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Journalism of Courage
The result of the Karnataka Assembly election are expected to point to the battle lines for the 2024 general elections in India. With the Congress’s comfortable victory and increased vote share, eating into the Janata Dal (United)’s pie, and the BJP losing the state, what’s the larger story that the May 13 result tells us? What are the factors that led to the outcome? How will the results affect the two major parties in the run-up to 2024?
To understand the results and the factors at play in Karnataka, social historian and political commentator Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi joined us for a conversation with The Indian Express National Opinion Editor Vandita Mishra. Shobhi, who studied history and literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and at the University of Chicago, from where he obtained a Ph.D., is currently Associate Professor, History, and Associate Dean at Krea University. Vandita Mishra travelled across Karnataka to cover the 2023 election for The Indian Express.
I was very surprised because we were expecting a much closer election. Though the Congress had the momentum for the last six to eight months, the extent of its victory and the way in which it managed to cobble together a social coalition in four out of the six regions have come as a surprise. Even in other regions, especially in Bengaluru, it has done reasonably well. It’s only in the coastal regions, which are a traditional stronghold of the BJP, that they fared badly.
I think that the results of this election did not depend on what the Congress was doing. There were two other important questions. The first and most important question was whether the BJP would be able to hold on to its Lok Sabha votebase because unlike 15-30 years ago, this comprises a plurality of voters. And that cannot be disputed as it became clear in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when BJP got more than 51 per cent of the votes.
Traditionally, in the Lok Sabha elections, voters have always supported a national party. In 1989, the Congress won more than 80 per cent of all seats. And that would also translate to winning about 75 per cent of the Assembly segments in every election. But over the last 25 years, the BJP has overtaken it and has done spectacularly well, except for one election in 2009. The culmination of its upward trend was in 2019 and for the past four years, the BJP has been wondering if it can retain its hold on Lok Sabha voters and ensure they support the Assembly election candidate.
The other question was about the impending implosion of the Janata Dal (Secular) and whether its various fragments would end up in one of the two national parties. This was expected since 2006 when JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy tied up with the BJP to form a coalition government. A month before the elections, when an endless fight drove him and his brother HD Revanna apart, the popular mood, even among strong supporters, was moving away from the party. The implosion hasn’t happened yet but the JD(S) disintegration is continuing.
There are two reasons why corruption has become a constitutive part of governance. First, contractors and entrepreneurs have become politicians. Second, there is a growing significance of extractive industries like mining and real estate in public life and politics in particular. The reason why such industry barons are entering politics is because they want to make sure their lands run large, they can manipulate public policy, get their clearances quickly and so on. In that sense, corruption has assumed this dual face. That’s why corruption has become a part of governance because instead of any substantive notion of public good or public welfare, it is actually private profit, which is the motivation. Therefore, what we see is an inefficient execution of projects, which has led to the erosion of the state’s capacity to function.
But Karnataka is still a pretty good state as it has been growing in comparison to other states quite dramatically. Enough wealth is being generated to apportion some for public welfare. There’s always some anger about the wealth which politicians are making, about corruption itself, about money that one has to pay either to get a job or a posting. But that hasn’t stopped people from actually offering bribes to get a job done, manipulate postings or ensure delivery of services.
There is no popular uprising against corruption as such. Corruption will continue because that has become a standard mode of operations. If we are so serious about corruption as a society, then we should have protested vehemently against the kind of obscene expenditure that has happened during campaigning in the state. So, the voter is also complicit.
National issues become more important in the Lok Sabha. Hindutva to an extent has an appeal because you do see a resentment towards minorities, especially against the Muslim-majority nations like Bangladesh or Pakistan, which are obscenely articulated sometimes with violent imagery and great aggression. Also, when it comes to a national discussion, there seems to be a tendency to fall back on one’s Hindu identity and see that as being more important than caste identity. The caste of the candidate is not a singular determinant in the Lok Sabha as it would be in the case of Vidhan Sabha, Zilla Panchayat or Taluk Panchayat elections.
If you were to do a survey, you will find that this is a far more conservative society than we had thought it to be earlier. Despite the progressive legacy and tradition that Karnataka has had, it still is a very conservative society when it comes to these kinds of issues and that has gotten consolidated in recent times. But by and large, Karnataka had this legacy of harmony, even when it came to the rule of Tipu Sultan.
He was quite aggressive, violent and hostile towards various communities, who were either outside his empire or outside the core region of his state and polity. When you have these nuanced discussions, a more complex understanding of people emerges. So, when you try to brand him as an evil zealot, that branding also hits a wall at some point because it runs counter to the memories of people, it runs counter to the historical record. And that is something of an issue that the BJP has had to deal with.
Similarly, the memory of Partition or the memory of Islamic aggression has not been as fresh. Even in north Karnataka, with the exception of the rule of Hyderabad nizams, the Bahmani Sultanate and other sorts of Islamic political presence have been fairly benign. And therefore, there is a shared culture of religious spaces being used together. So Islamic scholars have studied Vachanas and Hindu scholars have learnt Islamic texts. Then Sufism has been a major influence, and because of that, there are more memories or legacies of harmony than of disunion or aggression. You cannot wish these things away.
The foremost learning is that there is a benefit of empowering local leaders, who will build the party, understand what is needed in their state and, therefore, will be able to address people’s aspirations. A national political party needs to allow a conversation between the Central and state leadership, share ideas and fashion a new political imagination that can align with its national goals. The way the Congress revitalised its organisation, did its messaging and had different leaders working in a complementary manner is an example of working as a collective entity.
Bharat Jodo Yatra set the mood. It also energised the Congress at the local level. It was different from the Praja Dhwani Yatra, which was done a couple of months before the elections, where people were brought in and provided transport, accommodation and an allowance. In Bharat Jodo, people were walking alongside, they were not brought in for numbers.
So, this provides a different kind of dynamic and interaction with people to create very human moments that are not possible in big election rallies. Whether this can be sustained or institutionalised will depend on what the Congress does next. Mallikarjun Kharge’s elevation (to Congress president) is an important signal to both the Dalit and Kannada groups. Kharge is the first Kannadiga to have gotten that importance after (Siddavanahalli) Nijalingappa in the 1960s.
