The political foundation in Bihar is caste which carries the burden of its own class
Bihar’s politics continues to be shaped by deep caste hierarchies where class and caste intersect, with Dalits remaining at the bottom of both social and economic structures.
Despite their sizable population and history of political assertion, Dalits remain fragmented by sub-caste divisions and largely excluded from real power, even under leaders promising social justice.
Ahead of the 2025 Assembly polls, Chirag Paswan’s LJP (RV) faces the challenge of expanding beyond its Paswan-Dalit base and balancing its alliance with the NDA against its claim of representing Dalit interests.
The more things change in Bihar, the more they remain the same. Not because people are averse to change, but their level of acquiescence to the so-called ‘system’ is such that they accept, at the end of the day, the status-quo as something which has been ordained to them. This could be seen in the formation and the affectivity of the caste-based associations and groups. The power-relations, embedded in the caste-ties, controls impulses, emotions and motivations so firmly that any socio-cultural transformation is met either with oppression or political violence. The caste wars in Bihar are replete with the stories of tyranny and hope.
Bihar is, to put it succinctly, a history of a ‘surrealistic tale of violence’, a politics of ‘an inversion of insurgent citizenship’, a sociology of the ‘construction of docile bodies through hegemony’ and an economics of ‘a behavioural irrationalism in the dismal rules of the game’. The stakes of State-power, caste and class essentially try to sustain, what Jeffrey Witsoe once remarked about Bihar, a ‘feudal democracy’. Typically, Bihar is a case of ‘class-in-caste’ politics, wherein the political foundation is caste which carries the burden of its own class.
Tanvir Aeijaz
Courtesy : Outlook India
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