Karnataka, new template for state politics?

Pritam Singh
Professor of Economics, Oxford Brookes University, UK

NOW with Yeddyurappa's resignation, the BJP's manoeuvre to form the government has failed. It is time to reflect on the larger implications of the Karnataka election result for state politics in India and, perhaps, even at the Centre. Although there are several ethical, legal and constitutional aspects of what has happened in Karnatak arecently, it is important to focus on the most crucial political aspect of the Karnataka verdict which is that the BJP has been defeated, the Congress has not won and a Karnataka-based regional party JD (U) will have its representative as the Chief Minister of the state with support from the depleted Congress. What looked like an unstoppable march of the BJP has been stopped and the Congress has not managed to become the rival winner - it had to subordinate itself to a region-based party. Could this become the template for region/state-based politics to start with and then shape the nature of coalition power-sharing at the Centre? 

The 4 political tendencies

To grasp the significance of the Karnataka template, it is important to have a broad view of the four broad competing political tendencies in the country and its regions.  

1 First, the grand old party, the Congress. Its core vision is to weld various diversities in India into one unified Indian identity, even if it has a Hindu tinge. It tries to disguise that tinge by splashing a secular colour. This tightrope dancing between claiming allegiance from the country's Hindu majority while pretending to be secular to win support from the religious minorities is at the core of the ambiguity that characterises Congress politics despite various turns and twists in the form and content of this ambiguity. However, behind that deliberate, though not always self- conscious, ambiguity lies a core mission: construct one unified Indian national identity by subordinating and, if necessary crushing, diversities of identities that challenge that unified identity. Proclaiming secularism is not based on acknowledging the intrinsic worth of secularism but is viewed instrumentally as a tool to fulfil that mission of creating one unified identity. This core mission lends this party to be a strong votary of centralisation and its politico-economic project has strengthening centralisation as the overarching agenda to achieve that aim of one unified identity. The Nehruvian agenda of central planning had both the economic dimension of central economic coordination as well as political project of unification. The ugliest form of that centralising agenda got manifested through Indira Gandhi's Emergency regime (1975-1977).

2 The main rival of the Congress that has emerged slowly and steadily since 1947 and in an accelerated form since the 1980s is the BJP, from its earlier incarnation as Jana Sangh. Its political project for India has one similarity with the Congress': building one strong Indian identity over all other identities it views as divisive of that identity. However, it has one big dissimilarity from the Congress: it believes that one Indian identity can only be built through superimposing the hegemony of Hindu cultural values over all other diverse values. To facilitate that superimposition of Hindu cultural values, its members are also ardent believers in strengthening centralisation in all spheres: political, administrative, constitutional, internal and external security, law, education and media communications.

3 Opposed to both the Congress and BJP visions of centralisation is a third decentralising tendency emerging from the strength of diverse identities: regional, linguistic, religious and non-upper caste Hindu identities of Dalit and backward castes. Most of these diverse identities, except linguistic ones, remained dormant in the first two decades after India's independence due to the overpowering political culture of building a new nation in those two decades. The dissident voices of linguistic identities especially opposed to the prioritisation of Hindi, the language of the Hindi region, over the languages of non-Hindi regions did fracture that overpowering political culture. This fracture had its roots in the contestation over language in the Constitution making process. In the Constituent Assembly debates, the power of the Hindi-speaking northern region supported by the representatives of western India (the present-day Maharashtra and Gujarat) was opposed bitterly by the non-Hindi region representatives who even called it Hindi imperialism.

With the development of capitalism and communications that facilitate the voicing of identities that had remained unarticulated previously, the mid-1960s saw the emergence of regional parties that challenged the hegemony of the Congress. In the Assembly elections in 1967, from Bengal to Punjab saw regional parties and Left combinations forming governments. The ground realities of diversities had manifested against the ideological agenda of unification and centralisation. The decline of the all-mighty Congress had started, now culminating in it holding power in only three small states —  Punjab, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

4 The fourth political tendency — the parliamentary left — was once a champion of diversities but has increasingly become pro-centralist in the name of defending Indian nationhood, though with a secular orientation. It has regional roots, but it is in a state of denial.

In this changed scenario of a weakened Congress and Left, regional parties are emerging as the main challengers of centralising Hindu hegemonism of the BJP. This challenge is not clear-cut, it is messy and at times confused, especially when a regional formation such as the Akali Dal (Badal) subordinating itself, even while sulking, to the BJP, but the overall direction of this challenge is clear, ie diverse regional identities constitute a negation of one centralising Hindu identity. 

The Congress needs to reinvent itself by abandoning its vision of centralisation and adjusting to the reality of being a subordinate player to regional formations. The Left needs to reorient its politics of acknowledging the progressive potentialities of regional parties in challenging growing centralisation and authoritarianism under BJP rule. 

For a progressive agenda to develop in a capitalist economy, strengthening of democracy is a must. Regional parties have the potential to be the voice of democracy not only in the states but also through forming coalitions at the Centre and thus representing the true diversity of India. Karnataka, with all its limitations, may emerge as the harbinger of the making of a new decentralising and democratic India.