Now BJP invokes Rajendra Prasad to ride on Bihari pride

After Sardar Patel and Lal Bahadur Shastri, the BJP now has its sights trained on Rajendra Prasad, a icon from the freedom struggle and India’s first President; who ironically has long been forgotten even in his home state Bihar. The BJP may not have any ideological or political affinity with Prasad, but the party now known for its uncanny ability to hijack legacy of the national icons looks keen on resurrecting his memories through some spectacular event management and to co-opt him as a symbol for the modern Bharatiya Janata Party.

With Bihar Assembly polls just about ten months away, Team Saffron is clearly claiming ownership over the forgotten icon, hoping it will help them outwit Nitish Kumar’s poll plank of Bihari pride.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his tributes to Rajendra Prasad on Wednesday on the occasion of the late leader’s 130th birth anniversary, the other Modi in the BJP, Bihar’s former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi left for Siwan, 145km north east of Patna - to attend functions at Prasad’s native village Ziradei, being held today to commemorate the occasion.

Though Rajendra Prasad’s glorification may have been long planned in the backdrop of BJP’s oft-repeated criticism of Congress for abandoning his legacy, the underpinnings of BJP’s focus in Bihar and the alacrity with which the party's top leader in Bihar, Sushil Modi, travelled to Prasad’s native village on his birth anniversary make this exercise obviously political.

“The earlier Congress government completely abandoned Rajendra Prasad, a symbol of Bihar’s pride. Nitish Kumar and his successor have also followed the same strategy," Sushil Modi told India Today. "Now, it is BJP’s quest to remind the grateful country about Rajendra Babu and acknowledge his monumental contribution for nation building."

Prasad was out of office when he passed away in February 1963. Since his death however, the Congress has neglected his legacy and BJP has seized the opportunity now to claim it.

In the era of legacy politics that too has remained caste-ridden in Bihar, Rajendra Prasad, a recipient of Bharat Ratna, ironically lost political relevance in his home state over the years apparently because he belonged to Kayastha community, a social group with insignificant electoral strength.

The Congress largely focused on four leaders: Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi while everyone else has been ignored. On the other hand, Bihar socialist champions like Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar have claimed the legacy of Karpoori Thakur, an extremely backward caste leader, who introduced reservation, and that of Ram Manohar Lohia, who propounded the strategy of anti-Congressism in 1963.

Even Srikrishna Singh, Bihar’s first chief minister, has a much better known legacy with greater following in today’s Bihar than that of Rajendra Prasad, India’s first President.

Though Lalu, Nitish, Ram Vilas Paswan and Sushil Modi, besides others from their generation of politicians also sing paeans to Jayaprakash Narayan, a Kayastha like Rajendra Prasad, but the memories of the late leader fondly known as JP have remained relevant not owing to his caste profile but for the fact that he mentored these politicians.

While the current crop of Bihar leaders have no active memory of Rajendra Prasad; and his caste group being least dominant, India’s first President has remained forgotten in his home State; with his legacy considered incapable of fetching votes.

Even former chief minister Nitish Kumar, credited for being the first among his peers to promote sub-nationalism against caste politics in Bihar, has largely ignored Rajendra Prasad’s legacy. For someone known for placing symbolism over substance, Nitish Kumar—the man who in 2010 launched the concept of Bihar Day on March 22, the day on which the state was carved out of Bengal presidency in 1912—frequently falls back upon backward icons like Karpoori Thakur and Ram Manohar Lohia.

So complete has been the marginalisation of Rajendra Prasad’s legacy in the last 25 years that his home district Siwan became known only as a fiefdom of convicted RJD politician Mohammad Shahabuddin, a former Lok Sabha MP known for his AK-47 rather than any legislative contributions. Ironically, Shahabuddin started his legislative career in 1990 from Ziradei, Prasad’s native village, and went on to become the most dreaded don from Bihar.         

But the BJP, which led NDA to claim 31 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats in the General Elections, is not ignorant about the electoral limitation of Rajendra Babu’s legacy in the caste ridden Bihar where even Narendra Modi was projected as a backward caste leader in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.

On the other hand, Lalu Prasad never flirted with the “proud Bihari” idea and stayed along with his Muslim-Yadav base whereas Nitish has skilfully used social engineering to win over the extremely backward caste votes even though he overtly tried to keep the “Bihari pride” factor afloat by harping on the special category status issue for Bihar.

Now, led by Narendra Modi and in alliance with caste chieftains like Ram Vilas Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha, both ministers in the Centre, the BJP is unlikely to dilute its social engineering based poll strategy in the run up to the Bihar assembly polls, scheduled October 2015. Rajendra Prasad’s legacy, however, may help them counter Nitish Kumar’s poll centric criticism of BJP government for denying Bihar a special category.

The saffron selective appropriation of icons also hints at BJP’s structured plan to capture the centrist political space in the State by gradually shifting away from its extremist rightist image. In its quest to seen as an unbiased party with a national perspective, the BJP has already announced its intentions of fielding the highest ever number of Muslim candidates in Bihar election.

With BJP latching on to Rajendra Prasad, seeking to claim legitimacy and larger political profile in Bihar, the Jitan Ram Manjhi government seems to have taken note as well. On Tuesday, it declared a restricted holiday on the birth anniversary of Bihar’s icon.