Patna: It was in March 1988. The imposing socialist patriarch and leader of the Lok Dal Legislative Party (LDLP), Karpoori Thakur, had died a few weeks ago and his colleagues, Gajendra Himanshu, Anuplal Yadav and Vinayak Prasad Yadav were competing to put themselves in his place.
Shyam rajak – a young activist from Lok Dal then and high-ranking leader of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) now – fell into patna’s Hindustan Times office with a press brochure issued in the name of Nitish Kumar. When Rajak left, the landline in the briefing room rang. The lead reporter, Narmdeshwar Sinha took the call; the person who called was Nitish.
Sinha, who was called Lama ji because her face resembled that of Buddhist monks, handed me the receiver as she had assigned me to do a news report with what Nitish had to say.
“I am Nitish Kumar, MLA from Lok Dal. Please make the news on behalf of Lalu Prasad ”, Nitish – whom I had not yet met personally – he told me on the phone. A puppy reporter, I got confused.
Lama hee – a veteran political journalist – He looked me in the face and said, “You’re not supposed to be a student memorizing a political science chapter. As a reporter, you must understand real politics. Nitish is on a mission to turn his friend Lalu into the leader of the Legislative Party Lok Dal. The young brigade of the JP movement is on the way to execute a generational change in Lok Dal. Nitish is the brains of the young brigade, ”Lama ji said with his enigmatic smile.
Later, we learned that Nitish was operating from behind the scenes to make Lalu the leader of the LDLP and was circulating the “right messages” in the media.
The power of the Lalu-Nitish combination
Lalu and Nitish worked together to effect a phenomenal change in the course of Bihar politics. Lalu became the leader of the LDLP, beating Himanshu, Anuplal, and Vinayak. Lalu, who is three years older than Nitish, called him “chhota bhai” and Nitish called him “bade bhai”. Their relationship was rooted in student activism under the “tutelage” of Jayaprakash Narayan, or JP, as he was popularly known, who led the movement that culminated in the removal from power of the powerful Indira Gandhi in 1977.
Journalists coined the nickname “Chanakya” (Machiavelli’s Indian version) for Nitish. It fit perfectly with Nitish, who had played a pivotal role in changing the course of Bihar politics through Lalu, as Chanakya had done when replacing the Nanda dynasty with Chandra Gupta Maurya in the 3rd century BC. C.
Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar during a rally in Hajipur, Bihar on August 11, 2014. Photo: IANS
Tejashwi Yadav was not yet born when Lalu and Nitish had combined to define the course of history. And the murder case that Tejashwi referred to in the Bihar assembly on Thursday that sent Nitish in a fit of anger belonged to the 1991 elections, when Lalu was prime minister and Nitish was his closest confidante. It was a fabricated charge against Nitish that the courts had dismissed and described as “mala fide”. Furthermore, Lalu, who was in power for the next 15 years, never made a public statement about this case.
Reasons for Nitish’s Loss of Temper
In the rarest of rare loss of temper, Nitish yelled, “Ask your father who made him the leader of the Lok Dal Legislative Party. I do not speak, I am silent… He (Tejashwi) is the son of my brother friend. Who made him deputy prime minister? You are recharged; action will continue, ”after Tejashwi referred to the murder case.
Nitish must have had memories of the phenomenal chapters that the ‘Lalu-Nitish combination’ had written in the political history of the state.
As recently as 2015, Lalu and Nitish together dealt the biggest blow to Narendra Modi-Amit Shah. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won 33 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar in 2014. The ‘Lalu-Nitish combination’ constituted the ‘core’ of what Nitish referred to as the RJD-JD (U) -Congress Mahagathbandhan, which won 177 seats in the 242-member Bihar assembly, bringing the BJP’s count down to 53. In many ways, the Lalu-Nitish combination was more powerful than that of AB Vajpayee-LK Advani during the 1990s.
Perhaps, the Modi-Shah duo now have a clear idea of what Lalu and Nitish can do together. And the fear of them reuniting has prompted the BJP to accept Nitish as the prime minister.
Union Interior Minister Amit Shah greets Bihar’s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after the latter’s swearing-in ceremony at Raj Bhawan in Patna on November 16, 2020. Photo: PTI
However, it is difficult to decipher the “personal equations” between Lalu – bellicose and flamboyant, and Nitish – skillful thinker and skillful strategist.
Lalu-Nitish Unique Bond
Throughout the years, Nitish symbolized Lalu’s “brain” and Lalu symbolized Nitish’s “power.” Nitish was the happiest person when Lalu became prime minister against the wishes of Prime Minister VP Singh in 1990. His closeness became apparent when reporters asked Lalu about his prospective ministers. “Ye sab baat Nitish se poochho, mantriyon ka list-phist wah banat-e hain (Ask Nitish about these things; he makes the list of ministers) ”. And when Nitish was asked about the same thing, he said: “Selecting ministers is the prerogative of the prime minister.”
Nitish was the main gear on Lalu’s missions. – be it the arrest of LK Advani in 1991 or the energetic implementation of the Mandal Commission.
Lalu, in fact, never denied Nitish’s contributions. In his memoirs, Gopalganj to Raisina – My political journey, Lalu has twice expressed his gratitude to Nitish for helping him become the LDLP leader.
While Nitish helped Lalu overcome entrenched socialist stalwarts, Lalu consolidated the bond between Kurmis and Yadavs fighters in the Barh-Nalanda regions to smooth the playing field for Nitish, helping him successively win the post of Barh Lok Sabha.
Reams have been written about the two leaders who fell apart in the mid-1990s. Nitish formed his Samata Party, which took on Lalu’s Janata Dal and lost a lot in 1995. Nitish joined the BJP-led NDA and it eventually replaced the Lalu-Rabri regime in 2005. But the personal equation between Lalu and Nitish has always been an enigma; they have not allowed a “third party” to operate in that space.
The Mahagathbandhan defeating the BJP in 2015 was not as impressive as Lalu and Nitish burying their 20 year old ax so suddenly. During the Vajpayee-Advani era, Nitish worked with the BJP high command with the help of “interlocutors” – Arun Jaitely, Sushil Modi, Sanjay Jha, etc. Currently, he works with the Modi-Shah combination through Bhupendra Yadav.
There are no “interlocutors” between Lalu and Nitish
But neither Lalu nor Nitish needed interlocutors when it came to forming Mahagathbandhan in 2015. It is true that Lalu called Nitish after RJD and JD (U) suffered at the hands of the BJP in 2014 and the alliance was consolidated. Such was the power of the Lalu-Nitish combination that up to six splinter groups of the former Janata Parivar, including the Samajwadi Party, advanced to reunite and revive the Janata Parivar.
For a moment it seemed that the Lalu-Nitish combination would build a formidable alternative against the BJP at the national level. Due to internal differences in the Samajwadi Party, it did not work, but it did deal a crushing blow to the BJP in Bihar.
Nitish left Lalu and returned to the BJP in 2017 again in an inexplicable way, as he had left in 1995. Reports were circulating in 2019 that Nitish was willing to join Lalu again. Lalu’s memoirs, co-authored by me, say that election strategist Prashant Kishore met with Lalu five times to revive the Lalu-Nitish combination.
Lalu Prasad Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav. Credit: PTI / Archives
It is said that Lalu did not object to the idea, but Tejashwi became the main obstacle. Maybe, Tejashwi – young, ambitious and reasonably successful son of Lalu – he is the first to stand in the way of Lalu and Nitish in some 50 years of his political life. In a way, Tejashwi has “appropriated” the space Nitish enjoyed in the inner core of Lalu’s heart and mind over the years. And that could be the reason for Nitish’s loss of calm when he feels cornered by the BJP and has no idea how to deal with Tejashwi. – the son of his friend brother.
Nalin Verma is a senior journalist and co-author of Gopalganj to Raisina – My political trip, The memoirs of Lalu Prasad Yadav. He has also been an author The best folk tales of Bihar.
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