Yorktown, Galwan and Bihar
THAT remote and distant things are linked in our world is sometimes explained with the example of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil, which could set off a chain of events that contributes to a tornado forming in Texas weeks later. The 1781 battle of Yorktown and the vicious stand-off between Chinese and Indian troops in Galwan in 2020 are thus linked to the state assembly elections currently underway in Bihar. This is the rare north Indian state where the Hindu right is struggling to take power on its own.
Other Hindi-belt states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have seen BJP taking power on its own steam, but in Bihar it continues to lean on allies, that too playing second fiddle. This, even though the BJP won more seats than the chief minister Nitish Kumar’s party in the 2020 polls. There is lingering apprehension today that the BJP, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch, could do with Kumar what it did with allies in Maharashtra — pare them down by splitting their ranks and usurp direct power. Bihar though has been a different kettle of fish.
The state is among the most fractured regions in caste terms, far more intractable than other BJP-ruled states. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, the Bahujan Samaj Party of Dalits could take power with or without allies. Likewise, the Samajwadi Party of lower caste peasants was able to rule on its own. Unlike Uttar Pradesh where it runs its own government, the BJP has so far failed to gain power in Bihar by itself.
Two historical events have influenced the state’s hugely politicised and intellectually raw earthiness. This was the region after all where Buddha attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago. Buddhism spread from Bihar and marked the most entrenched and durable rebellion in history against Brahminical hegemony over much of ancient India. There was thus already something about Bihar — it derives its name from Buddhist vihars or monasteries — which spurred anti-caste revolt to spread via Buddhism and Jainism.
Bihar is the rare north Indian state where the Hindu right is struggling to take power on its own.
The other significant event in Bihar, which continues to stalk its fragmented social relations, was the land revenue arrangement installed by British governor-general Lord Cornwallis. The Permanent Settlement created a violent system of zamindars with hereditary rights. They extracted from the peasants all that could fill the coffers of the East India Company and enough for themselves to buy muscle power to ply the ruthless system.
Think about it. Had Cornwallis not been routed by George Washington in Yorktown, Bihar might have been spared the pain of his socially disruptive extortion. Who knows, perhaps Tipu Sultan would have carved a different role for India, not unlike what George Washington did for America, as an ally of the French and tormentor of British rule. Cornwallis vented his spleen at the French for supporting Tipu who he defeated in Srirangapatnam in 1792. The unabated exploitation of Dalits and tribespeople Cornwallis created in Bihar would erupt in political movements — now dressed as Naxalites or again as the middle caste-led advocate of ‘total revolution’.
Political earthiness apart, acid verse too abounds about elections in India. One such by Ashok Chakradhar describes a famished tiger that far from eating up a lamb and its mother, wishes them health and longevity, instead. The lines end tartly: “Itna keh kar sher kar gaya prasthaan. Bakri hairaan. Beta taajjub hai. Bhala ye sher kisi per rahem khanewala hai. Lagta hai jangal mein chunaav aane wala hai.” (The goat shared its bewilderment with the baby. Hungry tigers don’t usually bungle. It must be election time in the jungle.)
Likewise, the late Raahat Indori conflated military tensions on the border with elections. “Sarhad par bahot tanaav hai kya? Kuchh pata karo, chunaav hai kya?” (There’s tension on the borders, but why? Go find out if an election is nigh.) Cynicism apart, the state assembly polls underway in Bihar, the second most populous of the so-called Hindi-belt states, where the BJP derives much of its strength from, do have a military connection.
Two days after the horrific attack in Pahalgam on April 20, a livid Narendra Modi showed up at a public rally in Bihar, not at the site of the communal carnage in Kashmir as might be expected of him. From the rally in Bihar, Modi declared his fight to the finish against terrorism. Significantly, he made the most critical point about the prospects of war in English. Bihar was the platform not the audience. About 20 days later, Operation Sindoor was unleashed only to be quickly suspended with a tentative and, by many accounts, puzzling ceasefire. In Bihar’s election campaign though, the short sharp exchange with Pakistan appears to be offering little purchase in the two-stage Nov 6 and 11 elections for the 243 assembly seats.
Curiously, in the October 2020 Bihar elections too, the prime minister tried to stoke the memory of the killings of Indian soldiers by Chinese troops along the disputed Sino-Indian border at Galwan. At three brief halts in Sasaram, Gaya and Bhagalpur, Modi spoke of the clash with China, in which soldiers — notably of 16 Bihar regiment — had been killed. Modi accused the opposition of supporting those “conspiring” against India.
Bihar happens to be where L.K. Advani’s communally divisive 1990 ‘rath yatra’ to Ayodhya was brought to heel by Lalu Prasad Yadav, the state’s chief minister at the time. Yadav’s much-applauded courage, however, triggered the fall of the BJP-supported V.P. Singh government. The BJP gained traction from the event. By December 1992, the Babri Masjid was destroyed in the presence of Advani. By 1996, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the BJP’s first prime minister. Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar crucially supports Modi as he did Vajpayee. Should he flap his wings post elections, it might usher a tornado in Delhi. Rahul Gandhi is watching.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2025