Terms of Trade | The story of two betrayed revolutions in Bihar

February 17 was the death anniversary of a freedom fighter, a radical leader of the socially backward classes and former chief minister Karpoori Thakur, who is always remembered with a reverential prefix of Jan Nayak. That a man, who pursued his own political agenda despite belonging to a weak and numerically insignificant caste could become the chief minister of a caste-ridden feudal state like Bihar was, simply speaking, unimaginable. His contribution to social equality notwithstanding, Thakur could not last as the chief minister for his full term and was brought down by people within his own party which included leaders from dominant backward castes. The major outrages against harijan sharecroppers and agricultural labourers since March 1977 occurred in Kargahar, Belchhi, Pathadda, Chhaundadano, Gopalpur and Dharampura and in almost all cases the accused belonged to these aggressive backward castes”, Manish Kumar Jha writes in his essay called Caste and Popular Politics in Bihar: The Enigmatic figure of Karpoori Thakur. The appropriation of Saraswati and Thakur by their saboteurs Anybody who is aware of political rhetoric in present-day Bihar would know that Swami Sahajanand Saraswati’s name is evoked as a politically correct euphemism for the political mobilisation of the Bhumihar caste in Bihar.