Bihar CM Nitish Kumar: A master in singing various political tunes

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has mastered the art of singing in various tunes. The man who, as recently as April 2016, called upon all non-BJP parties to unite for a “Sangh-mukt Bharat”, is now dancing to the tune of those who are dreaming of “Congress-mukt Bharat.”

No doubt, politicians do change their tune as per demands of the situation, but perhaps not quite so frequently as Nitish. On February 12, he tried to defend RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s remark made a day earlier in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, even though he hastened to add that he is not fully aware of the Sangh chief’s comment.

“If an organisation talks about its preparedness to protect the country’s borders, what comment should I give? If an organisation of citizens is talking about its preparedness for the protection of borders, what is the dispute about it?” This was what he said to mediapersons after his weekly ‘Lok Samvad’ programme.

The big question is: why was Nitish in such a hurry to defend Bhagwat if he did not know all that much about what the RSS chief had said? The related question is, why was he not fully aware of the remark of such national importance in the first place, when in this era of information explosion the news had travelled far and wide in no time.

The mediapersons rightly expected Nitish to be fully aware of Bhagwat’s remark made a day earlier in his state, as Nitish is not only the chief minister of Bihar but also the national president of Janata Dal (United), which rules Bihar along with BJP.

As reported, Bhagwat had on February 11 said: “Ours is not a military organisation, but we have military-like discipline. If the country requires and our Constitution permits, the RSS workers will be battle ready in three days.” He went on to say that the Indian Army otherwise needs months to prepare itself for a battle.

Nitish’s love-hate relationship with the BJP and Sangh is a well-known fact. He had shared a platform with both Bhagwat and his predecessor, Sudarshan. Yet it is the same Nitish, who during the campaign for the Bihar assembly elections in Oct-Nov 2015, repeatedly asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to denounce Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks on the reservation made at the time.

“Why has Modi not refuted Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks? If he favours reservation for Dalits and OBCs, Modi must publicly denounce him,” Nitish Kumar had then said at an election rally in Arwal, a district town south-west of Patna.

Today Nitish may say that he uttered these words because he was contesting elections in alliance with the RJD and Congress. But what about his diatribes against the BJP and Sangh made after he parted ways with the saffron brigade on June 16, 2013, till his crushing defeat in Lok Sabha election of May 2014. He was not under any compulsion or pressure then.

Not to forget the fact that he had cancelled the dinner hosted for all the BJP bigwigs present in Patna on June 12, 2010, when they were in Bihar’s capital to attend a two-day National Executive meeting. A week later he returned ₹5 crore donated by the Gujarat government––then led by Narendra Modi––to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund after the river Kosi flood in 2008.

Ironically, he did all this when his government was surviving in partnership with the same BJP. Eight years later, Nitish is realising that he has a lot to atone for if he wishes to be counted in the good books of RSS and BJP. That is why he deemed it fit to jump to the RSS chief’s support, even before being fully aware of Bhagwat’s remark––and that too when several other leaders of NDA partners have not opened their mouths on the subject.

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