The Minority Card

With Congress Frame of Mind, Prashant Will Play Muslim Card in Bihar

Prashant Kishor, a rising political star in Bihar, first launched a Jan Suraaj campaign through the villages and districts by collecting data and identifying issues at the micro-levels. He labored to educate the Biharis in the state or settled elsewhere, often in harsh words, why Bihar was at the bottom 28th place among the Indian states. His campaign morphed into a political party on 2 Oct 2024 that was certainly poised to make a ripple or a wave. Given the fondness of the Biharis for new political experiments, it wouldn’t be surprising if his party brought about a tectonic shift in Bihar politics.

Its prospect, considering the current wretched state of Bihar in practically every respect, appeared to be very high because the citizens of Bihar would like to express their restlessness against a quarter-century old stagnant-regressive government of Nitish Kumar that has, for the most part, been shared and supported by the BJP too.

Prashant might get sympathy from everyone who would honestly like a better Bihar. However, he would definitely face tough challenges when his Jan Suraaj would announce its manifesto and field its candidates in the forthcoming State Vidhan Sabha elections (2025).

When the campaign would heat up, his ideological-political philosophy would come under the microscope for everyone to analyze and discuss in detail.

Prashant’s ideological frame of mind has been apparent

Prashant has been accused of playing the B-team to the BJP. On the contrary, however, he hasn’t hidden his sympathy for and attachment to the Sonia-led Congress party. As an election analyst, he has been aware of a sizable chunk of Congress voters in Bihar (or India) coming from its traditional base of the Muslims, upper caste Brahmins and the Dalits (formerly mentioned as Harijans). In good or bad days for the Congress, they have always been voting for this national party. Prashant was at one time very passionate about reviving the Congress by projecting the face of Priyanka Gandhi as the true heir of the Nehru-Gandhi family and as the next Chief Ministerial candidate of U.P.

In all likelihood, Prashant’s attachment to Mohandas K. Gandhi (The Jan Suraaj campaign flag has the emblem of Gandhi in its center), his efforts to woo the Muslim voters who accounted for nearly 17 percent of the state population, and his glorification of the legacy of the Nehru-Indira Congress would put him and his party on the defensive where he would have very hard time convincing the voters of Bihar.

The citizens of Bihar have now been schooled enough on the three underpinnings Prashant wishes to rest his party’s ideology on.

Mohandas K Gandhi as the party-icon

First on Gandhi. Although Bihar (the district of Champaran) happened to be the first place from where Gandhi began his political activism against the British in 1917, his publicly expressed views on Moplah riots (1921), his volte face on the question of division of India or creation of Pakistan and his post-partition excessive concession to the Muslims at the cost of the uprooted Hindus of Pakistan were now in the collective memory of most Biharis.

The Biharis have read, for example, literature of Prof Shankar Sharan (from Bihar) and numerous well-researched academic writings by others. They have heard extensive discussions on Gandhi. Most recently, they were exposed to an outstanding book on Gandhi, HEY RAM, by a talented, painstaking young journalist, Prakhar Shrivastava (about Prashant’s age).

These authors, among many, have underlined the point as to how eminent leaders like B.R.Ambedkar and Annie Besant held views against Gandhi on Moplah riots; how leaders like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Purushottam Das Tandon spoke against the resolution for the partition of India that was supported by Gandhi. It is now publicly known that Gandhi, who could concede Pakistan only over his “dead body,” changed his stance under the influence of the Congress faction led by Nehru. It’s now documented how at morning prayers or sermons in 1947, Gandhi’s unveiled dislike for the Punjabi or Sindhi Hindus, who fled from Pakistan and took refuge in the shelter houses or mosques vacated by the Muslims in Delhi, had angered or pained them.

Prashant’s ideological or organizational leanings towards the Congress party were revealed in several of his interviews with different media outlets. Recently, in a YouTube- interview, he professed that he was an andh-bhakta (a blind-follower) of Gandhi and therefore he had full trust in his judgment as he picked up Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister of Independent India.

Can Prashant project Gandhi as a true democrat?

Prashant must have read the pages of history carefully to determine how Gandhi undemocratically favored Nehru denying the legitimate claims of Sardar Patel to become the first Prime Minister of India. In fact, he persuaded Patel to withdraw and accept the second position.

Gandhi obviously flouted all rules or conventions of normal party operation.12 out of 15 Pradesh Congress Working Committees had nominated Sardar Patel for the position of the party president, the remaining three had abstained. At that time only the Pradesh Congress Committee could nominate and elect the Congress president. In April, 1946, the nominated party president had to be the Prime Minister.

According to one account, Gandhi’s mention that “no PCC had put forward his name” drew Nehru’s “complete silence.” However, Nehru later sent a message to Gandhi that he wouldn’t “take second place” and, then, Gandhi fell for him.

Indians were now re-reading the history of Independence to figure out how, in the words of Dr Rajendra Prasad, Gandhi “sacrificed his trusted lieutenant for the sake of the glamorous Nehru.” Earlier also, in preference to Nehru, Gandhi had denied the Congress presidentship to Patel in 1929 and 1937.

Maltreatment of Subhash Chandra Bose at the hands of Gandhi and his faction was also adequately registered. Elected twice as the President (Haripura Congress,1938 and Tripuri Congress, 1939), Subhash Babu was forced by Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee to resign. Gandhi’s sponsored candidate, Dr Pattabhi Sitaramayya, had been defeated. Was Gandhi a true democrat who honored the wishes of the majority? Will Gandhi’s modus operandi, if followed by Prashant in his party, work in today’s Bihar or India?

Prahant’s reliance on the Islamist Muslims

In preparation of his party-launch, Prashant recently addressed a “Muslims-only” meeting at a Patna auditorium. He scolded Muslims for agreeing to be kerosene oil to Lalu’s lantern – a sarcasm referring to lantern, the election symbol of the RJD. The Muslims were burning, he said, but the lights were taken advantage of by Lalu’s family and some of their caste members. Scared of the BJP’s Hindutva, they always huddled into vote for the RJD.

Prashant referred to the Quran and encouraged Muslims To Read (Ikra). That might be considered great, given the rate of illiteracy among the Muslims. However, when Prashant advised his audience to read the Quran, his audience wouldn’t read just one verse (ayat) of the Quran in isolation. They would or should read the Quran in its entirety.

Of all the verses, the Muslims should also read, for example, the verse 9:29 [https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=9&verse=29] as well.

Quran: 9:29, according to Sahih International, says, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.”

There are numerous commands and instructions in the Quran that reinforce the Islamists in India on the war-path of a civilizational conflict they have been waging for 1700 years. Will Prashant be able to insulate all Muslims of Bihar from the influence of the Islamists? The more Prashant would refer to the Islamic scriptures, the more polarizing he and his party would be against the forces of Hindutva in India.

Prashant’s opposition to the CAA, NRC and Wakf Board Amendment

Prashant is also known to be among the opponents of the laws the Modi government made in its second term restricting and monitoring the inflow or settlement of illegal migrants to India. Recently, he has spoken against the Wakf Board amendment brought up by Modi 3.0 too.

As far back as in January of 2020, I wrote two pieces: (i) Dangers of Leadership Like Prashant Kishor’s and (ii) Nitish Should Offer a Logical Retort to the CAA Opponents (See my Ebook, Dynamics of the State of Bihar bspublicationsonline.com pgs. 75-85) wherein I had pointed out the illogical arguments and illegality of Prashant’s action. In the capacity of a nominated – not elected – Vice-President of the JDU by its autocrat President, Nitish Kumar, Prashant had declared via his Twitter account that the CAA wouldn’t be implemented in Bihar. That announcement was against his party policy and issued without authorization.

As a former staff at the United Nations (New York), with ten years of experience, Prashant must be aware of something called, “weaponization of demography” in International Relations. Modi’s CAA and NRC legislation was exactly to curb the demographic invasion against India by the hostile neighboring countries. It was expected of an educated young man like Prashant that he would tell the communally aroused Muslims of India that the CAA or NRC weren’t against them but against the illegal migrants to the country. Indian citizenship-guarantee to the evicted, persecuted or displaced non-Muslims from Pakistan was first demanded by none other than Mohandas K. Gandhi, the icon of the Jan Suraaj party.

As a political-electoral strategist, Prashant knows the significance of the Muslim vote-bank. Just as he helped Mamata Banerjee play the Islamic card recently in the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha election (2021), he would be applying the same tactic in Bihar.That’s the principal reason he’s making noises against the Wakf Board Amendment proposal as well. He has also promised the Bihari Muslims that in proportion to their population in the state, his party would field 40 Muslim candidates in the forthcoming election to the 243-Vidhan Sabha seats.

Prashant: An effective political educator

In a thoroughly defiled and vitiated political environment of Bihar where only the likes of dynasts from political families like Tejaswi Yadav, Chirag Paswan or Samrat Chaudhary were in play, Prashant, with his impressive background, brings in fresh air. He makes a few brilliant points on behalf of the millennial generation.

For instance, when asked whether he considered RJD or JDU responsible for the decline of Bihar to the 28th position in the ranking of the states, he held both the regional parties equally guilty. However, he emphasized correctly that the two federal parties – the Congress and the BJP – shared even a greater blame. Both the Congress party and the BJP, in order to keep their political alliance with the RJD and the JDU intact, didn’t hold Lalu or Nitish accountable for anything. Large parts of federal grants and aid to a number of projects, for instance, were often returned because of their non-utilization.

Although, this is also true that the elected Members of Parliament from Bihar, regardless of their party affiliation, were the top power-brokers and sycophants operating in Delhi. They knew they owed their position to the party supremo and all they had to do was to pay court to their leaders to secure party nomination for the next election cycle. Never did they form any committee or group nor did they have any extensive discussion to collectively put pressure on Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh or Narendra Modi to do certain good to their state.

Only 1,250 families ruling Bihar

Prashant has also brought to the surface more eloquently a widely known but less discussed fact that there were only about 1,250 families in Bihar who always ruled the state regardless of what parties or alliance were in power. Although this is not a startling revelation. People familiar with the ‘Elite theory’ in politics know that in organized societies all around the world, the social-political elites are interconnected with all powerful centers including the media and the corporate organizations. The competition between the two or three major political interests (non-communist, non-revolutionary) is always between the elites of the two or three major political parties. Their leaders are the members of the same club and are often related to each other by marriage or business. The same relationship could be seen, for example, between the Communists, Congress or Socialist elite leaders in India. In Bihar, even the Yadav mafia killers, during the Lalu-Rabri regime, were the leaders of the notorious Naxalite outfits like MCC (Marxist Communist Center) by the night and leading activists for the RJD by the day. Prashant’s party may also have to tap into all these political families who are related to each other through marriage, business or criminal-mafia activities.

According to unconfirmed news, there was already a move to rope in Chirag Paswan, the Chief of his father’s Lok Janshakti Party, by offering him the position of the state Chief Minister in exchange for the merger of his party with Jan Suraaj. Members of such families as those of Karpoori Thakur or Dhanik Lal Mandal were already in. Members of families – politically or socially well-connected – were in a better position to deliver goods to their constituencies. That’s the reason, political establishments are inclined to recruit them in their ranks.

After 2 Oct 2024, Bihar and India will see if Prashant’s Jan Suraaj experiment promises to bring in any permanent-basic-reformative change in the state or it ends up as a proverbial ‘flavor of the month.’

[Originally from Darbhanga, Bihar (India), Dr Binoy Shanker Prasad lives in Dundas, Ontario (Canada). He is a former UGC teacher fellow at JNU in India and a Fulbright Scholar in the USA. Author of scholarly works including a book, “Violence Against Minorities”, “Gandhi in the Age of Globalization” (a monograph) and a collection of poems”, Dr Prasad has taught at Ryerson University, Centennial College and McMaster University. He has also been the president of Hamilton based India-Canada Society (2006-08 and 2018-20)]