The Cigarette War: Caste, Violence & Marxism in Rural India

Chandrabhusan’s profile was picked out by the crimson mystery of an Indian sunset. His voice was like fine silk. I leaned halfway across the rickety wooden table to better hear what he was saying about the war between upper and lower castes, then being waged in a remote village on the banks of the Ganges. I was also doing my best to avoid drinking the murky liquid in a grease–smeared glass given to me by the barefoot urchin, but I didn’t want to insult Chandrabhusan, a leader among the local Naxalites, one of many of India’s militant Marxist/Maoist groups. Chandrabhusan pursed his chubby lips, keeping his eyes on the cheap ballpoint his thick but nimble fingers continually toyed with. He looked up with an unexpected smile, the sunlight glinting off his spectacles, “It is something approaching, but not quite achieving, the title of tea,” charmingly relieving me of any obligation to risk dysentery. Chandrabhusan continued with the tale of violent conflict between the upper-caste landowners and lower-caste labourers in the East Indian state of Bihar, speaking in his slow, precise way, “It all began with a cigarette.”

Sunil Kumar, an upper-caste landlord, came to buy a cigarette from the little mud shop that clung to the edge of the narrow dirt road under the shade of ancient mango trees. But the shopkeeper, Sidhanath Sah, could not find the packet from which the single cigarettes were sold. He looked behind the tins of flour, underneath the big bag of sugar and even dug through the loose-leaf tobacco, but his son had been minding the shop that morning, and now the packet was missing. Sidhanath Sah knew how fond Sunil Kumar was of an after-lunch smoke and that he would be irritated by the deprivation. As he obsequiously begged the man’s forgiveness, he was already mentally alleviating this humiliation by punishing his stupid son. Sunil Kumar left in a huff. He was too peeved to enjoy the verdant beauty of the crops thriving in the fertile soil of the Ganges plain all around him. To the right were the waterlogged green rice paddies, to the left the drier green wheat fields. Brilliant yellow patches of flowering wild mustard signalled that the wet monsoon would soon prevail.

Sidhanath Sah’s absent-minded son returned to the shop, and two swift slaps later, the cigarettes were recovered. Shortly, another man who was of the Bania caste, like the shopkeeper, came to the shop for a cigarette. As fate would have it, the customer passed by the thwarted smoker, Sunil Kumar. On learning he had bought the cigarette from Sidhanath Sah, Sunil Kumar went into a rage – the shopkeeper sold cigarettes to his own lowly caste, but lied to his betters, trying to make a fool of him, a zamindar (landlord) and a Bhumihar. Sunil Kumar gathered a gang of Bhumihars, and they took revenge on the shopkeeper. So severe was the beating that Sidhanath Sah came close to death. The lower castes were angered and called for a meeting with the Bhumihars. But before the meeting could take place, the landlords’ goondas went to the hut of one of the lower caste leaders who was a known Communist, dragged him out and beat him. Yadav Birbal needed fifty stitches on his head alone.

“Disgusting behaviour; the zamindars are monsters,” the retelling of the story was interrupted by the outrage of fellow Naxalite, Rabindra Kumar, seated in the gloom of the room, behind Chandrabhusan. He dropped his fiery eyes to the mud floor and muttered with guilt, “That is a personal opinion.”

Chandrabhusan pursed his full lips and continued the tale as if the young man had never spoken. After the assault, the lower castes set up roadblocks. In one typically overloaded bus, they spotted Barhoo Chowdri, the uncle of Sunil Kumar. They pulled him out, dragging him over the luggage, boxes and goats that cluttered the aisle. But once they had him in their clutches, they were unsure of what to do with their hostage. That night, Barhoo Chowdri, sensing the indecision of his captors, tried to escape. He was chased down and killed. The Bhumihars couldn’t believe it. The peasants had always borne economic exploitation, humiliation, beatings, death and even rape at the hands of their feudal masters. It was accepted that a low-caste bride be deflowered by a zamindar on her wedding night, but now those same submissive Untouchables had taken up arms against their lords. The upper castes were determined that life in Belaur should continue the way it had for centuries. They recruited a private army of some four hundred men-at-arms, called them the Ranvir Sena and set about quashing the rebellion. The lower castes called in the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) guerrillas. The Cigarette War had begun.

Chandrabhusan was the frontman for the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). Not to be confused with either the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist – Party Unity), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or simply the Communist Party of India, with whom they were bitter rivals. There were dozens of communist parties, factions and splinter groups who all followed the path of the late Chairman Mao, in spite of the liberal reference to Messrs Marx and Lenin. Despite some groups having elected to become political parties, most of them operated underground and waged a guerrilla war against the state and the private armies of the rural landlords. Rather loosely, they were collectively called Naxalites.

A plaintive cricket-like chirp intrudes; it was the dull black Bakelite telephone in a corner of the shack-office. The room was full of CPI (ML) members, yet they all blithely ignored the insistent bleating of the phone. Perhaps this was because a soiled cloth covered it, apparently serving to render it mute as well as invisible. A little later, Onkar Tuwari, the local party chief, came in. In direct contrast to his city comrade, Chandrabhusan, the local man was a tall, emaciated figure who moved hesitantly, in fits and starts. Everyone shifted seats to let Onkar Tuwari take the honoured place behind the desk. When the phone first rang in his presence, the talk in the room hushed. He stared at it, as if waiting for the caller to prove his sincerity. Finally, he reached over and gingerly picked the handset up, seemingly unsure of what would ensue. He grunted and then smiled before gently returning the handset to its cradle. The tension in the room evaporated, and talk resumed.

Mahatma Gandhi, fondly referred to as Gandhiji by Indians, was their most famous and beloved citizen, who succeeded in overthrowing British colonial rule, but failed in his struggle to relieve the majority of his countrymen from the even greater oppression of the caste system. He renamed the Untouchables, calling them Harijan – Beloved of God. The Mahatma changed their label, but their misery continued. India’s apartheid began with the northern Aryan invaders conquering the indigenous, darker Dravidian peoples. They developed a divine hierarchy, which strictly pigeonholed different groups. The Brahmins, the Aryan nobility, were at the top of the pecking order and occupied themselves with matters of God and learning. Their strong-armed cousins, the Rajputs and Bhumihars, were the warrior caste. Lower down there are more than 300 castes, including those of shopkeepers, potters who make water jars, potters who make clay bedpans, night soil removers, etc. The caste ladder eventually descends into the hell on earth that is the lot of the Untouchable castes.

A Hindu woman (centre, veiled) is driven to her marriage ceremony in Bihar (India) by relatives in a locally produced Ambassador car, 1995. Copyright: Greg Marinovich (Note: This photograph has been reproduced here with the author's permission only for representation purposes).

Modern India is proud to call itself the world’s largest democracy. With more than one billion people, it is certainly the most populous country in the world where a Western-style democracy is practised. But democracy’s foothold is rather fragile, especially in Bihar. The lower castes and Untouchables make up the majority of the population. So, in a village like Belaur, where a minority upper caste makes life a misery for the majority lower castes, you could expect a champion of the underdogs to be elected. It would certainly be so, but for that neat little trick of booth-capturing. In areas where the landlords knew that they would lose in a fair vote, they recruited gangs of goondas (goons) who specialised in staging military-style operations to occupy polling stations, ensuring all the votes were for their employer’s candidate. Not subtle, not nice, but booth-capturing was totally effective, and a great line of business.

Early on the morning of the poll, well-armed goons moved in. They usually took about three hours to occupy and control an area, depending on the opposition they encountered. Then another three hours to stamp the ballot papers and have the presiding election officer countersign the papers at gunpoint. The cost of hiring the goons to capture a booth depended on the seat’s prestige and the expected difficulty – the polling stations might be in an area where their candidate’s opposition was popular and powerful.

With the evil of inflation biting into every hard-workingman’s pocket, the cheapest you could capture a constituency for in 1996 was about $6,000, while the top seats went for as much as $20,000. These sums were staggering, especially in a state like Bihar where a farm worker earned about half a dollar for a back-breaking ten–hour day. But a seat in the provincial legislature was the gilded path to wealth and power. You and your allies decided which company got that lucrative road-resurfacing contract; who was granted permission to start a bus company; and who, quite suddenly, should find his trading license revoked for no apparent reason.

In Belaur village, Zamindar Purushottam Dubey was leading me on a guided tour. We had been to see the Hindu temples dedicated to locally revered deities. Several small, simple clay deities were casually propped against a fig tree – they had been found while the field alongside was being tilled with an animal-drawn plough. No one seemed to pay those ancient, unpainted statues much heed. He led us through the maze-like streets of the village centre, where one or two-story brick houses invariably belonged to big landlords, and the low mud huts were the abode of Untouchables whose families had been bonded to the landlords or moneylenders for generations. Debt might befall a family through a grandfather who had to borrow money to pay for an expensive dowry because he had one too many daughters. No worse luck can happen to a poor man than to be blighted with many daughters. Or perhaps the promise shown by a clever son might have prompted a proud father to take out a loan to fund an education, a desperate gamble to break the poverty trap. But many bright young men did not make the cut. To rise above the circumstances of your birth in India, one has to be extreme. Extremely brilliant. Extremely talented. Extremely lucky. Perhaps even extremely vicious.

Dirt tracks raised above the monsoon flood level snaked out through the fields to the big landowners’ farms that surrounded the village. Purushottam Dubey stopped and turned with dramatic abruptness, “The fires of revolution brushed past this village in September of 1994. That there,” he indicated a crumbling settlement of grey mud huts across a field, “is where the Naxalites began their war. It is deserted now. They did not succeed.”

He stared closely at me, waiting to see a reaction, even a tightening of my eyes that might have betrayed sympathy for his enemies. Satisfied, he continued the tour, his hands clasped behind his back. It was the affectation of a landlord; the landless did not have the luxury of strolling with idle hands. We were to meet one of the heroes of the zamindars’ struggle. Outside a hut set among fields, I was introduced to a farmer who had faced the onslaught of the Naxalites and triumphed. He was a massive man with powerful shoulders that bulged out from a white vest. His eyes were close-set to either side of a nose bent to one side like a boxer’s, and their blank stare was suspicious and aggressive. “This is a very brave man. Very brave,” stated Purushottam, “the bravest man in Belaur.”

On hearing the translation of this favourable description, the bravest of men invited us to join him on the low wood pallet on which he and his cohorts were resting. The customary offer of tea was made and accepted. It was a silent, uncomfortable cup - how does one make small talk with a hero? I took leave of my zamindar hosts and crossed the no–go zone that separated the Untouchables from their former feudal landlords. The Bazar Tola was a miserable collection of mud huts – no brick buildings there. Suffering had worsened since the landless rose against their former feudal masters in the Cigarette War, as they could no longer work in the landlords’ fields. They stared suspiciously at the strangers; young women covered their faces and pulled back into darkened doorways. I skirted the edge of the village as a crowd of curious men and children followed a few dozen metres behind.

I had discovered that to get spontaneous photographs, I had to sneak up on scenes to get that two or three-second window of authenticity before everyone gathered to pose for the camera. So, I stole up on a home that looked out across the fields to the landlords’ village about a kilometre away. A woman looked up, and her eyes widened in panic. She started to yell, grabbed her toddler by the arm and sprinted off. The kid was dangling like a puppet, his whirling feet only occasionally brushing the pathway. There was a chain reaction of screaming and yelling. Men rushed to my side, “Bhumihars! Guns!” galvanised, they pointed across the wheat field at women quietly working the fields.

“No, no, it was me!” I pointed at myself. They stared blankly at me, no doubt thinking I was extremely slow-witted. We had insurmountable language barriers as my taxi driver, Ramisingh, who spoke some English, was not in sight. The Untouchables fearfully readied themselves to defend their hamlet. Fortunately, Ramisingh returned, and a crisis was averted. Back in the village centre, zamindars' territory, I bumped into a slight man with a serious face and a petty moustache. He was going door-to-door, campaigning for votes. “I am an Independent Candidate,” said Bijander Yadav Singh emphatically, “I am campaigning for equality; against communist violence and against the violence of the landlords.” He spoke in clipped tones; he lectured to the landlords, and he preached to the landless. One thing I had picked up during my time in Bihar was that no one ran as an independent candidate if they realistically hoped to win. A hopeful must be pretty desperate to try to match the resources of an entire caste or party in the strange, convoluted and corrupt game that is Indian politics.

Back in the CPI (ML) office that night, I was being treated to one of Chandrabhusan’s discourses on the Indian Independence Movement, hoping to gather more insight into the political labyrinth. After independence, Gandhi and Nehru’s party, the Indian National Congress, adopted mild Socialism. But all too soon, Socialism became a vehicle for government control, nepotism and corruption. The banner of Socialism fell to the torchbearers, the committed Maoists and Communists, the radicals. In those early days, the middle-ranked castes were at the forefront of the fight to create a society where every individual, no matter what their caste, had equal rights, opportunity and access to the nation’s resources. It was a period of heady optimism. The mighty British Raj had crumbled before the humble strength of Gandhi. It was the time to usher in India’s golden era, free of the shackles of caste. And, sure enough, many of the middle-ranked castes broke through the social barriers that denied them a fair shot at success. They became transporters, businessmen and industrialists. Once they saw the advantages of keeping the masses poor and subjugated, they promptly forgot about the working-class people becoming part of the elite. There are only so many slices to the cake.

“In Belaur, take the example of Bijander Yadav Singh, a little-known but ambitious gangster,” Chandrabhusan’s voice emerged softly from the darkness that lay between us. The sun had set, and the paraffin lamps were not yet lit. Mosquitoes whined softly around my ears. I could not hear the ones around my ankles, but felt their sharp attack. When the Cigarette War began, Yadav Singh (a middle-caste man ) saw his chance. If he could be seen as the saviour of the oppressed lower castes from the tyranny of the vastly less numerous upper castes, he would surely win the election. He sent four of his gunmen to assist the lower castes against the landlords. It was his goons who gunned down the upper-caste hostage Barhoo Chowdri when he tried to escape after being kidnapped off the bus at the start of the hostilities over a misplaced cigarette. As the conflict escalated and the landlords recruited the powerful Ranvir Sena army, Yadav Singh thought it smart to switch sides. His goons began to commit acts of brutality against their former friends, the lower castes and Untouchables. He hoped that his newfound zeal would earn him the support of the Bhumihars to be their electoral candidate. The Bhumihars accepted the strength of their new ally, but put forward a candidate from their own caste. Sensing an opportunity, Yadav Singh set himself up as an independent candidate, ostensibly to fight injustice and radicalism.

It suddenly dawned on me that this was the man we had seen campaigning in Belaur earlier that day; this was a giant leap in my comprehension of the intricacies of village politics. Chandrabhusan calmly waited out my burst of excitement on discovering this coincidence. “We are going to eliminate him,” he said quietly, his voice flat, and then added, “he thinks he can toy with the people, make fools of us. We will show him otherwise. Not now. We have too many other things to deal with. Later.”

Cover Photograph: A bus in Bihar, India, 1995. Copyright: Greg Marinovich (Reproduced here with permission for representational purposes only).

An upper-caste Hindu man is carried to his marriage ceremony in Bihar (India) by lower-caste men on a palanquin, 1995. Copyright: Greg Marinovich (Note: This photograph has been reproduced here with the author's permission only for representation purposes).

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