By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
One cannot wear a mask forever. It can fall off, rather accidentally, at some point of time. But when you try to wear too many of them at a time, and that too with dark glasses, there is sometimes possibility of messing up and getting completely exposed.
June 12 not only made it known to the world the truth of Narendra Modi-Nitish Kumar cordiality but also laid bare the larger than life profile of the Bihar chief minister created by the media. Since truth is always bitter it was natural for him to turn furious over a non-issue––a 13 months old photo taken in Ludhiana and republished in a BJP advertisement. Perhaps the jinxed 13.
What Nitish fails to fathom is that the world knows that he and his party have excellent relationship with the BJP ever since 1995. The Janata Dal (United) is the first secular party––obviously after Akali Dal and Shiv Sena which do not come in that category––which joined hands with the BJP in the post-Babri Masjid years.
It was the duo of George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar––Sharad Yadav was then nowhere in the picture but was with Lalu Yadav––who gave ‘secular legitimacy’ to the then political pariah, the BJP, and became a part of the NDA when it came to power just for 13 days in 1996. Again 13.
Nitish himself was a high-profile railway minister during most period between 1998 and 2004. He was holding that post when the Godhra incident took place on February 27, 2002, which sparked off the mayhem in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat.
[Photo by www.ilovekolkata.in]
As the railway minister Nitish spoke nothing. In fact the truth could be known only when Lalu Yadav succeeded him and constituted Justice Banerjee Commission to probe the matter.
Nitish tried to take credit of keeping Narendra Modi arms distance away. But the truth is that more than Nitish it was a part of the BJP strategy to keep its own fire-brand leaders away from the state during successive election campaign as it would polarize the environment in favour of Lalu Yadav.
It was the Sangh Parivar, who cultivated and nurtured Nitish, a backward caste leader almost sulking on the margin of politics after the humiliating defeat in the 1995 assembly election which his party then fought in alliance with the CPI ML.
The BJP adopted a very cool and calculated strategy to take on Lalu in Bihar. It was its cadres which used to man booths and ensure victory of the Janata Dal (United) candidates in election after election since 1996. So a man who barely managed to win seven assembly seats in the House of 324 in 1995 finally managed to become the railway minister of India and then ended up as the chief minister of Bihar on November 24, 2005.
Though the BJP deliberately kept men like Narendra Modi away yet it allowed all the Sangh Parivar constituents to work in a big way. After 15 long years they got such golden opportunity. Visits of Pravin Togadia became regular feature and RSS held its own National Executive for the first time between October 9 and 11, 2009 in Rajgir in Nalanda district and once again another huge show in Patna in the last week of the same year. Never in two decades Bihar saw such muscle-flexing by such elements.
In November-December 2008 the Sangh Parivar, along with its students’ wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad launched an oust-Bangladeshi stir in north-east Bihar, north Bengal and Assam. Then there was a campaign against the off-campus branch of the Aligarh Muslim University in Kishanganj in Bihar and Murshidabad in West Bengal.
A couple of years back Nitish personally greeted the then RSS chief, Sudarshan, and shared dais with him in Patna. He used to regularly meet all the Sangh Parivar bigwigs, including Modi, outside Bihar. There was absolutely no problem even when his photo with Narendra Modi hand-in-hand in Ludhiana on May 11, 2009 was published then.
But exactly 13 months later when the same photo was re-produced in an advertisement he lost control on himself and called for legal action against the BJP, cancelled dinner invitation to Narendra Modi and company the same evening and threatened to return the Kosi flood relief aid of Rs five crore from the Gujarat government.
The BJP’s response was once again planned, well-executed and systematic. As Bihar was among the last bastion to fall to the NDA it was in no hurry to squander this opportunity, which came four and a half years ago. It fully capitalized on Nitish’s mistake of making only Narendra Modi and Lal Krishna Advani as the State guest though there were several other BJP chief ministers, who attended the National Executive.
The party let loose its loose cannons on Nitish Kumar. The likes of Vinay Katiyar, Giriraj Singh, minister in Bihar cabinet and Rameshwar Chaurasia, an Extreme Backward Caste leader of the BJP, was allowed to verbally shell Nitish with some choicest political abuses. They fully utilized the print and electronic media and went on to ask Nitish to do whatever he likes and that the BJP is ready for all the consequences. The party leaders silenced Nitish by asking if he had so many problems with Narendra Modi than why was the latter invited to dinner party at all.
The senior leaders took up more matured position. During the rally on the final evening, that is, June 13 none of them spoke a single word on Nitish. It was left upto Lal Krishna Advani to recall how Nitish attended the National Executive of the BJP way back in Mumbai in 1995. He explained how good the relationship is between Nitish and the BJP and hoped that such minor differences over advertisement would soon come to an end.
However, the BJP took full advantage of sudden surge of public sympathy for Narendra Modi following Nitish Kumar’s abrupt decision to cancel dinner for the BJP top brass at the 11th hour, This move was widely condemned by everyone––friends and rivals, Hindus and Muslims. Even Lalu Yadav said that it is against our culture.
Utilizing the opportunity the BJP allowed Narendra Modi to speak for maximum amount of time. While all the four chief ministers, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley etc spoke between five and seven minutes the party chief Nitin Gadkari and Lal Krishna Advani took about 15 minutes to complete their respective speeches.
Narendra Modi thundered for about half an hour and touched all the issues: national, international, regional, Maoism, terrorism, Pakistan, foreign relation, Bihar, Gujarat etc. The unannounced message was loud and clear: he is our Prime Ministerial candidate in waiting. Let Nitish rant and fume.