Karnataka elections: Deve Gowda’s legacy holds the key in Old Mysuru battleground

In many ways, the electoral fate of HD Deve Gowda and his Janata Dal(Secular) is one of the defining questions of the Karnataka assembly elections.

 There is no board, no poster, no nameplate. Off a smooth black tar road, on the hint of an incline in a village ensconced by small hills, the home is freshly built, the walls on its two floors boasting a fresh quote of white paint. The doors are polished mahogany but there is a lock that dangles on the gate, and another on the main entrance. There is no one inside. The man that grew up here has important business to attend to. He is on a mission, at 89 years old , perhaps the last one he will lead, to ensure that the political party he founded and nurtured wins a place in the Karnataka government again.

Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda (right) with his son HD Kumaraswamy at a programme in Mysuru on March 26. (PTI)

Standing just outside the front gate, 77-year-old ragi farmer Kari Gowda waves his hand dismissively. “Why does a man like HD Deve Gowda need a sign? This is the land that gave birth to a Prime Minister. Ask everyone in Hassan, and they will point you to Haradanahalli, and this house as Deve Gowda’s home. And right now, he has more important things to do, like take care of the state. Haradanahalli will take care of itself for him,” Gowda says.

In many ways, the electoral fate of HD Deve Gowda and his Janata Dal(Secular) is one of the defining questions of the Karnataka assembly elections that will go to the polls on May 10. Born out of the Janata Party that he rode to the pinnacle of Indian politics in 1996, the JD(S) was formed in 1999 after a split in the umbrella organisation over the issue of lending support to the BJP-led NDA at the centre in 1999. Since then, not only has the JD(S) become the sole regional party to have any heft in the state’s politics, but often, also the difference between the Congress or the BJP, the two other behemoths winning outright majority. It is a heft so significant, that despite vastly smaller numbers, that the JD(S) has punched above its weight much like their founder, and Deve Gowda’s son HD Kumaraswamy has been the state Chief Minister twice.

The first assembly election for the party was in 1999, and even then as a fledgling regional party, it won 10 seats, and captured 10.42 % of the vote. Every election since, from 2004 to 2018, the JD(S) – from the outside it appears to be plagued by infighting, allegations of being dynastic, power hungry, with MLAs that jump from one ship to the next -- it has never lost electoral significance. In 2004, the party won 58 seats, and 20.77% of the vote; in 2008, 30 seats and 18.96% of the vote; in 2013, 40 seats and 20.2% of the vote, and in 2018, 37 seats and 18.3 % of the vote. Since the turn of the century then, tellingly, only once has a party, the Congress in 2013, won an absolute majority.

In each of these election cycles, a significant part of the JD(S)’ strength has come from the bastion of Old Mysuru, dominated by Vokkaligas, the caste that Gowda comes from, that form close to 12% of the Karnataka electorate, second only to the Lingayats. It is a region, with 61 seats of the 224 in the Karnataka assembly, that may well hold the answers on counting day.

An hour from the district headquarters of Hassan, Haradanahalli shows signs that come from being the home turf of a political heavyweight. Atop one hill is a residential school named after another Prime Minister from the Janata Party, Morarji Desai. The homes are nearly all made of cement, coloured brightly, new cars adorning the front gates of several. Just across the road from the Gowda home, looming out into the distance, is an Eshwara temple, patronized by the family, including the sitting MLA HD Revanna, former PWD minister and Kumaraswamy’s brother. “It used to be small earlier, but the family has taken care of the temple, like they take care of the village. When any of them come, Deve Gowda, Kumaraswamy, or Revanna who is our MLA, they all go to the temple. There is no question of who the people will vote for here. We will vote for those that have always been with us,” Kari Gowda says.

48 kilometres away in Krishnarajanagara, there is another Hardanahalli, often mistaken for the village that is Gowda’s home, but in Old Mysuru all the same. Here, shorn of the largesse of being a celebrity village, there are some signs of rural distress. The streets are narrower, the road needs some repair and the huts more ramshackle. In front of one home made of thatch sit six men, three of them Vokkaligas, three Kurubas, the two dominant communities in the village. One of them, Prashant Kumar, is 44 years old, farms areca nuts for a living, and is worried; worried about the impending heat, worried about the thunderstorm that is gathering in the afternoon, and worried about the price of his crop. “I cannot afford for the seasonal cycle to be erratic. In any case, a few years ago we got 55,000 rupees per quintal and now because of imported areca nuts, we only get around 40,000 to 45000 a quintal,” Kumar says.

But there is another reason Kumar is in a foul mood. “I was watching television, and they are saying that the additional reservation they had given to the Vokkaligas and Lingayats has been stopped by the court. I watched Siddaramaiah say the government didn’t argue the case properly,” Kumar says. The other five nod vigorously in agreement. “Only Siddaramaiah and Deve Gowda care for the poor, and those who need help. Here in Krishnarajanagara, like last time, it will only be a contest between the JD(S) and the Congress here. The BJP only works for the rich,” he says. Noticeably, Kumar does not mention state Congress president DK Shivakumar, also a Vokkaliga. “He is a big leader for Bengaluru. But here, we respect Siddaramaiah and Deve Gowda,” Kumar says. Which isn’t surprising – Siddaramaiah is a Kuruba himself, and while the community lacks the dominance or the concentration of the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, it is spread across the state.

On its part, the BJP, perhaps conscious of anti-incumbency that it may face and to counter-act any shift in its Lingayat votebase, has made a conscious effort to make inroads into Old Mysuru. In March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a rally in Mandya, while Union Home Minister has said that the party was targeting four seats in Hassan, Deve Gowda’s home district. The party has been buoyed by the support of independent MP Sumalatha Ambareesh, a former actress and the wife of the late Ambareesh, one of Kannada cinema’s biggest stars, who pulled off a victory against Nikhil Kumaradwamy, HD Kumaraswamy’s son from Mandya in 2019. In Channapatna, the seat in Ramnagara district that HD Kumaraswamy is contesting, a local BJP worker listed the reasons they would pull off an upset. “It is a misimpression that the JD(S) can’t be beaten. In 2013, our current BJP candidate CP Yogeshwara beat Kumaraswamy’s wife on an SP ticket. In 2018, Kumaraswamy won, but Yogeshwara has always stood with the constituency. With him in the BJP, we will win. The people now see that a vote for the JD(S) is wasted. They are dynastic, and will only mean an unstable government,” the BJP leader said, asking not to be named.

But experts point out that the epitaph of the JD(S) is written every five years and this notion of the Gowdas as a diminishing, power-hungry clan losing relevance is not new, and lasts only until counting day when the party’s power is always evident. A Narayan, political expert from the Azim Premji University said, “During five years of the government, the JD(S) always seems dormant. But that is misleading, and if there is a party that can match the BJP in how to fight elections efficiently, it is the JD(S). For instance, to show a distance from the BJP for their Muslim base, they have attacked them saying they will bring a Brahmin as Chief Minister. From early this year, the party machinery has been in operation, with their 100 day Pancharatna Yatra making promises people want to hear.”

The yatra, a 100-day rally through Karnataka that ended in Mysuru on March 27 made a five-point programme central to the JD(S) campaign: an economic assistance scheme for farmer families, a loan waiver for women self help groups, medical assistance of upto ₹40 lakh, the development of government schools, and 30-bed hospitals in all panchayat hospitals.

Back at Hardanahalli, Kari Gowda points to the lock on the mahogany door, and says he only wants to see it open twice in the next month. Once, when Deve Gowda, Revanna and Kumaraswamy come to pray at the temple across the road just before the elections. “And then, when one of them comes to pray at the temple after one of them is Chief Minister again,” Gowda says. Much must align for that to happen. But if the JD(S) holds on to Old Mysuru; there is a hung assembly; and the Gowdas remain the shrewd negotiators they have always been, nothing is impossible. As Kari Gowda points out, it has happened before.

“That is why, we are not just the village that produced a Prime Minister. We are also the village that has produced two Chief Ministers of Karnataka.”