“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” — Milan Kundera
Patna, currently in the throes of an election and stared down by giant billboards exhorting the people to make the right choice, is, in essence, like the rest of Bihar, which is being asked to choose memories that best represent its realities.
Nistula Hebbar As both alliances seek purchase in new and slightly uncertain partnerships, hoping that these may propel them to power, the exercise of campaigning for the elections has become a memory game. What one remembers of the past has become a Rashomon-like exercise in perspectivism.
The BJP, trying to forge an ambitious upper caste-Dalit-non Yadav Backward Classes alliance with Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awaam Morcha and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party is evoking the spirit of the Lalu Prasad government of the late 1990s as a cautionary tale of what could happen if he is allowed to return to power.
Time of violence
The 1990s of Bihar was a time of extreme caste violence in the State in the countryside. Upper caste armies clashed with Maoist insurgents with impunity, resulting in massacres such as the Laxmanpur Bathe incident in which, in December 1997, 58 Dalits were killed allegedly by the upper caste Ranvir Sena. This occurred despite the fact that Mr. Prasad’s ascension to the chair of Chief Minister was an assertion of the backward classes not seen in Bihar before.
“ The 1990s of Bihar was a time of extreme caste violence in the State in the countryside. ”
The lawlessness of those years is evoked to describe the reign of terror of Mr. Prasad’s henchmen like Shahabuddin of Siwan, or his brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav, who reportedly sacked automobile showrooms in Patna on the occasion of Mr. Prasad’s elder daughter Misa’s wedding. The BJP is projecting itself as the bulwark that prevented a further disintegration of the State, and constantly pointing out that Mr. Kumar had, by joining forces with Mr. Prasad, betrayed not only the cause of Dalits, but all those who suffered under aggressive Yadav rule.
“ Which of these memories will dominate and who is in a position to assert this dominance decisively? ”
The alternative to electing a regime that would put a question mark on hard-won privileges and self-respect by the backward classes of the State is the combined rule of a kinder, gentler Mr. Prasad, felled by his conviction in the fodder scam, fronted by Mr. Kumar, who will run the government.
Which of these memories will dominate and who is in a position to assert this dominance decisively? Or is it, as Susan Sontag said of collective memory, “part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.”
The result in Bihar, quite apart from its implications for realpolitik in the rest of the country, will decide whose story will prevail.
nistula.hebbar@thehindu.co.in
