By Jinit Parmar
As Bihar’s 2025 Assembly election campaign gains ferocity, a troubling pattern has emerged in the state’s political discourse. The state’s political discourse has shifted dramatically. Hate speech, once a subtext in election rhetoric, has moved to centre stage, amplified by rallies, social media and official campaign material. The language of development and governance has been steadily replaced by insinuations about religion, caste and “infiltrators”, prompting alarm among civil society groups and election observers.
At a rally in Arwal, Union Minister and Begusarai MP Giriraj Singh declared that he “does not need the votes of the namak haraam (the ungrateful)”, recounting an encounter with a cleric who allegedly accepted government benefits but refused to pledge loyalty. His remark, critics said, sought to draw a moral line between “grateful citizens” and those perceived as disloyal, an insinuation that echoed far beyond its immediate audience.
The BJP’s rhetoric did not stop there. Soon after, the party’s Bihar leadership asked the Election Commission to verify the identities of women wearing burqas by matching their faces with voter ID photos, alleging the possibility of “non-genuine votes”. Opposition parties condemned the move as a “political conspiracy to intimidate Muslim women voters”.
On 19 October, the BJP’s official X account posted an insulting graphic showing a bus supposedly belonging to the RJD and Congress, carrying Muslims labelled as “infiltrators”. The caption read, “Congress and RJD’s ‘Infiltrator Express’ is now heading towards Bihar”. It showed Muslim passengers and a goat, an image critics said reduced an entire community to caricature.
In Darbhanga, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai told a gathering that he wished only “to be born as a Hindu” and condemned those “running slaughterhouses”. He went on to invoke a familiar refrain: “Those who wear reshmi salwar and topi, the jaliwale, who promote slaughter—no matter which party they belong to, if they go against the Gita’s message, they incur sin. Some people want to bring in foreign ghuspaithiye (infiltrators) and take away the livelihoods of Bihar’s youth. Tejashwi, no matter how hard you try, you cannot include Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators in the voter list to destroy Bihar’s demography.”
In a recent report, the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a hate watchdog group, documented a clear pattern of remarks by BJP leaders targeting religious and caste communities. It described Singh’s “namak haraam” comment as an attempt to define citizenship through partisan loyalty, a line that blurs the distinction between welfare recipients and political supporters.
This story was originally published in outlookindia.com. Read the full story here.