Even at the risk of being told that it may be subjective nonsense or a long-existing default, one feels rather compelled to argue that a certain hopelessness, a certain type of gloom has taken over Karnataka in recent months. This has nothing to do with the diminished shine of the sun, but with the horrible degradation of words that one has been witness to. The ordinary citizen has had to endure a certain violent language in recent times. That has dimmed the mood.
If it is not a politically incorrect phrase to use, one may say that the multiple ‘gang wars’ that seem to have suddenly broken out between politicians threaten to disturb the clever composure that politics had hitherto manufactured. Each is competing to undo the other. Politicians usually create a sense of normality to ensure their transactions continue seamlessly. There is a code beyond which they do not disturb each other. But when that code is broken, when they themselves disturb that carefully poised normality, then we know something serious is churning. If one invited Shakespeare to this situation, he would say, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
To understand what is being argued here, one has to listen to the volley of exchanges Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has at regular intervals with Union minister H D Kumaraswamy. Every other day, they threaten to prosecute each other and send the other to jail. They invoke their past disloyalties to cancel out each other’s claims of cleanliness. They both literally walk into the trap of local television channels, a khedda of microphones, whose staple technique of news generation is to broadcast abuse and chase raw reaction.
Similarly, words behave like guided missiles when a war breaks out between deputy CM D K Shivakumar and Kumaraswamy, and that happens all too often. After all, they have overlapping political and caste territories to guard. Mothers, fathers and families are drawn into their slugfest. Then, there are a set of estranged friends and associates of Kumaraswamy, who now form the Siddaramaiah faction in the Congress, whose singular job is to provoke him. The exchange that takes place between them is crowded with innuendoes.
Not to be left behind is former CM B S Yediyurappa. Past and current allegations against him, including a POCSO case, are often dangled to lock up his words. But he has a way of walking through all that is thrown at him with limping courage. Or is it brazenness? Does it emanate from confidence of his alleged sweet deals with rival administrations and politicians?
A charge that now threatens to stifle the career of his son, B Y Vijayendra, the sitting president of the BJP in Karnataka. Those accusing the father and son of perpetual ‘adjustment’ are their own party men in loud press meets. Another former CM in the saffron party has taken an injunction preventing stories against him. What his fear could be is not tough to imagine.
The power tussle inside the Karnataka Congress, which smells like a leadership change, adds to the swirling winds. Shivakumar is waiting in rather dark wings to replace Siddaramaiah. But since his vulnerabilities are far too many, others secretly desire to take the chair. The media speculation on this game of thrones has many seasons. Even the silence of syllables of a few aspirants cannot suppress the noise of their ambition. In some cases, those thought of as urban sophisticates have invoked new belligerence to defend their chief minister with the hope that the roulette game may favour them too. They hurled abuses at the governor but slowed down when they realised he was a Dalit and that may entangle them in legal difficulty.
All this ambition is being served with a broth of scams, which funnily is not being hurled by professional politicians in the opposition, but by a set of enterprising activists, proxies and journalists. The elected professional wants to keep his white unsullied and is therefore being served by professional muckrakers.
Siddaramaiah’s case has anyway reached the courts for sanction—the case of 14 sites mysteriously being allotted to his equally mysterious wife, who has never been photographed in public. For her sake, Siddaramaiah demanded compensation from his own government.
The newest scam vortex has taken the Kharge family in. They are being accused of getting government land parcels to a trust in the name of a person who gave up everything seeking enlightenment—Siddhartha. Members of the trust are only first-circle family. Priyank Kharge has stood up to defend the allegations, but what he does not understand is what is officially denied in long messages on social media will add to suspicion. Priyank Kharge suggests every allocation to the trust is legal. However, legal and moral are different categories.
Similarly, Siddaramaiah’s claims of compensation may be legal, but is it also moral? Is there an absence of conscience in his defence? When so many politicians spend so much time and money to defend their wealth, what impact does it have on the elector? Does it legitimise the desire to put a price tag on her vote? Does it make her feel outraged or even depressed? The voter may cynically conclude the noise that ideology creates (socialism, secularism, Lohia-vaad, Hindutva etc.) in our everyday discourse is perhaps a smokescreen behind which there is only the wild dance of mammon. Watch the gloom percolate in the comments section of newspapers and online platforms.
Politics should be built around hope, not a bribe or allurement. But when hope vanishes, even a government with strong numbers can crumble in the minds of people. The more optimistic may, however, predict that this makes space for a new force, a new reconciler, and a new prophet of sorts. Like it was told in the Bhagavad Gita that whenever there is adharma, the lord makes an appearance. In an earlier time, pre-June 2024, the central government may have operated with a messianic language and machinery, but the 240-effect in the parliamentary polls has made them reluctant participants. They simply await an implosion to step in.
Until then, perhaps solace may be found in Purandara Dasa, who sang in the 16th century: “It makes me laugh as I see all people of the world whip up scams.”
Sugata Srinivasaraju
Senior journalist and author of Strange Burdens: The Politics and Predicaments of Rahul Gandhi
(Views are personal)
(sugata@sugataraju.in)