Bihar landless see ray of hope

Chautarwa (West Champaran) Jan. 27: A landless peasants’ movement in north Bihar against a few super-wealthy landlords illegally owning hundreds of acres of land and an indifferent state government had several reasons for frustration when its tricolour-led effort to help some landless families reclaim their land failed on Republic Day. But thousands of landless people in the region felt a small but significant success in their decades-old movement when two landlords who masterminded attacks on activists the previous night spent hours in police lock-up and were later sent to jail. This was the first such arrest of an influential West Champaran zamindar over the land issue in recent years. A large crowd of landless people gathered for a public meeting under the tricolour at Lagunaha village was awash with the subtle message — that the illegal zamindari system has been brought to its knees by sustained, peaceful movement waged by three organisations with support from Bihar’s leading social activists. The villagers, including many women, sang songs excoriating the landlords. “While the landless villagers here are free under the open sky on Republic Day, two perpetrators of injustice are locked behind the bars. Last night’s attacks and the administration’s requests forced us to postpone our plans to restore some of the illegally occupied land to their rightful owners today,” said Pankaj, leader of the apolitical Bhoomi Satyagraha movement. Goodluck Rao and Nitish Rao, who reportedly own hundreds of acres of land illegally, were arrested by Bagaha police from their house, fearfully known in the area as Ratwal Durbar, for leading attacks on activists of the Parchadhari Sangharsh Vahini and two other democratic outfits on Monday midnight. “The zamindar’s men also groped many women saying we hid bombs under our saris and abused us in filthy language,” said Phuljhari Devi, a landless woman among about a hundred like her at the meeting. The attacks were condemned by senior social activists like C.A. Priyadarshi, Ranjeev Kumar and Rupesh, who had come from Patna to help in the tricolour-led land reclamation movement.

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