Prime Minister Narendra Modi has added a new dimension to the pre-election announcements-driven campaign thrust in Bihar, at his Bhagalpur rally

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Parivartan rally in Bhagalpur has added a new dimension to the pre-election announcements-driven campaign thrust in Bihar. The rally was watched closely by both, his supporters and his political rivals — the JD(U), RJD and the Congress — to see how he would respond to the heat and dust generated by the so-called secularist alliance Mahagathbandhan’s Swabhiman rally in Patna held only two days ago.

The choice of Bhagalpur as the venue for Modi’s final rally before the Election Commission announces the Bihar poll schedule was an interesting one. Although in decline, Bhagalpur is the silk city of Bihar, and home to Danveer Karna (mythological king of Anga Pradesh) — one of the central characters and most acclaimed warriors of the Mahabharata — and the ancient Vikramshila University.

In contemporary history however, the town is better known for the 1979-80 police-sponsored blinding cases and the 1989 riots. Its demography comprises an almost equal percentage of people from the Yadav and Muslim communities (around 15 percent each), and a mix of other castes and social groups.

Of the four Parivartan rallies held by Modi so far, Bhagalpur represented the smallest number catchment area — in terms of the relative number of Assembly seats — vis-à-vis Muzaffarpur, Gaya and Saharsa, where he held his earlier rallies. But the ground chosen for the Bhagalpur rally was over three-and-a-half times bigger than Patna Gandhi Maidan where the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Yadav-Sonia Gandhi combine held its Swabhiman rally.

To put this into perspective, the Patna Gandhi Maidan is spread across 63 acres, while the Bhagalpur Airport Maidan covers a sprawling 203 acres. Meanwhile, the prime minister’s two other Bihar rallies — one in Patna and the other in Ara — were listed as official government functions, and cannot be counted as part of the Parivartan series.

Apart from the change in scale, the tone and tenor of Modi’s speech was also markedly different in Bhagalpur. In a departure from the pitch he had made in his three other Bihar outings, he infused his speech with more substance than rhetoric. Those who hoped that Modi would provide a strong rebuttal to the barbs aimed at him by Lalu, Nitish and Sonia at their Patna rally were left slightly disappointed.

Although his speech contained scathing attacks on his rivals — he continued with the theme of ‘betrayal’ against Nitish, and added Lalu to the list of ‘betrayers’ — he wisely chose to speak at length about development. The list of leaders and allies with whom the dais would be shared, was equally strategic, with former Union minister and the BJP’s most prominent Muslim face Syed Shahnawaz Hussain appointed the convener of the rally.

In Patna, Nitish Kumar had raised the ‘Bihari DNA’ issue and equated it with an “insult of Bihar”, in an effort to give his discourse an emotional spin. Meanwhile, Lalu tried hard to paint the upcoming election with caste-ist hues, by openly talking about another social conflict that he dubbed ‘Mandal Raj Part II’.

Modi, on his part, avoided explicitly naming the caste issue, but the message was clear.

There was significance in his repeated mentions of legendary socialist leader and two-time chief minister Karpoori Thakur (from the Nai or barber community), whose reservation formula had a special category for the most backward castes among the OBCs. Notably, he also mentored Lalu and Nitish, in the same manner as Ram Manohar Lohia and Jaiprakash Narayan (JP). In Patna, Nitish said that he had learnt lessons of democracy from sitting at JP’s feet, however it has been a long time since either Nitish or Lalu referred to Thakur, vis-à-vis their political lineage.

By invoking the memory of Thakur, Modi reached out to the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) and Most Backward Classes (MBC), while simultaneously drawing a distinction between the years Thakur was chief minister and the ones that saw his forgetful protégées in the proverbial hot seat. By referring to Lalu and Nitish’s perceived repudiation (tilanjali) of the values inculcated in them by Lohia, Thakur and JP, Modi has provided the Bihar electorate with a talking point that the JD(U)-RJD-Congress leaders and workers might find very difficult to counter.

The outcome of the Bihar election will depend on how the Mahadalits, EBCs and Yadavs vote. The upper castes, for all practical purposes, will side with the BJP. The Muslims — comprising 17 percent of the population — are likely to vote for the Mahagahthbandan even as All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi’s visit to Bihar is creating tension within the JD(U)-RJD-Congress ranks.

Owaisi has the potential to damage the secularist combine’s prospects in some constituencies, if that is, he does not win all on his own. Nitish had earlier cultivated the Mahadalit community, but the way he dealt with former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, has ruined his chances. With Ramvilas Paswan and Manjhi siding with the BJP, the Mahadalit votes is likely to go in favour of the NDA. The EBC vote and a fragmentation of Yadav votes — if at all that happens — will tilt the scales in the BJP’s favour.

Lalu has survived for all these years on his famed M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) combination. However, in the Parliamentary election, the younger Yadav voters deserted the RJD — thereby costing Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi and daughter Misa Bharti the election — and voted for Modi.

By seeking explanations for the past 25 years (under Lalu-Rabri-Nitish rule), Modi has turned the tables on them: “A youth born in 1990 is today 25 years old, and he has every right to know what his rulers delivered for him,” said Modi.

For 15 years, Lalu and Rabri were messiahs of underdevelopment, while Nitish’s claim to fame had been the restoration of law and order in the state since 2005 — when he aligned with the BJP to oust the Lalu-Rabri regime. It was on the basis of some visible changes in statecraft that saw Nitish and the BJP receive an unprecedented 75 percent mandate in 2010. But in his second innings spanning 2010 to 2015, Nitish has no achievement to claim as his own. Some of his critics have even suggested that the difference between his first and second terms was just as stark as the difference between UPA-I and UPA-II at the Centre.

Ultimately, Modi’s Bhagalpur rally saw far greater attendance than the Mahagathbandhan’s Patna rally, according to many who attended both. And by bringing the narrative back to development, Modi has done two things: He has re-established his credentials as a development-oriented leader and tried to convince voters to rise above the caste lines and vote for the BJP, despite the major role caste plays in their social and political psyche. In the 2010 Assembly elections and 2014 Parliamentary election, the vote had been for development, subsuming caste-ist boundaries. Modi and the BJP will hope for a repeat of the same phenomenon.