President Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday announced that the Bharat Ratna would be awarded to socialist icon Karpoori Thakur, posthumously. This comes at a time when three-day celebrations are being held in Bihar to mark the birth centenary of the former Bihar CM.

Demands for a Bharat Ratna for Thakur have been made for years. Last year, on July 12, speaking at an event to mark the centenary of the Bihar Assembly building, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav demanded Bharat Ratna for Thakur, a two-time Chief Minister of the state and a towering socialist icon who is often invoked by the state’s politicians.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who also attended the event, did not comment on the demand, he mentioned Karpoori along with other stalwarts from the state such as Jayaprakash Narain, the pioneer of the Bihar movement, and Srikrishna Sinha, the state’s first CM.

Tejashwi’s demand was not the first time that a contemporary Bihar leader demanded the highest civilian honour for Thakur, who is popularly referred to as Jannayak or people’s leader. In fact, the RJD and JD(U) had been making the appeal almost every year around the time of Thakur’s birth and death anniversaries.

Some of the schemes rolled out by CM Nitish Kumar bear the mark of Thakur’s socialist politics – whether it is the waiving of school fees for girls until their post graduation or providing a 50 per cent reservation to women in panchayats.

But what is it about Thakur’s legacy that makes political parties queue up to stake claim?

Thakur’s life can be divided into three phases: when he was a freedom fighter and a staunch socialist who worked under the guidance of stalwarts such as Jayaprakash Narain, Dr Rammanohar Lohia and Ramnandan Mishra (1942 to 1967); as the state’s CM and tallest socialist leader (1970 to 1979); and his later years (1980-1988) when he was trying to re-establish his political identity.

Thakur belonged to the Nai (barber) community that is listed as an Extremely Backward Class (EBC) among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the state and was from Pitaunjhia (now known as Karpoori Gram), a Rajput-dominated village in the Samstipur district. He made his debut as a legislator when he won the 1952 elections and remained one till his last Assembly election in 1985. He, however, faced an electoral loss when he contested from Samastipur in the 1984 Lok Sabha polls, when several other non-Congress stalwarts had also lost their elections due to the sympathy wave in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

Thakur was the deputy CM and education minister in the Mahamaya Prasad Sinha Cabinet from 5 March 1967 to 28 January 1968.

In December 1970, Thakur went on to become the state’s CM for the first time with the Samyuktha Socialist Party, a coalition of ideologically similar outfits. However, political instability rocked the state from 1967-72, and the stint barely lasted six months until June 1971.

He later became the Janata Party’s CM in June 1977 and held power for close to two years, until differences with its main ally, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the BJP’s precursor, alongside other reasons, led to the government’s fall.

As CM and deputy CM, his policies were wide-ranging: promotion of Hindi language in government offices, declaring Urdu as the second official language in Bihar, waiving school fees, strengthening the Panchayati Raj system by holding regular elections, among others.

But his most significant contribution was in the sphere of reservation, a model that is still followed for all of the state’s jobs.

As CM in 1978, Thakur implemented a layered reservation system, despite resistance from the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, a major constituent of the Janata Party government in power at the time.

The system, an unparalleled one, provided a 26 per cent reservation model in which OBC communities got 12 per cent of the share; Economically Backward Classes from among the OBCs got 8 per cent; women got 3 per cent; and economically backward classes from amongst the upper castes also got 3 per cent.

This was much before the Narendra Modi government introduced the Economically Weaker Section quota of 10 per cent.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Sushil Kumar Modi, former deputy CM of the state, said: “Reservation for OBCs with a separate provision for EBC reservation was Karpoori Thakur’s masterstroke and his lasting legacy.”

Former JD(U) MP K C Tyagi attributes Thakur’s enduring legacy to his “assimilative and inclusive politics”.

The reservations also hold importance in the context of the Bihar of that time, which was going through a churn, with dominant OBC and Dalit leaders asserting their positions. Lalu Prasad Yadav had become an MP in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections and was putting up a tough fight. Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan was elected as an MP in 1977 and was already challenging Karpoori’s long-held position as the socialist leader in Bihar. This was a changed picture from just a couple of years ago, when Yadav leaders such as Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav had helped Karpoori emerge as the tallest leader of the OBCs.

After 1980, Karpoori was dubbed an EBC leader, a tag that he was not able to shed till the end of his life. This was a bit of an irony since he started off as the leader of the masses by rallying together the support of the upper castes, OBCs and Dalits. However, from this point until his death in 1988, he had to look for political relevance in the state.

Towards the later part of his career, Thakur’s reservation policy drew a lot of criticism from the public. In 1988, 42 upper caste people were killed by Naxalites in the Dalelchak Bhagoda village and Thakur, who went to visit the village, was nearly driven away by an angry mob from the spot. A Patna-based photographer had to rescue him.

Old-timers who have worked with Thakur talk of his “simplicity and probity.”

They recount an incident when Janata Party President Chandrashekhar is said to have collected funds from party leaders to buy a new kurta for Thakur, who would often wear worn-out kurtas. An amused Karpoori is said to have remarked: “If there are more funds, I will donate it to the party.”

Those close to him say Thakur’s commitment to the Janata Party’s socialist ideals stayed till the very end. Many recall an incident where former Uttar Pradesh CM Hemwati Nandan Bahugana went to Thakur’s house in his village after his death and broke down when he saw it was a little more than a run-down hut.

The socialist icon is known to have been firmly against dynastic politics. His son Ramnath Thakur, now a second-term JD (U) Rajya Sabha MP, only joined politics after his father’s death.