Old Mysore is where they say it will be decided. In recent times, even those who tout ‘paradigm shifts’ in the world of business management like to put a coating of grand myth on unenlightening boardroom struggles and such like. Mysuru, whose self-definition is framed within the mythical struggle between Mahishasura and Chamunda Devi, lends itself to such ‘talking up’. It’s the heart and soul of Karnataka, in a way. So what is a dusty, gory assembly election contest can get elevated as a do-or-die battle that will decide the fate and future of Karnataka, the nation and Indian civilisation itself.
To some extent, even such outsize propagandising contains something of the truth. In Ramanagara, closer to Bengaluru on the highway, the famous Channapatna toy-makers do a decent variation of the Russian nesting dolls. One wooden doll within another, going from the biggest to the smallest. In exactly one year, we will be plunged fully into the heat of general elections, and what happens there will surely not be irrelevant to how India shapes up. Working backward from that logic, or taking out the smaller doll each time, we can make our way back to Old Mysuru. But why is it in the eye of the vortex? For one, it’s the stronghold of three prominent aspiring chief ministers—D.K. Shivakumar, Siddaramaiah and H.D. Kumaraswamy. Toss in the film-star son of the last-named, putting some extra garnish into the campaign trail, and you have a battle gladiatorial enough to suit Mysuru’s storied past.
And how each of the three contesting forces fares here—the incumbent BJP, the challenger Congress and the local turf defender JDS—will surely tilt the balance of numbers in the Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru. That’s why local intellectuals like V.K. Nataraj, former chairman of the Madras Development Institute, and political scientist Muzafar Asadi mostly converge on what’s often stated as a straight-up equation, ‘Whoever wins Mysuru will win Karnataka.’
Of course there are other determinants. The Lingayats of the north are said to be more of a floating population these days, rather than a fixed bloc wedded to saffron via the good offices of ex-CM B.S. Yediyurappa, and the Congress candidate list clearly evinces an interest on that front. So perhaps a tinge of local pride colours the statements on the primacy of Mysuru. But the triangular contest in this belt does reveal the micro-dynamics of the state polls.
Traditionally, this Vokkaliga-dominated belt used to witness a straight fight between the JDS and Congress. But the concerted inroads by the BJP have upset the logic of that innocent past. Unlike coastal Karnataka, a BJP anchorage point with a sharp communal divide, Mysuru still retains an old-world flavour that still recalls the relatively progressive, egalitarian bent of the Wadiyar Maharajas. Make no mistake though, Narendra Modi is nonetheless popular here.
In Varuna, from where Siddaramaiah is now contesting, a mixed group of youth—surprisingly including many from the Lingayat community—holds forth on how the assembly polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha are unconnected in their minds. Only for the latter, they will reserve their votes for Modi—for reasons “national and international”. The assembly is about local issues—here and now, bread and water, raw and real. Questions of ideals and identity animate that too, but not in a way unconnected to the ground. New Delhi is a remote palace of dreams to which you can still send your contributions, while coping with livelihood issues here.
This inner flux—individual and collective minds in an unsettled pattern of Brownian motion—does not make it easy for any of the three claimants to power. The Congress has to wean away a considerable chunk of the 30 per cent Vokkaliga votes from the JDS, while retaining a strong imprint on the Kuruba, Dalit and Muslim vote (9.78 per cent, 24.5 per cent and 8.35 per cent respectively) to have a reasonable shot at the 51 seats in this belt, inclusive of Bengaluru Rural. Depending on how you define the Mysuru belt, others count 70-odd seats. Either way, it’s a good quarter or more of the 224-seat assembly.
The JDS hit the road first. H.D. Kumaraswamy’s yatra, which has touched nearly 5,000 villages, is a sort of dogged comeback trail—how well his tough territorial defence holds up one end will make or mar things for the other two. The BJP has tried to consolidate the restive Lingayat votes, its mainstay in Karnataka, through the reservation, added outreach to the Kurubas and a section of the Dalit community. The consolidation for the Congress can only happen if the trio of DKS-Siddaramaiah-Kharge join forces.
The buzz is, if the JDS gets around 30-35 seats, Karnataka may again see a hotchpotch result. If either of the other two does well, the next five years will be theirs. For the BJP, there are other variables—it’s a test of voter loyalty. That’s why in Central and Bombay Karnataka, it’s putting its entire might—in the shape of the usual Modi-Shah carpet-bombing—to keep its flock together. Stray reports also hint at a slight breach in its coastal bastions, where Congress is showing an uptick. Hyderabad Karnataka is a prestige battle for Kharge, even though it might not be quite the swing factor as Mysuru. And the 28 seats in Bengaluru’s greater metropolitan area punch way above their weight. The Congress used to have a good footprint here, but the BJP has cracked it of late.
Away from the statistics, Karnataka has always been an arena that yokes the local and the national together and brings them into vexed negotiations. It is a speech in Kolar that has led to Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification, opening up a debate on democracy and free speech. This is an election where the fading local memory of Nehru-Gandhi loyalties would be put to test perhaps for the last time. This is a state, after all, where it’s famously recounted that a voter in a Chamarajanagar village had to take the permission of his fellow villagers to vote for the Janata Party and not Indira Gandhi—and his was a lone vote. Old anecdotes about Indira and her mesmerising hold over the voter psyche have not disappeared entirely into history’s oblivion. This is also the first southern state where Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani were hosted and funded by old RSS/Jan Sangh supporters like the Shettys who ran the Thippaiah hotels. One generation of pan-Karnataka leaders—BSY, Kharge, Deve Gowda—too are at their old game, campaigning and strategising, for perhaps the last time. Above all of them, like a hologram, Modi is looming large. As for Nehru, no one talks about him on the ground, except Ram Guha. The sword of Tipu Sultan, with its hilt gripped by the other side now, too makes no cut on the ground he used to rule at one time.