Maharashtra violence

Independent Inquiry Slams Pune Police for ‘Inaction’ During Bhima Koregaon Violence

The inquiry has concluded that the violence could have been controlled had the police and state administration reacted promptly to the “premeditated” violence, and has demanded an inquiry against “erring officers”.

Mumbai: A non-official inquiry conducted by a retired high court judge and two district judges has come down heavily on the police and particularly the then superintendent of Pune police (rural) Mohd. Suvez Haq for its “inaction and inability to control the mob” that had unleashed violence on the huge gathering of Bahujans at Bhima Koregaon outside Pune on January 1.

As part of an independent inquiry initiated by anti-caste activists and social groups, Justice (retired) B. Chandra Kumar of the Hyderabad high court, along with two district judges of Maharashtra, J.H. Dongre and Manik Mhakre, had travelled to Bhima Koregaon and the nearby villages, and recorded exhaustive testimonies of the victims, bystanders and the police on duty.

The inquiry has concluded that the violence could have been controlled had the police and state administration reacted promptly to the “premeditated” violence.

The inquiry report that has been accessed by The Wire has already been submitted to the state set two- member judicial inquiry commission headed by the former chief justice of Calcutta high court J.N. Patel and Sumit Mullick, former chief secretary of the Maharashtra government.

The inquiry committee has observed that, “On January 1, a huge mob of nearly 2,000 people carrying lathis and saffron flags from Vadhu Budruk area were allowed to head towards the Vijay Stambh (the memorial built to commemorate the defeat of the Brahmin Peshwa soldiers by a Mahar Battalion of British East India Company comprising Dalits in 1818).”

The observation, which is based on the testimonies of the victims and other eye witnesses has also concluded that: “Superintendent of Police Mohd. Suvez Haq and other police officers were also present and observed the procession… No steps were taken by the police to stop this procession. Not even a suggestion was given to them not to proceed towards the places where the vehicles were parked or to the main road through which people were proceeding towards Vijay Stambh.”

Haq, soon after the riots, was transferred to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad as the deputy inspector general and on August 8 was inducted into the CBI as a superintendent of police. Several attempts were made to reach Haq but his phone has been out of reach. The story will be updated once he responds to the report’s findings.

Justice (retired) B. Chandra Kumar. Credit: YouTube

Speaking to The Wire, Justice Chandra Kumar said that the incident could have been nipped in the bud had the police responded to the situation promptly. “The police were deployed at the spot. The SP was present there too. However, from the testimonies of the villagers and victims who were brutalised in the attack we have concluded that the police had intentionally not taken any action against the rioters. They allowed the riot to grow out of control,” Justice Chandra Kumar said.

The committee has also considered the events prior to Elgar Parishad meet at Shaniwarwada on December 31 as the reason behind the violence. The Pune police has so far arrested ten persons including lawyers, activists and academics for their alleged role in “naxal activities” and for instigating the mob and also funding the violence. However, the fact-finding committee has observed that the events that unfolded in and around Bhima Koregaon villages since December 27 and especially on December 29 at Vadhu Budruk village were behind the attack.

Contrary to some reports in the media, the committee has blamed the activities in Sanaswadi and Vadhu Budruk villages to be behind the violence. Vadhu Budruk village in Shirur Tehsil, which is less than four kilometres away from Bhima Koregaon is another significant place in the history, where the samadhi of King Sambhaji – son of King Shivaji – was built. Sanaswadi is around 7.5 km from Bhima Koregaon.

Justice Chandra Kumar, in the report, has observed that specific orders were issued at the village level three-four days prior to the January 1 celebration. Both at Vadhu Budruk and Sanaswadi, Hindutva leader Milind Ekbote has been actively working and has been allegedly instigating the Marathas against the Dalits. “Sanaswadi Gram Panchayat has passed a resolution on December 30, 2017, directing the people to observe ‘Total Bandh’ and to observe January 1, 2018, as a ‘Black Day’, the committee has observed.

Ekbote, who was arrested in March by the Pune police, was promptly released on bail. He and another Hindutva leader Manohar alias Sambhaji Bhide were named in the initial FIR for allegedly instigating the mob against the Dalits. No action has been initiated against Bhide so far and the police is yet to file a chargesheet in the case. The FIR was registered after Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh’s leader Prakash Ambedkar named the two as the masterminds behind the violence.

“Three to four days prior to 1st January 2018, several messages were sent out on WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media on behalf of Manohar alias Samhaji Bhide and Samastha Hindu Agadhi (run by Ekbote) instigating the people to observe ‘Bandh’ on 1st January 2018, in the Village Perne Phata, Bhima Koregaon, Shikrapur, Vagholi, Sanaswadi, Lonikand and nearby 10-15 villages,” the report observed. The report claims all hotels around the vicinity were specifically instructed by the two to strictly observe a bandh so that the people coming to pay respect to Vijay Stambh would not get drinking water, breakfast, lunch, etc. “A threat was also given that those who do not observe ‘Bandh’ or provide water, etc. to the people coming for paying respect to Vijay Stambh would have to face dire consequences,” the inquiry report further observed.

Justice Chandra Kumar said the incident in Sanaswadi in particular was of a peculiar nature. “The gram panchayat had passed a resolution to socially boycott thousands of Dalits travelling to Bhima Koregoan. This boycott is a clear case of caste violence. It was brought to the police’s notice. Yet, the police decided to not respond to it,” he said. The committee has also observed that there was a total failure of intelligence in securing information and in taking preventive action.

Besides the three judges, the team also comprised of lawyers and social activists from Pune. Justice Chandra Kumar said the exercise was intentionally carried out with judges and lawyers to ensure proper legal processes were followed and that the documentation was conducted without any distortion of facts.

The All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF), an organisation set up by the late Kanshi Ram provided the logistic support to the inquiry committee. BAMCEF along with Samata Sainik Dal founded by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar has been working actively in organising the processions and visits to Bhima Koregaon for several decades.

This is the first part of the report, the second part focusses on the protests that were organised across the state that led to indiscriminate police action against over 27000 Bahujan youths including teenage boys across Maharashtra. “That report will be finalised in a week’s time and will be submitted to the two- member judicial commission,” confirmed senior lawyer Rahul Makhre, who was also a part of the fact-finding team.

Every year over three-four lakh Dalit Bahujan and anti-caste activists travel to Bhima Koregaon on January 1 and observe ‘Vijay Diwas’ to commemorate the defeat of the Brahmin Peshwa soldiers by a Mahar Battalion of British East India Company comprising Dalits in 1818. This year, since it was the 200th year, the number of visitors had doubled and over six lakh people from across Maharashtra and neighbouring states had travelled to Bhima Koregaon. However, most had to turn back after the violence broke out.

Failure to intervene

Another revelation, the report makes, is of a phone call made by one Ramdas Lokhande to the minister of state for social justice Dilip Kamble. Lokhande, who also deposed before the committee, has apparently informed the minister over a phone call made at 9 am on January 1 that “the people (Dalits visiting Bhima Koregaon) were being obstructed outside the village and the situation was tense.”

Justice Chandra Kumar points out that this SOS call was made in desperation and with the hope of receiving help. “This was the beginning for the riot. In a few minutes, the gathered mob had attacked those heading to Bhima Koregaon, vehicles were burnt, stones were pelted and public and private property were damaged,” he said.

At 11 am, the minister reached the spot and instructed the police to act immediately. However, stones were pelted on his car too. Kamble had then reportedly made a call to Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis between 1.30 and 2.00 pm and had sought for additional police force at Bhima Koregaon. “Even though, the Honourable Minister Dilip Kamble personally talked to the Maharashtra chief minister of at around 11 pm, the police did not deploy any additional force. Even after getting information that shops and houses were attacked and burned and even the victims were making phone calls to the police to save their shops and houses, the police have not taken any steps to save their shops and houses,” the report concluded.

In an hour, the report says, the mob had reached closer to the banks of Bhima river. By 10 am, stones – that were stored in advance at the river bank – were pelted at the visitors. According to some testimonies, rumours of pieces of meat and beer bottles being thrown at one Bhairoba temple at Sanaswadi temple were rife for nearly three-four days. “Even when these rumours were brought to the police’s notice, the police had failed to intervene,” said Justice Chandra Kumar.

Justice Chandra Kumar has called this act “a systematically planned caste violence”. “In our several rounds of meetings with the villagers, and the police and ongoing through the video recordings of the wide- spread violence, we could not find any convincing reason as to why the police could not stop the mob at its origin (near Vadhu Budruk village) itself. The police had already received complaints on December 29 about the alleged planning of riots that were underway in the neighbouring village, these complaints were also overlooked,” Chandra Kumar said.

Post Bhima Koregaon Violence, Police Target Dalits Across Maharashtra; Minor Boys Worst Hit

‘Instead of arresting those involved in terrorising our community, the police has been busy arresting our children,’ said the uncle of a 14-year-old boy who was picked up.

‘Instead of arresting those involved in terrorising our community, the police have been busy arresting our children,’ said the uncle of a 14-year-old boy who was picked up.

Dalit protesters block a road during Maharashtra bandh called over Koregaon violence in Thane, Mumbai. Credit: PTI

Mumbai: Sarita Kamble stood in front of the tall, wooden door of the Dongri Observation Home for almost 10 minutes before entering. “He can’t see me crying. It will make him weak. Let us go in once I feel composed,” she hastily tells her husband, Sanket, as she struggles to hold back her tears.

It’s January 6, three days since her 15-year-old son was picked up by Chembur police for “unlawfully assembling on the street”, “rioting” and the most serious of all – “voluntarily causing grievous hurt to any person being a public servant in the discharge of his duty”. Sarita’s son studies in class nine at a municipal corporation run school near Deonar. He is one of 16 boys, all below 16, to be booked and later lodged at Dongri Children’s Home for their alleged roles in the riot and vandalism at Chembur on January 3. Sarita, like other parents, has come to see her son.

One law student from her neighbourhood in Govandi had told her that her son Rahul might be kept in “jail” for 10 years. “That boy told me the sections are grave. He opened some page on his mobile phone and read it aloud,” Sarita says. “Ataa daha varshaa saathi gela samjha tumcha mulga (your son has gone in for 10 years now),” Sarita recalls his exact words.

But once she steps inside the observation home and speaks to the social workers from the Resource Cell for Juvenile Justice (RCJJ) – a field action project started by the Centre for Criminology and Justice Department of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) – Sarita gets some clarity. “They (social workers) said under-18 children cannot be kept here for more than three years. But my son is still a child. He is innocent. I cannot let him be here for even a day more,” she tells The Wire while waiting outside the probation officer’s office, hoping to see her son.

According to S. Mane, senior police inspector from Govandi, Sanket, Rahul, along with 39 others, had indulged in vandalism and caused harmed to public property. These teenage boys, according to the police, were out on the street protesting against the violence unleashed on Dalits at Bhima Koregaon near Pune on January 1. But Sarita says her son was on his way to tuition class. “He was wrongly booked,” she repeats to everyone she speaks to in the next six hours inside the juvenile home.

Also read: Bhima Koregaon and the Dalits’ Never-Ending Search for a Nation

The Kamble couple had to wait for over an hour before they meet Rahul. He’s no longer in his school uniform – dark blue pants and white shirt – that he was wearing when he had left his home. It has been replaced with a yellow t-shirt with stripes and brown shorts.

“Who gave you these clothes?” she enquires. Rahul stands there with his head bowed. “Jail cha uniform aahe ka ha? (is this a jail uniform?),” she asks him. Rahul nods. By then four other boys join him. All of similar age, build and in similar striped t-shirts and brown shorts. They were all brought to Dongri home on January 3. Of the 16 children, one was released on the same day.

“He was bleeding profusely. Mirror shards had pierced him deeply and ruptured his skin badly on the right side of his body. He was in a terrible state. The magistrate had ordered his release on the same day,” confirms a social worker at the observation home.

The juvenile home in Mumbai. Credit: Free Press Journal

The trauma of having spent three days in confinement and the uncertainty of how many more days they would have to spend there has made most of these children extremely restless. “We have been asking sir (pointing at probation officer Dilip Naragnkar’s room) about when we can return home. He says he can’t tell. I have my board (10th) exams coming up in another one month’s time,” says 15- year old Avi. He tells this reporter that he was picked up from his house. “I had not stepped out that entire day. My elder brother had participated in the protest in the morning, but he too got back home in an hour. But the police came home and took us both to the Govandi chowki and then brought us here. My brother is 19. He was taken to another jail.”

Rahul’s co-inmate Aniket, another 15-year-old boy, is limping. These teenagers had not known each other until January 3. But for three days, Rahul has been taking care of Aniket. When this reporter asked Aniket about his injury, he said that a police constable had hit him with a baton. “I was out protesting with my sister and mother at Deonar. We were a huge group. They let my sister and mother go and brought me here. Many boys from my area were picked up.”

The families allege that the police did not spare anyone. “Police have launched a manhunt against our children. They arbitrarily arrested them,” says Sukhdeo Khairnar, whose 14-year-old nephew was also arrested. “Arrested for what? Is protesting illegal?” asks an elderly woman. Her 16-year-old grandson was also rounded up.

Also read: Beyond Bhima Koregaon: A Tale of Dalit-Maratha Relations in Modern Maharashtra

By 3 pm on January 6, the magistrate, Jyoti Purkar, calls all 15 children, one by one, to her chamber. Their parents are asked to furnish two independent sureties each. This means they had to find individuals with a regular job, stable income and the readiness to vouch for these children. Belonging to the lowest strata of the society, this is a lot to ask for. Families desperately begin making calls and scrounging for help. Within a few hours, some relatives and neighbours pour into the observation home. But the documents they’ve managed to assemble do not suffice. The last entry made in one of the bank passbooks was in 2014. Another person had come with his papers of his “zero balance bank account”. “Most women among us work as domestic help. Men in the family do odd-jobs. We do not have any family members with high income,” said one of the mothers.

Finally by 4 pm, 13 families convince the Juvenile Justice Board. They children are then released against two “personal bonds” each. For two other kids – 14 and 16 year old – their families could not provide “convincing” sureties and their release is deferred for later.

Most arrests in Mumbai were from the slums of Chembur, Deonar, Vikroli and Powai in the northeast region. People from Dalit Bahujan communities living here were also the ones who had travelled in huge number to Bhima Koregaon on January 1. Several private vehicles were booked to travel from different parts of Mumbai to Bhima Koregoan memorial. Most of them had to return mid-way after the violence on participants and visitors heading to the memorial. Since this was also the 200th anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon battle, an occasion of great importance to Dalits, the crowd this year had gone up from a few thousands to over two lakhs.

Policemen stand guard at a traffic junction in Mumbai, India, January 3, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

Policemen stand guard at a traffic junction in Mumbai, January 3, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

“We suffered violence first hand at Bhima Koregaon. The call for bandh on the following day was only a response to it. Instead of arresting those involved in terrorising our community, the police has been busy arresting our children,” Khairnar says. The Pune police are yet to arrest the prime suspects in the Bhima Koregaon attacks – Manohar alias Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ebute, both Brahmins and prominent Hindutva leaders.

In Mumbai alone, close to 300 persons, all belonging to Bahujan communities have been arrested. The Directorate General of the Police’s control room confirmed a total of 502 FIRs have been registered across Maharashtra in the aftermath of the Bhima Koregaon violence.

“We have not collated any data so far on the number of arrests made. But most arrests have been in Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nanded and some parts of Nagpur,” says the officer attending to calls on Monday morning. News reports from various district confirms the number of persons arrested could be anywhere between 4,000 and 5,000. At least 5,000 more have been booked, but yet to be arrested. Besides being a part of unlawful assembly, most of them have been booked under serious, non-bailable charges such as vandalism and attempt to murder.

Advocate Darshan Ingole, one of the young lawyers who have been handling many of these cases, feels many of these charges might not even stand the scrutiny of the court. “Most of them are trumped-up charges. But the purpose is not to convict these young kids, but to instill terror in their minds. Can you even imagine what a family dependent on daily wages goes through if they have to visit the court and police station every day?” he asks.

Activist and journalist Vaibhav Chaya feels Dalit Bahujans commonly get criminalised during such violent incidents. “This way, most youth will be kept busy in dealing with these criminal cases against them. Their energy and resources all diverted from (their) education and career. These cases end up criminalising the community en masse.”

Chayya and several other young activists and lawyers have been working continuously since the day violence broke out at Bhima Koregaon. Besides coordinating with a network or lawyers and activists in most affected areas of Mumbai and other regions of the state, they have been busy putting out appeals to the Bahujan youths on the social media to protect their interests. “This is a tiring process. But it is only the community that can come together and salvage the situation during such times.”

(Names of children and their families have been changed in order to protect their identities.)

Bhima Koregaon and the Dalits’ Never-Ending Search for a Nation

Over the past few days, Maharashtra has observed the pent-up rage of a community that is still struggling to establish its legitimate claim in India’s history, while fighting for their rights and dignity.

Over the past few days, Maharashtra has observed the pent-up rage of a community that is still struggling to establish its legitimate claim in India’s history, while fighting for their rights and dignity.

Bhim Koregaon war memorial. Credit: YouTube

The 200th anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon rally in Pune, attended by lakhs of Dalits on January 1, was attacked by several right wing outfits that led to the death of a youth and injured many others. Upper caste men and Hindutva outfits like the Akhil Bhartiya Brahmin Mahasabha, the Hindu Ekta Aghadi, Shiv Pratishthan and the Rashtriya Ekatmata Rashtra Abhiyan had been opposing this event as being “anti-national” and, as was expected, mobilised a planned attack on the same.

As a student of history, it is a crucial exercise to interpret the past to unravel contradictions inherent in it, and to understand the various symbolisms involved in the act of remembering the past. This is not just to get a better sense of the past, but also to draw the right lessons for the present and for the future. If, as a historian, one is biased towards the dominant common sense, one may end up interpreting the act of commemorating Bhima Koregaon by the Dalits as a blatant celebration of a foreign (British) victory. This notion would presuppose that the Dalits fighting on the side of the British were “anti-nationals” (just like those commemorating them), while the vanquished – the Peshwa – may be a presumed as a “national” hero. But anyone who is aware of history would know that in 1818, when the British fought the Peshwas in Koregaon in the banks of the Bhima river, there was no Indian nation that existed. Nor was there any pan-Indian notion of nationalism. There were only a plethora of principalities that were in a state of war with each other from time to time. The East India Company, for its own imperial trading interests, allied with some, fought with others, negotiated with some, and vanquished others.

What did exist, however, was entrenched Brahmanism or caste that segregated people by birth, discriminated against them, denied them resources and dignity. As per the casteist diktats of the Brahmin Peshwas, the Mahars, who were considered untouchables, were made to tie brooms at their waists to sweep the dust of their footprints, and pots at their necks to collect their own spit. The Dalits recount that the Peshwa Baji Rao II in fact did not even allow the Mahars to fight in his army. So when the 900-strong Mahar soldiers in the Company’s army defeated the 20,000 strong Peshwa forces, it was meant to enter into a tale of legends.

Also read: The Myth of Bhima Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to Transcend

The victory memorial erected at Bhima Koregaon was just one among various such war memorials that the British had constructed across the subcontinent to immortalise or symbolise their own victories. Even the India Gate in Delhi, around which the Republic Day parade is held every year, is one amongst them. But in history, symbols are often given different meanings by people, depending on how they relate to it from their own subject position. This particular memorial at Koregaon, for instance, with the name of the Mahar martyrs etched on it (along with the Marathas, Muslims and Christian soldiers who fought alongside), assumed a different significance for the Dalits as they derived from it a sense of pride and self-respect that was denied to them by the Peshwas for centuries. About a 100 years later, this meaning was reinforced by none other than B.R. Ambedkar who, on January 1, 1927, visited the monument with Dalit veterans of the British army.

Credit: PTI

The British never attempted to vanquish Brahmanism. They rather ruled in collaboration and collusion with the Brahmanical ruling elite. And what disturbed Ambedkar the most was the fact that the dominant narrative of nationalism or the nascent idea of a nation that was emerging by the early decades of the 20th century was no different than the Peshwayi in terms of its disdain for – and discrimination of – the Dalits. The Congress, headed by Gandhi-Nehru-Patel, epitomised this upper caste expression of nationalism in which Dalits had no place, no voice, no rights and no dignity. The Hindu Mahasabha openly promoted the Manusmriti and glorified a revival of the chaturvarna legacy. When Ambedkar raised his voice on behalf of the Dalits, he was, in fact, the first to have been branded an anti-national, a traitor.

However, it never detracted him from his firm belief that no amount of political/legal freedom would mean more than a paper’s worth unless there were genuine efforts towards social transformation, towards annihilation of caste to start with. Till then the Dalits, he knew, would never have a nation.

“Gandhiji,” he famously said, “I have no homeland…How can I call this land my own homeland and this religion my own, wherein we are treated worse than cats and dogs, wherein we cannot get water to drink?” It is fashionable today, under the Bharatiya Janata Party, to brand any voice that speaks for the oppressed, that speaks against the majoritarian Hindutva/brahmanical idea of nation, as anti-national. But Ambedkar was unwavering when he said that “whenever there is any conflict of interest between the country and the untouchables, so far as I am concerned, the untouchables’ interests will take precedence over the interests of the country. I am not going to support a tyrannising majority simply because it happens to speak in the name of the country. I am not going to support a party because it happens to speak in the name of the country… As between the country and myself, the country will have precedence; as between the country and the Depressed Classes, the Depressed Classes will have precedence.”

So, Ambedkar’s visit to Bhima Koregaon in 1927 was an excercise of re-interpreting or reclaiming the war memorial for building his alternative vision of a nation wherein the Dalits would have a voice on equal footing. That is the real significance of Bhima Koregaon.

Also read: Watch: Bhima Koregaon Violence and the Dalit Movement in Maharashtra

But 200 years since, and even after 75 years of Independence, Dalits still don’t have a homeland or a nation. This is the message that the Hindutva outfits wanted to convey under the patronage of the ruling Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh/BJP by brutally attacking the 200th anniversary rally of Bhima Koregaon in broad daylight. In protest, Dalit organisations called for a bandh. What Maharashtra has observed over the last two days is the pent-up rage of a community that is still struggling for its legitimate claim over the nation’s history, its resources and their own rights and dignity.

Two hundred years from now, if a student of history would attempt write about today’s happenings, and would be tempted to use the contemporary newspapers as sources for his/her study, what she/he would find is an overwhelming tale of “rampage”, “hooliganism”, “inconvenience”, “disruption of traffic”, “cancellation of film shootings” and “the plight of Mumbaikars” as a “city was brought to a halt” by “unruly elements”. This is how caste-bias reflects in the reporting of majority of the mainstream media today.

As long as the Dalits accept their “fate” as determined by the Manusmriti and lie low in the face of Hindutva terror, as long as the SC/ST Atrocity Act remains merely on paper with abysmally low conviction rate, as long as they are silent in the face of casteist slurs, as long as they are denied land or discriminated in jobs and education, everything is considered to be “normal”.

But the moment the anger of the Dalits against centuries of denial and humiliation express itself in the streets, all hell breaks loose and it is dubbed merely as “inconvenience” or “hooliganism”. The entire might of the state is brought upon them as has happened in the past in Ramabai colony or in the aftermath of the Khairlanji massacre when Dalits burst in anger against such atrocities.

Interestingly, the future historian will also find that instead of the right-wing culprits, it is the likes of Umar Khalid or Jignesh Mevani who stood in solidarity with the Dalits. Unless the historian has a knack for truth, he/she can easily be deceived by such casteist and saffron cacophony.

If we are to make the task of the future historian easier, if we are to build a better future for the oppressed millions of this country, for the Dalits and the Muslims, then it is imperative that we strengthen the struggle for annihilation of caste and the fight against Hindutva fascism. And it is towards that end that the Dalits of Maharashtra are marching today.

Anirban Bhattacharya has a Ph.d in History and is currently working as a senior researcher at the Centre for Equity Studiers, New Delhi. He is also a member of the Bhagat Singh Ambedkar Students Organisation.