Bihar Elections 2025 Navigating Polarization

Bihar Elections 2025 Navigating Polarization and Rising Nationalism

Bihar will go into another high stakes Assembly elections on November 6 and 11, 2025. These elections will not only verdict the political survival of Nitish Kumar, but also the ethical barometer of Indian democracy. The two phase polling, reduced from five in 2015 and three in 2020, reflects a major simplification. It also signals a nervous Election Commission trying to maintain control in one of India’s most politically volatile states.

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) still runs a long and awkward alliance with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar under the NDA banner. They have 132 out of 243 Assembly seats, barely a comfortable majority and an uncomfortable electorate. The prevalent dissatisfaction with unemployment, corruption, and ineffective underdevelopment has turned the rural poor and lower caste voter in Bihar. It particularly includes both ruling and opposition camps. The Mahagathbandhan, consisting of the RJD, Congress and the Jan Suraj Party, is fragmented, led by Prashant Kishor.

Nationalism as a Fallacy

The BJP campaign, guided personally by its leader Narendra Modi, has not been the most subtle one. Notably, following the Pahalgam terror attack, the speeches that Modi gave in Bihar made the foreign aggression and domestic politics hard to draw the line. Pakistan is the handy scapegoat, and Bihar has become the stage for performing nationalism.

The BJP and its Operation Sindoor story of honor, nationalism, and sacrifice has transformed the BJP state election into a patriotism referendum.

However, the truth about Bihar is a different story below the slogans. The roads are still in potholes, the state funded hospitals are still underfunded, and the unemployment rate among the young people in the urban areas is just 11%. The capital spending of the state amounts to 42,000 crores in growth terms is hardly even a needle mover. One third of the population of Bihar continues to exist below poverty line. Thousands of people emigrate annually in search of primitive means of survival. The hollow rhetoric of Vikas of the state where the development is largely restricted to the inauguration at election times.

Polarization as a Political Strategy

Interestingly, the BJP game in Bihar has now become well known, religion is fused with security, and nationalism with fear. Polarization among communities has taken a sharp turn up to 65 cases of violence this year against only seven in 2024. Bihar falls second only to Madhya Pradesh in terms of community clashes. The brunt has been taken by the Muslims, Dalits, and Christians. The party’s messaging links cross-border terrorism to the Nepal-Bihar border region. However, it depicts the districts of Kishanganj and Purnia as the center of security flash. It is not a policy strategy, it is a vote getting strategy based on consolidating upper caste Hindu votes by creating an effect of threat.

Moreover, AIMIM under Asaduddin Owaisi has also resurfaced dividing the Muslim votes that could have been supporting the Mahagathbandhan. It is not accidental that the BJP silently allowed AIMIM to spread in Seemanchal. Thus, it is the divide and rule strategy in the guise of multiparty democracy.

The Caste Chessboard

In Bihar, everything is still under the surface of caste politics. The BJP led by Modi is still seen as an upper caste stronghold and it has been attracting extremely backed caste. The JD of Nitish Kumar is affected with issues of credibility due to the years of ideological flip flops. In the meantime, the story of social justice at RJD is outdated and the Congress is lacking energy and message. The smaller left parties CPI(ML) and CPM still have some annexes but have few coordination contacts with their larger allies.

The actual threat is the fusion of caste and religion being currently combined into a hybrid identity politics, Hindu unity, and internal aspects.

Technocracy and Capitalism in Action

Strikingly, the Congress has already indicted NDA to manipulate electoral roll and utilize state machinery in vote chori. Regardless of the validity of those arguments, the election is clear, panic over facts, and belief over performance. The BJP is structurally advantaged to start with the digital dominance, sympathetic press, and administrative leverage to make the row unequal.

The Bihar elections of 2025 are not just a battle of the state, but it reflects the Indian politics at its finest under Narendra Modi. Nationalism has been turned into a political weapon, community segregation is made the norm, and governance is turned into a facade. To the voters, the actual decision is not between the political parties but between two versions of democracy, where one is motivated by propaganda and polarization and the other one is motivated by the prospect that policy and justice can still count.