In politics, foes quickly turn into friends

NEWDELHI: The 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck’s famously said “politics is the art of the possible, the attainable ... the art of the next best” and it aptly describes Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s yet another political somersault to revive his ties with the friend-turned-foeturned-friend BJP.

Nitish had taken a moral high ground in June 2013 when he broke his 17-year-old ties with BJP over the naming of Narendra Modi as its PM candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In August 2014, he joined hands with RJD chief Lalu Prasad for assembly by-polls in Bihar. The Congress too became a part of the so-called secular formation, known as ‘Mahagathbandhan’ or grand alliance (GA).

Nitish termed the tie-up between JD(U) and RJD as “the need of the hour” and said the country was in danger with the Modi government “spreading religious passion” to grab power in states. The GA defied the Modi wave to win the 2015 assembly elections, the campaign for which was marked by vicious mudslinging. At a rally in Muzaffarpur on July 25, 2015, Modi attacked Nitish over his frequent change of political allegiances, saying it seemed that there was “some problem with Nitish Kumar’s DNA”. Nitish vowed to never join hands with the BJP.

Two years later on Wednesday, Nitish thanked Modi for congratulating him after he quit over allegations of corruption against Prasad’s family members. Within minutes, he met BJP leaders to formalise his return to the NDA fold after four years. But he is not alone in such flip-flops.

On September 27, 2013, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi criticised the UPA government’s ordinance that sought to reverse a Supreme Court judgment on the immediate disqualification of lawmakers convicted in a criminal case carrying jail terms of more than two years.

The move hurt Prasad for he had been rendered ineligible in 2013 from contesting elections for 11 years after being convicted in a corruption case and sentenced to five years in prison. Gandhi later justified his party’s alliance with Prasad, saying the tie-up was with a political party, with an idea and not an individual.

Again in 2016, the Congress struck an alliance with arch-rivals Left Front to oust Trinamool Congress in West Bengal but fought a bitter battle against each other in Kerala.

Prior to that in J&K, the PDP and BJP were at each other’s throats in 2014 elections. But the two diametrically opposite ideologies formed a coalition government in March 2015.