Special Article On the Desecration of Nehru’s ‘Temples’: Bhilai and Rourkela Compared Jonathan Parry, Christian Struempell T The major steel towns built in the wake of the Second he “temples” of our title are the public sector steel plants Five-Year Plan were to be “temples” to India’s industrial projected in India’s Second Five-Year Plan, drafted in 1954-55: Bhilai (built with Soviet aid) in what is now future and secular “modernity”; but soon they were Chhattisgarh but was formerly Madhya Pradesh; Durgapur (built desecrated by ethnic and communal violence. Focusing with British collaboration) in Bengal, and – in Orissa – Rourkela on two of them, this article shows that the extent of (with West German expertise). We confine ourselves here to the violence was markedly different, and asks “why?”. Bhilai and Rourkela, because these are the two of which we have first-hand experience.1 “Temples” because that is how Nehru him- Attention is drawn to the kind of ethnic mix in their self had described them – temples to India’s industrial modernity workforces, to their different experiences of “modernity”, that would abolish centuries of economic stagnation; beacons shop floor cultures and histories of displacement, and to along the path of “progress” that would allow the new nation to the different agendas of state governments and the way “catch up” with the developed world. Not just about forging steel, they were as much about forging a new society. Employment pro- they shaped civil society institutions. vision was a major objective; and since both were built on green field sites in sparsely populated areas where the local peasantry had little industrial experience, skilled workers would inevitably be drawn largely from outside. Their townships would be melt- ing pots, exemplars of unity in diversity, symbols of national inte- gration. As peasants turned proletarians, the grip of primordial identities would weaken inexorably. The steel towns would thus also be temples to Nehru’s vision of a secular India. With hind- sight, it was perhaps naïve to suppose that this iconic role could be perfectly enacted. Soon they were desecrated by the ethnic and communal violence on which this article focuses. We show, however, that the sacrilege was far more severe in one case than the other, and ask why. In a recent study of post-independence discourses on the Indian state, Roy (2007) devotes a chapter to charting what she repre- sents as a rapid slide into disillusionment from the millennial optimism that surrounded the steel towns when they started. Within 15 years, these “exemplary national ‘dreamworlds’” of the late 1950s came to be seen as “exemplary national catastrophes”. Of particular relevance here is her claim that ethnic, caste and communal antagonisms were (or were believed to have been) reproduced in them in intensified form. The “postcolonial re- vitalisation” of “the discourse of communalism”, she even con- cludes, took place in the steel towns (2007: 150). It is true that Bhilai and Rourkela have much in common. Con- structed over the same period, their first blast furnaces were com- missioned within a day of each other (in February 1959), reflecting the prestige race that the Russians and Germans were running. In Jonathan Parry (
[email protected]) teaches anthropology at the the early years, both were managed by Hindustan Steel; and since London School of Economics. Christian Struempell (rwe55@rediffmail. the 1970s both have come under the Steel Authority of India com) is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social (SAIL), which means that – with minor variations – their regular Anthropology, Halle, Germany. workforces are the beneficiaries of the same pay scales, perks and Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 10, 2008 47 Special Article conditions. “Beneficiaries”, because SAIL wages are munificent in et al 1997] and Mumbai [Hansen 2001] are two examples. “Com- comparison with other industrial employment locally available, munal” violence cannot be seen apart from other forms of ethnic making their workers the unquestioned aristocracy of labour. violence that are proximate to it in time and space. And, at least superficially, the two company townships look simi- From the start there were tensions between Hindustan Steel lar. With regard to ethnic and communal antagonisms, however, and the government of Orissa over the ethnic composition of the Roy’s homogenised characterisation of them is misleading – as the RSP workforce [Zinkin 1966:122]. Particularly in higher grades, following vignettes suggest. Punjabis and Bengalis (many displaced by Partition) were dispro- – In 1984, Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards portionately represented; clerks were often Malayalis. These sparked anti-Sikh riots and killings throughout the country. Not tended to be better qualified; large numbers of Punjabis were in Bhilai. Surinder2 is a Sikh and one of four brothers, the sons of shipped in by the many Punjabi civil contractors on site, and there a Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) worker. The family were living on the were repeated accusations (as in Bhilai) that senior plant man- wrong side of the tracks from the BSP township, next to the Tata agers – overwhelmingly outsiders – persistently skewed recruit- Lines with their notoriously rough – and predominantly Hindu – ment in favour of their own countrymen. In April 1959, a state population. Theirs was the only house in that neighbourhood government-appointed commission of enquiry found that out of with television, and following the murder their front room was the still relatively small regular RSP workforce (2,630 as against packed for every newscast. Not once, Surinder insists, did any of around 37,000 by the end of the 1980s) less than 12 per cent of the family sense the slightest danger or hostility against them. At Class 1 and 2 employees were from Orissa [Sperling 1963]. This that time his wife and the wife of a younger brother were young compared with around 33 per cent in Class 3 (foremen, clerks girls in Rourkela where their fathers were also steel workers. The and master craftsmen), and around 61 per cent in Class 4 (skilled, former lived in a joint household in a big resettlement colony for semi-skilled and unskilled workers) – figures that would never- displaced people called Jalda. They were eating their mid-day theless compare very favourably with the proportion of Chhattis- meal when they heard loud cries from the street. ‘Catch them …. garhis in the regular workforce in Bhilai. The commission’s rec- kill .. kill’. Some neighbours rushed in to urge them to flee forth- ommendation that preference should henceforth be given to with. Her father’s brother’s son was living with them, and he had Orissans was not well received by RSP management who regarded two wives – an Oriya and an adivasi. The family of the latter, also it as political interference and stood on the principle that candi- Jalda residents, helped them escape. Subsequently they were dates should be selected on merit, and that in a central govern- taken under police escort to a township gurudwara where they ment enterprise all Indian citizens should be eligible. Apparently camped for the next five days. Their house was ransacked and all in retaliation for their “uncooperative” attitude, the government their possessions looted, including jewellery recently purchased of Orissa initially obstructed outsider industrialists setting up for her elder sister’s upcoming marriage. When peace was on Rourkela’s private sector industrial estate (ibid p 46). restored, the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) assigned them quarters The massive influx of outsiders – around 76,000 by 1961 (ibid in the “sectors”. Returning to Jalda was judged impossible and p 22) – was undoubtedly a source of dismay to the local peasantry, they sold their house at a knockdown price. Though Surinder’s more than two-thirds of whom in villages displaced by the plant younger brother’s wife’s experience was less traumatic – her were from scheduled tribes. But they largely lacked the skills to family lived in the township – she too vividly recalls their urgent aspire to anything other than labouring work, and it was better evacuation to the gurudwara where they sheltered some days. educated Oriyas from the plains who protested most loudly that – Abdul’s family are settled in Rourkela, but his cousin Hassan they were done down. And that often – in what they claimed as has a job in Bhilai. Abdul reports that – as a Muslim – Hassan their own “homeland” – by Bengalis too, from whose “arrogance” finds it much more relaxed than Rourkela. There he had lived in a and sense of cultural superiority they had suffered sufficiently. Muslim enclave. In Bhilai he rents in a predominantly Hindu col- Most vociferous, it is said, were Rourkela Oriyas who had formerly ony where the neighbours are neighbourly and he feels secure. worked in Calcutta. The adivasis, however, had other ideas about – Rajiv – an exceptionally capable BSP manager with family ori- whose “homeland” it was, and had historical reasons for regarding gins in Uttar Pradesh – is destined for the top. But as he is pro- these katakiyas5 as cuckoos with predatory designs on their nests. moted up the ladder he will become liable for transfer to other In union turf wars they were consequently more likely to support SAIL units, and who – he reflects – would want to wind up in labour leaders from outside the state than their Oriya rivals. But Rourkela where only Oriyas thrive. It is a familiar complaint. although Oriyas were the main instigators of violence directed at out-of-state migrants that repeatedly erupted in the early years of Ethnic Violence in Rourkela3 the plant, adivasis were also involved [Sperling 1969:38]. Writing of the 2002 bloodletting in Gujarat, Amita Baviskar In March 1958, seven Germans witnessed 19 Sikhs being beaten (2005) identified two novel features: the involvement of adivasis to the point of death by a large Hindu crowd outside one of the and the extension of such violence to the villages.4 If there is one German bungalows. In August that year, violence against south lesson of which the history of Rourkela should remind us it is that Indians resulted in 300 arrests. From incidents during Holi in the neither is new. If there is another, it is that different forms of eth- following year, at least nine Punjabi fatalities resulted. Then, in nic violence – between caste blocks, religious communities or rapid succession during August 1959, there were large-scale dis- regional-cum-linguistic groups – often display a protean charac- turbances between Oriyas and Punjabis, Oriyas and “Madrasis”, ter and morph into each other quite rapidly. Ahmedabad [Nandy and finally between Oriyas and Bengalis. “All work came to a stop 48 May 10, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly Special Article for days on end” [Sperling 1969:123]. About 5,000 Punjabis fled settled. But fleeing Muslims were also hacked down in the streets to Calcutta and violence broke out inside the plant. of the township; and Muslim servants of foreign technicians were killed at the back of their bungalows. A few Germans tried to inter- The 1964 Pogrom vene but were threatened “by a howling mob” [Sperling 1969:124]. All this was small scale in comparison to the communal savagery One of the handful of American experts confided to Zinkin unleashed against Muslims in March 1964. The Rourkela riots – the (1966:152-3) that he had been too petrified to do anything but most bloody in the Indian sequence and the first of a communal kind drink whisky as his servants were butchered, and that he was later in Orissa [Kanungo 2003] – were at the crest of a wave that started scared off from offering evidence by a senior Bengali colleague. with the disappearance of a relic of the Prophet from a shrine in The poison soon infected the countryside, and vehicles from Srinagar. Disturbances within Kashmir were followed by appalling Rourkela were touring the villages to spread the message that carnage in East Pakistan provoking the flight of huge numbers of Muslims were gathering to attack them and that the adivasis should Hindus across the border. Trouble flared in Calcutta (resulting in get in first. Though now shamed by the memory, Japun recalls some 400 deaths [Guha 2007:376]) and spread into the countryside “Punjabis” and “Nepalis” arriving in his village, intimidating them around. From Calcutta, refugees were packed onto special trains to about their imminent danger and bullying them to identify the be taken to resettlement schemes in Madhya Pradesh, and these houses of local Muslims. When they set off to burn them, the adivasis made long halts in Jamshedpur and Rourkela for passengers to be were sent ahead with their bows and arrows. Some were suppos- fed. In both towns it was their harrowing plight that supposedly edly told that Nehru himself had sanctioned it, and that for each sparked the subsequent slaughter, though in reality it was not so dead Muslim the government was giving a five rupee bounty. spontaneous. Many of these refugees were initially destined for The violence lasted a fortnight, during which large numbers fled Mana, a transit camp on the outskirts of Raipur and within 30-odd Rourkela. It is impossible to say how many were dead by the end, miles of Bhilai. In neither place was violence provoked. though it is certain that the great majority were Muslims and that the As soon as the refugee trains began arriving at Rourkela it count was many times the 34 fatalities officially reported.6 Zinkin became clear that the small contractor who had the task of feeding (1966:151) records that “the current guess” a short time after was the traumatised passengers could not cope with their numbers. about 5,000 dead. Though that is probably inflated, S K Ghosh (1981: Concerned citizens, including some Muslims, brought food to the 92-3) – who served as additional inspector general of police in Orissa station, but RSS and Jan Sangh activists quickly muscled in to – estimates 2,000 in and around Rourkela. Given that in Jalda alone orchestrate the operation and incite the crowds through loud- “hundreds were butchered and all the (Muslim) houses burnt” [Chat- speakers. The violence began when one refugee vomited after sup- terjee et al 1967:35], given the number of other bastis that are pointed posedly eating bread donated by a Muslim baker, and the rumour out today as places from which Muslims had been eliminated, and spread that the Muslims were poisoning them. A handful of given informants like Aziz who claims more than 50 members of his refugees were themselves Muslims and were the first to be killed. ‘khandan’ (lineage) were murdered, Ghosh’s figure seems credible. From the station, the violence spread rapidly into the slum bastis It is clear that some of the RSP workforce were implicated in the surrounding it, home to a large semi-criminalised migrant popula- violence (though some hid the wives and children of Muslim col- tion of unorganised sector labour, many of whom had worked on leagues in the plant). Although our sources include others, all the construction of the plant but were now laid off. Over these identify Punjabis, Bengalis, Oriyas and adivasis as the main aggres- neighbourhoods, both RSP and the state government disowned sors. More than 20 different “tribes” are present in the area, though jurisdiction – the first on the ground that they were not on com- Mundas and Oraons predominate. A significant proportion of the pany land; the second on the ground that it was nevertheless land latter are Christians. We do not know whether some of these encroached by workers for whom the company was responsible. groups were more involved in the riots than others. We do know Before long the whole urban area was engulfed. “It was absolutely that the participation of Christian adivasis was discouraged by terrifying”, a family friend of Zinkin’s (1966:151-2) told her. “The their priests [Zinkin 1966:153], but it is widely alleged that not all mobs from the shanty towns round the station were roaming the heeded them. What can definitely be said is that local adivasis steel town shouting slogans armed with crow bars and steel rods from villages displaced by the plant played a prominent role, and which had been sharpened at one end into becoming spears. And that a disproportionate number of Muslim victims were also local. there was not a single policeman to be seen anywhere”. In fact, In the aftermath, Muslim employees of RSP were granted three there were only 72 of them in the whole of Rourkela, for a popula- months paid leave and sent back to their ancestral homes; and tion of roughly 1,00,000 living in an area of 32 square miles. This when they returned (some did not), were given the option of moving is not to gainsay the resolute lethargy of the local administration, into a newly completed block in the township. Over 700 families who failed to heed (or chose to ignore) the obvious omens. Senior (mainly outsiders) did so and it became an ethnic enclave. Others RSP management was also asleep. It was only after the violence (largely locals) shifted – with the same result – into neighbour- had begun that they took steps to prevent workers doing what hoods in “old Rourkela” that already had a sizeable Muslim popu- numbers of them had been doing for days under the indulgent eye lation. Within the plant, they remained members of the work of some officers – making weapons [Chatterjee et al 1967:33]. The groups to which they had formerly belonged. They were not worried, worst slaughter – indiscriminately directed at men, women and they say, about the shop floor but about the dangers outside. children – occurred in and around the resettlement colonies of No communal violence has recurred in Rourkela on anything Jalda and Jhirpani in which many displaced local adivasis had like the same scale, though – as we have seen – there was Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 10, 2008 49 Special Article anti-Sikh rioting in 1984. Property was looted; some remember received fresh impetus from the campaign against Orissa’s new Sikhs being forcibly shaved or badly beaten, and a few claim pos- industrial complex at Kalinga Nagar, and the deaths in police firing itive knowledge of two or three deaths (though these we have of adivasi protesters. In solidarity with them, and watched by sev- been unable to confirm). Activists from the Centre of Indian eral battalions of armed police, in Rourkela adivasi demonstrators Trade Unions (CITU) tell of being appointed “special constables” carrying bows, arrows and axes blocked the supply of iron ore to and patrolling the streets as peacekeepers for almost a month. the plant for some days. Shortly after, adivasi villagers nearby Subsequently, Sikhs (unsuccessfully) demanded a special block invaded a sponge iron plant that they claimed was polluting their in the township, like the one that Muslims had been given. land. For several years now, young adivasis have protested daily outside the additional district magistrate’s office, demanding the Changes in the Ethnic Fault-lines land requisition files be reopened and they be given at last the RSP Though with this exception, the communal temperature has been jobs that their grandfathers were due. Periodically they step up the more or less stable since 1964, antagonisms based on regional pressure by burning tyres across the busiest roads. ethnicity continued to re-surface and ethnic skirmishes contin- If not by all-India standards, then at least compared to Bhilai, ued to plague the town for years. Within four months of that Rourkela seems riot-prone, suggesting that we might appropriate pogrom, there was renewed tension between Oriyas and Benga- Brass’s notion of an “institutionalised riot system” to explain the lis and many Bengalis went into hiding. Relations between the difference. This model – with the key (indeed almost definitive) two remained dangerously volatile up until the mid-1970s; while role it assigns to “conversion specialists”, prototypically goondas those between Oriyas and adivasis remain so today. expert in fanning the flames when it suits their political patrons – Since the 1970s the regional composition of the RSP workforce has the apparent attraction of illuminating the protean quality of has changed significantly. In 1968, the ministry of labour in Delhi ethnic violence that we earlier alluded to. They are aptly named made it mandatory for public sector enterprises to fill regular since they may be supposed adept not only at converting peace posts that paid less than Rs 500 per month from applicants regis- into violence but also one form of violence into another. In other tered at local employment exchanges [Weiner 1978:339]. Prior to respects, however, we question the analytical leverage the concept that RSP policy was to give preference to those who had worked provides. This is firstly because, like anywhere else, Bhilai has its for some years on its “muster roll” or as RSP contract labour. This goondas and unprincipled politicians. It is therefore only ex post included large numbers of local adivasis and out-of-state facto (after repeated riots) that it is possible to say that in Rour- migrants, whose expectations of a secure government job were kela an institutionalised riot system must exist. The model does suddenly shattered. Not only did they lose seniority, but in the not predict which town will have one, and nor does it explain why new system the cards were stacked against them – against adi Bhilai does not. To do that, we would secondly need to know vasis because their formal qualifications were generally lower something it does not tell us: what it is that allows such unsavoury than other candidates; against outsiders because the employment characters to persuade large mobs, that presumably include some exchanges were staffed by Oriyas who were suspected of relegat- normally rational citizens who do not usually place much faith in ing their applications to the bottom of the pile, and because the goondas and politicians, to commit such barbaric atrocities – not state government had its placemen on all appointment boards. just commit them but momentarily believe they are “right”. Their plight was compounded when, in 1989, eligibility to even register became contingent on a certificate of residence in Orissa. The Ethnic Air in Bhilai Though born and bred in Rourkela, many young men of “out- In previous publications, Parry (1999a and b, 2003, 2008) has sider” ancestry found themselves excluded because the require- described the generally benign character of ethnic relations in ment for 10 years continuous residence had been disrupted by Bhilai. Here we focus on the underside of violence. The contrast short periods of childhood spent in their “home” states, or with Rourkela is not just its actual incidence but also in the way it because their families lived on encroached land for which they figures in popular consciousness. Though in fact Bhilai’s record of could not show title deeds [Meher 2004:146]. The result was a ethnic harmony is not unblemished, that is how its inhabitants progressive “Oriya-isation” of the RSP workforce, a high water- characteristically represent it – mostly in good faith. “Here peo- mark of which was the appointment of an Oriya as the managing ple from all corners of the country live together in peace. There director. The whole process has led to a realignment of the ethnic were never communal troubles here”. It is said with pride and, for fault-lines. While the contest between Oriyas and “outsiders” has the many who strongly identify with Nehru’s “dreamworld”, it is been largely decided in favour of the former, that between them part of what it is to belong in Bhilai. Perhaps because it was on a and the local adivasis has acquired a new edge. comparatively small-scale and confined to a limited locality, very It is in this context that the recently rejuvenated campaigns to few of those old enough to remember have any recollection of the redress “wrongs” done to local adivasis displaced by the plant one communal outbreak that occurred. In Rourkela, by contrast, should be seen. Significant agitations had been staged in its early nobody of an age to remember the 1964 riots can fail to do so – years, had reached a new crescendo in 1969 when a large demon- even if they are reluctant to recall them. stration was brutally dispersed by the police, and had faded away Of those who express anxieties about the future of ethnic rela- until the late 1980s – a lull during which there was some progress tions in Bhilai, the overwhelming majority – especially amongst in providing the RSP jobs that were promised as part of their com- Hindus – identify the threat, not as communal conflict, but as pensation package. In the last couple of years these agitations have conflict between sons-of-the-Chhattisgarh-soil and outsiders. 50 May 10, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly Special Article In the early years, however, local resentments appear to have proportionately over-represented in the regular BSP workforce, been more muted than might be expected. In the area around whereas those who work as contract labourers in the plant on Rourkela, the Jharkhand movement had established a significant comparatively derisory rates of pay are overwhelmingly Chhat- hold in previous decades; as recently as 1948 there had been vio- tisgarhis. On the large private sector industrial estate nearby, it is lent resistance to the region’s incorporation into Orissa, and well much the same story. Nearly all of these factories are owned by before the steel plant was built the adivasi population had devel- outsiders and nearly all employ mainly outsiders as regular com- oped and asserted an identity in opposition to that of exploitative pany workers. Chhattisgarhis are concentrated in the ranks of dikus (non-adivasi outsiders). In the villages surrounding Bhilai, contract and supply labour. It is these inequities that create anxi- by contrast, it was not until the plant was under construction that a eties about the town’s ethnic future. And there is resentment. self-conscious sense of being Chhattisgarhi was crystallised. With- “They say they are ‘dharati-putr’ (sons-of-the-soil) and that we out much contact with outsiders the issue had hardly arisen before. should go back to our own pavilion after all our toiling-moiling”, Even now, it was slow to assume a confrontational form as there as a long-serving Malayali clerk put it in English. To date, how- was plenty of employment available to those who wanted it, which ever, these sentiments have not been violently expressed. It is true most of the local population did not. that at the beginning of the 1990s, and earlier in the townships One conventional explanation for that is that they were con- attached to BSP’s captive iron ore mines, there was bitter fighting vinced that hundreds, if not thousands, of human sacrifices between the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha that was championing (pujvan, bali) would be required to establish such a gargantuan the cause of contract labour, and (Communist Party of India-affil- industrial complex – sacrifices for which they were reluctant to iated) All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) unions that stood be victims [Parry 2007]. Though it is certainly possible to see pre-eminently for the interests of company workers (and many these stories as an expression of the fear and awe with which the would say of employers). Inevitably this set Chhattisgarhis against outside world was regarded, there was little actual resistance to “outsiders” (Parry, in press). But to represent it as an ethnic strug- it, and none in the form of collective violence towards its harbin- gle would be a distortion. The idiom was class, not ethnicity, and gers. Local wariness of plant employment did however have the both sides had activists of the “wrong” ethnic category. effect of enhancing demand for labour from elsewhere, with the In both Chhattisgarh and Orissa, the proportion of Muslims in result that the BSP workforce was (and still remains) significantly the population is tiny (around 2 per cent); and although that figure more dominated than Rourkela’s by migrants of out-of-state would rise to between 5 and 10 per cent in Bhilai and Rourkela, it is origin. And they did indeed come from every corner. Only a small still very small. In both towns, Christians compete in numbers. In proportion were from other parts of Madhya Pradesh, and it is neither can the Hindu majority claim to be threatened. reasonable to suppose that the sheer heterogeneity of its popula- In rural society in this part of Chhattisgarh, the main social tion is one reason that Bhilai has remained relatively peaceful. cleavage is between the (ex-untouchable) Satnamis and the No group was in a position to claim the hegemony that plains’ so-called “Hindu” castes – which typically include almost all Oriyas sought to establish in Rourkela. others in the village hierarchy. Where Muslims are represented, As is inevitable, people of different ethnicities sometimes come they generally bathe from the “Hindu” ghat at the village tank to blows and the trouble then blamed on the innate propensities and draw water from the same sources as the “Hindu” castes. In of this or that group. And it is true that neighbourhood conflicts opposition to Satnamis, Muslims seem to count as (honorary) often run in ethnic grooves. The crucial point, however, is that Hindus! Or to put it differently, “Hindu” has historically been this does not result in randomly targeting individuals from the defined primarily in opposition to Satnami rather than “Muslim” other ethnic group who are not associated with the main pro- [Parry 1999b]. Perhaps related to that, no generalised hostility tagonists. It is not “Biharis” in general who are taught a lesson, towards Muslims has taken firm root in the local population. but rather those loud-mouthed “Biharis” from down the lane who The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been active in Chhat- misbehave with our girls. That is very different from picking on tisgarh since the 1930s [Jaffrelot 1996:134]; and in Raipur by the strangers in the streets and beating them to death because they early 1990s the Shiv Sena had established a following that are identifiably of this or that ethnicity – which is on occasion directed some violence at both Muslims and Christians [Heuzé what happened in Rourkela. 1992]. The main preoccupation of the RSS, however, has been By the time that the main construction phase was over and the with combating Christian influence amongst adivasis in more risk of becoming a bali was deemed to have receded, by the time northerly districts and – apart from a riot in Raigarh in the 1960s their compensation money had been reinvested in fields further – the Muslims have escaped largely unmolested. In Bhilai, nei- out or drunk to the last drop, and by the time that public sector ther the RSS nor the Shiv Sena has ever acquired significant influ- pay had begun to take-off, local Chhattisgarhis had abandoned ence, and the Jan Sangh made little electoral headway. With a their scruples and were clamouring for jobs in the plant. Indeed gap between 1998 and 2003, the BJP has however held the Bhilai they were now demanding preferment. But by now regular BSP assembly constituency since 1990; and since 1998 it has held jobs were harder to get, and in competition for them locals were neighbouring Durg (which includes part of Bhilai). But these suc- disadvantaged by their lower educational attainments, and – cesses have more to do with disillusionment with Congress and they claim – by discrimination. Discrimination or not, what is its factional in-fighting than with the appeal of “Hindutva” senti- certainly the case is that even today people of outsider ancestry ments. Though a thorn in the flesh of the chief minister, it was (of whom most would now have been brought up in Bhilai) are widely said by those in the know that the latter had nevertheless Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 10, 2008 51 Special Article strongly supported the Bhilai constituency’s sitting Congress MLA identities (which is how a government minister who visited for the party ticket in 2003. He would need a Muslim in govern- Boriya immediately after was anxious to portray it). ment and it was only from Bhilai that he could hope to get one.7 Its timing was significant. The violence began early on the morn- ing of January 26 when it could be safely assumed that all available The 1970 Incident police would be on duty at Bhilai’s official Republic Day celebra- The biggest blot on Bhilai’s record of ethnic peace was a riot that tions. A parliamentary by-election was coming up shortly and Nai broke out on January 26, 1970 in a basti called Boriya built on Dunia’s reporter insinuated Jan Sangh chicanery.9 Cow protection BSP land just outside one of the principal gates to the plant8 – a had been a highly emotive issue in the previous general election squatter settlement inhabited by contract workers, petty crimi- [Jaffrelot 1996: 221]. Moreover, this was a time when the labour nals involved in recycling plant property and some regular BSP market was depressed. As we have seen, the 1964 Rourkela riots labour. It was triggered by the discovery of beef brought for sale had their epicentre in slum neighbourhoods in which many now in the basti by a Muslim butcher, wrestler and goonda called laid-off construction workers were hanging on in the generally forlorn Kallu Khan. Perhaps it came from cattle markets in Vidarbha; hope of RSP posts. In Bhilai at that point the demand for labour was perhaps it was carrion brought for the tigers in BSP’s zoo. A huge buoyant as the plant’s capacity was being more than doubled. By hue and cry was raised, and a tempo mounted with a loud- the time of the Boriya riot, however, that work had been completed speaker was soon circumambulating Boriya broadcasting the for more than two years, and the next major expansion would not news that the Muslims had slaughtered a cow. People quickly begin for another five. In both cases, then, ethnic violence erupted appeared from the nearby township with weapons. Muslims during a period in which the livelihoods of many had become were attacked, their houses and shops looted and set on fire, the increasingly precarious. It was also a time of intense factionalism mosque razed. By the time the police arrived, three Muslim within the recognised (INTUC-affiliated) BSP union; and there are corpses were lying on waste ground, and 23 Muslims were badly reports of one INTUC leader (a Hindu) using the riot as an opportu- wounded, two of whom died in hospital. Five dead was the offi- nity to set on another (a Muslim), and of a third being implicated cial figure. Simultaneously, there were small incidents in the in the attempt to foment trouble in the township. township apparently intended to spark a more general confla- After the riot, the widows of the five victims were given BSP gration that failed to ignite. Next day, a cow was attacked with jobs. Boriya basti was bulldozed and BSP workers who lived there a knife and the severed head of a calf was tossed into a Hindu were offered quarters (deliberately) dispersed throughout town- house (by agents provocateurs, it is assumed). That evening, a ship. Others had to fend for themselves. Many Muslims shifted to Jan Sangh leader delivered an inflammatory public speech and Durg or Raipur to live in Muslim-majority areas; some went home many Muslims fled Bhilai. Meanwhile, those evacuated from to their villages, and a handful built houses on what was then Boriya were camped out in the compound of a police station in empty land but is now the thriving colony of Faridnagar. the township and in a Durg community hall. Faridnagar today is a large Muslim enclave – the only one in Both dead and wounded were all Muslims. Of the former, all Bhilai. In the township there are no ethnic ghettos. Outside it, were young men, regular BSP employees and “Mauhadayyas”. there are colonies originally set up by associations of fellow That is, all originated from a group of predominantly Muslim vil- countrymen – Ayyappa Nagar by Malayalis, Smriti Nagar by lages in the vicinity of Mauhada, a small town in the UP district of Maharashtrians and so forth – but this ethnic core has rapidly been Hamirpur, which was where Kallu Khan also came from. True, diluted by large numbers of others moving in. Bhilai does not dis- the shops and houses of other Muslims were also destroyed, but play the strong tendency towards residential clustering by caste Mauhadayyas were specifically targeted. By whom is less clear. and ethnicity that Meher (2004:125f) emphasises for Rourkela. A What is established is that a Sikh woman who had political ambi- Muslim of Maharashtrian origin, who was asked whether he had tions, and later became a small-time Congress leader, instigated ever contemplated moving to Faridnagar from the ex-village- the hullabaloo about cow slaughter and laid on the tempo and cum-labour colony in which he has resided for some years, loudspeaker. Some of her ‘biradari’ (kin group) had tried to wanted to know why he might wish to live amongst all those restrain her and we know from several Muslims that Sikhs had clannish and backward-looking Mauhadayyas when he could not hidden and protected them. Others appear to have led the may- ask for better neighbours than he has? He had once considered hem. The “communal” character of the riot is thus ambiguous. shifting to the township, but Ankalaha’s old mother (a The principal victims were Maudahayyas, not Muslims in gen- Chhatttisgarhi) had wept in his house and begged him not to go. eral; Sikhs were prominent among the aggressors, but some tried to thwart them. As Brass (1997) has convincingly argued, the A Problem with ‘Modernity’? “communal” tag is an ex post facto construction, and it is political The “temples” were desecrated, though in varying degrees; and to interests that determine whether or not it is applied to a particu- many today Nehru’s faith that modern urban industrialism would lar incident. Though in the case of the 1964 communal riots in inexorably dissolve the primordial identities of the workforce seems Rourkela, it is difficult to imagine how they might otherwise have Pollyanna-ish. “Modernity” was not the solution but the problem. been labelled, in the present instance it is not. It might easily be Communal violence is the consequence of “the urban-industrial represented as reflecting animosities between two regional vision of life”, zealotry “a pathology of modernity” [Nandy groups (one of which was disunited); as a ghastly episode in a 1990:83-4]. Or, according to Hansen (1999:7, 90, 212) the xeno neighbourhood vendetta that had nothing to do with religious phobic discourses of Hindu nationalism reflect the “fundamental 52 May 10, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly Special Article ambivalence” with which the “large and expanding” (and very attended a cultural event at the German Club in Rourkela, and vaguely specified) “middle class” regards modernity, and result from though none knew the language, they presented a beautiful “the larger processes of urbanisation and capitalist development”. recital of folksongs in Hindi, leaving not a dry Indian eye in the Seen from Bhilai and Rourkela, modernity looked different. audience. The Germans sang German “pop” (ibid p 20). Zinkin (1966) heads her section on Bhilai, “recipe for success”; But there was more to it than tact. In the first 12 years of its on Rourkela, “… for failure”. Bhilai was a “buzzing beehive”; effective functioning, BSP was in profit for five; and – even through and when she first visited both projects in 1956 she was sur- the worst recessions – has remained so in every year since 1972-73. prised to find that – though the Rourkela contract had been Rourkela has frequently run in the red and failed to meet produc- signed two years earlier – Bhilai was equally advanced. With tion targets. That’s partly because it has had a much more troubled the one that was signed, only a “miracle” would have made record of industrial relations than Bhilai, in the history of which Rourkela work. Around 40 West German companies (relying on there has not been a single strike of real significance amongst its a chain of more than 3,000 suppliers), and about 70 (mainly) production workers. Moscow did not want its most lustrous sym- Indian civil engineering firms were involved [cf Sperling 1969:ix]. bol of Indo-Soviet collaboration to be tarnished. The local party The result was chaos. Work was suspended after rain because was charged with curbing any over-enthusiastic challenge by its excavations were flooded and nobody had thought to order union activists to the hegemony of a management-friendly recog- pumps; or cranes for unloading at the station, which was now nised Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) union (Parry, so clogged that it was impossible to bring in more equipment. in press). In Rourkela, by contrast, there have been frequent strikes On site it was difficult to move even by foot – or to locate any- – some seriously disruptive. thing needed – for the mountains of crates. The contract, more- So what was the problem with modernity that it (allegedly) led over, gave the German experts only easily over-ridden advisory to horrors like the Rourkela riots of 1964? Except in its association roles. The plant was handed over on completion, with the re- with secularism, which at its most strident backs believers into too sult that inexperienced Indian management was left with the tight a corner [Nandy 1990:79], the precise nature of the link is serious teething problems that soon arose. With Bhilai, the So- left unclear. Nor does the thesis explain why the urban-industrial viets were shrewder. Control was much more centralised and vision of life should produce violence in Rourkela on a scale they were to see the plant into production. Indian engineers unknown in Bhilai. But perhaps the answer is obvious – that the sent for training in the USSR were required to do all the same danger lay not in modernity, but in modernity that conspicuously jobs as their Soviet counterparts and there were no commer- failed? Obviously it cannot be simply because blast furnaces con- cial secrets to keep from them; those sent to West Germany tinually breakdown and account books do n0t balance that Hindus were allowed no hands-on experience and excluded by the murder Muslims. But it does seem reasonable to suppose that obsession with patents. Technologically, Rourkela was state-of-the- where modernity has manifestly not worked, people are less art – a racehorse in comparison with carthorse Bhilai, the willing to buy into its dream. In Bhilai, many more were pre- German chancellor boasted [Krishna Moorthy 1984:94]. But pared to do so because the Nehruvian project seemed more Bhilai functioned well from the start; Rourkela – which had credible – and that project involved accepting the “melting-pot”. eight general managers in its first nine years – did not. Even if only carthorse provisioners, at public relations the Shop Floor Culture Soviets were far more sophisticated. Stories critical of Rourkela In neither Bhilai nor Rourkela today are the steel plants the only were planted in the press. There was much to criticise, not only in industry; but in both they are by far the most important ones and the management of the project, but also in the conduct of its per- their employees are the local labour aristocrats who in many sonnel. In pay and conditions, there was a huge disparity between ways set the tone for their towns. As Steel Authority of India Lim- Germans and their Indian counterparts. Sperling (1969) – who ited (SAIL) subsidiaries, there is much in common in the way work was director of the German Social Centre in Rourkela in 1958-62 is managed in the two plants; but their shop floor cultures are – provides a warts-and-all portrait of his compatriots that sug- nevertheless significantly different. Part of that difference can be gests why they were sometimes unloved (though probably less so traced back to legacies left by their foreign collaborators. A trivial than the British in Durgapur). The mechanics drank heavily, but telling example is that in German factories it was not done to brawled frequently, trashed furniture in the club and chucked exchange greetings with colleagues at the start of the day; and in bearers into its pool. Most were uninterested in anything Indian, Rourkela this avoidance was maintained [Sperling 1969:15]. In except the young women. Many kept adivasi “ayahs” as concu- Bhilai it was (and remains) the practice for all to shake hands at bines. Rourkela produced more bastards than steel, it was said. the start of their shift – Hindus and Muslims, dalits and brahmins, Reminding readers of Sita’s passage through fire to prove her line-managers and men. More important, however, is the much chastity, one newspaper complained that Rourkela women were more heterogeneous composition of BSP work groups. sacrificing theirs to heat “a crucible of steel” (ibid p 93). Even Take Satyanarayan, a UP brahmin and a recently retired crane worse, Germans of a different temper who gave their Sundays to operator in the Wire Rod Mill. Crane operators regard themselves “good works” in the villages were assumed to be missionaries. as a cut above other workers and tend to form a clique whose The Russians in Bhilai were on a tighter leash – no alcohol, no members socialise mainly amongst themselves during breaks. servants, and standards of living more comparable to those of Satyanarayan’s included a Nagpur Muslim, a Punjabi Sikh, a their Indian equivalents. When a Russian delegation from Bhilai Malayali Christian, a dalit from Andhra and a Bihari yadav. That is Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 10, 2008 53 Special Article not at all atypical. The membership of most work groups is fairly Plant Site People’s Federation – headed by both adivasi and diku stable over long periods of time; and the work itself may be dan- village headmen – had been founded to fight the villagers’ corner. gerous and demands not only cooperation but trust. Some tasks Site preparations were disrupted and locals refused to work on it. are more arduous and unpleasant than others, and partners rotate Opposition oscillated between outright rejection of the project them. Even after the down-sizing of the permanent labour force and pragmatic concern to leverage the best terms possible. Dikus over the past two decades, manning levels remain generous and and many Catholic Oraons favoured compromise; other adivasis many teams run their own informal duty rosters that permit them took a harder line – predisposed to do so by their long history of to show up for only half their shift and sometimes not at all. Even resistance to outside incursions. In Gangpur and Bonei – the erst- so there are long fallow periods between bouts of productive acti while princely states that make up the present district of Sundar- vity during which there is little to do but gossip and drink tea. A garh in which Rourkela is located – the rulers’ attempts to strong sense of solidarity and fast friendships develop. Regardless enhance their revenue by bringing in non-adivasi tax farmers of caste, those who work together eat together, shovelling delica- from adjacent areas had led to rebellion in 1897. In Gangpur, cies brought from home onto each other’s plates. Not that primor- another significant uprising followed in 1939; and in 1948 there dial identities disappear. A certain tenseness about regional identi- were violent protests against the region’s incorporation into ties is expressed in licensed joking that plays on ethnic stereotypes; Orissa [Mallick 2007; Bailey 1959]. and regional ethnicity is a major factor in union elections at shop The terms eventually extracted included monetary compensa- floor level. Most striking, however, is the extent to which identity tion for the land they were relinquishing; the promise of a job in issues are muffled by a robust institutional culture. The effects of it the regular RSP workforce for one able-bodied member of every wash over the perimeter walls. Many work groups run rotating household from which land was requisitioned, and the establish- credit societies, tour groups that travel together to spend a few ment of three resettlement colonies for the displaced on the days at some tourist site, and dining clubs that convene to eat meat, periphery of the township. In these, the government provided booze and banter. Hindu or Muslim, entire work groups are gener- house plots and building subsidies. In addition, the villagers were ally invited to major life cycle rituals celebrated by the household, assigned unbroken land for cultivation in one of a dozen or so and it is de rigueur that at least some attend [Parry 1999a and b]. reclamation camps within a 100 kilometre radius of Rourkela, As the RSP workforce has been “Oriya-ised”, that kind of ethnic and an allowance for breaking it. heterogeneity can hardly exist. “Outsiders” are scattered in ones Though the package might sound generous there are many and twos in work groups dominated by Oriyas and adivasis. complaints. The compensation rates are said to have been totally Sometimes one might say “or adivasis” since they are heavily con- inadequate, and many people got nothing at all. This was because centrated in the least skilled operational jobs in the hardest the revenue records in Gangpur state had been so poorly main- shops, while it is overwhelmingly Oriyas who man the mills [cf tained that they could not prove legal title. The promised jobs Behera 1996]. In Rourkela too there are clubs for shop floor col- often took years to materialise, and sometimes never did. Finding leagues, but – unthinkable in Bhilai – adivasis have in some cases that they could earn more with a private contractor, those who formed their own. Nor are there the same informal visits to the got them early on had often relinquished them before public sec- homes of workmates of different ethnicity that are routine in tor wage inflation had made them really valuable. Others were Bhilai. Few Oriya workers would ever set foot in the house of an fired in a major purge of the labour force that screened out absen- adivasi colleague. One day, Struempell was talking with an adi- tees. In the reclamation camps, epidemic disease was recurrent vasi RSP worker in a lane of the Munda basti of one of the resettle- and the terrain so inhospitable that “even tigers could not live ment colonies, a lane used as a shortcut to the plant by Oriya there”. House plots in the resettlement colonies were granted workers from the colony next door. An Oriya workmate drew up only on usufruct and could not be legitimately sold. In fact they on a bike to remark in astonishment: “So this is where you live? I often were, and many non-displaced people – mainly adivasis – had never thought we were such close neighbours”. The response moved in but had no legal rights. For present purposes, most was sour: “What did you think? That I live in the jungle?” crucial was the concentration of displaced malcontents in reset- At the risk of labouring the point, this contrast in shop floor tlement colonies on the edge of town, especially of younger men cultures does more than reflect a difference in the ethnic air of who hung on in the hope of secure employment but actually the two towns. It is also what helps to constitute it. eked out a meagre living from irregular casual labour. Not sur- prisingly, these colonies rapidly became hotbeds of Jharkhand The Legacy of Displacement militancy, and were at the centre of horrendous violence in At least as important is the history of displacement. Remember 1964 (as of anti-Sikh rioting in 1984). that in Rourkela’s early years many of the victims of Oriya aggres- Resettlement colonies had other enduring consequences. Dis- sion, as well as many of the perpetrators of the anti-Muslim placed adivasis (and others who joined them) became ghettoised. pogrom of 1964, were Punjabis and Bengalis, often displaced by The township is overwhelmingly inhabited by Oriyas and other the Partition. Those we focus on here, however, are the more dikus; the resettlement colonies are overwhelmingly adivasi, and than 15,000 largely adivasi inhabitants of the 32 villages that lost between the two there is little interaction. Adivasi children are their houses and fields to the plant. educated in state government-run colony schools in which stand- Even before the initial agreement for Rourkela had been signed ards are significantly lower than in RSP schools in the township. there was significant local opposition to it;10 and in 1953 a Steel There they are unlikely to acquire the educational qualifications 54 May 10, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly Special Article or cultural capital that would allow them to compete with town- pre-history of deep political antagonism towards outsiders. As far ship kids on the labour market. The separation and subordination as ethnic violence is concerned, the main structural cleavage in of adivasis is seamlessly reproduced. local society was moreover not between Hindus and Muslims, In Orissa at large, Christians have more often been victims of but between the so-called “Hindu” castes and the Satnamis. In communal violence than Muslims. In Rourkela they have never the case of Rourkela, by contrast, the local adivasis were almost been targeted. A substantial majority are adivasis, whose soli- pre-programmed by the previous half-century or more of their darity against outsiders affords them protection. But what had history to violent resistance against dikus; and – for reasons just adivasis got against Muslims, especially local ones? In one way, given – had motives for singling out Muslims. The second expla- their victimhood seems fortuitous in that it is easy to imagine nation is that, in Bhilai, the displaced were dispersed throughout adivasis picking on some other diku community. In others, the the general population. In much policy-oriented literature, the targeting of them seems over-determined. Muslims had been recommendation is that displaced communities should as far as brought in by the local rajas to serve as policemen and other petty possible be kept intact.11 As far as the ethnic tensions that often functionaries, and thus stood for the previous generation of accompany large-scale development projects are concerned, exploitative interlopers. More had been traders, and were now however, out comparison suggests that strategy does not always big in the liquor business. Many adivasis drank heavily and were produce the most desirable outcomes. In the case of Rourkela, deeply indebted to them, and that led to frequent demands for the local adivasis were – as we have suggested – largely ghetto- sexual favours from adivasi women [Ghosh 1981:92-3]. During ised, largely unable to take advantage of the lucrative and pres- the 1964 riots, it is claimed, some Hindu traders with a lustful eye tigious jobs that were now available, and were condemned to on the liquor trade instigated adivasi violence. reproduce their own inferiority. It should not be surprising that In Bhilai displacement took place in a different historical con- they felt a sense of betrayal and were tempted to vent their resent- text, and its consequences have been much less antagonistic, ment on outside “interlopers” with a venom far more virulent than though the number of villages (96 in all) and the population that ever manifested by the displaced Chhattisgarhi peasantry. affected was much larger. Few were adivasis. Records of recent land sales were examined for each village, distress sales (due to Civil Society and the State indebtedness, widowhood and so forth) scrupulously excluded, This article has followed Varshney (2002) in attempting to gain and a market price established that reflected soil quality. As in some insight into communal riots by juxtaposing two similar Rourkela, one member of each household that had sacrificed land urban settings that are differentiated by their levels of ethnic vio- for the plant was to be offered a BSP job; and as in Rourkela there lence. For Varshney, the crucial variable is the extent to which was often a long gap before these promises were honoured. In the civil society institutions bridge the communal divide. The state end, however, they generally were. What was most different, how- has little explanatory significance. With the first of these proposi- ever, was that there were no resettlement colonies or reclamation tions we have sympathy; with the second none. Not only is it hard camps. Each household made its own decisions about where to to credit in the light of Gujarat’s recent history, but the two resettle and where – or whether – to reinvest in land. dimensions are not clearly separated. Civil society institutions In Bhilai too, today many claim that the rates of compensation are often decisively shaped by the state. The ones we focus on were derisory. It is also alleged that the sudden influx of cash drove here are the unions. Remember the CITU “special constables” patrol- up prices in surrounding villages, making it difficult for the dispos- ling Rourkela in 1984 to prevent anti-Sikh violence from spreading. sessed to buy replacement holdings of equivalent productivity. A BSP’s recognised union was from the start a Congress-affiliated study of the records, however, provided no evidence for either INTUC one. In the early days there was industrial strife, but this was claim. But what is certainly true is that land was compulsorily pur- largely limited to the temporary construction labour force. Regular chased in separate tranches over several years, making it difficult BSP production workers held aloof, as did their union. 1969-73 was for the villagers to reinvest rationally. Moreover BSP requisitioned a time of crippling factionalism within it, during which Bhilai’s one much more land than it actually needed for the plant and the town- “communal” riot occurred. Some lower-level union leaders were ship, and by 1966 was using the surplus to run 23 sizeable “officer certainly involved and through it appear to have prosecuted plant farms”. The matter went to court, the farms were liquidated in 1979 rivalries. Under pressure from senior management and the steel and the land was made over to a Special Area Development Autho ministry, INTUC national leadership eventually intervened to order rity who proceeded to sell much of it off to speculators. Vast profits fresh elections in 1973. From these Ravi Arya (a Punjabi) emerged were made; but not of course by the villagers. If only it were now as the union’s general secretary (it is said with backing from the theirs to sell. It is largely this that lies behind the outrage they now steel minister himself). For the next 30-odd years, Arya remained feel about the rates at which they were compensated – an outrage its most powerful figure. He and a small coterie developed a com- compounded by the significant reduction in plant manpower over fortable relationship with senior management that ensured uncon- the past two decades. Even if it has to be partitioned, land can be frontational labour relations. Those lower down the union hierar- passed on from one generation to the next. But the BSP job that was chy were discouraged from dissent by perks and free trips, exemp- offered in lieu went to one brother only and was not heritable. tion from normal duties and by the power and patronage that was Such resentments notwithstanding, displacement has not been put their way. Shop floor representatives acquired a lien on the the running sore it has remained in Rourkela. We see two princi- workforce that rivalled that of line managers. Over the past few pal reasons. The first is that there was in Bhilai no comparable years, however, the union has fallen back into factional disarray. Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 10, 2008 55 Special Article There has been no undisputed leadership with whom management the Works Committee. Three years later, however, they lost out might talk. Indeed, for much of this time the union has been sus- badly on account of the strong resentments their pro-Oriya influ- pended by the courts (Parry, in press). ence on recruitment and promotions had aroused. Rolling the For present purposes there are two crucial points. The first is clock rapidly forward, in the late 1980s and early 1990s a Malayali that throughout BSP’s history the recognised union has (unless by RSP clerk launched a campaign on behalf of the approximately internal rivalries) remained unchallenged. One reason was the 10,000 contract workers in the plant, and by the mid-1990s had restraint Moscow placed on its most plausible (CPI-affiliated AITUC) got almost half of them regularised. Most were locals and many rival. A more important one is that worker-management relations adivasis, which again significantly shifted the ethnic balance of the have been governed by the Madhya Pradesh Industrial Relations workforce. The union that grew out of this victory became the Act (1960), which requires management to negotiate with a recog- recognised one in 1995, and with substantial adivasi support still nised union chosen by a majority of its workforce, and with that is. Enough said, we hope, to establish that Rourkela unions tend to union only – which means that most workers see little point in join- be identified with particular ethnic lobbies. The corollary is that ing any other. The most salient feature of the legislation, however, ethnic violence has been concentrated during periods of intense is that the formal procedures for replacing one recognised union by union rivalry, and a lid kept on it when rivalries were muted. another are so complex, protracted and subject to manipulation Varshney is right. Civil society institutions do help explain the vari- that without the direct backing of the state the prospects of doing ations over space and time. What is less convincing is his bracketing so are negligible. The second point is that although the split out of the state. As we have just seen, the industrial relations legisla- between Chhattisgarhis and “outsiders” is important in shop floor tion in force makes a significant difference to the degree of competi- elections, regional ethnicity plays no significant role in union poli- tion between unions, and thus to the extent to which ethnic rivalries tics at higher levels. Few major players are Chhattisgarhis, and no are expressed through – and exacerbated by – union politics. Civil “outsider” can construct a winning coalition-based on his own society institutions are not sui generis. They are moulded by state countrymen. In the BSP mines, and on the private sector industrial interventions and agendas; and – not only with regard to the law – estate, predominantly “outsider” company labour and predomi- these have differed in their impact on Bhilai and Rourkela. nantly Chhattisgarhi contract labour were for a time represented by different unions (respectively affiliated to AITUC12 and the Compulsions of Regional Nationalism Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha) that were in sometimes violent con- Madhya Pradesh (MP) was patched together from fragments that flict with each other. But as we have already pointed out, their were just assuming stable shape when the BSP project was start- struggle took place in the idiom of class, not ethnicity. ing. It had little self-conscious sense of a singular identity and In Rourkela, by contrast, ethnicity is central to the way in nobody gave much thought to creating one. Throughout the early which workers represent union rivalries, and within the plant years of the plant, the state government had a generally harmoni- competition between unions has been more meaningful. RSP is ous working relationship with the centre, which the local political governed by an Industrial Disputes Act that provides rival unions elite in Chhattisgarh had no desire to disrupt. Though by the mid- with a realistic chance of supplanting the recognised one, which 1960s there was clamour for sons-of-the-Chhattisgarh-soil to be has happened twice in its history. Given the context, it is hardly privileged in recruitment to plant jobs, the demands of the local surprising if unions that compete on the same turf should be leadership were generally restrained, and it was never seriously identified with ethnic categories that are also in competition. claimed by Bhopal that people from other MP regions should be The earliest unions were the Gangpur Labour Union and the preferred for BSP employment over people from other states. In North Orissa Workers’ Union, both champions of local Sundar- fact, the former were always hugely outnumbered by them. In garhi labour and backed by the Ganatantra Parishad, the party short, BSP management was on the whole allowed to manage created after the hill states merged with Orissa, ostensibly to pro- without “interference” from state and local political lobbies. tect their people from colonisation by coastal Oriyas. Though sig- The Orissa state government faced greater compulsions and nificant in the mines, neither established much influence in the was much more assertive in its claims on RSP jobs. Some were – plant, where the Rourkela Mazdoor Sabha [RMS] (affiliated to the like massive under-employment in the densely populated cyclone- union wing of the Praja Socialist Party) was the first to gain a real prone coastal districts – economic; but just as pressing were politi- foothold as the guardian of local interests. By the late 1960s, how- cal ones. In 1948, the Feudatory States had tried (some violently) ever, it had become closely identified with workers from coastal to resist merger, which roughly doubled Orissa’s population and Orissa. Opposed to it were an INTUC union (Hindustan Steel Workers’ gave the eastern plains access to the natural resources of the west- Association [HSWA]) associated with out-of-state migrants, and ern hills. But from the point of view of their inhabitants, this the far-left Rourkela Workers’ Union with a largely adivasi following was a katakiya state and its representatives were occupiers. In and Bengali leadership. At the time of the 1964 riots, the RMS and the 1952 elections, Congress managed to win only 26 of the 72 HSWA were the main competitors, though up to that point there constituencies in the hill areas; and in 1957 it was reduced to 14 had been no recognised union. RSP management was in the proc- out of 74. In that election, Congress fared badly throughout ess of getting the RMS suspended for staging wildcat strikes; and Orissa, in large measure because of the passions aroused by the just as the riots were petering out recognised the HSWA. RMS activ- recent States Reorganisation Commission award of Oriya- ists were accused of fanning the flames. By 1966, they were back speaking Seraikella and Kharaswan to Bihar. Following it, Con- and had staged an electoral coup that gave them a stranglehold on gress could only retain power with Jharkhand Party support; its 56 May 10, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly Special Article hold on it was extremely precarious throughout the late 1950s, government led the campaign to restrict entry to it. Though it and its sense of insecurity was exacerbated by the knowledge may not have actually sponsored the violence directed at that the chief minister was not on good terms with Nehru. outsiders, it certainly laid the ground for it. Hence what Bailey (1963:8) describes as “the disproportionate But how were these purges of migrants from other states tenderness which the ministry showed to even the least of its transformed into a pogrom against Muslims? Everybody had supporters”. Since the majority of these were plains’ Oriyas, a their reasons. Those of the adivasis we have already discussed. vigorous assertion of Oriya rights over Rourkela jobs was an Many of the Punjabis and Bengalis had experienced the horrors obvious way of shoring up their political fortunes. of Partition. Many had earlier been the target of Oriya violence But there was more to it than practical reason. There was also and now was their opportunity to show who the “real” outsiders an ideological mission to build a viable Oriya “nation”. That meant were. As for the Oriyas, central to the self-definition of Orissa is incorporating the hills, which – given their “primitive” population that it is a Hindu province [Kanungo 2003]. The Oriya nation – made it a civilising mission as well. “It was a Herculean task to being built in Rourkela should therefore be Hindu. turn this area into Orissa”, one of Struempell’s Oriya informants Thus the state, we are arguing, created the conditions in explained, to sage nods from his fellow teachers. RSP – representing which civil society institutions became ethnic lobbies, in which modernity brought to the jungle – encapsulated that heroic task. “sons-of-the-soil” turned on “outsiders”, and in which the What the Nehruvians intended as a “temple” to modern industrial meaning of these categories was continually redefined through India became a “temple” to Oriya nationalism – and the state violence. In Bhilai things went differently. Notes Institutional/Manuals /OpManual.nsf/toc2/CA2D0 Nandy, A (1990): ‘The Politics of Secularism and the 1A4D1BDF58085256B19008197F6?OpenDocument) Recovery of Religious Tolerance’ in V Das (ed), 1 Parry’s field research in Bhilai – undertaken 12 Though INTUC has the plant, the recognised union Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survi- between 1993 and 2006 – has extended over in the BSP mines has always been an AITUC one. vors in South Asia, Oxford University Press, Delhi. approximately 26 months. He gratefully acknowl- edges the invaluable research assistance of Ajay Nandy, A, S Trivedy, S Mayaram and A Yagnik T G and the patient clarifications that Lalit Surjan (1997): Creating a Nation: The Ramjanmabhumi provided in connection with this article. Struem- References Movement and Fear of Self, Oxford University pell’s fieldwork in Rourkela has extended over Press, Delhi. Bailey, F G (1959): ‘The Ganatantra Parishad’, approximately 18 months during the period Economic Weekly, pp 1469-76, October 24. Parry, J (1999a): ‘Lords of Labour: Working and Shirk- 2004-08. He thanks Amar Kumar Singh and Rajat ing in Bhilai’ in J P Parry, J Breman and K Kapadia – (1963): Politics and Social Change: Orissa in 1959, Singh for their research assistance. (eds), The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour, Oxford University Press, Bombay. 2 We employ pseudonyms throughout. Sage Publications, New Delhi, pp 107-40. Baviskar, A (2005): ‘Adivasi Encounters with Hindu 3 We use “ethnic” as a catch-all for caste, commu- – (1999b): ‘Two Cheers for Reservation: The Satna- Nationalism in MP’, Economic & Political Weekly, nal and regional identities. mis and the Steel Plant’ in Ramachandra Guha Vol 40 (43), November 26 – December 2. and J P Parry (eds), Institutions and Inequalities: 4 Similarly, Saumya (2008) has recently suggested Behera, D K (1996): ‘Plight of the Tribal Workers of Essays in Honour of André Béteille, Oxford Univer- that in Chhattisgarh adivasi participation is a Rourkela Steel Plant of Orissa’, Man in India, sity Press, New Delhi, pp 129-69. post-1990 phenomenon; while Nandy (1990) has 76 (3), pp 239-51. claimed that communal riots are a specifically – (2003): ‘Nehru’s Dream and the Village “Waiting Brass, P (1997): Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Room”: Long Distance Labour Migrants to a urban affliction – a point properly disputed by Representation of Collective Violence, University Brass (1997:18). Central Indian Steel Town’, Contributions to Press, Princeton. Indian Sociology, 37 (1 and 2), pp 217-49. 5 Though the term derives from the town of Cuttack, Chatterjee, R B, P N Singh and G R S Rao (1967): Riots it is generically applied to all plains Oriyas. – (2007): ‘The Sacrifices of Modernity in a Soviet- in Rourkela: A Psychological Study, Popular Book built Steel Town in Central India’ in F Pine and 6 This is the figure cited in an appendix to Chatter- Services, New Delhi. J de Pina-Cabral (eds), Religion on the Margins, jee et al (1967:127), though the main body of their Drèze, J M Samson and S Singh (eds) (1997): The Dam pp 233-62, Berghahn Books, Oxford. text – based on extensive interviews conducted and the Nation: Displacement and Resettlement in some six weeks after the riots – makes it obvious – (2008): ‘Cosmopolitan Values in a Central Indian the Narmada Valley, Oxford University Press, Delhi. Steel Town’ in Pnina Werbner (ed), Anthropology that they did not believe it. Though she does not Ghosh, S K (1981): Violence in the Streets: Order and cite sources, Roy (2007:148) reproduces it, but and the New Cosmopolitanism, Berg Publications, Liberty in Indian Society, Light and Life Publish- London, pp 325-43. then modifies it shortly after to ‘at least’ 28 (p 151). ers, New Delhi. Kanungo (2003) says 72, but appears to have In press ‘Sociological Marxism in Central India: Guha, Ramachandra (2007): India after Gandhi: The Polanyi, Gramsci and the Case of the Unions in confused the death toll with the number of police- History of the World’s Largest Democracy, Harper C Hann and K Hart (eds), Market and Society: The men in Rourkela. Collins, New York. Great Transformation Today, University Press, 7 In the event, however, Baddrudin Quereshi was Hansen, T Blom (1999): The Saffron Wave: Democracy Cambridge. defeated in Bhilai, and Ajit Jogi’s government was and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Univer- Roy, Srirupa (2007): Beyond Belief: India and the ousted. sity Press, Princeton. Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism, Duke Univer- 8 Our account of these events relies heavily on the – (2001): Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in sity Press, Durham. Raipur edition of Nai Dunia during late January Postcolonial Bombay, Princeton University Press. Saumya (2008): ‘Communalism: Narratives in Chhat- and mid-February 1970. The most informative investigative article, by Rammu Srivasatava, Heuzé, G (1992): ‘Shiv Sena and “National” Hinduism’, tisgarh’, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 43, No 2, appeared on February 6. These sources are Economic & Political Weekly, October 3, January 12-18. supplemented by interviews with several individ- pp 2189-95; October 10, pp 2253-63. Sengupta, N (1983): Contract Labour in the Steel uals then living in Boriya and with the widows of Jaffrelot, C (1996): The Hindu Nationalist Movement Region: Rourkela, Asian Workers Development two of those murdered. and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s, Hurst and Institute (mimeo), Rourkela. 9 The party was not itself fielding a candidate, but Co, London. Sperling, J B (1963): Rourkela: Sozio-ökonomische was in electoral alliance with the Samyukta Kanungo, P (2003): ‘Hindutva’s Entry into a “Hindu Probleme eines Entwicklungsprojekts, Eichholz Socialist Party that was. Province”: Early Years of the RSS in Orissa’, Velag, Bonn. 10 Apart from data collected during fieldwork, our Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 38 (31), – (1969): The Human Dimension of Technical Assist- summary account of this opposition calls in August 2-8. ance: The German Experience of Rourkela, India, particular on Behera 1996, Meher 2004:68f and Krishna Moorthy, K (1984): Engineering Change: Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Sengupta 1983:38f. India’s Iron and Steel, Technology Books, Madras. Varshney, A (2002): Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: 11 An assumption reflected in a ruling – in the event Mallick, P K (2007): ‘Madri Kalo and the First Tribal Hindus and Muslims in India, Yale University ignored – of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Uprising in the State of Gangpur’, Orissa Review, Press, New Haven. (Frontline, April 22 – May 5, 2006; see also Drèze et Vol 63, No 6, pp 64-67. Weiner, M (1978): Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic al 1997:186f). The principle is laid down in a Meher, R (2004): Stealing the Environment: Social and Conflict in India, University Press, Princeton. World Bank ‘Operation Manual’ on Involuntary Ecological Effects of Industrialiasation in Rourkela, Zinkin, Taya (1966): Challenges in India, Chatto & Resettlement (http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/ Manohar, New Delhi. Windus. Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 10, 2008 57