Dalit Factor in Bihar's Politics
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7. The (Maha) Dalit Factor in Bihar’s Politics Shreyas Sardesai* Until the 2010 election for the Bihar Assembly, elections in the state were largely analysed in terms of a six caste categories – Upper castes, Yadavs, other OBCs, Pasis, other Dalits and Muslims. Since 2007 however, Bihar politics has witnessed new developments and the caste dimension of elections cannot be fully understood without taking into account two additional caste categories, namely EBCs or Extremely Backward Classes, and Mahadalits. This chapter seeks to analyse the emergence of latter and its implications. In August 2007, the Nitish Kumar led JDU-BJP government set up the Bihar State Mahadalit Commission to “identify the castes within Scheduled Castes who lagged behind in the development process” and to “study [their] educational and social status and suggest measures for [their] upliftment”. In April 2008, 18 Dalit castes were brought under the Mahadalit category to begin with. These are Bantar, Bauri, Bhogta, Bhuiya, Chaupal, Dabgar, Dom/Dhangad, Ghasi, Halalkhor, Hari/Mehtar/Bhangi, Kanjar, Kurariar, Lalbegi, Musahar, Nat, Pan/Swasi, Rajwar and Turi. Three months later Dhobi and Pasi castes were also added to the Mahadalit category based on the Commission’s recommendation and then Chamars were also included in the Mahadalit category by the state government in November 2009 on the grounds that they too were lagging in literacy and economic status and were victims of untouchability at the hands of other Mahadalit castes1. The only sub-caste that was left out was Paswan or Dusadh *Author is Research Associate at Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. 1See http://mahadalitmission.org/BMVM-about-us-list.php#. VZzGJxvzrIU for list of Mahadalit castes; accessed on June 3, 2015. 80 Democracies (also part of the larger Pasi family) on the grounds that they were more literate and dominant among the Scheduled Castes (The Hindu, Nov 2009). Some political observers however saw the non-inclusion as a deliberate move by Nitish Kumar to settle a score with his political adversary Ram Vilas Paswan who has considerable clout among his caste men (The Telegraph, Feb 15, 2015). Recently (in February 2015) however the Dusadh caste was finally included in the Mahadalit category by then chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. Manjhi’s decision was read in the context of his rivalry with Nitish Kumar and his bid to emerge as a Dalit leader acceptable to all ahead of the 2015 Bihar Assembly elections (Dasgupta 2015). This means that the entire Dalit population (all 22 sub-castes) in Bihar now falls under the Mahadalit category and is entitled to benefits from state government programmes implemented by the Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission which was set up in 2008 (The Indian Express, 2015). These programmes include Mahadalit crèches, provision of a health card for every Mahadalit family and the granting of three decimals of land to Maha Dalit families (The Hindu, Aug 2009). While the Mahadalit category was created ostensibly for socio-economic upliftment and governance reasons as cited above, it should also essentially be seen in political terms. Its creation was not just for social and economic justice but was also meant to shore up votes of the Mahadalits by giving them a separate identity and it paid rich electoral dividends for the JDU and the BJP in the 2010 assembly election. Since that election, Mahadalit politics in the state has continued unabated and Nitish Kumar’s move to make Jitan Ram Manjhi from the Musahar caste, the chief minister of Bihar soon after JDU’s 2014 Lok Sabha debacle was yet another attempt by him to use the Mahadalit card. It was widely viewed as a ploy by Kumar to retain Mahadalit support for the JDU even as the party was losing support among its core base. It is another matter that the move backfired on Kumar as Manjhi revolted later due to his own personal ambitions. Desperate to hold on to power and with an eye on the 2015 assembly elections, Manjhi played victim accusing Nitish Kumar of humiliating a Mahadalit leader. He later went on to form his own party, the Hindustani Awam Morcha, and subsequently announced an alliance with the BJP (The Telegraph, Jun 2015). Caste has been one of the predominant aspects of Bihar politics and with the The (Maha) Dalit Factor in Bihar’s Politics 81 assembly elections due in the state later this year, the question of who the Dalits of Bihar vote for in the context of the state’s new Mahadalit politics and Manjhi’s revolt assumes significance. This chapter will look at how the various Dalit castes have been voting in the state during Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha elections over the last 15 years and whether their voting patterns offer any clues on what is likely to happen in the coming election. For the purposes of this chapter, Mahadalit refers to all the 18 castes that were designated as Mahadalit in the first recommendation in 2008 as well as the Dhobi caste. Pasis/Paswans and Chamars have been kept as separate analytical categories. If we go by the CSDS election surveys in Bihar that have been conducted over the years, on an average Mahadalit castes (19 castes) account for 4-5 percent of Bihar’s population and 24 percent of the total Dalit population. Pasis account for about 5-6 percent of the total population of the state and 37 percent of the Dalit population whereas Chamars are around 6-7 percent of Bihar’s population and 39 percent of the total Dalit population. The total Dalit population of the state as per Census 2011 is 15.9 percent (Tables 1 and 1a). 82 Table 1 Achieved Sample Size of Dalit communities in CSDS Surveys in Bihar, 2000-2014 Community 2000 2004 LS 2005 Feb 2005 Oct 2009 LS 2010 2014 LS Chamar 148 63 496 74 133 315 101 Pasi/Paswan 140 48 470 37 133 309 88 Mahadalit 113 58 238 42 93 185 86 Non-SC 1829 1022 6490 732 1580 4152 1256 Total 2230 1191 7694 885 1939 4961 1531 Note : Chamar as Chamar; Pasi as Pasi; Rajwar, Dhobi, Musahar, Bhuiya etc. as Mahadalit, all other non-SC castes Democracies as Non-SC. Table 1a Proportion of SC communities in Total Sample of CSDS Surveys in Bihar, 2000-14 Community 2000 2004 LS 2005 Feb 2005 Oct 2009 LS 2010 2014 LS Average Chamar 6.6 5.3 6.4 8.4 6.9 6.4 6.6 6.7 Pasi/Paswan 6.3 4.0 6.1 4.2 6.8 6.3 5.7 5.6 Mahadalit 5.1 4.9 3.1 4.8 4.8 3.7 5.6 4.6 Non-SC 82.0 85.8 84.3 82.6 81.5 83.7 82.0 83.1 Note : Chamar as Chamar; Pasi as Pasi; Rajwar, Dhobi, Musahar, Bhuiya etc. as Mahadalit, all other non-SC castes as Non-SC. The (Maha) Dalit Factor in Bihar’s Politics 83 Mahadalit Voting Patterns Mahadalits, the poorest among Dalits, who were once behind the RJD (44 percent voted for the party in the 2000 Assembly election), have shifted allegiance towards the BJP and the JDU over the last fifteen years (Table 2). There has in fact been a steady decline in support among Mahadalits for RJD with every passing election since 2000. As per CSDS data, 33 percent Mahadalits voted for the RJD in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, 27 percent in the February 2005 Vidhan Sabha election, 22 percent in the October 2005 assembly poll, 12 percent in 2009 Lok Sabha election and 8 percent in the 2010 assembly and 2014 Lok Sabha elections. These figures show a clear pattern of declining Mahadalit support for the RJD. A party that once used to get nearly half the Mahadalit votes, now barely gets one in ten Mahadalit votes. The RJD’s loss has been the JDU and BJP’s gain. The two parties in alliance netted 33 to 36 percent of the Mahadalit vote between 2004 and 2009 and further increased the share to 40 percent in the 2010 elections. Among the two, the JDU did better than the BJP in 2004 and February 2005 whereas the BJP did better in October 2005 and 2009. It was in the 2010 Assembly elections however that the JDU raced ahead of the BJP and outdid its alliance partner by a large margin getting 30 percent of Mahadalit support to BJP’s 11 percent. This dramatic rise in Mahadalit support for the JDU should be seen in the context of Nitish Kumar’s concerted attempts to woo the community through the setting up of the Mahadalit Commission during his first tenure. Since then the support of Mahadalits for the JDU has remained firm with 34 percent of them voting for the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP, however, has been the biggest gainer with the party’s Mahadalit support rising dramatically between 2010 and 2014. The party has seen its Mahadalit support increase from just one in ten votes in 2010 to one in four in 2014 when it fought the elections on its own after its alliance with JDU came apart over Narendra Modi’s candidature for the post of Prime Minister. It must be emphasized however that the rise in the BJP’s Mahadalit support in 2014 came mainly at the expense of smaller parties and not the JDU. The JDU’s Mahadalit base remained intact during the 2014 election despite the party having contested on its own. With both the BJP and the JDU set to be on opposite sides once again in the upcoming 2015 84 Democracies assembly elections, how badly the Mahadalit vote splits between the two parties remains to be seen.