New Delhi, Oct 6 (IANS) “Misery”, wrote the celebrated playwright William Shakespeare, “acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

He used this phrase in ‘The Tempest’, to describe Trinculo’s desperate situation, where he must share a cloak with the strange looking, and smelling, Caliban to ride over a stormy weather.

In politics, the term “strange bedfellows” is often associated with parties with opposite beliefs or philosophies which come together to tide over political storms or to take on a more powerful, or popular, party.

In the end of the 1980s, the V.P. Singh-led National Front — itself a group of several parties — reached an agreement with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the one hand, and the Communist parties on the other, to not contest against each other in most of the Parliamentary seats.

The understanding was not on an ideological front, but to keep the Congress — from where broke out Singh earlier — from power.

By the turn of the century, however, through the changing times and political equations, many of these parties shifted their allegiance.

Reportedly, Bihar’s former Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav was once the convener of a steering committee, said to have been formed by Jayaprakash Narayan himself to coordinate the anti-Emergency protests.

On several occasions, while reminiscing of those days, Lalu Yadav has spoken about his imprisonment under the dreaded Maintenance of Security Act (MISA) for more than 15 months.

But in an article that he later co-authored with a journalist, he chose to use his recollection of those days to deride the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders who described the imposition of Emergency on June 25 as a “black day”.

Because, the same party that jailed him in the 70s, and which he defeated later, in 1990, to become the Chief Minister of Bihar, is now in alliance with the RJD.

The opponent this time is the same BJP that had once agreed to lend a hand to an anti-Congress platform.

Similarly, the Left Front came to power in West Bengal riding on the massive anti-Emergency wave of 1977.

There has since been skirmishes with the Congress in the state leading to widespread deaths and destruction in the 80s and 90s.

But the two parties are now alliance partners against the ruling Trianmool Congress in West Bengal and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar.

In Kerala too, the Communists are leading a coalition government, with the Congress-led Opposition group trying to topple it.

Moreover, the Left parties had withdrawn support over a nuclear deal with the US to the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in its second term.

Again, in Bihar, another constituent of the Opposition alliance of Mahagathbandhan is Pashupati Paras, the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party President.

He was the Union Food Processing Industries Minister in the NDA government from 2021 till his resignation in 2024.

Now, he has entered into the Mahagathbandhan alliance to seek seats and support in the upcoming Bihar elections in November.

Despite the inherent contradictions and contrarian political views and philosophies, the only thread that hold them together is a common aim to oppose the BJP.

In the ensuing game of a political musical chair, the Telegu Desam Party and Janata Dal-United –- except a brief period –- among very few parties, continue to politically oppose the Congress.

–IANS

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