Bengaluru: The recent Karnataka Assembly elections have shaken the Hindutva narrative of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), revealing that the Modi-Shah domination cannot be taken for granted in the south of India. While the BJP has enjoyed meek obedience in Hindi-speaking states, Karnataka has always been an exception like senior party leader B.S. Yediyurappa who has been in and out of power expressing defiance and has always refused to be tamed by the Modi-Shah dispensation.
The inner-party turbulence in Karnataka has resulted in former BJP Chief Minister Jagdish Shettar and former Deputy Chief Minister Laxman Savadi quitting the party and fighting on Congress tickets. While Savadi won, Shettar lost. The defections indicate the rising din of dissidents within the party, posing a challenge to both the key ideas of the BJP - ideology and the leader.
While BJP leaders speak of ideology, they refer back to the RSS and its core belief in Hindu political resurgence. However, in Karnataka, caste and community arithmetic is complicated, and the party's Hindutva ideology has limited attraction. The BJP's attempts to create a Hindu wave in the election arena have failed to bear much fruit, with the people of the state not taking seriously the allegations that the Congress was anti-Hindu. The Congress, on the other hand, took a different approach in their campaign, making the point of banning Bajrang Dal in their manifesto and using the weapon of anti-Hindu sentiment to gain the favour of the voters.
The loud and strong dissonant notes that have emerged in the Karnataka BJP reveal that the Modi-Shah domination cannot enjoy the meek obedience it is used to in other states. The BJP's members in the state are prominent politicians in their own right and do not owe it to either Modi or Shah, nor to the BJP-RSS ideology of Hindutva. The rising dissidence poses a significant challenge to the BJP, and it remains to be seen how the Modi-Shah dispensation tackles the local heavyweights.
The election results in Karnataka have shown that the BJP's Hindutva card has not yielded the expected results this time. The people of the state have remained unmoved by the use of slogans such as 'Bajrangbali ki Jai' and have not been swayed by the presence of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, considered an icon of Hinduism. The anti-incumbency wave against the BJP government has tripped the BJP's Hindutva card. The BJP will need to reassess its strategy in the state.
