Why Kashmir calls out to Biharis

I am a Harry a term coined decades ago by the snooty set to condescendingly identify the middle class Englishspeaking Biharis in Delhi We Harrys know from our experience that economic mobility is the principal driver of migration more so as Bihar is Indiarsquos poorest State by Gross State Domestic Product per capita Yet we were struck by the suicidal streak among Biharis who want to earn a livelihood in Kashmir Indiarsquos most dangerous place where five migrant labourers were gunned down this monthThere is a subtext to the names of those who diedmdashRaja Reshi Joginder Reshi Arvind Kumar Sah Sagheer and Virender Paswan Sagheer is a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh which is a rung above Bihar on the poverty scale Of the four Biharis three were Dalit and one an OBCInvisibilised in their lifetime because of their lowly socioeconomic status in death they were finally owned up by India as its very own albeit as migrant labour a category of citizens for whose protection the state suddenly became solicitous Anecdotal accounts suggest they were encouraged to leave Kashmirmdashand so they did in drovesEscape from a hellhole For an answer you must listen to the interview that The Lallantop a YouTube news channel conducted with Pankaj Paswan a relative of VirenderPaswan the golgappa seller who was killed in Srinagar on October 5 Pankaj has been in the Valley for 27 years 12 of which were with his family living therePankaj said he and other Biharis come to Srinagar because Kashmiris show them respect an allusion to the caste indignities his Dalit subcaste encounters in Bihar that they earn Rs 600650 daily three times what he can back homemdashand higher than the wage rates in any other Indian State and that Kashmir never gets too hot Pankaj said ldquoAny praise for the people will be lessrdquoBut the reading down of Article 370 must have had Kashmiris look upon Pankaj as the ugly Indian so to speak No he shot back even though the government encouraged them to leave he and many others did not That was because of the assurances of Kashmiris ldquoDonrsquot go you will die only after we dordquo He said that during the 2020 lockdown Kashmiris regularly sent them ration ldquoIn Bihar a person wouldnrsquot give a kilo of rice to his neighbourrdquo Pankaj saidIt would seem Kashmir is the safest place for lower caste Biharis Gross exaggeration the Harry in me thought until I trawled the internet to discover nuggets of facts soaked in the blood of Biharis On January 5 2007 the United Liberation Front of Assam killed 48 of them in the State Two days later they slaughtered 14 more triggering the exodus of Biharis from Assam These attacks there had been preceded by the killing of 29 Biharis in 2003 In Manipur 14 Hindispeaking migrants were killed in 2008Mumbaikarsrsquo contempt for Bhaiyas a pejorative term for those from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar spilled out in a prolonged spell of violence in 2008 Fomented by Raj Thackeray who had left the Shiv Sena to float the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena his supporters attacked the hated Bhaiyas attending a Samajwadi Party rally in Mumbai on February 3 They were beaten their stalls and carts looted their taxis smashedRajrsquos arrest for a few hours on February 13 saw the violence spread to other districts in Maharashtra Migrants were terrorised through the year most viciously in October when a large number of them appeared for a Railway recruitment entrance examination in MumbaiFive died 15000 north Indian migrants in Nashik and 25000 in Pune returned home In October 2018 after a 14monthold girl was allegedly raped by a migrant worker in Gujarat mobs descended on industrial estates in as many as six districts Led by wannabe politicians their violence frightened an estimated 25000 north Indian migrants to exit GujaratOne Covid19 image that will forever haunt us is of migrant workers hungry and forsaken enduring police battering walking hundreds of kilometres to reach their homes in north India Given that over two lakh migrant labourers descend on Kashmir every year it might have seemed surprising that we rarely heard of Biharis trekking out of there Pankajrsquos interview provides the answerBy contrast a National Human Rights Commission study on the impact of the 2020 lockdown on migrant workers found that 39 per cent of workers in Delhi 38 per cent in Gujarat 31 per cent in Haryana and 42 per cent in Maharashtra lost their livelihood Only community support as in Kashmir could have dissuaded them from fleeing worksites This is not to deny the factor of fear in the exodus of Biharis from Kashmir in recent weeks Yet former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Manjhi was being frivolous when he said Biharis could fix Kashmir in 15 days if it were handed over to them It is Bihar that needs a fix As for Kashmir Manjhi should ask the Prime Minister to fill the political vacuum there for the five killings in October were to use the phrase of philosopher Reacutegis Debray ldquomanifestos written in the blood of othersrdquoThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper