At least 50 Hindu SC (Mahadalit) families from a village in Jharkhand’s Palamu district were attacked and driven out of their homes by members of the Muslim community in the area.

The Hindus, belonging to the Mushar community, had been living in the Marumatu village in the land given to them by the state administration. They said that a Muslim mob demolished their homes and their belongings were forcibly transported to a village in Chhatarpur. Nandlal Musahar and Radha Devi told media that they have been residing in their huts in the Tongri Pahadi area and on Monday they became homeless.

A dozen people from the SC (Scheduled Caste) community have filed a police complaint and have pleaded for justice. They said that they were assaulted and prevented from approaching police in this regard.

On receiving the information, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO), Medininagar, Rajesh Kumar Sah and Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO), Bishrampur, Surjit Kumar rushed to the village, which is under Pandu police’s jurisdiction. The police provided food and clothing to the Dalit families and assured them that they would be rehabilitated in the same village.

An FIR has been registered against the accused and a massive hunt is on to apprehend them, according to the police. The cops confirmed that the Hindu houses have been demolished and said they will be rehabilitated with adequate security.

“We were living in the village for years together but several people, all residents of Marumatu village, forcibly drove us out of the village on Monday. They loaded our belongings into vehicles and dropped us in a nearby jungle,” one of the victims told news agency PTI.

The accused Islamists however played victim, and media outlets like India Today have taken their claims at face value. Painting the poor Hindus as ‘encroachers’, the Islamists told India Today that the poor Hindus had started living on the land near a ‘karbala’ (kabristan?) i.e Muslim burial ground “only a few months ago”, but concerned authorities didn’t act on Muslim complaints. Playing innocent, they claimed they had not kicked the Hindus out of their houses, but those families “took money from them and left voluntarily, but a few hours after taking the money the Hindus started to shriek and cry and make false allegations”.

Can we imagine a similar incident where general category (GC, ‘upper caste’) Hindus were accused of doing something similar to SCs? This issue would have reverberated in legislatures, media outlets and academia all across the country, and would made echoed in international media too and used to shame all Hindus. Would any glib defense, like the one being offered by Islamists here, been given any weightage?

Cops are saying that houses were demolished, which completely busts the Islamist position that they didn’t resort to any violence but “gave money to the Dalits to leave”. Couldn’t India Today have visited ground zero and confirmed this? Again, if GC Hindus were the accused of such an atrocity, the entire press corps of the nation would have descended on Marumatu village and we would have been flooded with videos, photos and interviews.

An OpIndia report on the same matter has no such secular compulsions to obfuscate the truth, so their report which is sourced from Hindi news outlets tells us exactly what happened –

“Islamists destroyed houses and huts belonging to people of Muhasar community and forced them to leave the village. The Islamists also abused and thrashed the victims and threw their valuables in the forest near Loto village of Chhatarpur.

A stampede-like situation occurred in the area after the attack as many family members and small children ran around to save their lives. Children were seen crying and wandering in the forest of Loto village…many of them gathered the courage to reach Pandu Police Station to seek justice. Reportedly, the Islamists are said to have launched the attack claiming that the Mahadalit Musahar families had illegally occupied the land which belongs to a madarsa.

Meanwhile, the people of Musahar community rubbished the allegations and clarified that they had been staying in the village for around 4 decades and that the land where they had built their huts and houses was GM land (government land). “The administration has settled us here after conducting a survey. People belonging to the Muslim community want to take possession of the land”, the victims were quoted.

The incident continued to happen throughout the day but even the Police failed to take any action against the Islamists. The incident was confirmed by Dhuma Kisku who is the in-charge of Pandu Police Station. He said that the matter is of land dispute and that the Islamists want to occupy the land which they say belong to Madarsa.”

Unlike India Today, Hindi news outlets have published a photo of the demolished houses that OpIndia has reproduced –

Also, why did India Today report that the Muslims claimed the land where Hindus were living as a burial ground, whereas even police is saying they claim it as madrasa land? Is it because India Today thinks that the former will evoke more sympathy for the Muslim side? Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility in the dark world of India’s English-language mainstream media.

Jharkhand is currently ruled by CM Hemant Soren who is from a vanvasi (Scheduled Tribe) community. He has not uttered one word on this incident, and neither have media posed any questions to him. 

Such a major human rights violation has also evinced zero response from the self-professed defenders of Dalit rights – people like Hanrasj Meena, Dilip Mandal, Chandrashekhar Azad, Prakash Ambedkar, Udit Raj, Thol Thirumavalavan have all maintained complete radio silence. Their fake activism is only limited to spreading vitriolic anti-Hindu hate.