With Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s pet project of building a robust sense of Bihari sub-nationalism having received fresh jolts by the latest round of anti-Bihari diatribes by Maharashtra politicians, the JD(U) stalwart is readying to address these issues anew.
Mr Kumar, who has driven and personified a new Bihari pride on the national stage and abroad for the past seven years after assuming power, is likely to focus on the recent ranting by Maharashtra politicians in his upcoming month-long statewide tour, beginning from September 18, said JD(U) leaders. The tour, christened “Adhikar Yatra”, is primarily aimed at showcasing the JD(U)-BJP government’s long-standing demand for special category state status to Bihar, but it would have parts targeted against the “parochial politics of hate against Biharis,” they said. JD(U) sources said the series of “anti-Bihar and anti-Bihari comments” by MNS chief Raj Thackeray, Shiv Sena leaders Bal Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra’s Congress CM Prithviraj Chavan have brought discomfort to Mr Kumar. After rebuking Mr Raj Thackeray as a “deranged man”, Mr Kumar has desisted from making any further reactions even as Opposition parties in Bihar have renewed their calls for him to snap ties with the Shiv Sena and the BJP.
The root of the present verbal duel between Bihar and Maharashtra leaders makes it more urgent for Mr Kumar to try to dispel the anxieties of Bihar’s Muslims.