Politics at Home: Bihar Elections Ignite Old Family Passions in Brussels

Politics and Us

My parents are visiting me in Brussels. They are always watching the election news on TV as it unfolds in Bihar where we come from. At night, when I remind my mother to put her phone away, she pleads for an hour of catching up on all election news and analysis of the day on YouTube. This is also because there is a story of unfinished political business or aspiration. Long ago, my grandfather had jumped into the electoral fray as an independent. He lost but the zeal was passed down as an inheritance and my father contested the college elections. Perhaps he would have taken it further, but he got married and had a family to take care of.

Unlike my reticent mother, my father is loquacious. In a small town, men like my father bonded over conversations. Mostly political ones. My father would often host them over endless cups of  tea. The men were loud and argumentative. My father probably the loudest and never the one to concede. My mother preferred the quietness of her routine to these noisy intrusions. Here in Brussels, my father very often concedes to my fiery mother. I suspect he does so half-heartedly. To buy peace.

The men in my family since my grandfather have had a brush—mostly accidental—with elections. My father lost the only election he ever fought. It was for the college president in Munger in Bihar. He was a student of political science at the time. He started as the strategist for the campaign but in the middle of the campaign, their candidate defected to the other side. They found a replacement only to be told 2-3 days before the election that the replacement would be disqualified. Left with no choice, he put up a spirited campaign himself and lost by 12 votes. While he was interested in politics, he never envisaged a career in the field. He was recently married and my brother was born soon after. With a family to feed, my father completely retreated from the world of politics and focused on his work. However, he never lost his intellectual interest in politics.

Several years later in 1998, my elder brother won the election to the students’ union of Hindu College in Delhi with the highest-ever margin in the college’s history. Like my father, his entry was accidental, too. However, unlike my father whose campaign was driven by consideration of caste, my brother was driven by a fire to end elitism and also the genuine desire to unite the warring students’ groups in the college hostel. He says the flame of politics was extinguished as quickly as it started. As for me, I couldn’t go beyond being a very apolitical elected class representative in my college. My only motivation being validation of my popularity in a small class of 70 students.

My paternal grandfather was the one seriously interested in electoral politics. Politics as a career. He was the only son of a reasonably well-to-do farmer, and well-educated with excellent connections to the political world. He had once refused a government job. He came very close to getting the ticket in the 1957 election to the Bihar legislative assembly and was one of the three shortlisted candidates from his home constituency. Somehow, he missed the bus.

At the fag end of his career, he contested as an independent in the assembly election. Everyone, including him, probably knew he did not stand a chance. He had no resources and no mass support; not even his own children’s backing. He would go campaigning with my youngest maternal uncle on a Bullet and distribute leaflets in the villages. Maybe it was just a lifelong dream that he did not want to leave unfulfilled.

For the last few years, my parents have been spending  considerable time with me.  Only recently did I realise that my mother is a keen political observer. She is also fiercely independent and her world views are diametrically opposite to my father’s. Growing up, I had not noticed this side of my mother at all. When I asked about her newfound love for politics, she laughed and said, “I grew up more politically aware than any one of you, including your father.” She told me about my maternal grandfather who was a farmer and also a political worker. However, unlike his father and brother, he was not associated with the dominant political party of the day. In her large extended family, her father was the only exception. In her village in Bihar, there were only five families like hers who were on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Even when she was badly outnumbered in her extended family and village, she teamed up with her sisters and sloganeered for her father’s party of choice. The reason we did not hear her talk much about politics during  our childhood was because there wasn’t  any space for her to do so. My father was mostly out for work and the women of our mohallah never discussed politics. They left it to the men and just followed their directions on the day of voting. 

My parents have never been associated with any political party. However, they are active participants in the political process. They believe in politics and its transformative power. They also carry the noisy spirit of the Indian republic and democracy wherever they go. The streets of Brussels may be calm and deserted but my home is currently a battlefield. My parents will be at war till the election in Bihar gets over.

Ashutosh Salil is an IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre

This story appeared in print as 'Election Diary' in Outlook’s November 21 issue Solitude Of Power, in which we trace Bihar’s enduring political grammar, where caste equations remain constant, alliances shift like sand, and one man’s survival instinct continues to shape the state’s destiny.