Bihar’s recent electoral shifts have revived an urgent conversation about governance, law and order, and the long shadow of political criminalisation. The National Democratic Alliance’s victories may signal a mandate for stability, yet the deeper challenge remains: dismantling the entrenched networks of patronage and fear that once defined the state’s political landscape.
The 1990s established the reference frame for what came to be popularly described as “Jungle Raj.” During this period, Bihar became synonymous with administrative breakdown, routine violence, and the normalization of illegalities in public life. Lalu Prasad Yadav’s ascent and consolidation of power were aided by permissive political incentives, a polarized national discourse, and sections of academia, intelligentsia, and media that often rationalized disorder as a response to historical oppression.
Journalist Sankarshan Thakur’s analysis in ‘The Making of Laloo Yadav: The Unmaking of Bihar’ captured the psychological toll on society with a devastating clarity: “What do we say of Bihar? What do we say of a state itself so punched and blown it is not even supposed to feel pain? What do we say of a state so inured to wretchedness it refuses now to convey it or complain? … Yeh Bihar hai. Yahan sub kuch chalta hai.” The line crystallized a grim acceptance of dysfunction that no society should be asked to bear.
Public discourse frequently trivialized this tragedy. The era spawned jokes that reduced systemic collapse to satire: quips about “fixing” Kashmir by gifting away Bihar, transforming Japan into Bihar in three months, or equating roads to film-star cheeks. The humor masked pain. Beneath the laughter lay the routine humiliation of citizens deprived of dignity, safety, and due process.
In the mid-2010s, the past threatened to reassert itself. After the 2015 Assembly elections, televised celebrations of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s political comeback were followed by an unsettling episode: audio tapes surfaced in 2017 suggesting that he was receiving instructions from Mohammad Shahabuddin, the notorious don-turned-politician. This revelation jolted the public and reinforced a critical lesson of the 1990s: when the rule of law is weakened, extralegal actors step into governance vacuums.
Mohammad Shahabuddin’s record illustrates the architecture of fear that flourished in that ecosystem. A fact-finding bulletin by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (October 2001) described him as a history-sheeter with a long record of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, armed offenses, and intimidation. The report observed that political protection and informal impunity helped him convert Siwan into a personal fiefdom where witnesses were frightened into silence and pliant officials enabled the capture of public institutions.
Arun Shourie, writing in 1999, reproduced intelligence assessments that portrayed Shahabuddin as a “Mafia don” with a heavily armed cadre operating across districts, implicated in political killings, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and illicit trade. Such profiles did not merely recount individual crimes; they documented the systemic overlap between criminal enterprise and electoral politics during a volatile decade.
Certain cases became shorthand for the era’s brutality, including an infamous acid-attack-and-murder of two young men and the fact that Shahabuddin contested and won a parliamentary election from prison in 2004. Popular culture registered this reality as well: Prakash Jha’s film Apharan (2005) depicted a legislator-don whose character and methods were widely read as reflections of that moment.
The context that enabled such figures was larger than any one party or personality. Competitive politics, selective enforcement, and a rhetoric of secularism as practiced in that period combined to produce perverse incentives. In this telling, “secularism” became less an ethic of equal citizenship and more a bargaining chip in coalition arithmetic—one that sometimes sheltered local strongmen so long as they delivered votes. This critique targets political expedience, not any community of faith; it calls for a principled secularism grounded in constitutionalism, ethical governance, and equal protection under the law.
Institutional fragility was starkly visible in 1998–1999, when the imposition of President’s Rule in Bihar was recommended after clear evidence of a breakdown in law and order. Although the measure passed the Union Cabinet twice and received presidential endorsement, it ultimately failed in one House of Parliament where numbers were arrayed to preserve the status quo. As one veteran leader explained at the time, “We have decided to put all our differences on the back-burner… The top priority is to oppose and overthrow the BJP-led government.” The implicit message was equally clear: short-term partisan aims outweighed the urgent need to restore public order.
The cumulative outcome was a form of “political criminalisation” that extracted a profound civilizational cost: the erosion of trust, the normalization of fear, and the degradation of institutions meant to shield citizens from arbitrary power. Bihar’s experience thus offers a national cautionary tale. When democratic processes are stripped of ethical guardrails, the ballot can unwittingly empower the bullet.
The political landscape today is markedly different from the 1990s. The administrative push toward roads, electricity, policing reforms, and social welfare has improved baselines across many states. Bihar’s electorate has repeatedly shown an appetite for order and advancement. Even so, legacies can resurface when vigilance wanes. Sustainable progress requires the vigilant de-linking of crime from politics, transparent policing, and prosecutorial independence—a governance culture that makes impunity impossible.
Equally vital is media responsibility. The celebratory framing of polarizing figures in 2015 and the earlier trivialization of systemic collapse through humor both reveal how narratives can dull civic sensitivity. Journalism, scholarship, and public commentary carry a duty to center victims, amplify accountability, and resist the glamorization of force.
This discussion also intersects with a broader imperative: social harmony rooted in dharmic values of ahimsa, nyaya, and satya—non-violence, justice, and truth. The lived traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism converge on an ethical commons that rejects coercion, condemns intimidation, and affirms the dignity of all. When governance aligns with these principles, communities flourish; when it does not, the social fabric frays.
The lessons from Bihar’s “Jungle Raj” are therefore not partisan but civilizational. They counsel steady institutional reform; an unwavering rule of law; zero tolerance for intimidation, booth capturing, or vote-bank protectionism; and a principled secularism that safeguards every citizen equally. They also remind policymakers that development without justice is brittle and that public order without compassion is unsustainable.
Bihar’s future—indeed India’s—depends on moving beyond the temptations of expedience toward a constitutional morality that is both firm and fair. That path strengthens democracy, honors the unity of India’s dharmic traditions, and ensures that the tragedies once normalized in public life are never repeated.
Inspired by this post on Dharma Dispatch.
