Not A Museum Of Castes

Bihar has long been seen as a caste museum. A society frozen in time, a part of earth where the sun of enlightenment does not reach, holding the transformation of its people from tribesmen to citizens. What if Bihar turns around and says the pundits who hold this view do need a little bit of light?

For the current Assembly elections the pundits have already given us the algebra: BJP + LJP + RSLP + HAM(S) = Upper castes (majority) + Dusadhs + Koeris + EBC (minority) + Mahadalits (majority); and JD(U) + RJD + Congress = Kurmis + Yadavs + EBC (majority) + Mahadalit (minority) + Upper castes (minority) + Muslims. What more is there to know for anyone to predict the outcome? What more excitement is left?

How can caste remain strong in politics when it is weakening in other areas of life? The foundations on which the caste edifice stood in Bihar are crumbling. The caste system consisted of self-contained villages where farming families would be served by artisans (such as carpenters and blacksmiths), servicemen (such as barbers and launderers) and labourers (such Musahars and Bhuiyans) in return for annual or periodic wage payments in grain or cash. In this ossified Hindu social division of labour, every caste’s occupation was fixed and ranked high or low according to God’s law. Children born in a caste were condemned to ancestral occupation. 

Two things changed that. The penetration of industrial goods ruptured the agriculture-craft-service-labour linkages, driving artisans and servicemen particularly but also labourers out of their traditional occupation. Together with that came the political ideology of progressive equalization, arousing hope among the lower castes that they would at last be able to move into a dignified occupation. However, there was a wide chasm between the doctrine of equal opportunity and its implementation at the ground level. Every village had a dominant caste that strongly resisted the distribution of growth benefits to the lower castes or misappropriated them in league with government officials who were from one or the other dominant caste.

That was where caste entered politics vigorously. Although the economic basis of the caste system had crumbled, the political basis had not. The dominant caste still ‘ruled’ over the village, denying them change of occupation, education and free vote. Caste would have disappeared with the caste system had the dominant castes not used it to continue wielding power in the villages. In reaction, the lower castes also mobilized themselves as castes. Thus caste, after the demise of the caste economy, was reborn in the form of a political organization.

This organisation took many forms, peaceful and armed, legal and extra-legal – caste associations, trade unions, political parties, factions within political parties, dominant-caste militias and armed leftist lower-caste groups. The conflicts within the village got reflected in voting behaviour, with both the dominant-caste organizations and the lower-caste organizations aiming to acquire influence and bargaining power by electing candidates and political parties that would protect and promote their interests.

Political entrepreneurs found a mass market in caste. Their public ideology and posturing was universal and they officially condemned caste but they did not discard it. They exploited caste as an underground market beneath the ideological earth. However, the relationship between the entrepreneur and the market was not that of a master and a herd. It was not a one-way relationship. The voters expected things in return: education, jobs, financial assistance, contracts, business licences, tenancy rights, pieces of agricultural land.

These were the things the lower castes desperately wanted because they would help them achieve their primary goal, which was social dignity by change of occupation. However, political entrepreneurs often disappointed them. A few clever persons from the caste, who served the entrepreneur as intermediaries, brokers and fixers, prospered but the large mass was left to fend for itself.

Still, in most cases, the caste voted for the entrepreneur.

Loyalty & pride

The tallest Bihar Dalit leader ever was Jagjiwan Ram who was elected continuously for decades from Sasaram. The Dalits living in the villages of Sasaram got virtually nothing in return for their support to him, yet they continued to vote for him. “Kuchh nahin kiye hamare liye, par hamare sar pe taj hain (He has brought us no material benefits, but he has brought us great honour by just being at the top),” they used to say. No different is the perception of Dalits of Hajipur about Ram Vilas Paswan for whom they have voted consistently even though their living conditions have not much changed.

Their behaviour might look strange in times when everyone chases only material benefits. But it would hardly look so if you do not forget that the lower castes are primarily desirous of dignity. Jagjivan Ram and Ram Vilas Paswan boosted their collective dignity and pride. Just as every lower caste’s historical mythology, which traced their origins centuries back to one or the other Kshatriya kingdom and clan, did.

Any ‘hurt’ to the collective pride can lead to intense mobilization of the caste. Ram Vilas Paswan aroused the fervor of Dusadhs against Nitish Kumar capitalizing on the hurt he had caused to the caste by excluding them from the list of Mahadalits. In the current Assembly elections, Jeetan Ram Manjhi is mobilizing Mahadalits on the ground that “Nitish Kumar thali deke aage se cheen liye” (Nitish Kumar gave a Mahadalit the chair, then pulled it away from him).

Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad did everything possible to maximise the mobilisation of the backward castes on the emotional play of the hurt caused by Narendra Modi’s remarks about “something wrong” about Nitish Kumar’s “political DNA” and about the threat from Lalu to bring back his “jungle raj”. Their “swabhiman” (self-respect) campaign addresses Biharis regardless of caste, but in the sub-strata it speaks to the castes who were traditionally segregated as “impure” from the twice-born who were “pure”, asking them to electorally punish Modi for questioning the purity of their blood.

All that has gone above in this article might suggest that politics is a handmaiden of caste, when in reality caste is the handmaiden of politics. Politics and caste operate in two conflicting spheres and have conflicting moral systems. Caste operates in particularist sphere, politics in universalist sphere. Caste considers one caste man favouring another as a moral duty; politics wants favours to be distributed fairly and equally.

Not by caste alone

The universalist doctrine of politics is not just an ideological construct; it is the compulsion of democratic politics too. No politician can expect to be elected exclusively with the support of his caste. The caste system has bequeathed a multi-caste demography in rural Bihar. There is no running away from a secular positioning for even a politician who starts out as a caste leader. His caste alone is inadequate for him to get elected. Ram Vilas Paswan has been representing Hajipur since 1977, with a couple of breaks. His caste men, the Dusadhs make, at the unofficial most, 6 per cent of the electorate of this Lok Sabha constituency. He has been winning with big margins. Do you think it was possible without the support of sections of Rajputs, Bhumihars, Yadavs, OBCs and Muslims? The story is the same with Upendra Kushwaha, Jeetan Manjhi, Sushil Modi, C P Thakur and Lalu Yadav. Nitish Kumar was elected successively from Barh not with the Kurmi-Koeri support alone but also of one of the upper castes, Rajputs or Bhumihars, and other backward castes and Dalits.

The cross-cutting relationships, networks and allegiances a politician has to establish for building his political career compels him to de-emphasize his primordial links and over-emphasize, both through rhetoric and distribution of divisible benefits, his casteless, secular links with all. Thus the islands of caste identity politics get submerged in the sea of multi-caste identity politics. Multi-caste coalitions become the larger reality in politics, rather than caste. The electoral conflict in a constituency therefore becomes a reflection of the multiple conflicts, rivalries and alliances among resident castes for retaining or acquiring local power and influence. Thus if Rajputs of Hajipur were voting for Paswan, the Yadavs would not do it. If Bhumihars of Barh were voting for Nitish, the Rajputs would not. But that still does not change the reality, which is that a politician is indebted to a caste coalition for his success and not to his caste alone.

A phenomenon that further reduces caste in electoral importance is intra-caste factionalism. There is no single politician who represents all the members of their caste. Depending on the leadership skills, there may emerge major and minor ‘leaders’ of a caste, but the fragmentation of the caste vote owing to intra-caste rivalries and factionalism is a reality.

Levelling up

It is very usual for political parties to set up a factional leader of a caste to challenge another factional leader of the caste. That is when the so-called caste ‘vote bank’ goes topsy-turvy. If any political party thought caste was an FD which its nominee had just to go to the bank and encash it, they were mistaken. There were other claimants too. In the current Bihar Assembly elections, the BJP camp has put up many middle caste candidates, and the JD (U) camp upper caste candidates to factionalize caste votes of each other. Obviously, the caste algebra of the two alliances given by the pundits is not going to work as they are predicting.

While politics is reducing the importance of caste through multi-caste coalitions and factions, what is actually digging its grave is the spread of education among lower castes. Even semi-educated young persons from these castes are unwilling to go back to their caste’s traditional occupation and taking up non-manual jobs. That is why they fight for quotas of college seats and government jobs. They use caste as a rope to climb out of the dark, stigmatizing pit of the traditional occupation. After that they try their best to put their caste behind themselves.

They adopt the status symbols of the middle class. In the earlier decades of the twentieth century, the upwardly mobile lower caste families adopted the status symbols of the caste system, such as the sacred thread, a process that was termed as ‘Sanskritisation’. Today Sanskritisation is an outdated concept. Upwardly mobile lower castes go for jeans, latest cell phone, a motor vehicle, consumer goods and other status symbols of the current times to look indistinguishable from the higher castes, not a sacred thread.

Schools and colleges provide environments that promote friendships and relations cutting across castes as do workplaces. There is a kind of levelling up. The number of inter-caste marriages among young men and women who met at college or workplace is exponentially increasing. The growing trend is autonomy of decision making by younger generations. If that can mean freedom to choose a life partner out of one’s caste, why can’t it mean freedom to elect a representative on a secular basis?

𒅌With the migration of youth, the demography of the villages is changing. Land is going into the hands of those among the upper and lower castes who have the skills and interest in pursuing agriculture as business. They want roads, electricity, irrigation, banks and markets. Development is a demand of all castes. That is why Nitish won a massive second mandate. That is why Modi won significant support even among castes supposed to be the constituency of Mandal leaders.

Journalist, author and filmmaker Arun Sinha lives in Panjim (Goa) and is the editor of Navhind Times