BJP recognises limits of Hindutva pull in K'taka with new appointments

Maqsood Maniyar | NT

Bengaluru: The BJP belatedly nominating former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa’s son BY Vijayendra as the party state president and former Deputy CM R Ashoka as the Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in the Assembly proves the high command has grasped certain political realities of Karnataka.

The saffron party had commissioned a poll booth-level report to explain its drubbing in May’s Assembly elections which had reduced them to 66 seats out of a possible 224.

The recently submitted report stated that Hindutva politics wasn’t effective at the pan-Karnataka level and had yielded positive results only in coastal Karnataka and Malnad, both regions with a history of responding to Sangh’s divisive politics.

It has been noted that subsequent appointments in Karnataka BJP are proof of the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acted on the report’s observations.

For instance, the appointment of Vijayendra is harmonious with the report’s conclusion that Yediyurappa – a Lingayat mass leader – is the only saffron party man who retains pan-Karnataka appeal.

Pivot to caste arithmetic

Earlier, the BJP wanted to make Hindutva ideologue CT Ravi, a Vokkaliga from Malnad, the party state president but the caste calculus changed in September when the JD(S) agreed to a prepoll alliance with the saffron party for the next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

BJP strategists reckoned Vokkaliga votes would come to them through the JD(S) route.

Despite Congressman and Deputy CM DK Shivakumar emerging as a prominent Vokkaliga face, JD(S) retains a support base within the community mainly because they still identify with former PM HD Deve Gowda.

So the BJP decided to shore up Lingayat votes by appointing Vijayendra to the post instead. This also freed up a Vokkaliga in Ashoka to be appointed as LOP.

In the lead-up to the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP hopes to cobble together an alliance of Lingayats and Vokkaligas, the state's two most politically dominant communities, rather than relying on the Hindutva plank.

This is a far cry from Modi’s declaration on the eve of the Assembly polls in May this year that Congress was trying to lock up devotees of Hanuman in response to the Grand Old Party’s manifesto mooting a ban on “groups like Bajrang Dal and (PFI) Popular Front of India”.

No partition memories: Prof

Mysore University political science professor Muzaffar Assadi reiterated his conviction that Karnataka doesn’t respond enthusiastically to Hindutva because the state lacked memories of the partition, which aids politics of communal polarization.

The professor argued that the ethnic cleansing perpetrated in present-day north India and Pakistan during the partition served as a justification for Sangh extremism.

Moreover, these memories of these atrocities were handed down to younger generations from their grandparents, he noted.

“This (new BJP appointments) is nothing but peddling of soft Hindutva, knowing very well that hard Hindutva cannot be sold here. The experiment of hard Hindutva doesn’t work here given the fact that we don’t have the history, memories and cultural practice, nor do we have the social and political conditions,” Assadi said, adding that Yediyurappa also practised soft Hindutva and hard Hindutva was promoted in BJP ranks of the Hindi belt.

Effectiveness of plan doubted

Assadi however, expressed doubts about how effective the Vijayendra-Ashoka combine will be in terms of caste arithmetic.

He argued that Ashoka didn’t have mass Vokkaliga support beyond his constituency Padmanabhanagar and that Vijayendra would find it difficult to woo the Lingayat voters they had lost to the Congress in the Assembly polls, especially those of marginalised background in the KitturKarnataka region.

“BJP will not win the required number of seats in Old Mysuru. Ashoka will not be able to deliver the goods to the BJP, which is the big problem. They’ve spoken so much about the Lingayats. How many of them have moved away from the BJP? Maybe 10 per cent. To say that all of them will come back is a myth,” he said.