The BJP has less than five months to straighten things out to taken on the Lingayat strongman in the May 2013 elections, says Aditi Phadnis
It was October 2007 and Rajnath Singh was president of the Bharatiya Janata Party. H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal Secular with 56 members of Legislative Assembly didn't have the numbers to form a government.
Deve Gowda was forced to do a deal with the devil -- the BJP that had 79 MLAs in a House of 224. The arrangement was that Deve Gowda's son H D Kumaraswamy would rule for two and a half years, and then yield the chief ministership to BJP's B S Yeddyurappa, then the state deputy chief minister.
But, when the time came for Kumaraswamy to hand over the mantle to Yeddyurappa, he changed his mind. Around the same time, one of his ministers, M P Prakash, broke away from the JDS. Karnataka was under the President's rule. Rajnath Singh saw this as an opportunity -- the party could go to town, shouting it had been betrayed by the JDS and sweep the elections.
But Yeddyurappa was having none of that. It was his moment in the sun, after all. He ran to Delhi to beg, plead, cajole -- do anything to let him become chief minister.
Rajnath Singh told him, "Mr Yeddyurappa, you SHALL NOT become chief minister." Yeddyurappa returned to Bangalore and staked claim to become the chief minister of a minority government. That government lasted a week. The President's rule was declared and elections followed in April 2008.
That was the first sign that Yeddyurappa had come into his own -- he was going to be bullied by no one, advised by no one and would continue to be his own man. This man is going to be their nightmare. And, there are several reasons for this.
Yeddyurappa is a Lingayat. Two castes -- the Vokkaliga and the Lingayat -- have been the dominant social groups in Karnataka, since the state was created. The tussle for power between these two communities has been the leitmotif of politics in the state. Karnataka has had five chief ministers from the Vokkaliga community, and six have been Lingayats. Three chief ministers have been from the backward classes, while Brahmins have managed to hold the top spot twice.
The Vokkaligas, who comprise around 15 per cent of the population of Karnataka, are spread mainly across Bangalore, Mandya, Hassan, Mysore, Kolar and Chikamagalur. Lingayats comprise around 17 per cent and are dominant in the central and the northern parts of Karnataka.
The Dalits are around 23 per cent of the population, the Kurubas eight per cent and the Muslims make up 10 per cent. The rest are Christians and others. All these numbers are approximations, but they do indicate the proportions.
The last memorable Lingayat chief minister of Karnataka was Veerendra Patil, when the Congress was in power in the state in the 1980s. Patil, however, suffered a stroke in the saddle and was unable to function for several months. Rajiv Gandhi, the then prime minister, ordered his replacement. Patil died soon thereafter, his community said, of a broken heart,
and the Lingayats promised to avenge the humiliation to the community and their leader. They moved en masse to the BJP.