Autumn of a socialist: On Nitish Kumar, the BJP and Bihar politics

Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar is relinquishing his post and stepping aside from active politics. A nominee from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will likely succeed him as Chief Minister. Though the turn of events appears abrupt, it has been in the making for several years, and follows a pattern of the BJP’s expansion into newer areas and social groups. Mr. Kumar has oscillated between the BJP and the Congress-led Opposition over the years, and still commands the loyalty of a considerable section of Other Backward Classes (OBC) in the State. At 75, old age had impaired him, and though his decline has been in full public view, he remained in the saddle — a testimony to his political indispensability. In the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept 202 of 243 seats, with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 89 seats against the JD(U)’s 85. The BJP was initially unwilling to declare Mr. Kumar as the NDA’s chief ministerial candidate, even while calculating that the alliance could not afford to contest without him. Less than four months after taking oath as Chief Minister for a record tenth time, he filed his Rajya Sabha nomination on March 5, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah by his side. The BJP is navigating a very fine line, trying to gently push Mr. Kumar aside without toppling the apple cart of the social combination that holds various Hindu caste groups together. Any sense of insult to the OBCs can be politically costly; but the party is equally determined to formalise its primacy in Bihar politics, a fact on the ground since at least the 2020 Assembly election, when it won 74 seats to the JD(U)’s 43.

The transition in Bihar also aligns with the four-decade pattern of the BJP’s growth. The Hindutva party finds a foothold in new areas and among new social groups through alliances with regional outfits first, then emerges on top, and finally replaces the former ally. In 2020, the BJP already outran the JD(U) in seat tally but swallowed its ambition to keep the coalition intact and Mr. Kumar in place. In 2025, it retained that lead — 89 to 85 — and the arithmetic of the Rajya Sabha vacancy provided the occasion, and a measure of cover, for the inevitable transition. Bihar is the latest instance in this pattern, following the template most recently visible in Maharashtra, where Assembly elections were fought under Eknath Shinde’s name but Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP took the Chief Minister’s chair after the Mahayuti victory. With the eclipse of Mr. Kumar, the social justice politics that Bihar has practised for the last half-century — rooted in Lohiaite assertion, OBC mobilisation, and a resistance to upper caste dominance — is turning a page. It has a certain finality about it.