The other day, in the middle of all the sweltering heat and iron ore-tinged red dust you see hovering over political Karnataka, a viral video already pointed to imminent battles. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are not far away, remember? The next Kurukshetras, Haldi Ghatis and Panipats—fill in your favourite ancient/medieval metaphor—loom in the near distance.
The video gave us an advance telecast, doubtless via some excellent ancient WiFi, of the tone, tenor and imagery we can expect to see as the political bugle picks up in those northern plains and jungles. But guess what … the distance between Udipi and Ujjain seemed to temporarily vanish as you watched Shivraj Singh Chouhan as Angad and Kamal Nath as Ravana. The morphed video did not just appear to be part of a seamless extension of what we have witnessed till this week, it indeed is part of the same war. The same low and desperate battle tactics, the same rough-cut weapons.
The blade-edge rhetoric, the hard, no-holds-barred rules of engagement, the willingness to wound at any cost, all the signs of fight-or-flight are identical. From putative insults to Kodagi heroes Cariappa and Thimmayya, to pride over the mother tongue and barbs over the mother’s mother tongue, to the threat of a `1,000-crore defamation suit by a chief minister, to unnuanced invective hurled routinely against the prime minister by the Congress (which is hardly proving unequal to the task)—what we have seen in Karnataka is perhaps exactly what we will see going forward.
But why has Indian politics reached this rhetorical nadir? There are cultural explanations, of course. But at present, in the soaring Celsius of election season, there is no time for lamentations over cultural decline. For now, political explanations must suffice. And they pretty much do. The view from within the BJP, and from those who keep a close watch on its internal dialogues, is illuminating. Party strategists have it down pat on why PM Narendra Modi has to bat not like a “classical Test batsman” but very much like a slam-bang hitman, “a bowler who comes in to bat late in a potentially losing T20 match and has to swing his bat at everything to score a four or a six”. Aesthetics is not going to be the prime concern there. The value of that innings will be estimated purely in hard monetary terms—how many runs?
And why see the contest in such desperate terms? It’s simple. If the BJP looks honestly at its own potential, it knows it is not evenly in contention all over Karnataka. It is a domineering presence along the coast, where everyone knows the communal polarisation is near-complete, and it is bouncing back in its old northern Lingayat fortresses. But as you go east from the coast towards, say, Hassan, or come down the map from the north to Tumakuru, or to Mandya, all those core central/southern districts, you see the BJP presence waning … and indeed finally well nigh disappearing.
It may be contesting all 224 seats across Karnataka’s diverse socio-political map. In 180 of these, prefiguring the coming showdowns of north India, the BJP and Congress are in a direct face-off. But in realistic terms, the saffron party is genuinely in contention only in 150 seats. It is from that smaller pool that it has to maximise its benefits. Therefore, the desperate T20 techniques, the ugly heaves. Some of it may indeed fetch runs. We’ll know by Tuesday.
The distinguishing feature of Karnataka is this: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, despite signs of last-minute panic, is operating from a zone of stability. Or at least as much stability as is possible for a Congress CM these days. If there is no distinct pro-incumbency, by common consensus that favourite trope of psephologists—“anti-incumbency”—too is largely absent. The subsidised food scheme indeed works. And rural women voters are fearful that the higher cutoff for qualifying for BPL welfare that Shobha Karandlaje had piloted as minister under B S Yeddyurappa may return—Sidda had widened the ambit of welfare the moment he had taken over.
This makes him a bit akin to the Chhattisgarh CM, ‘Chawal Baba’ Raman Singh (despite the talk of scams tainting the latter’s record). But this, a welfarist halo that still works, is also what sets him apart too from both the incumbent CMs of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, if in differing degrees. Those two have a real anti-incumbency burden to shoulder.
The Congress is putting up what seems to be an uncharacteristically strong fight beginning from Gujarat. Sidda did the honours in Karnataka—on whether he fails or succeeds will hinge a large part of the script to come over the next months. That’s why, even if Karnataka is singularly more crucial for the Congress as a party, it is no less a compelling scenario for the BJP. Besides the local micropolitics, there is the pan-India signal it will exude and the potential ricocheting effect it can have. The result, either way, can be read as a referendum on Modi’s rule.
Therefore, the goal of stamping out the Congress is a vital imperative for Modi-Shah. Any sign of health in the Congress obviously does it no good. Especially because the Congress’s leaders across Rajasthan and MP—despite their little internal turf wars, they are all strong figures with a certain brand recall value across India—can be expected to put up as stiff a fight as Gujarat and Karnataka witnessed. And remember, these are again largely bipolar states: a minor swing can tilt things, and neither state has a CM who is sitting pretty with either the people or indeed even the central leadership. Chhattisgarh offers a qualified exception, because the local Congress leadership is not as high-profile. But when the chariots roll, expect the weapons to be as sharp and cutting.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Political Editor, The New Indian Express
Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com