Bedlam at Balodabazar: a day of protest and pandemonium
The district in Chhattisgarh saw violence over the desecration of Jaitkhams or victory pillars, considered sacred by the Satnamis, a community of Scheduled Castes. Shubhomoy Sikdar reports on the frustrations of the youth in the community, the leadership, and the political pell-mell
Rakesh Dewangan, a 41-year-old office assistant at the Balodabazar-Bhatapara Collectorate in Chhattisgarh, is accustomed to long workdays. After reaching office at 9 a.m. every day, he spends his time running errands for the managers, cleaning the office, and guiding the occasional visitor to the right official. Often, his days stretch into the late evening. June 10 was different.
There was commotion outside the Collectorate and people were running around searching for a safe space inside the building. “I could hear the commotion all along, but I was alarmed when I heard the glass of the façade cracking due to stone pelting. I wondered if I would be able to reach home at all,” says Dewangan.
The protest by Satnamis, a community of Scheduled Castes (SCs), over the desecration of Jaitkhams or victory pillars — tall, white pillars made of bamboo or wood that are considered sacred — had begun peacefully in another part of the district. Once it reached the Composite Compound, which houses offices of the District Collector, Superintendent of Police (SP), and other officials, it devolved into chaos and violence.
The SP’s office was torched, the collectorate damaged, 40 police personnel were injured, and over 150 vehicles set on fire, say the police. In the days after, when the cranes came to clear the debris, the charred SP’s office and the scattered glass and stones around the Composite Compound were reminders of the violence.
Unlike Dewangan, who escaped unhurt, constable Akash Sharma, 34, was in the middle of the action. “A stick missed me, but before I could regain my composure, another one hit me on my face. I was in plain clothes and handing over riot control gear and tear gas shells to my colleagues on security duty. I have never witnessed this in Balodabazar before,” says Sharma, touching the stitches on his face.
Seven FIRs were registered immediately and two later at the Kotwali police station, which is serving as the makeshift SP office. At least 137 people were remanded in custody as of June 19.
The unexpected turn of events in Balodabazar-Bhatapara — a district that houses the main seat of power for the Santami and Kabirpanthi communities, two sects with a massive following in Chhattisgarh — has put the spotlight on two related but distinct issues. First, the inability of the administration to assess the impact of the desecration that happened nearly a month before the violent protest and the fallout. Second, the simmering anger of the Satnami community over similar incidents against the backdrop of persistent socio-economic issues such as lack of job opportunities and equitable development.
Another significant consequence was the escalation of a political tug-of-war between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. This political skirmish intensified amid the relentless summer heat, further inflaming the political landscape, as both parties vied to hold on to the support base of a community that impacts elections in the State’s non-tribal central plains.
How it all began
On May 17, Kasam Das Bhaskar, the priest of Amar Gufa, a Satnami temple built on a hill in Mahakoni — a village nearly 3 km from Giraudpuri, where the Giraudpuri Dham, the biggest pilgrimage site for Satnamis is located — approached the police. In his statement, he said when he went to the temple on the morning of May 16, he found three Jaitkhams in front of the temple broken.
“They were cut with a saw and felled, which is an insult to the faith,” a part of his statement read. Based on this, the police registered an FIR for hurting religious sentiments and started investigations into the case.
The Satnami sect was founded by Guru Baba Ghasidas, a saint who spread the message of ‘Mankhe mankhe ek saman (Everyone is equal)’. The guru, who died in 1850, called the members of the sect followers of Sat Nam or The True One and dissuaded them from idol worship. The Jaitkhams became a crucial religious symbol.
The police soon arrested three migrant labourers from Bihar who allegedly damaged the Jaitkhams. The local administration also installed new Jaitkhams in place of the damaged ones. While investigators remained tight-lipped about the motive, local media coverage suggested that the three men had some payment dispute with a contractor, who hired them for construction work.
Police constable Akash Sharma
| Photo Credit:
A.M. Faruqui
The follow-up action did not convince the members of the Satnami community, who wanted a deeper probe, arguing that the migrant labourers were innocent, and this was a conspiracy against the community that needed to be unearthed. Early protesters included voices from all political parties and they submitted memoranda to the District Collector, asking for a CBI probe.
While the rage over the Amar Gufa case started building up, another incident took place days later in another part of Balodabazar. During the shooting of a Chhattisgarhi film, someone allegedly d the flag installed at a Satnami religious site and inscribed some words on a Jaitkham. While the director and one member of the cast were arrested, the incident exacerbated the already escalating situation.
There were reportedly munadis or announcements in different Satnami villages to join the protest on June 10. Multiple local sources further claimed that the response of some senior police officers also miffed the representatives of the community as the momentum built up.
Simmering anger
Sunil Barle, a Satnami youth from Bemetara district, says while he does not justify the violence, the anger itself was justified because when such incidents happen all that the community gets are assurances. Memoranda are simply received and discarded. “Such desecration happened in Shivrinarayan in Janjgir-Champa district recently, and in Dharampura in Kawardha earlier [2021]. We do not have anything against any community, but we have a right to know who is conspiring against us,” says Barle, standing outside Amar Gufa a day after the arson.
A bunch of youth accompanying him also shared similar views and called it the sentiment of the larger community. Sensing public anger over the issue and after the march, the Vishnu Deo Sai-led BJP government announced a judicial probe into the desecration on June 10.
Despite the announcement, the community went ahead with its demonstration at Dussehra Maidan in Balodabazar city, and also laid siege to the Collector’s office. Nearly 7,000 people received permission to hold a dharna, but the protesters soon started marching towards the Collector’s office and the mob allegedly turned violent.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the focus shifted to the events preceding it. The police probe unearthed that in the days running up to the event, controversial posts were posted on social media, some of them by representatives of the Bhim Regiment and Bhim Krantiveer, two local outfits that operate without registration but are active on social media.
While SP Sadanand Kumar and Collector K.L. Chauhan were d and subsequently suspended, the incident also became a new flashpoint between the Congress and the BJP in the State. While the Opposition party mounted pressure on the government by announcing a Statewide protest on June 18, the BJP accused it of hatching the conspiracy behind the June 10 incident.
“In the programme (protest), some people systematically committed serious crimes like arson, loot, damage to government property, and attempt to murder, to defame the Satnami community, which is condemnable. Everything was executed in a planned manner. Anti-social elements torched about 150 two-wheelers and four-wheelers,” Minister and BJP leader Dayaldas Baghel said a day after the incident. While he claimed that Congress leaders, including former Minister Guru Rudra Kumar and incumbent MLAs Devendra Yadav and Kavita Pran Lahre, attended the demonstration, the leaders themselves said they had no role in the violence.
The showdown
A descendant of Guru Ghasidas, Kumar and his line of the family exert influence on the Giraudpuri area unlike other descendants, who are more influential in Arang near Raipur. The Congress leader said he would file a defamation case against Baghel and two of his partymen.
Stepping up the attack, the Congress also sent what they called a fact-finding team, led by Shivkumar Dahariya, a Satnami leader and former Minister, who recently lost the Lok Sabha poll from the Janjgir-Champa seat. Dahariya alleged that some of the vehicles were damaged by the police themselves and that the contractor, whose hired labourers had damaged the Jaitkhams on May 15-16, were from the BJP. Days later, the BJP also sent a five-member probe team, which focused on “de-escalation and meeting various community leaders”.
A police officer says there were ample signs of a conspiracy. “We found stones that are not present near the Collectorate premises; petrol bombs were used. So many protesters were mobilised. Someone had footed the bill for their food and travel from different parts of Chhattisgarh. It was a well-planned act.”
Among those arrested is Roop Kishore Navrange, a youth the police are calling the main conspirator behind the stone pelting and arson. “Navrange is the founder of an organisation called Bhim Krantiveer. Earlier, he was the district president of Bhim Regiment. He is accused of inciting people to join the protest through social media,” says the new SP, Vijay Agrawal.
Despite a similarity in names, neither Bhim Regiment nor Bhim Krantiveer have any direct association with the Bhim Army, the social base of the Aazad Samaj Party led by newly elected Member of Parliament Chandrashekhar Aazad.
However, Aazad himself joined the debate on June 15. He posted on X that in Raipur, the administration did not take any action even after more than a month of the desecration at Amar Gufa.
Distancing his own organisation from the violence, he wrote that the acts committed by anti-social elements were “extremely painful and condemnable…. I will reach Raipur soon and meet the victims’ families”.
Khushwant Saheb, BJP MLA and cousin of Kumar, acknowledged that there was public anger but defended the actions taken by the State government. “Such incidents have taken place earlier in Dharampura and Pallari, but the action was never this swift as it was in this case. The community was satisfied with the announcement of a judicial probe too, but it is the Congress that got anti-social elements to join the protest, giving a bad name to peaceful Satnamis,” he says.
In his 1995 book, Chhattisgarh Rediscovered (Vedantic Approaches to Folklore), historian H.L. Shukla wrote of the Satnamis: “As a class, they always act together, and are persistent assertors of their rights, real and fancied…”
The Satnami community is the biggest constituent of SCs in Chhattisgarh, which form 12.8% of its population. In the current political scenario, however, the community is divided between the supporters of Kumar and Saheb, although both branches of the family have a history of switching political allegiances.
The election results have also been mixed in Satnami-dominated areas. The BJP won the Janjgir-Champa seat — the only Lok Sabha seat in the State reserved for the SC community and one where Satnami votes decide the outcome — in the general election in May. The Congress had won all Assembly segments in the parliamentary seat in the State election held last November, in which it was voted out of power.
Legal expert B.K. Manish says an ongoing legal tangle on reservation has also enraged the community over time. It manifested first in a nude protest by 29 youth on the opening day of the Assembly’s monsoon session in Raipur last year. They were protesting against government jobs allegedly going to those holding fake SC/ST certificates. “Cleavages in SC/ST unity, which came to the fore soon after, made Satnamis desperate.”
Amit Jogi, president of the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J), alleges that both the BJP and the Congress want to weaken the unity of the Satnami community. He also points out that there is a leadership crisis that the youth have been facing. He adds that this frustration is coupled with shrinking employment prospects due to fewer government job opportunities.
“Almost all gurus of the Satnamis from Giraudhpuri to Bhandarpuri Dham have supported the government and not the community since 1980 due to their changing political ambitions. This is the reason that the community, which has been rebelling against slavery for centuries, has become completely leaderless socially and politically, and the youth have taken the place of the gurus,” Jogi says.
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