Bihar’s newest party has begun life on a cynical note. Last week, on the day Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) was formally recognised as a political party by the Election Commission, it admitted into its fold former MP from Vaishali, Lovely Anand, and her son, amid strident rhetoric about the “injustice” done to her husband Anand Mohan Singh and pledges to work towards getting his conviction overturned. Anand Mohan Singh, a dreaded Rajput bahubali or strongman, leader of the now defunct Bihar People’s Party, who had also acquired a Robin Hood image in the state’s Saharsa-Supaul belt, faced several criminal cases before being convicted for the lynching and gunning down of former Gopalganj DM G. Krishnaiah in December 1994.
The trajectory of Manjhi’s HAM may seem striking but it is only the latest entrant in an arena crowded with contestants who have, in different ways, effected somersaults and struck unlikely alliances ahead of the impending assembly election. The man who made Manjhi chief minister, Nitish Kumar, the erstwhile political benefactor Manjhi is now bitterly opposed to, had broken a 17-year-old alliance with the BJP in 2013 and has now joined hands with his long-time rival Lalu Yadav to fight the BJP. Confusion surrounds all the big slogans and ideological planks in Bihar in the run-up to elections.
Even Nitish’s “development” card — he can, in fact, be viewed to be a rightful claimant, given his government’s law-and-order and sadak-padhai achievements, especially in its first term — is now discomfited by association with Lalu’s “jungle raj”. “Social justice” and “secularism” are yet to recover from the unsettling effects of the realignment of political forces that has taken place recently in Bihar — Nitish’s social justice and secularism, after all, were markedly different from Lalu’s versions of both, and now that they are together, it remains to be seen whose notion will prevail.
This election in Bihar will be crucial because it will give a sense of where the BJP, with which the HAM is now allied, and its opposition are headed nationally. The verdict will also, hopefully, bring much-needed stability and reprieve for the people from a political churning that threatens to run out of purpose and meaning.
