Late in the evening of 1st December, nearly 300 gunmen of Ranvir Sena carried out a swift, savage attack on villagers, mostly daily wage earners and poor peasants of Batan Tola, part of Laxmanpur Bathe in Jehenabad district, Bihar. They crossed the nearby Sane River in two boats, coming over from Bhojpur district. Five fishermen, unlucky enough to have seen them, had their throats slit open so that no alarm was raised nor any witness left. The killers then moved in on unsuspecting villagers, breaking open doors, and in a matter of twenty minutes, shooting to death 61 persons, all Dalits, and 27 women and 16 children. In a number of cases, the women were raped and then murdered. This was the biggest upper caste carnage even in this increasingly bloody and lawless province.

Every bourgeois party has got into the act. Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi expressed her sorrow. Her husband, [C.M.—ex-Chief Minister??], Laloo Prasad Yadav, out on bail at last in a case involving the theft of millions of rupees in cattle-foods purchase transactions, made a bee-line for Batan Tola. The BJP, the Samajbadi Party, the Congress, the Janata Dal, each vied with the rest. But that, as everyone recognizes, is with an eye to the election for the 12th Lok Sabha, due in February.

Two simplifications have to be avoided to arrive at a proper evaluation of the event and at the course of action needed. The first is the impulse to explain everything as a caste war. The second is to assume that caste is only dragged in to confuse class issues. That caste identity is not the whole picture was shown most clearly by the Arwal massacre. In it, low caste rural poor were murdered by low caste-upper caste elements. But it is also a fact of Bihar's class structure that the bulk of the rural rich belong to Rajputsg, Bhumihars, Yadavs, Kurmis, a handful of castes whereas the over whelming majority of Dalits (Scheduled Castes) are wage labourers or landless/near- landless peasants. Caste is not unimportant. It divides the rural ruling class. But all too often, against the rural poor,

they unite. The latter, too, could theoretically be united on class lines. The CPI(ML) Liberation at an earlier stage, in trying to rally the landless peasants, had done that in areas like Bhojpur district.

But the great success of the rulers in the 1980's and 1990's has been the splitting up of the exploited rural masses along caste lines. And in this, not only have bourgeois parties played a role, but also the left. If one looks at the political map of Bihar, one finds caste written large. The Rastriya Janata Dal of Laloo Prasad Yadav is a Yadav-Muslim outfit. The Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav is its Uttar Pradesh counterpart, seeking to become an all India party by horning in on Laloo's preserves. The Samata Party of Nitish Kumar, et. al., is a Kurmi-based party. The SJP of Chandra Sekhar, former prime minister, is dependent on his Rajput identy for its fortunes. Even the two "national" parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the congress, have to take on caste identities. Their "national" identity rests on their ability (steadily declining, for the Congress) to rope in several castes.

In such a situation, none of these parties would like to, or is able to, do anything about the caste-armies of landlords that dot the landscape. On the contrary, each party has stray links with one or more of these private armies. The Ranvir Sena, for example, is known to be close to the

BJP. Caste-links are used to split the rural poor. But this is exacerbated by the left. The CPI [strey] in central and North Bihar, has caste-based middle peasant-rich peasant support. The three major far-left groups operating in this area likewise have caste links. The Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) is heavily Yadav based and is known to be in proximity to the RJD. This is not the sole reason for conflicts within the far-left, but this also contributes.

The caste conflicts make for a degree of instability in bourgeois politics, as electoral results in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have shown in recent years. But parties are not mechanical reflections of a class. Precisely because party conflicts sometimes become acute, and consequently

the state apparatus is often incapable of sufficiently resisting the struggles of workers and the rural poor, that Bihar has armed squads of the rulers. The "caste-wars" in Bihar have taken 206 lives so far in 1997, and with a fortnight to go, it could easily mount.

The class issues peep out all the time, notwithstanding caste. This time, the immediate [issue] was a dispute over 60 acres of land, claimed both by Bhumihar landlords and the CPI(ML) for poor peasants. In addition, there is the question of strategic location. This area is close to Bhojpur. The CPI(ML/Liberation) is stong in Bhojpur. In Jehanabad it is now being challenged by the CPI(ML Party- Unity). The Laxmanpur Bathe area forms part of a corridor between two CPI(ML/Liberation) bases. The massacres [are] aimed at demoralising the CPI(ML) supporters and weakening it in the area.

Retaliation on United Front?

Immediately after the massacre, the CPI(ML)/Liberation proposed a united front stretching from the CPI andCPI(M) to the Party Unity and the MCC, this is not on the agenda. Maoism in India began with a glorification of

violence, of terrorism decked up as class war, and of every manner of ultra-leftism generally, back in 1977. When the Satya Narayan Singh-Santhosh Rana group (the Provisional CC, CPI(ML) ) came into the open, they were greeted with cries of "liquidationism". Those who had cried loudest then were the C.C., CPI(ML/Liberation) (after their party magazine). It is true that in course of shedding it's ultra-left past, this group has commited significant opportunist actions, like its flip-flop over the Mandal Commision Report, its alliance with Mulayam Singh Yadav to win university students' union polls in Uttar Pradesh, its unprincipled electoral behaviour, etc. But it has come in for criticism from CPI(ML)Party-Unity, and the MCC, not for such mistakes, but for its very decision to act openly. Ever since then, its cadres have been under attack. A police report claims that since 1994, 450 Maoist activists and their sympathisers have been killed in intergroup conflicts. The conflicts began at least half a decade earlier. So the total is likely to be much higher. In their search for local [hegemony] these groups are not only sniping at the CPI(ML)/Liberation, but killing each other's cadres. MCC-PU clashes have resulted in 50 deaths, accordingly to one source.

In this situation, the extreme left groups have taken the easiest way out. They have joined hands with the CPI(ML) Peoples War Group, active in Andhra. The PWG in turn has proclaimed solidarity with practically every group in India, ethnic, minority religious, etc. that uses guns. Through some of thems AK-47s, RDX, and other sophisticated weapons. So far, weapon for weapon, the up, it getper class senas have always outmached the squads of CPIML)PU and MCC. With training and equipment provided by the PWG, they can now expect to put up a stiffer fight. But this politics of retaliation is useless, and even counter-productive from a class standpoint. The MCC has in the past killed and maimed in the name of revolutionary justice. Its logic is no different from that given by the anarchist Emile Henry at his trial, a century back. "We will not spare the women and children of the bourgeois, for the women and children of those we love have not been spared". MCC-CPI(ML)Liberation relations are so bad that even Liberation's United Front offer was not extended to them.

Yet, for all its shortcomings, it is this United Front appeal that makes any sense. If the left is unable to unite even to defend [itself against] direct assaults on cadres, how is it supposed to resist fascism [leaving aside the debates surrounding the fact that most of the Indian left characterises the BJP as a fascist party]? Ultra left nihilism, posing as Marxism, can only damage the revolutionary cause. It is only when masses are mobilized, when hundreds of thousands, and millions, come together for their class demands, that any question of real class terrorism can come up. We are not Gandhians, and [we] cannot be. As long as the ruling class murders us, maims us, we have to fight back. But the gun must not dictate politics. A united front, on even the simple goals of mobilising to resist the Senas and to carry out the redistribution of surplus land (i.e. land even formally stated by the government to be above the ceiling for individual holdings), can bring about a major change in class relations.

Unfortunately, for most of the left, transitional demands and a conception of the united front corresponding to them, is a sealed book. Each group, including CPI(ML)PU and MCC, are now busy talking about democratic rights. Yet they assume that human rights groups must keep silent when they murder activists of rival groups, when they [violate] human rights. The same narrow vision also disables them from any serious struggle for democracy. The response to the Jehanabad massacre will probably be counter-killings. It should be a united front to defend and broaden democracy, and to distribute land. And only then can the CPI and the CPI(M) also be pushed into a corner. As long as they can claim that the conflict is only between "rival armed groups", they can continue their united front with the bourgeoisie, where a "Communist" Union Home Minister sits in silence as the landlord's armies go on murdering the exploited. By publicly, repeatedly, offering issue-based united fronts, the "mainstream" left can be forced into occasional action. After all, in Calcutta, even CPI(M)-led Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU) activists protested after the Jehanabad massacre.