Karnataka: Political Arithmetic of Yeddyurappa's 'Secularism' (Shivasundar)

From: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol - XLVIII No. 02, January 12, 2013

Commentary


Political Arithmetic of Yeddyurappa's 'Secularism'

B S Yeddyurappa has declared his new Karnataka Janata Party's secular beliefs, but it would be reckless to support him just because he can wreck the Bharatiya Janata Party's chances of returning to power. Rhetoric aside, Yeddyurappa's and the KJP's ideological affi nity to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh remains and this cannot be wished away.

by Shivasundar *

B S Yeddyurappa, former chief minister of Karnataka and the man behind the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) rise to power south of the Vindhyas, has formed his own Karnataka Janata Party (KJP). On 9 December, at a huge convention held in the north Karnataka town of Haveri, which is dominated by the Lingayat caste (to which Yeddyurappa belongs), he declared that his new party would follow the teachings of B R Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jayaprakash Narayan, and that secularism would be its backbone.

What has transformed Yeddyurappa from a staunch Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker into a votary of regional parties and secularism? What will be the impact of the KJP on the BJP, and the politics of Karnataka? More importantly, can the KJP’s political distance from the BJP be construed as a measure of its ideological distance from the RSS?

The last question assumes importance because leaders from other political parties as well as intellectuals with secular credentials are said to be a part of the KJP “think tank”. The rationale for this is apparently the view that Yeddyurappa presents the best chance of defeating the BJP, which, they believe, will amount to the defeat of Hindu communalism, at least for the time being.

Yeddyurappa began preparing to form a new party nearly five months ago, once it became clear that he would neither get back the chief minister’s post nor be made the state president of the party. The BJP high command had been clueless about what to do with him after the Lokayukta made it clear that the chief minister and others had been involved in massive corruption. It is another matter that the same high command had earlier wholeheartedly supported his rise on a foundation of unseemly practices. When the BJP wanted to capture the “anti-corruption” plank at the centre for obvious political gains, Yeddyurappa became inconvenient. At the same time, Yeddyurappa wanted the high command to believe that the charges against him had been conjured up by the opposition and some of his detractors within the party, like Ananth Kumar and K S Eshwarappa.

The high command, especially the L K Advani camp, did not want to entertain Yeddyurappa after a charge sheet was filed against him and a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry was launched. He was asked to resign and wait till the judiciary cleared him of all charges. To Yeddyurappa, this was a bolt from the blue because he had thought the high command would come to his rescue, as it had done with Ananth Kumar, who had also faced corruption charges. Disheartened and disgruntled, he decided to quit the party to teach it a lesson.

The KJP has no real secular roots. Rather, it is using an opportunistic strategy to gain electoral mileage. The opportunism of the BJP high command is, of course, even more patent.

Impact on Karnataka Politics

Now that the KJP is a reality, what will be its impact on Karnataka’s politics? While it is clear that the BJP will suffer, it is not very evident who will gain, though Yeddyurappa claims he is not keen on anything other than becoming the “king”. That the BJP state unit has been reduced to a passive spectator was apparent when it could not take any disciplinary action against the 14 BJP Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) who participated in the Haveri convention. The compulsion of numbers in the assembly and the BJP’s desire to cling to power till the next election in mid-2013 has given Yeddyurappa an initial advantage. The BJP wants to have the opportunity to present a populist budget in February 2013 just before the elections that are due in May. An emboldened Yeddyurappa has warned the BJP that the present dispensation should be considered a “coalition government” of the BJP and the KJP, and that he will bring down the government if his supporters are harassed or discriminated against.

The meteoric rise of the BJP in Karnataka and its impending fall is closely tied to Yeddyurappa’s own political rise and fall in the party. From the Jan Sangh days to 1983, for three and a half decades, the BJP’s vote base was confined to an upper-caste urban constituency in south Karnataka. In the 1983 election, the BJP won 18 seats, gaining from an anti-Congress and pro-Janata wave in Karnataka. In the 1985 and 1989 elections, it lost heavily first to the Janata Party under Ramakrishna Hegde, and then the Congress, winning only two and four seats, respectively. But after the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)) began to be seen as a party favouring the Vokkaligas, and the Congress as “betraying” the interests of Lingayats after Veerendra Patil was unceremoniously dumped, Lingayats slowly started drifting towards the BJP. In the 1994 and 1999 elections, the BJP under Yeddyurappa got 40 and 44 seats respectively, with most of its gains in the Lingayat belt. Even though the Congress made a comeback in the 1999 election and the Lingayats were evenly divided between it and the BJP, S M Krishna, a Vokkaliga, became the chief minister, giving Yeddyurappa the opportunity to consolidate Lingayat support.

Rise of BJP

This paid off in the 2004 election with the BJP emerging as the single biggest party with 79 seats, even though its vote share was less than the Congress’. Most of the new MLAs were from north Karnataka and from Lingayat-dominated areas. In 2008, Yeddyurappa made political capital out of the “betrayal” by H D Kumaraswamy, a Vokkaliga, who refused to step down as chief minister after 20 months under an arrangement the JD(S) had drawn up with the BJP. The BJP under Yeddyurappa won 110 seats in the 2008 election.

The 2008 election figures throw light on the effect Yeddyurappa’s exit could have on the BJP. In the poll, there was a substantial 5.4% swing of votes in favour of the BJP, from 28.5% in 2004 to 33.9%. The Lingayat-dominated areas of north Karnataka and some parts of central Karnataka accounted for this rise. The Congress lost 0.7% of its vote share and the JD(S) 1.5%. So the BJP’s 5.4% increase, which yielded it 31 more seats, came largely from independents and others. In the coming election, the BJP will obviously not have a consolidated vote base (according to one estimate, 77% of the Lingayat vote went in favour of Yeddyurappa’s BJP in 2008), the financial backing of the Reddy brothers (now in jail), or sympathy for having been deceived by the JD(S). If no miracle takes place before the election, one can safely say that BJP will be back where it stood in 1994 – 40 seats, give or take a few, from its traditional support base in south and coastal Karnataka.

Yeddyurappa’s Calculations

Knowing well that the Congress and the BJP have a share of the Lingayat vote, Yeddyurappa is trying to forge a Lingayat-Muslim-Other Backward Class (OBC) combine, also including a section of Madigas from among the dalits. There are more than 20 constituencies in north Karnataka where Muslims make up more than 20% of the electorate. Yeddyurappa has already said that he will give seats to Muslims where they number more as well as to Madigas, who constitute around 6% to 10% of the voters in some constituencies. Meanwhile, B Sriramulu (a former minister and strongman of the Reddy camp) has formed the BSR Congress, which will attempt to garner votes from his community – one that had stood with the BJP the last time and has a presence in central Karnataka.

Thus, a four-cornered contest (Congress-BJP-JD(S)-KJP/BSR Congress/Bahujan Samaj Party) is possibly on in the next election, and no party without a dependable vote base will feel comfortable. The KJP and the BSR Congress have the potential to attract both Congress and BJP votes, while the BSP has shown in past elections that it can spoil the chances of Congress, BJP and JD(S) candidates. The JD(S) has a vote base in the south, but its chances of extending its reach to north Karnataka and among Muslims and dalits are seriously limited by the emergence of the KJP and the BSR Congress. In the absence of any wave, Yeddyurappa will cast himself as a martyr who has been rejected by the party he built over four decades. And by claiming that all the populist programmes launched by his administration were his own and by blaming the BJP for not continuing them, he will try to shake off any anti-incumbency feeling against his two years as chief minister.

Everything suggests that no single party will come to power in the next election. While the BJP’s chances seem very slim, the Congress appears to be incapable of seizing the opportunity. Given this, any party that wins 30-plus seats will have the potential to tilt the balance or even emerge at the head of a ruling front. This is the reason for Yeddyurappa’s loud proclamations on social justice and secularism.

Worryingly, progressive forces are lining up to support Yeddyurappa’s KJP and Sriramulu’s BSR Congress, hoping that they will help defeat the BJP and the Hindutva agenda. Even while Yeddyurappa was declaring his adherence to secularism in Haveri, his party leaders and his son, B Y Raghavendra, a BJP Member of Parliament (MP), were making it clear that they would look to the RSS for ideological and political guidance. Immediately after the Gujarat election, Yeddyurappa expressed his support for the idea that Narendra Modi be the BJP’s candidate for prime minister. All the MLAs who have openly associated with the KJP support have supported the anti-minority and anti-farmer Prevention of Cattle Slaughter Bill. So, a tinge of saffron is all too evident in the KJP’s political and ideological stands.

There is little doubt that Yeddyurappa will keep the BJP far from power this time. It is also true that communalism without state power is less harmful. But there is no reason to believe that the KJP’s ideological proximity to the RSS is a figment of the imagination. The cause of secularism will not be served if genuine secular forces do not develop alternative and democratic political spaces to counter the RSS and its ideology. It is foolhardy to discount Yeddyurappa’s ideological affinity to the RSS and presume he is secular just because he stands at a political distance from the BJP right now.

* [Shivasundar (shivasundar35@gmail.com) is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore.]