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    In Bihar’s Jehanabad, caste may act as antidote to Hindutva

    Synopsis

    If caste can really act as an antidote to Hindutva, nowhere is this more visible than Jehanabad, once the hotbed of Naxal activities and caste oppression.

    hindutva-bccl
    Caste considerations seem to have trumped Hindutva here with both NDA and gathbandhan saddled with a breach in their traditional support base.
    (This story originally appeared in on May 14, 2019)
    JEHANABAD:“You know RJD is not an option for us. We don’t want to go back to the days where everybody in our families slept with a pistol under their pillow,” says Dinesh Kumar, a resident of Chandharia village near Jehanabad town.

    For Kumar, who runs a cab service in Patna, and his fellow castemen, the Bhumihars, the BJP or NDA has been a natural home for over two decades. Just as you turn away, assuming he’s yet another Hindutva votary, he adds from behind, “But it’s more complex this time as we are voting for Arun Kumar and not JD(U)’s Chandeshwar Chandravanshi as you might think”.

    Arun Kumar, a Bhumihar, is the sitting MP who had won in 2014 contesting on a ticket from RLSP which was then in NDA but is now a part of the RJD-led gathbandhan. After he fell out with RLSP leader Upendra Kushwaha, Arun is contesting on his own party RLSP-Secular symbol. Jehanabad is a seat dominated by Bhumihars and Yadavs who inhabit the most disparate worlds in Bihar’s political spectrum.

    As Sanjay Sharma of Dohia village explains, Bhumihars, otherwise most vocal NDA supporters, are seething from within that possibly for the first time somebody not from his caste was not taking on the RJD. “NDA leaders are trying to replicate here the experiment in Muzaffarpur where ticket has been denied to Bhumihars for decades to undercut their political influence. Modi is fine but this time it’s about caste pride and so most Bhumihars will vote for Arun,” he says.

    If caste can really act as an antidote to Hindutva, nowhere is this more visible than Jehanabad, once the hotbed of Naxal activities and caste oppression. Caste considerations seem to have trumped Hindutva here with both NDA and gathbandhan saddled with a breach in their traditional support base.

    The JD(U) candidate, Chandravanshi, comes from an extremely backward caste but that apparently is not an issue for the Bhumihars. “We would have opposed him even if he were from some other upper caste. Jehanabad has always been synonymous with Bhumihars,” says Sharma. Chandravanshi was apparently not the first choice. The party apparently wanted to field former Congress leader and Bhumihar Ram Jatan Sinha from Jehanabad, according to a JD(U) leader who speaks on condition of anonymity, but this was strongly opposed by another party leader, and a rival of Sinha, who too belongs to Jehanabad and comes from the same caste.

    To prevent a split in Bhumihar votes, most NDA leaders have sought to remind people in their rallies that a victory for the RJD candidate could mean a return to the 1990s when Jehanabad was the scene of some of the worst caste massacres in Bihar’s history by Maoists and Bhumihar militia Ranbir Sena.

    The rift in JD-U over the choice of candidate and division of Bhumihar votes should have in the normal course allowed RJD’s Surender Yadav, who lost both in 2014 and 2009, to sail through. However, Jehanabad is also where RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad is being tested most. His son Tej Pratap has put up a rebel Yadav candidate, Chandra Prakash, against Surender. With RJD leader Tejaswi unable to convince his brother, Chandra Prakash is threatening to cut into Yadav votes.


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