How did the Second Round of Voting go in Bihar?
Caste cleavage-driven discrimination (including intra-Muslim inequity) in India is just as institutional as racism is in the USA. However, in a constituency where both Muslims and Hindus live in abject poverty, communalists like Owaisi and Akhtarul Iman have a fertile ground to play politics on the issue of Muslims’ backwardness and brighten their own future.
In the Second Round of elections held on 26 April 2024, the voting percentage got better than the first one, still lower than 2019. The decline in Bihar was to the extent of 4% against the national average of 6%. In Uttar Pradesh, the drop was an alarming 7.2% (from 62.1% in 2019 to 54.9% in 2024).
Indifference to the issues or the candidates; scorching heat; no central theme or narrative – only the local or tribal considerations; voting on the day of prayer (Friday) for the mosque-going Muslims were cited as the primary reasons for lack of enthusiasm among voters.
Muslims, generally, are easily organized and guided to the polling booths on a Friday. Either to or from their congregation and prayer at their mosques, they usually cast their votes. Just as the Black Churches in the USA are the leading institutions to drive their congregants to the polling stations, Muslims in the mosques anywhere in the world, are directed to the polling booths on election days. In the electoral process, the minorities always have more excitement and a sense of active participation to vote whereas the majority have a sense of complacency.
The Lok Sabha constituencies that went to polls in the second phase were on the Eastern side of the border of Bihar mostly adjacent to the state of West Bengal. A tiny part of the land at the North-Eastern tip borders with a neighboring Muslim- majority country, Bangladesh. The pressure of the dense Muslim population of West Bengal and Bangladesh has thickened the Muslim demography in the bordering constituencies of Katihar, Purnia and Kishanganj (also known as Seemanchal) where the Muslim population ranges from 40% to 70%.
The concentration of Muslims in these areas motivated a Muslim Member of Parliament from Hyderabad (in a Southern state of Telangana), Asaduddin Owaisi, the president of an Islamist party, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) to come to Seemanchal and deepen his party’s roots in the region. He fielded one candidate, the party’s state unit chief, from Kishanganj.
The excitement among the Muslim voters was noticeably more than the Hindu voters, yet the Muslim-dominant areas also registered a lower turnout.
As you travel from South to North, Banka had only 54% voter turnout compared to 58.60% in 2019. Likewise, Bhagalpur had 51% against 57.17% in 2019, the lowest in the second phase. In Purnia, there was a significant fall from 65.37% (2019) to 59.94% (2024), Katihar (64.60% in 2024 as against 67.62% in 2019). In Kishanganj, the voting percentage fell from 66.35% in 2019 to 64% in 2024.
Slightly better than the first round of the poll, the average decline in voters’ participation in Seemanchal hovered around 4.60% in the second phase.
A Lackluster Election
Political observers believed that in the absence of major emotive issues, this election had become lackluster. In 2014, there was a wave among voters to draft the services of a successful Chief Minister from Gujarat to the Center. Except for the southern states, the nation gave a resounding ndorsement to the call, abki baar Modi sarkar (Modi Government, this time!). In 2019, just before elections, an enemy attack on the Indian military convoy in Pulwama, Kashmir, had almost united the voters to give another term to PM Modi.
This time around, no sensational issue to tie the voters. The elements like the ‘Modi magic’, the Hindu-Muslim divide, or external threat to India’s defense didn’t seem to have played any role. Not even the completion of Ram temple in Ayodhya in January, 2024 could galvanize all Hindus toward unanimously voting in hordes.
Other factors for a lower turn out are believed to be the slightly diminishing role of money in elections, campaign – more through digital social media than personal contact, anti-incumbency against the sitting Members of Parliament and perhaps the complacency among voters about the inevitability of Modi’s return for the third term.
Since there was no central theme, in 2024, voting largely turned out to be on the basis of local considerations – the castes, their equation and leadership being the major ones. In 2014 and 2019, voters hardly talked about castes and their relative strengths in constituencies of Bihar; they were driven by the single motivation to elect Modi and further strengthen his hands for the second term.
In the absence of nationally unifying issues, the voters in Bihar fell back upon all socially divisive issues like caste consideration in distribution of tickets. Arbitrarily selected candidates across all parties, including the BJP, and their imposition on the voters created a social rift within the political alliances that translated into a general voters’ apathy.
Voters’ lack of enthusiasm was evidenced not only in Bihar but in other places also. Hema Malini, an iconic Hollywood figure and the sitting M.P. from Mathura couldn’t muster even 50% of voters’ turnout. Compared to 2019, the voting percentage declined by 14%. Mathura is expected to be one of the Hindus’ forthcoming battlegrounds for reclaiming the Krishna temple, a part of which was converted into the Shahi Eidgah mosque in 1670 by Aurangzeb, a Mughal emperor.
Bihar Constituencies Going to Poll in the Second Phase
Banka: Seen against the background of all elections being ‘local,’ in Banka, the result of a contest between the two Yadav candidates put up by the two major alliances (the INDI and NDA) was to be decided by who did the Rajputs support.
The overwhelming number of the Yadavs (a Backward caste) in the constituency was likely to split, thereby necessitating the addition of another major social group, the Rajputs (an Upper caste) to tip the balance.
Bhagalpur: Ajeet Sharma, an upper caste Bhumihar Member of Legislative Assembly put up by the Congress party, was expected to get support not only from his own caste but from other upper castes also. The upper castes are the traditional core voters of the BJP. The Brahmins were reported to be hurt because their caste representative, Ashwini Chaubey, a sitting MP from Buxar and a member of PM Modi’s cabinet was denied the BJP ticket. The BJP local unit – its rank and file in general – regarded Bhagalpur as belonging to their own party-share, and didn’t like this constituency to be allocated to their alliance partner, JDU. They didn’t put their heart and soul in the campaign of the JDU’s incumbent MP, Ajay K Mandal. If the JDU candidate were defeated, the local BJP leaders calculated, the constituency would be returned to them. Ajay Mandal was struggling against the anti-incumbency attitude of the voters as well.
Katihar: Like Bhagalpur, Katihar also went to the alliance partners of the BJP and the RJD. The incumbent MP was retained by the JDU; the Congress fielded its senior leader and ex-central minister, Tariq Anwar, who had once defected to the Sharad Pawar’s National Congress Party (NCP) and became its MP. In a constituency with around 40% Muslim voters, not all Hindu voters were against a Muslim candidate representing the Congress – Tariq was never a communally polarizing figure. There were, however, indications of non-cooperation within the ranks of both the alliances. As the disappointed BJP cadre and its disgruntled leaders didn’t seem to work hard for the JDU candidate, denial of an RJD ticket to a reputed ex-Rajya Sabha Muslim aspirant, Ashfaq Karim, many of his Muslim followers were likely to veer away from the Congress candidate. On the completion of his Rajya Sabha term in March, Ashfaq was possibly given hopes of a Lok Sabha ticket by the RJD. However, left in the lurch, he resigned from the RJD and joined the JDU. He exposed the hypocrisy of the RJD that, following the caste survey findings, had promised of giving “proportionate representation to all sections of the society.” Like Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in U.P., the Yadavs in Bihar have also greatly reduced the number of Muslims on their list.
Purnia: This constituency hit the national headlines for many reasons. Popularly called Pappu Yadav, a formidable strongman ex-MP, once in jail on suspicion of having a rival Communist Legislator assassinated, merged his small political outfit with the Indian National Congress Party. He had assurances that he would be the RJD-led alliance-nominated candidate from Purnia. An alarmed Lalu Yadav, with his family, camped in Delhi, lobbied with Sonia Gandhi and eventually blocked Pappu Yadav from getting the Congress nomination. Lalu Yadav ensured no rival Yadav leadership ever emerged within the RJD who could challenge his son, Tejaswi Yadav, down the line. A frustrated Pappu Yadav filed his nomination as an Independent candidate from Purnia, making the contest triangular.
Lalu Yadav got a weak Extremely Backward Caste lady MLA, Bima Bharati, defected from the JDU and fielded her as the alliance candidate anticipating it will be a straight contest against the JDU two-term MP, Santosh K Kushwaha. Pappu Yadav, who had cultivated popular support not only among the Yadavs and the Muslims, but also the general Purnia voters, wasn’t tamped down by the mounting efforts of Lalu Yadav and his son. To prevent Pappu Yadav from winning, Tejaswi even suggested that the voters could vote for Kushwaha, if they thought Bima Bharati couldn’t win. Here is the RJD chief ministerial candidate asking voters to vote for his arch-enemy, the JDU-BJP candidate because that way he would keep his leadership-rival away. Lesson is – Nothing sustained against personal ambition.
Kishanganj: In the Kishanganj Lok Sabha constituency that has a 70% Muslim population, all major party candidates were expected to be Muslims. In 2019, the NDA swept all Lok Sabha seats from Bihar except for Kishanganj that went into the column of the Congress party. In 2024, the incumbent, Mohammad Jawed is again a Congress candidate from the RJD-led alliance. Pitted against him is the JDU candidate from the NDA, Mujahid Alam. What could be a straight contest between the two major alliances is likely to be upset by a third party candidate, Akhtarul Iman of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).
Nicknamed as “Bihar ka Owaisi,” he gets good coverage through social media. To political observers and Muslims, he appears to be making the right noises as he talks about discrimination against Muslims. “Why should a political party be not based on Muslims as a faith, caste, community or a social group when there are parties based on Hindu caste identities like Paswan, Yadav, Mallah, Ravidas and others?” By mentioning this, however, he throws a challenge to the Hindu leaders: Why do they let the Hindus splinter based on castes that leads to mushrooming of political parties?
He applauds formation of multiple parties based on individual castes because each one of them has improved their political standing after they had a party and an influential leader. Mukesh Sahni is the latest in the last two election cycles. In addition to improving his own visibility in politics, he has been championing the cause of his fishermen (Mallah) caste.
Caste cleavage-driven discrimination (including intra-Muslim inequity) in India is just as institutional as racism is in the USA. However, in a constituency where both Muslims and Hindus live in abject poverty, communalists like Owaisi and Akhtarul Iman have a fertile ground to play politics on the issue of Muslims’ backwardness and brighten their own future.
One of the many thoughts that the AIMIM candidate expressed got my attention. I wondered how deeply a section of the Muslims of India was Islamized in a very distorted way. It warranted increased effort on the part of educationists like us to save Muslims from Islamism.
Akhtarul Iman demanded, Muslim students shouldn’t be asked to do Surya-Namaskar in their morning Yoga exercises at public schools. In a Hindu cultural environment of his native land, he could very well be reconciliatory. Surya-Namaskar is a light version of physical exercise that every school kid could do without invoking its association with the ancient Hindu culture or Hindutva. Surya- Namaskar i.e.,‘salutation of the Sun,’ is a practice of expressing devotion to the Sun God.
The Islamists must be aware that in their faith the Moon represented “the guidance of God (Allah) on the path through life.” Respecting the Moon’s counterpart, the Sun, shouldn’t be a taboo in the minds of Indian Muslims.
“The Sun is often a prime attribute of or is identified with the Supreme”, they could very well reason. However, the fundamentalist Islamist teachings tell Muslims that they shouldn’t do it because worshiping the Sun is “paganism.”
Akhtarul Iman’s rejection of Surya Namaskar exposed his repugnance to anything Hindu. Even if this is a Hindu tradition, why the Muslims could not embrace that to express their harmony with the Hindus just as the Hindus go to a Dargah or a mosque and offer flowers, Chadar and prayer?
Impact of election campaigns on voters with regard to the social, cultural or communal issues will be known when votes are tallied next month.
