A fall that isn8217;t fall enough

It was the spring of the fall of Brahmins in Bihar, March 1990. And there were not many mourning. The Brahmins, small in number some five-...

It was the spring of the fall of Brahmins in Bihar, March 1990. And there were not many mourning. The Brahmins, small in number some five-six percent of the state8217;s ninety-odd million people, too were not unanimous in their sorrow: the rise of the great Yadava was too much of an excitement to have left anyone just mourning.

The realisation of the damage done, of the loss an era of proxy lordship was to dawn some six months later when the kangaroo-judge of post-Gandhian social justice would push Mandal right down the nation8217;s throat. A total vindication of some of their unwittingly secular fears was to come still later.

It has been the summer of an individual8217;s melancholy. Or: more tragically, desperation. And there are not many mourning.

But many happy things happened in the interregnum.

To lend some importance to dates, Laloo Prasad Yadav became the chief minister of Bihar on March 10, 1990. It was Holi time. A very rabid campaign had led to the assembly elections: Great electoral savagery in pre-Seshan days. High on V.P. Singh8217;s Mandal mantra, there would be thousands of loud-speakers puking pre-recorded anti-Brahminical hymns. Excerpts from the Vedic literature would be quoted to illustrate how cruel the Brahminical dominance of 5000 years had been.

The moment for political comeuppance had arrived now. Rajiv8217;s poor foresight had lit it in the form of V P Singh. Laloo8217;s stars had fixed it two years back when Karpoori Thakur passed away. More than half the state8217;s electorate had endorsed it. It was coronation time. The first of a Yadav8217;s after perhaps the fall of the Pals of Bengal in early medieval India.

Within hours of the 43-year-old messiah8217;s ascent, a whole new folklore was set floating: he has a socialist vision, is capable of looking beyond Yadavas; Patna University educated which he is; knows how to speak English which he still doesn8217;t, needn8217;t; and, to the nation8217;s horror today, the most illustrious of JP8217;s retainers.

Myths are compressed dreams. And here we had almost the entire state dreaming dreaming so hard and so blind that over the next several years, past another election, reality will be overwhelmed by mythology: a Rs 1000-cr case of plain loot will find it hard to be sufficient reason for a chief minister to quit office.

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Those were happy years. Millions of the state8217;s backwards8217; debrahmanised their mental world. Vicarious political empowerment so magically became the substitute for social change. And then Advani was arrested. Muslims were so happy they almost created an idol.

The national media called him Lallu-a8217; and accepted him as the figurehead of a wronged social class, the torch-bearer of a rising new political creed. A comic but necessary reality. On his second victory in 1995, one national fortnightly wrote: that the social base of politics in Bihar has shifted, we have come to accept; what Laloo8217;s absolute victory shows is that he is the absolute leader of this transformation.

We now know, he was, if victory in democratically held polls is the absolute yardstick to decide the permanence of the victor8217;s moral authority to rule.What we have to unlearn is that polpular mandate to a party or an individual is democratically absolute. And, side by side with it, what we have to learn is that ready-made constitutional tools like Article 356 are only evasion.Today, when Laloo Prasad Yadav is swayed by a variety of misfortunes, from something as clear as a corruption chargesheet to a fact as readily dismissable as loss of popular confidence, many of us have hard time deciding if the beginning itself seven years ago was not flawed.

Today, when his political powers have decayed to a restive nuisance value that organises phony garib railas8217; and sabotages party polls, one is faced with a much larger reality: Laloo Yadav can8217;t build, bear or symbolise social justice.

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He says he is not resigning. It8217;is because our democracy allows him to believe he ought not.