Congress trounces BJP in Karnataka

The Bharatiya Janata Party has “not been able to make the mark,” Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said accepting defeat, as the Congress swept the state poll, expecting to win over 135 seats. Karnataka BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel also took “responsibility for the loss.”

The real losers, however, are the big two of the saffron party—Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. For they are the two men who really matter in the party (and government). It is easy to criticize their strategies, style of functioning, the centralization of power they are accused of, and so on, but it is indisputable that the big two have also played critical roles in making the BJP the predominant political force in the country and winning election after election at all levels.

The BJP, especially Modi and Shah, will receive a lot of unsolicited counsel from intellectuals and liberals to shed the excess Hindutva baggage and adopt a moderate stance over divisive issues, but it is unlikely that the party top brass would be very receptive to such advice. A major part of non-receptivity is because of the people delivering it, liberals, towards whom the saffron camp has developed visceral hatred. That hatred is a response to the contempt Left-liberals held the BJP, the RSS, and other Hindutva organizations in the pre-Modi era, but that’s another story.

One lesson that the BJP, and even the Congress, must learn from the Karnataka election result is that marginalizing state leaders can have unpleasant consequences. Since Modi and Shah are comfortable with any state leader who isn’t loyal to them, they expedited their strongest state leader B.S. Yediyurappa’s exit or retirement long before the state poll.

The community he comes from, Lingayats, didn’t like this. With around 17 per cent of Karnataka’s population, they are a critical factor in any election. They have been a solid support group of the BJP for quite some time. There are indications that the Lingayats’ unease with the BJP.

Basavaraj Bommai, though a Lingayat, neither had the stature of Yediyurappa’s nor much support from the RSS; for he is of Janata or socialist background. His father, S.R. Bommai, was also Karnataka chief minister from the Janata Party. The Basavaraj Bommai government’s decision to ban hijab was an attempt to endear himself to the RSS rank and file, but this didn’t help him or the party.

Nor did the acrimonious campaign by his party yield many dividends. The Congress will not only easily cross the magic figure of 113 but is also like to post the most impressive victory in the last quarter of a century. It appears to be getting more than 132 seats, the highest number any party has got in the state since 1999. That year, the Congress had won 132 seats under S.M. Krishna.

The big question is: would the BJP and the Congress that lesson? An answer in the affirmative will have a beneficial effect on not just politics but elsewhere too.