What is wrong if caste is relevant to Bihar’s, or to any state’s, politics? A Bihari should not be apologetic on this count as caste plays an important role in politics almost all over India. There are many states, more developed than Bihar, where the relevance of caste is much stronger. West Bengal, where caste is not so relevant in politics, may be an exception. In one or two elections, people may vote cutting across caste and community lines — for example, in the post-Emergency polls of 1977 — but that cannot lead to the conclusion that caste is irrelevant to the politics of Bihar now.
The Telegraph’s Bihar debate, “Caste is no longer relevant in Bihar politics” (March 3), witnessed an interesting scenario where even an admirer of the Bihar chief minister, Nitish Kumar, who obviously spoke in favour of the motion of the House, took an entirely different stand. The argument was simple: Kumar’s government has won the election because it has done some work, not because it has wiped out the relevance of caste in Bihar.
Winning an election is one thing and claiming that there is no relevance of caste in politics quite another. It is only in the recent years that portals such as bhumihar.com, pasmandamuslims.com and mallickbayasociety have come up. Mallick is a Muslim caste of central Bihar. Its relevance in politics can be measured from the fact that the Nitish Kumar government, a couple of years back, declared it a backward caste, though it is arguably the most developed of all the Muslim castes of Bihar. Such a step was taken because the Mallicks form a sizeable percentage of the Muslim population in the chief minister’s home district of Nalanda as well as in Jehanabad, Patna, Nawada, Munger and Gaya. The Muslims are influential in the politics of these districts. When the Sheikhs made a similar demand, their plea was not accepted for obvious reasons. The relevance of caste among Muslims is a relatively new phenomenon.
Cosmetic measures
But why talk of just Bihar? Leaf through any issue of India Abroad, a weekly published from the United States of America and Toronto by resident Indian-origin people, and one can find instances of parents seeking grooms and brides belonging to their own caste in matrimonial advertisements. In the community news section, one comes across organizations such as the Patel Samaj and the Brahmin Samaj.
If there are caste organizations among ‘progressive’ Indians living in 21st-century US and Canada for years, and parents still root for caste while marrying off their children, are we not being too harsh on Bihar? The state is backward not just because of the caste factor. After all, Bihar has no khap panchayat of the type that exists in developed states such as Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Some politicians who took a vague stand on khap panchayats hold foreign degrees and boast of being enlightened individuals.
It is the feeling of collective guilt that sometimes compels Biharis to get rid of the relevance of caste. Had this been always true, there would not have been any Mahadalit Commission and the Extremely Backward Castes would not have been granted 20 per cent reservation in the urban and local bodies. Recently, Nitish Kumar announced the constitution of an Upper Caste Commission to look into the grievances of the economically weak among the upper castes. If caste is not so relevant in Bihar politics, no commission should be set up in its name.
Two decades ago, the former Bihar chief minister, Jagannath Mishra, made a cosmetic effort to fight caste in politics. He dropped his surname on the plea that it revealed his caste. Months later, it became a part of his name again. Perhaps he copied the idea from the activists of the JP movement of 1974. But such exercises did not bear any long-lasting positive result.
