It may have been foretold. The day after Narendra Modi’s large victory, even as the prime minister designate headed to a near-coronation in Varanasi after being extravagantly feted in Delhi, Nitish Kumar snatched the spotlight, if briefly, by tendering his resignation in Bihar.
Almost exactly a year ago, in June 2013, this election was flagged off by Nitish announcing his exit from the NDA after it became clear at the BJP’s Goa meet that it would campaign in Modi’s name. An election that started with a dramatic Nitish versus Modi moment, then, has fittingly concluded with yet another one. But this is not an end. In fact, a new page has just been turned in one of the most riveting personal and political rivalries in India’s politics today. So far, Modi has emerged the winner. Nitish tried to frame his visceral antagonism with Modi as an ideological conflict between secularism and communalism, but nationally and even in his own state, the electorate has given Modi the benefit of the doubt and much more — it has wholeheartedly reposed its hopes in him. Even so, Nitish’s resignation now is more than just the acknowledgement of his rout. It is the beginning of a fightback by a long-distance player who has spectacular achievements of his own in the state he single-handedly turned around.
Looking back, while Modi’s take-over of the BJP and the prospect of his dominance on the national stage was a phenomenon that invited vigorous political-ideological contestation, Nitish failed to recognise his own constraints in stepping up to that role. Having raised expectations to dizzying levels in his first term, the Nitish government was being outpaced by the people’s vaulting aspirations in the second term. His own support base — primarily among the state’s most backward and scattered castes, the EBCs and Mahadalits — was still neither consolidated nor articulate. His style of governance, which involves making direct appeals to the people and the privileging of the bureaucracy over his party, meant that his message lacked an organised machine. He was unable to persuade Muslims in Bihar that having cohabited with the “communal” BJP for 17 years, his breakaway from the NDA was driven purely by a high-minded conviction in “secularism”.
The turbulence set off by Nitish’s resignation may yet lay the ground for an attempted regrouping of the defeated and fragmented forces of “secularism” and “social justice” against Modi, in Bihar and elsewhere. But before they take the plunge, Nitish and the other losers of this election would do well to pause and read the verdict again. The Modi mandate, which appears to have transcended caste if not community divisions, and which cannot also be explained by “Hindu consolidation” alone, calls for a comprehensive reboot of the politics of his opposition.
