Bullets Over Bihar

Why has violence been a routine way of practising politics in this state?

- By Tanvir Aeijaz

In the realm of politics and violence it is commonly assumed that where politics ends is where violence begins. That politics and violence are opposites, because violence is sheerly instrumental and politics in a democracy is, so to say, tasked to deal, dialogically, to keep violence at bay. Hannah Arendt's essay 'On Violence' makes explicit that the violence is practiced through instruments—atom bombs, guns, machines and so on—and is directed against the 'others', not as subjects, but as objects, who can be manipulated by its use or threat. The very idea of violence, for her, goes against the very grain of communicative and interactive politics, against the participatory role of citizens in common life, and against the formation of public good. Good democracies, therefore, experience less political violence than autocracies or bad democracies.

Political violence in Bihar has been instrumental in nature, particularly during the run-up to elections, and in the electoral campaigns for political mobilisations. Where politics and violence are seen, not as opposites, but as part of the continuing political processes. In the land of Buddha, we have witnessed perhaps one of the worst caste and communal violence, both in terms of scale and intensity. And, of course, there is this regular supply of everyday forms of violence rooted in patriarchy, poverty and pelf. What seems to be in short supply is justice, social-justice. Why is it that violence has been a routine way of practising politics in Bihar? Why is it that Bihar is replete with the stories of violence, tyranny amidst hope?

The Surrealistic Tales of Violence

During the colonial period, the decades of the 1930s and 1940s, Bihar was rife with the popular peasant protests (as Kisan Sabhas), led by the impressive leader Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, against the powerful