You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.
Abraham Lincoln
Since when have students needed somebody to tell them when to riot?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
One spring evening, Santhal boys from the Adivasi Boys’ Hostel in the town created a mighty havoc at the railway station. Armed with sticks and hockey sticks, they reached the station, broke the glass panels of the enquiry counter and the ticket counter, broke the head and hand of a TTE, and even injured an RPF jawan who tried to intervene.
Violence isn’t a solution to problems. But, perhaps, the violence these boys displayed can find some justification in the incident which spurred them to be violent, and also in the incidents that followed this violence.
This town in question is a small, district town in Santhal Pargana. Santhal Pargana should, ideally — if one goes by its name and the purpose for which it was marked as the Santhal Pargana — be a safe haven for Santhals.
Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way. Non-Santhals now own the place; while Santhals have either been pushed into their villages, or out of them, out of the Santhal Pargana, as migrant labourers in other places.
The Adivasi Boys’ Hostel in question is a hostel run by the government where Adivasi boys — Santhals, mostly — from various villages in the district stay and attend the college in town. Some boys even go to colleges outside the town, to other districts, while still putting up at the hostel, a place with, understandably, better facilities than in their villages.
The mode of transport these boys usually take while travelling to a different district up north is the railways. They take the morning passenger train to that district; attend college; then return to the town, their hostel, by the evening passenger train.
Students hardly buy tickets on passenger trains. If they travel solo, then, perhaps, they do. But if they travel in groups, then tickets? What tickets? It’s useless fighting them. It has always been so. Also, had the students had that much money to spend on daily tickets or monthly passes, they wouldn’t have come down from their villages up in the hills and inside forests to stay in a hostel in the town.
Now, the railway station in the town has a TTE who is known to harass ticketless travellers. Fine, travelling without a ticket is a crime, and those who do so should be penalised; but this particular TTE takes his power of penalising ticketless travellers to the extent of extortion. This TTE is a Hindu — a Brahmin, to be exact — and it isn’t like the job of the railways is his only source of sustenance or he is a faithful servant of the railways. He is known to be having certain side-business, as well. And they are pretty big businesses! He owns quarries — he deals in the famous stones of Santhal Pargana. And he has contacts at high places — he knows even the DC of the district, as the post-violence lament of his companions at the hospital showed.
For some reason, this TTE has the habit of picking on Santhal boys. Santhal boys usually travel without tickets. If they’re lucky, they escape the hawk eyes and feline clutch of the TTE. If not, they end up getting robbed.
So, on that fateful evening, this hapless, ticketless Santhal boy happened to alight from the passenger train and walk straight into the open, anaconda-ish jaws of the said TTE.
“Sir, I don’t have a ticket. I am a student. I couldn’t buy a ticket. I promise I’ll buy a ticket the next time. I’ll not repeat this mistake.”
Nothing worked.
“You can buy clothes? You can buy food? You can buy mobile phones? Why can’t you buy a train ticket?”
And the TTE made that Santhal boy turn his pockets and wallet inside out and took every currency note, every coin that boy had.
“Go! And be careful the next time. You’re lucky I am not sending you to jail.”
Abused, indignant, the boy came out of the station and informed his friends at the Adivasi Boys’ Hostel of the extortion he had faced at the hands of that TTE. Now, if Santhal boys were on that TTE’s radar for being the most vulnerable ticketless travellers, that TTE too was on the hitlist of the Santhal boys for having robbed them at every given opportunity. The Santhal boys were seething for revenge. This SOS call from one of their mates gave them the chance to avenge themselves.
They came armed with sticks and hockey sticks, a group of 25 to 30 Santhal boys — though the FIR the "victim’s" TTE filed said about one-hundred boys came — and it was rampage. The boys broke down whatever came in their way. They smashed the glass front of the ticket counter and the enquiry counter. They went inside the rooms and smashed lights and fans. They broke furniture and machines, and destroyed papers and other objects. The newspaper report the next day would mention the damage to be in lakhs of rupees.
After they were done with the inanimate objects, the boys went to look for the extortionist TTE. They did not hurt any other human being. When they found that TTE, it was almost the end for that despicable fellow. They smashed him up nicely. Head, hands, back, legs — wherever they could, they gave him nicely. Finally, they broke his right forearm. Ulna, radius, whatever it was, of the hand that extorted money from poor Santhal students, was broken.
The rampaging students did not hurt any other man. But while the TTE was being attacked, a young jawan of the RPF tried to rescue him. Interestingly, the surname of this jawan was Meena — an ST from the western India. The boys caught the jawan too and gave him nicely. Although not that nicely to break his bones — but nice enough. The jawan limped away with scratches and bruises and did not return to rescue the TTE.
Their vengeance done, the Santhal students returned to their hostel.
The man who took the injured TTE to a private clinic for first aid and then to the town thana to file the FIR was another TTE. An arrogant, youngish, track suit- and baseball cap-clad man, this TTE, too, was a Brahmin, had a side-business of stones, and socialised with the DC and other bigwigs. While the injured TTE had been extorting money from the Santhal boy, he saw his college ID card and remembered his name. That led to that boy’s name and address getting into the FIR. Another man accompanied these two men. He was a businessman, perhaps a Marwari or a Sindhi or another Bihari — as arrogant as the first two, if not more. The injured RPF jawan was accompanied by a foul-mouthed colleague of his who, quite interestingly, hated Adivasis.
After throwing their weight around at the clinic and the thana, this band of bashed up bullies made their way to the Sadar Hospital, because any legal action could be taken only after the opinion of a sarkaari doctor. And they were so brash and inconsiderate, they actually said this to the doctor-on-duty.
The doctor-on-duty had already been informed by the civil surgeon of the district of some high-profile maar-peet case that might come. The doctor was ready with his team. He was expecting crying, groaning patients; but what he got, instead, were a bunch of shamelessly arrogant people who would never learn their lesson.
The “victimized” TTE was quiet — thankfully. His young companion did all the talking. And what talks they were!
“These Adivasis have become too big for their boots. They have to be shown their place.”
“We will talk to the DC. We will not let these Adivasi boys escape.”
The Adivasi-hating RPF jawan agreed.
“We will not leave these Adivasis. We will see each of them.”
The doctor, who had read the injured jawan’s surname — Meena — on his badge, wondered if the Adivasi-hating jawan realised that his injured colleague, too, had got the job because he was an ST. Was the injured jawan hearing? Did it make any difference to him? Meenas availed of benefits for the STs; but they, perhaps, saw themselves as Hindus, not as Adivasis. The doctor further wondered if it was ok for RPF jawans to fuck Santhal women from the villages while they waited for their trains to go and work at paddy fields in West Bengal, but not ok for Santhal boys to beat up RPF jawans. The doctor, further, couldn’t help wondering if these were the type of jawans who were posted in Adivasi areas in other places in Jharkhand, in Odisha, in Chhattisgarh, in the northeast, and all over India and who, with their highly prejudiced idea about Adivasis, dubbed the Adivasis as Naxalites and other criminals. The doctor, further, wondered if he should record their anti-Adivasi tirade on his mobile phone and send the recording to those Santhal boys so that they could file a counter-case under the SC/ST Act. It’s useless, he thought, and returned to doing his duty.
But doing one’s duty, with such arrogant people sitting on one’s head, becomes a tad difficult.
When the doctor tried to examine the injured TTE’s hand — nicely tied in a sling — his TTE companion said: “Please don’t touch it. We have got it fixed at a clinic in town. You just write a report that it‘s fractured so that we can send those boys to jail. And you prepare us a referral slip so that we can take our patient to a railway hospital.”
At that moment, the doctor lost all sympathy for that patient and his attendants. He started doing what he was expected to do: paperwork. And all the while, the anti-Adivasi tirade continued.
There was one more trouble. The businessman companion started taking pictures of the emergency room on his mobile phone. He took pictures of bottles of Savlon and povidone-iodine solution; of forceps, sponge-holder, scissors; of the examination tables and draw-sheets.
“This place is so dirty!” the businessman — who reminded the doctor of a long-faced, thick-lipped diner at Krusty Krab from Spongebob cartoons — was going on commenting. “I will show these photos to the DC. He will take care of these people. So dirty!” The businessman, who had been mouthing laws and rules all the while, was openly flouting them as he wasn’t authorised to take pictures inside the hospital at all.
How do I stop him? thought the doctor, and hit upon an idea.
“I see we haven’t been introduced,” he smiled and said to the photographing businessman. “Are you a colleague of the patient?”
“No,” the businessman seemed stunned; perhaps, at the temerity of a mere doctor to ask him to introduce himself. “I am not a colleague. He is,” he pointed to the arrogant TTE, “a colleague.”
“And who are you?” the doctor asked.
“I am — ahem”, the businessman cleared his throat. “I am a businessman.”
You’re an asshole! thought the doctor. You can say you are a businessman but you need to clear your throat before that! And you are such an arrogant fellow you can’t even mention your name.
At this point, the doctor took a good look at the arrogant TTE. He looked familiar. And then he remembered. He had seen that TTE on many occasions at the best hotel in the town, entertaining his guests at the restaurant there. The restaurant was a huge, 30”x40” hall; with glass-topped tables and six split air-conditioners; and where the cheapest dish — a simple plate of veg fried rice — cost 80 rupees!
How much does a TTE earn to be able to host such extravagant parties? the doctor wondered. Then he realised, Oh! This man owns stone quarries and is on first-name terms with the DC!
The patient was referred; the arrogant, anti-Adivasi party left; and the doctor wondered if Santhal Pargana really was for the Santhals. If Santhal boys ritually came and emptied their wallets before a bloody, greedy Brahmin man, it’s good, it’s normal. But if the same Santhals fight against such exploitation and break the hand of that Brahmin, it becomes an issue. As the doctor retired for the night, he wished the Santhal boys all the luck. They had many battles to fight, bones of many enemies to smash.
