Karnataka battle lines: many Hindutvas bump up against layers of caste
The Congress party’s decision to bracket the Bajrang Dal with the banned PFI in its manifesto, and its promise to ban the former if voted to power, is a striking departure from its policy of general silence and evasion on Hindutva issues, especially ahead of a crucial election. To understand why it does in Karnataka what it does not in other states where it takes on the BJP, it may be helpful to look closer at Hindutva in Karnataka — or Karnataka’s many Hindutvas.
Because even as Hindutva is a growing force, its homogenising project has not had an easy ride in this complex state so far. Beyond the coastal belt, that is, where it had an early start and where it now rides on the back of mobilisations over decades. In the state’s other regions, Hindutva co-opts, but it also collides with local cultures dominated by caste.
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In an election in which no issue seems to straddle the different regions, no factor flattens the state’s several diversities, anti-incumbency also varies and fluctuates. But you can sense its presence in Karnataka. Voting exactly a week away, for the incumbent BJP, which is making the claim and promise of “double-engine sarkar” the central motif of its pursuit of the elusive “poorna bahumat”, that’s not good news.
