The decision of the BJP government to confer the Bharat Ratna on former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur seems to have been made keeping in view the coming general election. The late socialist leader is a very popular figure in Bihar, and the decision to posthumously give him the Bharat Ratna will surely help the prospects of the BJP. It is recognition of the social justice politics pioneered by Ram Manohar Lohia. Lohia foregrounded caste as the primary identity in society and advocated reservations for other backward classes (OBC) to build an egalitarian India. The idea took time to gain roots in northern India, the main battleground of Lohiaite politics.
Leaders such as Thakur stood with Lohia in resisting the Congress’ political hegemony, which was ambiguous towards reservations as a social policy, and succeeded in transforming politics in the Hindi heartland. As the Bihar CM in the late 1970s (when he was part of the Janata Party), Thakur introduced sub-quotas within the OBC segment to ensure that the numerically small backward castes could access the benefits of reservations. Interestingly, the move to confer the Bharat Ratna on him has led to patching up of the alliance between the BJP and the JD (U) in Bihar. For a long time Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been calling for conferring the Bharat Ratna on Thakur.