The Bihar CM’s Bizarre Equation

Marrying at 25 = less child malnutrition = long life

The reason Jitan Ram Manjhi is the Chief Minister of Bihar has roundly to do with his caste. He is a Musahar, the most downtrodden among Dalits in Bihar, and appointing him Chief Minister was part of Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar’s strategic move to halt an advancing Bharatiya Janata Party tide in the state because it would ensure the community’s allegiance to his party.

This Monday, following a function to discuss child malnutrition, Manjhi came to a press conference and said that late marriage after 25 is one solution to the problem. According to an Indian Express report, he gave his own example of having married after 25 and still being fit at 71. Note that this has zero connection with child malnutrition because the correct example for him to quote, if at all, would have been the health of his children on account of the age at which he got married. But there were further absurdities in store.

The Express report quoted him saying, “Population explosion and malnutrition were a result of violation of Ashrama system that had sound categorisation. One reason behind height of a person coming down from seven to five feet is because of early marriages.” Manjhi also said that ‘the Ashrama system, which advocated a phase of celibacy (brahmacharya) till one attained the age of 25, is scientific in nature. According to the system, the other phases are grihastha, vanaprastha and sannyasa.’

If there is any evidence that people were seven feet tall in India, then it is locked in Manjhi’s cupboard. It is the same as believing monkeys could talk or that there were flying chariots in ancient India.

Neither do we know that this system of Ashramas ever crept out from the scriptures to be part of the lives of Indians. If it did, then Manjhi should at present be in the forest doing sannyasa as per the Asharama system. But he is not. The conversion of celibacy into energy does work for many people but has nothing to do with anatomy; it is a psychological effect, like placebo action.

But leave all that aside. The biggest irony of what Manjhi said is that he is now espousing a system of thought that has led to the enslavement of Dalits for millennia.

The Ashramas that he speaks about is actually conjoined with another word; the real term is Varnashrama and in it the concept of the four stages of life is woven with that of the four castes (varnas) of Hindu society, which does not even give Dalits a place in it. In recommending it, Manjhi, a man who is Chief Minister because he is Dalit, is toeing the line of Brahminism. It is a system of thought that gets temples cleaned after he has visited them and which he complained about recently.

Caste has endured for so long in India because the ‘lower’ castes were conditioned to become willing participants in a worldview that this was a preordained state of being. But it is not.

Demolish that belief system, then there is no place for ridiculous thoughts about marrying at 25 doing anything against malnutrition or for longevity.

One would think a Dalit who became the Chief Minister of a state would recognise that.

Bihar CMJitan Ram ManjhiNitish Kumar