A vintage and majestic landmark of Bengaluru with a charming and exotic name, Ballabrooie was in the news for the wrong reasons recently — over the State government’s plan to convert it into a recreational centre, like a club.
Many of those who furiously agitated against the government’s plans to convert the mansion, situated within the government estate overlooking the Vidhana Soudha, may well have been unaware of the fact that it has been a part of contemporary political history, a witness to the ebb and flow of Indira Gandhi’s political career.
It was Devaraj Urs, the Congress Chief Minister, who brought Ballabrooie to national attention as he defied his mentor Indira Gandhi’s fiat and broke with her during a second stint in office.
Ballabrooie, which was Urs’s official residence, had become the rendezvous for leaders opposed to Indira Gandhi when she was out of office paying court to the rebel Chief Minister as the rallying point.
The rupture and the parting of ways were offshoots of Urs’s refusal to oblige All India Congress Committee president Indira Gandhi when she directed him to choose between the chief ministership and the presidentship of the Pradesh Congress Committee, in August 1979. The irony was that Urs had managed the re-election of Indira Gandhi in the Chikmagalur Lok Sabha by-election just a few months earlier, at a time when she had suffered political eclipse since her defeat and that of her party in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, in the aftermath of the Emergency.
In a very demonstrative show of his loyalty to Indira Gandhi, the Chief Minister of Karnataka had organised a State government-sponsored bandh to protest against her arrest in New Delhi when the Janata Party government led by Morarji Desai was in power. It was almost unbelievable that a staunch confidant like Urs could then take such liberties with his boss. Yet, he did it. In private conversations with this writer he had said he simply found it difficult to forgive Indira Gandhi for her authoritarianism even in adversity; he had expected her to mellow.
He had been a victim of neglect at the hands of his Chief Minister, S. Nijalingappa, when he was Transport Minister. It rankled all through as he managed to rise from the ashes, as it were. It was Indira Gandhi who had salvaged Urs’s political career.
The clash came about when close on the heels of Urs’s refusal to exercise the options given to him, Indira Gandhi appointed an ad hoc PCC president. The Chief Minister reciprocated by producing a crony as parallel president of his Karnataka Congress. The war of nerves went on with both digging their heels in.
The inevitable split came when Urs weaned away his followers from his erstwhile party, the Congress. R. Gundu Rao led the residual Congress(I) Legislature Party. A good number of legislators backed Urs, who ran his rebel outfit and the government with some stability.
But things changed with the fall of the Morarji government. Charan Singh dissolved the Lok Sabha in 1980 and elections followed. As Indira Gandhi was voted back to power, Urs’s establishment crashed overnight. His following deserted him and went back to the Gundu Rao-led minority Congress (I) faction. Gundu Rao formed the government following the prompt resignation of Urs, who saw the writing on the wall following the defections.
Even after he demitted office, Urs would not give up. As a counterblast against Indira Gandhi, he founded the Karnataka Kranti Ranga to try and stay in business. S. Bangarappa, who Gundu Rao had sacked from his Cabinet, managed to take over the Kranti Ranga, which later fell into Ramakrishna Hegde’s Janata kitty.
Urs’s tumultuous tenancy of Ballabrooie ended following his fall from power. His fame as the champion of the backward classes could not save him. Within a year thereafter, the stormy petrel of the Congress passed away, verily a broken man.
Urs’s predecessors in office, Nijalingappa and B.D. Jatti, were earlier occupants of Ballabrooie.
