In Bihar, a Moment of Generational Change, The End of the Mandal Era and the Rise of a New Political Order
For a man destined to become one of India’s most storied and enduring politicians, Nitish Kumar had a rather bumpy and traumatic electoral start. Swept up in the post-Emergency fervour of 1977, Kumar, then a 26-year-old socialist idealist, decided to take the electoral plunge from Harnaut, a constituency in Bihar’s Nalanda district. The region was roiled at the time by intense clashes between Dalit farmhands, who were demanding better wages, working conditions, and land rights, and their landlords, who hailed from the same Kurmi caste as Kumar. It was a classic confrontation, the kind of struggle that defined the social and political landscape of the Hindi heartland.
By then, Indira Gandhi had been dramatically deposed in the general elections, and a wave of anti-Congress sentiment was sweeping the country. Facing Kumar in the assembly polls was another Kurmi, Bhola Singh, a family acquaintance who had driven Kumar and his new bride during their wedding in his Fiat just four years earlier. Kumar’s spirits were high. He had the endorsement of the Janata Party, the grand coalition that had defeated the Congress. Singh was running as an independent, seemingly with little chance.
Weeks before the June assembly polls, however, the calculations changed with horrifying suddenness. Around 11 am on a May day, a Kurmi strongman landlord and 60 of his associates marched into a Dalit hamlet called Belchi. They hunted down the leader of the peasant mobilisation, rounded up 11 men, tied them up, and threw them into a pyre, burning them alive. The massacre made Belchi a national name and catalysed the dramatic return of Indira Gandhi from the political wilderness. But it also singed the young Nitish Kumar. Facing a storm of condemnation from across the country, the Kurmi community in Harnaut coalesced into a defensive, inward-looking group. They were looking for a candidate who would defend the perpetrators of the atrocity, or at least not condemn them. The socialist Kumar hesitated, his ideology preventing him from embracing the cause of the oppressors. Bhola Singh, his opponent, had no such hesitation. He embraced the mantle of community defender and won the election handily.
The 1977 polls in Bihar were hailed across the country as the harbinger of a long-awaited social justice revolution. Karpoori Thakur, a legendary OBC leader, became chief minister, and a year later, he introduced a layered 26% reservation system for backward classes in government jobs. This path-breaking policy pre-empted, by nearly half a century, the current debates around sub-categorisation of OBC quotas. Yet, Kumar’s debacle in Harnaut shows that the ground realities of caste were far removed from the lofty, idealistic brand of social justice that was hung around the government of the day. The communities that would go on to agitate for greater representation and rights for themselves did not dither in being ruthless to those more vulnerable than them in the caste hierarchy. It would take another five years, and for the fervour of Belchi to finally wilt, before Kumar scored his first, and only, assembly election victory from the seat in 1985.
This profound and enduring contradiction—between the ideology of social justice and the brutal reality of caste oppression—became the hallmark of the so-called Mandal years, and of its two tallest and most consequential acolytes: Nitish Kumar and his friend-turned-foe-turned-friend Lalu Prasad Yadav. For 35 years, Bihar swung between these two men, their political fortunes, their rivalries, and their contrasting visions for the state. That era is now decisively over. With the imminent ascension of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the only major heartland state that had long eluded it, the socialist strain of politics that came to characterise Bihar, separated it from its more communally charged neighbour to the north, and made successive rulers in Delhi a junior partner to the “Mandal brothers,” is fading into history.
The two men, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, came up with contrasting responses to square the central contradiction between their stated ideals and the political reality they navigated. Lalu Prasad built on his swashbuckling, rustic, and theatrical image. He focused single-mindedly on dismantling the decades-old upper-caste stranglehold on the bureaucracy and the police force. He inverted the social logic of shame around the naked exercise of power, projecting himself as the champion of the backwards and the marginalized. But his measures were often punitive, and they focused heavily on corralling the spoils of power and patronage for his own socially numerous Yadav community. His profound disdain for modernity, for infrastructure, for governance, created a false and damaging dichotomy in the public mind between social dignity and effective governance. For him, the two seemed mutually exclusive.
Nitish Kumar, in contrast, built on his perceived weaknesses. Lacking the backing of a single, numerically dominant community, he built a coalition of extremes. He outsourced the task of wooing the upper-castes to his then-ally, the BJP, while he himself stitched together a base of the less-dominant and more numerous backward groups who were smarting from the rise and dominance of the Yadavs. He correctly diagnosed that the rule of law, a sense of safety and order, was a key confidence booster for vulnerable communities, and he tried to bypass the power of caste strongmen by entrusting governance to a professional bureaucracy. His “Naya Bihar” campaign promised development, infrastructure, and improved law and order. Yet, he was less than successful in actually reversing entrenched caste power. He appeared more interested in his own hold on the chief minister’s position than in building a truly new social order. And his “Naya Bihar” failed to expand the economic pie beyond a certain point, resulting in the ongoing crisis of mass economic migration and the choked aspirations of millions of young people who still see no future for themselves within the state.
The transition now underway comes at a moment when the very nature of caste politics is mutating in the Indian hinterland. As communities get more fragmented, as welfare delivery becomes more targeted through direct benefit transfers, and as private enterprise expands into rural areas, the old Mandal models of politics are fraying at the edges. Despite the decades of rhetoric around dignity and empowerment, the power of the Mandal era lay in the political emancipation of the numerically significant communities. These communities, once empowered, had no inherent interest in empowering those more vulnerable than themselves. This is the uncomfortable truth that the new politics must confront. This is why neither Nitish Kumar nor Lalu Prasad, for all their professed commitment to social justice, ever successfully pushed a single major case of caste massacre to justice, nor did they ever nurture a marginalised caste leader worth their salt. Their single-minded pursuit of power for themselves and their immediate circles ironically reflected the profound limits of socialist politics. It showed why the sudden, uncritical valorization of the Mandal era is a deeply ahistorical exercise.
Ruling a state that acted as the cradle of both anti-Delhi sentiment and the most potent form of caste politics is, for the BJP, both an instrumental and a deeply symbolic victory. With the Janata Dal (United) weakened and Nitish Kumar’s towering stature no longer an obstacle, the party can now begin to inject its ideology into a province that has largely resisted it. It can finally change its own image in the one state where it is still largely perceived as a party of the upper-castes. It can implement its brand of welfare-plus-Hindutva without the constant friction of Kumar’s presence. Unless the Rashtriya Janata Dal steps up in a significant way, Bihar—a state that introduced OBC quotas nearly two decades before the Mandal Commission’s recommendations were implemented—could well become the BJP’s backward classes laboratory. This would be especially significant on the thorny question of sub-categorisation of OBC quotas, and after the historic caste census concludes in 2027. With modernity and capital, the material reality of caste is bound to transform, and with it, politics will change. This is not just a political transition; it is a generational moment, marking the end of a 35-year-old era and the uncertain beginning of a new one.
Questions and Answers
Q1: What was the Belchi massacre, and how did it impact Nitish Kumar’s first election?
A1: Weeks before the 1977 Bihar assembly polls, a Kurmi landlord and his associates burned 11 Dalit men alive in Belchi. The massacre created a political storm. The Kurmi community in Harnaut, where Nitish Kumar was contesting, rallied defensively behind a candidate who would defend the perpetrators. Kumar, a socialist, hesitated to embrace this cause, while his opponent did, and won. The incident showed the gap between social justice rhetoric and the brutal reality of caste politics.
Q2: What were the key differences in the political approaches of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar?
A2: Lalu Prasad focused on dismantling the upper-caste stranglehold on institutions, using punitive measures and corralling patronage for his own Yadav community, but with a disdain for governance and modernity. Nitish Kumar focused on building a coalition of less-dominant backwards and upper-castes (via the BJP), prioritizing the rule of law and bureaucratic governance, but failed to reverse entrenched caste power or expand the economic pie, leading to mass migration.
Q3: What is the “central contradiction” of the Mandal era that the article highlights?
A3: The central contradiction is that the Mandal era’s politics of social justice was driven by the emancipation of numerically significant backward communities. Once empowered, these communities had no inherent interest in empowering those more vulnerable than them in the caste hierarchy. This was reflected in the failure of leaders like Kumar and Prasad to deliver justice in caste massacre cases or nurture marginalized caste leaders.
Q4: Why is the BJP’s impending rule in Bihar described as both an “instrumental and symbolic victory”?
A4: It is instrumental because, with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) weakened, the BJP can finally implement its ideology (welfare-plus-Hindutva) and its policies (like on OBC sub-categorisation) in a key state that long resisted it. It is symbolic because Bihar was the cradle of anti-Delhi and caste politics; ruling it allows the BJP to change its image from a party of upper-castes and mark the end of the socialist, Mandal-era political dominance.
Q5: What does the article mean by a “generational moment” in Bihar’s politics?
A5: The “generational moment” refers to the end of the 35-year era when Bihar’s politics was defined by the rivalry and contrasting visions of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. With the BJP’s ascension, that era is over. The transition coincides with a broader mutation of caste politics, where old Mandal models are fraying due to welfare targeting and economic change, and a new, uncertain political order is beginning to take shape.
