Karnataka’s dilemma: To be or not to be a part of ‘Hindi’ India
Come 15 May, when the Karnataka Assembly election results are announced, these may have a deep impact on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s future beyond 2018, even as he completes four years in office, 11 days from Tuesday, on 26 May. But 15 May will also decide if Karnataka will continue to live inside the cultural-ecosystem of Kannada and Kannadigas, or would open up and invite “Hindi India” into South India. The Bharatiya Janata Party had won the state before. But its victory in 2008 was a non-starter in many ways because of the unstable nature of its government. Ten years later, the BJP under the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo sees an attractive opening here because out of all the South Indian states, Karnataka is the least ferocious in language chauvinism, particularly when compared to the Telugu states and Tamil Nadu. The software industry has brought in many cultural changes in Karnataka and BJP finds that conducive to its political agenda.
In Karnataka, Modi and Shah needed to create a certain image of the party to overcome the language barrier. Modi needed to transcend his persona on ground zero in such a way that the Kannada voters were mesmerised enough to forget the comfort factor that they enjoyed with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Nehru-Indira’s century-old Congress. Modi’s rhetoric was different this time as he tried to connect with the average voter. He was too conscious of the language barrier.
The Kannadiga voters had chosen BJP in the VajpayeeAdvani era, riding on the goodwill that B.S. Yeddyurappa enjoyed in the state. But a daringly ambitious BJP made Modi, Yogi Adityanath and Amit Shah the faces of its campaign this time.
Most observers say that the Karnataka match is between Siddaramaiah and Modi. While partly correct, it would be more accurate to say it’s between Kannada and Hindi and into this has got mixed a subtext of a different variety—that of Hindutva.
Modi- Shah’s politics is, quintessentially, based on the political practice of symbolism. Modi has no competition in the game, so far. His visit to Sita’s birthplace in Janakpur, Nepal on a lean day before the crucial voting in Karnataka was a clever political ploy to remind voters what he stands for.
Between 2013 and 2016, when the Modi-Shah duo harvested state after state in the Hindi heartland and in the west and Northeast, there was a touch of innocence among voters. Four years of Modi rule and India stands deeply divided over the style and substance of Modi-Shah’s politics. So, in Karnataka, the duo did not have the advantage of writing on a blank slate. When they arrived in Bengaluru to capture the minds of Kannadigas, they had only B.S. Yeddyurappa, a tainted lo-