Sand thrown in our eyes, but look who’s feeling cheated

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The last thing one wants to do is write an obituary. But with Udupi-Chikmagalur going to the polls this day, history could repeat itself — just as it did four years ago, the JD(S), once again, all too likely to cut into the votes of a Congress, albeit united for the first time but helpless against the undercurrents that will sweep the BJP to victory, riding on the back of RSS cadres, who have fanned out into every grama, every taluk to activate saffron votes.

The writing on the wall? If it is indeed a victory, it will not be welcomed in the B.S. Yeddyurappa camp, that wants D.V. Sadananda Gowda to fail. THAT will be the signal BSY wants to send to Delhi — without the Lingayat community, the BJP cannot come back to power in the state, let alone win a bypoll.

But conversely, any victory, however small, will come as much needed ballast to the Sadananda Gowda boom as he powers his way into the final lap of the BJP’s last twelve months in government, hoping for smooth sailing.

So, back to the central question – is it time to write BSY’s political obituary? Or would that be premature? Much of what we hear and speculate about is drawn from the tiny signals that politicians send out. Never what they tell us!

Sibling Priyanka’s arms around a hapless Rahul Gandhi’s shoulder after UP shifted gears and left Congress standing exactly where it has for the last 22 years — last place — was one such silent gesture that said nothing out loud. And yet, said everything.

With a slew of state elections scheduled over the coming year, with Gujarat and Modi being the most critical, as Modi does a BSY in UP, the unsayable is being said — the darling of big business’s boycott of the UP campaign has him scripting himself out of the pan-Indian leadership stakes within the BJP, reducing the party’s fast diminishing list of leaders who can lead in 2014 to … and not one name comes to mind…

Not even BSY’s who had hoped that after chief minister, he would head to Delhi. His misdirected attempts to reclaim his post have botched these for all time to come. Not that the party was going to give him the bad news. The giveaway, that the party was stalling for time? The deliberate quibble over who will present the state budget this Wednesday. “The chief minister,” says party chief K.S. Eshwarappa. “The chief minister,” says former chief minister Yeddyurappa. “The chief minister,” says chief minister Sadananda Gowda. “The chief minister,” says state in-charge Dhananjay Kumar.

Yes, yes. We know. But Chief Minister who? Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda? Or Chief Minister Yeddyurappa?

One formula after another was trotted out, each one less credible than the other — DVS presents a vote-on-account budget on Wednesday while BSY is brought in four months later and does the full monty; DVS shunted back to Delhi, fed the Rajya Sabha lollypop, and BSY is back as chief minister; DVS remains CM and BSY settles for ‘the most powerful job’ of state party chief… take your pick.

Amidst all the talk, the most curious was this nugget — that no-one dared disabuse BSY of his belief that come Monday morning, once voting was over and the Lingayats had stayed true to the BJP, he would be sworn in as chief minister, so that the budget — the `1 trillion budget — the ‘honour’ of presenting that budget will fall to him, and not to a whipper-snapper newbie like DVS.

How many of us can see beyond the sand, deliberately thrown in everyone’s eyes?

And I’m thinking, has no-one told BSY that the very purpose of floating this possibility – not a promise — that gives him the impression that the door had not yet been closed on him coming back as CM, was precisely this — say a firm no, and the Lingayat strongman, backed by the all powerful maths, would signal to the Lingayat community to end its backing of the BJP.

He’s employed the boycott card to some effect before — the no-show by his coterie at the L.K. Advani public meeting at the National College grounds, the one day of campaigning in Bellary when Sreeramulu stood against the BJP (and won), and here in Chikmagalur-Udupi where he has been completely absent from the scene, careful however to trot out his token representatives — a Basavaraj Bommai here, a Murugesh Nirani there. (..And in as improbable a sight as the motorcycle diaries a la Robert Vadra during the height of the UP campaign.)

But with most of his supporters, drawn not from the hardcore ranks of the RSS-Bajrang Dal but outsiders, former Congressmen, Dalits, the party is unable to draw on their allegiance to the saffron charter. Instead, thus far they have demonstrated fealty only to the BSY charter.

Cloaked as it is, it’s a defiance that is nevertheless there for all to see. How far it will carry BSY will be interesting to track as whether it is 13 or 30 followers, comparisons with the other ‘bad boy’ of Karnataka S. Bangarappa are being drawn. Bangarappa, of course, was forever the outsider.

Will BSY be the same, does he have a life outside his party? And with politics a costly business, how deep are his pockets? Will he be able to bankroll even the handful of legislators at his call, sustain the current level of defiance, especially in the run up to the biggie, under the banner of the Karnataka Janata Party, without the Reddy minewagon that he and the party used to such good effect earlier.

As the BSY-DVS denouement comes to a head this week, and Yeddyurappa wrestles with the dilemma central to his inner being, between staying loyal to the party he has helped build and seeking a role that is bigger than the party, and DVS worries about the message that will be sent out about his own image, and of the party, if he is shown the door, there is one far more interesting aspect to this petty battle of one-upmanship - the fate of the so-far monolithic Hindu vote and whether, if it splinters under pressure in Karnataka from a Lingayat-Shaivite walkaway, what it will do to the BJP in the rest of the country where the vote was once only about religion.

Today, it’s a rural vote that goes to regional satraps, and an urban voter riddled with mistrust and anger against the status quo. Whither the all-powerful nexus between the religious maths and the politicians, which reaped the consolidation of a pan-Hindu vote and delivered it to the BJP, rallying its faithful to the cries of Jai Shri Ram, bringing in ‘the Hinduism is in peril’ vote? For the BJP, whether it wins in Chikmagalur-Udupi or not, it maybe time to reinvent itself, find a new crutch that is outside the right-wing rhetoric that has sustained it thus far.

More than an obituary for BSY, then, perhaps it’s time to prepare an obituary for the big parties, in government and in opposition, as they throw sand in your eyes and mine.