Bihar election: Why Seemanchal's political landscape appears set to change

They comprise just 24 of Bihar’s 243 Assembly seats but the four districts of Araria, Purnia, Kishanganj and Katihar, which collectively form the state’s Seemanchal region, are a microcosm of their own. The rot of administrative apathy, the curse of crippling socio-economic backwardness and the uncertainties of communal and caste faultlines that define the rest of Bihar each apply to Seemanchal too but with visibly greater severity.

With its high Muslim population – homogenous by faith but diverse in the cultural and linguistic identities of Surjapuri, Shershahbadi and Kulhaiya Muslims – and the porous interstate and international borders it shares with Bengal and Nepal, respectively, ruefully affording India’s current ruling masters a despicable electoral opportunity to brand citizens as “infiltrators (ghuspaithiye)”, Seemanchal, to for the perspicacious, seems not merely an outlier but an outcast in the Bihar story.

NDA's dominance

To anyone who may harbour the notion that Seemanchal’s sizeable Muslim population – 39 per cent in Purnia, 43 per cent in Araria, 44.5 per cent in Katihar and 68 per cent in Kishanganj – makes the region an easy catch for the Opposition’s Grand Alliance of the RJD, Congress and Left parties; it does not.

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Ironic as it may seem, the past two decades have largely been of NDA dominance here, with the 2015 election, in which JD-U’s Nitish Kumar aligned with the Grand Alliance, being an aberration. The 2010 elections had seen the BJP and JD-U sweep 17 of Seemanchal’s 24 seats while the 2015 polls saw the tables turn with the Grand Alliance, bolstered by Nitish’s inclusion, sweeping across 18 seats. The 2020 polls saw the NDA outperforming its rival once again, bagging 12 seats against the Grand Alliance’s seven, thanks in no small measure to Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, which walked away with five seats in its stunning Bihar poll debut.

Five years on, while nothing seems to have changed in Seemanchal’s socio-economic deprivation, the political landscape appears poised for change. New rules of political engagement are emerging – dictated not by the powers that be but by a proletariat eager to reject alike purveyors of communal hate and a self-styled messiah who arrived five years ago promising deliverance only to see four of his five elected lieutenants abandon ship within months.

Frustration against spiralling unemployment, poverty and the lack of any infrastructure – civic, medical or educational – in most parts of the region, save for Purnia town, are palpable. Unlike the rest of Bihar, there is also a resonance here of the Opposition’s campaign against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), albeit, no longer against the supposed ‘cleansing’ of electoral rolls per se but over Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s continuing attempts at branding Seemanchal’s Muslims as ghuspaithiya.

“There will be no split in vote this time, barring maybe in a few constituencies because of individual candidates. Seemanchal will neither support those calling its people ghuspaithiya nor those who have come from Hyderabad to play the BJP’s Hindu-Muslim game. The vote this time will be for communal harmony and for livelihood issues – jobs, welfare, hospitals,” says Mohammed Sheesh, who runs a franchise of Kidzee schools in Kishanganj district.

Locals say Nitish govt under BJP's control

Sheesh believes the Grand Alliance is “poised for a sweep” across the four Assembly segments of Kishanganj – Thakurganj, Bahadurganj, Kishanganj and Kochadhaman. He, however, concedes that some seats, like Kishanganj and Jokihat in Araria district, could see a “close contest” due to multi-pronged contests between the NDA, Grand Alliance, Jan Suraaj and AIMIM nominees who have an independent political standing.

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At a snacks shop in Pothiya block of Kishanganj, tea garden worker Hafizur Rahman, a voter of the Thakurganj constituency, and Kochadhaman residents Anees Alam and Pradeep Yadav are agitatedly chatting about the prospects of Owaisi’s AIMIM.

In 2020, two of the five seats AIMIM won in the state were from the Kishanganj district – Bahadurganj and Kochadhaman; both with massive margins. The party had also bagged the Amour and Baisi seats of Purnia district and Araria’s Jokihat seat. Months later, barring AIMIM state chief and Amour MLA Akhtarul Iman, the other four – Mohammed Anzar (Bahadurganj), Shahnawaz Alam (Jokihat), Ruknuddin Ahmad (Baisi) and Mohammed Izhar (Kochadhaman) – switched to the RJD. In the elections due on Tuesday (November 11), Iman is once again the AIMIM’s candidate in Amour while Shahnawaz, son of former Union minister and late RJD stalwart Taslimuddin, is the RJD’s candidate in Jokihat against his own brother Sarfaraz Alam, a Jan Suraaj candidate, and the AIMIM’s Murshid Alam.

“Hindus and Muslims have always lived together peacefully in Seemanchal. There may be a caste divide among Hindus here and among Muslims, there may at times be some friction between Surjapuri and Shershahbadi, but there is never communal polarisation. BJP is trying to change this by calling Muslims ghuspaithiya; how are they ghuspaithiya when they have always been living here? Even the Election Commission could not find any ghuspaithiya after the SIR. The only ghuspaithiya here are BJP people and that Hyderabad wala (Owaisi),” says Pradeep.

Hafizur joins in to say, “lot of Muslims came under Owaisi’s influence last time… RJD aur Congress se naaraazgi bhi thi (there was resentment against Congress and RJD also) but then all AIMIM MLAs switched to RJD… there are only two contenders for power in Bihar, Nitish (the chief minister’s name is invariably used here as a synonym for the ruling NDA) and the gathbandhan (Grand Alliance); we don’t have a problem with Nitish but a vote for him is a vote for BJP, which we cannot do (sic) and voting for Owaisi is a waste.”

There is food for thought for Nitish and his JD-U too. While the JD-U’s Muslim candidates in recent elections may not have struck gold at the hustings, locals openly admit that they prefer Nitish over Tejashwi as Chief Minister. Ask them why they don’t vote for his party in the Muslim-dominated seats and the reply is unanimous – because Nitish is no longer in control of his government; the BJP is.

'Modi not wrong in raking up infiltrator issue'

“Nitish bura nahi hai par woh BJP ke saath hai (Nitish is not bad but he is BJP’s ally),” says Mohammed Taufeeq, a meat seller in Kharia village of Jokihat.

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“The BJP controls him completely now. It was not like this before. Earlier, when Nitish was in control, Muslims used to vote for his candidates. Now the BJP has the remote… In seats where the population of Hindus and Muslims is more even and JD-U fields a candidate, Muslims still vote in Nitish’s name but this time I don’t think even that will happen because everyone feels BJP will not let Nitish become CM,” Taufeeq adds.

In several Assembly segments of Araria, Katihar and Purnia, where the population of Hindus and Muslims is either more evenly distributed or the former outnumbers the latter, Taufeeq’s observation bears out. For instance, in the Dalit-reserved seats of Raniganj (Araria district) and Banmankhi (Purnia district) or Purnia’s general category seats of Dhamdaha and Rupauli, where Hindus outnumber Muslims, one will invariably find Muslim voters openly professing faith in Nitish’s leadership and admitting that they voted for JD-U in past elections before they announce that their vote this time is for the Grand Alliance.

The reasons they cite range from need to restore communal harmony to lack of Seemanchal’s development in 20 years of Nitish rule and from Tejashwi’s promise of giving a sarkari naukri (government job) in every household to his alliance’s pledge of opening schools, hospitals, colleges and industries in the region.

For the Grand Alliance, however, the visible consolidation of Muslim votes behind it is no guarantee of a clean sweep in Seemanchal either. Despite running a high-pitched campaign promising empowerment of backward castes and Dalits – the second most dominant conglomerate in Seemanchal after the Muslims – the Grand Alliance and NDA seem evenly keeled to secure support of these two crucial blocs.

The BJP’s ghuspaithiya narrative may have convinced Muslims to rally behind the Grand Alliance instead of giving Owaisi’s AIMIM and Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj a chance, but it would be folly to assume that the NDA hasn’t earned more determined support of its traditional voters among Hindu communities.

In Purnia town’s bustling Bhatta Bazaar, guest house owner Arvind Kumar tells The Federal that there was “nothing wrong” in Modi raking up the infiltrator bogey. “These people”, says Kumar, derisively referring to Muslims of Seemanchal, many of them who speak the Surjapuri and Shershahbadi dialects that are variously influenced by Bangla, Maithili and Urdu, “need to be kept under check; they are all Bangladeshi but have got fake certificates to claim they are Indians”.

“There is no doubt that Muslims and Yadavs this time are completely with the Grand Alliance in Seemanchal, which may help the RJD and Congress improve its tally but in seats with higher Dalit and non-Yadav OBC population, the NDA is giving a tough fight… the two main reasons for this are the ghuspaithiya narrative and Nitish’s goodwill. This time, more than Muslim consolidation, I feel Hindu consolidation will determine Seemanchal outcome. If the Grand Alliance manages to take away a chunk of backward caste and Dalit vote, which does look possible right now, it will do well here even if in the rest of the state the NDA performs much better,” says Girindranath Jha, a Purnia-based political commentator.