Cauliflowers, cabbages, eggplants, radishes, carrots, pointed gourds, bottle gourds, bitter gourds, spinach, ladyfingers and several other varieties of green vegetables in two large jute sacks.
This is what a middle aged man carried into Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Patna house on the evening of June 8. Security persons asked the man to dump the sacks in a corner and leave.
But Lalu, who underwent a kidney transplant around six months ago, raised his voice and said, “Open the sacks and show me the vegetables.”
The man who brought them told the security guards, “Don’t interfere, I am a bigger devotee of Lalu ji than you all.”
At the scene were senior Rashtriya Janata Dal leaders Shianand Tiwary, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Shyam Rajak and others, all of them smiling.
Lalu focused on the vegetables for a good few minutes as hundreds waited to greet him at his durbar. This is exactly what makes Lalu a leader of the masses, often setting him apart from others.
Barred from contesting elections after his conviction in the 2013 fodder scam case, he has undergone multiple surgeries, lived in jail and still managed to be an active participant in national and state politics in the last few years.
RJD workers are celebrating his 76th birthday today, June 11, as Samajik Nyay and Samajik Sadbhav Diwas, day for social justice and social harmony. His party has focused on price rise, unemployment, burgeoning disparity and exploitation as key poll planks, so such a branding is not surprising.
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Contemporaries
Lalu was born in a poor family of cattle raisers at Phulwaria in north Bihar’s Gopalganj district June 11, 1948, according to his certificates. But Lalu himself does not believe that today is his birthday, because his mother did not remember his birthday.
He was elected as the general secretary and then president of the of the Patna University Students’ Union (PUSU) in 1973 and 1975.
He emerged as a leader of the JP movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan against Indira Gandhi government and soon after was elected as a Member of Parliament from Chhapra seat in 1977.
He became leader of opposition in Bihar assembly after the death of socialist patriarch Karpoori Thakur in the 1980s and then, Bihar chief minister in 1990. In 1995, he replaced S. R. Bommai as the national president of the united Janata Dal. He went to jail in 1997 in connection with the fodder scam cases, paving the way for his wife Rabri Devi to replace him as Bihar CM.
He rejoined national politics, becoming the Minister for Railways (2004-2009) in the Manmohan Singh led government. The CBI charge-sheeted him, the court convicted him, and he stayed in jail for years and was barred from contesting the polls.
Most of his contemporaries, opponents and comrades, were not as fortunate as Lalu and did not manage to continue being politically relevant through the years. The biggest example of this is BJP’s Lal Krishna Advani, whose rivalry with Lalu was a staple for national newspapers for years in the 1990s.
Lalu had strong friendships with late chief ministers like R.K. Hegde who had named Lalu’s group as the “Rashtriya Janata Dal” after it broke from the Janata Dal in 1997, Karunanidhi who strongly supported Rabri as CM, Devi Lal who was like a father figure to Lalu and Jyoti Basu whom Lalu referred to as “Basu da”.
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Also close to Lalu were Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan, former Uttar Pradesh CM Mulayam Singh Yadav and former Union minister Sharad Yadav. Lalu had preferred H. D . Deve Gowda over Mulayam as the prime minister in 1996, a fact which Mulayam was not exactly happy with, even though it did not dent their friendship. Sharad Yadav, meanwhile, was Lalu’s comrade in arms in championing the Mandal Commission and backward class movement.
Friends
Lalu and Nitish Kumar, who is three years younger to him, started out as friends in the 1970s. Nitish was a student of the Bihar College of Engineering while Lalu was at Patna Law College when they became friends. Lalu referred to Nitish as “Chhota Bhai” or younger brother, and Nitish reciprocated by calling Lalu his “Bare Bhai” or big brother.
Lalu is more flamboyant. Nitish is less so. They share Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia and Karpoori Thakur as role models and mentors. The Lalu-Nitish duo worked together to execute a generation change in socialist politics in the 1980s and 1990s.
Lalu has admitted to this author that Nitish played a pivotal role in making him the leader of opposition in 1988 and then chief minister in 1990.
After the 1995 assembly elections in Bihar, Nitish joined the National Democratic Alliance. He joined Lalu again in 2015 but was once again separated in 2017. Now they have joined hands again, leaving many curious about the outcome of such a pairing in the 2024 elections.
Nalin Verma is a senior journalist and co-wrote Lalu’s biography, Gopalganj to Raisina: My Political Journey.