Happy birthday, B P Mandal

It was a good day for Mandal cousins Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar on Monday. Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Kumar's Janata Dal (United), in alliance with the Congress, won six of 10 Assembly seats in a by-poll in Bihar. The Modi wave had nearly decimated Yadav and Kumar in the Lok Sabha elections. The victory on Monday brought hope to anti-BJP forces that Mandal politics could still be the answer to defeating the BJP. Interestingly, according to Upendra Kushwaha, Monday was also the birth anniversary of B P Mandal. Kushwaha, a backward caste leader and minister of state for rural development in the Modi government, tweeted: "August 25: former CM of Bihar, the progenitor of Mandal Commission and supporter of social justice to backward castes, B P Mandal's birth anniversary. Respect." Neither Yadav, who tweeted about the election victory from his hospital bed, nor Kumar in Patna, were awake to the significance of the day.