How many people actually say that their main interest in life is
politics? Well, Renuka VISHVANATHAN is assertively and self admittedly one such person.
India’s Republic day on 26th January 2026 being an apt
occasion, I discuss with Renuka her comments on the Indian democracy, published
in her recent book, “Bless this Mess”.
Renuka VISWANATHAN is a retired IAS (Indian Administrative Services)
officer. In her long bureaucratic career spanning more than 37 years, she has
worked as Department Head to the State and Central secretariat. Renuka was a
Rural Development Secretary under the UPA government of Manmohan SINGH. In
2018, she contested the Karnataka assembly election from the Shanti Nagar
constituency of Bangalore under the banner of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
In this part 1 session, we discuss her childhood memories of Kerala and
Tamilnadu politics, the pillars of democracy, her own assessment of democratic
credentials of the Indian republic, the effects of transmuting demography on
the voter lists, the caste calculations and its repercussions on the State and
General elections, the frittering federalism and much more.
Here are few piercing and pertinent ponderings by Renuka.
“Not every vote has the same value”.
“The (electoral) majority is
actually a minority”.
“Democracy allowed the minority viewpoint of “Hindutva” to become that
of the ruling viewpoint.”
“The caste factor affects the National elections differently than it
affects the State elections.”
Presenting to you this grand invitation where Renuka invites citizens
for being “active participants” in democracy!
Note:
1) Simultaneous subtitles are provided in two languages.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAfFg7Sx8g
2) This interview could be read in the form of an article in the following languages: English, French, Italian, Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and Kannada.Anubandh: Hello! My name is Anubandh KATÉ. I am a Paris based engineer and since more than a year now I have been doing interviews with different authors. This is because I like reading books. Today, I am very happy as this is one of the rare times when I get to interview a friend who has also written a book. Her name is Renuka VISHWANATHAN.
Welcome Renuka!
Renuka: Thank you.
Anubandh: You are welcome. Renuka is a friend but I would also say that she is a “comrade”. That is the word that she likes to use, as she has mentioned it in her book. Also because when I was staying in Bangalore, we worked together in the initial days of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). We were involved in several activities there.
The name of Renuka’s book is “Bless This Mess”. This is
a compilation of her comments on Indian democracy and of her rich political
experiences.
Before I begin today's session, I would like to introduce Renuka formally. Renuka’s early childhood was in Madras (Chennai) which was once part of the Madras Presidency. Later, she moved to Cochin (Ernakulam) in the State of Kerala State. Her father was a high court judge and later he became the Chief Justice of Kerala. Her mother was a doctor. That is for her family background.
When it comes to her education, she has done a BA (Bachelor of Arts) in Economics, Politics and History from Kerala University. Later, a MA (Master of Arts) in English at Annamalai University. Then, she did a second MA in Economics. It was through a correspondence course. Further, she completed in France a MPhil (Master of Philosophy) or DESS (D'Études Supérieures Spécialisées) course in public finance. Later, she did as well a PhD in 1984 at the Paris IX University. It was a “Doctorat d'État” with a comparative study of the fiscal systems of federations. That is about her French connection as well.
Now, regarding her professional responsibilities. She entered the civil service and worked as a bureaucrat for 37 years. She moved up the ranks from a junior functionary to a department head, then to the state and central secretariat. She was the rural development secretary under the UPA government of Manmohan SINGH. She also had a role in proposing laws and policies for approval by the cabinet and for the vote of the legislature in the state and in the central parliament. She was as well part of discussions on cabinet notes before they were approved. Renuka has travelled across the world for professional and personal reasons. She was also the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections from Shantinagar (Bangalore).
Renuka has been an activist for voter registration and enrollment in schools of children of economically weak sections under the RTE (Right to Education) Act. She has also volunteered to help women subject to domestic violence.
Now, the cities and countries that she has stayed in or visited. I talked about her transfer from Madras to Cochin. Then she went to Mysore where she got married. Later, she moved to Bangalore. From there to Paris and then to Delhi and finally to Bangalore. Initially, she scuttled between Delhi and Bangalore for quite some time.
Renuka is a polyglot. She speaks multiple languages and enjoys them. Malayalam is her mother tongue. She also speaks Tamil, Kannada, Hindi and English. She has learnt French for four years at the Alliance Française de Bangalore (AFB). Renuka also loves Spanish, which she learnt during several years at the Delhi Institute of Foreign Languages and later at Bangalore University.
Above all, what is important is that Renuka has multiple interests and passions. She is a film buff. She loves theatre, music, literature and arts. Renuka loves travelling, reading and much more. Undoubtedly, Renuka is an inspiring personality for all of us.
I have read your book and I very much appreciated it because it brings together not only your comments, your observations but these observations come from your “on the ground experiences” and through your “field activities”. Added to that is as well an intellectual input. Therefore, it has a great mix.
Your book has chapters on politics and there are general comments on Indian democracy. Then, we have voter list related issues. You have dealt with the judiciary, the accountability of politicians, and the experiences of women in politics and in democracy. You have written about the role of bureaucracy in a democracy, the impact of caste on electoral outcomes and a lot more.
My first question to you is; what made you write this book? What was your inspiration?
Renuka: I started to think about writing this book when I looked back on my life and wondered about my main interest in life. I realized that I had always been fascinated by politics. So, I tried to put together what I had learned academically about political science and the experiences that I had known when I was working as an activist on the ground. That was where the book started.
Anubandh: Great. Thank you.
There are some highlights that I would like to point out from the book, which really captivated my attention.
First; you have touched on varied and diverse issues. It is not just one issue based writing or reflection. As I said earlier, you have also included your personal experiences as a bureaucrat, as a concerned citizen, as an activist, as a politician. We witness here a lot of ground level inputs that are precious.
Second; you have also compared Indian democracy with other democracies in the world. It is very vital not to lose focus in details, in just one country and in one democracy but to also have a broader view.
Third; I am from Maharashtra and unfortunately, the people from North India do not have much in depth knowledge about the politics of the South. Since that is for them something very intricate, different and complicated, the language being one reason as a barrier. Personally, I spent seven years in Bangalore and I did not know many of these things. Thanks to your book, I have now learnt them. Therefore, South Indian politics in a simple, accessible way, put together is the highlight for me.
Fourth; I note that you have both admired and criticized the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the book. This, in a way, is a proof of your objectivity. It is quite interesting as you have avoided being partisan.
Fifth; you are convinced that politics is the only path to change and that is what you mentioned in your conclusion. I really admire that.
What I also liked was the beautiful comparison that you made in the book between the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. And your childhood memories from these states.
This is what I took and I really liked from the book. Now, I request you to tell us about your childhood memories of those times and the transition from Tamil Nadu to Kerala that you had.
Renuka: Actually, I would like to see the differences and the similarities between Kerala and Tamilnadu from today's point of view. The major political similarity is that both these states have completely been free of the “Bhakt” virus. The right wing virus. They are both completely free and that is the bastion which today the RSS and the BJP are targeting. This is the door that they are hammering at, in order to somehow find an entry to both these states. That is an interesting side light because their resistance to the right wing is due to completely different causes.
In the case of Kerala, it is because of the socialist ideology. Kerala was perhaps the first state in the world to have openly elected a communist government to power. That happened immediately after independence. Nevertheless, in Tamil Nadu there is absolutely nothing leftist in the ideology of the two parties (DMK and AIDMK). Both are regional parties and what inspires them to fight the rest of the country is basically a tremendous sense of Tamil nationalism, Tamil culture and even a desire at one point, as I have written, to form a separate Tamil state. Thus, one thing, which is very important about both these states is that they fought the right wing, but they fought it for different reasons.
The other very important thing that I noticed was that Tamilnadu was secessionist. It started with a secessionist philosophy and this is even now to some extent enshrined in the fondness in Tamil Nadu for federalism. Tamil Nadu is probably the one state in India, which has pushed the federal boundaries of the Constitution to the maximum extent. That is the reason why for education they have their own policy and they will hold on to it. They will try to show how much you can formulate your own educational policy. As you are very well aware from France education is the key to the minds of people. When it comes to something like political change or democracy, it is absolutely the key. Which is why Tamilnadu fights the fight for education for all of us. However, when I went to Kerala, I found that nobody even understood the concept of secession. They never ever thought of forming a separate state. I mean, it is true that the Travancore - Cochin kingdom did try to become an independent state just before independence. Nevertheless, right now, there is no one in Kerala who thinks of leaving India. Nobody wants that. They never even think of themselves as separate from India because everything that they need, they get from the rest of India. Their food and all the other support. Besides, they also go everywhere and work. This has been happening also in the case of Tamil Nadu but the emotional part which is built into the structure, that kind of feeling is just totally absent in Kerala.
In Kerala, there are two national parties. One is of course the Left Front and the other is a middle of the road Congress front. That is a major difference between the two states, which I have noticed.
Anubandh: Thank you.
Regarding this secessionist tendency that we had in Tamil Nadu. Last year, I happened to talk to the Swedish political scientist, Sten WIDMALM, concerning his book, “Kashmir in comparative perspective”, about Kashmir and other Indian states. There, he said that the approach of the Indian state to deal with the secessionist tendencies in Kashmir and in Tamil Nadu was quite in contrast. For example, when the Congress saw that the DMK and other regional parties were demanding a separate state and they had public support, it accepted electoral defeat, took a back seat and allowed democracy to flourish. While it had exactly the opposite approach to Kashmir, where it tried to meddle with the politics of the state and did not really allow democracy to flourish there. In fact, the flourishing of democracy could potentially have ceased the demand for a separate country for Kashmir.
Renuka: I completely agree with what he has said. In fact, I had actually written a piece on this when the Kashmir troubles were escalating. I have seen throughout my years at Delhi, how Kashmir was never allowed to perform democratically by any government. There is one slight difference between Tamil Nadu and Kashmir though. It is a slight difference really. Kashmir was a border state in the north and the bordering country, Pakistan, just adjoined it. Therefore, there was a land border with Pakistan. This did make Kashmir a little more fragile. Nevertheless, Tamilnadu was also very much on the border. There was Sri Lanka just across the border. There is just a small, a little strait between India and Sri Lanka. The Kashmir problem was very much about the need for the Centre to dominate it. Therefore, my own feeling is that a greater degree of federalism could have completely cured the Kashmiri psyche of any intention or desire to be secessionist. Of course, this may be a very simplistic explanation but I still think that greater democracy is always a solution to secession.
Anubandh: Thanks.
Now, what I suggest is that I would share my screen. Because I have taken some aspects from your book and made a small presentation. You will recognize this.
It is important to begin with a broader framework and what you have compared and written about in the book. It is about the pillars of democracy. On the top, we have “the people - the voters”. We have two major systems of governance. One is called the “Westminster” model, which we have in India and in UK. The other one is the “Presidential” model in USA and France. Among the four pillars that we have, the first is the legislature. Then you have the executive, the judiciary and the media. Although you have not dedicated a special chapter to media, you have treated this topic in other chapters.
The legislature is always elected by the people. It has a lower house and an upper house. In the Upper house, there is an indirect selection of representatives. The executive may be elected directly or indirectly. So, we have a Prime Minister in the Westminster system who is the head of the government. While we have a President in the “Presidential system”.
Then, you have the judiciary. About the judiciary, there could be three ways of selecting judges. There is a “collegium” system that we have in India. There could be “competitive exams”. Then there are “elections”. The judiciary is often not answerable to the people and it is not constituted by elected representatives. Nevertheless, there is a debate that it should also be made accountable to the people. And in the book, you also talked about the fact that the judiciary is the guarantor of the safeguards of the Constitution and the standards of probity. Further, a constitution is not a must in a democracy. You said that a few countries like the UK do not have a constitution, in the regular sense. And you mentioned that the United States has a specificity where the president is elected by an “electoral College” constituted by the States and not by popular votes alone. Further, you took the example of TRUMP and some other Presidents before him, who had lost the popular vote but became Presidents even though most voters did not vote for them.
This is all I wanted to say. First of all, do you agree with this representation that I made from your book? And if you have any comments on this.
Renuka: Yes, roughly yes. We have three different branches in any government whether it is a democracy or not, and definitely so in a democracy. You have a legislature, you have an executive and you have a judiciary. I did not actually treat the media as a separate requirement for democracy, because I had made my own list of what I thought were the requirements of democracy. Your list here is not exactly in line with what my book says, There I have worked out a revised theory of democracy. However, by and large, yes, this is fair enough. I mean, you have got it.
Anubandh: Thanks. And since we are at it, I would also like to present one more chart where you did the rankings about India, about the Indian democracy.
This is what I prepared from your book. Again, I will invite you to confirm it.
We have different criteria here. You have given a score out of 10 and I have highlighted some comments there.
First criterion; it is about free and fair elections. You have given four out of 10. You have mentioned that there are EVM manipulations, exclusion of voters from electoral lists, there is hounding of opposition parties through government machinery, etc.
Second criterion; it is about canvassing minority views. To what extent this is allowed. On that account, the score is four out of 10. Since there are missing consultative and inclusive procedures, both inside and outside parliament.
Third criterion; it is about the judiciary. You have given 5 out of 10 because of occasional protection of constitutional rights and freedoms. I might invite you to give this a rethink since the standard of the judiciary in India is decreasing day by day. Thus, this score could be revisited and perhaps lowered further.
Fourth criterion; it is the responsiveness of the
government to the concerns of voters. The score is four out of ten. This is
because of the dilution of RTI and the takeover of media.
Fifth criterion; it is regarding democratic egalitarianism. You have given six out of ten, thanks to the protests for human rights and the high voter turnout. These are clear indicators. This I agree.
Sixth criterion; it is about post-election peaceful transfer of power. I consider this issue as being quite important because in the context of India, not many people talk about it. We take it for granted. Although, now there are serious reservations about how BJP tries to turn every election outcome in their favor. Therefore, that is seven out of 10. Moderate recourse to president's rule. This is for sure. We have not seen as many declarations of President’s rule since 2014, as perhaps in the past.
On an average, the cumulative score comes out to be five out of ten.
Do you agree with this representation?
Renuka: Yes. I think you have summarized it very well.
Actually, I had identified, as you can see on the left hand side, six points which I consider to be the essentials of democracy. This is a very impressionistic marking. There are a number of agencies, international agencies with very good credentials who actually quantify their markings and then they give a rank to India. We (India) have been going very quickly down in the rankings over the last few years, at least since the last 10 years, India has lost its position as a democratic country in international rankings. What I have done is very impressionistic. And this by the way, was what I wrote at the time the book went to the press. Politics is very fluid and things keep changing all the time. There is always a back and forth movement.
Since we will be talking about the judiciary later, I shall not now debate about the marks that I have given to the judiciary.
Regarding democratic egalitarianism, I am glad that you agree with me. That you have come to the same conclusion that I have. Now we have more evidence of this. Right now, look at the protest for protecting the Aravalli (mountains). It actually seems to have succeeded. The last I saw was that the government has agreed not to allow mining in the Aravallis. Let us see to what extent they keep their promise. However, it is good that people are vigilant. That they are able to actually get on the ground and get some results. This is the reason why I have faith in the Indian people to turn the narrative around by resorting to protests when it is necessary.
Anubandh: I must stress that in the book, you have also noted that you are a natural optimist. I agree with that as well because India and Indians can throw up surprises, sometimes even incredible surprises. The farmers’ protest has in the past given us a reason to believe so. There was as well the anti CAA protest. These for me are huge public expressions of disapproval. They indeed are laudable.
What I also liked in this exercise is the fact that you did not only confine yourself to commenting on existing rankings by agencies, Indian or foreign, but you went one-step ahead. And with your experiences, your reflections, you made your own evaluations. That kind of furthers the debate. I really appreciate that initiative.
I now have this topic where you came up with a very important discovery when you said that all votes do not have the same value. That is really a tagline for me. You further argued that the majority is actually a minority. That is another of your findings. On these two concepts, I will just read a few key points and then invite your comments.
You have noted that the state wise seat allocation in Parliament is frozen but the intrastate redrawing of constituencies and boundaries was done in 2008, as it was recommended by the Kuldip SINGH Commission. You were lucky to get a hand on this report. It really revealed something very striking to you. You noticed that Karnataka had the largest number of voters per constituency of any state and this meant that the vote of a Karnataka voter had less value than that of a voter in any other (Indian) state and that is very revealing!
Then later, when you contested the election in Shantinagar (Bangalore), you realized that there were 2 lakh (200 000) voters in Shantinagar while there were 4 lakh (400 000) in the adjacent constituency of KR Puram. Therefore, this halved the value of the K R Puram voter. In general, people do not think about their votes in these terms. Further, you cited the NGO JANAGRAHA, who had done a survey and had found that only 55% of the names on the voters’ list were those of genuine voters. You analysed that with 55% of genuine voters, a participation rate of let us say, 60 to 70%, and first-past-the-post counting, the MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly), the elected representative had been selected by hardly 10 to 15% of his constituents! Therefore, that is the reality, the stark reality. The question you ask is the following: Can what we have be then called the government of the people? The rule of the majority?
Then, the last thing is about your argument that the majority is actually a minority. You said that our democracy allowed the minority viewpoint of “Hindutva” to become the ruling viewpoint over a period of time. This is the promise of democratic effervescence, where the minority, one day, can hope to become a ruling majority.
So, thank you for these thoughts. Now, I invite you to comment.
Renuka: Well, actually, if you do not mind, let me just go a bit back. What I was realizing as I wrote the book was that when democracy is defined, when you work out the definition, it really comes down to the rule of the majority. The discovery was to find that we do not have the tools to create a majority government (and I am talking purely as a technician of democracy, and not of the concept itself) If I do not have the right tools to capture the choices of people, when they elect a representative, am I actually delivering a democratic legislature or executive? Under the parliamentary system, the executive is actually selected by the legislature. Am I delivering a government which represents the majority? What I discovered, to my horror, is that we do not have the tools required for this in any democracy! Now, this might be controversial. However, we all need to think about it. We do not have the tools in any democracy to ensure that when people vote or when we go through the voting process, we can hope to end up with a legislature and an executive, which have the sanction or the support of the majority. However, what we actually end up with is a government against which the majority has voted! That is quite a discovery. That does not mean that I believe that we should not try out democracy. Because, I believe that democracy is probably one of the most hopeful concepts that human beings have invented and yet, they are still not there. We are very far from achieving the government of the people that we are all trying to do when we elect our representatives. Because we are not getting to a majority government.
Thus, my conclusion is that a legislature is not a place where a majority sits and runs the government. It is actually a mosaic of minorities. That is how I see it. I have given six reasons which actually prove that we do not achieve what we are trying to do, that is elect a government which represents the majority of the people.
And of course, the first one is basically that our voters lists are in total shambles. There is a huge gap between the people who should be on the voters list in a particular area and the actual voters list as we see it. Of course, the only way to find out the extent of the disparity is to study every constituency. You cannot substitute, you cannot do sample surveys. That does not really prove anything. It may be totally different from one constituency to the next.
And then, I have given you the JANAGRAHA survey. By the way, it was actually not given much publicity. There was a tendency to say, no, do not talk about it.
Now, the second point which you raised is about the value of every vote. This depends on whether we can adjust on a live basis the demographic movements across constituencies for any country. That is impossible in any democracy. I mean, whatever you do, you cannot do it on a live basis. Now, in a place like India, it becomes extremely difficult. Because the Kuldip SINGH Commission report was based on the 2001 census data. Our last census was done in 2010. We have not had a census in 2020. We are still 15 years down the line, without a census. We are ending up with a situation where we are so far behind the reality on the ground. This is the first problem.
The second problem is that when we draw the boundaries, we are going to have a major confrontation between the States who are going to lose influence in the parliament because their populations have been controlled, as against those which have been, let us say slightly less effective in controlling their populations. Therefore, there was a compromise. It was a political compromise but it was not democratic. It was a political compromise which has resulted in staying the number of seats given to a state, holding it down to a much earlier census date, not to the actual situation. This will come up now for renegotiation next year. States like Tamil Nadu are naturally raising the question as they fear that they are going to lose the number of seats or at least reduce their influence in Parliament. Therefore, that problem has to be tackled.
But why the Karnataka result, which you cited has come about was because by keeping the number of MPs (Members of Parliament) static, the Commission still had to allot the population among the various parliamentary seats of Karnataka. They did change the boundaries of some of the parliamentary seats but obviously it still ended up with a result which was quite different. This is based on a very old data, old census data. Thus, the whole situation is completely confused. It is completely mangled. I was thinking that any student of politics could do a great job. What you could do is to take your vote and simply calculate which constituency will give you the maximum effect of your vote. My vote is worth something in Shanti Nagar and maybe, if I vote elsewhere, I may be worth more or less. You can keep it within a state and see what is the value of a vote if I move from constituency A to B to C to D, depending on what the voters’ list says about the number of people on the list. That would be a fascinating exercise.
Anubandh: And this is what I really liked that as citizens, it is not just being a “passive voter” but being an “active participant”, an active Citizen. And that is the invitation that you are extending to all of us through these ideas. I really appreciate these.
Now we do not have much time left and cannot perhaps talk much in detail about everything. However, about the RTI (Right to Information) act, which is now highly diluted, there was an excellent suggestion that you cited. I wish to underline it here. It is coined by the former Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind KEJRIWAL. He said that information which was already released or provided under the RTI should be put on the departmental website. This will avoid people asking the same questions again so that the whole machinery has to work again. That is an excellent suggestion, about which I came to know thanks to your book.
Now, let us move to caste politics. This is an important chapter in your book. Once again, I will read some key points here.
What I really liked which I did not know much about is how women are classified in India after they marry outside their caste through inter caste marriages. You have said that although courts have held that such women will continue in the caste of their birth and their children have the option of claiming the caste status of either of the parents, officials invariably insist on classifying them under the caste of the father. I did not know that there was this protection or provision in the law. I took it for granted that it was the father’s caste that gets the prominence. Because, usually people assume that women are automatically inducted into the caste of their husbands. Thus, this is important to give us also the legal interpretation.
Then, you cited Dr. AMBEDKAR who had said that “ social, educational and income inequalities derived from caste would distort the political equality that is essential for democracy”. Perhaps many people already know this but it is important to stress it in today's times.
Further, you stated that the viewpoint of a politician is that the caste factor helps political parties to maximize their support base with minimum effort. Then, you mentioned something which was very striking and not many people think of it this way. You said that the impact of caste calculations on national elections is distinctly different from its effects on state politics. Caste is much more critical at the state level than at the center. You also underlined that academic studies about the impact of caste politics on India as a whole are yet to be made. We see many studies about state caste politics but not many about its pan India impact. This is important.
You further mentioned that the caste factor dominates in
the absence of a wave based on patriotic fervor like Pulwama, the sympathy
factor, which favoured Rajiv GANDHI after Indira GANDHI was murdered or just
hatred, like that provoked against Muslims in 2002, in the Gujarat elections.
Then you went back to history a bit and you talked about the Karnataka
elections of 1985. You gave the example of the Janta Party of Ramakrishna
HEGDE, which came to power in Karnataka, although it had lost a large number of
Lok Sabha seats in December 1984. This is an example of how voters vote
differently, almost within the same time frame for state and central elections.
Then, there is of course the example of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) winning the Delhi assembly elections in 2015 and 2020 but not getting many seats at the center.
I really thank you for explaining the Lingayat and Vokkaliga caste equation in Karnataka. I appreciate this because now I know the historical background and how things work there, the party wise calculations.
Then, there is this affirmation: “The notion of caste is antithetical to the ideas of equality and fraternity on which democracy is based.”
This is what I grouped together as main points from the caste deliberations that you had mentioned in the book. Please, if you have any comments.
Renuka: Thank you. The caste issue does not apply to any other country except India, because basically, we are the only ones who have a caste system. I discussed it not from a social or even a religious point of view, but to the extent to which it affects the political outcome of a democracy. And yes, it is my hypothesis because I have been working only with the knowledge I have of a few states. The caste factor does make a difference to a state level election but it makes a difference to the state level election only if there is no bigger narrative that can be put out to distort the election process there. Therefore, people think their identities are tied up with caste. Their economic interests too to some extent still continue to be tied to caste because caste is like a guild, a medieval guild which includes people of a particular occupation. Occupations were also tied to caste, to start with. These are the two things which actually make a difference in an election.
I found at least three occasions when a caste factor became important for a national election. The first was when, thanks to Dr. AMBEDKAR, the Constitution was adopted and we had reserved constituencies for the Dalits. That was a major political decision which was taken at the time when the constitution came out.
The second was at the time of the Mandal agitation. At that time, too, caste played a role. This has not been analyzed in a very precise academic manner. The Mandal factor made a difference in the elections which took place when V.P. SINGH stepped down and we had a midterm kind of election at that point. That is an interesting study which needs to be made. Because Mandal really became a factor at the national level.
And the third point is going to come now when you really have the caste census issue coming up for discussion. That is going to be quite interesting. It is very controversial and it will come up. It will become a national issue.
One major reason why state level results which are influenced by state level caste factors are not really affecting the national electoral outcome is because we do not have the dominance of the same castes across all states. You have a completely different set of castes which are dominant probably in Kerala. You have a different set of castes in Karnataka. They do not fall easily into the fourfold framework that the British were talking about. We are not in a fourfold caste classification. We are in a much more complicated situation where certain communities have captured the levers of power. When they have political power, they do not share it. That is only natural. That is human nature.
Now, the Karnataka situation proves perfectly that a national party tries to get a foothold in a state by two methods. One is to get beyond the caste factor by creating some kind of a national theme, like hatred or sympathy: by electing Rajiv GANDHI for example by talking about his mother's (Indira GANDHI) death. The caste factor makes absolutely no difference to the election when everybody can be thinking about something else. Now, it may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing: like hatred or just a common feeling of patriotism, that we are fighting some other country and that another country is threatening us. However, if they cannot make that narrative, what the national party does is to make alliances with regional parties. That is exactly what has happened in Karnataka.
Anyone from outside Karnataka is under the impression that Karnataka has many people who believe in right wing policies because we have had BJP governments. The truth is that hardcore right wing ideology is still quite marginal in Karnataka. It is only along the coastal area where you have a lot of people who from the beginning, have always believed in Hindutva. And then in the small district of Kodagu (Coorg). That’s it. Now, to some extent, Hindutva has been creeping into Bangalore which is becoming a very urbanized place. Here, you have a lot of people from outside Karnataka, coming and living in Bangalore. Therefore, Bangalore is not really a Kannadiga city in that sense. It has a lot of people from outside who bring in their prejudices but that is not really Karnataka.
Why the BJP has been able to come to power in Karnataka
is because they have made a caste alliance with one aggrieved community which
had been enjoying the fruits of power for a very long time and had jealously
guarded them. These are the Lingayats. From the beginning, if you look at
Karnataka political history after independence, one Chief minister after
another were from the Lingayats. The Lingayats felt that they had the natural
right to control what happened
politically. They totally captured all the fruits of power. This was the
situation when I first came to Karnataka. Then I saw how Chief Minister Devaraj
ARASU collected all the other communities
who were not part of the dominant groups and formed an alliance. With
that alliance, he could continue in power by practically doing a Bahishkara (a
boycott) saying that, “I will not have
the Lingayats with us.” Because the Lingayats were very jealous of their power
and they would not share it. Thus, they were actually in the doghouse and they found
a national sponsor in the BJP. The BJP saw a very good opportunity. An alliance
was formed. The BJP, by itself, with its fundamentalist ideas cannot come to
power in Kannataka. It can only come in using the caste factor. The Lingayats,
believe me, are not fundamentalist. That is the truth actually. Therefore, we
have a very interesting situation of a national party coming to power through
the linkage with the Lingayats. I am sure that in different states, there are
narratives that will be very specific to those states at the time of an election.
For instance, the Gujarat election is coming now. If you listen to some of the
intelligent political commentators of that state, you will hear them discuss
the caste factor perfectly so that the rest of us wiho are watching understand
it. That is what I meant by saying that almost all states have their own
specific caste equations.
I would like to mention the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) here. I will tell you what I noticed about the Aam Aadmi Party. It was trying to get government going without using the caste factor or without making alliances with any caste groups. They did that in Delhi. However, what amazed me most was what happened in Punjab. Because in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), obviously has tremendous support. I still do not understand how the AAP narrative has been working in Punjab. They are trying perhaps to find some way which transcends or just does not use the caste narrative. In my own experience, going around Bangalore, campaigning, I noticed that young people may be open to something which forces them to look at other issues, beyond the caste narrative. This is a trend which is also there in the market. It is out there.
Anubandh: Well, it has been happening in Punjab, right since the 2014 Lok Sabha election results where AAP won four seats in Punjab. That was even before the landslide Delhi victories of 2015 and 2020 for AAP. It is a proof that people from Punjab are given to adventurous strides.
Renuka: You are right!
Anubandh: Thank you.
The discussion
will continue in the next session.
Renuka VISHWANATHAN
In 2018, Renuka had her maiden political stint when she contested the Karnataka assembly election from the Shanti Nagar constituency of Bangalore under the banner of the Aam Aadmi Party.
Renuka has been an activist for voter registration, enrollment in schools of children of economically weak sections under RTE (Right to Education). She is also involved in environmental issues & woman issues.
Renuka speaks multiple languages with ease such as Malyalaym,
Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, English, French and Spanish. Besides, she has multiple
interests and passions such as films, theatre, music, literature and arts. She
loves travelling, reading and much more.
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