Beef in Plenty but Not Jobs in Seemanchal’s Chicken’s Neck

Since last year, the hard-won trust between the Hindus and Muslims of Kishanganj has suffered a setback.

Twenty-five-year-old Shams Tabrez takes a quick shower, slips into a freshly laundered and neatly ironed pink kurta, adjusts his skull cap and hollers, “Jumme namaz ka waqt ho gaya hai; jaldi kijiye, (it’s time for the Friday namaz; hurry up).”

He steps out of the house, scampers away toward Gudri Bazar on Pilkhana Road in Kishanganj and then disappears in the sea of co-religionists hurrying to the local mosque where the call for prayers over loudspeakers tied atop minarets rises over the din on the congested and fume-choked road below.

Tabrez, his three brothers, including the youngest with kohl-lined eyes, won’t miss Friday prayers for anything, even if a guest must wait. This act of piety has been a constant but is now a protective shield. It is an act loaded with meaning – of identity solidification in Kishanganj where stories from Dadri in UP and Haryana and the hullabaloo over beef-eating have instilled a sense of fear. In the midst of the raucous and clangorous campaigning, Kishanganj, Purnea, Katihar, and Araria, which account for 24 of 57 seats in the Seemanchal and Mithilanchal regions, go to polls in the last phase of the 2015 Bihar assembly elections on November 5.

Beef as an Invocation of Nationalism

“For sure beef is sold and eaten here but in my opinion the more you talk about it with the objective of electoral mobilisation, the more tense Kishanganj will get,” Tabrez said before dashing out.

Gudri Bazar ke Haji Hotel mein beef milta hai. Lekin uss hotel ka diwar ek mandir se sata hua hai (beef is available at Haji Hotel which has one common wall with a temple).

Shams Tabrez

This reminded me of the rumours last year – beef, mischievously thrown into a temple, had nearly turned this thickly-populated town into a potentially deadly communal cauldron. It was spared of lucid madness because the dominant Muslims pulled back to choose peace over violence.

Beef, in Kishanganj, is construed as a back-door invocation of nationalism.

Since the events of last year, the hard-won trust between the Hindus and Muslims of Kishanganj has suffered a setback.

Tabrez runs an ayurvedic medicine store which doesn’t see much business. His 17-year-old brother Sarfaraz Hussain, who pursues English (Honours) in Marwari College, said that “in this chicken’s neck (a reference to Kishanganj’s peculiar geographic position in the narrow Siliguri Corridor close to the Nepal and Bangladesh border) there are too many boys and girls competing for too few seats in colleges.”

Regional Culture Over Religious Norms

Rukhsana Parveen, Shams’ and Sarfaraz’s sister, is in her first year of a BA course at the co-educational BN Mandal College, where her major is History. When I inquire what areas of history she is fond of, Rukhsana makes a politically significant point. “The Mughals from an all-India perspective and the reign of Ashoka from Bihar’s perspective.”

During the drive from Darbhanga, through Madhubani, Supaul, Araria, Purnea, Katihar and Kishanganj, the burqa is conspicuous by its near-total absence – a sign that regional culture has greater salience over norms dictated by religion. In the midst of a politically charged campaign in Seemanchal where the concept of nation has been used to mobilise loyalties, kindle energies and articulate demands, identity – both ‘hard’ and ‘soft' – itself has undergone a degree of cultural hybridisation.

Human Trafficking is a Big Problem

“It is true that the atmosphere has been slightly vitiated,” said Zulfikar Ali Khan, who lives in Kishanganj but is the station master at Islampur, which is in North Dinajpur in adjoining West Bengal. From his vantage point in the frontier town of Islampur, Khan, originally from UP, feels “human trafficking is the single biggest problem in this part of the country, which neither policy-makers in Delhi nor the state governments here are interested in stopping.”

In keeping with his elevated social status in Chunapatti area of Kishanganj, Khan, whose younger brother is a software engineer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, does not feel comfortable when described as a “minority” group member. Yet, he, like the teeming Muslims of this region, asks, “What is the minority to do?”

Mindful of the fear and apprehensions in the days preceding November 5, Khan himself supplied the answer: “It will vote.”