Justice Markandey Katju: Aaya Nitish Gaya Nitish

Justice Markandey Katju

By Justice Katju–

(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)

‘Jeevan ka safar hai toolaani
Yaan ikraani hai naadaani
Jo shahsawaar maahir hain
Woh raah badalte rehte hain’

(Life’s journey is long, sticking to one path is immaturity
The expert horse riders, keep changing their routes)

Most Indian politicians follow the above Urdu dictum. They have no principles; unless the pursuit of power and pelf can be described as one. They keep changing their parties as regularly as the Italian adventurer Casanova would change his mistresses.

We have seen many Indian politicians of this breed, the most famous being former Haryana MLA Gaya Lal who changed three parties in one day in 1967, thus creating a new phrase in Indian politics — “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram.” In 1980, then Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal took almost all the MLAs of his Janata Dal party and joined the Congress in 1980 after Indira Gandhi’s spectacular win in the parliamentary elections that year.

The latest in this fold of trapeze artists is Bihar’s 72-year-old chief minister, Nitish Kumar.

He reminds one of the French politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838) who kept switching sides all his life like a weathervane. He had the uncanny skill for sniffing which side the political wind was blowing.

Having been a bishop in the reign of King Louis XVI, Talleyrand strongly supported the French Revolution of 1789. After the fall of Robespierre in 1794, he became the foreign minister in the French Directory in 1797. But he conspired against the Directory, and helped in the installation of the Consulate in 1799, headed by Napoleon, and was again made the French Foreign Minister.

Seeing the decline of Napoleon after the disastrous war against Russia in 1812, he secretly held negotiations with Czar Alexander 1 of Russia, and helped the Bourbon Louis XVIII come back to France as king in 1818, and was suitably rewarded. When the Bourbons became unpopular, he supported the July Revolution of 1830 which brought the Orleanist King Louis Philippe to power.

From Top L to R: Nitish Kumar, Samrat Choudhary, Vijay Sinha, Vijay Choudhary, Vijendra Prasad Yadav, Prem Kumar, Shravan Kumar, Santosh Kumar Suman and Sumit Kumar Singh taking oath during the oath-taking ceremony at Raj Bhawan in Patna on Sunday, January 28. (ANI Photo)

Nitish Kumar’s political career bears a striking resemblance to Talleyrand’s. Starting out as a socialist in his youth, he joined the Jai Prakash Narain movement, and was elected an MLA of the Janta Party in 1985.

He then joined the Samata Party, which was in the BJP led NDA (National Democratic Alliance), and was elected as an MP on its ticket in 1996, and became a Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet.

His party merged into the Janata Dal (United) in 2003, and he became its leader in 2005. That year, in the Bihar state legislative assembly elections, the NDA, of which JDU was a part, won a majority, and Nitish Kumar became chief minister in a BJP-JDU coalition.

The coalition was re-elected in 2010, Nitish Kumar remaining the CM. However, he broke from the coalition in 2013, and formed the Mahagathbandhan, a coalition of Lalu Yadav’s RJD, the JDU, and the Congress, and joined the UPA (United Progressive Alliance). He remained the CM.

In 2015, the Mahagathbandhan won the assembly elections, but in 2017 Nitish and his party, the JDU, broke with the RJD and returned to the BJP led NDA, which won the elections in 2020, and he remained the CM.

In August 2022, Nitish Kumar broke again with the NDA and joined the Mahagathbandhan and the UPA, again remaining the CM.

On Sunday, he broke with the UPA, resigned as CM, joined the BJP-led NDA and became Bihar chief minister for a record ninth time!

Maan gaye maharaj, aap to Talleyrand ke baap nikle! Here is the latest ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ of Indian politics taking oath as Chief Minister of Bihar in a coalition along with the BJP.

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