When the forest moved to the hills, to vanquish Nitish Kumar

One of the prophecies that the witches give Macbeth, the titular character of the English playwright Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, is that he shall continue to rule Scotland until “great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinance Hill shall come for him.” Macbeth interprets this literally, thinking that since the chances of a forested area coming to his location on the hill were slim, his reign was secure. This changes when an enemy army passes through the woods. Each soldier cuts a branch to camouflage himself, making it appear, from a distance, as though the woods were on the move. The prophecy fulfilled, a king who believed he was invincible realises his downfall is near.

Four centuries later, a similar script unfolded in Bihar. The “branches” that veteran leader Nitish Kumar once used to camouflage the removal of his rivals, such as George Fernandes, his political mentor, or Sharad Yadav, his party’s co-founder, and Bashishth Narain Singh, known as the grandfather of Bihar’s socialism, were finally being held by his own enemies. The Rajya Sabha, long his preferred tool for nipping competition in the bud, had become his own Birnam Wood, signaling an approaching end to his twenty-year reign as Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister

Ten days before the sun is said to begin losing its vitality, marking the beginning of Kharmas—considered an inauspicious month in the Hindu calendar—pro-government channels began running headlines that Nitish would be stepping down from his post. He had been sworn in just three months earlier, after the National Democratic Alliance, led by his Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, won a decisive victory in the state assembly elections. But on 4 March, the eve of the deadline to file nominations for five Rajya Sabha seats that were to fall vacant from Bihar, news channels began hinting that Nitish would be putting his name down as one of the candidates. JD(U) workers and Nitish’s supporters, immersed in Holi festivities, remained in the dark. They would throng the gate of the party office and chief minister’s residence in Patna only the next morning, when Nitish dropped the bomb in an X post, confirming the rumours. He mentioned a long-cherished “desire” to become a member of “both houses of the Parliament” as the reason behind his decision. 

An angry group among the dozens of party workers gathered at the chief minister’s residence claimed to the media that the BJP forced Nitish to write the post. They also accused the BJP of “stealing” the people’s mandate as the allaince had fought the 2025 assembly elections on the slogan “2025, fir se Nitish”—2025, Nitish again—although the party refrained from naming him the chief ministerial face at the time. Unfazed by the protests, and within a few hours since putting up the post, Nitish left his official residence in a car shared by Amit Shah, the union home minister, and Nitin Nabin, the BJP’s national president, to file his nomination.