Why Lalu and Nitish Believe Opposition Unity Is Incomplete Without Congress

Patna: Even as the Congress was in the midst of a serious crisis in Rajasthan, Sonia Gandhi gave a patient hearing to Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar when they met her at 6:30 pm on Sunday.

Even top Congress leaders envy the level of trust that Sonia Gandhi is believed to have in Lalu, who has consistently and unflinchingly supported her through thick and thin ever since the death of Rajiv Gandhi.

While the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief’s constant battles with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the past three decades are well known, his support for the post-Rajiv Congress has gone under the radar.

This is why he – and also Nitish Kumar – believes that the BJP cannot be defeated without including the Congress in a united opposition alliance.

“We met Madam (Sonia) in our efforts to unite the opposition parties. The Congress is in the process of electing its new president. Soniaji extended her support to our efforts and said that we had to meet the new Congress president to take the dialogue forward,” Nitish said, emerging from the meeting.

“Bhajpa ko hatana hai, desh ko bachana hai (BJP has to be packed off to save the country),” Lalu said in his inimitable style.

Sources close to Lalu revealed that the ailing RJD boss has reposed full trust in Nitish to negotiate with the opposition parties to come together against the BJP. The RJD boss has also instructed his son and deputy CM Tejashwi to be in “complete sync” with Nitish on the issues of governance in Bihar and uniting the opposition.

In fact, Lalu himself has tremendous faith in Nitish as a political strategist. Lalu was flamboyant as a student leader. He was rhythmic, rhetorical, sharp-witted and even wild while addressing the people. But Nitish was diligent, smart and methodical in behind the scenes manoeuvres.

Lalu has admitted how Nitish played a pivotal role in making him the leader of the opposition in the Bihar assembly after the death of Karpoori Thakur in 1989 in his autobiography Gopalganj to Raisina, My Political Journey. It was not easy as many towering contemporaries of Karpoori – Anuplal Yadav, Vinayak Prasad Yadav and Munshilal Rai – were in the race to fill Karpoori’s shoes. Lalu was young but it was Nitish’s manoeuvres that paved the way for him to first become the leader of the opposition in 1989. Again, Nitish played a key role in making Lalu win the triangular contest for the Janata Dal legislature party leader in 1990 and become the CM.

Nitish was the only senior Janata Dal leader that Lalu took into confidence when he decided to arrest L.K. Advani on his Rath Yatra in 1990.

Lalu was weakened after Nitish formed the Samata Party in 1994-95. He failed to find a “substitute” of Nitish’s calibre. Though leaders like Jagdanand, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Shivanand, Raghunath Jha and many other old socialist leaders stood by Lalu, none matched Nitish’s talent in political manoeuvring.

Be it the era of Advani-Vajpayee or Narendra Modi-Amit Shah, the Lalu-Nitish combine has invariably defeated the BJP. The 2015 assembly elections are the latest example – together the RJD-JDU-Congress combine had reduced the BJP to 53 seats in the 243-member Bihar assembly.

Lalu’s poor health requires him to rest and remain in the care of doctors for most of the time. But those who know Lalu know that even if he was fit, he would have fully trusted Nitish in behind the scene negotiations to sort out the reservations that some non-BJP parties have with the Congress. Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress, West Bengal), Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy (YSR Congress Party, Andhra Pradesh) and K. Chandrashekar Rao (Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Telangana) have all expressed reservations in allying with the Congress. Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party is in a contest with both the Shiromani Akali Dal and Congress in Punjab, and with the grand old party in Delhi and Gujarat.

Not just Lalu but many in old the Janata Dal family that includes the Samajwadi Party and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) – which organised a massive rally on the 109th birth anniversary of Devi Lal at Fatehabad on Sunday that Nitish and Tejashwi attended – trust the capability of Nitish to carry forward these difficult political negotiations.

Nitish deliberately mentioned how he was working to bring the Congress and Left on board while addressing the INLD rally at Fatehabad. So did Tejashwi Yadav.

Lalu and Congress: A long-standing alliance

Lalu’s closeness with the Congress may apprear surprising, given that he came to power in 1990 replacing his Congress predecessor Jagannath Mishra. At the time, the BJP was in alliance with the Janata Dal and supported Lalu initially.

But when Lalu arrested Advani, he became enemy number one for the BJP. However, he successfully split the BJP in Bihar to retain his government after the saffron party withdrew its support.

After Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1989, the P.V. Narasimha Rao-led Congress came to power at the Centre in 1991. From then, Lalu became very ‘caring’ for the Congress leaders – particularly Sonia even when she was away from politics – and equally hostile to the BJP.

He never spoke a word against the Congress after Rajiv Gandhi’s death and attacked Advani and right-wing leaders like Ashok Singhal and Praveen Togadia with ferocity. Both Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, who in 1997 became the Congress president, shared a good relationship with Lalu. It was Kesri, in fact, who suggested to Lalu that his wife Rabri Devi should become the Bihar CM when he had to quit and go to jail in 1997.

It was in 1998 that Sonia Gandhi became the Congress president. Soon, the BJP leaders – particularly Pramod Mahajan and Sushma Swaraj in parliament – and the BJP cadres on the streets used objectionable words against her. Swaraj announced that she would shave her head if Sonia became the prime minister.

Lalu was an MP in 1998; he had never met Sonia nor was his party in alliance with the Congress in Bihar. He instantly stood in the Lok Sabha thundering, “Sonia Gandhi Bharat ki bahu hain. Woh Bharat ke balidani pradhan mantri ki vidhawa hain, unke do santan hain jo Bharat ke santan hain; main unpar koi lanchchan bardashta nahin karoonga (Sonia Gandhi is our nation’s daughter in law. She is the widow of a prime minister who was assassinated. She had two children who are Indians. I won’t tolerate abusive attack on her).”

Lalu’s words galvanised the RJD MPs and also the Congress MPs to turn combative against the BJP. A pall of silence suddenly descended on Swaraj, Mahajan and many other BJP MPs who attacked Sonia. The then former PM Chandra Shekhar had profusely praised Lalu for “shouting” down the BJP leaders. Not only that, Lalu attacked the BJP leaders and defended Sonia while campaigning in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, when there was no alliance between the RJD and Congress.

Barring the 2009 Lok Sabha elections – when the RJD and the Congress failed to strike a seat-sharing deal in Bihar – the two parties have always been allies. Of course, Lalu was hugely sad when Rahul Gandhi tore up a legislation that would have allowed him to contest the 2014 elections. But he never did anything to hurt the Congress.

Perhaps, his consistent loyalty – inspired more by human instinct than political considerations – has earned him Sonia’s trust.

Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author and professor of journalism and mass communication at Invertis University, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh.