Vikram Kilpady
The BJP has been around since 1980 after it left the debris of the Janata Party experiment of the late 1970s. That project collapsed over the dual membership issue when members chose to be RSS karyakartas than be Janata Party members by resigning from the newly-formed party than the Hedgewar-founded apolitical outfit which influences politics. To this day.
From then on, it has been stuck with the pejorative of being a national party without a state to call its own. Though headquartered in Delhi, and wielding considerable success in municipal elections there, the city-state wasn’t a state, like Arvind Kejriwal keeps saying.
Its first state was Gujarat, when in the 1990s Shankersinh Vaghela, Keshubhai Patel and Narendra Modi in quick succession supplanted the Congress-sick, ersatz Janata Dal, with what became a national party finding its state. Of course, the core issue leading to its growth was the rath-driving Lal Krishna Advani himself, espousing a temple where a mosque stood. That mosque went in 1992 under Congress watch.
Since then the BJP has been slowly and steadily acquiring more states all over the country, growing roots in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Assam and Goa.
After the decisive victory in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, Bihar was the lone state left out of its northern orbit. With the Janata Dal United of NItish Kumar being consigned to the second party in the alliance, the BJP has all the reasons to swallow those laddoos being dealt out in the streets of Patna by delirious party workers. A similar procession in 2015 turned out to be a jinx, the JDU and the RJD alliance thwacked the BJP and ruled Bihar for two years. But consistent pressure at Nitish for allying with the jungle raj folk had its dividends, Kumar just upped and left the original Mahagathbandhan, back into the BJP matrix.
Now, Nitish Kumar is in a place, like in the song Hotel California, which you can check out from but can never leave. The state is in BJP hands. That’s the fact.
Will a late evening reverse wipe out all that is written above? We don’t know but people have complained about the machine, again. That machine which delivers results fast and quick, and benefits not every other party, the BJP’s rivals say.
Nitish Kumar has been ruling Bihar for 18 years now, but the anti-incumbency against the JDU was pretty strong. He may continue to be the next chief minister too but on someone else’s terms, like a serf to a feudal lord, who may be asked to leave if he doesn’t behave.
It is not for nothing the repeated call for a Congress-mukt Bharat, the mukti is not from power but from hegemony and thought. The party itself had gone starry-eyed at getting 70 seats in the RJD coalition, now it will be shouldering the blame for being the useless batsman.