Rahul Gandhi’s Bihar Gamble: Caste Politics vs Aspirational Voters
LoP Rahul Gandhi during his Bihar Yatra! (Image X .com)
As Bihar heads to the polls, Rahul Gandhi’s push for a caste census and expanded reservations risks reviving memories of Jungle Raj and alienating the very voters seeking opportunity over old fault lines.
By MANISH ANAND
NEW DELHI, September 16, 2025 — Ayush Pandey (real name), a final-year student at an engineering college in Bhagalpur, Bihar, was returning to his hostel one evening when a gang of students affiliated with a caste group surrounded him. Within seconds, heavy lathis rained down on him, leaving him critically injured. His provocation? Pandey was a Brahmin.
The college principal, Om Prakash Roy, admits that caste violence has worsened on his campus. “Even ragging has a caste colour; students from their own caste are spared, but others are assaulted,” Roy told The Raisina Hills.
In one shocking incident, the furious mother of a victim stormed into Roy’s office and physically attacked him, accusing him of cowardice in failing to rein in caste gangs. Roy, however, normalises the violence, saying, “It’s raging in all parts of Bihar—as five students in Muzaffarpur were recently expelled for caste violence.”
As Bihar heads for Assembly elections in two months, the Opposition’s Mahagathbandhan has stirred the state’s oldest nemesis—the caste fault line. Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has built his political narrative around a caste census and breaching the 50% ceiling on reservations in jobs and education.
Bihar, however, has a long memory. The state that inspired Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne, where daydreaming could spark laughter, also endured the harsh reality of the 1990s Jungle Raj. At the heart of that dark chapter lay caste divisions.
From Subhash Yadav and Sadhu Yadav—Lalu Prasad Yadav’s notorious brothers-in-law—to the likes of Mohammed Shahabuddin in Siwan and Mohammed Taslimuddin in Araria, a network of local dons carved out fiefdoms of fear. Even villages fell under their control.
The Jungle Raj was a toxic cocktail of lawlessness and caste conflict. Dominant backward castes clashed with upper castes, while Muslim strongmen found political opportunity in alignment. The result: social, economic, and psychological devastation.
Ironically, the Mahagathbandhan is now raising the issue of palayan (migration). Yet it was the Jungle Raj itself that forced youth and families in the 1990s to flee Bihar, often taking loans to send their children out of the state.
The social churn, however, reshaped Bihar. Non-dominant backward castes, often victims of violence and land grabs, gradually organised into a formidable political force. For decades, they have understood that Mandal politics largely empowered dominant backward castes at their expense.
By doubling down on reservation rhetoric, Rahul Gandhi risks ignoring Bihar’s history—where caste politics bred both Jungle Raj and the mass flight of its youth. Today, aspirational voters may be looking beyond caste arithmetic, but the Congress leader appears determined to replay an old script.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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