From fringe player to powerhouse: the ascent of BJP in Bihar

The growth of a political party in a particular arena is dependent on many factors, the foremost being ideology and its acceptance. Equally important are its political actions, negotiations with communities, social and communitarian alliances, and organisational strength, which is forged by committed workers and charismatic leadership.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) upward trajectory in Bihar — beginning with its earlier incarnation as the Jana Sangh — can be attributed to its astute understanding of the State’s political landscape, where caste is of paramount importance, both socially and electorally. The BJP recognised that in a State where the socialist parties emerged as the main opposition to the Congress and still remain a potent force, there was a consequent requirement of broadening its social base. This led to the need to build a party organisation with leaders hailing from a wide range of castes and community groups.

The BJP (Jana Sangh) is a political organisation affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which was founded in 1925 and is identified with issues related to Hindu consciousness and Hindutva in society. In Bihar, however, Hindutva, as an ideology, remained on the margins for many years, even during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, as the countervailing force of caste politics, particularly after the Mandal Commission’s recommendations and their implementation, dominated the political landscape.

Caste is so deep-rooted in Bihar that it has influenced Muslim and minority politics as well. In 1940, the All India Momin Conference, which claimed to represent the non-elite Muslim communities, passed a resolution in Patna opposing Partition and organised public protests in the State. Observers argue that this laid the foundation for what is now known as the politics of Pasmanda Muslims, or non-elite Muslims, which was revived in the 2000s by Bihar Chief Minister and BJP ally Nitish Kumar.

There used to be a popular saying in Bihar: “Karmanasha ke paar Hindutva ruk jaata hai” (Hindutva stops at Karmanasha river). The river, which marks the boundary between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, became a symbol of the political divide between the two States. While Uttar Pradesh witnessed a more even spread of Hindutva and Mandal politics, it was not so in Bihar. The BJP’s politics in Bihar, therefore, followed a different trajectory. The emphasis on broadening social coalitions, forging strategic alliances, and focusing on governance and anti-corruption agitations has contributed to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance remaining in power in Bihar for two decades (barring a couple of years in between). For the purposes of this essay, a chronological approach will help us navigate this complex history more effectively. Thus, we begin the story of the BJP’s ascent from its earliest avatar as the Jana Sangh, which was founded in 1951 and fought its first electoral battle in 1952.

From Independence to the SVD government (1947-1967)

This was the period immediately after Independence, long before Jharkhand had been carved out of Bihar, and when the Congress enjoyed electoral dominance and ideological hegemony. The presence of the Jana Sangh was scattered, but it was important in areas that now fall under Jharkhand. This was due to various reasons, such as the presence of larger urban spaces, the rise of competing labour union groups in the industries that had come up in these areas, and the work done by the RSS among tribal communities. The Jana Sangh’s presence was, however, negligible in northern and central Bihar. At the time, the Jana Sangh did not have a significant presence among the upper-caste communities such as Bhumihars, who now form a key support base for the BJP. The leadership of Shri Krishna Sinha, the first Chief Minister of Bihar and an influential Congress leader, played a crucial role in keeping much of the upper castes within the Congress fold. The Congress still possessed the aura and influence of being the party of the freedom struggle. Interestingly, the Communist Party of India (CPI) also had Bhumihar leaders, including the influential farm leader Sahajanand Saraswati. In all this, the Jana Sangh remained restricted to urban and tribal pockets of what is now Jharkhand, while it had some presence among the Yadav community. On average, it secured around 20 seats in Assembly elections in undivided Bihar (primarily in south Bihar, now Jharkhand) till the 1967 Assembly election. What was it that chipped away at the dominance of the Congress and led to the rise of anti-Congress parties such as the Jana Sangh?

In 1966-67, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were severely affected by a drought that led to a famine which officially claimed more than 70,000 lives, half of them in Bihar. There was an acute shortage of food for people and fodder for livestock. This humanitarian crisis led to political upheaval, striking at the dominance of the Congress and changing the chemistry on the ground. It not only brought into focus the relief work done by the non-Congress parties but also the coordination among social and political formations, something that had not happened before.

The situation gave rise to the beginnings of coordination among the non-Congress parties, says Ram Bahadur Rai, president of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and former editor of Jansatta. “Relief work was being run of course by the government, but also by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and the RSS. At the time, K.N. Govindacharya (former general secretary of the BJP) was the RSS zila pracharak (district in-charge) in Patna, after having completed his MSc from Benaras Hindu University. He approached JP and asked him to have a look at the relief work being done by the RSS,” Rai says. JP was then not in favour of the RSS, but he did visit the relief camps and made public statements appreciating the efforts. This was the beginning of the RSS and JP coming closer, which ultimately led to the Jana Sangh being part of the anti-Emergency movement led by JP. The resentment against the Congress was so great that the then Chief Minister Krishna Ballabh Sahay lost the 1967 Bihar Assembly election to the cook of the Raja of Ramgarh. This was a significant event, and for the first time, it also led to a shift in support of the Kayastha community, to which Sahay belonged, from the Congress to JP.

The elections of 1967, both for the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, were extremely significant as they marked the rise of an opposition to the Congress for the first time. In these elections, Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) governments — a coalition of Opposition parties — were formed for the first time in several States. Some of the constituent parties were not aligned with each other in any way, but together they had more seats than the Congress, leading to the formation of these SVD governments. In Bihar, the SVD government included two socialist parties — the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) and the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) — the CPI, and the Jana Sangh. Thus, within two decades of its presence in Bihar, the Jana Sangh entered government and began to mitigate some of its political marginalisation due to its association with JP.

From Emergency to Palampur and Mandal (1968-1989)

The short-lived SVD governments provided an example of how to take on the dominant Congress politically, while also revealing the inherent fault lines within Opposition unity. The 1970s began with a boost in the Congress’s morale following its victory in the 1971 Lok Sabha election under Indira Gandhi, who led the campaign with the “garibi hatao” slogan. The momentum was further reinforced by India’s success against Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War. However, the sheen soon began to wear off amid rising inflation, economic stagnation, and allegations of corruption. The discontent spilled onto the streets, with students rising up in protest — the Gujarat Navnirman Sena led the protests in Gujarat in 1973-74 and the Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti in Bihar during the same period. Students’ unions from across Bihar were invited to be part of a larger State-wide platform, with Lalu Prasad as president. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student body of the RSS, was also part of it. The movement marked the emergence of leaders like the late Sushil Kumar Modi, who went on to become the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, former Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and the late Ram Vilas Paswan. The students’ agitation transformed into the Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution) movement led by JP against the imposition of Emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in June 1975.

The socialists, the Jana Sangh, and the ABVP were fully aligned in this movement. The post-Emergency election in 1977 saw the Janata Party, an amalgamation of anti-Congress parties, including the Jana Sangh, come to power at the Centre. Leaders such as the late Madhu Limaye felt that the socialists had “mainstreamed” the Jana Sangh and the RSS during this period, ending their political exclusion over questions of Hindutva. However, author Abhishek Choudhary, who wrote the well-regarded Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-77, does not consider this to be the case. “I don’t really agree [with the ‘mainstreaming’ narrative], because at that time the situation was such that to fight the Congress behemoth they needed the Jana Sangh. Earlier, the Jana Sangh had tried to tie up with right-wing outfits like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Ram Rajya Parishad, which had obscurantist views on caste reforms etc., but they could not [form alliances] because of these very reasons. The socialists and others saw that the Jana Sangh had a presence in electoral politics and was not like the Mahasabha and other such parties. Of course, there were ideological differences, like Madhu Limaye was deeply opposed to them, while Madhu Dandavate was in favour of extending the benefit of doubt to the Jana Sangh. Most, however, were in favour of giving the Jana Sangh a chance, including Jayaprakash Narayan, as the situation developed. So, this ‘mainstreaming’ argument is only partly true as the Sangh Parivar was a part of almost all movements in Independent India, from anti-cow slaughter to V.P. Singh’s anti-corruption movement. The Jana Sangh-BJP was bound to grow bigger with time, because it had an organised and disciplined cadre and was determined to acquire power,” Mr. Choudhary said in an interview to The Hindu.

The government that the Janata Party formed in Bihar was led by Karpoori Thakur, who introduced the 26% reservation policy for the Backward Classes in government jobs. The Jana Sangh, however, did not remain in the Janata Party for long, eventually walking out over the issue of dual membership of the party and the RSS. The Jana Sangh leaders refused to give up their RSS membership, leading to a split in the Janata Party and prompting fresh elections. The Jana Sangh subsequently re-emerged as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. In Bihar, the BJP’s first president was Kailashpati Mishra, a dominating force in the State unit. However, the legacy of its association with the socialists during the Janata Party years was evident. The BJP, in its first convention, declared pancha nishthas, or five guiding principles, that would guide its political path. These included the commitment to Gandhian socialism, described by the party as a Gandhian approach to socio-economic issues leading to the establishment of a samaras samaj free from exploitation. The 1980s were a period of churn for the BJP nationally, starting with the disappointing results in the 1985 Lok Sabha election, followed by the party finding common cause with the Opposition over the Bofors scandal, and culminating with the 1989 Palampur Resolution, in which the party declared its support for the demand to construct a Ram Temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. In 1990, another shift occurred when the then V.P. Singh-led National Front government (in which the BJP was a coalition partner) declared that it would implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission report on reservation for the Other Backward Classes in government jobs and educational institutions. This Mandal-Mandir churn came to define Indian politics for the next three decades and continues to do so. 

Mandir, Mandal, and Nitish (1990- )

The year 1990 saw BJP leader L.K. Advani embark on a Ram Rath Yatra to mobilise support for the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, an event that turbocharged then Chief Minister Lalu Prasad’s political career, as it was in Bihar that Advani was arrested on the orders of Lalu, ensuring his place in political history. While the BJP managed to amass support in both urban and rural areas and across sections of society that it hadn’t been able to mobilise before, Lalu’s move to arrest Advani and the decision to implement the reservation for the OBCs consolidated his “MY” (MuslimYadav) vote bank. During the 1990s, however, there were also three events that influenced the progress of the BJP as the main pole of politics in the State. The first was the exit of former Union Minister George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar from the Janata Dal, led by Lalu Prasad, to form the Samata Party in 1994. This formation, while not very strong on paper and having come a cropper in the 1995 polls after a tie-up with the Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist), later went on to ally with the BJP. This alliance brought the muchneeded socialist tinge to the BJP’s largely Hindutva appeal. Before that happened, however, the BJP — possibly due to the split within the Janata Dal — secured, for the first time, the post of Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly after the 1995 election. Meanwhile, the subalternisation of the BJP, or the reduction of what is termed “savarna prabhutva” within the party leadership, was continuing apace, with Sushil Kumar Modi occupying an important position within the State unit and driving its organisational structure. The bifurcation of Bihar in 2000, which led to the creation of Jharkhand, meant that the BJP had to rethink its strategy for what was no longer a huge catchment area for itself. The intricacies of social justice politics now had to be married with Hindutva concerns.

In North India, including Bihar, then BJP general secretary K.N. Govindacharya had been advancing his “social engineering” project of appropriating and promoting OBC and backward class leadership. This project got a boost in 1995, albeit in a different way, when the Samata Party allied with the BJP. In an interview with this author, as part of an article in the book The Lives of Muslims in India (Routledge), Advani says: “It was the [BJP] national council meeting in Mumbai in 1995, when I heard that George [Fernandes] was unwell and admitted to a hospital in Mumbai, I went to see him. Nitish Kumar was also with him at that time, and I invited both to attend the meeting of the council. George said he was unwell, but Nitish agreed, and I believe that is when we started getting closer, more than a decade after the Emergency.” This alliance added to the BJP’s appeal across various sections of society and strengthened its position within the unique social justiceoriented political landscape of the State. The second event that strengthened the BJP’s political support base was the pursuit of the fodder scam cases — from investigation to conviction — by its party leadership. Former Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad donned his lawyer’s robes to fight these cases, which ultimately led to the labelling of the Lalu Prasad government as one entangled in corruption. It also highlighted the governance deficit under his leadership, giving the BJP a potent narrative of “jungle raj” to leverage in successive elections.

Lalu Prasad resigned as Chief Minister in 1997 after the CBI filed a chargesheet in the fodder scam and installed his wife, Rabri Devi, in his place, this time with the support of the Congress. According to many, this marked the death knell for the Congress in the State, where it has been reduced from a dominant force to a junior coalition partner. The BJP and the NDA were able to capitalise on this situation by attracting the support base of the upper castes, who had previously voted for the Congress, as well as non-Yadav OBCs such as Kurmis, who were drawn to the alliance due to Nitish Kumar.

These three events can be seen as part of a continuum that led to the eventual victory of the NDA in the 2005 Assembly election and Nitish Kumar’s rise to the post of Chief Minister. The alliance between the BJP and the Janata Dal(U) (a new avatar of the Samata Party following its merger with the Janata Dal faction led by Sharad Yadav and the Lok Shakti party) has had its share of hiccups. During the early years of the NDA government in the State, Nitish Kumar’s efforts to break the Muslim consolidation behind the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) — through his advocacy of Pasmanda politics and initiatives such as pushing for a campus of Aligarh Muslim University in Kishanganj — met with opposition from sections of the BJP’s State unit. The advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the national stage had its own implications for Bihar. In 2013, when Narendra Modi — then Chief Minister of Gujarat — was named the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Nitish Kumar walked out of the NDA and contested the 2015 Assembly election in alliance with the RJD and the Congress, securing a victory. In 2017, he returned to the NDA. The BJP-JD(U) alliance won the 2020 Assembly election in Bihar, but Nitish Kumar once again split from the BJP in 2022 and tied up with the RJD and the Congress, only to return to the BJP in early 2024.

While Nitish Kumar went on to take oath as Chief Minister nine times, his frequent political U-turns meant that the BJP had learnt its lessons. The BJP, especially after the election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, has pursued a strategy of salami-slicing the OBC vote bank in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with non-Yadav OBC communities switching support to the BJP. However, this was not enough in the past to trounce the Mahagathbandhan alliance, when Nitish Kumar had joined hands with Lalu Prasad.

That situation changed a little in 2020, when the BJP won more seats than the JD(U) in the Assembly election. This outcome was the result of not just the presence of Backward Class leaders like Nityanand Rai but also the support from women, often considered a “casteless category”. Their vote accrued to the NDA as a whole, benefiting both the BJP and Nitish Kumar, who has assiduously courted this section. The emergence of women as a political force added a new dimension to the largely caste-driven politics of Bihar, fuelling optimism in the BJP ranks. While Nitish Kumar continues as Chief Minister despite his party holding fewer seats than the BJP, his declining health has raised questions over the leadership of both his party and the alliance. Meanwhile, RJD leader Lalu Prasad has also taken a back seat to his son Tejashwi Yadav. In such a scenario, the major question in the upcoming Assembly election in Bihar is whether the BJP is ready to go it alone, or at the very least, claim the Chief Minister’s post for itself while remaining in alliance with Nitish Kumar. The upper-caste Hindutva vote base is still firmly with the BJP; previous elections have shown that it has also expanded its support among non-Yadav OBC communities and the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC).

The 2025 election could finally see the BJP ascend to the Chief Minister’s post in Bihar, culminating its long political journey in the State.