DC Edit:Bihar Faces Uncertainty as Nitish Heads to RS

The exit of Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar from state politics and into Rajya Sabha marks the end not only of the tenure of the longest serving chief minister of the state but also of the socialist brand of politics he and his comrades advocated over the last several decades. It also marks the arrival of the saffron politics with full command of the state’s politics, emerging from the shadows of an emaciated red camp.

Mr Kumar is a product of the anti-Emergency movement of the seventies pioneered by Jayaprakash Narayan which aimed at ushering in total revolution in Indian polity, though its first priority was to remove the “fascist” government of the Congress led by Indira Gandhi. The movement succeeded in unseating Mrs Indira Gandhi but failed to accomplish its larger political objective of institutionalising an alternative political thought to the one espoused by the Congress. The byproduct of the movement, however, was a group of young leaders, freshly minted on campuses, entering the political scene.  Mr Kumar and his estranged fellow socialist Lalu Prasad Yadav belong to this group.

This young crop of leaders was the Emergency’s contribution and with all their eventual faults they were the ones to offer a political alternative to the Congress as well as aid the emergence of Hindutva politics on the national mainstream. The Janata Party formed to take on the Congress in some ways helped Jan Sangh, the then political arm of the RSS, to shed its political untouchability and become part of the government that was formed after the 1977 general elections.

The BJP, in the meanwhile, emerged as a political force pushed by aggressive Hindutva, but found the Bihar soil hard to flourish as long as the socialists were in command as they were fiercely opposed to the Hindutva nationalism of the RSS. However, Mr Kumar and his socialist friends, led by George Fernandes, were the first to extend a hand of cooperation to them in the turbulent north India of the 90s. Its force was enough to lead to BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee being anointed PM. History will now come full circle when Mr Kumar vacates his place for a BJP chief minister in the state and fades away.

The irony does not stop there. Mr Kumar and JD(U) had a love-hate relationship with the Sangh Parivar; he was even seen as the prime ministerial candidate of the INDIA coalition which was formed in 2023 to take on the NDA in the Lok Sabha election scheduled for the following year. In the meantime, the apathy and indifference of the Congress, the leading member of the Opposition bloc, had Mr Kumar and his party jump ship and become part of the NDA. In fact, that switch was instrumental in giving the NDA the much-needed push and  provided Narendra Modi a third stint as PM.

Mr Kumar’s political heir is said to be his son, who is tipped for deputy CM, but he might end up compromising every ideal the socialists once fought for, including opposing communal politics and nepotism. Perhaps it is a phase of Indian politics that will discover its natural bearings as time passes.