Journalism of Courage
During his visit to Karnataka on February 27 in the run-up to the upcoming state Assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tore into the Congress, accusing it of allegedly “hating” Karnataka and “insulting” its leaders from the state. PM Modi cited the names of Karnataka stalwarts like S Nijalingappa and Veerendra Patil and current Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge among those leaders the grand old party allegedly “humiliated” through its history.
Both Nijalingappa and his protege Patil were two-time chief ministers of Karnataka, who came from the electorally-influential Lingayat community, which forms 17 per cent of Karnataka’s population. Kharge belongs to the Dalit community.
Here is a look at the political careers of Nijalingappa and Patil.
S Nijalingappa
Nijalingappa was the first CM of the erstwhile Mysore state. Even before the states’ boundaries were drawn on the linguistic lines in 1956, he had vociferously argued for the formation of a Kannada-speaking state, even at the cost of antagonising senior Congress leaders of the day.
A freedom fighter and a member of the Constituent Assembly, he was the CM of the Mysuru state (which was renamed Karnataka in 1973) twice — from November 1, 1956 to May 16, 1958, and then from June 21, 1962 to May 29, 1968.
Nijalingappa was the Congress president in November 1969, when the party expelled the then PM Indira Gandhi for violating the party discipline, which resulted in its split into the Indira-led Congress (Requisitionists) and the Congress (Organisation) or Syndicate Congress that comprised of veterans like K Kamaraj, Morarji Desai and Nijalingappa himself.
Following the Congress’s split, Nijalingappa gradually retired from politics but was associated with various groups involved in cooperative farming and charitable trusts formed in the memory of freedom fighters. On August 8, 2000, he passed away at the age of 97.
Nijalingappa’s son-in-law M V Rajashekaran was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kanakapura constituency on the Congress’s ticket in the late 1960s. The Congress also nominated him as an MLC as well as a Rajya Sabha member. He also served as a minister of state for planning in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. He died in April 2020.
While denying the charges that the Congress insulted its veterans, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) chief, D K Shivakumar gave the example of Rajashekaran to claim that the party continued to provide opportunities to them.
Veerendra Patil
Veerendra Patil was also Karnataka CM twice, which was marked by a gap of 18 years. Nijalingappa was his mentor, who appointed him as his successor in the state when he moved to the national politics.
Patil became the CM for the first time in May 1968 and remained in this position up to March 1971. He again became the CM in November 1989, with his term cut short just after a year by then Congress president Rajiv Gandhi.
Between his CM stints, Patil also contested against Indira Gandhi from Chikkamagaluru constituency on the Janata Party ticket in 1978, but lost by over 77,000 votes.
Known for consolidating the Lingayat vote base in favour of the Congress after his return to the party, his unceremonious removal as the CM by Rajiv Gandhi has continued to haunt the party over three decades down the line.
In October 1990, while serving as the CM, Patil suffered a stroke just as communal riots broke out in some parts of the state. There were then speculations that some Congress leaders had allegedly engineered the riots to get rid of Patil, and succeeded in convincing Rajiv to fire him. Subsequently, after meeting Patil Rajiv announced before the media at the Bengaluru airport that Karnataka will have a new CM.
Patil’s ouster cost the Congress dear as it lost miserably in the next Assembly elections. While the Congress maintained that he was removed due to ill health, its claims did not cut much ice, as the party lost the support of the Lingayat community since. He died aged 73 on March 14, 1997.
