Caste Politics in Bihar: In Historical Continuum

Introduction

Movements for social change in Bihar have endured for longer than popularly perceived, and their ‘changing contours’ require a historical narrative as well as an ethnographic analysis. ²

On the other hand, when one turns towards the existing relevant literature in Hindi, one finds works, singular in their scope, intense in their content and sweeping in their treatment of time. Vikas Kumar Jha wrote an exhaustive volume on the post-independence politics of Bihar titled Satta ke Sutradhar (‘The Narrators/Protagonists of Power’, Delhi: D.K. Publishers, 1996). His other book Bihar: Rajniti ka Apraadhikaran (‘Criminalisation of Politics in Bihar’, Delhi: D.K. Publishers, 1991) was a smaller volume. Then, there are the three definitive works of Prasanna Kumar Chaudhary and Shrikant: Bihar mein Samajik Parivartan ke Kuch Aayaam (‘Some Aspects of Social Change in Bihar’, New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 2001), Swarg par Dhawa: Bihar mein Dalit Aandolan 1912–2000 (‘The Dalit Revolution in Bihar 1912–2000’, New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 2005) and Bahi Dhaar Triveni Sangh Ki: Bihar mein Samajik Nyaya ka Pehla Sangharsh (‘Triveni Sangh: The First Institutional Struggle for Social Justice in Bihar’, Patna: Loktantra Prakashan, 1998), respectively.

Following in their wake and drawing upon state archives and provincial newspapers, particularly The Indian Nation and The Searchlight, this article attempts to frame a rather known story in a longer context. At the heart of the caste ‘politics’ from 1990 lay the caste ‘structure’ of old—‘local relations of dominance and subordination’—that led to a ‘“territorial democracy” of caste empowerment’. ¹²

1920s and 1930s: The Janeyu Movement and the Triveni Sangh

In Francine Frankel’s vivid words, in Bihar, ‘Brahmins, Bhumihars and Rajputs held sway over society for at least one thousand years’ until challenged by the ‘Upper Shudras, the Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris’. ¹⁸

The corresponding economic matrix was headed by the landlord and followed by their tenants, and therein emerged a fourfold churning of/by: (a) social categorisation, (b) agrarian distress, (c) socio-religious reform and (d) national freedom movement. An undertow of caste mobilisation and organisation propped up each of these. Colonialism gave it a new character by consecrating the old and contributing to the new identities, but this too was an intervention, and not an invention, by the Raj and thus has long outlasted it. ²⁰

Against this backdrop, the process of Backward or lower caste empowerment began with the Janeyu Andolan, which saw the Yadavs and other lower castes sanskritising themselves by wearing the Brahmanical thread, through the early years of the 1920s. This led to countermeasures by the Brahmans, and there were violent as well non-violent encounters between peasants of the Yadav, Kurmi and Koeri castes and their upper caste adversaries. ²¹

During the period of the aforementioned five years (1921–25), both north and south Bihar, excluding Chota Nagpur area, were influenced by this movement. Confrontations took place in 20 villages of the districts of Patna and Munger of central-south Bihar and Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur in north Bihar. Simultaneously, a Momin Movement ‘challenged the dominance of Syeds, Sheikhs and Pathans’. ²⁵

During this period, Bihar was economically barely developed barring the southern, industrial region of Jamshedpur, and agriculture was traditional. Society was in the pre-capitalist stage and class interests did not achieve full economic articulation. Economic elements were inextricably linked to socio-political and cultural–religious factors. Action against socio-economic oppression in Bihar was thus imbricated with the promotion of caste interests. Historian Ramkrishna Mukherjee, among others, has shown this contradiction between the upper caste/class and lower caste/class. ³⁰

Against this backdrop of ‘planter—zamindar—government alliance’, confronted by M.K. Gandhi in Champaran in 1917, Swami Vidyanand in Darbhanga in 1919 and Sahajanand Saraswati in the 1930s, it is instructive to remember the first consolidated political attempt at social equality made by the Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris, the three landed castes among Backward Castes, 70 years ago. This was the Triveni Sangh, the organisational result of the Janeyu Andolan. ³³

It should have provoked introspection in the INC as to why those castes that formed the largest proportion of the state’s population and their representatives were absent from its leadership. But, as the tallest Congressman in Bihar, Rajendra Prasad wrote, ‘orthodoxy reigned supreme among the Hindus’. ³⁵

That, though, did not deter the launch of the ‘bakasht struggles’ of the Kisan Sabha, with its estimated 250,000 members, and spurred the formation of Bihar Provincial Khet Mazdoor Sabha by Jagjivan Ram in 1937. ³⁹

Socialists, Maoists and the Politics of Caste

The emergence of socialists as the major opposition power in Bihar occurred against this aforementioned ‘cultural crisis’, existing within and emanating from the INC. ⁴⁶

To build a powerful opposition to the INC, Lohia decided to turn to the Backward Caste agricultural groups as his political base. The rising groups within the Backward Castes were also looking for a party that could represent their political ambitions. It was here that Lohia’s slogan, pichhda pave sau mein saath [‘60 per cent benefits to the backwards/downtrodden’], was popularised by Karpoori Thakur, the emerging socialist leader from the lower Shudra nai or barber caste: ‘Socialists ne bandhi gaanth’ [socialists have given their pledge]. Lohia also launched the comprehensive idea of ‘sapt-kranti’ (sevenfold revolution) bringing together the issues of social exploitation with racial, national, sexual questions and linking them with the imagery triad of ‘vote-spade-jail’, thereby attempting to consolidate the anti-Congress forces. Another initiative was the anti-English emphasis of the socialist’s language policy, which emotionally resonated with the youth and the students of the north Indian backward-agricultural castes. ⁵⁰

The 1967 elections were held against this background ending the Congress two-decade long electoral domination and a ‘non-Congress government was formed with tremendous goodwill … drawn from [different] political parties’. ⁵²

However, in the elections held after the Bangladesh war in 1972 and after the fall of the Janata experiment in 1980, the Congress party had recovered. Similarly, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in October 1984, the sympathy vote saw the figures regaining the heights of the 1950s in the December 1984 elections. But, by/through the 1990s, Janata Dal/Rashtriya Janata Dal replaced the Congress Party in the vanguard of the political movement of the backward groups. Thus, the importance of 1967 elections in Bihar’s socio-political history can be gauged from the fact that it was a particular election, which ‘brought in a coalition [politics] setting urban disillusionment/apathy and rural splinter-ism/assertion’. ⁵⁴

The 1974 JP Movement was to be the watershed, ⁵⁸

His revolution would remain ‘incomplete’, by getting reframed as ‘Yadav Raj’. ⁶³

The Fall, Rise and Eclipse of Congress, 1967–89

The period from 1967 saw the social movement of the Backward Class/Castes reaching the corridors of power for the first time. In the next 4 years, Bihar had five CMs from the Backward Castes, two Scheduled Caste CMs, as well as the only Backward Caste minister from the INC. Between 1967 and 1972, Bihar had nine governments, including ones that lasted as briefly as for 3 days and 9 days. However, the accessions of these ‘Backward Caste/Scheduled Caste ministers’ had been the result of political compromise and did not alter the social vantage. The single most significant piece of social legislation for the Backward Castes, in this period, was the decision of Karpoori Thakur, as education minister in the Samvid Sarkar (1967–69), to abolish English education from school and college curriculum as well as to abolish its requirement in institutes of higher education. This led to a dramatic change in the social composition of institutes of higher education, with an influx of students from rural areas and Backward Castes, and a rise of the ‘forward among the backwards’ (Yadavas, Kurmis, Koeris). In contrast, Congress’ cohort of landed, educated and contracted elite headed by men like Harihar Singh, L.N. Mishra, Daroga Prasad Rai, Kedar Pandey and Abdul Ghafoor did not alter in that ‘the majority both before and after the 1969 split, remained with the forwards and the upper backwards’. ⁶⁴

Twenty years before Lalu Prasad Yadav polarised Bihar’s electoral scene, JP had already articulated the cardinal aphorism of Bihar politics. In 1974, he had said, ‘Caste is the biggest political party in Bihar’. ⁶⁵

Among other burning issues, the inflation rate reached 30 per cent by August 1974, and there was outrage against the political murders which had become prevalent in Bihar from the early 1970s, namely, those of freedom fighter Suraj Narain Singh on 21 April 1973 and the then Union Railway Minister Lalit Narayan Mishra on 2 February 1975. ⁶⁸

Nevertheless, the seeds of the politics of the 1990s were sown in this social movement of the 1970s. As the poet Nagarjuna wrote, ‘The decline of Bihar is not a story of yesterday. Actually, [since] history remains invisible to the common people therefore they start losing hope’. ⁷²

It was not long before disillusionment with the new non-Congress regime set in. Three months into the new government and a sense of helplessness can be detected as The Searchlight declared that ‘as long as narrowness prevails, governments may change, but things will not improve’. ⁷⁵

The Congress in the 1980s was still installing upper caste CMs; three were Brahmins and one Kayastha and one Thakur. The backward groups, meanwhile, continued towards their goal of political representation and power. At the outset of this period in the 1967 elections, there had been 82 Backward Caste MLAs compared to their 133 caste counterparts. By 1989, there were 90 Backward Caste MLAs and their caste adversaries had come down to 118. During this time, national issues like the Bangladesh War, Emergency and the following election, the squabbling and short-lived Janata government and the sympathy factor after Mrs Gandhi's assassination had overshadowed the question of empowerment of Backward groups. Therefore, in this period in the legislative assembly, the representation of the Backwards remained steady without being spectacular. But, by the 1990 election, Backward empowerment had become the only question. This is best illustrated by the ‘political odyssey of Karpoori Thakur after the 1980 elections until his death in 1988’, which saw:

… the emergence of two contradictory potentialities in the consolidation of larger political identities within the framework of the division between the Backward Classes and Forward Castes. Over all, the larger caste categories, i.e., forward and backward, were strengthened as the basic units of political identity. At the same time, within the Backward Classes, divisions emerged along class lines which simultaneously created an attrition in ‘Backward’ strength, and opened up the potentiality of a broader coalition of the poor. ⁷⁸

Moreover, between 1972 and 1990, there was a rise of armed rebel groups, which played a major part in breaking the dominance of the upper castes. Two prominent rebel leaders of this period were Mohan Bind in the Kaimur region and Kailash Mandal in Diayara area. Hindustan Weekly noted in its 22 December 1991 issue that, ‘The criminalisation of politics and the politicisation of criminals have turned Bihar into the largest arena of political violence’. ⁷⁹

The ‘turmoil in Bihar’ was seen as ‘a product of two related but independent struggles: a political struggle for control of the state pitting the forward castes against the backward castes, and a socio-economic struggle of the landless lower castes against the land-owning forward and backward castes’. There ‘always factionalised’ political elite of Bihar—whether Brahmans, Kayasths, Bhumihars, Rajputs or Yadavs, Koeris and Kurmis—always sought ‘a correlation among high status, landownership and political power’. This superbly summed ‘circulation of elites’ thrived on ‘co-option’, starting with the ‘middle peasantry’. By the late-1980s, government ineffectiveness, party disarray and power conflict, which had been increasing since 1967, was completed by a coming together of ‘ballot and bullet’. This 'democracy by gun' extended from anti-Indira rebellion, through Emergency, to Jagannath Mishra's 'dark period' and saw the Rajputs, Bhumihars and Kayasths move away from the Congress. Under the latter, violent incidents had increased from 260 in 1977 to 617 in 1984. Nearly 100 people were killed in the 1985 election, including three candidates, compared with 34 in 1977.

In the 1980s, ‘professionalism of the police [was] snuffed out by political interference [and] personalism’. And among personalities and private armies, ‘both politically and social, Karpoori Thakur symbolised a new phase in Bihar’s politics: the simultaneous consolidation of an alternative to Congress and the political rise of the backward castes’—one of Harry Blair’s ‘rising kulaks’. ⁸²

The Advent of Lalu Prasad Yadav

Karpoori Thakur died an untimely death in 1988. By then, ambitious and younger Yadav legislators had already harassed and undermined him to the point of exhaustion, particularly the trinity of Anoop Lal, Srinarayan and Lalu Prasad Yadav. They collaborated with the Speaker of the State Assembly, Shiv Chandra Jha, ⁸⁵

The ‘Subaltern Saheb’ began his political life as the Patna University Student Union’s President. ⁸⁶

In 1990, there were 117 Backward Caste MLAs as against 105 upper caste MLAs, and by 1995, there were 161 Backward Caste MLAs as against 56 upper caste MLAs. The composition among the four ‘forward among backward’ castes in these two elections was as follows: 1990: Yadavs (63), Kurmis (18), Banias (16) and Koeris (12); 1995: Yadavs (86), Kurmis (27), Banias (18) and Koeris (13). In the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, there were 24 Backward Caste MPs in all—Yadavs (13), Kurmis (6), Banias (1) and Koeris (4). These three elections thus saw a conclusive displacement of the upper castes from the corridors of political power at the hands of the ‘forward among backward’ castes. Analysing the reasons for the defeat of the Congress, The Indian Nation on 2 March and 6 March 1990 identified, ‘lost goodwill, tarnished image, useless tactics, need for strategy and rebels’. ⁸⁷

The next 7 days had elements of high drama as a row over the Bihar Janata Dal (JD) leadership came out in the open. A keen tussle developed between Ram Sunder Das, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Raghunath Jha. The Sunday edition of 4 March 1990 of Hindustan Times almost anointed Ram Sunder Das as the next leader and provided the inevitable reason for it:

Coalition government in Bihar [is] likely to be headed by Ram Sunder Das who is emerging as a consensus candidate—Mr. Laloo Yadav’s casteist image, his inexperience [and] his attempt to dominate the party with anti-social elements, plus the fact that [the] neighbouring Uttar Pradesh has a Yadav Chief Minister have militated against his serious candidature. ⁸⁹

Lalu Prasad Yadav’s candidature became public only on 5 March 1990 and a serious challenge was mounted over the next 2 days. He claimed the support of 79 MLAs, mostly those from the old guard of the Lok Dal and the Karpoori Thakur group. The situation was so chaotic that a fourth candidate, Anoop Lal Yadav, announced his bid the next day. ⁹⁰

Proving everyone wrong, the incumbent went on to rule Bihar for 15 years, first and foremost, as an aggressive representative of the drive for Backward empowerment. This was his power, but this also provided an intrinsic limit to his power. His ability to ‘connect’ with his social and electoral base and his projection of his personality as his politics were a symbol of pride for them. Even before him, there had been lower or Scheduled Caste CMs, but they had not personified empowerment, barring Karpoori Thakur. Lalu Prasad Yadav, the grassroot Lohiaite, hardened by JP’s Total Revolution, became the prince of social justice and secularism in power. His

… arrest of the Hindu nationalist L.K. Advani and the stopping of his Rath Yatra, firm handling of communal riots, combined with his strong opposition to upper caste hegemony with his characteristic native wit and rustic wisdom, made him tremendously popular among the Muslims (and lower caste Hindus). His electoral equation, Muslim-Yadav, became the famous mantra for his subsequent electoral successes. ⁹²

He gave his constituency, the Backwards and Muslims, a hitherto unprecedented sense of belonging and dignity by making them believe that he was their man, ruling on their behalf, for their benefit. He, then, brilliantly employed it by his knowledge of the nature of caste antipathies, social estrangements and constituency arithmetic. Once installed, he went about creating an iconoclastic image of the ‘common CM’. In the process, neither did he have to nor did he wish to govern Bihar in order to rule it; ⁹³

Politics is an act of self-location. Lalu Prasad Yadav loomed large because he emerged at a particular historical conjunction. With his advent, also emerged the ‘backwards among the backwards’. The one real change Lalu Yadav brought was a change of the caste character of the exploitative order. He gave the Backwards a sense of political participation and the Muslims a qualified sense of security in fractured times. ⁹⁵

In the process, by the mid-1990s, ‘the killing fields of Bihar … the site of persistent warfare against the poor, the weak, and the exploited of the rural countryside’ had descended in ‘the seven years of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s chief ministership as the populist champion of the poor, into “administrative atrophy” and “anarchy”’. Besieged by fodder scam charges, while Lalu Prasad Yadav was battling his (lack of) ‘right or suitability to continue’ as president of his party and CM of his state, the state seemed ‘on the verge of infrastructural collapse at the most fundamental levels of administering a civil society’. Lalu had an unvarnished and unrestrained ‘social justice theme’ in his first term, ‘of assuring izzat i.e., self-respect to the socially and economically deprived of the land’. ⁹⁸

In his ally-turned-opponent, Syed Shahabuddin’s words:

For Lalu Yadav, who swears by Mandal, social justice means the substitution of Bhumihar-Rajput Raj by Yadava Raj, that is, dominance and pre-eminence of the Yadavas in every walk of life’ thus leading to a section of Muslims [The Pasmanda], in addition to the Koeris and the Kurmis, deserting Lalu. ¹⁰⁰

By the turn of the century, for many, his ‘limiting “tunnel vision” reduced him to the status of yet another Yadav leader’. One of the visible factors for this was the brazen and cynical ‘Yadavisation’ of state administration, which fed ‘the formation of the Samata Party in 1994 by the engineer and Kurmi leader, Nitish Kumar’. In a subterranean sense, as shown by the historian Arvind Das, upwardly mobile middle castes and classes were ‘people not likely to be attracted by Lalu’s politics of poverty’, while being ‘concerned about a civil society of law and order of everyday life, no matter one’s social status or professional position’. A second ‘reality of post-Laloo dominance’ was ‘the softening of [his] scheduled caste-Dalit support base’. It is what has been crystallised as ‘specific secular and political interests, economic interests and personality interactions, which are decisive in determining how people vote … true for any social or religious segment of society; these are never unitary solidarities in any political sense. As Walter Hauser proffered too:

… issues of political freedom as well as economic and social freedom and the allied issues of social justice and self-respect have a long history in Bihar … Laloo Prasad Yadav brought the idea to a new level of awareness … But, the concept [went back to] Swami Sahajanand … and Jayaprakash Narayan, and Karpoori Thakur. And, movements like the Kisan Sabha, the Triveni Sangh, the Bihar Socialist Party, and the CPI, the CPI (ML).

The story of Lalu Prasad Yadav therefore was also his transformation from being ‘the solution’ to becoming the problem, through the 15 years from 1990 to 2005. Since then, ‘just as Indira was not India, so Lalu is not Bihar’. ¹⁰¹

Consequently, the quest for social in Bihar, among Backward and … since the 1990s, has mystified much social commentary and ‘demystified’ many political vote-banks. ¹⁰³

Conclusion

Today, Bihar is a heartland of an estimated 100 million people, 40 per cent of whom are below poverty line and 90 per cent of whom continue to have a rural existence. They share a collective trajectory that can be traced to the colonial creation of rent-seeking landlords by the permanent settlement of 1793. That set Bihar on becoming a ‘classic enclave economy’ through the British Raj. Post-independence, the ‘freight equalization scheme’, an ‘explosive mix of caste and class struggles’, ‘transfer of caste power [and] material benefits to [hitherto] marginalized’, a ‘deinstitutionalized state apparatus and curtailed development’, and, large social groups, from the 14 per cent twice-born castes, 39 per cent OBCs (20% upper OBCs, 19% lower OBCs, 12% Yadavs, 3.5% Kurmis, 4.1% Koeris), 15 per cent Dalits, 16 per cent Muslims have operated within a paradigm of continuity of caste and class conflict. These seven decades began for Bihar with the Congress' 'social coalition of extremes' dominated by the upper castes. It was followed by the emergence and then fragmentation of the OBC groups, symbolised by Karpoori Thakurprecursor for Lalu Prasad Yadav. The latter, subsequently, personified a 'democratic upsurge', a 'plebeian politics [of] narrow-poor redistributive coalitions'. Since 2005, Nitish Kumar has represented a ‘wide-poor coalition [of] Dalits and upper castes’, with the 2015 Bihar Assembly Elections showing that ‘themes of identity remain central to mobilisation efforts of political parties’. ¹⁰⁴

On the other hand is the view that Nitish Kumar’s ‘governmental concern of welfare and development’ vis-à-vis Lalu Prasad’s ‘agenda of justice, dignity and distribution of governmental resources’ are complimentary to each other. One’s caste-based politics is matched by the other’s functional social engineering; ‘for an emancipative politics of the Dalits, this history holds a clue’. ¹⁰⁵

Conflicts have plagued Bihar not so much from economic deprivation, but a deep sense of exclusion and marginality along caste lines, which must be moderated as much by means of a social transformation as by economic development. The question is whether social mobility in Bihar, having been expressed through the sphere and language of politics, will ultimately reflect a proper economic dimension—a new ‘social contract’—what Witsoe alternatively calls ‘popular sovereignty’: ‘the experience of local power’ and ‘everyday interactions with state institutions’ that revolved around ‘dignity’; a democratic demand that ‘verily characterizes India’s postcolonial democracy’. ¹⁰⁸