To succeed in the murky world of Indian politics, cynical amorality combined with chameleon qualities is very useful. Consider the amazing political longevity of Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Bihar chief minister and Union railways minister. Beginning his career as a youth leader in the late Jayaprakash Narayan’s anti-corruption crusade against then prime minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s, Lalu rose high in politics by promising equality to the cruelly neglected Dalits and backward castes of Bihar. But soon after he was swept to power in 1990, he became deeply mired in a fodder-for-cattle procurement scandal, and following a prolonged battle in the courts, was disqualified from holding public office by the Supreme Court, whereupon he promptly appointed his illiterate wife, Rabri Devi as chief minister in his stead and misruled by proxy. Since then, this typically amoral BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP) politician has remained a permanent fixture of Bihar politics, and following the Bihar assembly election of 2015 when his RJD party unexpectedly won the largest number of seats in the legislature, he arm-twisted chief Nitish Kumar to appoint his two sons as deputy chief and forestry ministers in the state’s coalition government. Not content with running the state government through proxies, now this backward castes champion has transformed into a businessman, inevitably crooked. Right now, Bihar’s largest shopping mall is under construction on a two-acre plot in Patna owned by a company named Lara Projects LLP in which the Lalu family is the major shareholder. According to the Kolkata-based The Telegraph, this plot was transferred to Lara Projects without any discernible compensation by RJD member and MLA Prem Gupta, who had been granted the lease of two railway hotels when Lalu was Union railways minister of the Congress-led UPA-I government in 2004-2009. Yet despite his disqualification from holding public office, Bihar’s electorate voted the Lalu-led RJD to power. It’s no coincidence that it is India’s most educationally backward state ranked last in the Educational Development Index of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration. Quite obviously, it’s in the interest of the state’s light-fingered, amoral politicians to maintain the status quo. Unheeded history At first the insidious agenda was covert. BJP leaders — including prime minister Narendra Modi and party spokespersons — would reply to English language television and print journalists in Hindi, allegedly the national language of the country. But of late, the campaign to establish the supremacy of Hindi and impose it upon the general public, including citizens resident south of the Vindhyas has become overt. After publicly celebrating Hindi Day (September 14) last year with great zest, the BJP/NDA government at the Centre has issued a spate of official circulars to establish Hindi — which coincidentally would confer a great advantage to citizens of BIMARU states in bagging government jobs, topping public exams, accessing information — and relegate non Hindi-speaking citizens to second-class status. Recently the Union cabinet has advised Central government ministers to deliver all public speeches in Hindi; the…
