Seema Chishti
Bihar matters a lot for the opposition INDIA bloc, but for the BJP, it matters much more.
Bihar matters a lot for the opposition INDIA, if only to regain the political momentum that the BJP getting just 240 MPs in the Lok Sabha in 2024 had given it.
But for the BJP, Bihar matters much more.
With 40 Lok Sabha MPs, Bihar is the sole Hindi heartland state where the BJP is not a winning act, on its own – just look around.
‘WhatsApp CMs’
Neighbouring Uttar Pradesh has had a hardline, saffron-clad Hindu religious head as chief minister since 2017. The BJP is strong enough in other north Indian states to have appointed ‘WhatsApp CMs’ (a reference to chief ministers taking orders relayed centrally from the top leadership of the BJP). Odisha’s Majhi, Madhya Pradesh’s Mohan Yadav, Uttarakhand’s Dhami, Gujarat’s Patel, Haryana’s Saini and Rajasthan’s Sharma have steered the sudden degradation of this important post in just the past two years.
It is important for the BJP – in its desire to not just control everything but make federalism subservient to a single, ‘national’, centralising idea – to have a ‘WhatsApp CM’ in Bihar. Nitish has been with the BJP but loomed large with his own social base and let his personality dominate the equation with the BJP. A significant section of Muslims and EBCs, many groups that don’t trust the BJP, have cast their lot with him. And he probably ignores most WhatsApp messages – making him a glaring exception to other rules BJP would like to establish.
What allies?
Nitish Kumar has been the sole exception to how the BJP has behaved with socialist parties (various breakaway factions of the Janata Dal since the 1970s) it has allied with, ever since the Samyukt Vidhayak Dal (‘Samvid’) governments came into being in 1967.
Its socialist partners, which allowed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to get back into the national political mainstream, faded away or were subsumed into the Jana Sangh. Since the days of its alliances with breakaway socialist groups and leaders in Karnataka and even Gujarat, the BJP’s allies have usually ended up split, absorbed into the larger Sangh parivar of parties or broken. More recently, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra under Eknath Shinde and the split Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) are crucial models of what happens to BJP allies. Amit Shah publicly referred to not needing “crutches” in Maharashtra last month.
The Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)), a BJP ally since the past millennium, has been an outlier. Nitish Kumar, the maverick, switching CM, the last to show defiance to Modi in the run-up to 2014, continues to assert himself in the Hindi belt.
What political realities?
Bihar has never had the BJP in the driver’s seat.
LJP (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan, self-declared as “Modi ji’s Hanuman”, managed to hurt Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) in 2020 and the BJP emerged as the senior partner in the NDA. Yet, political realities ensured that Nitish Kumar continued as chief minister. The BJP got a lesser vote share than the single largest party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal. With no real ‘third’ politico-social block, like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for example, it has been difficult for the BJP to engineer a situation where it could partner with a party like that and dominate the alliance. The BJP did that successfully in UP thrice – aligning with Mayawati’s BSP and using her social base to ride out the Samajwadi Party storm. But using Nitish, in a similar formula, to get the numbers to add up to the much lesser upper caste vote who are BJP loyalists, was seen as the only viable solution. He was expected to secure the EBCs (who form 36% of the state’s population, left out of the first flush of Mandal’s deepening democracy) to enable a government with the BJP to be formed. But Nitish stayed on top.
This time, the BJP, despite much criticism, has not declared Nitish as the CM candidate. What are the other ways it helps to have one’s own CM in Bihar? Adityanath looms large amongst other BJP CMs, even sometimes threatening to play the ‘successor to Modi’ game. It is no secret that the BJP’s top leadership wants to cut Adityanath to size. Giving him some competition in the north, if possible, to install another ideologically committed RSS veteran as CM in neighbouring Bihar, will be a leg up for the central leadership of the BJP. A big win in the long run.
What next?
In Bihar, the unique Karpoori Thakur reservation scheme has empowered Muslim backwards in reasonable measure. A Hindu-versus-Muslim stencil-like framing the BJP is able to use in other states is not possible to operationalise with a JD(U)-led government. A BJP CM-led government makes things much smoother to run ideologically and colour Bihar in the same single shade as UP. The history books, cultural markers and everything else that matter to the Sangh ecology can become more like UP or Uttarakhand, if Nitish is no longer the CM.
But it is the JD(U) that makes Modi’s PM-ship possible. But for the JD(U)’s 12 MPs, the BJP would be in a minority in Delhi. The JD(U), with six legislators in Manipur, is also the BJP’s most crucial ally in the sensitive state since November 2024 when other allies abandoned it.
The challenge for the BJP is how it should flip the equation, of near-subservience to Nitish Kumar, and gain the upper hand politically. A Maharashtra model, of breaking up the JD(U), is available as an option. By having its chief minister in Bihar, emerging as the single largest party in the state, it may be able to reduce the pressure of the JD(U) it still feels. All said and done, Eknath Shinde is now just another deputy minister in Maharashtra.
It was no surprise Nitish was allowed only 26 seconds on the NDA stage at the time the manifesto was released and there has been no press conference he, or the NDA, has held. The point is, will the numbers thrown up on Friday allow the BJP juggernaut to keep steamrolling the state? Or like in the state’s Samastipur district, exactly 35 years ago, will someone be able to do the unthinkable – stop the Rath Yatra?
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
Also Read: NDA Set To Breach Bihar Fortress, Exit Polls Hint At Victory https://www.vibesofindia.com/nda-set-to-breach-bihar-fortress-exit-polls-hint-at-victory/
