On Independence Day, in a village in Bihar, a group of Dalits were brutally attacked by their upper caste neighbours. One Dalit was killed and more than 30 others injured. The provocation: the Dalits built a temple of their icon Sant Ravidas at the entrance of the village. The upper castes wanted to hoist the national flag exactly at the same spot, but the Dalits refused, saying it is their land. It is an incident that came as shock to the rest of Bihar, which thought it had moved past its horrific legacy of caste atrocities. But while this episode may not mark a return to that terrible past, it brings out how Bihar's experiments with progressive politics have created new kinds of caste tensions, that simmer beneath the surface and occasionally, like on 15th August, come to the boil.
