ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Nitish Kumar's Honourable Exit: A brief history of caste politics AWANISH KUMAR Vol. 48, Issue No. 26-27, 29 Jun, 2013 The author would like to thank Saumyajit Bhattacharya and Chirashree Dasgupta for discussions on the issue. Awanish Kumar ([email protected]) is at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Nitish Kumar’s exit from the NDA maybe an honourable one, but he will have to shed his neoliberal “developmentalist” leanings if he wants to fight the feudal and communal forces that have taken root in Bihar. This article presents a brief history of the politics in Bihar that have led to this break between Nitish Kumar and the BJP-led NDA. The exit of Nitish Kumar from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has raised many interesting questions about Indian politics lately. The idea that Nitish Kumar decided to break away from the NDA owing to constraints of his carefully engineered Muslim “vote bank” has emerged as common sense. However, this is only partly the case. The deeper reasons for his exit from NDA have to be sought from politics in Bihar. At the outset, it is significant to note that Nitish Kumar has not been alien to any political tendency present in the Indian political spectrum. Though he portrays Lalu Prasad Yadav as a politician preoccupied with caste, Nitish Kumar himself was one of the first politicians in Bihar to organise a caste-based Kurmi rally in early 1992. He tried his luck with the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) - Liberation during the Assembly elections in 1995. He has been with the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) since the 1996 Parliamentary elections and it was only much later that he transformed himself into a vikas purush. For the outside observers of Bihar politics in recent times, this shift from “caste” to “development” reflects the importance of Nitish Kumar and his governance mantra. The English-language media has celebrated him as the harbinger of good governance in Bihar, often avoiding the question of context and efficacy. In the meanwhile, the central government has been pushing to dismantle existing public schemes and implement, for instance, conditional cash transfers. Nitish Kumar has endorsed and implemented many of these policy prescriptions; while many corporate houses andinternational agencies have put in a lot their money into Bihar and their confidence in him. Nitish Kumar has been running a coalition government with the BJP for two consecutive terms in Bihar. The sudden realisation that the BJP is a communal party bent on putting up ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate is ludicrous. Was it not his own party that was the first political formation to support the BJP in 1996? Babri demolition was fresh in the minds of Indians and here was an avowedly socialist party lending its hand to BJP when no other party came forward lest the act destroyed their secular credentials. More damaging to Nitish Kumar is the fact that he did not move out of the NDA government post- Gujarat riots in 2002. Clearly, at this juncture, his anti-Modi rhetoric does not hold much validity. A more convincing line of argument comes from his fear of the rising feudal and upper caste power in the state which has overt support from the BJP and, in some cases, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). This resurgence has been concomitant with communalisation and strengthening of BJP in several areas of Bihar, particularly Seemanchal, where there is an increase in the activities of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Upper caste resurgence Based on various estimates, about 35% of total cultivable land in Bihar is under the Bataidari system. There is immense concentration of land ownership in a few hands (Bandyopadhyay 2009). Recently, diesel tube wells have emerged as the most important source of irrigation and after the arrival of Nitish Kumar, “tractors lead the business boom” in the rural scene, as reported by an English newspaper in 2010. In this limited context, a section of upper and backward-caste landed groups have taken advantage of the agricultural roadmaps implemented by Kumar. Roads have improved and so has access to markets. Not surprisingly, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been a casualty of landed groups in this atmosphere of selective dynamism in rural Bihar. In his first term, Nitish Kumar backtracked on the issue of land reforms and taking firm steps against upper caste militias in the state. Added to this, he appointed a commission to look into the issue of backwardness among upper castes in the state. But the upper castes have been unhappy with Nitish Kumar. A bit of recent political history may be in order here. For the upper castes, Nitish Kumar represents the politics of Lohia and Karpoori Thakur that has, historically, been against upper caste domination. Riding on the support of growing number and strength of backward-caste peasants, Karpoori Thakur had coined the slogan of “Azadi and Roti”, social justice, self-respect and quality of life, in 1977 (Hauser 1997; also see Blair 1980). Till Lalu Prasad Yadav came to power, it was an era of rapid consolidation of various groups like backward-caste peasants, landless Dalits and Muslims; culminating in the political victory of Janata Dal in 1990. Backward-castes consolidate The worst fears of hitherto dominant social classes and castes came true after Lalu Prasad Yadav selectively dismantled their hold over the bureaucracy and local governance structures. Presumably, Yadav fulfilled the promise of 'Azadi' with his fiery slogans and ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 absolute disregard for conventional authority while dealing with the state machinery and local powers. This may also have laid the basis for his subsequent decline. In the post-Mandal scenario, the contradictions inherent in the agrarian structure and between the backward castes and Dalits in North India were developing at a rapid pace, particularly after certain backward castes which had a definite historical advantage made good use of new opportunities in land and agriculture. In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, this led to a consolidation of separate political groupings belonging to the backward castes and the Dalits. In Bihar, however, it may be said that Lalu Prasad Yadav successfully incorporated the Dalit cause into his self-respect and social-justice agenda for a considerable period of time, at least till the Assembly elections in the year 2000. However, much before Yadav's legitimacy was lost; Nitish Kumar had shifted away from the Janata Dal. The mid-1990s saw a consolidation in Bihar, a soco-political class alliance of sorts, between the Brahmans and Banias represented by the BJP; the non-Yadav middle castes under Kumar's Samata Party, and a section of the Rajputs represented by the short- lived Bihar People’s Party (BPP) led by Anand Mohan (Prasad 1997:3022). Nitish Kumar, hence, represented the political compromise between a section of backward castes and upper castes. While the backward caste and Dalit votes were divided, the upper-caste votes gradually got solidly behind the BJP-Samata Party-JD(U) combine during the late 1990s and thereafter. This process has been gradual, but it may be safely granted that the BJP succeeded in gaining acceptability across castes while projecting Nitish Kumar as the backward-caste face of the alliance. In successive Assembly elections in Bihar, the BJP expanded its own social and electoral base riding on Nitish Kumar’s back. Anti-Lalu, pro-“development” In the Assembly elections of the year 2005, it was a genuine anti-Lalu Prasad vote that brought Nitish Kumar to power. The giant share of votes from the upper castes came to him via the BJP. The BJP, however, was unsure of how to place itself as long as Nitish Kumar did not hurt their political agenda. The wave of “development politics” had also tied their hands. On his account, Nitish Kumar did not disappoint the BJP and its political constituency. He allotted important ministries to upper-caste politicians – a major perception exercise targeting upper castes in the state, particularly after coming to power with anti-Lalu Prasad vote. He disbanded the Justice Amir Das commission, appointed in 1998 to investigate political links of Ranvir Sena, months after he assumed office in his first term. It is said that the commission had hinted at longstanding relations between the Ranvir Sena and senior leaders of political parties, especially the BJP. In the course of time, however, for the upper castes, better roads and an improved law and order situation came with the Land Reforms and Maha Dalit commissions. In a society like Bihar, any “concession” from the State towards Dalits is viewed as an affront to the might and political weight of the upper castes. The BJP jumped at the opportunity of mobilising the ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 upper castes against such acts of the government. All major upper-caste politicians exchanged parties and Nitish Kumar suddenly became a casteist in the eyes of the upper castes in Bihar. This was ironic given that the Land Reforms commission's report was never tabled in the Assembly and Nitish Kumar had already declared that it was not his intention to implement the recommendations of the commission. Communalism takes root The BJP soon realised its core strength which was, for a brief period, camouflaged under the “developmentalist” propaganda of the Nitish Kumar government. By the end of 2008, RSS and ABVP had already started campaigns against Muslims in the garb of “Bangladeshis” in Seemanchal. Not only their visibility had increased, but the Sangh Parivar opposed the creation of a Aligarh Muslim University campus at Kishanganj.