In Karnataka, JD(S) tactfully fills the regional vacuum

Regional parties have dominated neighbouring Tamil Nadu and undivided Andhra Pradesh for decades and now Telangana too. Kerala has its own unique coalitions. But, Karnataka stands out for the absence of a regional party. The national parties — Congress, Janata Dal (Secular) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — still dominate electoral space in this state.

Across India, regional parties today are a considerable political force. More often than not, they have been singularly successful as they have been able to tap into local aspirations be it through language, caste or community.

The absence of a regional party in Karnataka reflects the fractured nature of the state in its culture, history, politics and sociological makeup.

Linguistic divide

Linguistic bonding could have been a driving force in fostering Kannada nationalism represented by a political party. But that has not happened thus far. Not that there has been no forceful movement for the local language. The historical 1980 Gokak agitation for the primacy of Kannada in administration is a case in point.

Kannada groups and supporters ensured that the 1980 agitation was a mass broad-based movement. But once the demands were accepted by the government, the movement lost steam. One reason for this is, unlike Tamil Nadu where Tamils dominate the entire state, in Karnataka there are other languages as well. Tulu and Konkani languages dominate Coastal Karnataka and the districts of Mangalore and Udupi. In Kodagu district, the local Kodava language prevails. These languages are different from Kannada and have their own literary history though they may share some vocabulary.

Similarly in the Uttara Kannada region, a large section of people speak Havyaka, a language that again is different from Kannada. And then, there are those who speak Sankethi, again a language in its own right.

To the north-west of Karnataka, towards Belgaum, Marathi is a dominant language and the Kannada spoken there has a liberal mix of that language. In the north-eastern part of the state, Kannada is mixed with Telugu as the region adjoins Andhra Pradesh and Rayalaseema.

The standard Kannada, used as an official government language, is the language of the people in central and southern parts of the state. Groups like Kannada Chaluvaligars with their base in the state capital Bengaluru do exist. But either due to the absence of a long-term vision and strategy or the limitations of leadership, they have been unable to transcend petty formations and turn into formidable political parties.

Diverse histories 

The state is also not bound by a common history. Karnataka did not exist prior to the reorganisation of states. It was stitched together from the erstwhile princely Mysore state in the south, parts of Madras presidency (Kodagu and the coastal region), Bombay presidency (Belgaum in the north and surrounding areas) besides pre-independent Hyderabad state (currently districts like Bellary and Raichur).

The heterogeneity is also a reason why well-known film stars like Rajkumar hesitated to enter politics as their following was not uniform across the state. Even Kannada language films exist with difficulty as they have been unable to get a pan-Karnataka audience support like what one sees in Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu.

Regional parties, a far cry

In the early 1980s when the Congress faced serious anti-incumbency in the state, the situation was ripe for the emergence of a regional party. The Janata Party, either by choice or design occupied that space. Though on paper it was a national party with units across India, it functioned like a regional party. For instance, there was nothing equivalent to a party high command that existed in the Congress or the BJP. All decisions relating to Karnataka were taken in Bangalore and the buck stopped with leaders like HD Deve Gowda and Ramakrishna Hegde.

The Janata Party later metamorphosed into the Janata Dal and the party split with one of the factions headed by Gowda (JD-Secular), which is still dominant in parts of the state. But the intrinsic nature of the party has not changed. All decisions including nomination of candidates for elections start and end in Bengaluru.

And, since the JD(S) does not have a similarly dominant presence  in the south and in most parts of the north except perhaps for Bihar, where the other faction (JD –United) is prominent, the party can afford to articulate issues similar to what a regional party would do. The Cauvery water dispute issue is such an instance. But, at the same time, the JD(S) has a national character with smattering presence in other states. That is a limitation, but is also negligible.

In the past, prominent leaders of mainstream parties like former chief minister Devaraj Urs attempted to start their own regional parties (the Karnataka Kranti Ranga) after tiffs with the Congress party high command. Bangarappa too quit the Congress and joined the KKR and in fact was in a coalition government with the Janata Party in 1983 in the state’s first non-Congress government.

But Urs earlier couldn’t shake off his image as a Congress leader while Bangarappa did not persevere with the KKR eventually re-joining the Congress after letting the KKR go adrift.

The state saw a successful farmers’ movement (the Karnataka Rajya Rytha Sangha) in the 1980’s and there was talk at the time that it could result in a peasant-based political party. But under its suave urbane chief MD Nanjundaswamy, it was unable to make the transition. After his death in 2004 it broke up into various factions and today exists only in name.

Similarly, the 1980s saw the emergence of a statewide Dalit mobilisation under the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti (DSS) and for a while it looked like its transition into a political party was imminent. But in both the farmers’ case and as regards to the Dalit movement, the Janata Party under Hegde cleverly neutralised any possibility by co-opting several of their leaders and by engineering splits in both the groups.

Thus, the story of a non-existent regional party in Karnataka along the lines of the DMK or the TDP is either one of missed opportunities (for those who would have liked to see one today) or a piece of unintended luck (for those who believe that national parties are better). And, probably satisfying both is a faux regional party in the form of the JD(S).

(This is the first of a three-part series on the domination of regional parties in southern India)