*Why Were Mohammad Jilani and Banna Lal Bairwa Killed?*
* *
*By Bhanwar Megwanshi*
*(Translated from Hindi by Yoginder Sikand)*
*Where the lives of Dalits and religious minorities are considered to be
worthless, they can be killed anywhere, at any time. What sort of ‘security’
and ‘development’ are we boasting about? What is the use of this
‘independence’?*
Two brutal incidents occurred not long ago in my home district of Bhilwara,
in Rajasthan. This district is notorious for its highly
communally-surcharged environment and for atrocities on Dalits and women.
The first case involved a young man called Mohammad Jilani, a brilliant
student of an engineering college. He belonged to an impoverished and
largely illiterate Pathan family from a place called Gulabpura. But,
despite all the odds that weighed heavily against him, Mohammad Jilani
managed to top his class in the Class 12 examinations, scoring 96%. Keeping
in mind his future, his family decided to shift to Bhilwara town, where
educational facilities were much better. His father, Nazir Khan, took to
working as a manual labourer, and in this way was able to admit Mohammad
Jilani to the ITM Engineering College. He also took an educational loan, of
Rs. 80,000, to help meet the expenses of his son’s education.
Mohammad Jilani excelled in college as well, and the thought that he would
soon receive his diploma and get a good job gave the desperately poor Pathan
family a glimmer of hope.
It is exceedingly rare to find men like Mohammad Jilani among Muslims. Most
Muslim youth study only a bit and then are compelled, often out of sheer
poverty, to take up some small job or the other in order to help their
families make their ends meet. The government-appointed Sachar Committee
Report clearly indicates that Muslims across India are faced with multiple
odds, be it in terms of education, health, housing, food or challenges to
their identity and self-respect. Their representation in government services
is worse than woeful. In a communally-surcharged environment, their
institutions, houses and businesses constantly face the threat of being
destroyed. Things have taken such a bad turn that insurance companies are
refusing to insure Muslim-owned shops, for no one knows when they will be
turned consigned to the flames.
The overall conditions of Muslims across India are heart-rending.
Governments are interested only in Muslim votes, and, in actual fact, no
party really wants Muslims to progress. In BJP-ruled Rajasthan, the
conditions of Muslims are worse than in many other parts of India. The RSS
agenda is being put into effect in Rajasthan, and this is even further
marginalizing the Muslims, who as it is occupy the margins. There have been
several cases of attacks on Muslims in recent years where they have
deliberately been denied justice just because they are Muslims.
My district of Bhilwara has, for several years now, been the major
laboratory for Hindutva forces in Rajasthan. Even a small incident here can
easily be transformed into a huge and violent controversy. In fact, such
incidents are often engineered precisely for this purpose. Sometimes, in a
carefully-planned manner, a mosques is destroyed, at other times a Sufi
tomb. Sometimes, the Quran is set on fire, at other times a brilliant
student such as Mohammad Jilani is killed. In every such case, the Muslim
minority is deliberately targeted and made to suffer enormous loss—of life,
property and dignity.
One day, when Mohammad Jilani was in the second year of the engineering
course, a friend of his called him on the phone. After answering the call,
Jilani left the house. But, he did not return home after that. Two days
later, when his mobile phone was still switched off, his distraught parents
began frantically searching for him. Unable to locate him, they lodged a
report in the City police station in Bhilwara.
Three days after he disappeared from home, Mohammad Jilani’s corpse was
found floating in the waters of the reservoir of the Meja dam.
Husain Shikah, district chief of the SC/ST/Religious Minorities Unity Forum
and activist of the Muslim Reservation Front, submitted a memorandum to the
Collector of Bhilwara district, wherein he noted that Mohammad Jilani’s
hands and feet had been bound with ropes, a noose had been tied around his
neck and his skull had been so badly hit that his brains had splattered out.
This clearly indicated that Mohammad Jilani had been murdered. Yet,
according to Mohammad Jilani’s father Nazir Khan, the investigative agencies
tried to hush up the death by seeking to pass it off as a suicide.
According to Nazir Khan, the investigative agencies questioned him and his
family, rather than the actual murderers of his son. They asked him, ‘How
were you, a manual labourer, able to afford higher education for your son?
Where is your money coming from? Who all are helping you?’
What do these questions indicate? Were the police trying to accuse the
hapless Nazir Khan of having dubious links with some ‘fundamentalist’ group
or the other? If the family were innocent, as was plainly the case, did the
police deliberately insult Nazir Khan and his family only so that the real
culprits behind Mohammad Jilani’s murder could thereby by shielded?
The Muslims of Bhilwara were, naturally, completely shaken in the wake of
Mohammad Jilani’s murder. They took out a demonstration, issued notices, and
published leaflets, but because the deceased was a Muslim, and the son of a
poor labourer at that, hopes for justice, they must have realized, were dim,
if at all.
*
The second such incident, which also took place in Bhilwara at around the
same time, occurred in Biliya village in the Shahpura area, a constituency
reserved for Scheduled Castes and which is notorious for atrocities on
Dalits. In this case, a Dalit youth, Banna Lal Bairwa, was shot dead.
Banna Lal Bairwa’s only ‘fault’ was that a month earlier a powerful Gujjar
from the village named Bhanwar Lal had, at gun-point, raped his wife Rasali.
Banna Lal Bairwa went to the Phuliyan police station to lodge an FIR. The
head of the police station, Karan Singh Khangarot, was an acquaintance of
Bhanwar Lal Gujjar, the rapist. That is why he refused to allow for the FIR
of the hapless Dalit woman to be lodged. But, more than that, he chased
Banna Lal Bairwa out of the police station. Somehow, Banna Lal Bairwa
managed to lodge a complaint in the Shahpura court, but, despite this, the
police delayed in taking any action. Meanwhile, Banna Lal Bairwa began
receiving threats to withdraw his complaint or else, he was told, he would
be killed. And so, when Banna Lal Bairwa firmly refused to withdraw the
complaint, the accused Bhanwar Lal Gujjar killed him.
So terrified were the denizens of the village in the aftermath of this
heinous killing that only seven people dared to come out of their homes to
carry Banna Lal Bairwa’s corpse, although there are more than 40 Dalit
families in the village. The local MLA, Ram Ratan Bairwa of the BJP, who had
served as a teacher in the very same village where this murder occurred and
who belonged to the same Bairwa caste as the murdered Banna Lal, did not
bother to come to commiserate with the aggrieved family. Some minor Dalit
functionaries of certain other parties remained contented by appearing
before the office of the District Collector and issuing memorandums.
Activists associated with various peoples’ movements, including the Mazdoor
Kisan Shakti Sangathan, the Jaipur-based Dalit Adhikar Kendra, the National
Dalit Human Rights Commission and the Rajasthan Dalit Adivasi and Nomadic
Peoples’ Rights Fourm, reached Banna Lal’s village shortly after the murder,
and met with the terrified Dalits. I was part of this group, too. Such was
the fear of the dominant castes that hardly anyone dared to speak. The
mother, wife and three hapless children of the slain Banna Lal were in a
stupor, their house on the verge of collapse in the torrential rain. I had
never seen a family so stricken with hunger, disease and terror, lingering
on the verge of death.
Our team collected such facts of the case as we could gather, and then met
with the Bhilwara District Collector and Police Chief. This probably made
them issue orders to provide some meagre financial assistance to the family
of Banna Lal, but yet the accused Bhanwar Gujjar remained scot free.
*
There have been several cases of such atrocities against Dalits in this
area, and this was certainly not the only one of or the first of its kind.
Whenever we approach the government administration to highlight such
terrible cases we are told that these are ‘gang-wars’. Instead of taking up
cases of anti-Dalit atrocities, they advise us to work for the
‘constructive’ development of Dalits. ‘Prepare a project and we will help
you,’ they tell us.
Till this day, I have been unable to understand why in every so-called
‘gang-war’, the gun is always in the hand of the goons from the powerful
Savarna Hindu castes and why those who are killed are always Dalits. What
sort of one-sided ‘gang-war’ is this?
And as for the advice that we should engage in ‘constructive’ work for the
Dalits instead of highlighting atrocities against them, the less said the
better. When such heinous crimes are being committed against our people,
when there is no hope for any justice in the face of unspeakable atrocities,
is it at all possible for us to talk about ‘constructive work’ and
‘projects’?
Those who remember Mohammad Jilani and Banna Lal Bairwa demand to know that
if even 60 years after India’s ‘independence’ the country’s marginalized
communities continue to be brutally denied justice, as these two hapless men
were, what is the use of living? Ours is a life worse than slavery.
*Bhanwar Megwanshi is a noted social activist from Bhilwara, Rajasthan. He
edits the Hindi monthly ‘Diamond India’, a journal that deals with
grassroots’ social issues. He is associated with the Rajasthan-based
Mazdoor-Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), and can be contacted on
[email protected]*
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