Vote for Swamy and Friends

With just 28 seats,and with the state having seen a squeezing of the “third front” space in the assembly polls last year and the formation of the South’s first BJP government,it has not been very fruitful to talk about prospects in Karnataka. An important leader of the Syndicate,key to giving Indira Gandhi a hard time before she became the Iron Woman she finally did,was the Karnataka satrap Nijalingappa. But even just after the Emergency,the state stayed very loyal to the party and stood behind the Congress. Partly,that was because of the emergence of the Devraj Urs phenomenon; Urs,twice chief minister,shaped Karnataka in those difficult years. He first stood with Indira Gandhi and then ultimately split,paving the way,many say,for the emergence of Ramakrishna Hegde,his Janata experiment and,ultimately,Deve Gowda,all of whom also played their part in national politics and had Delhi very much on their radar. In fact,it was Ramakrishna Hegde who first spoke of a “federation of opposition parties” to oppose the Congress,in the heyday of ’80s anti-Congressism. This was many years

before Chandrababu Naidu formed the “Federal Front” within the United Front — a conglomerate of regional parties,not very much talked about then,but a harbinger of things to come.

Historically too,Karnataka saw a powerful backward caste movement; demands for jobs for backward castes were enshrined in decrees by the Mysore maharajas before anyone else even got the idea. The state had always been a bit of a synthesis of the North and the South: the Bhakti and Sufi tradition took roots there early on. So much so that the shrine of Baba Budangiri in north Karnataka,which was to witness bloody conflict at the time of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra,should have actually been a point that symbolised togetherness or synthesis.

And today,politically as well,Karnataka is the only southern state where the two major parties in the fray are the Congress and the BJP,something that has merited more attention from political scientists than it has got.

More than 30 years ago,Indira Gandhi created a sensation when she,in the 1978 election — just after her rout in north India,which led to the formation of the Janata government in Delhi in 1977 — picked on Chikamangalur as her constituency,a place which had been a Congress bastion. She went on to win by more than 70,000 votes,defeating Veerendra Patil,a veteran of sorts of his time. It was Chikamangalur that paved the way for Indira’s return to the national stage.

It was this that possibly resulted in her daughter-in-law picking Bellary for her debut,along with a constituency in Uttar Pradesh. While promises were made of not giving up on Bellary after the polls,those weren’t kept. But it is perhaps that chord,of Bellary and Chikamangalur,that the Congress wants to revive in some way by blowing the bugles there. It is unlikely that the choice is inspired by the location of the Dobbespet rally just a week ago at Deve Gowda’s initiative,but Karnataka is clearly — when the times are those of close calls,uncertain allies and unsure seats — a good theatre to pick. In the 2004 Lok Sabha,the BJP came out trumps,as it did in the assembly polls in 2008,so the Congress hopes that any increment there would be welcome.

As all fans of R.K. Narayan’s Swami and his stories set in

Malgudi know,while Malgudi is meant to be an imaginary town,it nevertheless gives us a sense of quintessential small-town India,something that several readers rush to lay claim to. Politicians too,seem to be returning to Karnataka,to find and cling on to a Malgudi they can call their own. The Congress has its Chikamangalur (and now Davangere) dream of an adrenaline push; the Third Front hopes against hope that the Dobbespet hand-holding lasts for ever; and the BJP,well,it’s hoping its assembly dream run here could just,somehow,be replicated elsewhere.

seema.chishti@expressindia.com