HistoriCity: The focus on the Nishad community in the upcoming Bihar polls

Several communities have self-identified as Nishads since the first population enumeration exercises carried out by the British in the 19th century

This Bihar election, expectedly, has stirred the pot of caste politics so much that one of the most subaltern caste groups is now under focus. The nomination of Mukesh Sahni as the deputy chief minister candidate for the RJD-Congress+ alliance – if it comes to power -- is perhaps the first time that a person from the Mallah community has been made a key face of a major political formation.

The nomination of Mukesh Sahni as the deputy chief minister candidate for the RJD-Congress+ alliance – if it comes to power -- is perhaps the first time that a person from the Mallah community has been made a key face of a major political formation. (PTI)

The Mallah community was formerly dependent to a great extent on occupations linked to rivers, from being boatmen (kevat) to fishing and also farming along fertile river banks. They have been aptly called Jal Kisans in the past.

Communities like the Mallahs, Binds, Manjhi, Kewat, Tiyar and Turha and a few other groups traditionally associated with water-based occupations including desilting wells and chestnut (singhara) farming, have been self-identifying as Nishads since the first population enumeration exercises carried by the British in the 19th century.

Who are the Nishads?

Those who know the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, would recognise the Nishad. In the Ramayana, Ram, Sita and Lakshman were provided crucial help by Nishad king Guha to ford the river Ganga early on in their exile. This has been interpreted

by both the Nishads and scholars alike as evidence that more than 2,000 years ago this indigenous tribe was in control over large parts of the Gangetic belt as well as other areas.

Smita Tewary Jassal writes in ‘Caste and the Colonial State: Mallahs in the Census’, “There are three types of beliefs about the origin of Nishad in lok parampara (folk tradition). In the first, the claim is of a universal and philosophical nature…Legends within this category claim

that the Nishads were the first to inhabit the earth after a series of destructions. The Nishads’ proximity to water and water-based livelihoods reinforces this claim”.

The second is based on evidence from the epics and the third one is of Puranic origin. Tewary writes, “...Puranic myths is one that maintains that Nishads originated from the right thigh of King Venu. Upon churning his right thigh, a short, dark, flat-nosed, short-limbed,

large-jawed, copper-haired man with blood-shot eyes, appeared. He innocently asked the sages what he should do, to which they responded, Nishid, i.e., ’sit beside us’. He came to be known as Nishad and was made master of the forests and mountains.

On churning the left thigh, a fair-skinned man appeared, who was named ‘Puru’. Puru was made master of the city, and it is from him that caste Hindus trace their origin. The significance of this myth is the claim that dark-skinned people were the precursors of mankind.”

Sanskritisation and Colonial Census

Purity and pollution-based occupation segregation of society has remained a foundational fact among Hindus for more than two millennia. Bihar, the cradle of caste, has been a sort of soothsayer when it comes to caste politics, at least in north-India. The British administrators, influenced by elite caste informants willy-nilly codified and straitjacketed the casteism of Brahmanical tradition into modern administrative population censuses.

This also enabled them to not just make sense of who they were governing but also helped them suppress and subjugate unsettled and semi-settled non-agrarian groups such as the Mallahs, a term used to self-identify by subcastes Kewat, Bansi, Chain, Jalehar, Kharsa, Majhi, Birhar, Gayotri, Ghatwal, Jalwer, Kurwaha, Maheta, and Dhuria among dozens of others.

The census exercises proved to be an opportunity for oppressed classes and castes to re-label themselves. Caste associations sprung up across the country to petition the colonial authorities to admit them into one of the elite varnas i.e Brahmin, Kshatriyas and sometimes Vaishyas. Therefore, various sub-castes and groups who lived off the river and its banks such as Tiyars, Majhi, Chain (who were associated with thievery) and those mentioned earlier, all labelled themselves Nishad with the hope that the Ramayanic allusion of helping Lord Ram would uplift their status.

However, it also caused confusion. British administrators categorised other water-based occupational groups such as Kahar (water-carriers) as Mallah, which was later corrected. These efforts to enter the elite caste fold also led to violent opposition from Brahmins.

A double whammy for the Mallahs was the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 that was passed to provide for the registration, surveillance and control of certain tribes. In one stroke, Mallahs or Nishads were therefore forced to leave their traditional occupations and turn to being farm labourers or other petty jobs, often in exploitative conditions. This helped the British secure waterways as well as land routes as this was a major concern for their fledgling power.

Assa Doron, quotes Lt G F White’s 1838 account in her book, Life on the Ganga, “As Government despatches treasure by these boats, they are accompanied by a guard of soldiers…the thieves of India being exceedingly expert, and frequently committing great depredation on the river, by means of small boats, in which they glide noiselessly to any unguarded vessel, which they speedily strip of everything valuable.”

By 1872, the Mallah caste itself was added to the list and registered as a ‘Criminal Tribe’. Subaltern narratives seek to also highlight the role played by Nishad or Mallah communities in the revolt of 1857, which has eulogised elite caste heroes like Kunwar Singh, Tatya Tope and others at the cost of Mallah bravehearts such as Bhola Majhi. Other

accounts seek to foreground their economic contribution by asserting their role as drivers of barges carrying stone required for the building of iconic monuments such as the Red Fort in Delhi. With the rise of Mukesh Sahni as a figure in Bihar politics, at least one ‘son of Mallah’ stands to claim his rightful place.

(HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal)