The heat and dust generated by the hateful and acrimonious exchanges over the Karnataka government's decision to celebrate the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan will settle down sooner or later. As in all other debates, there are merits and demerits in the arguments being put forward by both proponents and detractors; but what has been missing from most contentions is the role of the man central to the conflagration – the state's chief minister, S Siddaramaiah.
Before one delves into the political compulsions that made Siddaramaiah take such a decision, it is worth recollecting something that Canadian essayist Stephen Leacock penned almost 100 years ago while trying to point out fallacies intrinsic to many English proverbs. Among other sayings, he wrote about the one that talks of people who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones.
Leacock, almost derisively, argued: "Not at all. They are the very people who ought to throw stones and to keep on throwing them all the time. They ought to keep up such a fusillade of stones from their glass house that no one can get near it. Or if the proverb is taken to mean that people who have faults of their own ought not to talk of other people's faults, it is equally mistaken. They ought to talk of other people's faults all the time so as to keep attention away from their own."
The Canadian writer had a point, and the tactic he wrote about has been traditionally made use of by politicians both before and after Leacock wrote the essay, and by those who have or haven't even heard of him. Diversionary tactics are employed by politicians all the time – they prop up red herrings to ward of criticism of their actions and policies. The Karnataka chief minister's decision to play the Tipu card had this objective: get the media, the intelligentsia and the masses talking, and in fact bitterly squabbling, about something that in itself has little to do with the daily lives of the people of the state.
It is not difficult to pinpoint, and thereby, understand the reasons that led to the artful Tipu decision. Those are in fact the same reasons why Siddaramaiah has been been under fire from all quarters, both within and outside his Congress party: Bangalore is rotting, and Karnataka going to hell. And that's putting it across mildly. The state is burning, and the chief minister like Nero is playing the proverbial fiddle. Criticism of Siddaramaiah is this: that he is inept and inert. He doesn't act, he doesn't react.
When Siddaramaiah became chief minister in May 2013, the understanding in the Congress was that he would continue in his post only if he was able to prove his mettle within the first six months. But, he has held on, in spite of repeated poll debacles and accusations of governance failures.
The Congress has been ceding the turf it had won over from the Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2013. First, it won only nine seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP and the Janata Dal (Secular) won 17 and two respectively. Though it is not prudent to compare results of Assembly elections with those to the Lok Sabha, vote share changes do point towards a shift in loyalties. The Congress, which won 122 seats to the 224-member house in 2013, managed to topple the BJP with just 36.6 per cent of the votes. In 2014, it increased its share to 40.8 per cent, but that was hardly enough. The BJP, which had spawned a number of breakaway factions in 2013, besides being at loggerheads with ally JD(S), regained ground in 2014 – its vote percentage swelled up from a measly 19.9 per cent to an impressive 43 per cent. The arithmetic was clear: the BJP, as a united front, had barely lost political clout.
Siddaramaiah understood this too well, and expected the BJP-JD(S) to do an encore in the August 2015 elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). He held all crucial ministerial portfolios governing the city’s main civic agencies – BBMP, the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) and the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB). Everything wrong with Bangalore reflected adversely on him. He knew the BJP might have lost the state in 2013, but it still retained control over a considerably large turf in Bangalore winning 12 of the 28 Assembly seats in the city. Then, it grabbed all three Lok Sabha seats in Bangalore a year later. Moreover, 113 of the outgoing palike’s 198 corporators were from the BJP. Siddaramaiah wanted Bangalore badly. A defeat would not only be a reflection on his own administrative lethargy, it would buck a historical trend: no party in power at the state had lost civic elections in the capital since 1983. He first tried to trifurcate the BBMP, dismissed the outgoing council, and even attempted to put off the polls. He failed, and paid the price with a defeat. Yet, he managed to grab the mayor's position for the party – since legislators and parliamentarians are by rule allowed to vote in the BBMP mayor's post. He also weaned away the JD(S) from the BJP. He may have been failed at governance, but succeeded in electoral games.
But Bangalore is not Karnataka. The BJP and its innumerable saffron variants have been on the ascendancy across the state, especially in the coastal and Hubli-Dharwad regions, since the party came to power on its own in 2008. What began as marauding attacks on churches in the Mangalore area culminated in the horrific murder of rationalist MM Kalburgi a few months back. Siddaramaiah has not only been unable to tackle Hindu rightwingers politically, he has also been come a cropper in addressing the issues plaguing Bangalore's huge hinterland. Farmer suicides in the state are among the highest in the country, and so-called development outside the capital remains a pipedream.
Moves have been afoot within the Congress to unseat the chief minister, but all dissident efforts have failed. Karnataka is the only major state now ruled by the party; it can ill-afford to show a sign of disunity. For his part, Siddaramaiah is not a pushover – he is both aggressive and wily. Still, he needs to divert attention from his non-performance. Hence, you had the Tipu controversy.
Siddaramaiah knows that he's living in a glass house.
