According to the recent caste survey, Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) are a diversified caste group that make up 36% of the population of Bihar. When combined together with the upper OBCs or upper Backward castes, they form the category of Backward Castes, which make up a combined total of 63% of Bihar’s population. While the politics of the Backward Castes have dominated the political discourse of Bihar at least since the 1990s, EBCs have been marginalised in terms of political representation. That is, despite their numerical significance, their political representation in the Bihar Legislature has hardly ever gone above the 10% mark.
Composition of the category
Bihar has about 112 EBCs, also known as the Most Backward Castes. In Bihar, they are referred to as ‘Annexure-I,’ whereas OBCs are referred to as ‘Annexure-II.’ Annexure-I (the ‘more backward’) includes some 88 Hindu and Muslim castes, some well-known (for example, Dhanuk, Hajjam, Kahar and Mallah castes), while others considerably less so (Gulguha, Jadupatia etc). Annexure-II (‘less backward’) comprises of 30 castes including upper Backward castes such as the Kurmis, Koeris, Banias and Yadavs. According to political scientist Harry Blair, many of these communities, such as the Barhis, Kandus and Kumhars (as well as some Muslim castes like Momins and Rayeens), were difficult to distinguish in terms of social and economic backwardness from those in Annexure-I. However, the Bihar government’s gazetted ordinance in 1951, followed by the first Backward Classes Commission led by Kaka Saheb Kalelkar in 1955, helped to identify the 837 “most Backward” castes among the total 2,399 Backward Castes in India. In Bihar, the commission enumerated a total of 127 Hindu and Muslim castes as backward castes, which now stand at 112, as per the caste survey conducted in 2022. Out of the 112 caste groups, 24 castes, like the Ansari or Momins, Rayeen, Shershahbadi, Rangrez, Dhobi, Idrish, Kasai, Nat, and Bhatiyara are Muslim EBCs, also referred to as Pasmanda Muslims.
Political mobilisation among EBCs
The politics of Bihar when seen through the prism of caste can be divided into several phases. The phase of the Congress rule in Bihar was dominated by forward caste alliances of Brahmin-Bhumihar-Rajput and Kayasthas for a long time after independence. Although backward caste mobilisation had begun in Bihar during the turn of the 20th century, through historical events like the Triveni Sangh (forging a collaboration between the Kurmis, Koeris and Yadavs) and the Janeyu Andolan (a movement where backward castes in Bihar began wearing the sacred thread to challenge upper-caste domination), the proliferation of several caste associations among upper Backward castes also played a prominent role in their political consolidation. This phase of political mobilisation of the backward castes reached a crescendo in the 1990s. From the Assembly elections of 1990 to 1995 and the Lok Sabha elections of 1991, the number of backward caste legislators finally outnumbered the number of upper caste representatives, a pivotal change in the social background of politicians in Bihar, that has since never been overturned.
Former Chief Minister of Bihar, Karpoori Thakur, attributed as the initiator of a ‘Backward Raj’ by Harry Blair, has been credited by several observers for this social reconfiguration in Bihar. Along with the implementation of the Mungeri Lal Commission report (1976), which facilitated reservations for backward castes in higher education and State government jobs, Karpoori Thakur initiated two major policy decisions which altered the caste dynamics of Bihar’s political landscape. First among these was the removal of English language as a mandatory subject for class 10 examinations which enabled a large number of Hindi medium students from backward castes to get access to government jobs and other opportunities in higher education. Second was the decision to conduct local elections at the panchayat level in 1978, which created opportunities for participation in democracy at the grassroots level leading to an eventual process of democratisation. Years later, in his attempts to consolidate EBC support for himself, Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar also facilitated such democratisation by implementing reservations for EBCs (of upto 20%) and women (upto 50%) in Panchayati Raj Institutions by promulgating the Bihar Panchayati Raj Amendment Act in 2006. According to a study by Subhesh Kumar, Nitu Sharan and Srikant Pandey, these reservations allowed the election of almost 1,464 Mukhiyas, 18,901 Gram Panchayat Members, 1,464 Sarpanchs, and 18,900 panchas from the EBC category, allowing them to benefit significantly from such grassroots level participation in democracy.
However, at the State level, EBCs continued to be marginalised in representative electoral politics, as compared to upper backward OBCs, as the assertion of backward caste dominance has been led by the Yadavs, Kurmis, Koeri and Banias. As pointed out by Srikant and Prasanna Kumar Choudhary, between 1957 and 1962, EBCs had no representation in the Bihar Legislative Assembly. Between 1967 and 1995, there were 753 MLAs from Yadav, Kurmi, Koeri and Baniya castes (upper OBCS) while for the same period, the number of EBC MLAs in Bihar was 55. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of EBC MLAs in Bihar was between 6 to 16. In 2005, 19 EBC MLAs were elected to the State Assembly, which fell to 17 in 2010. This number increased up to 29 in 2020; it was also the first time when the share of EBC MLAs in the Bihar Assembly went above 10% of the total MLAs. For a community with a 36% share in the State’s population, this is still a vast underrepresentation.
Emergence of new leadership
The heterogenous mix of castes within the EBC category poses substantial challenges to political mobilisation. Among the EBCs, only a handful of jatis like Teli, Dhanuk, Badhai, Kumhar (prajapati), Mallah, Nai, Noniya and Kahar (Chandravanshis) have a population between 1-3% of the total population of Bihar, as per the 2022 caste survey. All the other castes within the EBC category have a population size of below 1%, which makes political mobilisation difficult in terms of numerical consolidation.
The example of the Nishad community is a good case of political mobilisation through numerical consolidation. The Nishad community was forged by bringing together around 22 castes among the EBCs (such as the Mallah, Noniya and Bind, Kevat jatis), which brought their combined numbers to about 9.8% of the total population of the State, according to the 2022 caste survey. This makes them a significant part of the EBC cluster and highlights their political salience in terms of electoral support. However, while the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), led by Mukesh Sahani, has emerged as a key political group representing the interests of the Nishad community, the leadership among the Nishad has been scattered across several parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) and even Congress. Therefore, the viability of the Nishad community’s electoral impact among the EBCs is yet to materialise as a consolidated vote bank.
A close reading of the candidate nominations for 2025 by various political parties shows us that EBC representation among the fielded candidates has increased, especially among regional parties such as the JD(U), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and VIP. Both the Congress and the BJP lag behind in terms of EBC representation in distributing their party tickets. In fact, a closer look among candidate nominations suggests that among the various EBC castes, political parties tend to nominate candidates mostly from a few key communities like the Dhanuk, Mallah, Noniya, Teli among Hindu EBCs, and Ansaris or Momins among Muslim EBCs.
Long way to go
Whether it is the appointment of Dhanik Lal Mandal as the first EBC speaker of the Bihar Assembly in 1967, or the Rajya Sabha nomination for Pasmanda leader Ali Anwar, or even the appointment of Renu Devi as the first EBC Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar in 2020, the accommodation of EBC politicians by different parties in Bihar has been largely symbolic without much structural change in the political representation of the community, which remains highly marginalised.
Grassroots empowerment through representation in local level leadership positions is yet to translate into visible material transformations among the community, which still remains entrapped in poverty and precarity.
Sarthak Bagchi teaches Political Science at Ahmedabad University and Ashutosh Kumar Pandey is an independent journalist based in Arah, Bihar.
