Over 40 people killed in Bihar during Holi but not much responses sought from the media neither from the government nor from a society as a whole. We romanticise these festivals so much and yet every year they take so many lives. Of course, Holi seems to be the best time for ‘avenging’ things’.
The biggest of the story came from a village Mehmudpur in district Madhubani where five members of Rajput community were massacred but this story has been killed by the brahmin-bania media in Patna and Delhi. If you google search about this story, you wont get any information. You will get the news about the incident happened but not about the murderers who have killed the five members including one BSF Jawan who had come home on holidays. Some people wanted to give it a ‘communal’ angle because it is ‘Mehmudpur’ but Bihar police says it is not the issue of ‘caste’. I am surprised when it is not the issue of caste then what stop police and media naming the murders.
Media in this country has a brutal caste face. It can easily vilify the Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims. If any one from these communities are caught in some evil act then the entire communities are targeted but there is no story from Bihar. Even the heros of ‘secular’ ‘liberal’ elites in Delhi media remain silent. Interestingly, the loudspeakers of Karni Sena who had threatened to stop various films about their depiction of ‘Rajputs’ are silent. No political party in Bihar has spoken about it. BJP which enjoys the biggest patronage of Rajputs in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and elsewhere in the last one decade has not uttered a word about it. Human Rights activists remain silent as it is not suitable to them.
Have Rajputs lost all the good will from all other parties because excessively working for brahmanical India where they have no space except a few of their loudspeaker netas ? They will have to think but the main question remains who are the killers of these Rajputs and why their identities not being revealed in the media despite the fact that their names have come out openly.
Madhubani is dominated by Maithil Brahmins. Village Mehmudpur belongs to Kshatriyas or Rajputs which has a temple which had a Rajput Mahant killed by a person belonging to Brahmin community. It is being reported in social media that Brahmins were determined to take over this temple from the Rajputs which they were resisting. The names of local BJP MLA and other Bajrang Dal leaders who happened to be brahmins have come as accused but the police and administration have not spoken anything except that it was not a ‘caste war’ but a war of two ‘gangs’. How is it war of two gangs and how come that one family loses everything including one son who was in BSF and on holiday. Was he a gang member ?
Caste is the dirty reality in India. Brahmins and Rajputs are travellers these days in the BJP bandwagon run by the Banias. All the three savarna communities are united in their common aversion towards the Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs but it is also a fact that all these three powerful communities do not see eye to eye with each other. Their netas need a common ‘villain’ to survive in politics but social realities are different.
Imagine this Mehmudpur massacre accused were some Mohammad or Ali, our media would have gone berserk seeking blood of all the Muslims but when the accused are Jhas, the Maithil Brahmins then even the ‘secular’ brahmins will protect their own castes. We dont hear anything from these ‘liberal’ Jhas sitting in Delhi speaking about ‘fascism’ but criminally silent on the same. The Karni Sena neta is crying but unable to name that brahmins are accused. They would have gone violent everywhere if the accused were Muslims or Dalits. This is the dirty caste reality where the ‘powerful’ kshatriyas become ‘powerless’.
It is time for the Rajput community to ponder over whether they need rabble rouser netas who have no vision or those sober leaders who worked for all and talked with sanity and sense. Rajputs today remain isolated and their netas have made them arrogant and completed their isolation. Netas might have become CMs elsewhere but they have failed to provide a vision for all. These are times when they should look for people like V P Singh, Chandrashekhar, Arjun Singh, Jaswant Singh who spoke with sense and responsibility. It is time for the community to ponder over seriously as to what kind of politicians it is supporting and why the parties and politicians have deserted them even at this point of time when a family is butchered on a festival day.
Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a social activist
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