Bihar rebuffs BJP’s ‘nautanki’, bandh turns into self-goal

Why is there no ‘Gujarat Bandh’, shouted an irate office goer in Patna on Thursday, 4 September, before speeding away on his motorcycle. Why is there no outrage in Gujarat, he turned and shouted again as he gathered speed. He had been stopped by BJP workers and reminded of the bandh called by NDA alliance partners’ women wings to protest the alleged insult of PM Modi’s late mother with a five-hour Bihar bandh.

Like the officegoer, however, many in Bihar posed the same question, demanding justification for the disruption of normal life.

BJP and PM Modi’s attempt to latch on to the alleged abuse, used by one unknown man now in custody, tells its own story of desperation. It was not an accident that the BJP turned a random expletive allegedly shouted by a random man at a random corner on the outskirts of Darbhanga on 27 August into a huge electoral issue.

The Voter Adhikar Yatra had already passed and Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav had left Darbhanga riding on motorcycles. A week later, few seem to have watched the alleged video that recorded the abuse. Fewer seem to have a clear idea of the identity of the man although the police claim to have arrested the culprit.

That has not stopped the Union Home minister Amit Shah, BJP chief ministers, MPs, MLAs and sundry other leaders to demand that Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav must apologise. PM Modi’s mother is the nation’s mother, some of them said.

The PM himself travelled to Bihar and suggested that while he may forgive the culprit, he was certain that people of Bihar would teach a lesson to the culprits. He was clearly not referring to the random man from Darbhanga in custody. He had the assembly election in Bihar due in October-November, 2025 in mind.

There has been practically no outrage on the streets. Sarcasm, memes and jokes flooded the social media instead. Former union minister Yashwant Sinha posted on X, “I think the issue of abuse of PM's respected mother should now be taken to the UN with a request to the security council to take action against the guilty. Nothing less will do”.

‘Biharis have largely rejected Bihar Bandh and with that the idea of making a non-issue the agenda of Bihar elections. Development is the only agenda’, posted a handle With Love Bihar.

While the bandh was planned to be enforced by women belonging to women’s wings, there were so very few women in the protest that placards reading Mai Bhi Maa Hoon (I am also a mother), a throwback to the Mai Bhi Chowkidar campaign, were held up by the men, including BJP state president Dilip Jaiswal.

The prediction of Priyanka Bharti, RJD spokesperson, made during the day also turned out to be correct. There would be no debate on Bihar Bandh at prime time, she gleefully predicted, because it was such a flop.

Bihar Bandh on Thursday also boomeranged on the BJP because it famously maintains that protests do not take the country forward. BJP would never disrupt normal life of the people. Now protesting over a non-issue and a trivial issue made little sense to Biharis. NDA is in power in the state and has the authority to take action against the culprits, they pointed out. Why make the people suffer?

It also boomeranged because unruly BJP supporters assaulted officegoers, stopped an ambulance carrying a pregnant woman to hospital, manhandled a woman teacher who pleaded that she was getting late for school, detained school buses and hurled the choicest abuses laced with references to mothers and sisters.

Noticeably there was no outrage in Darbhanga, Gujarat or anywhere else on 28 August, when it was claimed that the video clip of the abuse had gone viral. Had that been really viral, many more people would have watched it but a week after the alleged incident it is still hard to come by those who have.

It was on 29 August when BJP workers, armed with lathis, marched to the Congress headquarters in Patna and clashed with Congress workers there. It took the BJP two more days to decide in favour of calling a Bihar Bandh on 4 September, eight days after the alleged incident.

The indifference of the people to the insult may have been because the alleged abuse is in daily use, hurled nonchalantly even among friends. It is so common that nobody even blinks in Bihar or UP at the random use of the slur, which points to an incestuous relationship between the mother and the son.

The only positive outcome that may come out of this controversy and the Bandh is to remind people that it is indeed an insult to women and ‘mothers’ and should be avoided.

The Bandh has turned into a self-goal by the NDA. By politicising the alleged insult of PM Modi’s mother, it served to rake up the abuses directed at women by BJP leaders, spokespersons, MPs and even the PM himself.

In Bihar on Thursday, people recalled the allegedly ‘indecent’ language used by chief minister Nitish Kumar at women, the slur on Nitish Kumar’s DNA by PM Modi and sundry other abuses that NDA leaders have used in the past. BJP’s state president Dilip Jaiswal, who wept or pretended to weep while listening to PM Modi recall his mother, had famously claimed that he was a ‘dictionary’ (encyclopaedia?) of abuses.

He had also recalled that in his school it was not uncommon for students to abuse teachers with abuses related to sisters, mothers and daughters.

If the BJP believed that the alleged abuse of the PM’s mother would garner sympathy and become an electoral issue in the state, it clearly erred. On Thursday at least, Biharis seemed to have little patience for such ‘nautanki’.