(The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Gujarat model of social engineering is facing stiff resistance in Karnataka. What happens in the southern State on this account will have ripples across the country, particularly in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Maharashtra. Here’s why.
The BJP’s rainbow caste coalitions either isolate or tame dominant castes in each region — the Patels in Gujarat; the Jats in Rajasthan, Haryana, and U.P.; the Yadavs in U.P. and Bihar; and the Marathas in Maharashtra — have all been at the receiving end of this framework of the BJP.
The BJP wants to do the same to the Lingayats and Vokkaligas in Karnataka through the State election scheduled this May. These are two caste groups that by themselves have the numbers, resources, and networks to determine the course of politics in the State. Even a BJP MLC --A.H. Vishwanath – has accused the RSS of pursuing a ‘hidden agenda’ of curbing the Lingayat and Vokkaliga leadership.
The BJP wants itself to be a Hindutva straight-jacket into which every other community identity must be subsumed, under national leadership. While giving representation to a wide range of communities, what it abhors is autonomous caste assertions of all kinds. With Ambedkarite mobilisation and the Yadavs, the sledgehammer of the legal system is used. That is not easily deployed against the Jats, the Patels, or the Marathas — they are wooed or cornered into surrendering their independent and assertive streak.
Dominant communities that are used to unrestrained power resent this Hindutva mould of caste coalition. They resist and rebel — as we are seeing in Karnataka right now. The BJP tames caste groups by side-lining local chieftains who have the capacity to defy Central authority.
The BJP replaced Lingayat strongman B.S. Yediyurappa (BSY) with a more ‘amenable’ leader from the community, Basavaraj Bommai, as Chief Minister. One way of making local leadership irrelevant is by denying tickets to veterans, which provides an additional argument that fresh faces are being fielded, in place of jaded ones. The BJP generally gains from this in elections.
Of the 212 tickets announced by the BJP so far in Karnataka, 66 have gone to fresh faces. What is interesting about most is that they are just that — fresh faces. With little political clout of their own, they are dependent on the Hindutva ideology and personal loyalty to a central leader. B.L. Santosh, the party’s National General Secretary, who is from Karnataka, is key in the transformation that the BJP is attempting in the State. The party has not gone the whole hog to upend local equations, and the appeasement they rolled out in the last weeks for BSY is a clear example.
The BJP wants to prop up new leaders from both Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities, but the communities don’t accept them as leaders, wanting instead their own to acquire power and prestige.
The Gujarat model of the BJP does not brook this demand. Much like the BJP tried to push Basavaraj Bommai to replace BSY as the leader of the Lingayats, it tried to promote C.N. Ashwath Narayan as the Vokkaligas face in the party to overshadow R. Ashok. The Vokkligas consider the latter as their legitimate representative in the BJP and the Lingayats consider BSY as theirs.
The BJP has tried to accommodate several strong leaders on the one hand, while trying to increase the grip of the Central leadership at all levels. This has triggered a churn, which is partly reflected in the exit from the party of several leaders.
What is of greater consequence is the unexpressed resentment that is bubbling under in individual constituencies. The BJP’s campaign pitch since 2014 has been that candidates do not matter; only the lotus symbol and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi do. Hindutva in Karnataka may not be ripe enough for that. There is even an argument that Lingayats are a separate religion.
When Mr. Modi took over as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, the BJP in the State was in control of the Patels. The Patels rebelled, formed separate parties, and tried to undermine Mr. Modi’s authority. By mobilising a larger social coalition around Hindutva and anti-Muslim rhetoric, the BJP managed to ‘discipline’ the powerful Patels. They are now meek followers of the BJP, and the party handpicks token leaders of the community for posts. In Karnataka, the party is dealing with two powerful communities, and the social milieu in the State is nowhere nearly as polarised as Gujarat on communal lines. That is the Big Picture (with inputs from Adhitya Bharadwaj).
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