The political discourse in Mandya district, known as the sugar bowl of Karnataka, has long been dictated by the Cauvery issue or by Vokkaliga identity. The traditional rivals in the State, the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular), have always shared the electoral spoils. With the exception of winning a by-election in 2019 from the K.R. Pet Assembly constituency, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not won any Lok Sabha or Assembly seat in the district.
The party, therefore, is leaving no stone unturned to change this. Recently, a saffron flag with an image of Hanuman, which was flying from a 108-foot tall flagpole on government land in Keragodu village, about 12 km from the district headquarters, was replaced by the government with the national tricolour. The sensitive issue comes close on the heels of the BJP joining hands with the JD(S), a potent electoral force in the Vokkaliga heartland, to fight the Lok Sabha elections.
The saffron flag was replaced by the national flag amid strong protests on January 28. The local administration pointed out that permission had been given to a private trust to hoist either the national flag or the Karnataka flag on the flagpole.
A day later, the BJP took out a march from Keragodu to the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Mandya. The march was led by the BJP’s former national General Secretary, C.T. Ravi, and comprised mostly activists from the party and its frontal organisations such as the Bajrang Dal and the Vishva Hindu Parishad. The activists sported saffron flags and shawls and shouted ‘Jai Sri Ram’. JD(S) leader and former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy also turned up at the protest site near the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Mandya wearing a saffron shawl.
At the protest site, Mr. Kumaraswamy shared the BJP’s anger over the lowering of the saffron flag by the government. He blamed the Congress government, led by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, for “communalising” the atmosphere. The next day, reacting to Mr. Siddaramaiah’s accusations that the JD(S) leader, alongside the BJP, was inciting violence, he told reporters that he will not support illegal activities of the BJP. As Mr. Kumaraswamy’s saffron shawl came under media glare, party supremo H.D. Deve Gowda felt that he could have instead sported the JD(S)’s colours. But he added that there was no need to read too much into it.
Clearly, the JD(S) leader appeared to be focusing more on countering the Congress, which had stormed the party’s citadel in Mandya by defeating it in six out of seven constituencies during the 2023 Assembly elections. Even though the Mandya Lok Sabha seat is held by film actor Sumalatha, an independent candidate who had declared her support for the BJP after defeating Mr. Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil during the 2019 polls, the JD (S) is expected to bargain hard for Mandya during its seat-sharing talks with the BJP.
With the BJP-JD (S) combine calling for a Mandya bundh on February 9, the Congress leaders see a political game plan by the BJP and its new-found political ally in the State to “polarise” voters before the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress has said that the BJP is trying to convert Mandya into another Hindutva laboratory in the State, after its experiments in coastal Karnataka.
Congress leaders in Mandya have also predicted that that the flag row could boomerang on the BJP. Agriculture Minister N. Cheluvarayaswamy, who is also Minister in charge of the district, and Malavalli MLA P.M. Narendraswamy have argued that the bundh call is indirectly against the national flag that is now flying from the flagpole.
The flag row is not the first sensitive issue to rock Mandya in recent years. In the run-up to the 2023 Assembly elections, BJP leaders had similarly tried to build a narrative around Uri Gowda and Dodda Nanje Gowda. The party claimed that these Vokkaliga warriors had killed Tipu Sultan, the erstwhile ruler of Mysuru, even though there are no historical records to back this claim. The efforts failed to yield any electoral dividends.
However, unlike the past when the JD(S) strongly opposed the BJP’s “communal” planks such as the hijab issue and the Uri Gowda and Dodda Nanje Gowda narrative, the regional party has now aligned with the saffron party. The alliance could either help the BJP-JD (S) combine or it could prove to be counter-productive like it did for the Congress-JD(S) alliance in 2019.
