How Nishads banded together to find a political foothold in east UP

GORAKHPUR: It wasn’t that Nishads in Uttar Pradesh were not seeking Scheduled Caste status before this, but if the ruling BJP government has agreed to their demand and started issuing them the ‘majhwar’ certificate in Purvanchal since April, it is for a reason that goes beyond welfare of the community.
Nishads are a consolidated chunk of voters no political party can afford to ignore. It was the SP-BSP-RLD combine which first tried to bring Nishads to its side this Lok Sabha election but failed to seal the deal. This gave BJP an opening, and the party swiftly capitalised on it to have a tie-up with the Nishad party.

The word Nishad originates from ‘ni’, which stands for water, and ‘shad’, a reference to fishermen, boatmen and a clutch of communities that once thrived on water resources. Their leaders, who are reverentially referred to as kings, had a say in allocation of riverine resources.

Over a period of time and with the writ of the state expanding over rivers, the community was pushed down the social ladder. The focus on upper castes in the first four decades after Independence and the arrival of dominant OBCs as the new power elite ensured that they remained on the fringes until they, like other smaller castes, learned to play the numbers game in a fragmented polity.

This LS election, however, marks a turnaround for Nishads, who have emerged as a bargaining entity and a political force because their presence, in the form of the community platform, Nishad Party, has been acknowledged by the principal players.

Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal (NISHAD) party is contesting its first general election with the slogan ‘Jiska dal uska bal; uski samasyaon ka hal (Power rests with those who are a group, only they have the power to solve problems)’.

The party is headquartered in Gorakhpur where Nishads constitute 24.7% of voters. Pravin Nishad, Gorakhpur MP and elder son of Sanjay Nishad who is the founding president of Nishad party, is in the fray from Sant Kabir Nagar on a BJP ticket.

In the 2018 bypoll, Pravin had won the Gorakhpur seat on an SP ticket, defeating BJP on its home turf for the first time since 1989. His win established Nishads as a powerful force in Gorakhpur. Nishads have emerged as free-wheeling transactional players in UP. “SP wanted us to contest on its party symbol while we sought a respectful adjustment of our party in the alliance and not a merger,” said Sarwan Nishad, younger son of the party’s founding president.

To unite Nishads, a Rashtriya Nishad Ekta Parishad was constituted in January 2013. The organisation still exists. To mark a political presence, Nishad party was registered in August 2016, and made its debut in the UP elections in 2017 and contested 62 seats though it won only in Bhadohi.

Going by Nishad party’s claim, they have a sizeable presence in 152 of the 403 assembly constituencies. Besides, they have significant numbers in 19 LS constituencies, among them Bhadohi, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Kushinagar, Ghosi, Deoria, Basti, Dumariyaganj, Salempur, Varanasi, Ballia and Sultanpur.

As part of the attempt to consolidate themselves, community members have stopped using old surnames and suffix ‘Nishad’ to their names.

Nishads are demanding inclusion among SCs for sub-castes under four generic castes — Majhwar, Gond, Shilpkar and Turaha — to do away with the confusion.

UP has 153 sub-castes of Nishads. “Some sub-castes are in the OBC list, some in the list of denotified tribes and others in the SC list. We want a common status for all — of an SC,” said Jaswant Singh Nishad, who edits and prints an all-Nishad newspaper, Eklavya Manav Sandesh. They also justify the demand for SC status, read quota benefits, by citing that Nishads were enumerated as SCs in the 1961 Census.