First saffron rays on citadel of New India

It’s a new decade and a new century and the BJP — adept here as elsewhere in cranking up the hype machine — is once again talking of Karnataka as their “gateway to the South” and is hoping that this time around the saffron sun will finally reach high noon.

Ananth Kumar, the high profile union minister who took over as state BJP president in June 2003, admits that the party “went into a spin” following the 1999 setback and the cadres were “totally demoralised” for the next few years. But, he claims rather immodestly, things have changed since he took over and the “new dynamism” in the state unit coupled with Vajpayee’s appeal is set to topple one of the few remaining Congress bastions in the country.

That might be a trifle too hopeful but the BJP certainly is emerging as the main opposition to the Congress, displacing the Janata Dal which first ended uninterrupted Congress rule in the state in 1983 and remained a “secular alternative” for a long time thereafter.

Although the BJP will not officially admit it, the BJP’s growth trajectory in Karnataka closely follows the Gujarat model — and that is its main strength as well as weakness.

Just as in Gujarat, the BJP’s growth in Karnataka is not based on old Jana Sangh roots but on the twin crutches of a grassroots Vishwa Hindu Parishad network and a fragmented Janata Parivar. In Gujarat, the BJP started off as a junior partner to the Janata Dal but soon displaced it. In Karnataka, the BJP made the most of the chronic rivalry between the late R.K. Hedge and H.D. Deve Gowda, and teamed up with Hegde in the 1998 and 1999 elections.

Ananth Kumar concedes that the “third factor” that has come to the aid of the BJP this time is the “sad demise of Hegdeji” following which “his ardent followers have started flocking to the BJP as a suitable platform” to pursue their leader’s “anti-Congress, value-based politics.” This development has “metamorphosised the entire scenario” in Karnataka, helping the BJP displace the Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular) as the main alternative.

While the BJP is trying to cash in on Hegde’s appeal while swallowing up the remnants of his JD(U) (it has conceded just four LS and 25 assembly seats to JD-U compared to 10 LS and 95 assembly seats in 1999), the party’s covert dependence on the VHP continues.

In the last four and a half years, the state VHP unit has held taluka-level conventions called Virat Hindu Samavesha throughout the state and Karnataka’s Pramod Mutalik is widely seen as a Praveen Togadia in the making. The BJP-VHP has also been busy creating what Ananth Kumar himself labelled the “Ayodhya of the south” — the attempted conversion of a revered Sufi shrine atop the Bababudan Giri hills in Chikmagalur into a Hindu temple. The VHP has also fuelled local communal disturbances in a large number of places in an attempt to polarise the two main communities.

But Karnataka is not Gujarat. The Congress still has a formidable dalit-OBCs-minorities base and Janata Dal(S) remains the main alternative in southern Karnataka, besides being the main beneficiary of rural discontent. The state also has a vibrant pluralist culture with a far more active civil society than in Gujarat.

The BJP is confined to coastal and parts of north Karnataka. The decimation of JD(U) in north Karnataka is a big factor in its favour as is the expected swing of Lingayat votes to the party. But its real trump card is Vajpayee. Chief minister S.M. Krishna is the “darling of the middle classes” but if the battle gets converted into a Vajpayee versus Sonia one, the BJP could displace him at least in urban Karnataka. The saffronites are at the gates all right, but capturing the fort may take a while.