18 THE CARAVAN
PERSPECTIVES
Temple Run
Will Karnataka’s real, devout Hindus
please stand up? / Politics/ narayana aOn 7 December 2017, Karnataka’s chief minister,
the Congress leader Siddaramaiah, addressed an
event in the Uttara Kannada district marking the
inauguration of several public-works programmes
by the state government. “They accuse us of being
anti-Hindu. Are we not Hindus?” he asked the au-
dience. “My name is Siddarama. My name too has
bhagwan Ram’s name. We are the devotees of Lord
Rama and Hanuman. ... The real Hindu is one who
loves all religions. You judge who the real Hindus
are. Us or BJP leaders?”
Then, the minister for public works in Siddara-
maiah’s government, HC Mahadevappa, took the
stage and also declared his allegiance to Hindu-
ism. And soon after, the medium- and large-scale
industries minister, RV Deshpande, informed
the audience that he too was a devout Hindu. “By
birth, I am a Hindu,” Deshpande said. “All other
people are my bandhu”—brothers.
Siddaramaiah and his ministers’ scramble to
prove their Hindu credentials surprised many
in the state. For years, the chief minister had
embraced the moniker of an “ahinda” leader—a
Kannada term that is an acronym for minorities,
backward classes and Dalits.
Siddaramaiah’s comments seemed to be in sync
with the speculation that the Congress will again
adopt a “soft Hindutva” strategy to counter the
Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming state-
assembly election. The Congress president, Rahul
Gandhi, had made several highly publicised visits
to temples in Gujarat ahead of the recent polls in
that state, and had also talked about his religious
affiliations. Congress leaders have said that Gan-
dhi will be seen temple-hopping during the cam-
paign in Karnataka too.
The fact that Siddaramaiah and his fellow min-
isters took the initiative early on is an indication
of how much the party is depending on its state
leadership to win this election. The contrary isthe case with the BJP, whose state leadership has
looked weak, and cannot bank merely on the his-
tory of anti-incumbency. The BJP’s campaign will
have to rely heavily on Modi’s enduring popularity
and the party’s Hindutva rhetoric. The Congress’s
soft Hindutva approach is an attempt to neutralise
the BJP’s pitch.
Karnataka’s voters have been famous for al-
ternating parties in every election since 1985.
However, this anti-incumbency is more nuanced
than meets the eye. In 2013, the BJP went to
polls after five years of lacklustre rule marred
by corruption, sleaze, dissidence and countless
incidents of moral policing by fringe elements of
the Sangh Parivar. Although the BJP expectedly
lost the election, a closer reading of the results
suggests that voters did not decisively choose the
Congress. The party won the election not so much
because people overwhelmingly voted in favour
of it, but rather, because of a three-way split in
the expected BJP vote caused by the presence of
the Karnataka Janata Party, or KJP, floated by the
former BJP chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, and
the Badavara Shramikara Raitara Congress, or
BSR Congress, led by the former BJP state minis-
ter B Sriramulu. In the 120 constituencies where
the Congress won, the combined votes polled by
the BJP and the two splinter parties far exceeded
the votes polled by the Congress. The BJP’s vote-
share declined by roughly 13 percent, from 34
percent in 2008 to 20 percent in 2013. But the re-
duction in the BJP’s vote share was nearly just as
much as the combined vote-share of the KJP and
BSR Congress. The KJP polled 10 percent and the
BSRC secured 2.7 percent of votes.
Similarly, in 2004, the Congress government
led by SM Krishna went to the polls on the back of
a good performance in government, but lost nev-
ertheless. The BJP emerged as the single largest
party, but was short of a majority in the 224-mem-
ber assembly. The party had to wait until 2008
to come to power on its own, after elections were