Kishan Yadav has a lot in common with the popular flute-playing god whose namesake he is. They share a name, a caste, a profession, and the land they live on. Despite the separation of 8,000 years between their lifetimes, the two Kishans would be comfortable speaking to each other - Maithili is the oldest living language spoken today. There is also a vast gulf between them. The Kishan I met in Darbhanga district has none of the joie-de-vivre of his namesake.
That is not surprising. Kishan Yadav is caught in a set of debilitating circumstances as impenetrable as the fearsome Chakravyuh mentioned in the Mahabharata.
A search for improved livelihood opportunities led the government of Bihar to promote fisheries and the cultivation of Makhana (Euryale Ferox). According to Shantanu Ghosh and Rajnarayan Indu, 'The original use of village water bodies was domestic, providing livestock water in the lean season and in rare cases providing supplemental irrigation to the kharif crop in a bad rainfall year. But over the years, with most of the ponds seen as a good income source for the village by leasing it out to fisherman, fishing is seen as a main use for these ponds.' This has led to the loss of important water sources to the buffalo herders.
The river has not fared much better. The Ulai once flowed close to their village. Now a dam upstream has ensured that it runs dry.
Both these interventions were implemented for laudable goals. The fisheries and Makhana cultivation was initiated to provide subsistence farmers with an alternative means of livelihood. The weir was built to provide irrigation for farmers. But in all this, noone thought of these people, the truly marginalised.
Narayanjee of the Mithila Gram Vikas Parishad, an organisation which works on environmental justice in Bihar, confirmed that oftentimes their buffaloes get stolen at night. If they protest, they are abused and driven away. The people of Mithilanchal clearly see no discrepancy between their worship of Kishan the god, and their ostracization of Kishan the buffalo herder.
There is one way in which the god protects the herder though. Our Kishan's surname protected his life. Mazlum Ansari (32) and Imteyaz Khan (15) were not so lucky. In March 2016, these two buffalo herders, bereft of an 'appropriate' surname, were killed in Jharkhand for their livestock.