Why Lalu is gleefully taking on Amit Shah

The irresistible pull of the Indo-Gangetic plain has transformed the Hindi heartland into a political chessboard over the centuries, but it is the lessons learnt from the rise and fall of these empires that is adding new excitement to the latest battle for Bihar. BJP president and PM Modi’s closest aide Amit Shah, seconded to chart a master plan for polls set to take place in October, is believed to be invoking the Battle of Buxar that was fought in 1764 between the East India Company against the trimurti of Indian native rulers – Mir Qasim the Nawab of Bengal, Shujaud-Daulah the Nawab of Avadh and Shah Alam II, the desperately weak Mughal emperor.

Grand prize

What happened in Buxar – then a town within Bengal, but now in Bihar – has been played and replayed so often over the centuries that it has become part of both folklore, military tactics as well as political common sense. Shah Alam and Shujaud-Daulah began to quarrel with each other and Mir Qasim found he had better things to do, which is to purloin the hard-earned savings of his subjects. The men fell out, no prizes for guessing, and Major Hector Munro of the East India Company walked away with the spoils.

In this case, the prize was India. The British didn’t leave for the next 183 years, until 1947. It seems Amit Shah is plotting something similar, which is to wrest the state away from the so-called social-secular alliance between Nitish Kumar, Lalu Yadav and Sonia Gandhi. The first is Bihar’s CM, the second is a ranking leader of the backward castes, and the third is the leader of India’s grand old, but largely toothless, party. If Shah can win Bihar, he will consolidate his proximity not only over Modi, but also across the Hindi heartland. And so it was on Sunday, August 30, as all roads led to the Gandhi Maidan in the heart of Patna – an enormous green square made famous by Jaiprakash Narayan’s clarion call before the Emergency to Indira Gandhi to step down and face the people – that Lalu Yadav threw down his own gauntlet to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. “You are exhorting the Yaduvans his (Yadavs) to break from each other? Which Yadavs will you break? Buffaloes can’t break Lalu and you can?” said Lalu. The crowd roared with appreciative laughter. This was the man many had come to hear, whose taunts of the rich and privileged over the years had become legion and because of whom they could now hope to achieve a sense of social equality.

Attacking DNA

Then Lalu drove the knife deep in, and turned it. “Amit Shah, he has such a fat stomach, because of which he got stuck in the lift in the guest house in Patna some days ago,” said Lalu, his voice throbbing with undisguised mirth. Certainly, Lalu had done the unmentionable, by targeting his opponent’s physique and making it and him into an object of derision. Both Nitish and Sonia remained impassive on stage, but the crowd was loving every moment of it. It wasn’t often that they got their money’s worth, bringing down a peg or two the chief honchos of a political party many of them may have voted for only a year ago in the general elections.

Choice abuse

The truth, perhaps, is that Lalu, on bail in the Rs 900-crore-odd fodder scam case, has little left to lose – he said as much in the rally, saying he was getting ready to go back to jail. But this canny man who upset the political apple-cart 25 years through the Mandal caste card seems to have once again realised that his enemy is not Nitish Kumar, against whom he has employed some of the choicest abuse, but the forces of Hindutva, as arranged and rearranged by Modi and Amit Shah.

And so Lalu Yadav bit his tongue and about a year ago, around the time the Rajya Sabha elections for three seats were to be finalised, agreed to support Nitish Kumar’s candidates. It is said that he was cajoled, behind the scenes, by none other than Sonia Gandhi, whose party he decimated in the halcyon days 25 years ago. The East India Company’s demolition job at Buxar was possible because Hector Munro could divide the Indians and rule thereafter. Lalu realised in the 2014 election, his party had retained his traditional caste voter base but was unable to translate them into Lok Sabha seats because of his failure to ally with fellow secular parties – like Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), and perhaps, even the Congress. And so, lo and behold the latter-day trimurti on stage at the “Swabhiman” rally on Sunday in Patna – Lalu, Nitish and Sonia Gandhi, a readymade advertisement for coalitions and grand alliances. By throwing down the gauntlet to the BJP, by invoking the hurt and shame of the people of Bihar by “outsiders” questioning their honour, “their DNA,” all three leaders were clearly hoping they can together take on the mighty challenge the BJP poses.

It will be a long, tough and bruising fight. Certainly Amit Shah and Narendra Modi aren’t expected to roll over and allow the battle for Bihar to slip out of their hands. The stakes for both sides are enormous, but the battle has been joined. The bugle has sounded. Let the games begin.