Kanhaiya Kumar in Begusarai: Old Fault Lines and New Struggles for Radical Political Change
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ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Kanhaiya Kumar In Begusarai: Old Fault Lines and New Struggles for Radical Political Change SHRAY MEHTA Shray Mehta ([email protected]) is a research scholar at South Asian University, New Delhi. Vol. 54, Issue No. 20, 18 May, 2019 The author would like to thank Ravi Kumar from South Asian University for his comments on the initial draft of this article, Nafis Jilani and Zoony Zainab for their inputs, and the respondents from the field. The need to confront and defeat the authoritarian tendencies of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the neo-liberal state has become ever more pressing. What are the issues when this challenge is to be met by contesting democratic elections? A month-long ethnographic study of Kanhaiya Kumar's campaign in Begusarai, Bihar speculates on its implications for progressive politics. The context of the 2019 general elections in India has had three critical components. There is the ever-increasing inequality in neo-liberal India, a deepening of the agrarian crisis, and an increase in the hold of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), both ideologically and politically. Though there has been a strengthening of peasant movements and Dalit assertions to face the onslaught of the RSS (Wire 2016, 2019), it has not been clear how this would translate into electoral victories. Scholars have pointed out that India is moving towards an ethnic majoritarian state (Jaffrelot 2019) and that there is a need for articulating a radical democratic change on the issues of land and labour (Nilsen 2019). This article attempts to provide a comment on how such dynamics play out in the field of ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 electoral politics through a case study of Begusarai constituency during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Even though Kanhaiya Kumar emerged as a new face of progressive politics in the region, several commentators have cast aspersions on the inability of such a politics to address issues related to caste. Based on month-long ethnographic fieldwork in Begusarai constituency before the elections, the article follows Kumar’s election campaign closely through conversations with party cadre, local leaders, campaigners, and voters. Campaign materials of the candidates along with social media and local newspaper reports have also been used. By focusing on oral narratives and histories that are evoked to support or oppose the candidates, this article will locate how much of the narrative of progressive politics relies on caste and kinship and if these present limitations for the campaign’s ability to transcend them. Most importantly, how do these factors get translated into an election that gets hyper-localised in its agenda? The article speculates on what factors may have led to a swing of the voters and more importantly the split of votes with the Bhumihars and Muslims, away from both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). “Hum CPI Kartey Hain” (We Do CPI Politics) There is a dilapidated building in Gauna village in Begusarai district. It has a small courtyard with six rooms, overgrown with vegetation. Until three years ago, the building was a fully functioning school run by Vimal Singh, a trade unionist belonging to the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and the Communist Party of India (CPI). Now, at night, it serves as a makeshift bar for some of the Bhumihar men in the village. The school had run successfully for almost a decade before the Bhumihars of the village got irked by the success of the Dalit students and Bhumihar men started consuming alcohol in the school premises. One day, one of the students from the Paswan community intervened to stop them. He was shot dead and the school was shut thereafter.[1] Vimal Singh, himself a Bhumihar, could do nothing to save the life of his student or the school itself. His family have been members of the communist party since its inception. This story of the presence of a Bhumihar trade union activist at the level of a village, the establishment of a school where there was none, and the subsequent murder of a Dalit student to prevent them from getting an education is a window into the complex history of politics and political violence in Begusarai. When Kanhaiya Kumar declared his intention to contest from the Begusarai seat in Bihar, mainstream media quickly discovered the town’s history explaining why Begusarai is called the Leningrad of Bihar (Begg 2019). The appearance of Begusarai on the map of national politics is, however, not new. As Vimal Singh points out, “AITUC had won the trade union elections at the Thermal Plant in Begusarai for more than 50 years. However, the BJP- aligned Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh managed to win the election in 2015. National newspapers called it the storming of the Red Bastion in Begusarai.” He continues, “But, we ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 won it back the next year. It became a prestige battle for us.” A senior comrade at a public meeting of intellectuals organised by the Progressive Writers Association, Begusarai pointed out, “There used to be a time when the Communist Party did not have even a single MP or MLA. Then there was a time when we had many. And now again we have none. But we are a party of sangharsh [mass struggle], not elections and can win seats again if we organise.” The town of Begusarai is a kind of memorial to this sangharsh. In the town area, one can see several duars (entry points) of bastis and residential areas paying homage to the shaheed (martyrs) of the party. There are around 150 such duars and the sheer number points to the long history of struggle and contestations that the cadre of the party on the ground has participated in. In Begusarai, communism seems to be a part of common sense about politics. As Kanhaiya Kumar’s grandfather pointed out, “We are communists not because of Das Capital, but because of the struggles of the ones before us.” One sees this also in the way of introducing oneself and one’s political leaning by saying, “Hum CPI kartey hain” [We do CPI politics] rather than saying “Hum CPI ke member hain” [We are part of CPI]. ‘Ek Jaat Aur Ek District ki Party’ (The Party of One Caste with Influence in One District) The other side story of the presence of the CPI in Begusarai is the association of the party with the Bhumihar caste. This point was raised by Tejashwi Yadav, leader of the RJD, most vociferously during the election. He pointed out time and again how the CPI is “Ek jaat aur ek district ki Party.” He also pointed out that all the leadership of the party belonged to this one caste and that the party has never allowed people belonging to other castes rise in the rank. The reality of the Bhumihar connection and the CPI is more complex. Begusarai has the distinction of producing the RSS ideologue Rakesh Sinha. In spite of the memorialisation of the sangharsh of the CPI in Begusarai town, it is actually the RSS and the BJP that are expected to do well in the urban areas. In Begusarai, it is the RSS, and by implication the BJP, which is the party of the Bhumihars. The effect of this connection of Bhumihars with the RSS became obvious in two ways with respect to Kumar. The first was that the most resistance that Kumar received was from the Bhumihar caste. This was visible in the instances where he had to face violent protests both as an individual and as a candidate of the communist party. These instances began from October 2018 onwards (Tewary 2018) when he was attacked upon entering the Bhagwanpur which, incidentally, was historically the first place in Begusarai where the RSS had set up its shakha. These instances continued and all the three instances of violent confrontations during the rest of the campaign happened in areas that are Bhumihar strongholds. The other is the complex way in which kinship has intersected with party politics in ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Begusarai. Kanhaiya Kumar could count on very limited support from Bhumihars. As an activist in the CPI cadre explained, “Bhumihar ki do jaat hoti hai. Ek woh jo Kanhaiya ke saath hai, aur dusara woh jo Giriraj Singh ke saath hai” (Bhumihars have two castes in Begusarai. One of them is with Kanhaiya and the other is with Giriraj Singh). There are two clans that make up the Bhumihars in the region and these are divided on the basis of different gotras: Jalewaar and Chakwar. Kanhaiya Kumar belongs to the former. The only support that he could expect on the basis of kinship was from his own clan, but that too in a limited way. Several traders in the Begusarai town pointed out that Kanhaiya Kumar could not count on more that 30% of the share of the total votes from the Bhumihars. Thus, caste and kinship, in this case, were not going to translate into support for Kumar. It is in this sense that the election became a hyper-localised one. Even though at the national level there has been a David versus Goliath narrative for the election, at the ground level, the histories of violence, kinship, and people’s movements have played out. “‘Tukde Tukde Gang’, the ‘Vote Katua Party’ and the Spectacle on Social Media Elections have increasingly become a part of a “spectacle” where different social media platforms add to the existing political mobilisation and opinion formation. While social media was first utilised in 2004 (Kumar 2004), in 2019, it has reached a pitch where there seems to be a feedback loop between news media, cinema, and politics.