KHAIRLANJI; A Strange and Bitter Crop – Anand Teltumbde

Small village in Bhandara district in Maharashtra has been focus of attention when four member of one dalit family was slaughtered on 29th September 29th, 2006 in bhandara district. Victims are Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s wife surekha, 44, his daughter priyanka, 18, sons, roshan, 23, and sudhir, 21.The fact finding team of vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti visited on 6th October to village kherlanji to know the details of this barbaric killing and they were shocked to learn that, Bhaiyyalal`s wife surekha, 44, his daughter priyanka, 18, sons, roshan, 23, and sudhir, 21, were first stripped naked, dragged from their hut to the choupal 500 meters away and hacked to death by the entire village of the so called upper-castes. vJAS has moved with the fact finding committee report to national human rights commission(nhrc) for independent probe of this dalit massacred as all political parties and local administration are covering up the matter as till date no mla or mp from bhandara has visited the village or Bhaiyyalal, more than a week after the gruesome killing took place. Two mlas from Nagpur, ostensibly sent by the congress higher-ups, visited kherlanji, but did not make any noise. The police are not acting fast and the only two prime witnesses are under threat. Not a single villager’s statement has been recorded. Neighboring villages are living with fear and terror, especially the minority lower castes dalit to dared to demand the right of land were slaughtered in order to give other dalit in villages of Mowadi taluka of bhandara district.

Anand Teltumbde gives the full accounts of that massacre which shook the world, in the book  “KHAIRLANJI A Strange and Bitter Crop”. He wrote; when the Khairlanji killing took place in September 2006, India was daydreaming about becoming a superpower. Clocking an average of eight percent GDP (Gross Domestic Product) Growth over the previous three years, it was expected to surge to a double-digit growth. The swelling of foreign exchange, influx of portfolio investments, a sky rocking sensex, booming business, merges and acquisitions by Indian corporate, the growing numbers of Indian Billionaires  - the entire establishment was singing the song of India. It was being said that India would soon overtake China. As this India of a handful people rose, the other India of hundreds of thousands was plumbing new lows…

Arundhathi Roy wrote; Anand Teltumde’s analysis of the public, ritualistic massacre of a dalit family in 21^st century India exposes the gangrenous heart of our society.  It conceptualizes the massacre and describes the manner in which the social, political and state machinery, the police, the mass media and the judiciary all collude to first create the elimate for such bestiality, and then cover it up. This is not a book about the last days of relic feudalism, but a book about what modernity means in India. It discusses one of the most important issues in contemporary India.