Image:PTI

Already an atmosphere of communal tension and polarisation prevails in most parts of Uttar Pradesh. In the Muzaffarnagar communal violence of August-September 2013 the victims (killed and displaced) belonged, in most part, to the poorer class of Pasmanda (Backward) Muslims engaged in artisanal occupations. The violence had broken out when the first phase of the ‘Pasmanda Kranti Abhiyan’ (founded in 2012) was underway in the western part of Uttar Pradesh. Scheduled to conclude on September 30, 2013, the slogan of the movement was “Dalit-Pichhrha Ek Samaan-Hindu ho ya Musalman’. The brute communal violence and consequent (almost inevitable) religious polarisation actually submerged an emerging interfaith subaltern solidarity.

In the Dadri lynching incident of September 2015, the victim, Md. Akhlaq was from carpenter (Saifi) caste/community among Muslims; he had recently acquired a car; one son of his was in the Indian Air Force, and another was preparing for the Civil Services; this advancement obviously did not go down well with his village compatriots, many of whom had had grown envious of this progress.

During the Riga (in Sitamarhi, Bihar) riots of October 1992, a similar pattern of empowerment of the backwards among the Muslims was visible: the Pasmanda Muslims, hitherto serving as field-labourers for the local landowning Hindus, had gradually become affluent through biri making, flute making, tailoring, etc., and one village headman, Ilyas, had even organised them into ‘syndicates’, or ‘cooperatives’, to sell these products profitably in the adjacent Nepali markets. But the then ruling Lalu regime never did make public the S. R. Adige Enquiry Report, nor did the Muslim leadership (of any hue) make demands for the document being made public. Even during the Azizpur (Muzaffarpur, Bihar) violence of January 2015, the victims were Pasmanda Muslims.

Now coming to Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, September 2016. Though the immediate spark in Bijnor, on September 17, 2016, was eve-teasing, tensions had been already simmering over community rights to use/access the pond water, in the village, Pedda, just four kilometres away from the town of Bijnor. Usually such contracts are given to the community of Kumbhars (potters), Singharias (the community that grows water chestnuts, singharas), and Dhobis (washermen). This year the contract was given to the Muslim Dhobis by the government while the pond was under the occupation of Hindu Jats.

In this overall context, the Bijnor violence looks like a case of spectacular crime carried out by the Jats in order to ward off the Muslim Dhobis from claiming their rights to the pond and trade in water chestnut(s). Haseenuddin, Sarfaraz, and Ehsan (differently abled), were all Pasmanda Muslims of Dhobi community of a particular family, who became the targets. Some local sources also say that the Jat hegemon, Sansar Singh was trying to forcefully occupy a piece of land owned by the Muslim family, as they were refusing to sell it to him.

These two crucial aspects, which could be a genesis of the conflict and eventually the trigger that transformed into acts of violence, have gone almost completely un-reported. This conscious suppression of the caste identity of the victims is becoming irksome for some of the Pasmanda intellectuals and activists, who are also disturbed with their own hegemonised political leadership and intellegenstia, who have turned a blind eye to this dimension of the conflict.

An altercation on the issue of eve-teasing need not escalate into gruesome communal violence, unless some other factors of tension did not already exist. At the moment when elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly are due next year, any minor scuffle acquires the saliency of escalating into large scale group violence. After all, communal polarisation yields electoral dividends.
 
Uttar Pradesh, under the dispensation of Akhilesh Yadav since 2012, has seen tremendous communalisation. Even before the Muzaffarnagar riots of August 2013, in some instances, the ruling regime, by some of its actions, indicated that there were some wilful attempts at communalising the province. The Samajwadi Party, by creating religious polarisation, probably intended to wean Muslim votes away from non-Bharatiya Janata Party political formations like the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal.

If it really did intend so, then the Samajwadi Party must not lose sight of the fact that the biggest beneficiary of the politics of communal polarisation will eventually be the BJP.

In a comprehensive study of communal riots, Yale University researchers assert that 'riots produce ethnic polarisation that benefits ethno-religious parties at the expense of the Congress' and 'the BJS (the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the BJP's parent) saw a 0.8 percentage point increase in their vote share following a riot in the year prior to an election.'

In 1989, the BSP's Mayawati won the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat by a narrow margin, by working out a Muslim-Dalit alliance, leaving out the Jats and other Hindus like the Rajputs, Gujjars, Banias who were leaning towards the BJP. Subsequently, in 1991, the BSP performed well in the Bijnor assembly seat, securing 41% of votes, even though it lost to the BJP. Of the 8 assembly seats in the Bijnor district, four seats are currently with the BSP, 3 with the Samajwadi Party, one with the BJP.

There is a distinct possibility that the ruling Samajwadi Party may fear a repeat of a Muslim-Dalit alliance for the BSP in the 2017 assembly election. The Bijnor violence should be seen against this backdrop.

It has  been reported that two Muslim girls were teased by Hindu Jat boys on September 17, 2016, while on their way to school. The boys are said to belong to the family of a Jat hegemon in the village. When the girl's family went to the Jat hegemon's home to complain about the eve-teasing, they were fired upon from the roof of the fortified house, in a brazen display of power. One member of the girls' family was killed on the spot.

The assault did not end there. The next morning, a mob of around 100 people attacked the girls' home and as many as 17 members of the Muslim family were badly injured in the violence. Three of the injured died later and a fourth, Rizwan, who works in a hair cutting saloon in Delhi and who was injured severely with bullet injuries in his neck, has been admitted to New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he remains critical.

In all, four people, including a woman, were killed in the violence, all Muslims. The fact that all the deceased and the injured belong to one family is proof that the girls' family had only gone to beseech the elders of the deviant boys to rein them in, rather than express any community driven sentiment.

The armed mob present at the home of the Jat hegemon (Sansar Singh) indicates a certain degree of pre-planning behind the assault. The Muslim villagers allege that the village pradhan and a local illegal arms dealer, one Manoj, were complicit in the killings.

The survivors and their families also allege that the sequence of events was not the outcome of what happened on that Friday morning, but that. The provocation and the assault that followed were pre-planned to create an atmosphere of communal tension in the village and the area. Serious allegations of complicity in the deliberate inaction and non-response of some policemen has also been alleged. Survivors say that policemen were even present in the home of the Jat leader when the firing started. The fact that the police did not answer around 12 phone calls made by a villager, Anis Ahmad, to the police control room during the attack, around 8 am. Bears testimony to these allegations. Ahmad had also called Ruchi Veera, the Samajwadi Party MLA, who, it is also alleged, did not answer the call. After the incident, Veera is said to have stepped in to curbed further outbreak of the violence. The MLA was also instrumental in securing compensation for the victims' families: Rs 20 lakhs (Rs 2 million) for each death that took place.

Tragically, even the amount of compensation paid out by the Samajwadi government has becomes a factor in further polarisation within Bijnor and around. The amount of Rs 20 lakh paid to the survivor families has bee, rather crudely, dubbed as ‘appeasement of Muslims’ by the regime by those belonging to supremacist organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political off shoot, the BJP.

Anis Ahmad, 38, is an alumnus of the Deoband seminary. His 'conservatism' or 'orthodoxy' is reflected in his sartorial manners. Anis was earlier a tailor in Kuwait. He is now a 'dress designer.' Having improved his economic standing, he entered politics and his wife is today elected as the village headwoman of Gokalpur, near Pedda.
 

Reports have also come in, corroborated by the Additional Director General (ADG) of Police (Law and Order), Daljeet Chaudhry, that a local RSS functionary, Aishwarya Chaudhry, led the mob with his gunman, and that there is photographic evidence to prove it.  Aishwarya is a young lawyer who is part of the RSS affiliated “Adhivakta Sangh” (Lawyers’ Association). According to the local sources, Aishwarya and is vying for a ticket from the RSS’ political wing, the BJP, in the upcoming Assembly elections. His father Rajendra Kumar is said to have been initially chosen as the candidate from Bijnor for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But the ticket was later given to Kunwar Bhartendra Singh.
 
In the Bijnor violence of 17 September 2016, as many as 27 persons have been named in the FIR. They are from Pedda, Kachpura and Nayagaon, Adipur villages. The Police said that six persons have been arrested while the others are absconding, including two Gram Pradhans of Nayagaon and Pedda. The names of the boys who had resorted to eve-teasing in the morning, have not been named by the media, as yet. In India, quite often, those resorting to violence, arson, and loot in the communal violence often benefit from the anonymity granted by the media and the police. By remaining anonymous ‘accused’, they go un-punished.  

The day after the Bijnor violence, two dailies, Dainik Jagran (Hindi), and Hindustan Times (English) mis-reported the violence, in a manner of suggesting that it was Jat girls who were eve-teased by boys from the minority (read Muslims), even though in the detail of it’s own story, the Dainik Jagran did write, citing police sources, that it was Muslim girls who bore the brunt of eve-teasing by Jat boys. This mis-reporting has had its own repercussions in building perceptions.

This deliberate mis-reporting by sections of the media has, in Uttar Pradesh, had a long and chequered history. It may be recalled that in the Aligarh riots of December 1990-January 1991, a vicious and false rumour was spread by the Hindi dailies, Aaj, Amar Ujala and Swatantra Bharat, after which, “attacks by Hindu mobs on Muslim persons and property, intensified”.  The then government of the Samajwadi Party led by chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav did not even institute an enquiry into the Aligarh riots of 1990-91. 

Overall, the Muslim washer men of the village have diversified their economy by using washing machines for commercial use, by working as tailors, as barbers, as fruit and vegetable sellers, automobile mechanics, and other artisanal practices. There are enough indications from the ground that reveal that it is this economic upward mobility of the Muslim dhobis that has not gone down well with the well-off Hindu Jats of the area. Even  Muslim dhobi girls(belonging to the washer man caste) have taken recourse to modern education, and this, too is a disdain and deadly jealousy for the Jats.

Across UP, a very high percentage — 31% — of political participation of Muslims in rural and urban local bodies may also be the reason for the resentments being fanned by supremacist outfits. In the UP assembly (2012), 69 out of 403 MLAs are Muslims. This has further contributed towards the growing anti-Muslim animosity.

Even though Bijnor has, until the September 2016 incidents, been generally regarded as an island of communal peace, it suffered huge communal violence in October 1990. Till 1990 Bijnor did not suffer from any communal violence, not even during the worst periods of the Independence struggle and Partition. Very few Muslims migrated from Bijnor to Pakistan.

In Bijnor town, around 49% of the population is Muslim. They constitute 57% of the total population in the three largest towns in Bijnor district: Bijnor, Nagina and Najibabad.

Overall, there has been a history of Jat-Muslim tension in Bijnor, in 1983, and in 1990, on the issue of eve-teasing.

More particularly, Mundahla (a Muslim-dominated village), and Suaheri (a Jat-dominated village) have a history of mutual tension. Some indications of anti-Muslim hatred among the Bengali Hindu refugees, who settled in the 1960s in Bijnor, were found during the 1990 riots.

Patricia Jeffrey studied the Bijnor riots of 1990 and observed that one of the probable reasons why Bijnor remained largely peaceful till the late 1980s is:
“Hindus and Muslims do occupy very different economic niches in Bijnor, with wholesalers and traders in the more valuable products (e.g., jewellers, groceries) more likely to be Hindu, and labourers and traders in the cheaper products (e.g., fruit and vegetables) more likely to be Muslims. The only substantial organised industry is the local sugar factory, where the management is predominantly Hindu and the labour is mostly Muslim. But class or other economic interests have not hitherto fused with religious allegiance to intensify local disputes”.

But all this has started changing in recent decades. The artisan class, the Pasmanda Muslims, have gained upward economic mobility by diversification of their artisanal economy, and also by remittance from Gulf money, with which the new generation has started taking to modern education. Further, their inclusion into the OBC category has helped them find public employment. Contrast it with the Jats whose struggles to be included as OBCs remain unfulfilled.

The overall status of Pasmanda Muslims has improved. This is reflected in their enhanced representation in the rural and urban local bodies of Uttar Pradesh. Almost every third seat (over 31%) in urban local bodies is represented by Muslims. In the urban local bodies (2012), 'the highest Muslim representation (53.5%) is in Ruhelkhand where Muslims account for 34% of the population.' Bijnor falls in the Ruhelkhand area of Uttar Pradesh.

Sadly, India is witnessing a resurgence of more and more religious strife. The need of the hour is to strengthen the criminal justice system to punish the rioters and bring about deterrence against the sickening recurrence of such hatred and violence.
When vote-hungry political parties appear to gain power only through violent communal polarisation, a concerted assertion from civil society is badly needed.

(Mohammad Sajjad, who teaches history at Aligarh Muslim University, is the author of Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours and Contesting Colonialism and Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur.)

References:
1) दैनिक जागरण जी, बिजनौर का सच क्या है?
2) बिजनौर : ‘वो अचानक घर में घुसे… और फिर सबकुछ ख़त्म हो गया’
3) बिजनौर सांप्रदायिक हिंसा में चार लोगों की हत्या के लिए अखिलेश सरकार जिम्मेदार- रिहाई मंच

The post Bijnor violence 2016: Upward Mobility of Pasmanda Muslims, a Root Cause appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image for representation purpose only        Courtesy: udayavani.com

Across Bihar, ever since the declaration of the results of the state assembly elections on November 8, there have been at least nine incidents of communal violence between November 9-18, 2015. They were in Nagra Bazar (Saran), Makhdum Sarai (Siwan), Arrah, Phulwari Sharif (Patna), Ameetthiya (Yogapatti, West Champaran), Basatwara (Simri, Darbhanga), Radhanagar (Sajur, Bhagalpur), Hasanpura (Siwan), and at Agarpur (Lalganj, Vaishali). The last three incidents took place on November 18, 2015.

Less than a year ago on January 18, 2015, similar violence broke out in Azizpur (Saraiya, Muzaffarpur) killing few people and setting over 50 houses of Muslims on fire.[1] Agarpur and Azizpur villages are situated close to the historic village of Vaishali. The violence in these two villages are conspicuously similar.

The immediate cause which sparked the Agarpur (in Lalganj thana) violence was when a Muslim driver, Rizwan Khan, who was said to have been excessively drunk, hit three Hindu co-villagers with an out-of-control four-wheeler on November 17, 2015, the day of Chhatth Puja festival. Of these, two people died. The third person to be hit was Lakhpatia Devi of the adjacent village, Jehanabad, who was admitted to the Sadar Hospital, Lalganj. The deceased Rajendra Sah (65) and his 8-month-old granddaughter were admitted to the Patna Medical College Hospital where they died and without lodging a formal case, a funeral was performed in Patna itself, which is barely 40 kilometres away from the village of Agarpur (in Lalganj, Vaishali) connected with very good metallic road called ‘Buddhist Circuit’. Why a case was not lodged with the police, is a question worth asking.

The following day two sets of rumours spread: (a) the police had set the driver free, hence there were allegations of a “police-driver nexus”, and (b) that Lakhpatia Devi had also died. These two rumours were the trigger that fuelled communal violence on November 18. The fact that the owner of the vehicle, Nanhe Khan of Agarpur, is supposed to be a close aide of Munna Shukla, and that Nanhe Khan is also supposed to be what the local people prefer to call him, a dalal (fixer) of the thana (local police station) made the angry Hindus of the neighbourhood easily believe the rumour of police having helped out the driver.

Munna (Vijay) Shukla has been an MLA from Lalganj before being convicted (in 2007) by the court for the murder of the then minister in Lalu-Rabri cabinet, Brij Bihari Prasad, in 1998. Munna Shukla also served jail in the case of killing (mob lynching) of a dalit IAS officer, G. Krishnaiah, on December 5, 1994. Krishnaiah was the district magistrate (DM) of Gopalganj, the native district of the then chief minister Lalu Yadav. Munna Shukla’s elder brother, Chhotan Shukla, was killed in December 1994. It was at/during his funeral that the mob killed the unfortunate DM. Later his brother Bhutkun Shukla was also killed. Earlier, in 1992, the Vaishali MLA, Hemant Shahi, [son of Laliteshwar Prasad Shahi, former MLA Lalganj, Vaishali, and former MP, Muzaffarpur, as well as former union minister of state for human resource development] was killed in the office of the deputy collector–block development officer (BDO) — of Vaishali, allegedly by the party workers of the ruling Janata Dal.

The city of Muzaffarpur in north Bihar has been famous for being a seat of Bhumihar landlords and politicians, and infamous for many Bhumihar gangsters

The city of Muzaffarpur in north Bihar has been famous for being a seat of Bhumihar landlords and politicians, and infamous for many Bhumihar gangsters. In fact, the history of Muzaffarpur will remain incomplete until a history of the crime within the social sphere is written. The killing of Hemant Shahi (1992), and of the Shukla brothers, immediately after Lalu coming to power in 1990, came to be seen as a political conspiracy of the ‘backwards’ to outdo the upper castes. Brij Bihari Prasad, belonged to Adapur (Champaran), came from a backward caste, was an engineer, and is said to have been a close aide of a Bhumihar strongman and Congress leader of Muzaffarpur, Raghunath Pandey), who patronized him in obtaining contracts for government constructions. Raghunath Pandey, a cinema and transport entrepreneur lorded over Muzaffarpur in the 1970s and 1980s, and became a minister in the Satyendra Narayan Sinha’s cabinet in the late 1980s. Later, the two (Pandey and Prasad) had a fall out.

Brij Bihari Prasad became an MLA from Adapur (Champaran) in 1990 and in 1995, while he was running for the 1985 elections. After 1990, he symbolized the assertion of backward castes in the city of Muzaffarpur, otherwise identified as a centre of the economic and political power of the Bhumihars. In the Rabri cabinet, he was the minister of science and technology when he was killed on June 13, 1998, in broad daylight, in a hospital of Patna. This was seen as revenge by Munna Shukla. This is how Munna Shukla rose to prominence and was elected MLA from Lalganj in 2000 (as Independent) and in 2005 (in February from the LJP when the assembly could not be formed; and in October from the JDU). When he (along with another Bhumihar gangster-politician from Mokamah, Suraj Bhan Singh) was convicted in the murder case of Brij Bihari Prasad, Munna Shukla’s wife Annu Shukla became an MLA (JDU) from Lalganj in 2010. In the 2015 elections, she was defeated by LJP’s Raj Kumar Sah, a Bania, identified as a backward caste in Bihar. Lalganj Assembly is a segment of Hajipur Lok Sabha represented by Ramvilas Paswan. Earlier it was a part of the Vaishali Lok Sabha.

Brij Bihari Prasad's widow Rama Devi joined the BJP and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Sheohar in 2009, and 2014. Interestingly, she was earlier elected to the Motihari Lok Sabha as RJD nominee in 1998 defeating the BJP's Radha Mohan Singh by a huge margin. Rama Devi received her education from the SRPS College, Jaintpur (Muzaffarpur).

Today the question is: has this electoral defeat made Munna Shukla desperate? Did he play any role in the Agarpur communal violence?

Nitish Kumar is credited to have “single-handedly” converted, the 'niyojit' sikshaks (contractually appointed teachers) numbering a total of 3,34,000, into regular government employees with a proper pay-scale, something that few state governments have done.

Munna Shukla is learned to have become little desperate about the course of his political career. In the recent, high voltage election and the significant victory of the Mahagathbandhan, upper caste hegemony has received another little more jolt. Shukla, despite being with the Mahagathbandhan has not been very comfortable with Nitish Kumar. Moreover, the Mahagathbandhan by not conceding a single Assembly seat to the Congress in Muzaffarpur and Vaishali sent a rather strong message to the Bhumihars and Rajputs in these parts of Bihar. They feel further marginalised in the present regime. This insecurity is also visible in the conduct of professor Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, a Rajput, and also the vice president of the RJD, who lost the last parliamentary elections from Vaishali (to the LJP’s Ramakishor Singh, a man with a criminal record). Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, as also JDU’s MLC Dinesh Singh of Muzaffarpur, have both failed in transferring the Rajput votes to the RJD (Mahagathbandhan) candidates in the just concluded assembly elections.

The CSDS-Lokniti report reveals that the Rajputs have been more enthusiastic supporters and voters of the BJP in Bihar in 2015, with 69-70% of them having voted for the BJP. Singh’s electorates in Vaishali-Muzaffarpur, have long standing complaints that his favours go much disproportionately to his caste peers, the Rajputs. Both Shukla and Singh, are now reported to be feeling a great sense of insecurity within the Mahagathbandhan. It is more than likely that the ruling dispensation would search for new leaders from among the Bhumihars and Rajputs in this part of Bihar.

So Nanhe Khan, the vehicle owner of Agarpur (Lalganj), both a close aide of Munna Shukla, and also being upwardly mobile in terms of economic affluence and his muscle flexing tendencies, has been an eyesore to the locality. Nanhe Khan also had some conflicts with some Hindus of the neighbouring village, Jehanabad. This conflict got enhanced in the campaign and run up to the recent assembly elections. From local reports, it appears that among the people who attacked the Muslims of Agarpur on November 18, most belonged to the adjacent villages and a handful in the violent mob belonged to Agarpur, which has over 200 Hindu families, comprising mostly of banias and other backward castes. So much so that even the one Vikas Kumar killed by the police bullet, belonged to the neighbouring village of Ataullapur. Did the deceased Vikas Kumar belong to the violent mob or was he merely an onlooker, is also a moot question?

The rumour that spread – that the driver Rizwan was let off by the police – gathered currency with the angry mob because of the pre-existing nexus between some strongmen who happened to be muslim, with the police. Rizwan was not found there in the lock up that Wednesday. (He was perhaps transferred by the police to elsewhere). This caused the angry mob of Hindus to turn their ire on the police. They brutally lynched Ajit Kumar to death. Ajit Kumar was the SHO of the neighbouring Belsar thana, who was called in to control the violent mob. Incidentally Ajit Kumar was going to retire in two years and hailed from Nalanda, the native district of Nitish Kumar. Many in the locality are raising a question: Did Ajit Kumar become a target of angry Hindu mobs because of his identity being somewhat similar to that of Nitish Kumar who was to take oath as chief minister on November 20, 2015?

Another lingering question remains. How did this incident of running over by a vehicle (a vehicle accident) turn into outright communal violence when the surviving and immediate kin of the victims — both Rajendra Sah and his little grand-daughter — did not in any way give it any communal interpretation ? They did not even lodge a police case or insist for a post mortem of the two dead bodies. The second important question is how did, all of a sudden, a large number of people, about a thousand, gather with weapons like petrol bombs? Was this ‘communal violence’ episode pre-planned?

Locals have observed that the pattern of arson, loot and violence was similar to that of Azizpur violence ( January 18, 2015). In both the villages, most of the attackers are said to belong to the Ati Pichhrha caste of Mallah (Hindu fishermen). In these localities, quite a number of the Mallahs are reportedly joining either the extreme left, the ‘Maoists’, or the extreme Hindu right wing, the Bajrang Dal. This phenomenon needs a deeper study.

In recent decades old small mosques have developed into new big ones with tall minars. This does not compare favourably with the Hindu temples which are often not as high as the minars of the mosques.

Another similarity between the Azizpur violence and the Agarpur violence: In both the cases, Muslim hoodlums patronised by local political hegemon, have been at the centre of the controversy. In September-October 2014, in the same locality, at another village, Turkauliya (in Paroo-Saraiya police station locality of Muzaffarpur), communal tensions emerged between Pasmanda Muslims and Hindu Mallahs. The violence could be avoided with visible and sustained efforts like inter-community dialogues and prompt administrative interventions. Here too a Muslim hoodlum, patronised by a local political hegemon, was the cause of such a conflict.

In other words, in present day Bihar, local hoodlums are one of the root causes of conflicts that could and do, turn communal. These local thugs, belonging to the minority as much as the majority community are not only patronized by the political hegemons but also get adequate protection from the local cops and other state functionaries. The upper/senior echelons of the police and other agencies of administration, rely more on their subordinates who are part of this unfortunate nexus rather than information obtained through independent and reliable sources.

There have been as many as 667 instances of communal skirmishes across Bihar after June 18, 2013 (when Nitish broke away with the BJP alliance).  On September 19, 2013 the carcass of a pig was found inside a mosque under construction in Bhanpur Brewa, a hamlet of Muslims and Dalits near Mahua in the district of Vaishali which has the highest density (20.68%) of Dalits in north Bihar, and from where Lalu’s son Tej Pratap Yadav has been elected. On September 30, 2013 scores of Hindus and Muslims pelted stones at each other following an alleged incident of cow slaughter in the Yadav-dominated Chakmajahid, another village in the vicinity, where on July 31, 2014, posters appeared on the wall of a mosque with this expletive-ridden line: “….. Kasai gai katna bandh karo” (Butchers stop killing cows). Incidentally, VHP leader Pravin Togadia was in Mahua, 5 km from Chakmajahid, on May 28, 2015, to address a rally organised by the Gau Pushtikaran Sanghathan. Pravin Togadia had also visited Saraiya after the Azizpur violence of January 2015. Incidentally, besides Ram Vilas Paswan, another NDA ally and the Koeri leader, Upendra Kushwaha (chief of the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party-RLSP), also belongs to the district of Vaishali.

The gradual communalisation of this locality, otherwise historically known for communal harmony, has also been taking place since late 1990s when the chain of RSS schools shishu mandirs have been established and has grown. In and after the 1990s, the duly recruited teachers of the government schools retired. There was not much recruitment of teachers to fill in these vacancies, whereas there has been a significant rise in the demand for school education. The under-staffed government schools gave way to private schools which are misleadingly dubbed as ‘convent’. Simultaneously, RSS schools also started coming up. These shishu mandirs came to be seen as a relatively better source of education compared to the government schools. These schools came to be preferred by the upper castes and also by the relatively affluent or less disadvantaged sections of the backward castes and Dalits. Gradually this gave rise to the Sunday drillings of the RSS shakhas in different nooks and corners of Bihar.

From 2006 onwards, with enhanced facilities being provided by the state government to its schools –including providing bicycles to students, providing mid-day meals and uniforms, etc. — there has been some check on the influence and spread of the RSS school. This may not be going unnoticed by the RSS think tank. This was yet another reason, though unpublicised, why the alliance between JDU and BJP was increasingly becoming uneasy. This also explains why the RSS affiliated BJP workers were increasingly becoming angrier with the then deputy chief minister, Sushil Modi, who, according to the RSS expectations, was not resisting Nitish Kumar adequately. Nitish Kumar is credited to have “single-handedly” converted, the 'niyojit' sikshaks (contractually appointed teachers) numbering a total of 3,34,000, into regular government employees with a proper pay-scale, something that few state governments have done. Since 2003, this segment was desperately waiting to be placed on proper pay-scale. The JDU and the BJP had promised this in their manifesto of 2010. But, Sushil Modi, the then deputy chief minister cum finance minister (2005-13) had reportedly back-tracked on. Nitish took this bold step soon after his split with the BJP in June 2013 and thus won lasting support.

The communalisation of the mind caused by the growth of the RSS shakha and school has seen similar tendencies among the state’s minorities. In the Muslim neighbourhoods, each village has a few people working in the Middle East that is the Gulf countries. Their affluence resulting from this remittance economy does not remain unnoticed. Old and small mosques have transformed into larger more visible ones with tall minars. This does not compare favourably with the Hindu temples, often not as high or visible as the minars of the mosques. In many cases, the rising subscription to the ‘Neo-Wahabi’, the Saudi Arab version of contemporary Islam, is also posing a problem for Hindu-Muslim harmony, as also for intra-Muslim maslaki (sectarian) harmony.

There has been reservation (since 2006, soon after Nitish Kumar took over as chief minister in November 2005), in the Panchayati Raj institutions for the Ati Pichhrha – Extremely or Most Backward-E/MBC (28 of the 41 Muslim communities fall in this category; 9 in Pichhrha-Backward- and rest 4 are upper castes), many Muslims belonging to these categories have moved up the ladder of political empowerment. Gradually this too has become a source of conflict, more particularly when it comes to electing the pramukh (chief of Panchayat Samiti), and chairman (adhyaksh, i.e. chief of the zila parishad (district board). In the elections for these positions, quite often, money and muscle prevail. All these have resulted into identity-based rivalries. Moreover, the funds pouring in for rural development through the Panchayati Raj institutions has given boost to the hoodlums and criminals, who rise up the political ladder through these institutions.

This may explain the context why and how Owaisi decided to jump into the Bihar elections this year in 2015. It all began with the Azizpur riots of Muzaffarpur in north Bihar.
 
Immediately after the Azizpur riots, some necessary, though not adequate, action against the culprits of the violence was initiated. The video-footage of a local journalist Arun Srivastav provided the initial lead into investigations. It helped in identifying and nabbing the culprits of the violence. The government also provided a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the next surviving kin of each deceased; each injured got Rs 20,000; of the 56 houses of the village, there were 77 families; each of 77 got Rs 4700 for kitchen utensils, the government then assessed the total property loss and the compensation for the loss. Yet, some Muslim leaders and the leaders-in-making started playing the victim, and recurrent visits of these Muslim leaders also delivered inflammatory speeches alienating the Hindus who were cooperating with the police in punishing the rioters. Once these inflammatory speeches were delivered there was competitive incitements provided by Pravin Togadia’s visit that soon followed to Saraiya (Muzaffarpur).
 
There were attempts by some Muslim leaders to milk the tragedy. Outraged with these, certain segments of the liberal Muslims had to issue appeals for soul-searching within the community to marginalise and condemn the hoodlums, also called rangdaars or dalals. Subsequently, a Muslim aide to Jitan Manjhi, Syed Sharim Ali (who was appointed by the chief minister Manjhi as the Waqf Administrator), and Shahid Ali Khan, (who was the Minister for Minority Affairs in the Nitish cabinet), joined the Manjhi’s HAM-S. After the news of the Manjhi’s overtures towards the BJP started coming out, it was Syed Sharim Ali who flew to Hyderabad and had a long meeting with Asaduddin Owaisi. Some of the ‘activists’ and ‘intelligentsia’ of the Muslims who had made interventions for justice in the Azizpur riots are also close to Sharim Ali as well as to Akhtarul Iman.
 
Shahid Ali Khan contested from Sursand (in Sitamarhi), as HAM-S nominee, and Syed Sharim Ali contested from Belaganj (in Gaya district) as a nominee of the HAM-S. Akhtarul Iman, having burnt his boats with the RJD and JDU in 2014 chose to become the Bihar face of the AIMIM on whose ticket he contested from the Kochadaman Assembly seat of Kishanganj in 2015. This is how the people of Bihar rightly concluded that there did exist a BJP-Manjhi-Owaisi nexus in the Assembly elections 2015.
 
Local political dynamics mixed with growing competitive communalization of both Hindus and Muslims and the encouragement of and inducements to the local hoodlums/criminals of both the communities are the major factors behind recent resurgence of communal tension and violence across Bihar. Communal political forces may have been defeated at the electoral hustings overtly. But the process of communalization does continue. Sadly, this is contributed to immensely by the faults in the governance of those who vouch to be the greatest champions of secularism and social justice. As the left and socialist forces have given up on peasant radicalism, communal forces are making use of the ever swelling ranks of hoodlums. This remains one of the biggest problems of contemporary Bihar. It needs to be addressed immediately by civil rights activists, academic researchers and of course the state administration. The eventual beneficiary of communal politics can only be the overtly communal political parties.
 
(The author is associated with the Centre of Advanced Study in History Aligarh Muslim University. An expanded version is expected to be published soon]
 

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The landslide victory of the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance of Nitish-Lalu-Congress) in the Bihar polls, with almost 180 out of 243 seats in the assembly, has conspicuously drawn the attention of the entire nation. No other election for a provincial legislature of India may have been watched as closely as this one. In May 2014, after the overwhelming victory of the saffron coalition in the 16^th Lok Sabha elections, and in some subsequent provincial elections (such as Maharashtra and Jammu & Kashmir), the BJP appeared as an invincible force. Even though it lost the Delhi assembly elections, the party’s majoritarian Hindutva offensive went on to create an atmosphere of fear across the country. Communalist virulence was on the rise as the Bihar poll dates came closer. Hoodlums, including saffron lawmakers and ministers, became dangerously intrusive—to the extent of lynching a person rumoured to have a different food habit. Killers of writers and artists were roaming free while autonomous institutions like the Sahitya Akademi were displaying slavish submission before the regime, to the extent of not daring to call a condolence meeting for the victims or condemn the murderers.

Such a scary context made people watch the Bihar polls with bated breath. For most people, even outside Bihar, the very ‘Idea of India’, as Rabindranath Tagore put it, was at stake. Hence, the Bihar verdict on November 8, 2015, brought huge relief to everyone who believes in the historically evolved liberal, plural civilizational ethos of the Indian subcontinent. Still, it doesn’t mean that communalization of Bihar’s society has come to a halt.
 
Nitish, Lalu balance caste equation
In the poll run-up, observers, reporters, and informed insiders said the incumbent chief minister, Nitish Kumar, seeking his third term, retained his popularity even though a section disapproved of his alliance with Lalu[i]. The reported disapproval had to do with the apprehension that Lalu may not let Nitish continue with his development work. This apprehension was felt more among the educated middle classes, mostly comprising the upper castes and trading communities–the core base of the BJP. The RJD-JDU alliance had already demonstrated a strong performance in the assembly by-elections by winning 10 out of 15 seats. Moreover, this was something the Mahagathbandhan could read well in advance; the contents of the speeches delivered by its leaders in their Patna rally of August 30 made it too evident. They, sort of, almost abandoned the upper castes, the traditional hegemons, pegging the proportion of electoral nominees from this social segment down to 15%, which is equal to their population in Bihar. This realization dawned more decisively after the July 25 rally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Muzaffarpur, supposedly a strong base of the upper castes, particularly Bhumihars, who are supposed to have benefitted much from Nitish’s tenure. Yet, they deserted Nitish after he broke his alliance with the BJP in June 2013[ii].

The Mahagathbandhan has reportedly secured around 42% of votes. Except 1957, never did any party/coalition secure such a high percentage of votes in Bihar’s assembly elections. An obvious interpretation of this mandate is that backwards, dalits and minorities, and a huge proportion of women across castes and classes displayed massive consolidation to the extent that despite the chipping in of votes by the Left Front, the Third Front and BSP candidates, the Mahagathbandhan won, in many cases with emphatic margins. The popular endorsement and appreciation of good governance and socially inclusive development under Nitish was loud and clear. Even those who were openly going to vote for other groups had no hesitation in making public their acknowledgement of and gratitude to the Nitish administration. Schoolgirls cycling on good roads were the strongest testimonies of governance and educational uplift. More significantly, the 50% reservations for them in the local bodies testified to the political empowerment of women. This was further burnished by the manifesto promising 35% reservation for women in public employment. The enhanced supply of electricity added to Nitish’s charisma. Not inappropriately, he carries the nickname Sushasan Babu (Mr Good Governance).

Importantly, despite his alliance with the BJP, he was able to let communal harmony prevail. In his first stint (2005-10), he brought to book and expedited the judicial trial of the perpetrators of the Bhagalpur riots of October 1989. Then, the ruling Congress under the chief ministership of Satyendra Narayan Sinha (1917-2005) was found either helpless or unwilling to prevent and control the riots, engineered by the factional rivalries of veteran Congressmen Bhagwat Jha Azad (a former chief minister) and Shiv Chandra Jha (a former speaker of the Bihar assembly). The riots were intensified by the visit of the then Prime Minsiter Rajiv Gandhi, who stayed the transfer of the erring police officer. In March 1990, when Lalu Yadav became chief minister, he earned great fame because of his firm handling of communal riots. Nevertheless, he never went for penalizing the rioters[iii]. After Nitish became chief minister in 2005, he re-opened the cases despite being in alliance with the BJP[iv]. Precisely because of this, in 2015 the people trusted Nitish that despite his alliance with Lalu he would succeed in letting development work occur in Bihar.

Nitish’s image of a performing chief minister was all set to attract substantial upper caste votes as well. Seeing this, the RSS found it electorally prudent to consolidate this social base towards the BJP’s side; hence the statement from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat about a re-look at the reservation policy. Contrary to the assertions of many analysts and politicos, Bhagwat’s statement saved the BJP from a bigger drubbing. But his statement was also fodder for Lalu, who scoops up votes best with such issues. Lalu distributed photocopies of the relevant pages of MS Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts (1966) on a large scale. This text is a foundational exposition of the chauvinistic ideology of the RSS.
 
Mahagathbandhan relies on scientific seat distribution
The Mahagathbandhan allayed the misgivings of incompatibility by displaying an almost frictionless seat distribution. A young, professionally equipped techno-manager, Prashant Kishor, who fell out with Narendra Modi soon after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, was won over by Nitish. He was joined by another sharp, articulate strategist, and a professionally trained academic of Delhi University’s department of social work, Prof Manoj Jha, the national spokesperson of the RJD, among others. Applying their professional expertise, they meticulously collected information about the socio-economic profiles and recent electoral histories and profiles of each constituency and of the prospective candidates. They then worked out winnabilities. Based on this, symbols were allotted to the candidates. This defied the conventional practice of seats being allotted to allies and leaving it upon them to choose nominees. It was the reason why there was complete transfer of votes among the Mahagathbandhan allies. This is why, compared to the BJP, the Mahagathbandhan had the least number of rebels. Mahagathbandhan candidates from the Paswan (Dusadh), Kushwaha (Koeris) and upper caste communities, in most cases, attained easy victories with comfortable margins. The Paswans and Kushwahas were also dissatisfied with the BJP because it conceded very few seats to the LJP of Ramvilas Paswan and to the RLSP of Upendra Kushwaha, despite both being ministers in the Narendra Modi cabinet. This was felt as humiliation by their respective social bases. The BJP alliance trailed in the home booths of both leaders.

Nitish said, “Laluji ko Hanuman ji ka gada chalanay do (let Laluji make use of the mace, a weapon associated with the mythical monkey-god Hanuman).

Modi makes mockery of the PM’s office
Another good strategy of the Mahagathbandhan was that immediately after Narendra Modi’s rally, there followed a press conference of Nitish, who made point-by-point rebuttals of the PM’s allegations. Within two or three days of a Modi rally, Nitish-Lalu would hold a ‘sabha’ at the venue, and Lalu would ridicule the PM, to great acclaim. The more Modi attacked the two, the more the subaltern communities consolidated around their leaders, with visible vengeance. Unlike the PM’s rallies, the CM’s sabhas were more organic, with greater participation of women. The meticulous preparedness of the Nitish-Lalu duo can be gauged by the fact that as early as June 2015, when JDU workers were addressed by Nitish and Prashant Kishor in Patna’s Shri Krishna Memorial Hall, Nitish’s instructions made it pretty clear that JDU workers were to make pointed rebuttals with factsheets of accomplishments; the rest was to left for the RJD and Lalu. Nitish said, “Laluji ko Hanuman ji ka gada chalanay do (let Laluji make use of the mace, a weapon associated with the mythical monkey-god Hanuman).”

The PM’s divisive speeches in the later phases of the election, such as the ones at Buxar and Darbhanga (where he invoked terrorism), and Amit Shah’s speech at Raxaul, etc, backfired. Also, their prevarications on floating too many names from too many castes ended up pleasing none[v]. While such speeches lowered the prestige of the office of the PM, Nitish’s rebuttals raised him to the status of a decent statesman, something reportedly admitted even by the RSS. Nitish also took up the matter of regional pride, the historic lack of which is supposed to have been a bottleneck in the economic development of Bihar, as suggested by Shaibal Gupta, an economist and advisor to Nitish. Hence the slogan ‘Bihari’ (son of the soil) versus ‘Bahari’ (outsider). The same issue was taken up by Lalu in a different way. In his characteristic wit and rustic wisdom, Lalu described the persona of the two Gujaratis (Narendra Modi and Amit Shah) as being unwanted in Bihar. He made the audience recall that Amit Shah stood accused of such crimes that he had to be “banished from Gujarat”; “Woh tarhipaar hai.” Lalu’s mimicry of the PM’s speeches inflicted serious damage on Modi’s persona, stripping him of the charisma he enjoyed in 2014. Also, the PM’s offer of a special package in a manner as if the territory of Bihar and the collective identity of its people were up for auction was taken as an affront.

 
Inflation costs BJP dear
The PM’s failure in controlling inflation and his non-fulfilment of promises were the BJP’s greatest disadvantage. Rising prices of pulses, vegetables, and edible oils, failure to deliver against black money, huge cuts in the Indira Awas Yojana (shelters for poor), and the non-implementation of the Jan Dhan Yojana were greatly resented by the people. Voters complained that they had opened bank accounts for the Jan Dhan Yojana by selling their goats and bicycles (which their daughters had got from the government). They thought the PM had cheated them. Lalu was quick to capitalize. His hoardings articulated these complaints by displaying a slogan—Gharibon badla le lena jis ne dukh pahunchaya hai (O poor folks, take revenge on those who have made your lives miserable). The JDU’s hoardings said: Jhansay mein na aayengay, Nitish ko jitaayengay (We won’t be misled any more, we will make Nitish win).

Nitish was able to convince the peasantry that if the BJP won in Bihar, its MLAs will enable it to get its numbers right in the Rajya Sabha and pass the Land Acquisition Bill–a prospect as alarming as reservations being done away with. The Forbesganj killings (where a BJP-corporate nexus had become evident: the investor concerned was said to have close links with the then deputy chief minister and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi) had convinced the peasantry all the more that their lands would be taken away, with state violence, if the BJP came to power[vi].

The good performance of the Left was also because of this. Its campaigns further persuaded the people to vote against the BJP by educating them about how corporations were waiting to snatch away their lands. It created class awareness by discussing the Amir Das and the D Bandopadhyay committee reports on land reforms. The CPI-ML managed to win three seats–its candidate Mehboob Alam won with a huge margin from an assembly seat in Katihar district in Seemanchal (eastern Bihar). Given the intensely bipolar fight in the state and a resource crunch, the three-seat win is not a mean achievement for the party. What is intriguing is why the Left didn’t align with the Mahagathbandhan given the tremendous threat to secularism, for the sake of which the Left, not long ago, was in alliance with Lalu.

The Left Front was the fourth front in the polls. The third front was comprised of the Samajwadi Party, the Jan Adhikar Party of Pappu Yadav and the NCP of Tariq Anwar-Sharad Pawar. During the course of the campaign, the electorate could make out that the third front was tacitly helping the BJP: Mulayam Singh Yadav’s utterances about the better prospects of the BJP in some of his speeches confirmed such a tacit understanding.

 
BJP fans communal flames to corner seats
No election campaign in Bihar has ever been as rabidly communalized as this one.  For someone occupying the PM’s chair, Modi stooped so low as to speak (at Buxar) that reservations could be given away to the “other community”. He also sought votes invoking his own cast, marking a new low for India’s democracy. There were 667 instances of communal skirmishes across Bihar after June 2013 (when Nitish broke away from the BJP alliance). “From throwing animal carcasses at places of worship to digging up buried issues, police records in Bihar have listed a variety of ways in which communal tension appears to have been deliberately kept on the boil ever since the BJP-JDU ruling coalition split on June 18, 2013.[vii]” In Muzaffarpur and the adjoining district of Tirhut, such occurrences, since September 2013, were particularly shocking and surprising. On September 19, 2013, the carcass of a pig was found inside an under-construction mosque in Bhanpur Brewa, a hamlet of Muslims and Dalits near Mahua in the district of Vaishali, which has the highest density (20.68%) of Dalits in north Bihar[viii]. On September 30, 2013, scores of Hindus and Muslims pelted stones at each other following an alleged incident of cow slaughter in the Yadav-dominated Chakmajahid, another village in the vicinity, where, on July 31, 2014, posters appeared on the wall of a mosque with this expletive-ridden line: “Kasai gai katna bandh karo (Butchers stop killing cows).” Incidentally, VHP leader Pravin Togadia was in Mahua, 5km from Chakmajahid, on May 28, 2015, to address a rally organized by the Gau Pushtikaran Sanghathan[ix]. A Sufi shrine, of Maulvi Shah Imaduddin at Chakmajahid, is venerated by both Hindus and Muslims. This may be an index of interfaith harmony in the locality, which was sought to be vitiated by communal forces. Earlier, there was tension on the issue of cow slaughter in Aba Bakarpur near Mahua.

Not far away from these villages, on January 18, 2015, in village Azizpur (near Saraiya in Muzaffarpur), in the assembly seat of Paroo (a segment of the Vaishali Lok Sabha seat) represented by the BJP MLA Ashok Singh, a ferocious riot broke out[x]. Locals, according to civil society group Samaaj Bachaao Aandolan (of Kashif Yunus, an advocate in the Patna high court and the great grandson of Md Yunus, 1884-1952, the first chief minister of Bihar), “Directly accused Singh for plotting this riot. The plot was planned on January 17 at the house of a local mukhiya belonging to the Mallah community. The house of the Paroo MLA is in the same panchayat to whom this mukhiya belongs. The mukhiya is an active Bajrang Dal leader. The MLA was the planner and this mukhiya was the executor.” A delegation of the civil society group visited Azizpur on January 21, 2015, and its efforts led to the registration of 22 FIRs.

It is in the fitness of things to recall this Mallah-Muslim riot in detail as in it lies the genesis of how AIMIM leader and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi finally landed in Bihar, though confining himself to eastern Bihar. This may also explain why the BJP fared less badly in Tirhut (including Champaran) and how the competition for winning over Mallah (Hindu fishermen) voters became sharper. This was long before the emergence of Mukesh Sahni–who made news as ‘son of Mallah’, though hardly any Mallahs knew him before the elections. Eventually, the Paroo assembly seat returned Ashok Singh for a third consecutive time. The RJD had given its ticket to Shankar Yadav. Locals say a good number of Dalits, and a substantial number of Mallahs didn’t vote for the RJD[xi]. Shankar’s defeat was a foregone conclusion, given his negative image. He was in the reckoning only because of the popular sentiment against the BJP. Also, Muslims constitute a significant proportion of Paroo’s electorate.

Twenty-one seats of Champaran and 11 seats of Muzaffarpur saw better performance by the BJP. While Champaran, Sheohar and Sitamarhi districts have a history of communal conflict and a relatively better presence of Hindu Mahasabha-RSS-like organizations, Muzaffarpur has been known for communal harmony. In all these parts, a good proportion of EBCs and Dalits are reported to have voted for the BJP.

However, as the JDU government prevented pre-election communal violence rather successfully, eventual communal polarization could be prevented.

This is in contrast with Akhilesh Yadav’s administration in UP, where numerous communal riots have occurred since the SP came to power in 2012. The worst was the Muzaffarnagar riots of September 2013. It became apparent that the Akhilesh administration was slow in checking communalization[xii]. Many surmised that he was looking for communal polarization in western UP so that the Jat base of the Lok Dal and the Dalit base of the BSP would switch over to the BJP and Muslims would have no option but to desert these parties and the Congress to eventually rally behind the SP. The strategy boomeranged.

Political analysts have also opined that the wilful communal politics of Akhilesh spiralled out of his hands in Muzaffarnagar[xiii]. Little did Akhilesh-Azam Khan realize that the sole electoral beneficiary of rabid communal politics would be none other than the BJP[xiv]. Consequently, more than 90% of Lok Sabha seats in UP went to the BJP in 2014. Things didn’t stop there. Western UP got much more deeply communalized even at the social level.

The Dadri lynching (September 28-29, 2015) was a logical culmination of this process. As the Bihar polls neared, majoritarian communal forces, failing to engineer riots in Bihar, tried to do so in UP to create communal polarization in the neighbouring state by contact. Not wrongly did Nitish attack the BJP, saying that the beef issue was being imported to Bihar. The BJP’s alleged strategy failed. The history of Bihar elections doesn’t have many instances of conflicts around the cow[xv].
 
 
Courtesy: Alessio Mamo/Redux/eyevine

Nationwide majoritarian violence leads to subaltern consolidation
The instances of lynching, mob violence, and Dalit persecution in certain parts of India by late September and early October, and BJP leaders, including Union ministers, defending the aggressors, contributed towards a subaltern consolidation in favour of the Mahagathbandhan. Not only did the Hindu majority resist communal polarization, but the Muslim minority also reciprocated by frustrating the efforts of Asaduddin Owaisi–whose AIMIM could not win even from Kochadaman (Kishanganj), where 74% of the electorate is Muslim.

Eventually, 24 Muslim candidates got elected, some with emphatic margins, including CPI-ML candidate Mehboob Alam. Nonetheless, for a pluralist democracy it is extremely worrisome that its religious minority would vote en bloc as a fear-stricken, scared community. The fear factor among Muslims was unprecedentedly high[xvi]. “Never has the Muslim community witnessed an election so bitter, a campaign so acrimonious, scattering seeds of distrust to pit faith against faith, caste against caste,” reported Muzamil Jaleel of The Indian Express, from Muzaffarpur, where his Muslim respondent belonged to the Sufi shrine of Kambal Shah (existing since 1880s), venerated by both Hindus and Muslims[xvii].

This fear factor in determining electoral behaviour is something to be taken note of. Such a situation is fraught with implications and in the celebration of the trouncing of two communal parties, the BJP and the AIMIM, one should not remain oblivious of the prevalence of communalisation of both majority and minority communities. It has been found that as the subaltern classes and castes move up the economic ladder, they tend to become more prone to communalisation. The middle classes (even among the OBCs and Dalits) tend to vote more for the BJP as this segment is more visible and aggressive in urban spaces; the CSDS-Lokniti and other surveys (pre- and post-poll) indicate such proclivities.

Among the Muslims, too, such trends are found. This aspect needs academic investigation. My own trips into many villages in north Bihar during the last two years or so have revealed that quite a lot of Muslim youth are in a denial mode. They deny the menacingly growing phenomenon of harbouring ‘Wahabi’ radicalism by a section of their co-religionists. The vulgar display of wealth by neo-rich Muslims earning in West Asian countries have not only brought about economic competition and rivalry, but also conspicuous assertion of identities by constructing mosques with tall minars, which have always been seen as eyesores in Hindu neighbourhoods[xviii].
 
This too may explain why Owaisi decided to land in Bihar. The Azizpur riots were revealing. In the political melee over it, a Muslim aide to Jitan Manjhi, Syed Sharim Ali (appointed by Manjhi as Waqf administrator) and Shahid Ali Khan (minister for minority affairs in the Nitish cabinet) joined Manjhi’s HAM-S. After news of Manjhi’s overtures to the BJP came, Sharim Ali flew to Hyderabad and had a long meeting with Owaisi. This is how the people sensed a possible BJP-Manjhi-Owaisi ‘nexus’.
 
As this ‘nexus’ got exposed and pressure mounted on the AIMIM, it eventually decided to dilute its ambition and contest only six seats with the highest Muslim concentrations in Seemanchal. Still, the AIMIM could secure only around 80,000 votes. In Bihar Muslims account for 17% of the population; in four districts, the Muslim population is above 35%: Kishanganj (68%), Araria (41%), Purnia (37%) and Katihar (43%).
     
The Mallah factor and the agrarian economy of chaur lands
In the previous elections, the Paroo Mallahs were said to have been opposed to Ashok Singh, who used to brand the Mallahs as Maoists. This time he was desperate to get Mallah votes. In October 2014, there was Mallah-Muslim tension in village Turkauliya. This was prevented from spiralling into violence through dialogue and administrative intervention. In January 2015, in Azizpur, a village of Pasmanda Muslims, violence, again essentially between Mallahs and Muslims, could not be prevented (the author’s report in the EPW edition of January 31, 2015, details all aspects). The Mallahs (Hindu fishermen, including allied or similar sub-castes like Gangotas and Kevats—boatmen) are now emerging as “dominant castes” in these parts of Bihar, more specifically in and around Muzaffarpur. The chaur (low-lying waterlogged lands across north and east Bihar) have almost been abandoned by peasants, with the male members of families migrating for livelihood. Soil of these lands is used by brick makers. Thus baolis (ponds and pondlets) emerge within the landmass of chaurs. Malalhs use these baolis for fishery without the landowners. The lands also attract aquatic and semiaquatic birds. Mallahs sell these birds and fish in the local village haats and markets. Such an economy has implications. The rate of migration for livelihood among Mallah males is lowest. The preponderant physical presence of Mallah males in the villages is increasingly making them emerge as local toughies. Their defiance of the absentee landowners (not landlords, as most are marginal and middle peasants) by exploiting the chaur lands have made them a cohesive group, which has started yielding an electoral advantage to them.

Peasants owning land in the chaurs look up to the state for investments for draining out the water so that the extremely fertile soil of the chaurs can be used for planting Rabi crops and pulses. In some chaurs, with the collective efforts of village communities, some success in making arrangements for draining out water has been achieved. This has brought a perceptible improvement in the economic status of the peasants. So far, the state has been callous. In the late 1980s, the then MLA of Paroo, Mrs Usha Singh (of Jaintpur Estate, who was later elected MP from Vaishali in 1989 and became a deputy minister in the VP Singh cabinet, 1989-90) had raised the issue in the Bihar assembly, to no avail. In 1989-90, Nitish Kumar was Union minister of state for agriculture. He talked about the matter, but nothing substantial emerged. The current minister, Radha Mohan Singh, who represents Motihari (East Champaran), must be familiar with the chaur economy, but is yet to speak out.

The challenge
Neither of the two coalitions in their high decibel election campaigns, talked about how to control the recurrent flood, about how to make useful investments in reclaiming the chaur (low lying, waterlogged) lands of north Bihar ( given the fact that the poor among the upper castes have got their economic stakes in the chaur lands) and how to give creative impetus to agro industries.

A pressing challenge before the new government that has received such an overwhelming mandate from the people of Bihar, would be to retrieve the lost glory of at least some of the institutions of learning and research, besides, specifically, revamping of the primary education system. During the 1990s, a generation of the teachers of the government schools retired and a large number of vacancies could not be filled in for long. This broke the back of education. Some of these spaces came to be filled in by the RSS chain of schools. It also spread RSS shakhas. Subsequently, when the BJP alliance came to power in 2005, these shakhas further spread. In Bihar, during the Congress era, oppositional political spaces were occupied by the Left and Socialist political formations of peasant radicalism. During the era of social justice, these spaces came to be captured by the right wing reactionary forces.

Overall, Bihar continues to suffer as India’s ‘internal colony’.^[xix]  Nitish Kumar’s gigantic challenge lies in going ahead on an inclusive journey that will create a middle class but one that is both rooted and stays on in the province. As important, for the sustainability of social democratic project, would be active programmes to resist the communalisation of that middle class as it evolves. The challenge is not just with the government just voted in but its allies in the political and social spectrum that see this victory, today, for what it actually is. A push back to the forces of aggressive majoritarianism and a reaffirmation of the idea of the republic. Will Bihar, “the Heart of India”, really show us the way? ^[xx]

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