dna edit: The Nitish moment

Reducing the recent Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) split to a clash of ideology or personalities would be infantilizing politics and the intricate logic driving it. True, architects of politics do tend to appear like petulant infants these days.

But the protagonists of the latest political theatre — Narendra Modi, LK Advani and Nitish Kumar — are neither childlike nor petulant in their machinations to outbid each other in this complicated game for power.

Nitish Kumar is as astute a politician as are Modi and Advani. By pulling out of his party’s 17-year-old alliance with the NDA, the JD (U) veteran has set in motion a process of fresh political realignments for the 2014 general elections. A substantive part of Kumar’s actions can be explained in the contrasting personalities of Atal Behari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi, even while both subscribe to the Sangh Parivar-sponsored Hindutva ideology.

Being part of a government headed by Vajpayee, no doubt, has been less of an existential dilemma for Kumar than lending credence to a countrywide electoral campaign by a leader, still under the shadow of 2002 Gujarat riots.

Having said that, questions about Kumar’s secular ideology, whether or not he had stayed true to its credo in the past, have little relevance beyond the rhetoric of electoral brinkmanship. Consider the events of the last decade or more, putting coalition politics, made up of transient allies, firmly at the national centrestage. In such a context of shifting perspectives and strategies, claims to ownership of ideology by parties on both sides of electoral barricade, sound hollow.

No wonder then that the BJP, which at one time boasted of not resorting to caste-based mobilisations, now has no qualms about making contrary statements. Within hours of Kumar’s annulling the alliance, Sushil Modi, his one-time trusted lieutenant in the BJP, evoked Modi’s OBC status, hitting out at Kumar and accusing him of working against backward caste leaders. In a way, Sushil Modi’s outburst sums up the crucial role of expediency in electoral politics, ideology and identities becoming convenient instruments of political mobilisation. Nothing more, nothing less.    

Tune out the shrill rhetoric, the tall euphemistic claims, you find party splits and open dissidence have always been defined by the crystallization of extraordinary moments. It’s in such moments that even risk-averse political personalities embark on unusual journeys, jettisoning time-tested allies and picking up new ones. Such actions don’t often bear fruit.

Rudderless parties and leaders, sans safe anchors, have often disappeared in political wilderness. But Nitish has chosen his ‘moment’ to act, only after carefully considering the pros and cons of his decisive action, putting a huge question mark on the BJP’s ability under Modi, to expand its network of allies. For the moment, the Bihar chief minister does seem to have checkmated the BJP.