E-Paper
What swung the vote in Bihar polls: Fatigue and resentment among Muslim vote base
A serious dent in the M-Y combination that will be an existential threat to the RJD. And the lowest number of Muslim lawmakers in the incoming assembly– only 11
If Muslims are considered the second of the two pillars that hold up the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a large part of the reason must be that October afternoon in 1990 when the newly minted chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad, decided to stop the raucous Rath Yatra helmed by Lal Krishna Advani in Samastipur and arrest the Bharatiya Janata Party stalwart. The Rath Yatra, that aimed to press for a Ram Temple in the erstwhile disputed Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, had left a trail of bloody riots across the breadth of India and Prasad was quickly hailed as the new champion of secularism. “Nobody should dare spread communal tension in Bihar or he will be severely dealt with. I have the courage to arrest Advani, I will be unsparing in my punishment,” Prasad thundered. It was a moment that helped him wrest the Muslim vote from the Congress and catapult himself into the national political centrestage.
During his rule that lasted 15 years, Prasad frequently boasted about turning the page on Bihar’s disturbing history of sectarian disturbances and making the province into an oasis of communal peace. Muslims were impoverished and, as some studies suggested, lagged their Hindu counterparts on educational and health indices. But Prasad patronised key community religious leaders, promoted some strongmen from the Muslim community, and at a time when the Congress often prevaricated on communal amity, sought to project a grassroots, rustic alternative to Nehruvian secularism.
To be sure, electoral campaigning in Bihar has never been explicitly communal like in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. Muslims form 17% of the population but are concentrated in a handful of districts in the border Seemanchal region – the spatial skew limiting any attempts to counter-polarise Hindu votes. For two decades, Muslims largely consolidated behind the RJD and formed the core of its M-Y formula, only briefly abandoning Lalu Prasad for Nitish Kumar during 2010’s watershed elections. Even as the RJD struggled to expand its base, Muslims largely refused overtures from the JD(U), the LJP and the Congress.
But things might be changing. First in 2020 and now again in 2025, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen has won five seats each by defeating candidates from the RJD. In 2020, four of the five AIMIM candidates switched to the RJD after the elections. The party ran a campaign asking Muslims to back Tejashwi as CM and called the AIMIM the B-team of the BJP. And yet, unsung AIMIM candidates won more seats in the Seemanchal region than Muslim candidates from either the RJD or the Congress – some in constituencies with 50% Muslims. The Grand Alliance won just five of the 24 seats in the Seemanchal region, once its bastion.
Why did this happen? A combination of fatigue, lacklustre campaign and resentment at being taken for granted may have vitiated the once-solid relationship. Yadav might have felt that a promise to scrap the Waqf law was enough to attract Muslims but clearly the ordinary person didn’t feel so. Similarly, the bogie of the BJP or the TINA (there is no alternative) factor also didn’t work as well as the RJD might have hoped. And most of all, resentment at being meted stepmotherly treatment – the alliance named a man with a 2% vote bank as deputy CM face but didn’t bother to say anything about a community that makes up 17% of the state – might have eroded trust.
The result? A serious dent in the M-Y combination that will be an existential threat to the RJD. And the lowest number of Muslim lawmakers in the incoming assembly – only 11.
