So Karnataka finally sees the transition that was knocking at the castle gates for three years. In fact, that imagery does not fully capture it. The change of guard from Siddaramaiah to D K Shivakumar was a prophecy half foretold, half written into the original decree. It was a possibility already present in the body, like a not-so-dormant gene insisting on being expressed. The Congress got the chance to put up a relatively more orderly, warm and amiable succession than it has previously managed—or not managed, most notoriously in Rajasthan.
Yet, the fact of two power centres bristling within the same frame, without clear timelines for desire fulfilment, was never ideal. Siddaramaiah’s second term never quite breathed the air of fully assured authority. There was always a faint background static haunting it.A voice at the shoulder. And as DKS fulfils his own claim to power, that duality persists. Sidda is not keen on moving to New Delhi to attain siddhi.
Whatever that entails for Karnataka or the party, it says something far more revealing about India’s polity. It’s a symptom that must be named and examined beyond the playfield in which it has found its latest case-study.
It seems an old question has come in the way of Siddaramaiah, causing a reluctance, at least for now, to plunge into national politics—language. Hindi, to be precise. Going by what one of his loyalists confessed to this writer, the inscrutable lawyer from Varuna, who can dance the Kuruba community dance without missing a beat back in his village, a fully formed politician who is both ideologue and practitioner, who can ideate on AHINDA politics and GST allocation with the same ease, such a man feels that in his sunset years he’d rather not stumble and fumble in a corner of a foreign field. The option was offered to him of making his presence felt in the Rajya Sabha, or on podiums elsewhere as an OBC leader of national stature. But his reflex was to shrink back into the comfort zone of doing politics in his mother tongue, Kannada, than learn ‘the North Indian language’.
At first glance, this reveals a strong asymmetry in the political armoury of the two national parties. The BJP’s tallest speakers are adept in Hindi, a vast language currency zone in itself with an even wider play as lingua franca. But then, that’s also a function of its history and ideological fit—if not exactly origins. Its leaders too struggle in non-Hindi lands, and vice versa. A Himanta Biswa Sarma in Hodal would be as much a hilsa out of the Ganges as a Yogi in Yelahanka. Speaking of that pit-stop en route to the airport, there was another man who couldn’t take the flight. Who can forget Yediyurappa breaking into Kannada as journalists cornered him on his way out of the old Parliament’s Central Hall?
It’s not a generation issue. S M Krishna and Ramakrishna Hegde vaulted across the barrier without breaking into sweat—the latter charming his way through interminable dialogues with cow belt politicians during the Janata days! That felicity came partly from the vogue Dakkhini/Hindi has in parts of Karnataka—the same reason a Mallikarjun Kharge can approach a northern dais unhesitatingly. It’s also partly elite mobility—though that offers no free pass. Pranab Mukherjee always believed Hindi was the real reason why he could never become prime minister. But the core issue is with truly grassroots leaders.
Like the steps of the Veera Makkala Kunitha dance he learnt as a boy, Siddaramaiah’s articulacy is also deeply rooted in Mysuru. There may be a touch of realpolitik to his decision, a tactical desire to avoid playing second fiddle to Kharge in the Rajya Sabha. But if language too caused diffidence, as it seems it did, it points to a true dilemma for Indian politics—not just for the Congress. What, indeed, is Indian politics? What is its remit? What can one even mean by ‘national’ if it cannot include something sprung from the soil?
For the Congress, Sidda’s veto complicates what would otherwise have been a neat exchange programme. Allowing DKS to come into his own, it would have derived in the process a backward caste mascot for Rahul Gandhi on the national stage—filling out its new politics with authentic leaders, not token faces. A Kharge-Sidda duo covering the Dalit-OBC continuum. Why does that idea not travel as well as, say, an Indira Gandhi into Chikmagalur?
Power imbalance does not flow only from the number of seats in Parliament. The idea of democracy as evenly spread out power is not hollowed out only in the recognised categories of caste and religion. Language is a potent sphere where this plays out. P V Narasimha Rao knew 14 languages but was read in the north as a mute man. Deve Gowda faced derision. Mamata Banerjee’s chappals wear out in Goa and Haryana. BRS ponders going back to being TRS.
Maybe, over time, a model can be devised—a Sidda-like figure transitioning first to a pan-South role, speaking a politics of representation, welfare and just resource-sharing, while preserving regional and caste identity. The two are complementarities, not ideas in competition. That’s not just a thought for the Congress, presently trying to fill the gap between a subalternised Rahul and a ‘party of satraps’. That’s for future Lok Sabhas.
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Santwana Bhattacharya
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