There are Real Reasons behind the ‘Marathi–Bihari Conflict’
and There is Only One Cure of that

You already know the events. Thousands of young aspirants from many states came to Mumbai for appearing in Railway Recruitment Board Exam for Western Railway and Central Railway – a common scene in any big city whenever there is a RRB exam. As usual, many of them were from north India – and more often than not, from Bihar – where there is little chance of getting employed due to the state's poor development and consequently massive unemployment. A young boy from Bihar , Pawan Kumar, died when ultra-Marathi outfit MNS attacked exam centres, rampaged Mumbai, virtually put the city on hold. When police arrested MNS chief Raj Thakerey its cadres ran berserk and let out their fury on anything in front of them. Even two migrant workers coming from north India died in Mumbai outskirt. Many candidates of the exam were injured. At latest two cases are the deaths of a ‘Bihari' radiologist Rahul Raj, a young person in his early 20s, by police in an ‘encounter' when he came in Mumbai to protest in a rather queer way, and on the next day of a worker hailing from U.P. in a local train after being beaten up allegedly by some Marathi speaking youth after a squabble. MNS fury on north Indians, particularly Biharis, is nothing new in Mumbai, or as a whole in cities and their outskirts in Maharashtra . The latest phase of ‘North Indian' or ‘Hindi-speaking' baiting by MNS, stimulating hate campaign against people of east UP and mainly Bihar, forcing many migrant workers/contract-labourers to go back home … etc have been going since early 2008.

People from Bihar were targeted and gunned in Assam not long ago, they are facing hate, wrath, physical injury and even death in Mahrashtra … but nobody asked or thought for a while why and under what compulsion people of Bihar in lakhs and millions are forced to migrate in search of meagre jobs! Who made and kept Bihar , which had given the world the first text book of economics much more than 2000 years ago, so much economically underdeveloped for so many years or centuries? First and foremost it was Indian feudalism, naturally along with its accomplice caste system, that kept Bihar so underdeveloped. Then, it is the British colonialism that ‘developed' some regions and but didn't care to develop others due to their own interest. The feudal lords of Bihar also enjoyed patronage of the colonial master and that added to their strength. After ‘independence' the big bourgeois did not have the will and the courage to ‘disturb' their ally feudalism and so the social structure remained. Their effort to convert feudalism only slowly to capitalism via reformist, Jünker method — by slow paced ‘land reform' by ‘abolition of zamindari act', ‘land ceiling act' etc and granting huge governmental ‘subsidy' to the rural rich to change over to developed agriculture — were least successful in Bihar compared to other big, major states. Because, in Bihar , the feudal lords were very strong, stronger than in many other states, and had stronghold in the state machinery. So the basic economic changes that can fuel development along other different trajectories by flourishing trade, then small and medium industries, then… etcetera, that can demand development in other spheres… did not happen. So the overall scenario of the state's economic development was very bleak. Of course changes did occur in spite of the snail-speed reforms which gained a little pace lately. However, Bihar remains a backward state till now. But there was another important factor behind this backwardness: the ruling classes of India and their ally imperialist forces, for whom the ‘unity and integrity' of India is very important for having this vast market including the cheap labour market intact, many regions were/are kept as suppliers of cheap labour and raw material (like Bihar, Jharkhand etc) while other regions were developed into centres of trade and/or industry and suppliers of ‘human resources' of higher echelons and what not. It started all the way back from the British era. Bihar suffered de to this too. Then, almost all of Bihar 's industries were gone after the formation of Jharkhand – but there again, original habitants, the tribe people, the Jharkhandis, who fought for a state of their own are now at the receiving end! The same is the condition of eastern U.P. who also have to migrate in large numbers; they are victim of a peculiar condition of regional disparity within a single state which is also prevailing in some other states: here also the western part developed much more than the eastern part both agriculturally and industrially.

The regional ruling classes of Bihar and UP too – and the parties representing them there enjoy the patronage of the Pan-Indian Ruling Classes and their ‘fight' for ‘development' ends with receiving their own quotas – and in return they give service to All-India big bourgeois ruling parties by providing support of their MPs in govt formation. They use caste, religion etc everything for ensuring vote bank. Now they even dream of sitting on the chair of PM by their ‘social engineering' or ‘electoral arithmetic'. On the other side of the picture, Biharis (people of Jharkhand too) and people of eastern UP don't just supply Maharashtra only with cheap labourers – many such workers at poorer wages and worse working condition can be seen in Noida, Gurgaon, Gaziabad, Faridabad etc industrial parts of National Capital Territory and also in West Bengal and Haryana. Bihar also supplies cheap seasonal agricultural-labourers, brick-kiln workers to West Bengal and many other states. All the parties and leaders hailing from Bihar and UP – who pose themselves as ‘liberators' of the ‘poor' or ‘Dalits' or oppressed people – in reality, support the policies of Indian ruling class – the policies of globalization-liberalization-privatisation – which, among other evils, furthers exploitation and constricts employment opportunity. Now, as a part of policies of Globalization, Bihar 's (and Jharkhand's) major employment sources are being restructured. Railways, Mines, other Public Sector Units etc are all slimmed down adding to the burden of unemployment of the state. So more and more job seekers are compelled to move outside.

After all these can one reproach ‘Hindi-speaking' crowd swamping other states for employment at whatever meagre pay they get and at whatever harsh working conditions imposed upon them? Can you put the blame on the Bihari youth who went on rampage of govt property in blind fury after the news of maltreatment their friends and family received in Maharashtra or elsewhere reached Bihar ?

But that is not all. There is another aspect adding salt to the injuries. A separate identity as ‘Bihari' is not very old; Biharis didn't perceive themselves as a separate nationality, separately existing within the generally ‘Hindi-speaking' people say half a century ago; neither people of non-Hindi-speaking regions thought ‘Biharis' as anything separate from the common pool of ‘Hindi speakers'. That Biharis now think themselves as a separate nationality implies some sort of economic development and cultural evolution that binds them together as a single ‘national' entity. It evolved into a nationality (or nation). But then, ‘Bihari' is perhaps one of the most oppressed and exploited nationalities in India . Biharis are ridiculed everywhere in India . Everyone pokes fun at ‘Bhaia-s'! Bihar is perhaps the most ‘backward' state in public perception among Babu-s of other states. Biharis are now thought to be uncivilized, uncultured, uneducated….But see, is it not that this same Bihar was at the centre of Indian civilisation during, after and even before emperor Ashoka? Is it not that this Bihar hosted world's most famous centre of learning even till 12-16 centuries ago that attracted foreign students from all over Asia? One must remember that it is not the ordinary Biharis who can be held responsible for the degradation of Bihar . Overlooking all these, many people are insulting Bihar and Biharis! It seems nobody cares to listen the agony of Bihar !

But Maharashtra too has its agonising tale to tell! During only the 1990s much more than a million migrant labourers, according to a report in TOI it is more than 3 millions in the 1990s, thronged Maharashtra for employment. The contract-labour agencies of organised industries and owners and/or labour-contractors of unorganised industries want these migrant labourers, exploiting whom are easier. And this was in the 1st decade after the start of Globalization. In effect: permanent workforce in organised industries dwindled, Maharashtra was losing its sheen as the most industrialised state since the mid-1980s and that was apparent — and all these meant more unemployment for local, i.e., Marathi youth in organised sector. If Marathi youth go to search some low earning jobs in unorganised sectors in Mumbai they find a queue of the migrant workers from underdeveloped states whom the labour contractors prefer over the local youth because the later have more strength and backing and would be more difficult to ‘handle' and exploit. The state's agriculture is in very bad shape. But it was not that much advanced earlier too: in mid-1990s the no:1 state in Industry was the no:12 state among 14 major states of India in several features of agricultural development! Eastern Maharashtra is underdeveloped compared to western part of the state. Agriculture in east MR is particularly in a harsh condition. Even at the heydays of Maharashtra, the most developed, most glittering state, the rural joblessness, under-employment was so stark and subsequently the ground was so hot that the state government had to start its own “Employment Guaranteeing Scheme” or EGS — the precursor of the present 100-days'-work in villages or the NREGP (National Rural Employment Guaranteeing Scheme) more than three decades ago. All these negative features of rural Maharashtra also pushed many Marathi rural people to their towns and cities to find employment. Ordinary Marathi youths cannot dream of competing with professionals with expertise and high learning coming from, say, the Southern states or Bengal, or say with traditional skill based hands like goldsmiths or zari-embroidery makers coming from outer states etc. It was often heard that the Mumbai Stock Market was overflowing with money; that FII-FDI-s were pouring millions for investment in India through Mumbai; that the super rich Mumbai Billionaires, Millionaires are making new age industries. But what was the concrete result in regard to the Marathi youth? “Jobless Economic Growth”?!! How many of them got decent jobs and how many lost jobs in the last 10-15 years? Is there any hope for tomorrow for Marathi youth in this ‘most-industrially advanced state' of India ?

MNS does not at al represent the feeling of Marathi nationality as a whole. Caste is a very important factor in Maharashtra . Marathi Dalits and Marathi upper-caste people have different perception about many social-political agenda. Let us see the objective problems that may very well influence the national feeling among at least a section of caste-Hindu Marathis. If any Marathi youth comes in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, s/he will see perhaps only one-third of the people there are Marathis, with not a few highflying professionals and super-rich ones, ‘cosmopolitan ladies & gentlemen', openly declaring that there is nothing wrong in their speaking only Hindi and English! They don't bother to learn just some basic Marathi even after spending decades in Mumbai! The ‘famous' multi-million dollar Film Industry, the Share-Market and other trades of Mumbai did not create much employment for Marathi youth and was not ‘Marathi' in some sense, or, it may be said that there was never much Marathi about it. Mumbai is virtually owned by persons of Gujarati, Persian community and some others wealthy people of other non-Marathi communities. Marathi national feeling, Marathi pride … may well get hurt by all these, isn't it? After a prolonged movement to have a state of their own the Marathi people, particularly the Marathi aspiring ‘middle' class which dreamt for development from the movement, got Maharshtra in 1960 by separating it from Gujarat. Mumbai, erstwhile Bombay – the capital of the Bombay province became the capital of Maharashtra . After seeing the result of ‘development' or ‘employment' programs throughout nearly 50 years what may be the state of mind of an ordinary Marathi youth! And it is to be viewed in the backdrop of events where Mumbai lost the strong presence of working class due to de-industrialisation and also lost the powerful impact of radical youth like, say Dalit Panthers – and there had been the rise of Shiv Sena with the backing of the capitalists and their parties to crush workers' movement and any possibility of rise of radicalism. Above all in absence of a true All India Communist Party Mumbai is a different city now than it was in the days of Naval Mutiny in the colonial times, or, say, in the early 1970s or, say, early 1980s.

So we see it clearly that there are basically two kind of problems related to the controversy: (1) Inter-regional and inter-state uneven development in India; India's overall backwardness with some states like Bihar much more backward; and even the so called ‘developed' states are not that developed to provide proper employment and social security to all; all these point to the Problem of Economic Underdevelopment, Backwardness etc which pictures of glittering cities, shopping malls cum multiplexes, high spending Aristocrats and Nouveau Riches cannot veil and (2) National Problem – the problem when a nationality finds itself deprived, oppressed, plundered, exploited, humiliated, let down due to direct and/or indirect action(s) of some other nationality or nationalities. These two problems act in an interacting manner, they are related, but for the sake of easier understanding we should start from discussing them separately.

(1) The Indian ruling capitalists and their foreign big brother imperialist powers, Trans National Corporations, pose that the only way towards ‘development' is letting capital function unhindered and letting profit surging which will attract more and more capital investment — the Market will take care of everything else and we will move to ‘full employment' – rational utilization of resources etc. But a sorry feature of capitalism is that it could never achieve these goals. And what is more, capitalism always produces uneven development – unevenness among different branches of economy, and also produce regional disparities even within capitalist countries. It is so because capitalism as such and capitalists put capital-money-market-profit etcetera before Humanity or in other words Society and Nature.

The real way of development is rather designing the economy as per requirement of Humanity considering well about all plausible long-term impacts on Nature. To act like this the present ruling classes: the bourgeoisie and landlords and the imperialist domination will have to be overthrown, Feudal remnants must be weeded out and uprooted totally. it cannot be done by simply changing governments, ministers, etc.

Who can overthrow those evils? Only workers and peasants can, if they fight combined and establish their own rule – the workers' and peasants' state. The workers' and peasants' state will unleash the productivity of the rural India, evict feudalism and confiscate land of feudal and capitalist landlords, give peasants land, unleash the creative power of peasants and workers. The countryside will flourish. This will demand more and more industries to come up to make products demanded for cultivation of millions of hectares in a scientific way and by millions of rural people by increasing their purchasing power – industries not simply for making ‘profits' for some capitalists – who do not bother where from and how his profit comes, be that profit is marred with blood-and-sweat. The so called ‘profit' is this workers'-peasants' state, as the surplus created by society, will go for the benefit of the society as a whole. Society will provide social security to each and everyone. Industries, in turn, will be set up considering how best to utilise the immense pool of manpower in the country — without wasting part of it in the form of ‘unemployment' or underemployment taking into consideration the necessity of reduction of working hours or workers grilled in unorganised industries at present — and how best to utilise natural resources, naturally considering well about all plausible long-term impacts on Nature. Productivity and creativity of workers will enhance when they will know it surely that they are not working to get squeezed for profit of capitalists and their agents – the management staff. Workers and peasants will march to take control over the economy. Genuine ‘development' and real ‘industrialisation' will only occur then. For industrialisation and/or development working people will not have to wait for capitalists, industrialists and their plans or governments or this or that party. This is true for India as a whole, and naturally for Bihar, for Jharkhand and for Maharashtra too.

(2) Contrary to what the Indian big bourgeois and their parties say, India is not a single nation, rather it is a Multi-National country, which means people of several nationalities live in this country. Some nationalities among them can be said to be ‘advanced' and that is so due to historical reasons, one of those reasons being ‘blessed' by earlier arrival of the British colonialists, setting up ‘English education centres', offices and factories etc. During the rule of Indian big bourgeoisie allied with their imperialist big brothers the unevenness of development among nationalities only accentuated accompanied by the growth of nationalism particularly among oppressed nationalities. Plus there are some nationalities residing on the fringes who were forcefully attached with British India and then severely maltreated and dominated by the Indian ruling classes or their representative – the govt of India . The bigger nationalities got their own states but almost all of them dislike the way the Central Government deal with different issues, allocate budgets, resources etc; whereas the Central Government never had the courage to practise real ‘Federal' functioning on the ‘fear' lest anybody demand greater autonomy or ultimately separation. There are some other queer sides of the Indian national problem: # Even some advanced nationalities resent the way the Indian big bourgeoisie imposes their will – like the Tamil people resent and once they bitterly fought on the streets against the imposition of Hindi as national language, etc; # On the other hand the Hindi-speaking regions, above all Bihar and east-UP are not at all advanced, neither a sizeable part of the Indian big bourgeoisie are Hindi speaking; # The so-called advanced nationalities are not Hindi speaking; # After “independence”, a good time, decades passed when we saw movements and bitter fights, of Nationalities demanding their separate states and surprisingly many of them belong to somewhat advanced nationalities like Andhra, Karnataka; etc. But whatever has happened, as a whole the national problem of India only became more volatile. It is openly visible that the ruling classes and their parties couldn't solve the national problem either by negotiations or military repression except becoming successful in wooing a part of the regional bourgeoisie for some breadcrumbs of govt power. In fact, solution of national problem can never be thought without thorough democratisation of the entire state, which is beyond the limit of ruling big bourgeoisie – big landlord. And hence Congress, BJP, non-Congress-non-BJP etc all the regimes were destined to fail to solve the problem! National Problem still remains one of the most burning problems of our country. The BJP was in ‘power' of the central govt for 6 years; they too failed miserably!

But who will tell these plain truths to the restless people of the oppressed nationalities who are on the wrong track? Only one force is there for this task. That is the working class. Only one force believes and knows that the liberation of India must perform some historical tasks, must establish workers'-peasants' state, must solve some burning problems without delay, some of those problems being the Agrarian problem, the Caste problem and the National problem.

In the sphere of National problem the solution shall start from guaranteeing total and real equality to all nationalities, their languages and cultures etc, and unity based on only this equality; plus there should be the right to be separate at will whenever any nationality feels oppressed or being treated as unequal — as separations were achievable peacefully, in a civilised way, even in countries under bourgeois rule e.g. separation of Norway from Sweden in the first decade of 20th century and separation of Checks and Slavs in the last decade of 20th century (due to some behind-the-screen actors?). The Indian ruling classes and their parties have fanned up the idea of some holy ‘unity and integrity' of India without granting or arranging real equality and always use ‘secessionist' as a taboo to be engraved on any protest over their military/violent efforts to curb national aspirations.

As immediate program, the workers should oppose all such inter-nationality conflicts, will have to expose the political careerist leaders (and also the super-rich snobs) who incite such conflicts. The working class should have to explain the real reasons behind the conflict and that those reasons cannot be removed by inter-nationality conflict, the later only contributing to increase woe among common toiling people and most importantly to the fracture of unity of workers of all nationalities much needed for the emancipation of the whole of toiling people. They should explain that the unemployment problem and national problem too are directly related to the rule and policies of the present ruling classes. The working class quarters, slums etc are to be built fortress of workers unity standing strongly against national, communal, caste etc divides. This is a difficult job to perform with a small force but it is extremely urgent.

While doing this the working class should try to make more workers from among them class conscious, should make more workers take ‘class position'. It is a sad feature that many, or nearly all to speak frankly among us, workers today identify themselves as ‘Bihari', ‘Marathi', ‘Punjabi' or ‘Bengali', ‘Hindu' or ‘Muslim', of this or that caste first. So we find ourselves as Bihari workers, Marathi workers, Hindi-speaking workers, Telegu-speaking workers etc rather than simply workers . The self portrayal as a member of the working class is now weak. After the defeat of the International Working Class Movement – the International Socialist Movement – the workers are in a disarrayed state; they do not have their party; lots of confusion crept in; an ideological vacuum was created; a vacuum which by ‘the law of nature' was filled, even if temporarily, by bourgeois ideology and other alien ideologies like reactionary ideology of ‘Hindutva'. Non-class identities took precedence over identity of class having a common aspiration. In this situation of today a worker without that class position cannot effectively fight as a constituent of the working class; though of course from the stand point of ‘trade union level unity' and ‘trade union level solidarity' they can, to some extent, fight against division within the rank of the workers, against pitting a section of workers opposed to another section and against religious divide and hatred etc — and these are also much valuable and welcome now, even if it is primary compared to what is wanted of them, even if it is like a un-cut, un-polished diamond.

Alas! This class made its first state – the Paris Commune – way back in 1871, which the workers themselves created! The anthem of the Commune written then and greatly popularised later is called ‘The International'. The call of the international working class platform was ‘Workers of the World Unite!' and the working class is truly international in the sense that it puts its class identity and the tasks that follow from that before its other identities including national identity. But the working class, the class conscious workers no matter what microscopic their number, with whatever strength it has, must exert and assert itself, must stretch their effort, raise its distinctly separate voice as regards this present conflict among nationalities. And, to repeat, through their agitation-propaganda movement they should raise the their fellow common workers to the level of class conscious workers and thus try to increase the number of class conscious workers.

 

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