“I Am From Bihar — But Don’t Reduce Me to ‘Bihari’.”

Words by Ananta Prasad

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If advertising truly is a mirror of the times then this Tata Airlines (Now Air India) route map is evidence of how different regions of South Asia was seen and represented 83 years ago. (Available now as print)

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“I Am From Bihar — But Don’t Reduce Me to ‘Bihari’.”

The Making of the Modern Bihari Identity

Migrants travel atop a truck in Patna on May 17, 2020, enduring the scorching heat to return to their hometowns during the COVID-19 lockdown. Photo: Ranjeet Kumar/The Hindu

In a viral YouTube video, a young artist, Sahil Kumar, performs a searing spoken-word monologue. His words, shaky yet deliberate, carry the weight of a people’s grievance:

“You might call me crude,
but don’t mistake this for helplessness.
I am from Bihar—
but don’t reduce me to ‘Bihari.”

A single word can carry so much. Not just a geographical marker, but a shorthand for an entire set of assumptions: poverty, backwardness, violence, cultural inferiority. In urban India, for millions of migrants like him, the word has become less a descriptor and more a slur, a tool of exclusion wielded with casual cruelty.