Can Hindutva push beyond its traditional bastion to deliver results for the BJP in Karnataka?

Karnataka Assembly elections 2023 | Can Hindutva push beyond its traditional bastion to deliver results for the BJP in Karnataka?

When the BJP pushed through a change of guard in its government in Karnataka in July 2021, from B.S. Yediyurappa to Basavaraj Bommai, it also marked a change in the tone of both the party and its government in the State. It kicked off an experiment to push “hardline Hindutva”, and whether it will yield dividends for the BJP is to be seen in the upcoming elections.

The change of guard in Karnataka in July 2021, from B.S. Yediyurappa to Basavaraj Bommai, also marked the change in the tone of the BJP and its government in the State. It kicked off an experiment to push “hardline Hindutva” and whether it will yield dividends for the BJP is to be seen in the upcoming elections.

On the one hand, the government passed laws like The Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, (better known as the anti-conversion law), ostensibly to fight “love jihad”, and The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act (KPSPCA), 2020, (the cow slaughter ban law), with stringent clauses. On the other hand, the State saw intense communal polarisation, especially in the first half of 2022, an unprecedented campaign that started with banning Muslim girlsfrom wearing hijab in classrooms in Udupi and which soon extended to calls for banning halal meat and the azaan or Muslim call to prayer, and even for a boycott of Muslim traders in temple fairs. 

However, that communal campaign slowed down by June 2022. “There was a realisation within the party that it had gone too far and taking the narrative any further may backfire. So the volume was reduced,” a senior strategist for the BJP said.

Interestingly, the demand for slowing down came from the party’s leaders in coastal Karnataka, a region considered to be Hindutva’s laboratory in the State, sources said. This is the region where the murder of a BJP worker, Praveen Nattaru, has come to haunt the party as the workers are angry at the leaders for “doing little” for their safety and cause. The ban on radical Muslim organisation, the Popular Front of India (PFI), was an attempt to assuage this anger, sources said.  However, the BJP has now fielded leaders like Yashpal Suvarna, a Hindutva hardliner who was the face of the hijab campaign and was earlier accused of cow vigilantism. 

What was different about last year’s Hindutva push was that it went beyond the traditional ideological pockets of coastal Karnataka and the Mumbai Karnataka or Kittur Karnataka regions. The hijab protests spread even to Mandya, part of the Vokkaliga heartland; the Ram Navami celebrations of 2022 saw communal flare-ups in several parts of the Kalyana Karnataka region, besides the Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts.

The BJP has tried to revive the Idgah Maidan dispute in Bengaluru, promised a Ram Mandir — on the lines of the one being built in Ayodhya — in Ramanagara, and is developing Anjanadri temple, said to be the “birthplace of Hanuman” in Koppal. The party tried to push a theory that two Vokkaliga chieftains, Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda, killed 19th century Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan for his alleged atrocities against Hindus. This narrative against the king, who died in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore war in 1799, had to beat an unforeseen retreat, as a section of Vokkaligas perceived it as an attempt to brand their community as “traitors” who killed a man who is still regarded a “hero.”