Political pariah to Hunkar rally: Patna gets ready for Modi show

Patna has never prepared itself for the arrival of a cherished guest as it has done for Narendra Modi. Ironically, it is doing so for the same person who was a virtual pariah for the state; whose entry was a strict no-no for former BJP ally and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The preparations will give immense satisfaction to the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and the state party leaders who are preparing for Modi’s appearance on 27 October. Diwali has well and truly arrived early for them and the way things are expected to unfold at Gandhi Maidan, the JD(U), RJD and Congress have some genuine reasons to worry. [caption id=“attachment_1196219” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. PTI[/caption] On Saturday, a day before the rally, President Pranab Mukherjee came and went from the state capital without evoking much enthusiasm. His reception at the airport was a tame affair. Modi, in contrast, remains the talk of the town. He is evoking a great deal of curiosity among the many rival political groups. No leader from outside the state has ever been able to gain the kind of traction that he has gained, at least on the surface. In his hey day, Lalu Prasad Yadav was a great crowd puller and his Garib Raila in the mid-1990s set the bench mark for politicians attracting large numbers of people. The BJP’s challenge is to have a bigger crowd than him. But Bihar has never seen anything like this for any prime ministerial candidate or a leader from outside the state. However, a JD(U)leader, who chose to remain anonymous, said the current mood in Patna does not represent mood of the state, which has a relatively small urban population. This is small consolation. To strike an emotive cord with the people, the BJP is working on twin planks - trying to evoke a sense of betrayal against Nitish Kumar while playing on Bihari pride by using all kinds of symbolism, from erstwhile heroes like Babu Kunwar Singh to Jayaprakash Narayan, to even using of naming the rally Hunkar (war cry), taken from a famous title of Rashtrakavi Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s nationalistic Veer Ras poetry writings. Hunkar is the counter to Nitish Kumar’s Adhikar rally. But former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi doesn’t think any comparisons with JD(U)’s rally are apt. Adhikar was a much smaller campaign, he claimed, and the JD(U)’s rally was organised by the party in power. BJP’s Hunkar is by the opposition. Ahead of the rally, Sushil Kumar was in a very buoyant mood and was constantly monitoring the inflow of rallyists from all parts of the state: 8000 buses, 25000 small vehicles, 11 special trains, 8 regular trains, hundreds of boats to ferry across the Ganga and so on. The task is gigantic but the party leaders and workers have a visible cheerfulness and there is a feel of organising a family wedding with the objective of upstaging a jealous neighbour. On the evening prior, the venue looked like a carnival. Smart lighting, LED test displays at various spots in this huge ground with a giant LED in the backdrop of the stage and a linear sound system enabling similar sound quality from front row to a kilometre. The maidan has attracted hundreds of onlookers. “There is a wild craze for Modi,” Sushil Modi says. “The youth is aggressively for Modi and will form 50 percent of the gathered crowd at Hunkar rally.” The state BJP leaders led by Sushil Modi and others have gone to districts, blocks, villages to mobilise the crowd, used all conventional and unconventional modes of communication. If it was a the hands of unity ad in 2010 depicting Modi and Nitish that angered Bihar chief minister to the point that he withdrew his dinner invite to Modi and eventually cancelled the dinner for the whole of the BJP leadership, this time there was another full page ad in local newspapers, right ahead of Modi’s arrival in the city, but the content is very different. The ad has a towering picture of Sardar Patel with banner of the Hunkar rally. “Bihar welcomes the icon of development Shri Narendrabhai Modi-ji. The hero behind the world’s tallest monument, the statue of unity in memory of the unifier and original Iron Man of India, Shri Sardar Patel.” Sardar Patel may belong to Gujarat but his connect with Bihar is special. Patel is considered Kurmi, the caste to which Nitish Kumar belongs. Some old timers recalled that during the Kurmi Chetna rally preceding the launch of the Samata Party in Patna - with Nitish Kumar as the man of the moment - Sardar Patel’s portrait formed a perfect backdrop. In trying to woo even Kurmis, Modi has shown a keen interest in the caste sensitive politics of Bihar. Since electioneering (thanks to the Election Commission’s strict guidelines) has become an austere affair, a Modi rally gives a welcome change to see and enjoy political festivity. What Modi says would be important for the wider world’s analysis but for those in Patna, it is the numbers and his style and use of modern technology that declares him the winner, for now.