Outgrowing, even undercutting one’s political mentor is nothing unusual among politicians. To cite contemporary examples, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal had to walk out of the shadows of their respective mentors, L.K. Advani and Anna Hazare, to establish themselves as figures of political authority. Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s revolt against his former mentor and Janata Dal (United) leader, Nitish Kumar, is however in many ways one of its kind. For one, it was Mr. Kumar who won the mandate in 2010. He had made it for a second consecutive term riding a popularity wave he had created on account of two features that defined his politics — good governance and social empowerment. Mr. Manjhi was an accidental inheritor of that mandate, when Mr. Kumar decided to step aside after the setback his party suffered in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Mr. Manjhi had not earned what he now claims to be his — the Chief Minister’s chair.
Mr. Manjhi began to dissociate himself from Mr. Kumar soon after becoming Chief Minister, and sounded the bugle of revolt in an interview to The Hindu on January 6, 2015, where he declared that his achievements in social empowerment were better than Mr. Kumar’s, and that the next Chief Minister of the State should be a Mahadalit, the lowest section of the Dalit community that he belongs to. From then on, Mr. Kumar had no option but to replace Mr. Manjhi, whose rebellious reaction has complicated the matrix of caste politics in Bihar. Mr. Kumar’s attempts to build a broad social coalition ahead of the Assembly elections in the State, due in October, by bringing together the backward communities, Dalits and Muslims, in an alliance with the RJD, the Congress and the Left, will now have to be fine-tuned. The BJP, with which Mr. Kumar split in 2013 after a 17-year-long coalition arrangement, opposing Mr. Modi’s projection as Prime Minister, is hungering to bid for power in the State. Attracting a good chunk of Dalit votes has been a component of the BJP’s winning strategy in Maharashtra and Haryana recently. The party is using the chance to widen the gulf between Dalits and the backwards to its own benefit, yet is wary of getting too closely identified with the unremarkable track record of Mr. Manjhi in governance, often marred by allegations of impropriety and corruption. The ability of the regrouped factions of the erstwhile Janata Party to resist the Modi-led BJP will also be tested in the crucial State that elects 40 Lok Sabha members. It is going to be an uphill task for Mr. Kumar to recover the ground, but this is a fight he cannot avoid, and it will have national resonance.