Will the Nitish, Lalu and Sonia rally be a turning point for Bihar?
All through the previous night and until late on the morning of August 30, hundreds of Bolero and Mahindra and Sumo jeeps that are an ubiquitous part of the migratory Bihar landscape, had carried thousands of men and women from all parts of the state to its capital, Patna. Another few score buses as well as a thousand boats had been hired to transport people across the mighty Ganges on the banks of which this ancient city has flourished and prospered over the centuries.
By noon on August 30, all roads were leading to Gandhi Maidan in the heart of the city, cheek by jowl with the Granary the British once infamously built to house grain in times of need but never used because of a most basic structural defect, and a stone's throw away from the Patna Museum which houses some of the most beautiful sculptures of the "dharti-sparsh" Buddha.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of men and women - actually, mostly men - were being disgorged by the vehicles that had brought them all the way from Sugauli on the border with Nepal, or Motihari in East Champaran district where Mahatma Gandhi once fought the battle against indigo, or neighbouring Gaya where the Buddha achieved nirvana…
From Muzaffarpur and Jehanabad and Bhagalpur and Siwan and Sitamarhi and scores of constituencies and districts and villages they came, walking the last few kilometres to the Gandhi Maidan - the men in dhotis and kurta-pyjamas, the women in nylon saris - holding aloft the flags that identified their political affiliation, the sign of the "arrow" representing the election symbol of chief minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) party, while the "lantern" represented the Rashtriya Janata Dal's inimitable Lalu Prasad Yadav .
Around Kranti Chowk and Income-Tax Chowk plastered with enormous banners and posters of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav as well as a few of Congress president Sonia Gandhi - who was flying in from Delhi for the rally - and down the main streets leading to the Gandhi Maidan, the big city had given itself up for the day to the village. Loudspeakers belting folk music kept pace with the single-minded determination of the walkers, the folk lyrics replaced by the political characters in question. A band struck up a martial melody. The dust thrown up by the marchers underfoot hung in the air like a haze.
It was like a spectacle, a very large party to which the whole province was invited. Certainly, the hosts of the day - Lalu and Nitish - seemed excruciatingly aware that this was their one chance to show Bihar as well as the rest of India what their "mahagathbandhan" or grand alliance could be capable of. Not so long ago the two had been trading dire insults. Now, they were celebrating their coming out, determined to stop in his tracks the one man threatening to paint the rest of the country saffron: Prime Minister Narendrabhai Damodardasbhai Modi.
Slowly, the 59 acres or 29 lakh sq ft that is the Gandhi Maidan filled up. By the time Sonia Gandhi at around 2pm spoke it was brimming over - according to conservative estimates, that's about 4.5-5 lakh people. Thousands of others were milling outside and elsewhere in Patna - it is the Big City after all, and there are temples to visit and even a zoo in which all kinds of strange animals are kept.
So when a slow drizzle threatened to damage the large TV screens and the equipment managers turned off one to the right of the stage, young men with sticks name-called them to put it back on. After all their hero, Lalu Yadav, the man who had single-handedly empowered them in their own idiom and transformed the backward castes into a political instrument of power, was speaking. Soon enough, the TV screen came back on.
And what a speech Lalu Yadav delivered. Old-timers who had heard him in his Garib Rally as long ago as 1990 - when the Gandhi Maidan had last filled up to its brim - said it compared with the best and most evocative lines spoken in service of the Mandal agitation. As Lalu said himself, responding derisively to the BJP labelling his tenure in power as "jungle raj," about the time when several bullies belonging to his Yadav caste ran riot in village and city alike, "This is not jungle raj 2, this is Mandal raj 2."
But some of Lalu's most applauded lines came when he challenged not only Narendra Modi, but also Modi's all-powerful confidante and the BJP president Amit Shah "to break the unity of the Yadavs" in Bihar, "as I have heard that you are doing." Then he asked why the CBI hadn't appealed the clean chit to Shah in the Sohrabuddin murder case. He taunted Shah - pointing out that he had a big stomach and so had got stuck in a lift in his Patna guest house only a few days ago.
Lalu also demolished with devastating humour the promise by Modi, who as prime ministerial candidate vowed to put Rs 15 lakhs into the account of every citizen taken back from the vaults of black money abroad if the BJP was elected to power.
"We have seven daughters, two sons, then there is Rabri and me, that's 11 people, now you can yourself multiply that by 15 lakhs and see what comes of it," Lalu said. The crowd roared with appreciative laughter.
It was as if Lalu was delivering the performance of his life, as if this is what he will want to be remembered by - that he also kept the secular flame alive. With the fodder scam hanging over this head, it's not clear how much further he can go in his political career. Moreover, several of his children now want to be in active politics - on top of that list are Misa Bharati and Tejaswi - and Lalu knows that part of the job profile of a good father is to the hand over at least some of the reins to his ambitious children.
Certainly, Sonia Gandhi hasn't had so much fun in public in a long time. She was often seen laughing at Lalu's jokes at Modi and Amit Shah's expense, along with the rest of the delighted crowd. Certainly, not in at least two decades since Lalu decimated the Congress in Bihar, has a Congress leader addressed such a huge rally in this state.
And what of Nitish Kumar? Bihar's chief minister agreed to let Lalu Prasad speak last not only because he knows he is a much better orator than him, or that this was a kind of thank you present for meeting him more than half way by agreeing to a 100:100 seat distribution (Lalu gave away two from his quota to the Samajwadi Party just before the rally) but also because large parts of the loyal crowd at Gandhi Maidan was brought by none other than Lalu and his band of caste brothers.
But the truth also is that large parts of the crowd also owed their allegiance to the mild-mannered Nitish - one man spoke glowingly of how all four of his children went to school on bicycles provided by his government, another of the roads he had ordered built across the state that resembled Hema Malini's cheeks and a third of the plank of governance that could pose a challenge to Modi's obsession with development.
But it was also clear to everyone that although Lalu Yadav was the hero of the rally, Nitish Kumar was the one who had planned as well as executed it with the precision of a master strategist. From hogging billboard space to ensuring security for the lakhs of people brought in, to deciding the speaking order of all those on the big stage. After the rally as well, Nitish monitored the return journey home of the lakhs of rallyists, keeping in touch with his bureaucrats as well as the police to ensure that the movement of people across the Ganga bridge was smooth and continuous.
And so the big two questions: Will the August 30 rally by Nitish and Lalu and Sonia Gandhi constitute a turning point in the fortunes of Bihar? And, if the anti-Modi alliance actually succeeds in pulling off a victory, what impact will that have on the BJP's governance and Modi's prime ministerial ambitions?