Bihar election: The unsteady boat of Mukesh Sahani's ambitions

On November 4, Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) chief Mukesh Sahani left many stunned when, at a hurriedly convened press conference in Darbhanga, he declared that his brother, Santosh Sahani, was “withdrawing” from the electoral contest in the district’s Gaura Bauram constituency to pave the way for Afzal Ali’s victory.

A day earlier, Ali had been expelled by the RJD for refusing to bow out from the electoral race in Gaura Bauram after Tejashwi Yadav publicly endorsed Santosh as the “official candidate” of the Grand Alliance from the seat.

Also read | Bihar polls: Decoding Grand Alliance's Tejashwi-Sahani gamble

Mukesh’s decision, which he dubbed a “sacrifice for a larger cause”, was intriguing for many reasons; perhaps even more befuddling than his move to not contest the polls himself despite being officially projected as the Grand Alliance’s deputy chief ministerial candidate.

Mukesh’s moves baffle allies

For one, Mukesh had bargained hard for the seat to be given to the VIP, and before he declared Santosh as the candidate, it was widely believed that the RJD was keen on having Mukesh contest from Gaura Bauram.

By endorsing RJD rebel Afzal Ali in the constituency on the final day of campaigning, even though Santosh’s name still appeared on the EVM when votes were cast on November 6, as the EC’s deadline for withdrawing nominations had long passed, Mukesh also chipped away at the already minuscule number of seats his party was contesting in the polls.

Though the VIP had been allotted 15 seats in the seat-sharing deal, two of his candidates were rejected by the Election Commission during scrutiny of nomination papers, and a third was not contesting on the party symbol but as an independent. As such, by bowing out of Gaura Bauram too, the VIP chief was effectively shrinking his party’s seat tally even before voting for the elections could take place.

The most puzzling question in all of this, though, is what impact Mukesh’s intriguing moves would likely have on the Grand Alliance’s bid to consolidate votes of the Nishad community, which comprises 9.6 per cent of Bihar’s population, using the VIP chief’s caste identity of a Mallah – a Nishad sub-caste – as bait. Long before the Grand Alliance members settled their competing seat-allocation claims, it was evident that Mukesh was being assiduously courted by RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, not for his individual electoral heft, for he had none.

Nishad votes not intact

Rather, it was the assumption that the former Bollywood set designer’s political image as the ‘son of Mallah’ would be an asset to the Opposition bloc, Tejashwi in particular, as having Mukesh at the electoral vanguard could widen the alliance’s vote catchment area beyond the ‘committed’ Muslim-Yadav (MY) combination that together comprises over 32 per cent of Bihar’s population.

“The nearly two dozen sub-castes that collectively make up the 9.6 per cent population bloc of Nishads have never been an organised voting bloc in Bihar. Unlike the RJD and the JD-U, which have their captive MY and Luv-Kush (Koeri-Kushwaha) vote banks, respectively, no political party can claim exclusive rights on the Nishad vote. The Nishad vote has always split, going to candidates from their community irrespective of party affiliations or to parties that promised to do something for them. It was this void that Mukesh Sahani hoped to fill by flaunting his ‘son of Mallah’ identity and floating a party that has nav-chhap (boat) as its symbol and it is for this reason that both NDA and Grand Alliance have been so keen on doing business with him even though the VIP’s actual electoral footprint is negligible,” says Prof Rama Shankar Singh, author of Nadi Putra: Uttar Bharat Mein Nishad Aur Nadi.

Also read | Last-minute truce keeps Mukesh Sahani in Bihar Grand Alliance

For Singh, the Grand Alliance’s decision to project Mukesh as its deputy CM choice ahead of the polls had the potential to “consolidate Nishad votes and steer them towards the Opposition”. Yet, events of the past few weeks, beginning with the VIP being allotted only a fraction of Bihar’s seats and culminating with Santosh’s last-minute withdrawal from the contest in Gaura Bauram, in Singh’s view, “could squander any such possibility”.

With rivers and tributaries such as Ganga, Kosi, Mahananda, Gandak, Burhi Gandak, Bagmati, Son, Phaglu and Punpun flowing through different parts of Bihar, the Nishads, a caste conglomerate of sub-groups including Bind, Mallah, Kevat, Mukhiya, Chhai, Turha, Dhimar, Gangota, Manjhi and Ghatwar, are spread all across the state. In a sizeable chunk of Assembly constituencies that fall along riverbanks, the community’s population can vary from 5,000 to 30,000.

Nishad pride meets politics

In tight electoral contests, as the ongoing one is expected to be, a decisive tilt by the Nishads towards one party or the other could, thus, dictate the poll outcome. This is what made Mukesh’s VIP a lucrative ally for the Grand Alliance, which had polled just 11,150 votes less than the NDA in the 2020 Bihar elections. The VIP was then part of the NDA and had polled 6.39 lakh votes across the 11 seats it contested, of which it won four.

Having severed ties with the NDA after the BJP poached three of his MLAs in 2021, Mukesh spent the past few years projecting himself as a political face of the under-represented Nishads as a whole and not just a leader of Mallahs, who constitute just 2.6 per cent of Bihar’s population. Over the past two years, even though the share of seats RJD would bequeath to the VIP remained unclear, Mukesh made repeated public assertions that if and when the Grand Alliance comes to power, he would be the Deputy CM under Tejashwi.

Mukesh’s claim on the Deputy CM’s chair may have seemed comical to many – it still does, given his refusal to fight the polls and the meagre number of seats VIP is contesting, with victory looking evasive even on these – but Prof Rama Shankar Singh explains why a “historical and cultural perspective” justifies the VIP chief’s seemingly unreasonable demand.

“Historically, the Nishads, unlike the Dalits, have always held that they were part of the ruling class centuries ago, but over time, they were forced into social and economic backwardness. No Nishad folklore is ever complete without references to the Ramayana and tales of Nishad Raj (the Nishad king who helped Lord Rama cross the Ganga during his exile from Ayodhya). Then there are local traditions wherever there is a Nishad population of local Nishad kings and chieftains. So, in Nishad consciousness, there has always been the desire for a slice of power. When Mukesh Sahani says he is going to be made Deputy CM, he isn’t merely speaking about his ambition, but he is telling the Nishad community as a whole that this is their chance to get the slice of power they have long waited for,” Singh explains.

Caste currents, weak candidates

In the riverine belts of Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga districts, Singh’s treatise can be put to the test. Ashok Sahani, a fish vendor from Baruraj Assembly segment in Muzaffarpur, tells The Federal, “Every political party wants Nishad vote but none of them want to give us a share in power; why shouldn’t a Mallah ka beta (Mallah’s son) dream to become deputy CM or even CM of Bihar. The Yadavs in Bihar prospered when Laluji (RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav) became CM, Kurmis prospered when Nitish Kumar became CM; before that, all upper caste people used to be CM, and they worked for the people of their caste; if we get our man in government, then we will have someone to work for us too.”

Siyaram Kumar, who belongs to the Bind sub-caste, feels proud that “for the first time ever Nishads have the chance to vote on nav-chhap (boat)”; the VIP’s poll symbol that is intrinsic to the cultural identity of all Nishad sub-groups. A resident and voter of Darbhanga, Siyaram works at a local eatery in Muzaffarpur’s Moti Jheel area but had taken leave to return to his native town to vote on November 6, when half of Bihar queued up for the first phase of polling.

Also read | Grand Alliance battles chaos and crumbling unity ahead of Bihar polls

For Mukesh and his allies, testimonies like these by Ashok and Siyaram would be encouraging. Yet, these paint only half the portrait of the ongoing election and are easily misleading. The other half is one that the Grand Alliance seems determined to overlook; something it would likely regret when poll results pour in on November 14.

While Mukesh may have piqued the interests of his community, the limited success he has had in nurturing strong grassroots candidates for the few seats his party is contesting could cost him dear. More importantly, he seems to have overlooked that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD-U and the BJP have both walked the extra mile to keep Nishads happy ever since the VIP hopped out of the NDA’s boat to align with the Grand Alliance.

NDA courts Nishad loyalty

In the guise of aiding the riverine communities through various welfare schemes, Nitish has consistently targeted the Nishad community. In his many poll rallies in Bihar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has sought to appease Nishads by routinely paying tributes to Nishad Raj, Jubba Sahni and other historical and cultural icons of the community. In 2023, Nitish unveiled a life-size statue of Jubba Sahni, a revolutionary of the Indian freedom movement from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur who was hanged by the British at the Bhagalpur Jail, while Modi announced a financial assistance scheme for fishermen in Jubba Sahni’s name as part of the NDA’s poll manifesto last week.

The results of this largesse and outreach by the NDA are visible on the ground. At a makhana (foxnut) processing unit in the Kadwa Assembly segment of Katihar district, women voters from the Mallah and Kewat communities – all voters registered in various localities of Darbhanga – bluntly dissented with their male counterparts when this reporter asked who they would vote for. While the men seemed inclined to vote for the Grand Alliance because “son of Mallah will be the deputy CM”, the women said they would “vote for Nitish”.

“Sirf jaati dekh ke vote de denge kya? Hamara jaat ka hai toh kya hua, hamare liye kya kiya. Nitish ne paisa diya hai, bachcha log sabka padhai-likhai karaya hai, vote usi ko na denge (Will we just vote on caste? He may be from our caste, but what has he done for us? Nitish has given us money, he got our children educated, so we will vote for him),” said Saraswati when her husband, Narayan Sahni, told this reporter he would vote for the VIP candidate because “Mukesh Sahani is a mallah like us”.

Betrayal narrative gains traction

The momentum VIP had picked up in the early days of the campaign, in part also because seven of its 15 candidates announced before the scrutiny of nominations began were from various Nishad sub-castes, seems to be fast waning since the twist in the Gaura Bauram contest.

Also read | VIP chief Sahani bargains hard for more seats, Tejashwi gives him an ‘ultimatum’

Gajanan Sahani, a resident of Gaura Bauram, says VIP supporters are “convinced that Tejashwi Yadav backstabbed Mukesh Sahani”. “Santosh had to bow out of the race because the RJD people were sabotaging his campaign to help Afzal Ali win. First, Tejashwi forced Mukesh Sahani not to contest the election, and now he has made sure that Santosh also does not win. Tejashwi wants Mallah votes but does not want a son of Mallah to grow in Bihar politics and become his challenger in the future. This has sent a very wrong message. Nishads who wanted to vote for VIP here and for other Grand Alliance parties elsewhere are going to teach Tejashwi a lesson for this betrayal,” says Gajanan.