The Last Leap of a Warhorse

THE HOUSES IN JAGALUR HAVE been spruced up. The women have spent an unreasonable amount of time cook­ing, sweeping and colouring in their ran­golis. Shamianas flutter over porches and backyards, welcoming family and friends to the annual five-day Marikamba Devi Jatra that begins today. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA SV Ramachandra’s house, too, has a shamiana out front—white and blue, with tables full of crisp Davanagere dosas, sweets and ice cream. Ramach­andra’s special guest today is none other than the man who helped bring BJP to power for the first time in south India. BS Yediyurappa arrives over an hour late, by chopper from Bengaluru, to campaign for the BJP candidate who won the seat in 2018 securing over 58 per cent of the vote, defeating Congress’ SP Rajesh. The 80-year-old Lingayat leader, who is not contest­ing this time, takes the passenger seat as Ramachandra and GM Siddeshwara, the Davanagere MP, scoot into the back of the Toyota Fortuner. The winding road leads to a square that heaves with crowds waiting to meet the hard, level confidence of Yediyurappa’s stare. As he takes position atop a campaign vehicle, someone holds up an umbrella to shield him from the sun and a crane gently lowers a massive saffron garland to frame him. He waves occasionally. To the sound of loud cheering and drum beats, the vehicle begins a slow journey to Ambedkar Circle, a few hundred metres away, even as the summer heat spreads over the town. It is 34 degrees Celsius but feels like 40. Support­ers wear party-issue visors and Gandhi caps. Those who throng the campaign truck persistently are rewarded with a garland or a wave. It is a small convoy, with a water tanker, a police car and an ambulance in tow. But the crowd of 20,000 or so is not small for Jagalur, a constituency of about 1.9 lakh voters. HM Nagaraj, 59, is among them. “I have come to support not just Yediyurappa but also the Bommai government. My family is a beneficiary of their scholarship scheme for students—I have two daughters—and I have availed farm loans and subsidies for my 12-acre land,” says the LIC agent, making his way out. “People here vote BJP as much for its social schemes as for its leadership.”

Although reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST), Jagalur in Dava­nagere district is a Lingayat-majority seat. It is witnessing a three-cornered contest this time, with Congress fielding B Devendrappa, a former Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), man, and Rajesh contesting as an independent against incumbent BJP MLA Ramachandra. In 2018, BJP won six of the eight seats in the district and swept the entire central Karnataka region, including the neighbouring Shi­vamogga district, which is Yediyurappa’s home ground and where his son BY Vijayendra is contesting his maiden election from. Yediyurappa is now here to signal to voters that he is still a political force even if he is not the chief ministerial candidate. For starters, a big chunk of the BJP list appears to have his blessings. “The status quo remains in about 110 seats across the state. In Davanagere, we will retain all the seats. Lingayats are with us, and so are other communities,” he tells Open, on the sidelines of his campaign in Davanagere district, which includes roadshows in Jagalur and Mayakonda. Asked if senior Lingayat leaders Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi quitting BJP over their alleged ill-treatment could affect the party’s poll prospects, Yediyurappa makes light of it. “Shettar has been given every position, every opportunity by the party. Even now, Amit Shah told him, let your wife contest, we will field her, but he did not listen. He betrayed the party and that’s why he is sure to lose his seat this time (contesting on a Congress ticket from Hubli-Dharwad).”

For a variety of reasons, BJP looks to be struggling to retain the gains it made in central Karnataka in 2018. Madal Virupakshappa, the BJP MLA from Channagiri in Davanagere, was arrested in March by Lokayukta police for alleged corrup­tion. His son MV Prashanth Kumar, chief accounts officer with the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), was arrested for taking a ` 40-lakh bribe from a government contrac­tor. Kumar allegedly took the bribe on behalf of his father, the Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Ltd (KSDL) chairman, for a contract with the state government entity that manufactures soaps under the Mysore Sandal brand. In Shivamogga, BJP MLA KS Eshwarappa had to resign from his position as rural develop­ment and panchayat raj minister after a controversy over his alleged role in the suicide of a contractor, Santhosh Patil, over non-payment of dues for roadworks. While Eshwarappa and his son have been denied tickets for the upcoming Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally called the Kuruba leader on the phone to thank him for staying in the party when other disgruntled seniors jumped ship. “While I do not support people who have done wrong, Congress’ allegations of mass cor­ruption by our government are entirely false and will not stick,” Yediyurappa tells Open, expressing confidence that nothing, not even the shifting of BJP’s Valmiki leader B Sriramulu, who had helped the party win five of six seats in Chitradurga in 2018, to Ballari, can dent BJP’s prospects in central Karnataka. “I will personally campaign in 70-75 constituencies across the state to ensure BJP returns to power with a clear majority,” he adds.

AS THE ROADSHOW reaches Ambedkar Circle, a stream of jatris and performers in larger-than-life animal costumes merges with the crowd, creating a surreal parade. The sugar­cane juice and watermelon stalls on street corners do brisk busi­ness. Women dressed in yellow saris, their feet bare, stop by on their way to the temple. “We don’t know anything about politics; we came to see who is drawing as big a crowd as our Marikamba,” says 21-year-old Saibai S, who is pursuing a Masters in computer science in Mysuru. “It is good that Yediyurappa is seeking the blessings of Dodda Marikamba,” says T Shivabasappa, a 48-year-old flower seller. “You know, she is a non-vegetarian deity, and this is a non-vegetarian festival. Most households in Jagalur will slaughter several goats over the next few days. But the Lingayat way of life is inclusive, and he is a leader who understands that. It is easier for other communities to support such a leader than young brash Hindu leaders.” There are over 50,000 Lingayat vot­ers in Jagalur and about 40,000 ST voters.

When Yediyurappa briefly takes the microphone to ad­dress the people of Jagalur, thanking them for their support, his words are barely audible over the din. But words don’t matter here; it is what he stands for that does. How did Yediyurappa, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker, Jana Sangh leader and hardware shop owner, become BJP’s only mass leader in Karnataka? The story begins in the 1990s when the party began to make inroads into the state, winning 40 and 44 seats in the 1994 and 1999 elections, respectively. Lingayats, who had been cross with Congress for its unceremonious dismissal of Veeren­dra Patil from the chief minister’s chair in 1989, were starting to lean towards Janata Dal (United) and BJP. As the Janata Dal government led by Lingayat leader JH Patel reached the end of its term in 1999, Congress won the election and appointed a Vokkaliga, SM Krishna, as chief minister. BJP’s veteran Lin­gayat leader, BB Shivappa, had hoped to become leader of the opposition but was turned away, and ironically, it was Jagadish Shettar who landed that opportunity. Yediyurappa, who had lost the Shikaripura seat to the Congress candidate, got to work consolidating Lingayat support for the party. In 2004, when BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 79 seats, Yediyurappa had cemented his position as the most influential leader of the Lingayats and was credited for the party’s performance. When Congress joined hands with JD(S) to form the government under Dharam Singh, Yediyurappa struck a deal with HD Kumaraswamy to bring down the gov­ernment, and under a rotational power-sharing arrangement, agreed to become deputy chief minister even as Kumaraswa­my took the top post. When it came to Yediyurappa’s turn to take over as chief minister—for the first time—in November 2007, Kumaraswamy reneged on their arrangement in just seven days. BJP’s vote share in Karnataka, meanwhile, had steadily climbed—from 28.5 per cent in 2004 to 33.9 per cent in 2008—and much of this was attributed to Lingayat support. Nearly 78 per cent of Lingayats are estimated to have voted for BJP in 2008. BJP formed its first government ever in south India, with Yediyurappa as chief minister, in May 2008, but he had to step down in 2011 following his indictment by the then Lokayukta in an illegal mining case. “Yediyurappa cannot be replaced,” he was quoted as saying, when there was talk of the high command, especially LK Advani, looking to replace him.

Betrayals followed Yediyurappa throughout his ca­reer—or so it seemed. Cut loose by the party he had helped nurture, he broke from the mothership to form an outfit of his own in 2013—the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), which he declared would have secularism at its heart and fol­low the teachings of BR Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan. KJP stripped BJP of the political stature it had quickly gained in the state. From winning 110 seats in 2008, it was reduced to a double-digit score of 40 in 2013. “There was no question of BJP winning without Yediyurappa. He had to be brought back even if he did not get along with ev­eryone in the party,” says a senior BJP leader from Karnataka, declining to be named. For a party that does not like regional sa­traps getting drunk on power, here was a strongman it couldn’t wish away. And not for want of trying. His fourth term as chief minister was cut short in 2021 as the party looked to give him a “graceful exit”—although he claims he quit voluntarily—only to be forced to lean on him for the upcoming Assembly polls. “There is simply no other mass leader in BJP other than, ironi­cally, Eshwarappa to a certain extent. Yediyurappa knows the lay of the land; he has been a fighter for many causes and has a real connect with people. Basavaraj Bommai is trying to fill the void, but he has a long way to go,” says VS Sreedhara, a ra­tionalist researcher. According to him, BJP has started to take Lingayat votes for granted, or it would not have let Shettar and Savadi go. “Yediyurappa, in the autumn of his political career, is insurance, whether he likes it or not, against any adverse impact the party’s internal leadership rejig may have. It is experiment­ing with a new kind of leadership, more Hindutvavadi, more RSS-based, and the man who has been called in for damage con­trol is a Lingayat who claims to be a socialist,” he adds. Almost no one, not even the opposition, disputes his credibility as a Lingayat leader, or wonders aloud why he wears the RSS tilak and not the Veerashaivite vibhuti, Sreedhara notes.

BJP HAD ONLY just yielded to the reservation demands of the politically significant Panchamsali Lingayat com­munity by carving out a new category, ‘2D’, allotting them 7 per cent reservation. And now, it appeared to be sidestepping Lingayat leaders like Shettar and Savadi, allegedly to usher in a Brahmin as chief minister. Speaking to Open, former BJP chief minister and state party president Shettar, 67, blamed BJP’s or­ganising secretary BL Santhosh for pushing “a Hindutva agenda at the cost of Lingayats”. “There is a clear attempt to sideline the community which has always supported BJP. Voters can see through their intentions,” he said. Party national general secre­tary and Karnataka in-charge Arun Singh has since hastened to refute charges of mistreatment of Lingayat leaders by BJP and said that only a leader from the community, whose numbers are estimated to be around 17 per cent of the state’s population, will become chief minister. “It is known to everyone. It is a universal truth in BJP who will be the chief minister,” he told reporters in Belagavi. The party has fielded 68 Lingayats and 42 Vokkaligas this time, up from 55 and 41 respectively in 2018.

Yediyurappa actively touring the state is the best damage control the party can hope for. In the eighth decade of his life, his hands are shaky but he has barely broken sweat in all this heat, physical and political. If the quiet chafing of one power centre against another within the party is wearing him down, he doesn’t show it. Later, over lunch at Ramachandra’s house, the political hawk transforms into a gentle patriarch, insisting everyone have seconds, making it a point to speak to the catering staff, and in­viting shy hangers-on to take photographs. He spots a mirror on the wall and quickly whips out a comb. It is important that he look his best. I ask him about the delays plaguing the Upper Bhadra irrigation project—when completed, it will provide sus­tainable irrigation during the kharif season and recharge ground water tables in the drought-prone areas of Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga, Tumakuru and Davangere districts—that contin­ues to be a poll issue in central Karnataka and he says the Union government’s grant of ` 5,300 crore for the project is sure to speed it up. “Some things take time, but they are worth waiting for,” he says, as though commenting on the rewards of his hard work building up the party’s support base in the state.

“It was SP Rajesh who pushed Siddaramaiah, when he was chief minister, to get the project going. But they denied him a ticket and fielded a rank newcomer,” says Srinivas Reddy, a farm­er with 35 acres of land where he currently grows sunflower and groundnut. According to Reddy, Rajesh’s core support base is Lingayats and STs. “It is Lingayats who have poured money into his campaign.” If the crowd gathered at Rajesh’s house in Bidarekere, a new building with cool, bare rooms that are yet to be furnished, is anything to go by, he may well give Ramachandra a tough fight. “Local issues matter in this election. Congress and BJP have both betrayed the people of Jagalur. We may be in Davanagere, but we are just as drought-prone as the neighbouring districts in Chitradurga. Water and an accessible MLA are what people want,” Rajesh says, pointing in the direc­tion of areca nut plantations in need of irrigation.

BJP hopes that in Yediyurappa’s capable hands, the lotus will continue to bloom in Davanagere, no matter how harsh the sun. The gardener who takes over from him will have his task cut out.

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