Congress’s Lingayat gambit in Karnataka flops despite seer support

One of the most controversial issues going into the Karnataka assembly election on May 12 was the state government’s decision in March to grant the status of a minority religion to the Lingayat community, which was backed by chief minister Siddaramaiah himself.

With the election results out on Tuesday, it became clear that in the Mumbai-Karnataka, Hyderabad-Karnataka and Central Karnataka regions, where the community is dominant, the Congress had emerged as the biggest loser.

The Congress had banked on the support of the influential mutts (monasteries) of the community to back its decision and help sway a significant chunk of Lingayat votes in its favour. The Congress managed to win only 39 of the 104 seats in the regions, a significant reduction from the 67 seats it won in 2013.

The defeats of ministers Vinay Kulkarni and Sharan Prakash Patil, who had been part of the Lingayat campaign seeking recognition as a separate religious group, showed the limits of the movement. Other leaders like SR Patil and BR Patil also lost in the polls, as did minister SS Mallikarjun, son of Lingayat leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa, showing that even the Veerashaiva community leadership did not escape unscathed from the backlash.

SM Jamdar, leader of the Jagatika Lingayat Mahasabha, which spearheaded the movement, said that, if anything, the Congress was saved by the Lingayat movement, else it would have been completely wiped out in the Lingayat-dominated regions.

“If not for a minor sway of votes in its favour, the Congress would have fared even worse,” Jamdar said. “In the victory of MB Patil you can see that the failure to capture the Lingayat votes was not because of the rallies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as Patil could not be defeated in Babaleshwar. It was rather the failure of the Congress to reap the benefits of the move,” Jamdar said.

A senior Congress leader, close to the movement and some Lingayat mutts, said there was much disappointment at the failure of the mutts to back the government.

While many influential seers had backed the government’s move at a convention in the state capital in April, the Congress leader said the party was let down by these seers as they had not mobilised the community.

“Many of these mutts only claim (12th century Lingayat philosopher) Basaveshwara’s legacy but are in fact Veerashaivas in practice. We had banked on a public expression of support by these seers, which did not come about,” the Congress leader said on condition of anonymity.

Such was the miscalculation on the Lingayat issue that a Lingayat leader from southern Karnataka said Siddaramaiah had banked on the support of the Lingayats in the Varuna constituency to sail through. “But it is believed that the Suttur Mutt decided to not back him and there has anyway been significant resentment against him for having alienated both the Vokkaligas and the Lingayats through the majority of his tenure,” the leader said.

“This is clearly reflected in the margin of his loss (in Chamundeshwari), which at 36,000 points towards a significant consolidation of Vokkaliga and Lingayat votes,” he added.

Siddaramaiah decided to vacate the Varuna seat, which was cleaved out of the Chamundeshwari seat in 2008 after the delimitation exercise was conducted, in favour of his younger son Yathindra. Siddaramaiah had earlier won the Chamundeshwari seat in 2006 by a small margin of around 250 votes.

Jamdar said the view among Lingayats was that the chief minister had done precious little in the first four years. “He incurred the ire of the Vokkaligas and the Lingayats in the beginning because he openly threatened the dominance of these communities,” Jamdar said.

Added to this, the Congress leader quoted above said, was Siddaramaiah’s decision to contest the Chamundeshwari constituency. “We had expected him to tour in the northern regions because that would have galvanized Lingayat voters. But with none of the other senior Congress leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge and G Parameshwara uttering a single word on this, it looked like nobody in the party wanted to own up to the move,” the leader said.