Patna/New Delhi: On 26 October 2023, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav walked into the premises of Patna’s Sadaqat Ashram, where the Congress was holding an event to mark the birth anniversary of Bihar’s first chief minister, Shri Krishna Sinha.
In many ways, for Lalu Prasad Yadav, and more importantly for the Congress, the moment marked a full circle in the party’s political journey in Bihar—from the heyday of its sweeping domination to its long, steady decline.
After all, Sadaqat Ashram in Patna has been a silent witness to over a century of the party’s political history, first as a hub of the freedom movement, and later, as the headquarters of the Congress’s Bihar unit.
Established in 1921 by Maulana Mazharul Haque, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, the premises became a hub of supporting the national movement. The inauguration of Bihar Vidyapith, as a part of the Non-Cooperation Movement, on the premises turned it into a centre promoting indigenous education amid the boycott of British institutions.
Decades later, India’s first President, Rajendra Prasad, spent his final months on the premises after retiring from public life. As the nerve centre of the Congress in Bihar, the ashram has seen the ebb and flow of the party’s fortunes in the state, where it has remained in the political wilderness since losing power in 1990.
At the recent event, Lalu Prasad Yadav lavished praise on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for upholding the politics of social justice. “We kept the flag of social justice high, and that is what Rahul Gandhi is also doing,” he declared.
The irony of the moment was not lost on political observers, on the veterans of the Bihar Congress, least of all, as they stood smiling in the audience.
“Here was the man who finished us in Bihar, now handing out certificates of praise to us. That too on the soil of Sadaqat Ashram. It was deeply humiliating,” a senior Congress leader told ThePrint, surveying the largely empty courtyard of the ashram.
Yet, can the Congress’s decline in Bihar be attributed solely to the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav, riding the wave of Mandal politics and the assertion of backward classes? Or, was the party’s fall a tale foretold?
An undefeatable formula
After Independence, the Congress party, from a distance, looked like an invincible, towering giant, which could eclipse even the shadow of its rivals. It helped that its rivals on the Left were deeply divided.
It held its pincer-grip on Bihar with what seemed like an undefeatable formula. It had the support of the upper castes, 15.4 percent of the state’s population, according to the 1931 Census; the Scheduled Castes (16 percent); and Muslims (14.6 percent).
The reasons why each of these groups supported the Congress were easy to understand. For the upper castes (UC), the Congress was the party of and for their people. Through the 1952, 1957 and 1962 elections, 51.1 percent, 46.2 percent and 49 percent, respectively, of the Congress MLAs in the Bihar assembly were upper castes, despite the state having a mere 14 percent UC population.
For the Scheduled Castes, the Congress, for many years, remained the party of Mahatma Gandhi. Despite reserved constituencies, the SCs tended to defer to leaders from their sub-castes, who, in turn, were loyal to Gandhi’s party. In Bihar, reserved constituencies, as argued by Francine R. Frankel in the book Dominance and State Power in Modern India, had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the political subordination of SC MLAs to upper caste leaders in the Congress, thereby arresting any broad-based political initiative by the community to come into its own.
In the immediate aftermath of Partition, Muslims were a fear-stricken community. Unlike Dalits, they did not even have reserved constituencies. Moreover, their national loyalty was suspect. On their part, their safest bet was the party of Mahatma Gandhi that kept the Hindu communal parties at bay. As a result, the beleaguered community relied en masse on the Congress. For its part, the Congress picked “pliable” Muslims to represent the community, keeping it within the Congress fold.
“It was an absolutely invincible formula, till it lasted,” says senior Bihar-based journalist and author, Nalin Verma. “With the upper castes, Scheduled Castes and Muslims with it, defeating the Congress was unimaginable, especially at a time when there was no OBC consciousness, politically.”
The OBC consciousness would reach its crescendo with the Mandal politics of the early 1990s. It, however, had been in the making in Bihar for decades. It was a politics the Congress also had a role in creating.
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‘Rise of Congressi Yadavs’
In 1963, the then-Chief Minister of Bihar, K.B. Sahay, who belonged to the Kayastha community, made a noteworthy speech.
In a telling departure from the conventional logics of Bihar’s caste politics, Sahay referred to Sushil Kumar Bage, a Scheduled Tribe MLA, as ‘my right hand’, and to Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, a Scheduled Caste MLA, as ‘my left hand’.
The speech was a cue to the politics Sahay was going to perfect in the years to come, one that would indirectly and gradually become the party’s undoing in the state it hitherto had an unbreakable grip on.
To an outsider, the Congress of the 1960s would have seemed the perfect embodiment of upper caste interests. Politics, governance, bureaucracy, police, cities, villages—the Brahmins, Rajputs and Bhumihars controlled everything in Bihar.
For instance, even though Bihar was one of the first states in the country to abolish zamindari in 1950, giving it the appearance of magnanimity towards the Backward Classes and the landless, little changed on the ground. Feudal families maintained their control over land through innovative methods. They would either register excess tracts of land in the names of bonded retainers or “donated” them to names that belonged to their pets, writes journalist-author Sankarshan Thakur in The Brothers Bihari.
But beneath the surface of this seemingly perfect upper caste bonhomie were serious and bitter contestations for power. Within the Congress leadership, each caste within the upper castes was vying for more power. For the initial years after Independence, there was arguably more political competition among the upper castes within the Congress party than outside it.
For the first few years after Independence, Nehru or Maulana Azad could rein in the deep, caste-based factionalism within the party by chiding the rival party men for subordinating party unity and national interest to personal ambitions over a phone call.
However, as the early crop of Congressmen began to depart from both the national and state levels, the chances of containing personal ambitions and egos became increasingly tougher. As argued by Frankel, “The leadership of the party thus became a function of coalescence brought about in the style of a musical-chair game amongst the caste-based factions of the party.”
By the 1960s, things had come to such a pass that for leaders within the Congress, it became impossible to establish their control on the strength of the individual caste-based factions. Sahay, thus, began empowering the OBCs and STs within the Congress to consolidate his individual power. It was in this spirit that he called Sushil Kumar Bage and Ram Lakhan Yadav his “left hand” and “right hand”.
The composition of his cabinet betrayed his strategy. In 1962, he reduced the upper-caste members in his cabinet to 40 percent from the earlier 50 percent, while increasing the share of the “upper” backward classes to 20 percent from less than 10 percent. Sahay elevated Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav to the rank of minister.
But those whom Sahay empowered were not ready to play second fiddle. More than any other traditionally oppressed communities, the elites among the OBCs had begun to understand that the days of rule by social sanction were over—at least on paper. With their numbers and burgeoning caste consciousness, they became aware of their power in electoral politics.
By the eve of the 1967 election, Sahay’s government was gasping for breath. Two successive drought years devastated whatever credibility was left of the government, already tarnished by casteism and corruption. The leaders of factions within the Congress party began to flex again.
Among them was Sahay’s “right hand”, Ram Lakhan Yadav, who had by now become a leader in his own right. If Sahay wanted his continued support, the chief minister would have to give away 100 of 318 Congress tickets to the members of the backward classes, Yadav decreed.
“The Congress began the process of unwittingly empowering the Ahirs and the Yadavs,” says Verma. “It was a survival strategy, but it led to these groups realising their political power in the state.”
As the social and political awareness of the elite OBCs grew, Bihar’s politics began to be divided perpendicularly between the forward classes represented by the Congress and the backward classes, which claimed to represent the “downtrodden”, but in practice, were the spokespersons of the “upper” Shudras. It was an axis along which Bihar’s politics would play out for decades to come.
Ripples in ‘Congress system’
The 1960s were a heady time for the burgeoning Opposition. The Congress was no longer invincible. Charges of corruption and gross mismanagement of the food situation by the Congress government pervaded the 1967 election campaign. Yet, the election was not fought on the division between the forward and backward classes. It was an election for or against the Congress.
In 1967, as the Congress lost a series of elections in states, one of its worst defeats was in Bihar. The party’s popular vote declined from over 41 percent in 1962 to 33 percent in 1967. The Congress tally dropped from 185 to 128. The Socialist Party of India, which secured a five percent vote share in 1962, expanded its footprint in 1967. Its successor, the Samyukta Socialist Party, secured a vote share of over 17 percent. The seats increased from seven to 68 between 1962 and 1967. In March 1967, Bihar elected its first non-Congress government, led by Mahamaya Prasad Sinha, a Kayastha.
At the same time, a leader from the backward classes emerged. Even though he did not have a significant political base, the slogan he used reverberated in Bihar’s politics for decades to come: Socialists ne bandhi ganth pichara pave saumee sath (Socialists have given their pledge/The downtrodden get sixty percent).
The leader was Karpoori Thakur, a member of the small nai or barber caste. And while he would become chief minister himself in 1977, he first became deputy CM in 1967. More importantly, he successfully started to irrevocably shift the social dynamics around which Bihar’s politics revolved.
From 1967 to 1980, Bihar had 15 chief ministers. The fractious state legislature barely managed to sit for longer than six weeks during each of the two annual sessions. In a span of ten years—from 1971 to 1981—the state government passed an average of 178 ordinances, while the legislative assembly passed 15 Acts.
Bihar’s polity had been decisively alienated from the Congress. Even at the height of Indira Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao campaign, while the Congress vote approached or exceeded an absolute majority in virtually all major states, it did not surpass 32 percent in Bihar.
“While a lot of people think that the Congress began to lose ground in Bihar in the 1970s, in the immediate run-up and aftermath of the Emergency, and Jayaprakash Narayan’s politics, in actuality, the Congress was rotting from within much before that,” said a political scientist, also a member of a dominant political party in Bihar. “The 1970s, the protests, the Emergency, and its fallouts were only a culmination of what had been going on in Bihar for decades before that.”
“If you compare the history of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, you will find that the party was way more experimental in Bihar. It made CMs from all castes and communities, be it Paswans, Rajputs, Pandits, Bhumihars, Yadavs or Muslims. Yet, the circumstances were such that its fall was inevitable,” said a senior Congress leader based in Patna.
In the 19 months that the Emergency lasted, the forward classes and the backward classes waged an all-out war against Indira Gandhi. However, the angst of the backward classes was doubly triggered as Congress Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra ignored the final report of the (Mungeri Lal) Backward Classes Commission and opposed the introduction of reservations for OBCs. As argued by Cyril Robin, “In the state, this attitude resulted in an unprecedented alienation of the masses from the ruling party.”
“It was not just the backward classes who were moving away from the Congress, however. Much before the Mandir agitation, the upper castes too started getting fed up with the Congress,” added the political scientist quoted above. “For the Brahmins, for instance, there was a direct connection between Zamindari abolition and a decline in their authority…But for the longest time, they felt that the Congress was their only option.”
“Both Mandir and Mandal, therefore, had been in the making for a long time in Bihar,” he added.
While the Congress returned and stayed in power through the 1980s, it was a moth-eaten avatar of the Grand Old Party.
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‘Welcome to hell’
In 1982, Trevor Fishlock, who was then the India correspondent for The Times of London, wrote of Bihar: “Bihar is India’s sewer. The government in Delhi seems helpless as the state slides into barbarism, its decline punctuated increasingly by violence.”
When Fishlock went to meet the editor of a national daily in Patna, the editor greeted him, saying, “Welcome to hell,” Thakur wrote in his book.
The 1980s were the second Congress era in Bihar. For the whole decade, the party was in power. Yet, there were five chief ministers in ten years. But it was also a decade when each of the traditional supporters of the Congress—the Scheduled Castes, the Muslims and the upper castes—turned against it irrevocably.
As Thakur wrote, the 1980s were like a “parade of horrors marching through a long darkness”, a time when “violence leapfrogged from one bloodied dateline to another, not only out of the state’s grasp, but often perpetrated by it”. It was a “jungle raj”, which belonged to the traditional elite, the Brahmins, Bhumihars and Rajputs.
While there were seldom any protests against the “jungle raj” of the upper castes, the few that took place saw brutal repression, the most notorious being the response to the 1986 protests in Arwal, a village close to Patna. When a group of Harijans gathered to demand the release of a person from their community, the police surrounded them and opened fire, killing 21 people. The electoral support of the SCs for the Congress after this Jallianwala Bagh-like operation turned ever-elusive.
In 1989, it was the turn of the Muslims to turn away from the Congress. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was already underway. In October that year, a procession by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in east-central Bihar’s Bhagalpur led to a communal conflagration, engulfing more than 250 villages. Hundreds of mostly poor Muslim weavers were killed, with many buried in clandestine graveyards on which mustard saplings were, thereafter, planted.
Months before the Bihar elections, the Congress government was in no mood to alienate the Hindus. And thus, it soft-paddled the investigations that followed. The battered and wounded Muslim community would never trust the party again.
As for the upper caste Hindus, they had found in the BJP—feverishly riding the momentum of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement—a substitute they had been searching for decades. For them, not only was the Congress no longer a guardian of Hindu interests, but it was also the party that allowed the backward classes to challenge upper caste hegemony by what they saw as needless pandering.
The undefeatable formula of the 1960s had run its course by the end of the 1980s. Each group that once fervently supported the Congress was left scarred by its ways by the end of the decade.
The people wanted a clear break from the Congress, and Lalu Prasad Yadav was the man whom they chose for the job.
With Lalu’s spectacular rise, the state’s politics changed forever. The Congress became an appendage to the parties of the backward classes. It is no coincidence that the last time Bihar had a Congress-Brahmin CM—Jagannath Mishra—was around the same time in 1990.
Congress’s fall and fall
The year 1990 marked a turning point—the Congress lost power in Bihar, paving the way for Lalu’s ascent to the position of chief minister. Though short of a majority, the Janata Dal formed the government with outside support from the BJP and the Left parties, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
“Over time, Lalu cemented his image as a messiah of the Muslims. But the truth is, he could not have become chief minister without the BJP’s ‘outside support’. Even during the 1990 campaign, he was notably restrained in criticising the BJP,” said a senior Congress leader based in Patna.
The BJP eventually withdrew support after Lalu Prasad Yadav ordered the arrest of L.K. Advani during his Rath Yatra as part of the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign. Yet, Lalu remained in power, now with the backing of the Left parties, and emerged as the undisputed leader of secular politics in the Hindi heartland.
The implementation of the Mandal Commission report by the V.P. Singh central government further reinforced the positioning of Lalu Prasad Yadav—who supported the Mandal decision—as a champion of social justice and further galvanised the OBC community.
In the 1995 assembly elections, Lalu won a landslide victory, securing an absolute majority. The Congress suffered a crushing defeat and was even replaced by the BJP as the principal opposition party in the state.
In the years that followed, the Janata Dal began to fracture. Nitish Kumar broke away, opposing Lalu Prasad Yadav’s style of politics, and Lalu responded by forming his own party—Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Nitish allied, initially with the United Front government and then with the BJP, and saw success in the Lok Sabha elections of 1996, 1998, and 1999.
Meanwhile, the Congress remained indecisive, unsure whether to oppose the RJD outright or align with it to counter the BJP. Despite this confusion at the state level, the party continued to maintain an alliance with the RJD at the Centre.
“Due to an unclear policy agenda, the Congress experienced a further decline,” noted political scientist Sanjay Kumar in the publication, Post-Mandal Politics of Bihar.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, however, enjoyed an excellent rapport with Sonia Gandhi, having been the first non-Congress leader to support her during the controversy over her foreign origin. RJD’s support was pivotal to the formation of the first United Progressive Alliance government in 2004.
“Lalu did not just back the Congress, he also helped bring other regional players on board,” added the Congress leader quoted earlier.
It was only during the 2005 Bihar assembly elections that the Congress officially entered into an electoral alliance with the RJD. But their alliance was largely unsuccessful. Five years later, in 2010, the Congress contested alone, sinking to a historic low of just four seats.
“Those who argue that Congress should go it alone must consider the 2010 results,” the same leader said.
Since the 2015 assembly election, the Congress has contested every Bihar election in alliance with the RJD.
Starting afresh
Cut to 2025. The Congress cadres are buoyed by Rahul Gandhi’s 15-day voter Adhikar Yatra, which crisscrossed parts of the state and energised the party’s rank and file. The party is also driving a hard bargain with the RJD to secure winnable seats. But it is not an easy bargain. The Congress has piggybacked on the RJD for years now, and the label of “peechlaggu” (tag-along) to the RJD continues to sting Congress leaders and workers.
Obviously, many within the party find the continued dependence on the RJD unacceptable.
As a senior office-bearer of the Congress in Bihar, staunchly opposed to any alliance with the RJD, lamented, “You ask why the Congress keeps sinking in Bihar? Because it is sacrificing its future for short-term gains. Tell me, how can you grow a party in a constituency, when you don’t even know whether your candidate will get to contest from there? Khet toh hamara poora banjar hai (our entire field lies fallow).”
Moreover, with Rahul Gandhi’s emphasis on the caste census and proportional reservation, the Congress is essentially seeking to write off its past.
“It’s a historical reality that we cannot deny. We were seen as a party of upper castes. Even Rahul Gandhi has said so in as many words that we failed to read the minds of the backward classes. We failed to do so not just in the 1990s but also in the early 21st century when the BJP built an OBC voter base. It is only now that the Congress, guided by Rahul’s vision, is making a pitch for OBCs,” said a senior functionary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC).
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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