Why the Bihar bandh against the citizenship law was a poor advertisement for the RJD

The party has been trying to banish its 'Jungle Raj' image, and the violence that marked the protests didn't help.

WrittenBy:Anand Vardhan
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The green headgear and laathi – the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s preferred defence (and mostly assault) weapon since its chief, Lalu Prasad Yadav, called for the Laathi Tel Pilawan (lathi-oiling) campaign in 2003 – are still etched in public memory as street symbols of either the “ state withering away” or “ functioning anarchy”. These expressions are used to evoke memories of 15 years of the Lalu family’s rule in Bihar, the first seven years until 1997 under Janata Dal and then the RJD, which Lalu formed after parting ways with the Janata Dal. 

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In reaching out to new sections of the electorate beyond its famed Muslim-Yadav base, the RJD still seems nowhere near banishing such memories.

The violence and vandalism seen during Saturday’s Bihar bandh called by the RJD and its allies to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act only reinforced such perceptions. It was a poor advertisement for a party trying to expand its voter base by disassociating from what its opponents remember it for – Jungle Raj. The Dak Bunglow Crossing in the capital Patna where party leader Tejashwi Yadav addressed the protesters was held hostage for five hours, and some miscreants among the protesters reportedly assaulted mediapersons. According to a report in the state’s most-read daily, Hindustan, photojournalists Mohan Kumar of the Times of India and Dinesh Kumar of Dainik Jagran were seriously injured in attacks by the protesters, while several journalists ran away and took shelter in a nearby house. Burning of tyres to block roads, including the arterial Ashok Rajpath, and stone-pelting on a state bus in Mithapur was also reported.

Outside of the state capital, a police station was attacked in Nawada district, six police personnel were injured in stone-pelting in Aurangabad, and train services were severely disrupted in Saran, Samastipur, Sasaram, Laheriasarai, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Begusarai, Bhojpur, and Buxar. Of course, not all these violent acts and disruptions can be linked to RJD workers alone; there is a possibility that some of it was the handiwork of miscreants over whom the party has no control. It’s in this context that the party’s reputation for orchestrating street rowdyism and siding with particular sections of the society might hamper its bid to change public perception about it, if it intends to do so at all.

Besides the protests held by political parties, there was violence when two groups, one supporting the citizenship law and the other opposing it, confronted each other in Katihar district as well as at Tamtam Padav in Phulwarisharif area of Patna, leaving at least 10 people injured, including six from gunshot wounds and one from a stabbing. Both incidents posed the danger of sparking a communal conflagration in the area, particularly the latter as a video has gone went viral showing alleged vandalism in a Hanuman temple. Mainstream media hasn’t taken note of it – neither refuted nor confirmed it – leaving scope for all sorts of unverified information being circulated. However, the police have so far managed to prevent escalation of the clashes into a communal flashpoint.

Even if these clashes could be delinked from RJD-led bandh, what the party would find difficult to dissociate from is the street violence its workers resorted to at many places, sometimes quickly turning the phrase “ peaceful protest” on its head. As this RJD leader in Bhagalpur was seen doing in a video shot by a Hindi news channel: 

Sensing the online backlash – besides chuckles that the video was getting for its comic import – the RJD’s media managers swung into damage control mode and Tejashawi Yadav tweeted about dismissing the Bhagalpur RJD leader shown smashing an autorickshaw windscreen in the video and compensating the autorickshaw owner.

It is, however, unclear how late and little such moves are to address the deeply entrenched perceptions about the RJD’s commitment, rather the lack of it, to public order. To a large extent, it has only itself to blame for it.

While meetings and marches in protest as well as in support of the citizenship law continue in Bihar, neither carry any intensity beyond the demonstration effect of protest or support movements in metropolitan cities. In a way, in the state capital and small towns, it’s showing signs of being a fad that nationally broadcast stirs can infect the hinterland with. In fact, one of the viral videos posted by a Hindi news channel shows a protester, when asked what CAA meant, saying it was a protest against the rise in the prices of garlic. 


That’s interesting because unlike many other parts of the country, the northeastern districts of Bihar like Kishanganj are close to the Indo-Bangladesh border and are known to have seen infiltration from the foreign land. The pros and cons of the CAA should have been of interest to Bihar, at least to some of its northeastern districts.

Even the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar didn’t acquit itself too well. Its soft handling of the violence and vandalism unleashed by the protesters didn’t do its claims, sustainable in a relative sense, of better governance any good. Given the not so old scars of lawlessness and disorder during a decade-and-half of the RJD’s rule, the civic discourse in Bihar places tough policing high on the governance agenda. Starting in the backdrop of the nadir that policing had plunged to during the RJD rule, the Nitish government has scored relatively better on that count but can’t afford to be complacent. Even though Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, took potshots at the RJD for showing glimpses of its dreaded Jungle Raj during the bandh, what the state government can’t afford now is skipping the responsibility for lax policing in its failure to control violent acts.

In resurrecting its claim to responsible leadership, the street violence was poor optics for the RJD as it enters a long campaign season to wrest back 1, Anne Marg in the new decade. Its success in the next election would depend on not only strengthening its trusted Muslim-Yadav support base but also winning the confidence of other parts of the electorate to build a broader social coalition. The way it convinces those sections about its claim to better governance would constitute an important part of it. By that measure, it hasn’t done itself any favours given what people saw last Saturday.

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