Nitish returns to power leaning on Modi, the very man he once opposed

As the 74-year-old Nitish Kumar prepares to take oath for a record 10th time as Chief Minister of Bihar, it cannot be overlooked that he has worn many a political hat and broken bread, literally as well as metaphorically, with a wide variety of electoral and governmental partners.

In fact, long innings of ideological consistency have not been his trait, and in place, he has been a master of political pragmatism, changing teams with the alacrity of franchise sport players.

There shall be no compromise on that man. I am not prepared to sacrifice my principles at the altar of the ambitions of a man who creates fear in the minds of my countrymen:" Nitish on Modi, in 2013

This characteristic, however, sits at odds with the righteous socialist orientation with which he embarked on this journey more than five decades ago as a fledgling activist, dwarfed by some of the tallest anti-establishment leaders of the time.

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But, nothing sits more oddly at this juncture than the fact that some of his choicest phrases of political sarcasm, as well as unmitigated criticism and contempt, were, more often than not, reserved for one leader without whose backing he may not have succeeded in stepping inside the portals of the government, for what many are of the view, one last time — Narendra Modi.

Modi, a political rival?

“There shall be no compromise on that man. I am not prepared to sacrifice my principles at the altar of the ambitions of a man who creates fear in the minds of my countrymen...," Nitish had loftily declared to the deceased journalist and author, Sankarshan Thakur, in the searing summer of 2013 in Patna.

“That man,” was no one but the one who also had no great liking for him — Modi.

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Nitish Kumar’s anger towards Modi was also triggered by a rally near Gaya in mid-2012, at which ‘Narendra Modi posters’ were put up below Nitish’s stage. If that was not enough to make him livid, a staccato burst suddenly arose: ‘Desh ka neta kaisa ho? Narendra Modi jaisa ho! (How should a national leader be? Like Narendra Modi!)'

This merely added to the Chief Minister’s anger because Modi demonstrated that even though he was almost prevented from entering Bihar, he had significant remote control devices at his disposal.

Silence tussle

In November 2005, when Nitish Kumar was elected as Chief Minister, he had specified to the BJP’s brass that he would not just run the state in his own style, but also that Modi would stay out of Bihar.

Furthermore, the government would be guided by Lohiaite socialism and secularism, along with minority protectionism, would be among its principal credos. Further ahead, in 2010, before the state elections that year, Kumar told a journalist who asked if he would invite Modi for the ensuing election campaign: “One Modi is enough for Bihar," referring to his late deputy, Sushil Kumar Modi.

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The elections were preceded by Nitish cancelling a dinner he was hosting for attendees of the BJP national executive. The reason? Modi cocking a snook at the Bihar CM by inserting advertisements from Friends of Bihar, thanking Modi for donating Rs 5 crore to the Bihar CM’s fund for flood relief.

In 2013, however, that conversation with Nitish never made it to any of Thakur’s dispatches for his newspaper, as the Chief Minister wanted the exchange to remain off the record, at least immediately.

An unspoken conflict

But, the exchange formed a significant, although small section, of his 2015 book, The Brothers Bihari, on the two enigmatic leaders of the state who dominated mind and political space in the state since the early 1990s – Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar.

The Modi-Nitish separation started a timeline of political crossovers and, like a trapeze artist, Nitish swung between Modi and the BJP, and the RJD.

The duo apprenticed hand in hand in street politics (strictly agitation and anti-establishment), but thereafter were mostly at loggerheads with one another, even within the same party, and certainly more virulently in the political outfits they set up to chart independent paths for their rival ambitions.

That section with Nitish Kumar berating Modi was a crucial part of Thakur’s book because it established the extent of the former's abhorrence towards the latter. Thakur did not get Modi’s response to the impertinent assertion of a leader who was still an ally and coalition partner of Modi’s party, the BJP.

Modi's biggest undoing

However, in my 2013 biography of the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, the ‘Modi versus Nitish’ episode was tackled in a roundabout manner. I contended that given the pace with which political parties and their leaders were beginning to ‘accept’ Modi, it was fairly certain his critics would be “silenced with political promises in the future.”

But Modi’s “biggest undoing” would be due to “his personal trait of not being able to look at a discord from any viewpoint except his own.”

A month after the aforesaid conversation with Thakur, Nitish Kumar snapped the then 17-year-old alliance with the BJP and sought the dismissal of its 11 ministerial representatives from his government at a meeting with the Governor.

Debate on secularism

The JD(U) also issued a formal statement that after the BJP appointed Modi as the Chief of Electoral Campaign Committee at its national executive meeting in Goa, there remained not a “shadow of doubt that this is a mere ceremonial prelude to Modi’s nomination as the PM candidate. All efforts within the BJP suggest care and moderation in the process were smothered by the authoritarian cult and imperious disdain.”

This separation started a timeline of political crossovers and, like a trapeze artist, Nitish Kumar swung between his old bête noire, Modi and the BJP ‘commanded’ by him, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, where the baton was half-passed to Tejashwi Yadav, but Lalu still retained control.

Nitish's allegation that Modi “creates fear in the minds of countrymen” was not the first occasion that he taunted the latter for his exclusivist ways. In 2011, during his Sadhavna Mission, with which Modi announced his entry into the BJP’s prime ministerial race, he refused a skull cap from a Muslim Sufi cleric.

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The man governing Bihar, with fair support from Muslims of the state, taunted Modi in the run-up to his parting of ways with the BJP. He said a leader running a “diverse country like India must embrace all communities, symbolically stating that one has to wear both a topi (skullcap) and a tilak (Hindu forehead mark).”

Even earlier, for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Nitish Kumar made it known that he did not want Modi to campaign in Bihar, fearing this would risk his inclusive image.

Gujarat riots

Modi too hit back and, in an election rally in Ludhiana, in a pre-planned manner, the moment his bête noire made an entry on the crowded dais, Modi walked up and held Nitish Kumar’s hand in an iron-clasp and hoisted it for waiting photographers. Even though the word ‘viral’ was not part of the social media vocabulary in 2009, the word can be applied with retrospective effect to that picture.

Paradoxically, Nitish's secularist posturing was nowhere in sight in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots. Although Ram Vilas Paswan, then Union Coal and Mines Minister in the AB Vajpayee government and running his own Lok Janshakti Party, resigned, Nitish continued as Railway Minister.

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The reason was simple: Having whetted his political appetite with a brief seven-day term as CM of pre-bifurcation Bihar in March 2000, Nitish reasoned that he stood to eventually get his much-desired position only if the partnership continued with the BJP. When he eventually secured that job in November 2005, he voiced no objection to Modi continuing as Gujarat CM.

Eye on power

It is thereby clear that Nitish Kumar’s posturing was solely to retain power. After parting ways with the BJP in June 2013, he eventually joined hands with Lalu and forged a wide-canvas alliance with the RJD and Congress for the 2015 assembly polls and swept into office.

Yet, he parted ways two years later and had absolutely no qualms with teaming up with the BJP, which by then was completely ‘Modified’. Not so inexplicably, he parted ways from BJP again in 2022 and teamed up with the Mahagathbandhan because he sensed a shot at the prime ministership.

When the expected nomination as the electoral mascot of the opposition did not happen, he changed sides again, in December 2023, and first secured 12 seats for his party in the Lok Sabha elections, and now has stormed back to office for a record term.

Opportunistic politics

It is not that Nitish Kumar alone chose to be opportunistic and put principles or personal belief aside in the march to power, or to absolute control.

In 2012, when interviewing Modi for my book, I queried him on the BJP’s dwindling list of allies. This part of our conversation was in the backdrop of Nitish Kumar’s threats of pulling out of the alliance. If this went through, the BJP would lose one of its oldest allies.

Numerically, Nitish can no longer throw a tantrum, as the BJP, with support from other allies, will remain in office even if the JD(U) parts ways.

To engage Modi further, I asked him if the coalition era would continue eternally. He expressed confidence that this phase of politics would end and the process would be expedited if voting were “made compulsory”. Modi also spoke about the Bill making voting mandatory for every citizen, already passed by his government and awaiting the Governor’s nod.

In 2014, Modi led the BJP to a majority of its own, the first time it happened in India after 1984. He repeated this feat in 2019. With the failure to secure a majority for the BJP in 2024, and coalitions being a rule in several states, including Bihar, this plan of Modi must be kept in mind.

Winnability of the BJP

Will compulsory voting be one of the many legislative changes that could be introduced, in addition to those already mooted?

Modi was also very dismissive towards coalition partners in that conversation with me. “The number of allies depends on the winnability of the BJP. If allies become confident that by associating with the BJP their chances will increase, they will come and join the BJP.

"But if they think that the BJP will become a burden and that we will be able to save a few seats by going it alone, then they will not join hands with the BJP.” This was little but a pragmatist politician’s core belief, and in this principle mattered little.

One of Modi’s characteristics is that he brooks no insult and does not ever forget an affront. There was a time when Nitish may have fancied that the scale was tilted in his favour. After the BJP’s emergence as the largest party – albeit narrowly – he truly carries lesser political gravitas.

Government at Modi's mercy

Numerically, Nitish can no longer throw a tantrum, as the BJP, with support from other allies, will remain in office even if the JD(U) parts ways. Consequently, Modi has his moment finally – his party is the largest in the state assembly: ‘This ally’ will hereon remain in office at his ‘mercy’. We have to wait to see what the future has in store for Nitish Kumar.

Prophetically, Thakur wrote about Nitish and Lalu: “Someday soon these men will slip out of these pages and become greater or lesser. There are no last words on lives; they end in ellipses, often suffixed with a question mark. The protagonists of this volume are a work in progress; when the last word has been written, a trail would already have leapt off it. There will be more to tell...”

I can add Modi’s name to make it a nice trio because age does not really separate them.

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