Lies and half-truths: How Nitish Kumar outsmarted RSS, BJP in their own game in Bihar

Politics, like war, is an art of deception. Disinformation and rumours are essential in the arsenal that political parties build to demolish rivals. The RSS-BJP may have earned a formidable reputation, or notoriety, at least in general perception, for deploying falsehoods and half-truths to create a smokescreen to attain political goals, but in Bihar it appears to have met more than a match in Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav. Take for instance the manner in which Nitish Kumar has been trying to exploit the Modi versus Modi fault-line in the BJP to the hilt. In one of his interviews, Kumar blamed Sushil Modi for not letting Narendra Modi campaign in Bihar during 2005 and 2010 assembly elections. He also accused the former of insisting on excluding Modi from the list of invitees for the dinner that did not happen in June 2010, during the BJP’s national executive in Patna. [caption id=“attachment_2477628” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Nitish Kumar. PTI[/caption] Perhaps no dinner has influenced the course of politics as much as Nitish Kumar’s decision to recall the invitation for meal to the BJP national executive in Patna in 2010. That proved to be a turning point in Bihar politics and there are various versions of it. Kumar seemed to have conveniently resorted to half-truth to clear people’s perception that a guest was insulted and meal was denied to him. Those aware of the sequence of events that led to cancellation of the dinner know it too well that Sushil Modi had nothing to do with Kumar’s fury that was on display on TV channels since morning. One of the most reliable accounts of the events that led to cancellation of the dinner is chronicled in a book on Nitish Kumar authored by journalist Sankarshan Thakur. In the book titled Single Man, Thakur writes:

“Invitation cards were printed, individually addressed to each member of the BJP national executive and the state leaders. The evening before the dinner, they were handed to Shyam Jaju, an old BJP hand who supervised the party headquarters in Delhi, for distribution. When the morning’s papers were brought to Nitish the next day, what he saw left him so irate he could not hold his cup of tea straight. Full-page advertisement had appeared in two of Patna’s largest circulated Hindi dailies- Jagran and Hindustan- thanking Narendra Modi for Rs 5 crore flood relief money. The sponsors were a hitherto unknown set that called themselves as ‘friends of Bihar’. The issuing agency was the Patna-based Expression Ads owned by a PR conduit called Arindam Guha, well-known to both media and government circles. None of those filters could mask the author of the ad. The text on it was irrelevant; it was the subtext that burned into Nitish - the Ludhiana photograph leapt off the page: there it was again, Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, palms clutched and held aloft.”

Thakur’s book goes on to describe how Nitish Kumar was in uncontrollable rage when he called his trusted aide and ex-BJP leader Sanjay Jha to give vent to his anger. “The dinner won’t happen, recall the invitations. Nitish told Sanjay Jha that it was no time to argue or reason. The chief minister also instructed his home staff to have the shamiana pulled down and the kitchen put out.” Even after three years of publication of the book, this version remains unchallenged. Sanjay Jha who used to play an effective role as an intermediary between the BJP’s central leadership, particularly Arun Jaitley, and Nitish Kumar later joined the JD (U). There is little doubt that Nitish Kumar has been resorting to convenient half-truths to deepen the fault-line that exists between Narendra Modi and Sushil Modi. Nitish, who was associated with the BJP for over 17 years, is quite aware of the frictions within various groups of the party. There is little doubt that Sushil Modi fully endorsed the idea of keeping Narendra Modi away from the campaign in Bihar elections to avoid consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of Lalu Yadav. But Sushil was not alone as he found unqualified support from the central leadership. LK Advani, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley found merit in the logic of “keeping away Narendra Modi from Bihar” and deliberately excluded him from the campaign till 2010. But in those days, Sushil Modi was seen as an extension of Nitish Kumar. And there are several instances to prove that till Nitish parted his company with the BJP, he enjoyed unflinching loyalty of Sushil Modi as deputy chief minister. This was evident when Narendra Modi, after winning 2012 assembly election, walked into a meeting of the national development council (NDC) and was greeted by central ministers and all chief ministers except Nitish Kumar at Vigyan Bhavan. Sushil Modi who accompanied Nitish Kumar at the NDC also chose to ignore Narendra Modi and avoided greeting him. The apparent reason for Sushil Modi’s insouciance was his belief that it would be too difficult for the Gujarat strongman to emerge at the national scene given the perception of him being a polarising personality. As the Bihar battle appears to be in full gear, Nitish Kumar has been strategically washing off his own intransigence towards Narendra Modi by pinning the blame on Sushil Modi. The move is clearly aimed at driving his adversaries in disarray by sowing seeds of doubts within the enemy’s camp. In Bihar election, Nitish Kumar and his team successfully created many smokescreens to cover up their real political objectives. More recently the JD (U)-RJD successfully spread the rumours that Narendra Modi’s rallies were called off in various places in view of the imminent defeat. Nobody knows it better than Nitish Kumar that these lies and half-truths have temporary strategic value. Though his training as socialist leader often exposes him to cantankerous and conflicting opinions within his own group, he not only learnt the art of deception from the RSS-BJP but also significantly improved upon it. In politics as in War, it is the victory that matters.