One of the better ways of responding to ill-behaved adversaries is to refuse to be like them, firmly and obdurately, and if possible in undemonstrative fashion.

Bihar insists on furnishing illustration of the opposite; Biharis are, given the chance, intent on mimicking their adversaries, they would sooner become exactly like the ones who have given them cause for grief and grievance.

Last fortnight, armed gangsters looted and torched to cinders an entire settlement of Dalits near Nawada in central Bihar; nobody was killed, fortuitously, but the assailants would probably not have hesitated to take lives. They came armed, they fired several rounds in the air as they arrived. The victims, as often in Bihar, were Dalits, from the Musahar and Ravidas communities. Their tormentors, as rarely in Bihar, were also Dalits, from the Paswan community. Another layer of feudal hierarchy — and excess — may have been inaugurated in the state — politically more empowered and economically prosperous Dalits oppressing ‘lesser’ Dalits. To begin with, there were the unreserved caste categories — the so-called ‘upper castes’ — lording over the rest. Then you had the socially and politically influential Yadavs putting their heel to other backward caste groups. Now, there are seemingly empowered Dalits rampaging over the weaker among their own. The chronic victims of feudalism have turned feudal themselves, or aspire to feudal ways. Instead of eschewing feudal manners, they embrace them.

This is irony wrapped in irony wrapped in irony. That last of those ironies is that Biharis, having suffered unrelenting feudal and hierarchical excess and gone purple and puce in the face complaining about it, refuse to see it. The middle irony is that Bihar has come to consider itself a laboratory of social change. The first, and probably most insistent, irony is that for close to three and a half decades, Bihar has been ruled by leaders whose signature politics is the overthrow of the politics of pyramidal caste hierarchies. Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar are both, on paper and by avowal, Mandalites of the Ram Manohar Lohia brand of socialism. Their extended and unbroken run in power — as foes, and often as friends — should have achieved demonstrable movement in the direction of dismantling feudal and caste hierarchies in society. What we have instead is the fitful and famously fickle Nitish Kumar back sharing power with the sanghi orthodoxy and Lalu and Jitan Ram Manjhi (handpicked by Nitish to warm the chief minister’s seat temporarily after being drubbed in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls) tossing casteist invective at each other; Manjhi has called Lalu a gareri (shepherd) pretending to be a Yadav; Lalu has shot back calling Manjhi a rat-eater.

I have often found myself collared for being harsh on Bihar and its people, for using the advantage of exile to probe and expose warts I was privileged enough to leave behind. But it was also a wrench, as all departure from home is. There may well be merit to some of the carping that has come my way. But there is no merit, in my book, to romancing misdemeanour. I have often been tempted to quote to my critics passages from a speech the Nigerian Nobel laureate, Chinua Achebe, made to a Western audience in Paris. It was a discourse titled “Africa is People” and it should rank as compulsory reading for anyone trying to understand the complexities of our world. I merely quote this: “I am not an apologist for Africa’s many failings. And I am hard-headed enough to realize that we must not be soft on them, must never go out to justify them. But I am also rational enough to realize that we should strive to understand our failings objectively and not simply swallow the mystifications and mythologies cooked up by those whose goodwill we have every reason to suspect… I understand and accept the logic that if a country mismanages its resources it should be prepared to face the music of hard times.” Bihar has much to learn, a long way to go. Its leaders alone cannot carry the burden of that journey, its people will have to.

Perhaps a good place to start would be to stop imagining the world to be shaped like a spittoon. The mouthfuls of masticated paan Biharis are wont to spit any and everywhere must rank high on the catalogue of uncivil liberties they feel entitled to. To have a dual-carriageway in Bihar is to find ways of violating the one-way regime, to wade your vehicle — four-wheel, two-wheel, bike or bullock-cart — in the face of oncoming traffic, the road’s toll-free. To find a padded seat on the bus is an invitation to stab it and rip the foam. Correction: the delight of deflowering virgin foam is reserved for those who bother squeezing into the bus; the best seats are still on the top deck, whether or not the inside is entirely taken. The New Bihar Story awaits the courtesies of its people.

Bihar was never at a loss for those who set out to build it. In the narrow firmament of Bihari consciousness, they make a clotted constellation of visionaries and builders, reformists and revolutionaries, Samaritans and messiahs. Srikrishna Sinha and Anugrah Narayan Sinha, JP and Karpoori Thakur, Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav and Jagannath Mishra. They have either been forgotten, some mercifully, or live on in dust-ridden memorial halls and annual, rent-a-crowd commemorations. Or in disregarded town squares as busts bejewelled in bird dropping. For all the retrospective reputation they have come to acquire, the gifts of Bihar’s league of legends don’t add up to much. Quite often in recent years, and especially since Nitish Kumar took power in 2005, the arrival of Naya Bihar has been bragged about. A schoolgirl on a cycle, a new coat of paint on a block development office, syringes in a primary health centre, a stretch of unbroken road do not a Naya Bihar make. On the evidence of the horror visited upon the Dalit bustee near Nawada by other Dalits, Bihar may only have regressed deeper into the quagmire Biharis and their chosen leaders say they want to pluck the state out of. It’s also what comes from not knowing better than to aspire to ape poorly behaved adversaries.

sankarshan.thakur@abp.in