LETTER FROM INDIA/Rahul Bedi: The recent arrest of the founder of an upper-caste, outlawed "farmers' army" in eastern India's poorest state, Bihar, which was responsible for the deaths of over 500 Dalits or low-caste Hindus over the past two decades, highlights the country's ancient caste system.
"I have nothing to repent about, as all the killings carried out by my outfit were retaliatory in nature," the bespectacled Brameshwar Singh Mukhiya, commander of the brutal "Ranvir Army" said after his arrest last week in the state capital, Patna.
"My detention is not going to derail the farmers' war against the lower castes," the 50-year-old caste warrior declared.
The unshaven and emaciated insurgent leader has been accused of masterminding and being personally involved in some of Bihar's gruesome Dalit mass killings, in which children and pregnant women were not spared.
Mukhiya's upper-caste supporters in his home district of Bhojur in western Bihar are blindly supportive of their leader. "He is a highly respected man. He is like our king " said farmer Ajay Kumar.
In Bihar, over 80 per cent of the state's population of over 100 million live in a medieval, caste-bound time-warp. There have been around three dozen massacres in recent years, of which the worst was the December 1997 attack, in which 61 Dalits were hacked to death in the Jehanabad district south of Patna.
Officials said the "Farmers' Army", one of several rival militias that emerged in rural Bihar in the early 1980s, came into being following a feud. It began when the young son of an upper-caste farmer was beaten up and chased away by some low-caste people when he approached one of them for a light.
The boy mentioned the incident to his father who "responded" by beating up the low-caste group.
Thereafter, the landlords, mostly Brahmins and Rajputs, migrants from western India, raised their army under Mukhiya's leadership to take on the Dalits, who by then had banded together to form the Maoist Communist Centre, the People's War Group and Maoist-Leninist Liberation Army, known locally as the "Red Terror".
Police say over 3,000 people have died in Bihar's caste wars since the mid-1980s. The unofficial death toll, however, is twice as high.
Human rights activists say Bihar's continuing repressive social system, underpinned by caste affiliations, has spawned the private armies. Even today Dalits are treated like pariahs in Bhiar, confined to village ghettos. Any attempt by them to drink water at public wells or pray in temples in upper-caste rural areas often resulted in a beating, ostracism or other public humiliation.
Upper-caste males keep lower-caste males "in their place" by raping Dalit women publicly in villages and small Bihar towns. In many instances, the incidents go unpunished; the upper-caste police refuse to even register these crimes and some upper-caste journalists ignore such deeds.
"Regular bloodletting between castes has become a ritual across Bihar, trapping the rich and poor in an unbreakable cycle of violence " said a senior police officer. The state, he admitted, had neither the infrastructure nor the political will to combat the caste system, illiteracy or abject poverty.
Taking advantage of official impotence and the breakdown of the state's authority, Bihar's private armies, with a few hundred "soldiers" and the capacity to mobilise many more, often institute kangaroo courts in their areas of control to dispense instant "justice". They also increase their influence by levying "local tolls" after making deals with the corrupt policemen and politicians for which Bihar is notorious.
Private armies have also boosted Bihar's clandestine arms industry, which produces shotguns and handguns that are good for a few rounds. Over the past five years, assault rifles and mines have also found their way to some of the richer militias.
Bihar's lawlessness also impinges on eligible bachelors, who are wary at this time of year as many are kidnapped and forcibly married to strangers during the "wedding season" that lasts from July till November.
Police admit that scores of bachelors are abducted each year in Gaya, Darbangha and Purnea districts. After being beaten senseless, the men are married according to Hindu rites in a custom, which, over the years, has gained tacit social approval.
Social activists say excessive dowry demands by grooms, particularly amongst the upwardly mobile Yadav agricultural class, forced parents to resort to such "shotgun alliances".
The groom-kidnapping system is well honed.
Basing their requirements on caste, parents target a suitable male in the vicinity or district. A "marriage fee" is negotiated with the kidnapping gangs that have sprung up over the years.
"Groom contractors" are known to shadow their victims for days, even weeks, snatching them off buses and trains in broad daylight. A "compliant groom", usually beaten senseless, is guaranteed. The most favoured victims are government employees, followed by doctors, businessmen and company executives.
Although illegal and capable of being annulled, such marriages in Bihar's feudal and backward society are regarded as socially valid, making it impossible for the groom to "escape" or remarry. Officials in Patna recall none having been annulled since the mid-1980s.
The police remain indifferent to complaints of abduction and forced marriages and have not worked on the handful of complaints lodged over the years. "No one ever gets punished, " said a senior police officer in Patna, declining to be identified.
Official apathy to the enforced marriages and Bihar's peculiar social profile, dominated exclusively by caste, lead to the victim and his parents compromising and accepting the bride as part of the family. But she is rarely looked upon kindly, adding to her woes of being a woman in a male-dominated, quasi-feudal society.