A 2009 photo of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Ludhiana, Punjab | Photo credit: PTI
These are the curtains for the political career of Nitish Kumar, who was baptized into politics through the Jayaprakash Narayan movement in Bihar in the 1970s – a movement that was itself an amalgamation of two political families, the Sangh Parivar and the Janata Parivar. The JP movement marked the consolidation of OBC politics in the state against the dominance of the Congress, which reflected and entrenched the social hegemony of the upper caste.
OBC politics in Bihar has undergone numerous changes over the past century. Three communities—Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris—challenged upper caste hegemony in the state. Mr. Kumar is a Kurmi. After playing second fiddle to Lalu Prasad Yadav in the Janata Parivar for many years, Mr. Kumar broke away in 1994 to form the Samata Party — which later morphed into the Janata Dal (United). After being in the saddle for 20 years as Chief Minister, he is now all set to enter the Rajya Sabha.
His departure from the center stage to the antechamber marks the culmination of a social and political process shaped by the interaction between the Sangh Parivar and the Janata Parivar in the last half century. This makes the demise of the Janata Parivar seem closer; it is a triumph for the Sangh Parivar.
Mandal vs Kamandal
Politics in the Hindi heartland has often been framed as Mandal versus Kamandal – the assertion and autonomy of the OBCs as opposed to the Hindutva push for unity and order among all Hindu castes. This was not a completely linear or binary antagonism. Mr. Kumar’s own version of Mandal’s politics has been in alliance with Kamandal for most of his career. Under Narendra Modi, the BJP has absorbed this dynamic of inter-caste competition, rivalry and accommodation and transformed it into an intra-Parivar affair – a matter of the Sangh Parivar itself rather than inter-party rivalries and alliances.
Caste enforcement and rivalry continued; they now play within the Parivar. The recent controversy surrounding the UGC guidelines to address caste discrimination is a case in point. The Janata Parivar, that vast ecosystem of caste groups organized as competing and collaborating parties, is dissolving. The Koeri stronghold in Bihar – Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha – is also under pressure to dissolve into the BJP.
The JP movement and the Janata experiment united all aggrieved social groups against the upper caste, Dalit and Muslim coalition that supported the Congress. The Sangh Parivar helped midwife the Janata Parivar and both together defeated the Congress in the heartland. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement advanced Hindu consolidation, and the 1989 Bhagalpur riots that killed nearly 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, deepened communal polarization in the state. Yet it was Lalu Prasad who outmaneuvered the Sangh Parivar by uniting the Hindu underlings with the Muslims into an unbeatable social base of the RJD. The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 completed the decimation of the Congress, pushing its upper caste supporters to the BJP and Muslims and Dalits to the RJD.
The fierce Sangh Parivar
The Mandal-Kamandal dynamic played out in several cycles of fragmentation and consolidation of social groups and parties, with the Sangh Parivar emerging stronger at each stage. Lalu Yadav’s OBC base crumbled, leaving him with only Yadavs and Muslims by 2005, even as Mr. Kumar raided his camps for non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits. In 2005, the RJD was finally overthrown and Mr. Kumar came to head the ruling BJP-JDU coalition as Chief Minister.
Nitish initially resisted the rise of Narendra Modi as the BJP’s national leader, but soon relented to the rising ally. Mr. Modi entered Bihar in 2014 as an OBC leader and captured the very territory that the Janata Parivar claimed as its own, so there is no doubt that his ally will eventually be cannibalized.
That process is now complete – or so the BJP believes. A leader from the OBC community is likely to be the next chief minister and the party has already deepened its bench with OBC leaders at all levels. An upper caste BJP leader said, only half jokingly, that BJP stands for “Backward Janata Party”. Upper caste BJP supporters have limited options and the party is willing to bow to the strength of numbers that the OBCs have.
Caste dynamics are now managed like family feuds in the universe of Hindutva. It is no longer social justice versus Hindutva, it is no longer Mandal versus Kamandala. It is social justice within Hindutva – Mandal absorbed into Kamandal. Mr. Kumar’s controlled soft exile marks a significant milestone in the continuing eclipse of autonomous social justice parties in India.
Published – 06 March 2026 07:22 IST
