NEWS MAKER. The national challenger

From the time he famously cancelled his dinner invitation to his then alliance partner, the BJP, in the summer of 2010, Nitish Kumar’s prospects as a secular alternative to the Hindu Hriday Samrat had been dwindling in the national mainstream.

The epochal result on Sunday has washed away all the setbacks so far to propel the Bihar Chief Minister firmly as the challenger to Narendra Modi’s throne in Lok Sabha 2019.

What he said on Sunday is typically the kind of understatement that exposes as much as it eclipses the real intent of the man who has pulled himself out from the danger of political ignominy to being the brightest star on the national stage.

“Every election has its own grammar. This election will be remembered in the years to come for the great alliance we made and the offensive campaign that was mounted against us, in the way the entire machinery of the Central government was pressed into service and the communal propaganda that was spread.

“This is a milestone election. The people of Bihar have reflected the nation’s mood,” said a smiling Nitish, flanked by his “ bade bhai” (big brother) Lalu Prasad and local Congress unit president Ashok Chowdhary.

He talked about the one big concern that has worried him and Lalu since the beginning of the campaign.

In different interactions with BusinessLine , both Nitish and Lalu had expressed their fears about the BJP whipping up the “communal bogey”. In one interaction during the campaign, Nitish had confessed that communal tensions during the festival season, Dussehra and Moharram, were his biggest worry.

“This mandate has come in the face of grave provocation. I salute the people of Bihar for keeping calm during Dussehra and Moharram,” he said.

This is the secular socialist who had no compunctions in aligning with the BJP for 17 long years. He was the Railway Minister in 2002 when the S6 coach of Sabarmati Express was gutted. He blames the then Chief Minister and now Prime Minister for what happened subsequently.

But very few now remember that post-Godhra, the Railway Ministry did not conduct the statutory enquiry. But Godhra is a fading memory in the resurrection of Nitish the secular/progressive icon, having severed ties with the BJP in the summer of 2013 in the wake of Modi’s anointment as the NDA’s PM candidate.

“To govern a country like India, you have to wear a skull cap and sometimes you have to wear the tilak ,” he said at the time.

As JD(U) president Sharad Yadav points out, Nitish paid the price for what he calls his “most principled stand”. The JD(U) floundered in the Lok Sabha election of 2014. But it was a spur for uniting the old comrades in the former Janata Parivar — the seeds for cobbling together the Mahagathbandhan were sown in the Lok Sabha defeat.

The journey from then to the overwhelming victory a day before Diwali has not always been smooth with the temperamental Lalu and an unpredictable Congress. But as Nitish and Lalu have both pointed out, the Bihar experiment is critical for changing the national political discourse. With the Congress meekly playing sidekick, the third-term CM of Bihar has plans for another three-term CM — from Gujarat.

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