The centrality of caste in Bihar’s political life offers a compelling case for rethinking global theories of ethnic politics and underscore their limits in explaining India’s democratic experience.

Many scholars contend that ethnic politics in divided societies typically breeds exclusion, elite capture and recurring violence. Yet, Bihar’s trajectory especially after 2005 – with the expansion of the Mandal Commission’s reforms on reservations for members of the Other Backward Classes – complicates this orthodoxy.

Once synonymous with caste massacres, private militias, criminal gangs and the Naxalite insurgency, Bihar today represents one of India’s most resilient regimes of lower-caste-led governance.

As the National Democratic Alliance of the Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata

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