The Indian Express
February 03, 2006
Politics in Karnataka could be the script for
a fine Yakshagana performance. The angst of
a wronged father confronting a wayward son who
threatens to squander a carefully constructed
political legacy, has mythological resonances
that will long echo through the capacious corridors
of Bangalore's Vidhana Soudha. H.D. Deve Gowda
knows well the price the Janata Dal - which
flags the word 'secular' as part of its nomenclature
- will have to pay for son H.D. Kumaraswamy's
pact with the BJP. He sees it for what it is:
political suicide.
The BJP's ascent to governance in Karnataka
- if things go according to plan - will see
the emergence of a bipolar polity in the state.
It will also mean an end to the Janata Dal,
as we know it, 12 short years after its big
moment when various factions led by strongmen
H.D. Deve Gowda, S.R. Bommai and R.K. Hedge
fought elections together and gave the state
its first Janata Dal government. For the BJP,
breaking the south-of-the-Vindhyas barrier will
come as a major psychological boost - the culmination
of 16 years of concerted labour.
While covering the 1991 General Election in
the state, I could distinctly discern the saffron
tint in the air. The Congress, which until then
had enjoyed unchallenged suzerainty in the state,
had trouble even in encashing politically the
sympathy generated by Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.
I remember speaking at that point to the erstwhile
maharaja of Mysore, Srikantadatta Narasimharaja
Wodeyar, who had deserted the Congress for the
BJP. He believed that time was on the BJP's
side: "The youth are the moving force today,
and they are supportive of the Hindutva cause.
The Rajmata may have invited me to join the
party, but I am convinced about the BJP's politics.
I am a practicing Hindu and the Congress Party's
policy of minority appeasement was too much."
He subsequently found it more advantageous to
return to the Congress, but there was no denying
the political frisson he had referred to. That
election saw the BJP emerge with four seats
in Karnataka - a first in the
south - and, more significantly, 29 per cent
of the votes. In '89, it could secure only 2.6
per cent of votes!
How did this happen in a state that had witnessed
the Congress's one-party dominance ever since
its birth? The cynical and corrupt politics
of the Congress certainly helped, but without
doubt Karnataka was the most receptive among
the four southern states to the passions unleashed
by the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The Sangh Parivar's
Rama Jyothi processions introduced a new dynamic
into local politics as a string of riots, in
towns like Ramnagaram, Channapatna, Kolar, Devangere,
erupted in September-October '90. In Mangalore,
Congress's Janardhana Poojary who won election
after election by cleverly posing as the 'Poojary
of the poor', bit the dust in that election.
The BJP's V. Dhananjaya Kumar, buttressed by
vocal support from local temple trusts and pilgrim
centres, like the influential Pejavar Mutt and
the Shree Kshetra Dharmasthal, defeated him
by 35,000 votes.
Over the next decade the BJP consolidated its
hold in three pockets of the state: the coastal
belt, the Bombay-Karnataka and the Hyderabad-Karnataka
regions. There is a popular misconception that
the BJP's politics in the
south is markedly different to its north Indian
variant. The fact is that the party's political
strategy - the "exclusion-inclusion"
paradigm - was essentially the same in Karnataka,
as in UP. It played the Hindu card and deepened
communal divides in the state, while working
for a homogeneous Hindutva identity by melding
together disparate caste groups.
To help in polarising the state along communal
lines, the Karnataka BJP threw itself into the
Idgah Maidan campaign in Hubli, with some help
from national leaders. In 1992, during Murli
Manohar Joshi's Ekta Yatra, local party workers
attempted to hoist the flag in the Maidan to
contest the ownership rights of the Anjuman-e-Islam.
The party persisted with the campaign for the
next two years, through episodes of rioting
and deaths in police firing. Even after the
Anjuman-e-Islam authorities defused the issue
by themselves deciding to hoist the national
flag, the Sangh Parivar continued to target
the Idgah Maidan, making Hubli something of
a communal hotspot. Its exertions saw a rise
in local profile. By 2002, a party that had
no presence in the Hubli corporation ten years
earlier, had come to occupy 40 per cent of its
seats. The conscious search for an Ayodhya-like
flashpoint, also saw the Sangh Parivar home
in on the Guru Dattatreya Baba Budangiri Swamy
dargah, near Chikmagalur. In December 2003,
the VHP-Bajrang Dal attempted to "liberate"
the dargah with notables like Pravin Togadia
and Sadhvi Ritambara providing the required
soundbites. The state BJP participated in this
campaign with great enthusiasm.
If "exclusion" required the services
of the stormtroopers, "inclusion"
demanded intense community networking. It was
along the coastal belt that attempts to construct
a homogeneous Hindutva identity proved most
successful. Two factors worked in its favour
there. The first was the presence of a disciplined
RSS cadre. Ram Madhav, RSS spokesperson, is
on record for having noted that the Dakshina
Kannada district had become one of the strongholds
of the RSS because in at least 300 places shakas
have been running at least two programmes each.
These included civic interventions like promoting
village cleanliness, temple maintenance, water
purification, the creation of self-help and
knowledge dissemination groups. The powerful
mutts and temples that dot the Mangalore-Udipi
region were sites of community bonding around
festivals, bhajan sessions, and locally convened
Hindu Samajosavas. In these activities, the
lower castes - which in an earlier era had been
kept at a distance - were consciously wooed.
Such activities and institutions worked as force
multipliers for the BJP. At the political level
the party kept itself open to anyone willing
to do business with it. If Ramakrishna Hegde
had helped it consolidate the Brahmin-Lingayat
vote, winning over S. Bangarappa (albeit for
a short spell), broadened its appeal among the
Idigas.
This strategy of inclusion-exclusion has paid
the party rich dividends in Karnataka, where
surveys indicate that the party now enjoys considerable
support from SC/STs and OBCs in the state. The
BJP's biggest problem so far had been its inability
to make that final leap to power and thus keep
its restive flock intact. Kumaraswamy may have
just solved that dilemma - for the time being,
at least.
