ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two related but different issues. The first is linguistic: that politics, both "rajniti" in Hindi and "politics" in English, as used in the Bihar context, had a range of meanings depending on the social and cultural context in which it was used. The second is historic: that the use of the word "politics" had social and political implications especially tied to the gender of the users. The chapter focuses on the various interpretations of the term "politics" as influenced by gender. It shows that the way in which politics was defined sometimes contradicted, coexisted with, or changed the agenda of the 1991 Parliamentary campaigns. The chapter demonstrates that the way in which people used those definitions in evaluating their political participation. It also focuses on women campaigners, on women's issues in party platforms and in the campaigns, and on grassroots political efforts in Bihar.
