There are unmistakable signs of hardening of political positions in India in the wake of the Bihar election results that have given a clear mandate to Nitish Kumar-led RJD-JD(U)-Congress alliance. Nitish Kumar would now emerge as a political fulcrum around which all anti-BJP and anti-Modi political forces would converge.
Though Nitish Kumar owes his victory to a powerful social coalition of backward classes and Muslims, he would be heading an inherently fragile coalition of three parties which are quite different from one another temperamentally and culturally. As he gets ready to take over as chief minister for the fifth time, he has an unenviable task of managing extreme contradictions on his hands.
A seasoned politician that he is, Kumar is aware of his challenges and may be well-prepared for the task ahead. But that would be less of a challenge as compared to managing the larger-than-life he would acquire for stopping Modi in his track in a critical state like Bihar. The results would invariably throw a question: how serious a challenge he would be for the RSS-BJP combine?
In the context of this election, it would be naïve to believe that it was fought on the planks of ideology and development. Bihar election should be a sign of worry for the democracy. It was case where, to use Plato’s words, “masses were moved by emotion rather than reason and by short-term self-interest rather than long-term wisdom”. The Grand Alliance and the BJP competed with each other to pander to such emotions.
In fact, Nitish Kumar was never an ideological challenge to the RSS-BJP combine or Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His opposition to Modi has much to do with his personal ambition than aversion to Modi’s ideology. It became evident the moment he roped in Modi’s strategist Prashant Kishore to his core team with the hope that he would employ the same tools of propaganda which Kishore used in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Kishore and his team rose up to the expectation and beat the BJP in its own game of deception and propaganda.There was a brazen attempt to mobilise voters on the basis of identity. Nitish forged a formidable Muslim-Yadav-Kurmi coalition to which a significant section of the extremely backward classes (EBCs) got drawn. The BJP harped on religious polarisation but could not project itself convincingly as protector of the EBC’s political interests. Nitish’s credential as an impeccable chief minister also helped him emerge as a more reliable leader than a motley group of upper caste central ministers who became the interface between Modi and the people of Bihar.
But strengthening of castes would not necessarily defang communalism. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, caste consolidation by regional parties espousing secularism has often proved to be too vulnerable to mobilization of people on communal lines. This was amply demonstated in UP where Dalits and Yadav deserted their political camps and voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in the post-Muzaffarnagar riot phase. Similarly in Bihar, the BJP got substantial votes of Yadavs in the Lok Sabha as their leader Lalu Yadav was out of contest. In the ultimate analysis, casteism practiced by regional leaders of Hindi heartland never proved to be an effective antidote to mobilisation on religious lines.
In such a setting, the victory of Nitish Kumar in the assembly election would not change the grammar of Indian politics. Those who worked with Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar testify that both share many common traits. Both are meticulous, honest, hardworking and come from a humble background. In their respective settings, both are often accused of being “arrogant and authoritative”. Their politics may diverge but it leaves the scope of the twain meeting in future.
However, the Bihar election would mark the beginning of silly season where logic and rationality would be expendable. The anti-Modi rhetoric would be amplified to a din where the discourse would often degenerate to mutual recrimination. Such a situation is often a precursor to further radicalisation of society. This was convincingly confirmed by the fact that India’s biggest electoral mandate won by Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 rode on the wave of communal consolidation.
Similarly, VP Singh’s emergence as a counter to Rajiv Gandhi proved to be politically ephemeral as its ideological base was no distinct from the Congress, which bounced back to assert itself. As the jubilation in Patna fades away and Nitish Kumar occupies the official bungalow at Anne Marg, he would certainly be conscious of the fragility of this electoral victory more than anybody else.
