 "Bihar, Congress")
Other than unruly traffic and very dusty air, what is very striking about Siwan, a small city in Bihar with a population of 135,066, is the presence of large number of Western Union branches. It is not unusual to see a paan shop flashing the Western Union board asking people to make use of money transfer facilities.
In fact, Siwan district has nearly 200 outlets of Western Union alone, very high for a poor district like this with a little over 3 million population. A Western Union official told me that the district receives, on an average, nearly 31,000 remit orders every year, mostly from people working in Arab countries. According to estimates, the average annual remittance is nearly Rs. 2,000 crore in the twin districts of Siwan and Gopalganj. “Nearly 40 per cent of such remit orders are from Hindus and 60 per cent from Muslims,” the company official told me.
It is their pursuit of common goal of going abroad together for jobs that has provided an additional glue to the already amicable relations between Hindus and Muslims in the region.
Even as I was talking to the official about the number of Hindus and Muslims going to Arab countries every year from the region, an elderly gentleman, a Muslim, sitting nearly was getting irritated. “Why do you keep talking about Hindus or Muslims going to Abu Dhabi or Dubai? Why don’t you understand that technicians who go there, not Hindus or Muslims,” the gentlemen told me, cutting short the conversation.
The underlying spirit of unity expressed by the gentleman was visible everywhere—from peaceful co-existence in villages to taking part in religious processions. In interiors of Siwan, I saw rows of houses flaunting religious identities in the form of flags, some Hindus’ and some others of Muslims. It was not uncommon to find a temple in the midst of a Muslim basti or houses of Hindus near a mosque.
“If you live together and trust each other so much that you don’t mind sending your children abroad to earn, then you can imagine the bond members of the two community shares with each other. Other than living together, fortunes are interlinked and rhetoric alone cannot break this bond,” a well-known Hindi television anchor told me. He has been touring Bihar for a long time. He added that “you will also notice that Hindus and Muslims in Bihar speak the same language—Bhojpuri in and around Siwan, Maithili in the Mithila region and Magahi in the Magadh region.” Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi are dialects of Hindi and are spoken in different parts of Bihar.
Elsewhere in Hajipur district, we saw several Hindus taking part in Muharram processions. Many Hindus we spoke to said that they never shy away from making donations for Muharram processions. Those processions, and we saw quite a few of them, were orderly and they would make sure that incoming vehicles get safe passage.
In the middle of one such procession, I reached a Yadav-dominated village Alipur Mukund. We were greeted by an old man called Mohammed Yakub. He was sitting along with scores of villagers, many Hindus and some Muslims. He introduced himself as Sardar (a word commonly used for commander-in-chief in villages of the state) of the village and others nodded in agreement. Villagers looked very upset with the controversy surrounding beef. “If beef ban brings development, ban it by all means. But please don’t make it an issue to divide communities. We live together and will die together. If we fight among ourselves, how are we going to survive?” asked Yakub.
The geographical segregation of religious communities was conspicuous by its absence even in Muslim dominated Seemanchal region of the state. “Most of the shops here are owned by Hindus and customers are mostly Muslims. We buy ration for our daily needs without thinking even for a minute who are we buying from. Same is the case in village melas,” a woman worker of Janata Dal (United) worker told me in Muslim-dominated Baisi which is part of Purnea district. During elections, she was tasked with contacting women in her area, collect their feedback and send them to the party leaders.
As members of different communities constantly interact with each other and pursue common goals, divisive issues tend to unite them at times. This is what we saw in assembly elections this time. Chances are the amity is likely to continue beyond elections.
