SORRY STATE : ‘BIHARI has become an ABUSE’

TAKE THAT An MNS activist venting his anger against north Indians earlier this year (top); Bihari Nitin Chandra (below) returns the blow with a film

SORRY STATE
‘BIHARI has become an ABUSE’
Mohammed Wajihuddin speaks to Nitin Chandra, who responded to Raj Thackeray’s violence with a film


In February 2008, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s anti-Bihari fury, which sent thousands of frightened Bihari workers scurrying from Nashik, rekindled a spark of anger in a filmmaker who also hailed from the region. “Every time a Bihari was bashed, I felt bashed too,’’ says Mumbai-based Nitin Chandra whose Bring Back Bihar, a 98-minute documentary, features vignettes of the violence against Bihari migrants as well as a road map out of the crisis.
Even as Nashik was erupting, Chandra loaded his equipment on the roof of a hired car and drove to the town accompanied by a Maharashtrian friend. This wasn’t his first tryst with Raj Thackeray’s ‘boys’—in 2003, after the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena beat up dozens of Biharis who’d come to Mumbai to give a railway recruitment exam at Kalyan station, Chandra had made a short film on the incident called The Outsider. “So I was familiar with the subject. But the magnitude of violence against migrant workers this time was unprecedented,’’ he says.
When the police caught Chandra shooting in a sensitive area, they confiscated his camera and detained him for hours. After the Maharashtrian friend intervened and convinced the cops that Chandra was just an academic and not a “sensationalist’’ newsman, they relented. By the time he was out shooting again, most of the Bihari labourers had fled. Touring the ransacked shanties, he managed to interview a few frightened souls who were scurrying for cover like marked fugitives. “It was pure anarchy perpetrated on Indian citizens by fellow Indians,’’ he says.
Last week, the Supreme Court rejected Raj Thackeray’s plea to get a case filed against him in Jamshedpur transferred to Mumbai. As the MNS chief faces trial, in Mumbai and elsewhere, Chandra’s film reminds us not just of a people punished for trying to earn bread beyond their backyards. It also diagnoses the malaise of Biharis’ migration to other states.
“For Biharis like me, migration is a need. For politicians like Raj Thackeray, it is a threat of their political space being swamped by others,’’ says Chandra. “I am sorry to say it, but the fact is that the hungry farmers in Maharashtra commit suicide while the equally deprived farmers in Bihar, instead of killing themselves, slum it in cities like Mumbai.’’
The anti-Bihari assault is just one element of the film, which is a collage of images and voices: Jaya Prakash Narayan’s Total Revolution, which inspired a million small mutinies across the country, the benevolent, smiling Buddha, the revolutionary tribal icon Birsa Munda, the hero of 1857 Babu Kunwar Singh and the mystic Makhdoom Yahya Maneri. Bring Back Bihar is Bihar’s long, turbulent journey in frames.
“We have seen enough of Biharbashing. My attempt is to reclaim Bihar’s lost glory, its true asmita (pride),’’ says 26-year-old Chandra. But how? “Successful Biharis can invest in Bihar. Around 90 per cent of the graduates who pass out from Patna University every year don’t stay back in the state. If even a fraction of them do their bit, things can be improved,’’ says Chandra who is trying to create a network of fellow Bihari professionals across the globe.
According to the film-maker, Biharis could have escaped the sustained humiliation in Maharashtra, Delhi, and Assam, had the country’s planners done justice to the state. “It’s fashionable to blame the state’s backwardness on the 15-year misrule of Lalu-Rabri,’’ he says. “And it’s true that not only Lalu but successive state governments’ populist policies have added to the mess. But the fact is that Bihar has been discriminated against since Independence. The Freight Equalisation Policy of 1952, for instance, denied it its legitimate income from the coal mines and killed its economy. After Bihar was divided in 2000, even that meagre income vanished. After the creation of Jharkhand, a popular joke in Patna was that Bihar was left with Lalu, balu (dust) and baadh (flood).’’
Chandra made his film with money borrowed from friends and public donations after he announced his financial difficulty on Orkut. Biharis from Seattle to Singapore chipped in, boosting his morale and bank account as well. “I got just Rs 40,000 in donation, but the people’s encouragement overwhelmed me,’’ says Chandra who plans to show the film to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar later this month.
The film has a sequence of Dasrath Manjhi, an unlettered villager from Central Bihar who spent decades at a rocky hill, chipping away at it inch by inch, to make a road for his village. Lauding Manjhi, now dead, a local journo had fittingly quoted poet Majrooh Sultanpuri: “Main akela hi chala tha janibe manzil magar/Log aate gaye aur karvan banta gaya (I had left for the destination alone/But people kept joining me and a caravan was formed).’’
Chandra too eyes a similar fellowship of Biharis who will help revive the homes state’s flagging fortunes. TNN
mohammed.wajihuddin@timesgroup.com



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