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It is not very hard to read the political subtext of the sharp rise in communal violence in Bihar since Chief Minister Nitish Kumar embraced the BJP again after having denounced Narendra Modi as a “divisive” figure.
Since July 2017, the day Kumar crawled back to the BJP’s fold, as many as 200 incidents of communal violence have been reported in Bihar. In Bhagalpur, Arijit Shaswat, BJP leader and son of Union Minister of State Ashwini Choube, was arrested on March 24 for allegedly stoking communal tension. The celebrations around Ramnavami on March 26 witnessed a fresh spurt of violence and the police have booked BJP and its sister organisation, Bajrang Dal, leaders in Aurangabad, Samastipur and Nalanda.
The BJP is using communal polarisation to alter the backward-forward caste polarisation typical of Bihar. Social relations here are understood in terms of upper caste dominance over resources, institutional structures and land owing to Permanent Settlement, and the challenge to this dominance through militant movements by poor peasants and agricultural labourers, belonging to the Dalit, Mahadalit and OBC categories.
The conviction of Lalu Prasad in the multiple cases pertaining to the infamous fodder scam and the simultaneous acquittal of Jagannath Mishra provides the perfect example to validate the RJD’s claim that the OBCs, SCs and minorities continue to be discriminated against by a socio-political structure dominated by upper castes. The RJD has thus claimed the backward space with Jitan Ram Manjhi, the Dalit leader propped up by Nitish Kumar once, dumping the BJP in Lalu’s favour. Lalu, even from jail, dominates the Opposition space.
The BJP is clearly the ruling party applying its time-tested strategy of paving caste stratifications with communal polarisation. And there are no prizes for guessing who inhabits the periphery in this political slugfest: For Nitish Kumar, the fall to irrelevance is complete. He’s seen not just as a lameduck, but also as an established turncoat.
Poornima Joshi Associate Editor
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