Locked up questions

On Tuesday, Mohammad Shahabuddin, infamous don and MP from Siwan, Bihar, was sentenced by a local court to life imprisonment in a 1999 case of abduction and murder. On the same day, in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, in the last phase of polling, the fate of an unprecedented number of candidates with criminal antecedents was being decided at the hustings. According to one estimate, 162 candidates out of 934 in the 59 constituencies that went to poll in the seventh phase were “tainted”. It may be that several of these criminal-politicians — among them, jailed SP MLA Amarmani Tripathi in Laxmipur, Mukhtar Ansari who is also contesting from behind bars in Mau and Harishankar Tiwari from Chillupar — will breast the tape. Democracy in India has shown a tragic capacity to play host to its own subversion. But whatever be the final result in UP, the verdict in Bihar is reason to hope. A significant dent has been registered in the impunity of the bahubali.

Mohammad Shahabuddin and many others like him occupy the space vacated by the receding of the state in pockets of this country. The mix of fear and expectation they cultivate in the common man and woman is a crucial part of the bahubali’s story. But the bahubali doesn’t just step into the terrible void created in places where the state has withered away both as keeper of law and order and as provider of basic services. He also thrives because of a deep corruption of politics. Shahabuddin’s eminence in Bihar, for instance, drew upon his perceived capacity to assure the “Muslim vote” for Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD. In turn, Lalu’s determined promotion of Shahabuddin as a “Muslim” leader underlined the artificial poverty of options created for the Muslim community by its ‘secular messiah’. Over the years the Shahabuddin phenomenon captured the decline of the state, the political party and of secular politics in Bihar.

The decision of the lower court may or may not stand. But the subduing of Shahabuddin in Siwan is a valuable moment. Bihar’s new regime must build on it by pursuing all the other cases against him and his colleagues to their just conclusion.