Column: A video clip and an enveloping innuendo

First Published: The New Indian Express | 02 April 2021

Link: https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2021/apr/02/a-video-clip-and-an-envelopinginnuendo-2284719.html

Column: How much faith to mix in a democracy?

First published: 31 March 2021 | Times of India+ 

Link:https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/are-elections-won-on-faith-or-emotions/articleshow/81762326.cms

Baithak: Video interview with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah

First Published: The State | November 2017

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

How Siddaramaiah was felled by his own imagination

First Published: Hindustan Times | 16 May 2018

Link: https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/how-siddaramaiah-was-felled-by-his-own-imagination-in-karnataka-elections-opinion/story-QcClyhbJYninE0NTU7htMP.html

This election is a bigger challenge to PM Modi than it is to the Congress

First Published: HT Mint | 08 May 2018
Link: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/D98wk1E3elxlLJTsa8uBGJ/This-election-is-a-bigger-challenge-to-PM-Modi-than-it-is-to.html

Why Siddaramaiah should be careful when he speaks of federal autonomy

First Published: SouthWord | March 2018

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently wrote a piece on federal autonomy and linguistic identity (https://www.facebook.com/Siddaramaiah.Official/posts/602181456793987), which appeared on his social media accounts, and has also been reproduced on some digital platforms. It has been widely reported in the mainstream press as well. To write is a rare form of expression for him -- his favoured mode of communication being extended speeches where he works the crowds brilliantly.

Perhaps this new structured expression of thought, and that too in English with a quasi-academic bearing, was a first not only in his tenure as chief minister but in his entire political career. I hope my memory is serving me right as I make this claim. In my view, instead of pasting his written outpourings on social media, the CM’s media managers could perhaps have sought space in the Op-Ed pages of English dailies. But that would have been the strategy employed by advisers of politicians who have deep and defined Lutyens’ Delhi ambition. Siddaramaiah isn’t that kind of politician.

That aside, his piece in question appeared in the backdrop of the `backlash’ in ‘Delhi’s TV studios’ that questioned his government’s move to adopt an independent flag for Karnataka. On his part, Siddaramaiah, through his article, attempted to reconcile the national and the regional, yet tried to counter Modi’s variety of nationalism with the ‘settled’ idea of sub-nationalism and linguistic re-organisation.

There is nothing new in the sub-nationalism argument that he presented. It is an old rhetoric, borrowed from the 1950s and 60s when Indian states were being rearranged, and Mysore/Karnataka too was in the very middle of piecing together its diverse parts. During those decades, in the excitement generated by the historic exercise, a flat narrative that was spun made every linguistic state a ‘daughter’ of ‘Mother’ India.  It appears there were two big reasons for this: This was the emotional glue to preserve a newly independent, but extremely plural republic. And, this was the only way to get richly distinct cultural, ethnic identities and dialects even within a region, to merge with a larger and more dominant linguistic identity that was being forged, like say a Karnataka or an Andhra Pradesh or a Tamil Nadu.

But, there was a little twist in the CM’s argument to defend the cause of the state flag that he had just unfurled. Siddaramaiah intelligently harped on a seemingly unconnected idea, which is the economic prosperity of some of the linguistic states below the Vindhyas. Pitching the rich southern states against the poor Hindi ones, he put across a statistic that formed the fulcrum of his entire piece: He said, for every rupee that Karnataka contributes to the Central purse, it gets back only Rs. 0.47. But for every rupee Uttar Pradesh contributes, it gets back Rs 1.79. He implied ‘they’ are being subsidised by ‘us’.

Siddaramaiah continued by stating that the Centre’s tax distribution formula is flawed as it uses population levels as the sole criteria, while performance of states like Karnataka had gone unrecognized and undervalued. The Chief Minister also noted that population growth has gone unchecked in the North while it is at replacement levels in the educated South. He followed up his piece with a series of tweets where he argued that the 15^th Finance Commission should not use 2011 census data but should continue with the 1971 data for devolution of taxes.

The encrypted message conveyed through his article and the tweets is not difficult to decipher. Crudely put, it would run something like this: ‘We are being wronged. You live on our charity. We subsidise you. Since we are prosperous and progressive, we’d like to do our own thing. We’ll have our own flag and fly it as high as we want. Who are you to question this in distant Delhi?’

While this was all about cocking a snook at the rest of the world, within Karnataka it predictably stirred machismo emotions, which may be electorally beneficial for Siddaramaiah. It was similar to an image that Modi had created for himself as Gujarat’s Chief Minister which he took with him to Delhi in 2014. This is something about which the PM remains nostalgic to this very day.

Besides flaunting regional pride, there was a larger political affront to Modi in Siddaramaiah’s statistic-based thesis. Each time the Prime Minister was in Karnataka or for that matter in any other state ruled by the opposition, he has tried to push a narrative which endeavours to establish that the Centre gives enough funds but the states underutilise them. Or, whatever welfare the state does, it is thanks to monies released by the Centre.

By raising the tax devolution issue, and in the same breath speaking about the poverty of Uttar Pradesh, the Karnataka CM was trying to fact check, and drive home the point that it is the reverse that’s true. His implicit message: ‘Forget you are giving us money, in fact it is we who are allowing you your indulgences at the Centre where you are Prime Minister, and in UP, where your constituency is located. So, don’t talk of funds allocated to us as charity doled out by the Centre.’

There is also another subtext: Remember the Prime Minister fashions himself after Sardar Patel, the unifier of India. So, given that, if the South repeatedly challenges his wisdom and hubris, and as a result, if he is seen as not being able to take them along, then there will be cracks in his a la Sardar image. After Siddaramaiah raised the issue, we have seen Chandrababu Naidu, Jaganmohan Reddy, K Chandrashekar Rao and M K Stalin joining the chorus. Below the Vindhyas, Balasaheb Thackarey’s inheritors in Maharashtra, the richest state in India, have also begun to chant this line.

Siddaramaiah may have had enough political justification to push his argument. However, he must proceed with caution because it is fraught with ideological inconsistencies and contradictions. It may serve well as a convenient election rhetoric but it can also put the Chief Minister in a spot for the following reasons:

01. To base one’s economic argument on population alone is to replicate, in a different context though, the argument of the RSS and the BJP, who use it to target alleged preferential treatment to Muslims and other minorities to create panic among Hindus.

02. The argument for greater federal autonomy should not echo the meritocracy argument of anti-Mandalites and anti-reservationists. This may badly damage the social justice plank on which Siddaramaiah has stood all through his political career.

03. To speak of North Indians the way the Thackerays and the Shiv Sena speak will translate at the ground level into violence which has been witnessed in Karnataka in the past. For example, towards the end of the BJP regime in the state, in 2012, the drummed up fear of a violent backlash against North Easterners led to their panic exodus. 

04.  Siddaramaiah extends the economic logic to regions within Karnataka, then the richest are the Old Mysore districts (from where the CM hails) and the poorest are the Hyderabad-Karnataka districts. Can he discriminate between the two regions in the allocation of resources? Holding back special grants to the poorer regions may not only be imprudent but it would be politically suicidal. There are already demands for a separate North Karnataka. Historically, Old Mysore leaders resisted poor northern districts coming together to form a unified Karnataka. To this day, it is the Old Mysore region that is culturally dominant. 

05. Further, Bangalore, the state capital, contributes the most to the state’s GDP. What if the citizens of the metro argue they should get preferential treatment over the rest of the state? What if there is a mischievous suggestion to make it a union territory? 

06. The demographic composition of Bangalore is cosmopolitan. It is common knowledge that Kannadigas are outnumbered in Karnataka’s capital. People from different states work and reside here. They also contribute hugely to its thriving economy. Somebody has to rejig the CM’s memory that Bangalore’s growth was originally spurred by establishment of public sector organisations like HAL, ITI, BEL, HMT, BEML, ISRO etc., which were funded by the Centre. Over the decades, people have come from across India and settled down in the city to work in these establishments. The software industry harvested the scientific and technological culture established by these organisations. Now, where does one ideally begin to separate the state and the Centre’s contribution here?

07. Nearly 63 per cent of the state’s revenue comes from the services sector, industry contributes 24 per cent, and agriculture another 13 per cent. But the maximum subsidy is offered to farming. Can this be altered or support to the least of the contributing sectors drastically trimmed?

08. We have seen that maximum revenues pour in from the services industry. What if tomorrow the software service jobs migrate to another country or city that offers a competitive labour price advantage and there is a sudden dip in Karnataka and Bangalore’s fortunes? Irrespective of which government is at the Centre, will not the state look for assistance? 

09. When Siddaramaiah launched his biggest social welfare programme ‘Annabhagya’ (rice and other staple grains at one rupee a kg), the argument against it was this: ‘Why are you rendering the workforce lethargic? Why are you making them lazy dependents on state subsidy? Let them earn their two square meals.’ But that sounded both cruel and irrational. In fact, I was the only editor in the mainstream press who had then favoured the policy. My editorial line was that it was not merely a hunger eradication dole but was sound economics.

10. The CM should also reckon with this fact: Only 1.5 per cent of India’s population pay income tax. What if they argue, like they have often done, that they must be given preferential treatment? Can such an argument hold? In which case, what happens to people who pay indirect taxes?

11. Finally, Siddaramaiah should not forget that the constituencies of his political bosses Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi are in Uttar Pradesh. People from those constituencies also benefit from a higher devolution of tax revenues to their state. 

12. The CM’s idea is not consistent with the Nehruvian idea of India. After all it was the Congress that evolved the tax devolution formula. Would Siddaramaiah have protested so much were it to be a Congress or UPA government at the Centre?

In the final analysis, this much can be said, whatever be the geographical location or the economic status of a state, we live today in a deeply interconnected world where it doesn’t help to speak the language of Trumpian exclusion. Federal autonomy, no doubt, is a very valid argument. But one needs to temper it carefully so that it does not become a divisive instrument that pits one region against the other.

What Google and Wikipedia will not tell you about the Lingayats

                

       First Published: SouthWord | March 2018

• Lingayats follow the 12^th century social reformer and mystic Basaveshwara, who rebelled against the tyranny of the Hindu caste order and argued for an egalitarian society. Basavanna, as he his locally known, spoke about dignity of labour and gender equality not in the way we speak about them today, but as spiritual values to be imbibed and inculcated as a service to humanity. Before he broke his caste links, Basavanna was a Brahmin and was notable as a Chief Minister in the court of Bijjala, a king of the Kalachuri dynasty. His revolutionary spiritual and social agenda met with immense resistance during his lifetime. 
• Lingayat propagandists would like us to believe that mankind’s first Parliament was set up during Basaveshwara’s time. But that is clearly an exaggeration. What he created with fellow mystics like Allama Prabhu was an open forum (Anubhava Mantapa), a kind of a debating society, which functioned as an interface between spiritual thinkers and society. Here sharanas or spiritual seekers and mystics primarily engaged and developed philosophical arguments that delved deep into the human condition.
• The best way to understand the Lingayats or the Basava philosophy is through Vachanas. These are short verses that are lucid and luminous. They are gently instructional at times, un-acrimoniously censorious of society’s ills, but always spiritual and abidingly poetic. The Vacahanas used the idiom of the common man and has had a huge influence on the way modern Kannada is written. 
• The Vachana revival as a literary and cultural project in Karnataka happened in the 1960s. These verses were mostly perceived as religious writings until then. Hindustani music legends Mallikarjun Mansur and Basavaraja Rajguru, who sang them, and A K Ramanujan who translated them (Speaking of Siva, Penguin Classics), immensely contributed to their cultural revival and universalisation.
•  The Lingayats as a demography are found across Karnataka but are mostly concentrated in the northern districts of the state. There is no accurate measure of their population (perhaps the caste census that the Siddaramaiah government is getting done will shine light on this), but an estimate pegs the figure at 12 to 14 per cent of the state’s population. Here too there is a lot of exaggeration as size helps in political perception and calculations.
• It is again estimated that Lingayats influence nearly 90-100 assembly seats (of the total 224) and that makes them extremely important in the power game. This calculation is based on a rough count of Lingayats in different Assembly seats. They range anywhere between 10,000 to 90,000 depending on the constituency. But now with the split between Lingayats and Veerashaivas, who were together perceived as a voting block there may be a slight alteration in the numbers. Anyway, Lingayats hugely outnumber Veerashaivas. There are hundreds of big and small Lingayat seminaries, also called Virakta Maths, but there are only a handful of Veerashaiva seminaries, five to be precise.
• The essential difference between Lingayats and Veerashaivas is that the Lingayats owe their existence and allegiance to Basava philosophy, while Veerashaivas follow a Shaivite order borrowing heavily from Hindu traditions. For them Basava is just one of their spiritual proponents. In other words, Basavanna is appropriated into the Shaiva order. The separate religion tag was meant to be given to only those who follow Basava philosophy, that is primarily Lingayats. But the Siddaramaiah government has rather cleverly said that this would be applicable to Veerashaivas who accept the primacy of Basavanna’s teachings as well. This sets the cats among the Veerashaiva pigeons and relatively quells resistance to the government’s move. 
• There are a set of calculations based on data from the 1972 Assembly polls and subsequent elections which is interesting. Going by that if a political party were to get only Lingayat votes they can aim to win only around 26 seats. If the two major communities, Lingayats and Vokkaligas were to come together, then they can stake claim to around 65 seats (vote share of 1978 polls). If a fairly inclusive politics of communities is forged like in 1972 and 1978 by Devaraj Urs, 1985 by Ramakrishna Hegde and 1989 by Veerendra Patil then the vote share and seat share are pretty large.
•  Now, the big question is how will Siddaramaiah’s politics be perceived? He has attempted to piece together Backward Classes, Dalits, Minorities and now a sizeable chunk of the dominant Lingayats. Since the innocence of the 1970s and 1980s no longer exists among caste groups, the chief minister’s circus of identity politics and social engineering may just about ensure that he retains the same seat and vote share as last time. That is if all other factors remain neutral.
•  So far, the BJP had seen Lingayats and Veerashaivas as one political block, but now the Congress has engineered a split by offering the numerically higher Lingayats an independent religious identity. This split also checkmates the BJP and RSS’ Hindutva project.  Caste and religious plurality as a counter strategy is intended to jeopardise the attempted Hindu consolidation.
• The risk that the Congress party and Siddaramaiah runs by recommending Lingayats for an independent religion is if the meek and ordinary followers of the faith feel their religion and unity has been splintered, and they have been made guinea pigs in a political experiment. Then, there may be a backlash at the ballot box. So far, the most vocal about this issue are political leaders. The most powerful pontiffs of the Lingayat faith are yet to make their opinion known. Laymen Lingayats will wait for the polls to cast their view.
•  Since the influential Lingayat community politicians, businessmen and pontiffs run mega educational institutions in Karnataka, across India and also in some cases on foreign soil, the religious minority tag is said to hugely benefit their businesses. Hence it is assumed that they will quietly acquiesce to the idea of a separate religion. There are also many constitutional guarantees religious minorities are accorded, plus the status opens up access to a wide array of central and state funds.
• Even as we tend to speak of Lingayats as a homogenous community, in reality it isn’t. Although Basavanna fought for a casteless society, over time, ironically, the community has reintroduced a stratification based on their original castes and occupations. When people had joined the Basava order they are said to have given up their caste affiliations to merge into one seamless ideal. But now, we have Jangamas (priestly class), the Banajigas (traders), Panchamasalis (tillers of the earth), Saadars, Nonavas, Ganigas, Gouda-Lingayats, Reddy-Lingayats etc. The Panchamasalis are numerically higher but are politically underrepresented. Banajigas, the trading sub-sect, has disproportionately walked away with political power. One has to wait and see how each of these sub-sects will respond to the separate religion tag. The reaction is not going to be uniform.
• Of the eight Lingayat chief ministers in history almost all of them, except one (S R Bommai was a Saadar Lingayat) has been a Banajiga Lingayat. Till date Karnataka has had 22 chief ministers (some of them with multiple terms) out of which eight are Lingayats (S Nijalingappa, SR Kanti, B D Jatti, Veerendra Patil, S R Bommai, J H Patel, B S Yeddyrurappa and Jagadish Shettar); seven are Vokkaligas (K C Reddy, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, Kadidal Manjappa, H D Deve Gowda, SM Krishna, H D Kumaraswamy and D V Sadananda Gowda); three from Backward Classes (S Bangarappa, Veerappa Moily and Siddaramaiah); two Kshatriyas (Devaraj Urs and Dharam Singh) and two Brahmins (Ramakrishna Hegde and R Gundu Rao).
•  Basavanna has been the most explored literary figure and metaphor in the 20^th century Kannada literature. The most celebrated works on his life are P Lankesh’s Sankranti, Girish Karnad’s Taledanda and H S Shivaprakash’s Mahachaitra. All three are plays. There are innumerable other works across genres that can easily fill up a section in a library. The best edited Vachana volumes with annotations and elaborate introductions are by scholar L Basavaraju.
• Since Lingayats have been politically powerful they have from time to time censored creative license as well as critical opinion of writers on Basavanna or the Lingayat-Veerashaiva history. Books that have been censored in the last few decades include Marga (edited by M M Kalburgi), Mahachaitra (by H S Shivaprakash), Dharmakarana (by P V Narayana) and Aanu Deva Horaginavanu (by Banjagere Jayaprakash). The intolerance of the community has exploded on many other occasions as well.
• When it comes to food habits, Lingayats are vegetarians. The Lingayat Khanavalis in all North Karanataka towns typically serve guests the food they eat: Jowar rotis, groundnut powder, sesame seed powder, fenugreek leaves, brinjal curry, lentil curry, cut onions, raw chillies and thick curd.
• Prof. M M Kalaburgi and Gauri Lankesh, who were murdered in the recent past, were both Lingayats. Incidentally, they were both for declaring Lingayats as an independent religion. While Kalburgi’s very last piece dealt with the origins and differences between Veerashaivas and Lingayats, Gauri’s last editorial endorsed the idea of Lingayats as a separate religion. The BJP did not mourn both their deaths.

Karnataka Polls: Questions for Locals

First Published: SouthWord | February 2018
As the Assembly polls approach, expectedly, there is a huge surge of interest in Karnataka. Droves of reporters, researchers, psephologists, astrologers, politicians, satta-baazar-wallahs, who were until recently deeply invested in the fortunes of Gujarat, are now slowly turning their gaze towards Karnataka. Their parachute gear is being readied. They know one or two broad things, but they desperately fish for nuggets of nuance (an oxymoronish postulation) to be able to make or begin intelligent conversations in their drawing rooms, newsrooms, office rooms, restrooms, walking tracks and lift cabins. So, what are the questions we, locals, get asked most times. Here’s a gem-pick of sixty-five:

1.     Why is Karnataka so different? Why are cinema actors not big in politics here?

2.     Is Kannada really the official language, but we heard some other tongue being spoken in Kodagu and Mangaluru?

3.     Why does Siddaramaiah have no initials or a surname?

4.     Is Siddaramaiah an atheist?

5.     Why is the chief minister’s wife never seen in public, and why has no newspaper published her picture?

6.     What is the difference between Left and Right Dalits?

7.     Is Mallikarjauna Kharge Left or Right Dalit?

8.     What is this whole Lingayat religion controversy?

9.     What is the real difference between Lingayats and Veerashaivas?

10.   Does religion work here or caste?

11.   Why do Kannadigas also fight with Tamilians over Cauvery river water?

12.   Now, why are they fighting with Goa over Mahadayi river?

13.   Why did Narendra Modi and Amit Shah pick Yeddyurappa despite he having a image problem?

14.    Why did Modi and Shah pick a little known MP like Ananth Kumar Hegde as a minister?

15.   Are Ananth Kumar Hegde and Justice Santosh Hegde related?

16.   Is Siddaramaiah really anti-Hindu?

17.   Where have the Reddy brothers vanished? Why is nobody speaking about them?

18.   Are the Reddy brothers quietly funding the BJP? By the way, where have they hid their money?

19.   Why are only Congress leaders being raided in Karnataka by the IT department?

20.   Is Yeddyurappa married?

21.   Does Yeddyurappa stay with his sons and daughters?

22.   Do the father and son, H D Deve Gowda and H D Kumaraswamy, get along?

23.   Does Deve Gowda favour his other son, H D Revanna?

24.   Is there rebellion in the Gowda family and JDS(S)?

25.   How many from the Gowda family will contest this time?

26.   What feeds Deve Gowda’s political stamina?

27.   Does Kumaraswamy still have filmi interests?

28.   Will JD(S) go with Congress or BJP if there is a hung Assembly?

29.   Who will be the BJP’s CM candidate if Yeddyurappa ends up like Himachal’s Dhumal?

30.   What is the difference between Uttara Kannada and North Karnataka?

31.   Why is it called Hyderabad Karnataka and Bombay Karnataka? By the way, what is Old Mysore?

32.   Why is there this Hindutva frenzy only in Mangalore?

33.   Is the ‘URS’ in the name of former CM Devaraj Urs like the ‘URS’ in a Sufi context?

34.   Why is Yeddyurappa’s old foe Parliamentary Affairs Minister H N Ananth Kumar so quiet?

35.   Will Ananth Kumar be a dark horse as CM or do Modi-Shah despise him?

36.   Why did S M Krishna leave the Congress? Has it got something to do with his son-in-law?

37.   Was Congress strongman D K Shiva Kumar close to SMK?

38.   Is KPCC President Parameshwar still close to SMK?

39.   Will Nandan Nilekani be BJP MP from Karnataka?

40.   Why has Rajeev Chandrashekar not been made a minister?

41.   Why was Digvijay Singh taken off Karnataka?

42.   Is the current AICC in-charge Venugopal better than Digvijay Singh?

43.   How close is actor Ramya to the Congress high command?

44.   Will minorities vote en bloc for the Congress this time?

45.   Is BJP trying to split the Muslim vote?

46.   Who is floating all the new parties coming up in the state, and more importantly, who is funding them?

47.   Can Kejriwal ever dream of a seat in Karnataka?

48.   What chance does Swaraj India have? Or, is it seen as an NGO in an advocacy space?

49.   Who really is the Karnataka in-charge of BJP: Muralidhar Rao, Piyush Goyal or Prakash Javdekar?

50.   Do BJP leaders in the state dislike or fear Amit Shah?

51.   At what stage are all the cases against Yeddyurappa?

52.   Does Karnataka government function at such a low commission rate of ‘ten percent’ as Modi accused?

53.   Why is Yogi Adityanath being fielded as a campaigner in Karnataka?

54.   How much will Hindi work in Karnataka?

55.   Will Rahul Gandhi contest from Karnataka in 2019 like his grandmother?

56.   Is it important for Rahul Gandhi to visit temples and seminaries in Karnataka?

57.   Whatever happened to Socialist leaders in Karnataka? One a hotbed of socialist politics.

58.   Is Siddaramaiah closer to Rahul Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi?

59.   Does Siddaramaiah retain influence over his former JD(S) colleagues?

60.   Is Siddaramaiah like Amarinder Singh?

61.   Why wasn’t Siddaramaiah active for the first four years of his term?

62.   Does Siddaramaiah still suffer from sleep apnea?

63.   Is it true that the chief minister is good with numbers?

64.   What is this Kuruba community that the CM belongs to? How big are they? Are they bigger than the Gowdas? Are they a tribe?

65.   Is caste more important in Karnataka or religion?

Am sure there are more questions. So, keep this list growing until the campaigning ends. In fact, until the results are out! Make it a hundred. Why not a thousand? Whoever answers these questions will have to have some pretense of a political/historical/sociological/cultural/anthropological/ethnographic understanding of the society.