Gopalgunj to Raisina review: The book on Lalu is exciting in parts

PTI6_25_2016_000174B Lalu Prasad | PTI

When Lalu Prasad traces his journey from his village, Phulwaria in Bihar, to Patna, where he studied, one can imagine the story panning out like most rags-to-riches one. However, very few can describe it like the former railway minister—extremely detailed, earthy in language and expression, and unabashed in sharing information many might not be able to confess, even to themselves. In this era of biopics, a book about Lalu's life—Gopalganj to Raisina: My Political Journey—might easily lend itself to one.

What Lalu has to say about Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, the BJP's candidate from Patna Sahib, and Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi, in an election season, is interesting. The three w ere together in the Patna University Students' Union, and also under the aegis of Jayaprakash Narayan or JP, who had given his famous call for “total revolution”. Obviously, the ideologies of Lalu and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leaders Prasad and Modi were like chalk and cheese. In his book, Lalu says that the two complained to JP that he had consumed liquor and collected unaccounted money. When JP pulled him up, Lalu confessed to drinking toddy occasionally, but “emphatically denied collecting money, and said it was a blatant lie spread by the ABVP members to defame me”. He was let off after being warned that smoking and drinking were injurious to health.

How he got then-BJP president L.K. Advani arrested in Samastipur during Advani's 1990 Rath Yatra reads almost like a thriller. Also detailed in the book are the fodder scam from Lalu's perspective, the birth of his party—the Rashtriya Janata Dal—and the BJP's reaction to Sonia Gandhi becoming the president of the Congress. When Sushma Swaraj announced that she would tonsure her head if Sonia became prime minister, Lalu says that the Congress MPs were demoralised. He had not met Sonia then. “The vitriolic attacks day in and day out on her by the BJP leaders angered me,” he writes. “I have always been guided in my life by impulse rather than calculations of profit and gain. I lost my cool at their uncouth conduct. I punched my fist in the air and rolled up my sleeves for a befitting response,” which was to declare that Sonia Gandhi was “Bharat ki Bahu”. Their relationship, he says, is not based on mutual benefit, but “upon basic values which do not seem to exist in the lexicon of the Sangh Parivar”.

The book is exciting in parts. But then, so was the life of Lalu till the fodder scam landed him in jail. He projects himself as someone who is happy with what life has dealt him, and especially with the way his son Tejashwi is shaping up as a leader. The way forward, according to him, is to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. Here and there, he may be exaggerating a little, but his commitment to secularism and democracy seems genuine.

GOPALGANJ TO RAISINA—MY POLITICAL JOURNEY

Author: Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nalin Verma

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 214

Price: Rs 500

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