KPCC president and Kanakapura constituency candidate DK Shivakumar with his supporters during a roadshow ahead of filing nomination papers for the upcoming assembly elections, in Kanakapura on April 17, 2023. KPCC president DK Shivakumar appealed to give a chance to the Vokkaliga chief minister. , Photo credit: The Hindu
As the Karnataka assembly election campaign draws to a close, it is clear that caste narratives and calculations have overwhelmed the real issues plaguing people for the most part of the state.
While the opposition Congress spoke of price rise, the economic burden people are facing, and corruption, the caste issue – BJP allegedly marginalizing Lingayats and in response to this, or KPCC president DK Shivakumar’s Vokkaliga chief minister appealed for a chance, and so on—the past two months have often overtaken the earlier narrative.
Vinay Srinivas of Bahutva Karnataka, a coalition of progressive organisations, said even the opposition parties did not pick up on the government’s performance sector-wise report card, which they issued to put the government on the mat. “For example, the education sector has been severely affected under the BJP government in more ways than one. Not a single leader spoke about it,” he said. Farmer leader Badagalpura Nagendra also had a similar complaint. “The issues of farmers were never discussed during the campaign. The campaign was limited to mud-slinging and caste narratives,” he said.
CM’s caste identity
Importantly, the campaign was dominated by claims to the post of chief minister based on caste identities. Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy has set a cat among pigeons when he said that the Peshwa Brahmins of North Karnataka are sidelining Lingayats in the BJP in the race to capture the chief minister’s chair. The narrative gained further currency as Jagadish Shettar left the BJP to join the Congress, blaming BL Santhosh, the BJP’s national general secretary, for the organization. As the Congress attacked the BJP over its alleged sidelining of Lingayats, including BS Yediyurappa, the BJP asked people to let the former Lingayat chief ministers S. Nijalingappa and Virendra Patil hit back and challenged the Congress to declare that it would make a “Lingayat chief minister” if voted to power.
Karnataka has seen 23 Chief Ministers since 1947. Nine of them were Lingayats, seven were Vokkaligas, two were Brahmins, and five were from Other Backward Class (OBC) communities. Karnataka has never seen a Dalit or a Muslim chief minister.
no political representative
The Justice Bhaktavatsalam committee, which examined OBC reservation in local bodies, recently found that out of 802 OBC communities, only 156 had secured any political representation, while 644 communities had no political representative even at the panchayat level, in the assembly So it’s a distant thing. The dominance of a few communities in the corridors of power in Karnataka has stifled the voices of smaller communities and those lower in the caste hierarchy.
Social activist Vivekananda HK said that the decision of who will be the chief minister seems to revolve entirely around caste calculations. “Why do we identify the Chief Minister with the community in which he was born? Any person who identifies himself with his caste or community will not be truly neutral to all the people of the state,” he said. While this may sound like a “naïve dream” in the present context, people should not lose sight of this spirit of democracy.
Political scientist Muzaffar Asadi said, “Vokkaligas and Lingayats feel they have a legitimate claim to the chief minister’s post, being the dominant land-owning community in the state.”
internal partition
Another political observer A.K. Narayan said that Ahinda (minorities, OBCs and Dalits) have failed to counter this dominance because of division among themselves. “The problem is that Ahinda is not united and there is no collective political consciousness or ambition for political power from this block. This can be achieved either through a strong leader or through political consciousness, which is yet to Has not happened in the state,” he said. Even Siddaramaiah, seen as an OBC leader, worked to change public policy to benefit voiceless communities but did not organize them politically, He argued. “Given this situation, political parties argue that giving a ticket to someone from the zamindar feudal community was a better strategy, further increasing their dominance.”
“In all elections, the narrative has been built around dominant castes. No party listens to small communities. Given this situation, the numerically smaller castes cannot even dream of seeing one of them at the top position in the next 100 years,” said Naganna GK, president of the Kadugolla Asmithe Horta Samiti.
BJP experiment
This time, there have been some attempts by the BJP to change the traditional caste calculus in Karnataka on the issue of Hindutva. “The ongoing Hindutva experiment in the state by the BJP seeks to undermine Vokkaligas and Lingayat claims to power even as it wants them to reduce their caste identity and vote on the basis of Hindutva. However, in my opinion, Karnataka is not a state where this will work. We will see how this can come to fruition in this election,” said Professor Asadi.