How Nitish Kumar's principled position could turn out

Parting, as the Bard said, is such sweet sorrow. Which is why both the JD(U) and the BJP, which are almost certain to formalise their divorce today, are going to extraordinary lengths to soften the harsh rhetoric of their imminent separation. JD(U) leaders, exhibiting a hitherto-undisclosed talent for the understatement, are calling it a “cordial demerger”, one that had been thrust upon them by the BJP’s unrepentent Modi-fetish. The BJP, too, is making last-minute appeals to the JD(U) to not walk out of the marriage now, and reserve the option of a separation for a later time.  Evidently, one of the compromise formulae advanced by BJP leaders to Nitish Kumar is that the JD(U) stay in alliance with the BJP in the interests of the people of Bihar - since in any case Modi had merely been made head of the party’s campaign committee, not its prime ministerial candidate. The option of walking out can perhaps be exercised if the BJP does indeed nominate Narendra Modi as its candidate. The RSS mouthpiece Organiser too has made much the same distinction - noting that Modi had merely been appointed the BJP’s campaign committee chairman, not its candidate for prime ministership. “Undoubtedly, the question of declaring (the) Prime Ministerial candidate does not arise at this moment, as the polls have not yet been declared,” an editorial in the Organiser read. In such a situation, it added, “arm-twisting by the JD(U) is not good for the country.” [caption id=“attachment_867891” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar. AFP.[/caption] Despite the uncomplimentary reference to “arm-twisting, that editorial line - emphasising that Modi had not been nominated the party’s candidate for prime ministership - is actually being widely interpreted as a concession to the JD(U). Bihar Chief  Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar had explicitly laid down one condition for his party to stay in the NDA alliance: the BJP, he said, must address the JD(U)’s core concern in public - and not just offer “private assurance”. The allusion to core concern needs no parsing: the JD(U) wants the BJP to say in public, loudly and unambiguously, that Modi will not be its prime ministerial candidate. The Organiser editorial doesn’t go as far: it merely states the factual position - that Modi is not the BJP’s candidate for now. It makes no promise of what might happen in the future. To that extent, it is hard to see Nitish Kumar fold up his tents and retract his opposition to Modi - in the way that senior BJP leader LK Advani did. In that sense, having put himself so far out on a limb with his visceral opposition to Modi, Nitish Kumar today has only one “honourable option”, as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen told JD(U) leader NK Singh in Cambridge. (The Telegraph has an interesting account of the interaction here.) That report also notes that Nitish Kumar had sent out a strong message to his party to “prepare for a no-holds-barred battle to neutralise Narendra Modi’s intervention in Bihar.” It quotes an unidentified close aide of Nitish Kumar as saying that the Bihar Chief Minister believes that the BJP today has morphed into a “Modi Janata Party” and that he, Nitish Kumar, did not want to be associated with it. “We have been told to prepare for hard times and a harder struggle; the instructions are to not allow Modi’s politics in Bihar, come what may.” That sounds like a principled position to take, although - as has been widely noted - it is based entirely on the desperate calculation of Nitish Kumar’s political survival in Bihar. It is part of the political posturing that is now going on in the run-up to Election 2014. The Congress is playing its cards adroitly and looking to leverage the turmoil within the NDA to its own advantage. To that extent, it has already certified the JD(U) as a “secular, like-minded” party. Its leaders have also been dropping the helpful suggestion that there was no compelling reason for Nitish Kumar to resign as Chief Minister if the coalition arrangement with the BJP in Bihar collapses, as it inevitably will. All this must no doubt be gratifying for Nitish Kumar, but any move to align his party closer to the Congress will also involve compromises on its political principles, given that the JD(U) was born with the anti-Congress genetic code.  In that sense, Nitish Kumar has to walk the tightrope in Bihar, which is why RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav is doing his damnedest to paint Nitish Kumar as having been soft on the BJP for way too long for his opposition to Modi to carry any credibility today. Why did Nitish Kumar not resign as Railway Minister in 2002, if he was so opposed to Modi, Yadav wondered. Which is why, for all the acrimony of today’s inevitable parting,  one cannot entirely rule out a future where the JD(U) returns to the NDA fold in order to protect its own turf in Bihar. Akali Dal leader Naresh Gujaral said as much on Saturday, noting that it was only a “temporary divorce”, and that political reality would act as an agent of reconciliation over time. Politics is, in the end, a numbers game. And if the BJP manages to get within striking distance of forming a government, the political landscape will be altered dramatically as parties gravitate towards it. And even the JD(U) could once again be back in the NDA fold. But, of course, if the BJP fares badly, it gives Nitish Kumar the justification to claim that his visceral  - but “principled” - opposition to Modi has been vindicated, freeing him to go seek his fortunes in other political formations.