Amid hijab-halal row, as Karnataka BJP raises pitch, speculation of early polls

State Congress president D K Shivakumar in fact let it slip at a press conference this week that the Congress has information that elections in Karnataka will be announced on November 27 this year – in what is seen as a possible reference to holding the Karnataka polls in conjunction with Gujarat polls.

“Like the media has sources, we too have sources,” Shivakumar said when questioned regarding the basis of his declaration that state polls would be announced on November 27 this year.

Since the BJP registered a thumping win in elections in four states earlier this month, there has been speculation in political circles of the BJP high command being inclined to conduct early polls in Karnataka to capitalise on the momentum from the recent victories.

The BJP in Karnataka, which has been racked by allegations of corruption at many levels, is looking to overcome the corruption taint and the pressures of anti-incumbency by going for early polls, close associates of senior ministers in the BJP government have indicated. BJP sources, however, claimed that the party is yet to decide on going for early polls but is keen to ensure that new charges do not emerge in the run-up to elections which could be detrimental to the prospects of the party coming to power again.

According to BJP sources, the party is keen on emulating its victory in UP and other states by going into the state polls with Prime Minister Modi and his development agenda as its main plank — while also navigating Karnataka’s difficult caste terrain by using the low cost cement of Hindutva.

Over the last few weeks, some of the agenda the three main political parties – the BJP, the Congress and the Janata Dal Secular party – will deploy for the forthcoming polls has been publicly evident which is also indicative of a sense that the state polls will be held ahead of schedule in Karnataka.

Over the last few weeks, affiliates of the ruling BJP in the Sangh Parivar – the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Hindu Jagarana Vedike and outlier right-wing groups like the Bajrang Dal and Sri Rama Sena – have ratcheted the communal agenda in Karnataka by targeting the minority Muslims in particular.

There have been calls by right-wing groups for preventing Muslim vendors from participating in temple festivals during the ongoing temple festival season as well as calls for boycotting halal meat by Hindus after the Karnataka New Year festival of Ugadi on April 2. The calls by the right-wing groups on social media and through physical campaigns has received quiet support from the ruling BJP government even as BJP functionaries like the BJP general secretary C T Ravi have endorsed the initiatives like the halal meat boycott as an effort to counter “economic jihad”.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s silence on the shrill divisive agenda of the right-wing is now called into question by civil society groups and others.

On Wednesday, in the first significant corporate voice of concern, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson of Biocon Ltd, urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to resolve the “growing religious divide” in the state. Taking to Twitter, Shaw, while referring to a report published in The Indian Express and tagging Bommai, said: “Karnataka has always forged inclusive economic development and we must not allow such communal exclusion — if IT/BT became communal it would destroy our global leadership. @BSBommai please resolve this growing religious divide.”

On his part, Bommai claimed that the state government is focused on implementing a development agenda and that it would respond to calls to tackle the communal propaganda of BJP affiliates at the appropriate time. “We know when to act and we will do so. We are not going to intervene until it is required,” Bommai said.

The opposition Congress, which is hoping that a soft Hindutva agenda will carry the day for the party at the time of elections, has been largely quiet on the divisive agenda of the right-wing with top leaders like former chief minister Siddaramaiah forced into silence by party diktats.

The Janata Dal (Secular) party, which will be attempting to win enough seats to emerge as a possible coalition partner to the BJP or the Congress in the next state polls – like it did in the 2004 polls and the 2018 polls – has in recent days attempted to regain its political space by emerging from the shadow of the BJP, where the party had been sheltering after a coalition with the Congress collapsed in 2019.

JDS leader H D Kumaraswamy has made overtures towards Muslim voters — who were earlier a constituency of the party – by speaking strongly about the attempts by right-wing groups to cause divisions in society by preventing Muslims from vending at temple festivals and boycotting halal meat.

“Our chief minister (Bommai) is a puppet of some organisations. He is running the government on their orders. To safeguard his seat he is listening to whatever they say. Where is the decision by the government on calls for boycotting a community in business matters? There is no specific decision taken on all this by the government,” the former chief minister said this week.

Over the next two days, top leaders of the Congress and the BJP – Rahul Gandhi and Amit Shah – are scheduled to visit the Lingayat Siddagana Mutt in the Tumkur region of the state on the occasion of the 115th birth anniversary of the former seer of the Mutt, Shivakumar Swamiji, who died in 2019.

While Gandhi will visit the Siddaganga Mutt on Thursday, the Union Home Minister will visit the Mutt on Friday. Shah’s visit to Tumkur is likely to be a show of strength of the Lingayat community and its main leader, the former chief minister B S Yediyurappa who is keen to hand over his political legacy to his younger son B Y Vijayendra. The father-son duo are the main organisers of the official birth anniversary celebrations for the seer at the Tumkur Mutt.

The Lingayat vote in Karnataka has been considered to be the key to winning polls in the state until now. The community has backed the BJP in recent times and remains largely loyal to the leadership of Yediyurappa. The BJP leadership is, however, known to be keen to move away from reliance on one caste and its leader for its poll fortunes in Karnataka and is more in favor of Hindutva and development as the main political plank while weaving alliances across the spectrum of castes.