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Lawless lathi

IN ORGANISING A rally of lathi-wielding party workers in Patna, the Rashtriya Janata Dal might have scored a political point over the BJP by highlighting the provocative nature of trident distribution at the meetings of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. But the "secular" lathi at the rally did not stay at the level of a symbolic counter to the "Hindutva" trident, as the RJD chief, Laloo Prasad Yadav, wanted his workers to arm themselves to defeat the Opposition parties in Bihar. Indeed, the Bihar Chief Minister, Rabri Devi, went a step further and asked the workers to use the lathi to "protect" the polling booths in the elections. Both the leaders gave the impression that the lathi army would function as an extra-constitutional force, not only performing the duties of the police, but also acting as a guardian of the interests of the ruling party. While there can be no comparison between the distribution of sharp-edged tridents by VHP leaders, who have a track record of inciting communal violence, and the carrying of well-oiled lathis by RJD workers, the fact remains that in a State like Bihar, which is prone to political violence, the lathi army of the ruling party could spell real trouble. Even before the rally began, political rivalry claimed the lives of an RJD worker, Raj Kumar Yadav, and a BJP functionary, Satyanarayan Sinha, in separate incidents. Vehicles transporting RJD workers to the rally were burnt down, and supporters of the two parties exchanged fire. Although the rally itself was free of violence, the lathi army, now granted legitimacy by the RJD leadership, could prove a challenge to the law and order machinery of the State especially during elections. Bihar is not new to illegal firearms, which have often been used to settle political scores, but the lathi army, with the full support of the ruling party, could draw in more people into the vortex of violence.

Prior to the rally, there were apprehensions about the implications of an aggressive display of lathis. A public interest litigation petition was also filed against the rally on the ground that the meeting could create law and order problems. After all, different factions of the party had clashed in Muzaffarpur and Gaya on earlier occasions, and Mr. Yadav himself had to wield the lathi at one point to restore order. During Wednesday's lathi rally, normal life came to a standstill in Bihar as thousands of RJD workers converged on Patna. With the RJD leadership showing the way for the lathi-wielding workers, the police, no doubt, found it difficult to check the lathi army. Though the rally passed off peacefully, the lathis, which the Chief Minister asked the RJD workers to keep in their house, would remain a potential source of violence. Perhaps, in an attempt to soften the image of the lathi, Mr. Yadav actually said that those who wanted to do away with the lathi should remove it from the statues of Mahatma Gandhi. But, the dominant image of the lathi at the rally was that of a political weapon against the Opposition.

Instead of using the lathi rally to expose the politics of provocation behind the trident distribution of the VHP, Mr. Yadav, in the end, used the `trishul diksha' ceremony as a justification for the RJD raising the lathi army. Instead of drawing attention, in his own manner, to the politics of communal violence practised by the Hindutva outfits, he further vitiated the political climate of Bihar. And the RJD, which initially promised to show up the ludicrousness of the claims of the Hindutva outfits about the religiosity of trident distribution, almost aped the tactics of those very same forces. What should have been a spoof came too close to the original. The trident, it appears, was just an excuse for the RJD to wield the lathi.

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