Musahari

THE spring thunder of Naxalbari had found its first echo in Bihar at Musahari ('68-’69), till then an obscure block of Muzaffarpur district. But the anti-feudal mass struggles that had broken out at that time could not be carried forward as the then State Party leadership followed a Menshevik class line, emphasising unity with rich peasants and consequently failing to strike deep roots among agrarian labourers and poor peasants. Hence class struggle could not be sustained in face of severe police repression and Jaya Prakash Narayan made Musahari his experimental ground for curbing the ‘menace of Naxalism’.

It was only after 1978 that we could start reorganising our work in this area, and mass movements began to pick up, slowly but steadily. Village committees were formed and after a few initial rounds of struggle against a particular lumpen element, agrarian labourers and poor peasants were organised against a tyrannical landlord. Agrarian labourers went on strike demanding higher wages and in some cases wages were increased, too; but on the whole we could not achieve much of a success, and landlords began to harass advanced labourers. The ringleader of the landlords stopped paying wages to his labourers even as they worked full hours on his land. After a few days, one labourer, out of sheer hunger, picked up a jackfruit from the landlord's garden. At this the landlord's son mercilessly thrashed him and he had to be immediately hospitalised. But the police refused to register any case against the landlord and the hospital authorities also released the labourer half way through the treatment even as his conditions remained quite serious. Hearing this, peasants became furious. Group meetings were held in the village and it was decided that the landlord should be taught a good lesson.

Accordingly, one morning some 200 peasants gheraoed the landlord’s house. Hearing the slogans, more people joined in and the gherao of 200 peasants was soon trans­formed into a raid by a thousand people. Meanwhile, all members of the landlord's family, barring an old man, had taken to their heels. But the old man was also a cruel oppressor and the masses, therefore, gave him a good thrashing. Efforts were made once again to lodge a case against the landlord with the police, but the SP and the DM would never accept any case against him. Meanwhile the old man died in the hospital and the police unleashed a series of raids on the houses of peasant cadres and activists. But faced with a determined resistance from the masses, the police were ultimately forced to retreat.

This struggle has dealt a heavy blow to feudal high­handedness and had a good impact on several other villages in the neighbourhood, culminating in the emergence of a network of village committees in the area.

The peasants of Musahari have begun to assert as a political force and are actively participating in various movements on democratic issues. 500 peasants participated in the anti-Press Bill rally convened by the IPF in Patna, 300 peasants took out a militant torchlight procession in protest against the murder of a PCC, CPI (ML) cadre, 400 peasants joined in a procession against Operation Task Force and about 350 peasants attended the Kaithi Day memorial meeting on 1 January, 1986.