A Bloodied Election

Bihar's enduring legacy of political violence is intertwined with caste politics, where assertions of the dominated sections carved out a political space for the strongmen deployed to suppress them

- Md Asghar Khan IS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT FROM JHARKHAND

THE murder of a Jan Suraaj Party campaigner during a rally on October 30 in Mokama, in Bihar’s Patna district, six days ahead of the first phase of assembly polls has brought the spotlight back on the violence that has long dogged electoral politics in the state, where stories of gang rivalries, caste feuds and political vendetta resurface every election season.

The police investigation after Dularchand Yadav was run over and killed while campaigning for his party's candidate revealed that the motive stemmed from a local rivalry with the Janata Dal (United) candidate and influential strongman Anant Singh, who was named along with several others as the accused in the first information report (FIR).

Four days later, just 48 hours before polling, Naveen Kushwaha, the elder brother of a local JD(U) leader, Niranjan, was found dead with his wife and daughter under mysterious circumstances in their home in Purnea in north Bihar’s Seemanchal region. Naveen had run for the Lok Sabha in 2009 on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket. Investigating the possibility of accidental death, suicide or triple murder, the police questioned several people, but no murder charge has yet been established.

Politics in these parts has always smelled of gunpowder, and the recent incidents have only reopened old wounds as a reminder that violence remains the accepted grammar of politics. The blood shed here continues a political tradition in which caste equations, rival ideologies and electoral interests converge to legitimise violence, giving the region its lasting reputation for a “gun culture”. What were once decided in the caste-based panchayats of the past are now fought as battles for political dominance, also on social media.