New glitzy format for old riddles, formulas
The recently concluded Karnataka State Assembly elections in May 2023 throw up the same old riddles and formulas albeit in a new glitzy format. There is also a sense of Déjà vu, as it openly and brazenly goes back to another era’s old caste and religious politics.
In Karnataka, Mr. Siddaramaiah carefully cultivates the various electoral constituencies and also divides the electorate along caste and religious lines of Ahinda – the minorities (consisting of Muslims and Christians), the backward castes – which includes his own Kuruba community, and the Dalit/ SC and ST vote. Congress party sustained on these voting categories for six decades and more, and Mr. Siddaramaiah and Mr. D K Shivakumar continue in the same worthy tradition, with additional doses of targeted freebies. The election also decisively demolishes the idea that a state which is the IT capital of India, a cosmopolitan hub of Bengaluru with most startups and unicorns, which has seen rapid development in the new millennium, the building of massive public infrastructure, will somehow vote for development, entrepreneurship, and innovation. It is another matter that the NDA govt led by PM Modi through the aegis of the famed double-engine sarkar, has poured in massive amounts of funds into building infrastructure and metros, upgraded airports and railways, started many new medical colleges, and which has continuously chanted the development mantra has been rudely jolted and dethroned from the Vidhan-Soudha. As experts point out, it is also curious that inflation in Karnataka remained far lower than the national average; while the country’s per capita income stood at Rs.1.71 lakh in FY23 (48% growth ), Karnataka’s per capita income is estimated to be Rs.3.32 lakh in at the end of FY24.
In the electoral formula perfected by the Congress YSR Govt, in united Andhra Pradesh (AP) after 2004, when each and every community has been perfectly demarcated and wooed with several freebies, funds, and positions. For obvious reasons, AP still remains the only state (now Telangana also after division) which has a Christian Minority Finance Corporation, and not just a Minorities Finance Corporation as in other states. The convert, divide, and rule policy of Congress has always paid very rich electoral dividends, and it is being diligently followed by Congress and all regional parties successfully. It is to be noted that only the Hindu community is divided along caste lines and not the minorities who are wooed and encouraged to vote en masse. This is a well-established template and BJP fails to tackle this voting pattern yet again in Karnataka.
Apart from exploiting the Hindu caste/ community divisions, the Congress party along with the supportive minorities’ organizations has kept the electoral pot boiling through the last two years. Whether it is the extremist Popular Front of India (PFI) which targeted Hindus, or the raking up of Tipu Sultan issue and falsely equating him with Veer Savarkar, or the deliberate manufacturing of the hijab issue by Campus Front of India, an outfit of PFI, where innumerable Hindu youth were killed in acts akin to terror, the extreme polarization handsomely helped Congress party. It also bogusly played up the regional sentiment of Nandini milk versus Amul, for what it is worth.
Muslim agenda – Hindu youth murders
BJP even failed to capitalize on the well-known fact that the Congress Govt of Mr. Siddaramaiah removed more than 1600 dreaded terror cases against the PFI cadre. It was during the Congress and later Congress-JDS Govt that PFI has grown by leaps and bounds, Congress had a covert understanding with SDPI. The way Congress falsely equated Bajrang Dal with PFI and called for its ban is a neat ploy to further consolidate the Muslim vote in its favor.
It is strange that the entire scenario has changed in such a short time and electoral politics has taken precedence over everything else. However, it is important to remember that it is only a year since Bajrang Dal activists- Pravin Nettaru, and Dilip Magalimane in Malebenur, Davanagere district, Harsha in Shivamogga district were brutally murdered. Harsha was hacked to death after a fatwa was duly issued, for merely participating in an anti-hijab rally. Massive stone pelting was reported in many towns, even Harsha’s funeral procession was pelted with stones. `Allah o Akbar, hijab more important than kitab’ were the slogans resounding in the air. Several other workers including Prashanth Poojari, Deepak Rao, Santosh, Sharath Madiwala, Raju, Praveen Poojari, and Paresh Mesta were hacked to death in a similar way. Praveen Nettaru a BJYM activist was hacked to death by bike-borne attackers on the road in open daylight, in Bellare village of the Dakshina Kannada district on 26 July 2022. Very few states have seen this scale of violence and innumerable murders of Hindu youth.
Hundreds of disillusioned BJYM activists resigned from the party as no strong action was taken against the murderers of Pravin Nettaru. Mr. Tejasvi Surya the Bengaluru BJP MP and BJYM President too was criticized for not being able to handle the fallout. Outfits like the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) which were in the forefront of fomenting trouble were never banned, even when BJP legislators demanded. In fact, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) fielded Ismail Shafi Bellare, accused in the murder of BJP Yuva Morcha leader Praveen Nettaru in the Puttur Constituency. As neither MHA, Govt of India nor the Election Commission has banned SDPI, all the PFI cadre have effectively regrouped under the party flag. It is not clear why the Center has failed to ban SDPI.
There was also the small matter in Aug 2020, when a thousands-strong Muslim mob attacked the KG Halli Police Station in Bengaluru, after torching the Congress SC MLA Mr Srinivasa Murthy’s house and thousands of vehicles of passersby on the road, over an alleged derogatory FB post by the MLA’s nephew. Congress Party remained silent even then instead of supporting the Govt.
The Karnataka Chief Minister Mr Basavaraj Bommai and the Education Minister B C Nagesh in the outgoing BJP Govt have stood up to the pressures valiantly and pursued the Hijab matter in Karnataka High Court which later upheld that the educational institutions can enforce their rules in their schools. In fact, in the less than two years that Mr Bommai had as CM, he did a fairly decent job, handling the Covid crisis and its aftermath, vaccination rollout as well as the economy.
Muslim and Christian vote banks & `Activist’ forums
Congress party supporting the divisive Muslim agenda paid rich dividends to the party in elections. The massive Muslim consolidation of nearly 90% voting Congress party easily tilted the scales in their favor. The Sunni Ulma Board and Waqf Board members said as per their demand before elections, many ministerial positions including Dy CM should go to Muslims as Congress decisively won 72 seats due to the Muslim vote-bank. It is not clear what the understanding was reached by the Muslim groups with the Congress party. It is also not well-known that a forum called `Eddellu Karnataka/ Wake up Karnataka’ has been active for months, comprising more than 100 NGOs, a few writers, and activists, 5000+ grassroots persons, including so-called environment activists like Disha Ravi, and others who in the past raised slogans of Pakistan zindabad and walked with Rahul Gandhi are active in this. Erstwhile psephologist and an all-weather professional activist/ andolanjaeevi Yogendra Yadav claimed to have mapped out 100+ constituencies and gave a call to `defeat BJP and save democracy’. A forum activist Church Priest Cedric Prakash also claimed that `the Catholic Church of Karnataka under the leadership of Archbishop Peter Machado played a significant role through Karnataka Catholic Think-tank, their members were on the field for several weeks. The Jesuits were at the forefront, mobilizing youth, encouraging first-time voters, organizing public meetings, and being active on social media in both urban and rural Karnataka’. It is understandable that the church was agitating as their flocks may get disturbed by the anti-conversion bill.
Congress’s anti-Hindu promises including the repeal of laws
Congress party and the incoming CM, Mr. Siddaramaiah in particular, running true to type on its anti-Hindu agenda, promised to provide 6% reservations to the Muslim community. It also promised to repeal two important acts brought in by the BJP govt of Mr. Yediyurappa and Mr. Bommai – `The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020’ and `Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act, 2022’. The Cow Slaughter Ban Bill introduced by the BJP Govt places a ban and makes it illegal to buy, sell, transport, slaughter, or trade all cattle (cows, bulls, buffaloes, oxen) unless they are older than 13 years old and have been proven that they are unfit for breeding, draught or milking. Under the new law, those found guilty will be imprisoned for a maximum of seven years or fined up to Rs.5 lakh. The Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act, 2022, states that it will prohibit any “unlawful conversion from one religion to another by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means.”
The BJP core voters and supporters, especially on social media, have always questioned the BJP govt on a host of issues including their silence on brazen Muslim politics. BJP chose to ignore it and go ahead with Congress’s template of appeasement politics. However, BJP didn’t realize that they can’t do a one-upmanship with Congress as it is a past master of this brand of appeasement politics.
Lingayat issue
In these elections, the elephant in the room is the Lingayat vote which has shifted massively to the Congress party, after being faithful to the BJP for over 3.5 decades, 39 newly elected Congress MLAs belong to the Lingayat community. The politically powerful community has a decisive advantage in 100 constituencies; the `Karnataka Veerashaiva Lingayat Forum’ went so far as to issue a formal letter of support to the Congress party. It is supposed that they are miffed that BJP has sidelined the party stalwart Mr Yediyurappa who with his sheer force and popular support wrested back power dislodging the Congress-JDS Kumaraswamy Govt in 2019. To this day, it is not clear why BJP has asked Mr Yediyurappa to step down or why they have not even given the ticket to another Lingayat heavyweight former BJP CM Jagadish Shettar.
Mr D K Shivakumar, among the richest politicians in India, is said to own massive real estate in Bengaluru and can singlehandedly finance an election, is also a Vokkaliga leader, the second major community which has a huge vote share in the state. With the Ahinda vote – Muslim and Christian, OBC, Dalit, and ST vote, and also the Lingayat and Vokkaliga vote in Congress’s pocket, it is a no-brainer to understand which way the political wind was blowing. With all these political permutations and combinations mishandled by the BJP Central leadership and Party President J P Nadda, it is still a gratification that PM Modi’s popularity hasn’t dimmed at all, and Mr. Modi remains the first choice for the people of Karnataka as the Prime Minister of India in 2024. Hopefully, BJP will learn its lessons and not take its core Hindu voters for granted.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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“To this day, it is not clear why BJP has asked Mr Yediyurappa to step down or why they have not even given the ticket to another Lingayat heavyweight former BJP CM Jagadish Shettar.” — How else will Prahlad Joshi be made the CM?