63% Hindus, 37% Muslims
Chief Minister of Bihar: Jagannath Mishra, Congress (I), June 1980–August 1983
A serious riot took place in Biharsharif (Bihar), a town that had a forty-eight percent Muslim population at the time. Due to the relatively large presence of Muslims, there are several cemeteries in the town. In early 1981, tensions arose between Muslims and Yadavs (a rising Hindu lower caste) because of a dispute in which Yadavs had attempted to claim land for themselves that was situated in a Muslim cemetery. On January 21, the Muslims realized that the Yadavs had gone ahead with the construction of a Hindu temple on the disputed site. Clashes erupted, but they were rapidly brought under control by the police. On August 30, a dispute between drunken Muslim and Hindu youths in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Gangandiwan sparked off a riot. Rumors spread that Muslims had “massacred” Gangandiwan’s few Hindu families. On May 1, a mob armed with guns and bombs attacked Alinagar - an area which had been exempted from the curfew imposed in other areas. One man and 14 women and children were killed. In the town of Biharsharif alone, twenty persons lost their lives. But the most important events took place in nearby villages such as Gulni where 13 persons, mainly women and children were killed on May 2 by a crowd armed with bombs and rifles. Villagers, mainly Dalits and Yadavs (OBCs), joined the mob, attacking Muslims in a village that had lived in communal harmony for years. Violence in the rural areas continued unabated for three days without any intervention from the police. The Congress state administration reacted slowly; Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had to come to the area on May 4. Calm was restored on May 5. Some reports pointed out that the RSS had taken advantage of the Yadav’s anger over the land dispute to trigger a riot. A local CPI (Communist Party of India) MLA reported that during the riots, RSS activists visited rural areas with loudspeakers, spreading a false rumor that two hundred Yadavs had been killed by Muslims in Biharsharif. The police also proved themselves to be incompetent and partial to the Hindus.
The actual death toll remains unknown. Official accounts reported 52 deaths, but other estimates put the figure at from 80 to 150–200 deaths.
**(Secular Democracy, 05/1981); **(Sunday, 24/05/1981); ***(Engineer, 1981); ***(Ghosh, 1987: 127–130); ***(Saksena, 1990: 167)