When Siddaramaiah, Karnataka’s longest-serving Chief Minister and Congress Working Committee member, recently announced he has fought his last election and attributed the decision to his advancing age and increasing corruption in politics, it raised eyebrows across the nation. As CM, Siddaramaiah had said he would not contest the 2028 Assembly elections, but would remain active in politics. Whichever way one reads it, the veteran Congress leader’s latest remark was not off-the-cuff. Was there more to the astute politician’s sweeping statement? Or was the reference to “increased pollution in electoral politics” an outcry like that of King Lear, a distraught leader who begins to see beyond the hubris and feels more “sinned against than sinning”?
Siddaramaiah wears a political legacy that is both rich and complex. He not only surpassed former CM Devaraj Urs’ long tenure, but is also a leader of the AHINDA—a Kannada acronym coined by Urs in the 1970s for minorities, Dalits and backward classes. Siddaramaiah stepped down as CM on May 28 after being instructed by the Congress leadership in Delhi to pave the way for his deputy D K Shivakumar. Is the timing of his remark on political “pollution”—at a private event in the restive Mandya district—mere happenstance? It came on the eve of a Cabinet expansion, to discuss which Shivakumar is camping in Delhi.
Siddaramaiah’s life makes for an extraordinary biographical manuscript in which someone born to a shepherd family of modest means studied law, moved to politics in 1978 as a taluk board member, and then rose against odds to become Karnataka’s longest-serving CM. Such a persona’s comment on electoral pollution—to which he added that he had seen both victory and defeat, and had the satisfaction of never acting against his principles—demand attention to his presence in state politics. He cannot be wished away despite the fact that his second unfinished term as the CM was marred by corruption charges.
When he confessed that neither his age nor his aptitude was fit for present-day hustings, Siddaramaiah might indeed have been taking a leaf off one of Shakespeare’s most evocative tragedies: “O, that way madness lies; let me shun that. No more of that.” Siddaramaiah's comment was not too removed from Lear’s lament. Or was it a war cry?