The 14th-century Delhi Sultanate’s expansion into the Deccan led to the collapse of major Hindu kingdoms, marked by massacres, forced conversions and imposition of discriminatory practices like Jiziya and dhimmi status. This created widespread fear and suffering among the Hindu populace.
In response, brothers Harihara and Bukka Raya, guided by sage Vidyaranya, established the powerful Vijayanagara Empire in 1336 CE. To symbolise their victories, the empire named its capital Vijayanagara (City of Victory) and began publicly celebrating the Mahanavami (Dasara) festival. The king Krishnadevaraya built a three-tiered Mahanavami or Dasara Dibba in Hampi.
The empire used the festival, which historically honours the triumph of Lord Rama over Ravana and Goddess Durga over Mahishasura, to reinforce its narrative of resisting and overcoming invading Muslim forces.
The Empire’s festival symbolised the victory of Hindu society over Muslim aggression, a powerful display of military strength by showcasing warriors, elephants, horses, and weaponry to deter enemies and to boost the morale of Hindu subjects, and the preservation of Hindu culture and traditions.
After the empire’s decline in 1565, the Mysore Wadiyar dynasty, a former feudatory, revived the Dasara festival under Raja Wadiyar I in Srirangapatna in 1610. Later, it evolved into the world-famous Mysore Dasara.
The Hindu Dasara festival was so deeply ingrained in Mysore’s culture that even the Muslim kings Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan did not attempt to halt its celebrations.
Following India’s Independence, through the Instrument of Accession, the Mysore kingdom merged with the Indian Union. Under Article 291 of the Constitution, the Mysore royal family received a privy purse, a tax-free annual payment that allowed them to continue patronising cultural celebrations, including the Dasara. This demonstrated the nation’s founding fathers’ commitment to preserving the religious and cultural heritage of the Mysore kingdom.
During this period, two major political events contributed to the transformation of Mysore Dasara’s identity: First, Indira Gandhi strategically shifted the Congress party’s core support from the upper-class to lower and middle-income strata, including OBCs and minorities.
This strategy was operationalised through populist policies like bank nationalisation, land reforms, popularisation of ‘Garibi Hatao’ slogan, adding ‘secularism’ to the Constitution and abolition of royal privy purses through the 26th Constitutional Amendment Act in 1971.
It became financially unfeasible for the Wadiyar family to continue the lavish public celebrations, leading Maharaja Jayachamaraja Wadiyar to end public festivities, including the traditional ride on the golden howdah, and restrict celebrations to private rituals.
Second, responding to pressure from the decades-long Karnataka Unification Movement, Parliament passed the ‘Mysore State (Alteration of Name) Act, 1973’, under which chief minister D Devaraj Urs officially renamed the state as ‘Karnataka’. Urs was a close ally of Indira Gandhi since the Congress split in 1969; he not only effectively implemented her populist agenda but also championed similar policies in the state, like land reforms and OBC reservations.
At his juncture, under the combined influence of Indira Gandhi’s political stance and the Karnataka Unification movement, Urs attempted to fill the void left by the royal family’s withdrawal from public Dasara celebrations. Based on the opinion of a local committee, he decided to institutionalise the Hindu Dasara festival with state government sponsorship, officially renaming it ‘Naada Habba’ (State Festival), a Kannada word, replacing its ancient Sanskrit name.
Notably, this decision was made without the consent of the state assembly, and the local committee did not include any members from the non-Mysore regions, which underscores the local nature of the decision despite its statewide implications.
Their selection of the Hindu Dasara festival to promote as an identity of state rooted in language, culture and tradition; the replacement of the king with an idol of Goddess Chamundeshwari on a golden howdah during the Jamboo Savari parade; and popularising it as a progressive political transition from a monarchy to a democratic era, all resonated with the Hindu population and preempted opposition.
Congress’ tactical political position and the creative strategies of progressive and linguistic thinkers made a significant impact on transforming Dasara from an exclusionary Hindu-royal celebration into a modern symbol of Karnataka’s unity and identity.
Many scholars observed this transformation as a significant loss to the essence of Hindu Dasara: The festival’s religious core -- commemorating victories of Rama, Durga and the Vijayanagara kingdom -- was diluted into a secular cultural show.
Its historical memory as a symbol of resistance against Muslim rulers was replaced by a narrative of linguistic unity. Dasara’s geographical reach has diminished from a Deccan-wide celebration to a primarily Kannada-centric event. Hindus lost autonomy over their own tradition, as Dasara was reshaped into a tool of secular politics. While outward symbols like Chamundeshwari and Jamboo Savari were retained, the deeper Hindu meaning and ownership of the festival were undermined.
The transformation of Dasara into a state-sponsored ‘Naada Habba’ has raised constitutional questions among experts as to whether the state upheld the Constitution’s spirit of religious neutrality. By secularising and appropriating a sacred Hindu festival, the government blurred the line between cultural promotion and religious interference, diluting Dasara’s Hindu essence and undermining the community’s right to preserve its authentic traditions.
By rebranding a Hindu religious festival into a state identity, prioritising linguistic ideologies over Hindu rituals appears to be a selective reinterpretation, contradicting the constitutional duty to respect each religion in its own authenticity, not to redefine or re-engineer it for political gains.
The government’s use of Hindu symbols like Goddess Chamundeshwari for political legitimacy, while simultaneously denying Hindus the exclusive right to their tradition, compromises the principle of equal respect for all faiths. By reducing Hindu practices to instruments of party politics, the state sets a precedent for exploiting one religion for political gain while appeasing others, which undermines the Constitution’s commitment to equal respect for all religions.
The state government is arguing that Mysore Dasara is a secular, non-religious festival that belongs to all faiths. Hindu organisations contend that, saying, ‘Hindu Dasara is being captured by forces that ideologically or politically oppose it, through the state machinery in the guise of inclusivism and secularism.’ The festival has become a political and legal battleground in a state. A movement to reclaim its religious narrative and “de-governmentise” the celebrations is now poised to become a flashpoint for BJP and Congress in future elections.