New Delhi- The major beneficiaries of the reservation policies for Other Backward Communities (OBCs) are the upper-backward communities like Kurmi, Koeri, and Yadav in Bihar. The Extremely Backward Communities (EBCs) like Mallah, Nai, Kewat, Bind, and many more continue to remain on the margins of political representation. They were largely treated as a vote bank initially by the socialist parties like Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Janata Dal United (JDU), and later by the Hindutva political outfits like Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). However, in the past few decades, the EBCs have knocked on the doors of politics by forming different political parties. The rise of EBCs in the politics of Bihar, although significant, is not without grave challenges.
A few months back, the father of Mukesh Sahani was brutally murdered at his house in Darbhanga. Mukesh is an emerging leader from the Extremely Backward Communities (EBCs). While many people are trying to suggest that the lending business of Jitan Sahani is the major reason behind his murder, Mukesh Sahani and his Vikas Sheel Insaan (VIP) party are showing discontent with these claims. Mukesh Sahani argued that the government is trying to give a different color to his father’s murder to save their own skin. He questioned the intent behind the leakage of confidential documents related to the case in the media.
Questions are also being raised against the victimization of the victim. The mainstream media is trying to divert the case from the real issue of murder to the narrative that he was murdered because of the nature of the business he was involved in. The general secretary of the Vikas Sheel Insaan Party (VIP) argued in an interview that the documents related to the case may have been willingly leaked to the media in order to deteriorate the character of the victim and his family. In this article, we will discuss the possible political reasons behind the murder. The way and speed with which Mukesh Sahani has established himself in the politics of Bihar cannot deny the possibility of political reasons behind the murder of his father.
It’s not the first time that the leadership originating from the EBC community in general and the Mallah community in specific has been threatened and neutralized due to political rivalry. Phoolan Devi, who herself was a Mallah by caste, was assassinated on July 25, 2001, in New Delhi. It’s not hidden from anyone that Phoolan Devi was killed due to the fact that she asserted strongly against the dominance of upper-caste people. The way she was mobilizing the people of the Mallah community in politics became irksome and a threat to the acquisitive politics of elite political leaders. Jitan Sahani may also have become a victim of a similar sort of political rivalry. The murder of Jitan Sahani can be an outcome of both cultural as well as political assertion of Mukesh Sahani and his father on behalf of the Mallah community. Mukesh Sahani, a stalwart political leader from the Mallah caste, played an efficacious role in the cultural and political mobilization of the Mallah community. He formed his political party Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP) in 2018; before that, he was working under the banner of Nishad Vikas Sangh, an NGO formed in 2014.
Mukesh Sahani has, within the span of around a decade, established himself as the leader of the whole Nishad community. The identity of Nishad is an umbrella term that includes the sub-castes like Mallah, Noniya, Baildar, Kewat, Dhimar, Kol, Ghatwar, Tiyar, Turha, Manjhwar, and Bind, etc. In the past few years, the political presence of the Nishad community under the leadership of Mukesh Sahani has come as a blow to every political party in the region. He played a very important role in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. He organized the Nishad Sankalp Yatra in 2023, where the members of the Nishad community took a pledge that they would not vote for the parties that historically treated them as docile and did not work in their favor.
Mukesh Sahani promised his people that he would fight to get Scheduled Caste status for the community at any cost. The people also took the pledge that they would vote for Mukesh Sahani no matter which alliance he is with. The Mallah community remained on the margins of Bihar’s politics even after 77 years of independence despite their significant numerical strength. It’s only due to the political activism of Mukesh Sahani that the Nishad community has become a major political force and their issues and problems have attained center stage. It’s because of Mukesh Sahani that many dominant political parties of the state like Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) started to give leadership roles to the hitherto ignored leaders from the Nishad community. To jeopardize the political rise of Mukesh Sahani, Hari Sahani was made the leader of the opposition in Bihar’s legislative council by the BJP in 2023.
The time and context of his murder are also very important because it’s barely a month since the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were declared. During the campaign, a video of Mukesh Sahani with Tejasvi Yadav went viral in which they were eating fish together. Mukesh Sahani proudly argued that fish eating is an important cultural element of the Mallah community.
Many people from the upper-caste leadership were not happy with this kind of cultural assertion by Mukesh Sahani. In an interview given to a news channel, even Jitan Sahani proudly asserted his non-vegetarianism. In a society where the elite groups try to regulate the food habits of backward communities, the murder of Jitan Sahani can be no surprise as a brutal response to the cultural assertion of Mukesh Sahani and his father regarding their food habits. The manner in which his body has been mutilated makes it difficult to deny that he may have been murdered due to political rivalry.
This incident can be a psychological weapon to send a message to those political leaders who come from the backward communities and wish to represent the community’s socio-political interests. Through this incident, they may want to convey the message to Mukesh Sahani that he should stop doing what he is doing or else be ready to face the consequences. Many people from the EBC castes don’t enter politics due to the fear of violent responses to their political assertion.
During the pre-field visit in Bihar’s Motihari and Patna districts as part of my research work, many people of the Mallah community pointed to the factors behind why they don’t enter politics. Upinder Sahani, a husband-Mukhiya of Lahladpur village in Motihari, narrated his experience of capitulating active politics when he started to get death threats from the native upper-caste leaders. The incident of Jitan Sahani is one incident that came to the limelight; however, there are numerous similar cases that go unreported in the public sphere.
The presence of a community leader is very important as it helps in spreading the political consciousness and gives a sense of political confidence and political pride to the community members. The elite caste leaders are aware of the fact that the caste affects the voting behaviour of the people to a great extent. If a EBC’s leader establishes himself in politics, thecommunity members will accept him as their leader due to their shared sense of belongingness. It was observed in the field that even the educated people of the Mallah community who traditionally voted for a specific political party, have changed their political allegiance in favour of their own community leader. While a Mallah family in Bihar, with no to minimal education level argued that they although don't know the fact that Mukesh Sahani is the leader from their community but now as they know that he is from our community, we will definitely vote for him. This empirical evidence shows the depth of caste in affecting the voting behaviour in Bihar. The elite leadership do not want the leadership from the marginalised communities to emerge, as it will challenge their own claims of leadership.
The opposition party’s claims to produce new leaders from the EBC castes are apocryphal in nature, which worked in the favour of BJP and RSS. The political parties adopted the lackadaisical approach towards creating leadership roles from the EBC castes in Bihar. After Karpuri Thakur no prominent leadership from the EBC community has emerged or given space in the past 77 years. Even the political parties like RJD and JDU doing the politics of EBC failed to give space to the leaders of these communities. It cannot be a co-incident that a caste who constitute around 36.01 % of Bihar’s population has given only one big political leader in Bihar i.e. Karpuri Thakur. One can argue like many communists say “We do not believe in picking up leaders, They should emerge with a merit of their own”. However, the leaders like Mukesh Sahani established themselves in the state and regional politics without any political inheritance and patronage and still they have to face this brutality. Their political hue and cry of merit gets exposed when the leaders from backward communities confront this sort of violence even after owning the exclusive trait of merit which some people assume is only possessed by the upper caste people.
- The Author is a Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the stance or opinions of affiliated organizations or publications.
References:
Kothari, R. (with Internet Archive). (1970). Caste in Indian politics. New York : Gordon and Breach.
Kumar, S. (2018). Post-Mandal Politics in Bihar: Changing Electoral Patterns. SAGE Publications.
Phillips, A. (1998). The Politics of Presence. Oxford University Press, USA.
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