Congress effort to appropriate Lingayat legacy

IN AN attempt to win the support of the dominant Lingayat community in Karnataka, Congress Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has issued orders for installation of pictures of Basavanna, a 12th-century social reformer from the community, in all government offices from April 29 on the occasion of Basava Jayanti, birth anniversary of the philosopher.

The CM announced that he had issued such a directive during the course of a rally to thank voters in Gundlupet constituency in southern Karnataka, where the Congress recently won a byelection by defeating a BJP effort to grab the seat, part of a region with a nearly 40 per cent Lingayat population.

The community is the state’s single largest at nearly 17 percent of the population — mostly in the north — and is known to include firm supporters of the BJP and the party’s state president B S Yeddyurappa. The Lingayats, a Hindu Shaivite community, deify Basavanna who fought for equality in society. The Congress in Karnataka lost the confidence of the community in 1990 when Rajiv Gandhi abruptly sacked popular Lingayat chief minister Veerendra Patil. The Congress has been trying to win back the community even as the Janata Party and the BJP have cashed in on the Congress loss. The Congress has been unable to find a mass leader to match Yeddyurappa.

The move to install pictures of Basavanna in government offices is seen as an effort to make up for the lack of a strong community leader in its ranks ahead of the 2018 assembly polls and for the lack of Lingayats in strong positions in the party.

The Congress, which has positioned itself as a party for Dalits, backward classes and minorities under the leadership of Siddaramaiah, a backwardclasses Kuruba community leader, additionally needs the support of dominant communities like the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas. The party’s working president in Karnataka, Dinesh Gundu Rao, said Thursday that the chief minister had issued “oral orders to install pictures of Basavanna —Hindu philosopher, statesman, poet and social reformer — in all government offices”.

Following the victory in Gundlupet, Siddaramaiah had said people in the region had shown that Karnataka is a state of philosophers like Basavanna by voting for the Congress in the polls. “This increases our hope of winning in 2018. A message has been sent out that Karnataka is not UP. This is a land of saints and philosophers like Basavanna,’’ Siddaramaiah had said.

The BJP is banking on Yeddyurappa’s stature in the Lingayat community to combine with the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the tactics of BJP national president Amit Shah. Before the 2013 elections, Yeddyurappa had left the party and floated his own Karnataka Janata Party after he had been forced to step down as chief minister. This damaged the BJP as the Lingayat vote split in many constituencies between the BJP and Yeddyurappa’s KJP, and the BJP won only 40 seats compared to the 110 it had won in 2008, and its vote share dipped from 33.86 per cent to 19.95, with the KJP taking 9.8 per cent.

The return of Yeddyurappa to the BJP consolidated the Lingayat vote base of the party again in the 2014 general elections, where the BJP rode the Modi wave to win 17 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state. On Wednesday evening, Captain Ayush Yadav called up his mother Sarla in Kanpur and asked her to plan a trip to Kashmir as he expected to be transferred out of the Valley in a few months. The next morning, his father Arun Kant Yadav got a call from his unit informing him about Ayush’s death in a terror attack.

Arun Kant Yadav is a sub-inspector with Bargarh police station in Chitrakoot. He is due to retire next year. Ayush was their only On Tuesday night, Naik Bhoota Venkata Ramana had called his wife and told her he would come home within three weeks to ensure that his son B Ganesh, now out of upper KG, could be admitted to a good school. Ramana’s aunt Ramulamma said they were discussing if Ganesh should be admitted in the same school where his sister Chinmayi is studying in class III when the news came about the attack on the camp where Ramana was posted. Ramana’s parents — Anjeneyulu, 60, and mother Ramamma — both stay in a small house with their daughter-in-law and grandchildren in Kancherlapalem on the outskirts of Vizag. Naik Ramana had last come home in February. SREENIVAS JANYALA

Wikimedia Commons Basavanna was a 12thcentury reformer and poet; CM wants his pictures installed in all government offices.