If Jitan Ram Manjhi had remained in perpetual obeisance to Nitish Kumar, he too would have completed his tenure like Manmohan Singh did as Prime Minister by bowing to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s wishes
last Friday, two high-voltage dramas finally came to an end. One concluded with a bang and the other with a whimper. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monogrammed pinstripe suit fetched a whopping Rs4.31 crore at an auction at the Science Centre Gallery in Surat, Gujarat, while Jitan Ram Manjhi meekly quit his chief ministership without facing a floor test in the face of a numerically superior onslaught by the Nitish Kumar camp in Patna, Bihar.
Mr Modi will use the proceeds to clean up the Ganga while Mr Nitish Kumar can use his victory to refurbish his tainted image of being an opportunist and a hypocrite. Cleaning the Ganga and scrubbing the incumbent Chief Minister’s reputation are both daunting tasks. One is the country’s lifeline and the other is the Janata Dal (United)’s lifeline.
Barring the carping by Mr Modi’s critics for a few more days to come, the suit controversy has been consigned to the wardrobe, to be dusted out perhaps on occasions when his opponents feel the need to put the heat on the Prime Minister. For now, it’s only appropriate that with the end of the winter season and with Mr Barack Obama unlikely to visit Mr Modi again during the former’s tenure as US President, the dress should go out of sight.
The same, though, cannot be said of Mr Manjhi, who is not likely to melt into the background merely because he failed to retain his chair for more than nine months. If anything, the experience has emboldened him to be adventurous.
The burden of loyalty to Mr Nitish Kumar no longer weighs heavily on him, and this gives him freedom to manoeuvre. He can chart a fresh and lonely course with a new party that underscores his Mahadalit origin or align with the Bharatiya Janata Party through his new outfit or join the BJP or return to the parent fold. Mr Nitish Kumar has only one option: Simultaneously perform and keep his flock together till the Assembly election, which is only months away.
He has begun on a note of humility, seeking people’s forgiveness for having quit the chief ministership in a fit of emotional burst. Mr Arvind Kejriwal did that and reaped the reward; the Bihar Chief Minister hopes to emulate that.
Mr Nitish Kumar may well have also apologised to himself for having so monumentally misread his protégé (Mr Manjhi). But can one really blame Bihar’s political Chanakya (or Bhishma Pitamah) for believing that a supine creature rarely, if at all, develops spine — that too, in all of nine monthsIJ After all, Mr Manmohan Singh, the more scholarly accomplished and politically polished, even when his face was repeatedly ground to dust, had refused to stand up and reclaim his dignity.
Just as Mr Singh was beholden to Congress president Sonia Gandhi for the prime ministership, Mr Manjhi was indebted to Mr Nitish Kumar for the chief ministership. So, the calculation was, all things being equal, the end result should also be similar. This is science — same chemical elements in same quantities when mixed in exactly similar conditions on different occasions, should yield largely similar results.
But politics is not science, though we often hear of chemistry between leaders and how it can trump history and even geography. Moreover, Manjhi does not equal Singh. The crucial difference is that the latter has no mass base and is entirely dependent on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty for political relevance, whereas the former has support among the masses, especially the least privileged section of society to which he belongs.
Mr Manjhi can return to eminence (if not as Chief Minister) by leveraging his base, while Mr Singh can only make a comeback (though nobody in the Congress is looking forward to it) with the blessings of the party’s presiding deities. If Mr Manjhi had remained in perpetual obeisance, he too would have completed his tenure like Mr Singh did.
Just on this one ground alone — that he had the courage to take on the might of the formidable Nitish Kumar — Mr Manjhi stands out as a leader of substance. He may have lost the battle of numbers, but he has won the war of perception. He can move around with his head held high and not slink about apologetically like the former Prime Minister.
There can be conflicting opinions on why he chose to challenge his benefactor. It can be argued that, driven by soaring ambition, Mr Manjhi backstabbed Mr Nitish Kumar. It can also be said that Mr Manjhi was misled by many of those claiming to be his well-wishers, into punching far above his weight. There is some truth in both these explanations.
But being ambitious is not a crime, as Mr Nitish Kumar can explain better. His rise to power in Bihar came at a price his colleagues paid for his ambition over the years. He split from lalu Prasad, using the heft of the likes of George Fernandes and total commitment of friends and associates such as Shivanand Tiwari and Devesh Thakur. Along the way, after having carved a position for himself and packing off lalu Prasad to near wilderness, he dumped Mr Fernandes, Mr Tiwari and Mr Thakur by the wayside. And, the three do not complete the list.
However, it is ambition coupled with hypocrisy, which is the greater accusation Mr Nitish Kumar is stuck with all over the face. After having carved a political identity on an anti-corruption, anti-jungle-raj platform; after having enjoyed the fruits of power thereafter, he has joined hands with the same lalu Prasad, who, by the Chief Minister’s earlier accounts, represented the same corrupt-ridden, lawless governance. Was Mr Nitish Kumar wrong about lalu Prasad all these years or has his definition of good and bad changedIJ
The second act of hypocrisy is equally sensational. In May 2014, Mr Nitish Kumar resigned as Chief Minister, taking moral responsibility for his party’s resounding defeat in the lok Sabha poll. The buzz was that he did not want to meet Mr Modi, the Prime Minister — something he could not have avoided for long as Chief Minister of a State. Mr Modi is still the Prime Minister he will have to meet, and the Janata Dal (United) has not reversed the electoral defeat (the real test lies in the coming Assembly election).
For a man who has professed a saint-like disinterest in power, and who believes that only the BJP is “satta ki bhooki” (power-hungry), Mr Nitish Kumar had demonstrated exemplary hurry in wanting to return to a post he had ‘sacrificed’ not long ago.
Days ago, while leading the charge against Mr Manjhi, he had demanded a floor test within 48 hours — leading the Governor to remark that Chief Ministers cannot be changed in two days’ flat at someone’s whim.