Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who is set to play the secular card, could face hurdles as a section of Bihar Muslim leaders have begun questioning his “secular credentials”. These leaders suspect Mr Kumar’s intentions as he prepares to walk out of NDA over BJP’s projection of the Hindutva hawk, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
It was pointed out that Mr Kumar did not quit NDA after the 2002 “massacre” of minority community during post-Godhra riots. This particular section felt that Mr Kumar was “taking a stand against Modi merely for Prime Ministerial ambitions and it has nothing to do with secularism”. They also apprehend that the JD(U) might return to the NDA fold if the BJP “came close to power”.
During the 2002 riots, Mr Kumar was the railway minister in the NDA government led by Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This section feels that the RJD chief, Mr Lalu Yadav, and Samajwadi Party chief, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, are the “natural allies of the minority community”.
Mr Kumar is apparently banking on the ploy of weaning away the Muslim support base of the RJD to offset the loss from the upper caste following the possible snapping of ties with the BJP.
“This will be challenging for us to do, as Muslims are known as tactical voters and they may prefer the RJD over the JD(U) with their belief that a vote to Mr Lalu Yadav would eventually strengthen the UPA to stop the Mr Modi-led BJP from coming to power at the Centre,” said a Muslim JD(U) MP. Mr Yadav has also begun the exercise to make Mr Kumar’s ambitious move to play the secular card difficult by questioning his credentials.
“This whole drama to snap ties with the BJP is aimed to win support of the Muslims,” said Mr Yadav on Saturday.
However, Mr Kumar, who has stitched around his social engineering around upper caste, extremely backward caste and Mahadalit support base, has been working through schemes to win Muslim support base. He had expedited the prosecution of those behind the 1989 Bhagalpur riots.