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Mainstream, Vol XLVIII No 27, June 26, 2010

Letter to the Bihar Chief Minister

Sunday 27 June 2010, by Shree Shankar Sharan

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Respected Chief Minister,

Patna made history again by rebuffing an attempt to throw doubts on her deepest ideals, notwithstanding the spat it caused between the two members of the NDA with a limited common programme. The BJP clearly violated the terms of the alliance on the occasion of its National Executive meet at Patna by using it as a platform for claiming false and misleading proximity and warmth between the Bihar and Gujarat CMs when there had been none after the horrendous Gujarat riots. It was intended to cut down the trust built between the JD(U) and minorities so assiduously built by the Bihar CM, and push him deeper in the BJP’s arms and its core Hindutva vote.

The bizarre incidents at Patna in the last few days were just waiting to happen if the coalition dharma was not observed by the BJP and it did not respect the sensitivities of its coalition partners who do not subsribe to its belief in Hindutva. Though the immediate provocation, a sort of anti-climax to the dramatic episode, was allegedy an act of foolishness of some Bihari industrialists in Gujarat to ingratiate themselves with Modi while in Bihar as a price of survival, it defies common sense that Modi should have failed to earn the best mileage by publishing their names and Gujarat addresses. Not to have done this and to have made it appear as a welcome to Modi by the Bihar Chief Minister who had precluded Modi from Bihar’s last election campaign seems mischievous and suggestive of the unseen hand of Modi in this self-glorifying episode.

The incident of cancellation of the CM’s dinner to the BJP leaders was perhaps tough and not in good taste by the standards of Indian civility, but seems justified by the strong need for a strong rebuff as a damage-control exercise. Yet it was possible for the CM to be absent from the dinner on some excuse and getting the Speaker to stand for him since the Deputy CM is himself from the BJP. The rebuff would still have been delivered.

Thereafter came the Bihar CM’s return of Gujarat’s contribution to the Kosi flood relief fund following Narendra Modi’s declaration of Gujarat’s generosity that the former felt was against decency as also Indian cultural norms.

The crucial question now is: what next and where does the CM go from here? Does he propose to break the BJP alliance or will he accept the conciliatory moves by the BJP? Why is the JD(U) in an alliance with a party with which it has such a different worldview? Nitish Kumar has yet another alternative. He could decide not to be in the alliance but set the JD(U) up as an independent party capable of winning elections, at least the next, on its own merit and popularity earned by solid perfor-mance but accept and not refuse support from any party or alliance that cares to support him.

The question can also be answered by digging a little into recent history and discovering the genesis of coalition politics. It was built by a strategy evolved by the socialist leaders—Ram- manohar Lohia in 1967 to inflict defeat on the Congress by not letting the Opposition votes split and with more dramatic results in 1977 by Jaya Prakash Narayan who had merged all the Opposition parties into a single Janata Party to be an alternative to the Congress which was inclined, in the absence of a democratic challenge, to become dictatorial and sink in corruption and devaluation of important national institutions. The Janata Party could not stick together and the Jan Sangh was forced out to become the BJP. In 1989 it was revived again as the Janata Dal but broke again on the question of Mandal reservation and, with a few interludes with Congress support brought back a Congress Government in power. A new alliance, the NDA, was able to defeat it but lost power after five years among other reasons by the shock of the Modi-led or condoned horrendous riots in Gujarat.

The political situation remains polarised between a Centrist and pragmatic party like the Congress and more radical and committed Leftist or castest paties on the other. The BJP is also a Centrist party with some elements of committed pracharaks of Hindutva but with an organised cadre of workers which smaller parties lack

If the JD(U) breaks out of the NDA it will not lose but gain in Bihar by its record of performance. It wiil go the way West Bengal is going under Mamata Bannerjee. Yet it will be a personal achievement and make the State but not national politics, stronger. The country would be weaker in losing an alternative to the Congress. The same will happen if it joins the UPA even though on honourable terms

But the NDA can only survive by giving up its malafide attempt to drag its allies down to kowtow with its most identifiably fundamen-talist face, Narendra Modi, and be drowned in the more important politics of the nation.

(Convener, Lok Paksh, Patna/Delhi)

Shree Shankar Sharan

The author is the Convener of the Lok Paksh, Patna/Delhi.

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