India, Nov. 21 -- This column was written on a day when Nitish Kumar took oath as the Bihar chief minister for the tenth time. The entire top brass of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Prime Minister included, was in Patna to celebrate the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) landslide victory in the state.

Ten years ago, when Nitish took oath as the chief minister of Bihar after a similar landslide, even if slightly smaller in scale than this victory, it was the biggest challenge to the political prospects of what was then just a year and a half old Narendra Modi government. The coming together of the proverbial Brothers Bihari - Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar - and a weaponisation par excellence of the Mandal or lower caste Hindu plan...