As enormous crowds gathered in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on Sunday for a massive election rally, two signals emerged. To begin with, the bitter rivalry between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar seems to have evaporated in the face of the vital Bihar polls. But as the two leaders jointly invoked Bihari pride, it also seemed likely that Lalu's social revolution of the early 1990s could be reignited, once again drawing the Other Backward Classes into a compact with Muslims to create a solid base of voters that could halt the march of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Though the Swabhiman rally was addressed by leaders of all four constituents of Bihar’s grand alliance ‒ Lalu's Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), the Congress and the Samajwadi Party ‒ the central message was that Lalu Yadav is back in the reckoning. Though he appeared to be on the wane after his grip over Yadavs weakened during last year’s Lok Sabha elections, the event attempted to signal that he has retrieved much of the political support he had lost to the BJP.
“The Bharatiya Janata Party wants to break the Yadavs," Lalu told the crowds. "Will the Yadavs split? Will the Yadavs leave Lalu? No, they will not. If the Yadavs want to split then they should tell me now. They [the BJP] think Yadavs are fools.”
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark that democracy seemed to be absent from JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar’s DNA, Lalu said, “Good ‘sanskaras’ are in our DNA. In our state we call even poor rickshaw-pullers with respect. We will not allow any outsider, who has the blood of a businessman in his veins, to try to insult us.”
Twin planks
The deployment of the planks of social justice and Bihari pride has done a great deal to revive Lalu’s grip over his RJD’s core Yadav voters and to reinvigorate the political platform he had so successfully constructed two-and-a-half-decades ago, political observers say.
In early 1990s, Lalu’s rise was the result of his opposition to the politics of Hindutva, which was in essence an upper-caste mobilisation driven by the demand to build a Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. The Hindutva agitation reached a climax on December 6, 1992, with the demolition of Babri Masjid. The event led to a surge in support for the BJP and to communal riots in several parts of the country.
It also resulted in a mass switchover of Muslim support from the Congress to Lalu in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. Muslims were angered that the Congress, which was the party in power at the Centre, was unable to stop the demolition. In both Bihar and UP, the joining of ranks by Yadavs and Muslims – the “MY factor”, as it is often called – became a winning combination in subsequent elections.
Fall from grace
In the beginning, Lalu Prasad was seen by many as sincere, socialist and secular. But after allegations of massive corruption forced him to serve jail time, he has, for the last few years, been reviled for his mendacity, double-talk and self-serving recklessness. The RJD leader’s “MY factor” appeared to have lost traction in the Lok Sabha elections last year when his Yadav vote base cracked, a significant chunk of it shifting to the BJP.
This cast into doubt the RJD’s claim that it was Bihar’s main bulwark against the BJP. This is significant because, from the point of view of Muslims, allegiance to the RJD makes sense only if a significant chunk of OBCs – primarily Yadav voters – back the party in large numbers too, to ensure the defeat of the Hindutva party.
The Swabhiman rally demonstrated that Lalu Prasad remains not just a public performer par excellence but also a man very much in control of his core vote base, the Yadavs, observers believe.
This did not go unnoticed by other leaders at the rally. JD (U) president Sharad Yadav hailed the RJD chief for his role to empower weaker sections and to check communal forces in the state, while Nitish Kumar attacked Modi for describing the RJD as the “Rojana Jungle-raj ka Darr” ‒ a party that gave voters a daily fear that of the law of the jungle. “Bihar has rule of law, not jungle raj,” Nitish Kumar said. “The police in Delhi is controlled by Modi ji; there is less crime in Bihar as compared to Delhi.”
Congress president Sonia Gandhi also joined in, praising the RJD leader for his contribution to Bihar’s development. “The Congress contributed in taking the state forward,” she said. “It gave approval to make policies. Lalu Prasad has also contributed, but the state needs more.”
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Though the Swabhiman rally was addressed by leaders of all four constituents of Bihar’s grand alliance ‒ Lalu's Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), the Congress and the Samajwadi Party ‒ the central message was that Lalu Yadav is back in the reckoning. Though he appeared to be on the wane after his grip over Yadavs weakened during last year’s Lok Sabha elections, the event attempted to signal that he has retrieved much of the political support he had lost to the BJP.
“The Bharatiya Janata Party wants to break the Yadavs," Lalu told the crowds. "Will the Yadavs split? Will the Yadavs leave Lalu? No, they will not. If the Yadavs want to split then they should tell me now. They [the BJP] think Yadavs are fools.”
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark that democracy seemed to be absent from JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar’s DNA, Lalu said, “Good ‘sanskaras’ are in our DNA. In our state we call even poor rickshaw-pullers with respect. We will not allow any outsider, who has the blood of a businessman in his veins, to try to insult us.”
Twin planks
The deployment of the planks of social justice and Bihari pride has done a great deal to revive Lalu’s grip over his RJD’s core Yadav voters and to reinvigorate the political platform he had so successfully constructed two-and-a-half-decades ago, political observers say.
In early 1990s, Lalu’s rise was the result of his opposition to the politics of Hindutva, which was in essence an upper-caste mobilisation driven by the demand to build a Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. The Hindutva agitation reached a climax on December 6, 1992, with the demolition of Babri Masjid. The event led to a surge in support for the BJP and to communal riots in several parts of the country.
It also resulted in a mass switchover of Muslim support from the Congress to Lalu in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. Muslims were angered that the Congress, which was the party in power at the Centre, was unable to stop the demolition. In both Bihar and UP, the joining of ranks by Yadavs and Muslims – the “MY factor”, as it is often called – became a winning combination in subsequent elections.
Fall from grace
In the beginning, Lalu Prasad was seen by many as sincere, socialist and secular. But after allegations of massive corruption forced him to serve jail time, he has, for the last few years, been reviled for his mendacity, double-talk and self-serving recklessness. The RJD leader’s “MY factor” appeared to have lost traction in the Lok Sabha elections last year when his Yadav vote base cracked, a significant chunk of it shifting to the BJP.
This cast into doubt the RJD’s claim that it was Bihar’s main bulwark against the BJP. This is significant because, from the point of view of Muslims, allegiance to the RJD makes sense only if a significant chunk of OBCs – primarily Yadav voters – back the party in large numbers too, to ensure the defeat of the Hindutva party.
The Swabhiman rally demonstrated that Lalu Prasad remains not just a public performer par excellence but also a man very much in control of his core vote base, the Yadavs, observers believe.
This did not go unnoticed by other leaders at the rally. JD (U) president Sharad Yadav hailed the RJD chief for his role to empower weaker sections and to check communal forces in the state, while Nitish Kumar attacked Modi for describing the RJD as the “Rojana Jungle-raj ka Darr” ‒ a party that gave voters a daily fear that of the law of the jungle. “Bihar has rule of law, not jungle raj,” Nitish Kumar said. “The police in Delhi is controlled by Modi ji; there is less crime in Bihar as compared to Delhi.”
Congress president Sonia Gandhi also joined in, praising the RJD leader for his contribution to Bihar’s development. “The Congress contributed in taking the state forward,” she said. “It gave approval to make policies. Lalu Prasad has also contributed, but the state needs more.”