Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar may well be taking the guard for one last time in an electoral battle when the state goes to polls later this year. A master political schemer, Kumar has managed a ‘pendulum style’ politics swaying between hard-boiled Socialist caste-based politics and soft Hindutva agenda.

In the past quarter of a century, Kumar has managed, whether with the left-of-centre conundrum or right-of-centre Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to maintain a progressive profile for his government.

He has contested in alliance with the BJP on five occasions (2000, February 2005 and November 2010 and 2020), however, during every campaign, he always remained, at least in public perception, distant from the Hindutva agenda of its alliance partner the BJP.

This ‘distance’ had allowed him to take divorce from the BJP and enter into an electoral alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress in 2015, winning the polls. However, he later eloped with the mandate and formed a government with the BJP.

Similarly, after winning the 2020 polls in alliance with the BJP, he bolted with the mandate and formed........

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