Nawal Kishor Kumar 
Beyond politics, the Bihar caste survey is a revolutionary document.
A public document, the first ever after 1931, allowing for people to stand up and be counted.
We go down to the wire, on what each of the numbers unveiled mean.
Who are the people referred to by percentages in the survey?
Today we look at Bhishti.
§
There is a caste group in Bihar called Bhishti whose job was to quench people’s thirsts by offering them water. It is a noble job with little respect in it despite the fact that members of the community used to physically carry water to ensure it reached people. This caste group is nearly extinct now.
This was not so in the beginning. People called them Bahishti, a Persian word which means ‘one of the people of heaven’.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
They used to be part of emperors’ armies. It was their job to pick up injured soldiers from the battlefield, carry them to relief camps and give them water. Although the main work of treating the injured was done by hakims or doctors, water offered by the Bahishtis gave comfort to the injured.
When an enemy king won a battle, he would either kill captured soldiers or assimilate them in his army. But instead of killing the Bahishtis, he enslaved them. In this way, they continued to remain slaves of king after king.
Legend has it that when the Mughal emperor Humayun was lying injured in the battlefield of Chausa, a Bhishti is said to have saved his life. It is believed that Humayun repaid his kindness by making him king for half a day. However, such a story has had no impact on society’s outlook.
In reality, the ‘mashak’, a leather bag in which they potted and ported water, has been everything to them.
Today the people of this caste group do other types of work. Since most of them are landless, they work either as house help or daily wage labourers to earn a livelihood. Some of them are educated and have become part of the workforce but they are very few in number. The members of this caste are Sunni Muslims. Some privileged class families consider them inferior in status. This is because many people of this caste group serve water during festivals, marriages and other social and religious events.
In India, the people of Bhishti caste mainly reside in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Maharashtra. In all these states these people are included in the backward class lists. However, there are many subgroups of this caste. One of them are Hussaini Brahmins. This is a separate subgroup of people from whom the Brahmins accept water. Similarly, there were Samri Chauhans who were Bhishtis of the Rajput rulers. There is another sub-group called Bahmangaur. They were probably ‘untouchable’ Bhishtis who converted to Islam. While their religion changed, neither their status nor profession changed.
Thus, while this caste group has endured, they are not counted in the caste-based survey report of the Bihar government.
Translated from Hindi by Naushin Rehman. Read the Hindi original here.
Read earlier parts of the series on the following communities by clicking on their names: Ghasi | Santrash | Madaria | Koeri/Kushwaha | Chaupal | Nai/Hajjaam | Pasi | Rangrez | Chamar | Gorkan | Jutt | Yadav | Kamar | Chik | Bari and Bauri | Dhuniya | Donwar | Sinduria Baniya | Bhathiyara | Dabgar | Kumhar | Amaat | Dhobi | Paswan | Kevat.