Grass

Music

01.00.00.00

Hall:  It was on these vast Ganges plains that Buddha once trod his path to enlightenment. But there's little peace or tranquillity here now.

00.14

Wailing women/dead bodies

FX:  Wailing

00.22

Hall:  Hundreds of villagers have been butchered by a private upper class army.

00.33

They're being killed, not for what they've done, but for who they are, India's untouchables, the lowest of the low in this country's centuries old caste system.

00.42

Sena members

Sena member:  We kill at random. We kill whoever we see. Those who do wrong to us, we won't leave them. Those who dare to oppose us, we will kill them.

00.57

Wailing women

Hall:  Life in this remote feudal backwater goes on as it has for centuries.

01.30

Women working in fields

Landless labourers still stoop and strain to plant the crop for their upper caste masters.

They still live in separate lower caste villages.

01.50

And their lives are still ruled by the ancient caste system which infects their every move with fear.

01.56

Navin

Navin:  I used to hate it.

02.04

I used to hate being looked down upon and being treated as a non-human.

Hall:  Navin Prasad is one Dalit who dared to dream.

02.13

Navin:  So I thought of changing this system-demolishing all caste barriers and creating an equal order where all live as humans with dignity.

Navin walking

Hall:  He became a rebel after his sister was raped by their landlord. Now he's the leader of the Naxalites, a group of revolutionaries dedicated to throwing off the shackles of caste oppression.

02.37

Navin:  We have created a new force in society and politics. This new force calls the shots - we've punished many rich farmers and landlords and they have to accept the punishment.

02.42

Women with guns

Hall:  It's the emergence of a growing Dalit resistance movement, along with a powerful low caste political voice, that's sparked retaliation from the upper castes.

02.56

FX:  Gunfire

Hall:  And villagers like these are paying with blood.

03.11

Woman washing baby

By day this low caste village of Narayanpur appears peaceful enough. But at night, these mud huts are dark and defenseless, and it's then that the killers strike.

03.19

Music

03.31

Group of women and children

Sister:  It was night... they had covered their faces, and only their eyes were visible - so we could not recognise them.

03.40

Man

Man:  It was their will and wish to slaughter people mercilessly. There was so much cutting and killing.

03.50

Bodies from massacre

Hall:  At the end of the half hour rampage in this village of 30 families, a dozen people had been shot or hacked to death, including children, and scores were injured. The upper caste death squad, the Ranvir Sena, had swept through the village.

04.04

Boy

This little boy is the only member of his family to have survived.

04.15

Boy:   We were sleeping when they came in and fired at my father.  I was sleeping beside him with my head on his shoulder.

04.21

Hall visits family

Hall:  Just a few doors down, we met another family whose hopes have been destroyed by bullets.

04.38

Devi:  Oh Father, Father, why did you do that? He was my only hope. Who will look after me now?

04.48

Hall:  Maheshwari Devi has been around long enough to experience most of the indignities of life as a Dalit. She survived the massacre here, but she watched her 16 year old grandson bleed to death, just days before he was to be married.

04.56

Devi

Devi:  They have snatched him away from me... killed him... What sorrow... what grief... I can't live.

05.11

Villagers

Hall:  And these people are in no doubt about who's behind the killers. They say it's the upper caste landowners whose fields they must till to survive.

05.25

Sister:  Yes, but they do this to us because we are poor, aren't we? They make us work for them, and then they kill us too.

05.35

Street scene, night

Music/Traffic

Hall:  So brazen is the upper caste militia that's perpetrating this reign of terror, it's even prepared to boast about its activities to a foreign reporter.

05.57

Hall in car

It's late at night and we've just received word that some members of the private army of killers, the Ranvir Sena, will meet us. So we're heading off now to their hideout.

About 150 members of the Ranvir Sena are lying low in Bihar's capital city of Patna tonight, before moving out to the villages again in the morning.

After a signal from our hosts, we're ushered into the basement of a large apartment building, where we meet three heavily disguised members of this banned upper caste army.

Hall meets Sena members

Sena guys:  I'm twenty-five... I'm thirty-two years... I'm twenty-two years old.

06.42

Hall:  Can I just confirm though if it was Narayanpur was one of the villages they were at.

06.47

Hall:  How many people have these people killed? Women, children?

Sena member:  Yes... we don't see who is a woman and who is a child - we kill whoever we see - whoever is there.

Hall:  To these men who slaughtered so many at Narayanpur, it was not a mindless killing spree. It was a sacred mission to preserve the centuries old way of

07.09

Poster of Ranvir

life they'd been brought up to believe is their birthright.

Sena member:  Wherever we have a portrait of our deity, Baba Ranvir, that place is our temple. When we set off on a mission we do so with the names of our mothers and Baba Ranvir on our lips.

07.24

Hall:  What is it they think they're going to achieve by killing these people?

07.40

Sena member:  Revenge. We want to take revenge.  We don't want wealth and will not rob anyone.  Whoever has insulted and exploited us,  we will not rest till we kill them - finish them off.

07.44

Hall:  It seems curious that in this backward feudal state it's the upper caste sons of landlords who are complaining of exploitation.

08.04

Laloo walks among crowd

But then they've seen their comfortable world turned upside down by the ascension of a low caste interloper to the top office in their state.

08.16

Laloo

Laloo:  You know, I was a shepherd - I was grazing cows and buffalo in a remote village in Bihar.  I never thought I would become the Chief Minister of this feudal state.

08.26

Hall:  But Laloo Prasad Yadav did make it to the top. And not just once, but in four elections over a decade.

08.48

Hall and Laloo

Hall:  He might keep his favourite cows behind the Chief Minister's residence, and even do a bit of milking now and then, but this man is a formidable politician.

Hall:  How old is this one?

09.12

Laloo:  After 18 months she will conceive and children...

Hall:  No one else has taken on India's caste system in this state where it's been most rigidly enforced.

Laloo:  Every Dalit... every minority... every backward is my voter and supporter.  They are... massacred.

09.26

Village kids

Hall:  Laloo sees himself as Bihar's Nelson Mandela. And he views the discrimination against people like these, who scavenge a living from garbage, as no less evil than apartheid.

09.43

Laloo:  People... the scavengers, were living like a dog.  They were sitting on the street...they were eating with a dog... their eyes were red... their hair was like this.

09.57

Laloo in crowd

Hall:  Laloo is not a Dalit. He's a rung above. But even for someone from a lonely cowherd caste to have made it so far, shocked Bihar's political elite.

00.24

FX:  Crowd cheering

Laloo

Laloo:  Always, you know they are fighting... Laloo Yadav... how to send to gaol, gaol, gaol, gaol...

10.35

Laloo addressing crowd

Hall:  And jailed he was last year over corruption allegations, charges he's still fighting.

10.44

It was then he installed his wife, Rabri Devi as Chief Minister. Opposition leader, Sushil Modi, still can't hide his contempt.

10.53

Sushil:  She was only a puppet. She could not even write,

11.02

Sushil

she couldn't even speak. She was illiterate and she was made just a chief minister, she was a proxy chief minister in a way.

Laloo:  This is disrespect of our ladies... backward ladies...

11.14

Laloo

If a backward Dalit lady is given some assignment these people will hate... laugh!

Hall:  Nowhere is the hatred for Laloo and his low caste agitators greater than on this fertile plain south of the political capital.

11.37

Here landowners still rule their labourers lives with the authority of feudal lords, ordering death to those who defy them.  This wealthy upper caste village of Bellaur is the region's centre.

Hall with Ravinder

It's home to landlord Ravinder Chaudrey. It's also the home of the upper caste death squad, the Ranvir Sena.

12.11

Ravinder:  Yes, we formed the Ranvir Sena. The Ranvir Sena was born in this village.

12.19

Ravinder:  this house is our labourers'...

12.27

Hall:  Ravinder Chaudrey's family has owned land as far as the eye can see here for over 400 years.

12.32

Labourers

He has close to a hundred labourers working for him. And when it comes to protecting his way of life, this landlord is merciless.

12.41

While he won't admit to ordering the massacre at Narayanpur, he has no trouble justifying its brutality.

12.51

Ravinder

Ravinder:  When we kill the men their wives and children lead more miserable lives and so it is better to relieve them of their miseries along with the menfolk.

12.58

Hall:  Ravinder Chaudrey says violence was his only option after some of his labourers joined the rebel Naxalites, refused to work, and blockaded his land.

13.12

Rally

Organising the withdrawal of Dalit labour from the fields is a key Naxalite tactic.

13.27

FX:  Rally

Supporters:  Long live the revolution!

Long live... long live!

Hall:  At meetings like this, they raise funds and plan the blockades. But they're also prepared to back their cause with violence.

Naxalite leader Navin Prasad says when the landlords beat and kill Dalits for refusing to work, there's no alternative.

13.53

Navin:  Violence is necessary

14.02

Navin

against those who exploit repeatedly, do not mend their ways, and starve people to death.  Killing such people is necessary.

Ravinder

Ravinder:  In a fight, one side loses.  If the Ranvir Sena loses and we don't enslave the Dalits, then we will become their slaves.

14.14

Police entering village

Hall:  As this vicious contest for survival rages, the police seem capable only of mopping up the aftermath.

14.39

These officers are raiding a village near Narayanpur looking for a Ranvir Sena member they suspect was involved in the killings.

But a week after the massacre there's no sign of their quarry. So they're seizing his family's belongings instead.

Mr Singh

Mr Singh:  They massacred people at a village one and a half hours away from the police station secure in the knowledge that by the time the police arrive on the scene they will be gone.

15.16

Hall:  Over in Narayanpur though, there's a deeper suspicion of the police and their failure to prevent the massacres. These low caste people know that more than half the members of the police force come from upper caste families.

15.39

Old Lady

Old Lady:  They guard the doors of the upper castes...

Young woman:  They guard their houses - and Dalits are killed on this side.

15.54

Music

Hall:  In this state that seems suspended in an earlier century, and where caste hatred infects even those meant to maintain order, no one expects the slaughter to stop.

16.06

Sena member

Sena member:  See, the Dalits and the Naxalites... there is nothing wrong in killing them.  It is the Dalits who are selfish and do not listen to us - so we kill them.

16.20

Laloo

Laloo:  If you will not provide respect to the poor... downtrodden...if you will not provide them every facility, then nobody can stop the violence.

16.38

Woman and crying child

Hall:  And that means more children like these at Narayanpur are likely to be massacred long before they grow old enough to become the working slaves of their upper caste masters.

17.01

Crying child/music

Ends 17.21

CREDITS:

Reporter        ELEANOR HALL

Camera         GEOFF CLEGG

Sound              GEP BARTLETT

Editor            STUART MILLER

Producer        IAN ALTSCHWAGER