AD 1539 Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri routs Mughal emperor Humayun in the Battle of Chausa, fought on the confluence of the Ganga and Karmanasa rivers in Buxar. Humayun jumped into the Ganga and was saved by a local person bhisti (water carrier). Sher Shah went on to become the emperor of the country.
AD 1764 In the Battle of Buxar, the British East India Company force led by Major Hector Munro vanquished the combined army of the Nawab of Bengal Mir Qasim, Nawab of Awadh (Oudh) Shuja-ud-daula, and Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. The British firmly establish their rule in India.
AD 2024 The battle to decide who will rule India for the next five years is on. Buxar is set for a keen contest between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Mithilesh Tiwari and former Bihar minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Sudhakar Singh.
Buxar is witness to battles that were hard fought and changed the course of history. Locals have come to believe that whoever wins Buxar wins Delhi.
Senior BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Choubey triumphed in 2014 and 2019 while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) formed the government at the Centre. This time Mithilesh Kumar Tiwari, 55, has replaced him.
Tiwari’s opponent Sudhakar Singh, 52, is an RJD MLA from the Ramgarh Assembly segment, which comes under the Buxar Lok Sabha constituency. He is the son of RJD state president Jagadanand Singh, who won the seat in 2009, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) formed the government at the Centre for the second time in a row.
Buxar, a slow-moving place on the western fringes of Bihar, is also part of the famed ‘rice bowl’ (paddy producing region) of the state. The Ganga is its lifeline, flowing all along, supplying water for irrigation and other purposes, though the old canal and channel system is in poor condition.
The field where the Battle of Chausa was fought, at the confluence of the Ganga and Karmanasa rivers. Picture by Sanjay Choudhary
But if the leaders and their forces in the form of supporters and workers are geared up, there is an outward stillness in the constituency of around 18 lakh voters. There is no seeming enthusiasm for the polls.
For them, life’s daily travails keep them occupied. For instance, an entire flank or half of the four-lane expressway that starts from Koilwar and hits Buxar town before swerving to Uttar Pradesh has been captured by thousands of huge, 16 to 20-wheel trucks carrying sand from the Sone river, causing immense problems to the local people and commuters. At times they lead to traffic jams that continue for hours.
People are forced to travel in the wrong lane because the trucks will neither budge nor make way.
“This has become a severe daily problem. School students have to wait for one to two hours in their buses and vans just to cross the road. Nobody from the district administration pays any attention. The government is a failure,” said Brahmeshwar Prasad Mali, a school bus driver.
Brahmeshwar added that the entire game was of legal and illegal sand mining. “The government officials manning the Bihar and Uttar Pradesh borders stop the trucks in the name of checking their documents and take bribes to allow them to move ahead,” he said.
A couple of kilometres away is Kathkauli village where the patriots laid down their lives fighting the British East India Company forces in the 1784 battle. Their memorial lies neglected, as does a victory pillar erected by the British.
Kathkauli village is also famous because its residents have never registered any FIR nor filed any court case ever.
“We are peace-loving people who want to resolve their own petty issues amicably instead of running to the police or the court. It has worked till now. We want to live like this, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not want to let us do so. He should come here to understand how the Hindu and Muslims lived together, fought shoulder to shoulder against the British and died here. Maybe then he will stop speaking the things he and his fellows do,” said Muhammad Fahimuddin, a poultry farm owner at Kathkauli.
In Buxar town, we meet Shivji Choubey sipping tea at a stall on a scorching afternoon. He tries to impress that there is a hidden Modi wave at work, but points out that the Namami Gange plan of the Centre has failed and sewers still empty in the Ganga. Even the town’s drainage system stays perpetually clogged.
There is also anger among the people over the BJP giving the ticket to Tiwari, who is hardly known among the masses. They wonder where would they be able to meet him if he wins at all. However, they are not prone to vent their feelings and choose to stay silent.
“People are silent because a change is going to happen,” says Pappy Kumar Mishra
at Chausa Bazaar, while Sainul Razak chips in to assert, “Only a change can save the country.”
A 1320MW thermal power plant being built by Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN) is coming up at Chausa in Buxar over 1058 acres of land and another 250 acres have been acquired for a railway corridor and a water pipeline. The land is spread across two dozen villages.
The farmers have been protesting for better compensation for their land since 2022. It turned violent a couple of times in 2023 and also in March this year, leading to clashes with the plant officials and the police.
The agitators bore the brunt leaving many of them maimed. Several videos of the police brutally assaulting men and women went viral on various social media platforms.
Banaarpur is one of the villages whose people have been agitating for better compensation. Around 500 men of the village have fled to save themselves from being jailed.
“The policemen beat me with sticks so severely that I was not able to walk properly for more than a month. I was neither involved in the agitation, nor ventured out of my house, yet they thrashed me,” said Ramavati Devi, 65, of Banaarpur village.
Buxar is also one of the rare seats where the general category castes or the so-called upper castes are in a majority with the Brahmins and Rajputs leading the table, followed by Yadavs and other castes.
People discuss caste combinations, but also talk about the politics involved in it.
“Undoubtedly there is a tough contest between the BJP and RJD here. Nobody knows Tiwari, but he has the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi behind him. Singh is himself an MLA and his father was an MP from here. However, ‘vote cutting’ will also play a big role this time, especially when the margin of victory is expected to be lesser this time,” said Mahavir Kumar of Jyoti Chowk.
“Muscleman and former MLA Dadan Singh Yadav is contesting as an Independent and is expected to eat into votes of the RJD candidate. Another Independent, IPS officer Anand Mishra, is expected to slice through the vote bank of Tiwari. Anil Kumar aka Anil Samrat of the Bahujan Samaj Party is also expected to cut RJD votes,” Mahavir added.
It is in this maze that the winner of the battle of Buxar will emerge. But will he
rule Delhi?
Buxar votes on June 1
