Karnataka Countdown: Congress Tries to Fight Back Communal BJP

The southern state of Karnataka goes to polls on 12 May to elect a 224-member Assembly and a new government. The battle is mostly between the ruling Congress party and the challenger Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). What marked the volatile and bitterly fought election campaign was the widespread attempt by the BJP to communally polarise the voters in order to gain an electoral advantage – and the stiff fight put up by the Congress, especially its chief minister Siddharamaiah, to counter this by all means.

Despite Prime Minister Modi claiming to stand for his pet ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’slogan, that appears mostly during election campaigns, the game plan of the BJP was clear much before the formal election campaign started. BJP president Amit Shah undertook a 79-day Karnataka Parivartan Yatra in November 2017 visiting all districts and holding public meetings. He raked up issues typical of all Hindutva-espousing groups like attacks on Hindus by Muslims, etc. He visited families of some of those allegedly killed for communal reasons. All this was emphasised in the coastal Karnataka districts where Muslim population is relatively higher.

A direct result of this incendiary campaign was that in December, communal violence broke out in three towns - Honnavar, Kumta and Sirsi - in Uttara Kannada district. According to later reports, police investigations showed that the incidents were engineered under false pretexts. These reports also revealed that one BJP MP was being investigated for inciting this violence while another was booked for inciting violence through social media. In early January 2018, Dakshina Kannada district in the same region witnessed a communal flare up. 

It should be noted that this coastal region in particular, and Karnataka in general has been fertile ground for communal activities and hate for several years now. Diverse front organisations of the Hindutva brigade have been taking up issues like fighting back degenerate Western culture through moral policing of the most medieval kind, love jihad, mosque building, infiltration of jehadists etc. In the preceding three years there have been 291 incidents of communal violence in the state making it one of most communally violent state.

That the BJP – despite all the pretence that it is committed to “sabka saath” – invited Yogi Adityanath to campaign in Karnataka is proof of the fact that it was playing the communal card to the hilt. What is the Yogi’s claim to fame? It can hardly be his performance in UP which has seen a worsening of the law and order situation, continued farmers’ distress, attacks on Dalits and distress due to joblessness. 

What Yogi brings to the table is his aggressive Hindutva stance, expressed in vitriolic speeches and rhetoric. He has no qualms about saying things that others – even Modi – baulk at saying. Yogi had to cut short his trip to Karnataka because of the large number of deaths in Agra after a dust storm and outrage at the fact that he was away campaigning. But in his brief stint as a campaigner, he declared that BJP was going to bring ‘Ram Rajya’ in Karnataka, that Siddharamaiah was soft on jehadi elements and that hackneyed trope of the BJP – anti-national forces are all ganged up against BJP. 

Modi himself – though more circumspect – could not resist declaring his great appreciation of the Angry Hanuman portrait done by Karan Acharya and widely used by Hindutva supporters. He even criticised the Congress for its intolerance towards such magnificent art. His attempts to gather support for the party on the basis of the central govt.’s performance have not seen much appreciation in Karnataka.

Will all this politics of hatred work? It has worked in some places – like Gujarat and Uttarakhand – but it has not in others, like Bihar and Punjab. Congress has tried to counter it both by directly confronting it, and also by trying to disrupt it through Kannada pride as an alternative rallying point. Rahul Gandhi has also visited various mutts and paid his respects to the heads, in an old and rather useless ploy to gather some Hindutva sympathy. More germane is the possibility that Siddharamaiah’s populist policies may prevent people from getting attracted to the Hindutva option. 

Whatever be the case, Karnataka is poised on a cusp of history. The vote on 12 May will cast a long shadow on the future.