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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday (November 11) arrived in Bengaluru and unveiled a 108-feet tall bronze statue of ‘Nadaprabhu’ Kempegowda, credited to be the city’s founder. He also inaugurated Terminal 2 of the Kempegowda International Airport, which was built at a cost of around Rs 5,000 crore, and flagged off two trains, south India’s first Vande Bharat Express, and Bharat Gaurav Kashi Darshan train.
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had announced in June this year that a Kempegowda statue will also be installed inside the Vidhana Soudha (legislative assembly) premises within a year.
Also termed the “Statue of Prosperity”, Bommai tweeted on Wednesday that the structure has been termed the “first and tallest bronze statue of a founder of a city” by the World Book of Records.
So, who was Kempagowda, what are BJP’s political calculations behind the statue plan? The Indian Express explains.
Nadaprabhu Kempegowda, a 16th century chieftain of the Vijayanagara empire, is credited as the founder of Bengaluru. It is said that he conceived the idea of a new city while hunting with his minister, and later marked its territory by erecting towers in four corners of the proposed city.
Kempegowda is also known to have developed around 1,000 lakes in the city to cater to drinking and agricultural needs.
He was from the dominant agricultural Vokkaliga community in south Karnataka.
His name is everywhere in the city – the Kempegowda International Airport, the Kempegowda Bus Stand, and even the main metro station in the city is called Nadaprabhu Kempegowda metro station. An arterial road in the old city is called the K G Road or the Kempegowda Road.
The 108-ft bronze statue is being constructed in a 23-acre heritage park on the airport premises. It has a 4,000 kg sword which arrived at the Bengaluru airport from Delhi last month. The sword was brought in a special truck from Delhi.
It was in September 2019 that then Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa had announced plans to install a bronze statue of Kempegowda at the city’s international airport at the cost of Rs 100 crore.
This announcement had come a day after a massive protest by the Vokkaliga community in Bengaluru over the alleged targeting of its members, including Congress leader D K Shivakumar, the Café Coffee Day founder V G Siddharth (deceased) and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy by central probe agencies.
The protest had come at a time when the BJP was making plans to poach several Vokkaliga community leaders from southern Karnataka as part of its strong push to make inroads in the old Mysuru region, which is considered as the Vokkaliga stronghold.
The plan of constructing the statue was taken forward by the present CM Basavaraj Bommai.
The CM has said that the statue will be unveiled along with the inauguration of the much-awaited international airport’s Terminal-2.
“The statue of Kempegowda is in its final stages of completion and it is the tallest statue of Kempegowda,” Bommai said.
Kempegowda is an iconic figure among Karnataka’s second most dominant Vokkaliga community after Lingayats. The saffron party plans to woo the Vokkaliga community by honouring Kempegowda, according to the BJP sources.
The BJP has never won a clear majority of over 113 seats in the 224-member Karnataka Assembly as the party has struggled to attract the Vokkaliga community. The community has old Mysuru as its heartland.
The old Mysuru region in south Karnataka consists of areas that were part of the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore — Mysuru, Mandya, Chamarajanagar, Tumkur, Hassan, Chikmagalur, Kolar, Bengaluru and excludes coastal areas and Kodagu.
The BJP has been sensing a new opportunity to make inroads in the region after the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, where it virtually swept Karnataka.
The Vokkaliga community has usually been supporting former Prime Minister HD Devegowda’s JD(S) and the Congress party.
