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BSY elevated amid uncertainty on Hindutva dividend: Experts
The BJP national leadership on Wednesday included Yediyurappa into the 11-member parliamentary board, emphasising its reliance on the Lingayat strongman to retain power in the state in the 2023 assembly election.
Elevation of BS Yediyurappa to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) highest decision-making body indicates that the party is uncertain if its Hindutva push in the state can be sustained till the 2023 assembly polls and give it a platform to win a majority, political analysts said on Thursday.
That the BJP needs the 79-year-old leader to even have a shot at winning the election was a foregone conclusion, but bringing him back to the fore above the other state leaders points to the possibility that it cannot completely do away with the caste-based system that dominates the social, economic, educational and political life in most parts of the state.
The BJP national leadership on Wednesday included Yediyurappa into the 11-member parliamentary board, emphasising its reliance on the Lingayat strongman to retain power in the state in the 2023 assembly election.
“They had gone for a complete hardline position, but revolt in Dakshina Kannada has made it clear that this line will not work. There is a limit. So, they need somebody who can manage things a little more sophisticatedly and softly,” Narendar Pani, a Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, told HT.
Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai was seen to toe this hardline Hindutva as he has gone as far as to “justify” moral policing with his “action and reaction” remark, backed the banning of Muslims from conducting their business near Hindu temples, stood by the Hijab ban, anti-conversion law among others.
One analyst, requesting anonymity, said Bommai had toed this line to “appease” the Sangh Parivar that would help him not just complete his term as chief minister but also continue in the seat if the BJP retains power in 2023.
Apart from the coastal Karnataka region and a few other seats across the state, contesting on the basis of religion or Hindutva can be a risky strategy as Karnataka’s politics is deeply influenced by caste which the likes of Yediyurappa and HD Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular) have used to their advantage over the decades.
The Lingayats, believed to be the single largest caste group in the state, have backed the BJP in recent elections while the Vokkaligas, an agricultural community found largely in south-interior Karnataka, have consolidated behind the JD(S). The Congress has depended on backward classes, Dalits and minorities.
“If Yediyurappa’s replacement (in July last year) had led to some erosion that had to be made good by either winning them back with an alternative strategy like Hindutva or that had to be made by cultivating new voters through Hindutva. I think by either count, there has not been any great progress made so they have no other choice but to make Hindutva work wherever it normally does and then to win Lingayats through the same old leader (Yediyurappa),” said A Narayana, a political analyst.
Narayana said there was also a perception that Yediyurappa was not treated very well after his unceremonious ouster last July and the opposition had used this to highlight how the BJP had treated its tallest leader.
To be sure, the projection that Yediyurappa was wronged by the JD(S) in 2007 helped him gain the sympathy of the Lingayats who backed him and helped him become chief minister in 2008. His departure from the BJP in 2012 had resulted in a rout of the saffron outfit in the 2013 elections that demonstrated his ability to get the community to rally behind him.
Analysts said efforts to get the backing of Lingayat without Yediyurappa had not materialised and Bommai, despite being from the same community, has not been able to make any positive impact in this regard.
Bommai, in fact, finds himself in a precarious position of delaying the reservation-related demands from the Panchamasalis, the largest sub-sect within the Lingayats, that is said to have cost the BJP the Hanagal bypolls in November last year.
Arun Singh, the BJP national general secretary in charge of Karnataka, on Thursday met Yediyurappa as leaders, including archrival BL Santosh, have made a beeline to congratulate the leader after his elevation to the parliamentary board and election committee.
“With his (Yediyurappa) guidance, we will come back with full majority,” Singh said on Thursday. He said the anger of its party workers had transformed into joy after Yediyurappa’s elevation.
