Broadening and Deepening Democracy

E Raghavan, James Manor

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136035265
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines certain changes in the political make-up of Karnataka, between the early 1970s and the late 1980s, which, in turn, led to the birth of a unique democracy in the state.

In a departure from most studies on political science and political history which pay little or no attention to the role of politicians and focus only on technocratic blueprints, administrative processes and incentive systems, this volume takes into account the role politicians play in shaping the character of their governments, public policy and state–society relations. It studies the political transformation of Karnataka by focusing heavily on three chief ministers of the state who played an important role in making politics in Karnataka more accommodative, enlightened and, hence, more democratic.

This volume is a detailed insider's account of the political processes in Karnataka, enriched with interviews and surveys which seek to locate this work in the social science literature, in Karnataka's recent history and in comparative context alongside other Indian states.

Part I

D. Devaraj Urs, 1972–80

1

The Emergence of Urs: The Challenge to the Landed Castes’ Dominance of State Politics

Urs, Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1972 to 1980, did more than any predecessor, and as much as any counterpart elsewhere in India, before or since, to make the democratic process more genuine for the disadvantaged groups who form a substantial majority of the state’s population. By doing this, he initiated a process of broadening and deepening democracy that would be completed by a successor government led by Hegde from 1983 to 1988.

The magnitude of Urs’s achievement becomes apparent only when we understand what he was up against. As we noted in the Introduction, he broke the control which the two land-owning caste-clusters of the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas had exercised on state-level politics since independence. There are two dimensions to this story, since Urs faced daunting challenges both at the ‘local’ level (which, in this predominantly rural state, mainly meant the village level) and at the ‘state’ level from which he governed.

In Urs’s time, life in most Karnataka villages was dominated by Lingayats and Vokkaligas. They constituted a minority of the rural population, and just 26.1 per cent of the entire population of the state after its enlargement in 1956 (cf. Table 1, p. 7). But a little more than a quarter of the population still represents considerable numerical strength. Because they were mostly concentrated in geographically exclusive areas (Vokkaligas in southern Karnataka and Lingayats in the northern part of the state), their dominance was far greater than their percentage of the overall population would suggest. More crucially, they controlled most of the better land, a decisive resource. Lingayats and Vokkaligas at the village level provided support to politicians from their respective castes at the state level, and in return, they received material support (goods, services and funds) and helpful interventions from these politicians through networks of clients. If he was to survive at the head of the government, Urs had to change state-level politics, and the networks connecting the state level to the villages, in ways that would undermine their power. He could expect stiff resistance. To compound his problems, he belonged to neither landed caste, and politicians from both were determined to reassert their control over state politics, which they regarded as the natural order of things.

To accomplish this change at the state level, Urs also had to induce change at the lower levels. It was not necessary that he transform the rural socio-economic order to prevail at the apex of the system — which was just as well, since such a transformation was impossible at the time. Evidence of a significant decline in the power of the old caste hierarchies in villages did not emerge in Karnataka or other parts of India until the 1990s. But he had to induce a substantial change in the political dynamics between the apex and the base of the system, and in government policies, if he was to mobilise support from the majority of villagers who did not belong to the land-owning castes.

Once we understand what he was up against, we explain (as we do in this and the next two chapters) how he overcame these impediments. Here again, we must consider both the state and the local levels, and changes that occurred in between. Urs used the enticements that are available to any leader in power to attract support from a few Lingayat and Vokkaliga leaders. But he also concentrated on raising new leaders from less exalted social groups to serve as allies within his government, and as intermediaries between him and their caste fellows at the grassroots.

He proved to be a remarkably effective communicator and a gifted manipulator: charming and tough by turns, and consistently shrewd and imaginative. These qualities enabled him to secure his position at the state level. To ensure the support of villagers from lower-status groups, he made startling pledges and undertook initiatives — both symbolic and substantive — that were widely popular among them. So, far more than Indira Gandhi and most of her Chief Ministers in other states, Urs delivered concrete results to back his promises of help to disadvantaged groups.

To begin with, his party could not have been elected if a political awakening had not gained momentum among lower-status groups in the villages. This awakening entailed greater awareness, assertiveness, organisational strength, and discontent with dominant-caste rule at the state level. But on its own, the awakening was not enough. Support from these groups could be consolidated only by providing them with solid reasons to back him. He did so by implementing policies that brought tangible change (see Chapter 2). Whether we call this an ‘enlightened conservative’, a ‘progressive’ or even a ‘radical’ approach is not an issue that should detain us. In truth, it entailed some of all these things.

In pursuing these goals, Urs was conforming to the political tradition that had developed well before independence in princely Mysore, where he had spent his life as a member of the tiny caste of the state’s maharajas. He, like the princes on several key occasions before him, recognised the need for change and took decisive action to achieve it. This way he could anticipate and defuse potentially serious conflict. The national election of 1971 and the state election of 1972 indicated that the rural majority was impatient with the dominance of state politics by the landed minority. Urs had no choice but to mobilise this majority, since it was the only way he could survive politically in the teeth of inevitable attempts by the Lingayats and Vokkaligas to dislodge him. But by including lower-status groups in a broadened political settlement at the state level, he removed the threat of their demands triggering destructive conflict of the kind which convulsed north India in 1990 and still afflicts it. And by establishing a tradition (which has endured) of rainbow coalitions within the state cabinet, in which leaders from lowerstatus groups held key posts alongside Lingayats and Vokkaligas, he served the cause of future political and social accommodation and stability.

Lingayat–Vokkaliga Dominance at Local and State Levels

Land was more equably distributed in Karnataka (especially in the state’s southern half) than in any other region in South Asia. Partly as a consequence, caste hierarchies have long been less oppressive here for lower-status groups (for a detailed account, see Manor 1989). But during the first four decades or so after independence, the Lingayat–Vokkaliga dominance in most villages (where over two-thirds of the people lived) was still a patent, and sometimes painful, reality. It is worth noting that the fieldwork which led to the classic study of ‘dominant castes’ in India (Srinivas 1959) occurred in southern Karnataka.

Who are the Lingayats and Vokkaligas? They are not single castes, but clusters of castes, that is, of jatis.¹ The term ‘Vokkaliga’ refers to an occupation, since it literally means ‘those who thresh’, which is to say that they traditionally cultivate grain. There are six main Vokkaliga jatis or sub-castes which occupy distinct but over-lapping areas, nearly all of which are in southern Karnataka. As region-wide politics became important in the 20th century, they found it beneficial to band together to seek influence as a coherent ‘caste’ group.

The Lingayats form another cluster of sub-castes or jatis. They are occupationally more diverse than the Vokkaligas, since they trace their origins to a religious reform movement within Hinduism, Veerasaivism, which in the pre-modern era won followers from many occupational groups, mainly in northern Karnataka, but to some extent in the south as well. Several Lingayat sub-castes — priests, traders, weavers, etc. — own little or no land. But one of them, the Sadar Lingayats, has huge numerical strength and traditionally cultivated land and dominated village life in the manner of the Vokkaligas (Manor 1977a).

We need to provide a little more detail on these matters in order to explain regional variations within Karnataka. In what before independence was the princely state of Mysore (roughly the southern-half of contemporary Karnataka), Brahmins stood at the apex of the caste hierarchy by virtue of the traditional priestly roles which they continued to perform unchallenged in areas dominated by the Vokkaligas. Because they were traditionally literate and often learned, they made great progress in Western education and eventually migrated in significant numbers to urban centres like Bangalore and Mysore, giving up, in the process, whatever little land they had. They had always constituted a tiny portion (3.5 per cent) of the total population, and this migration reduced their numbers in rural areas still further. Those who remained in villages had to defer in temporal matters to the Vokkaligas, whose landed wealth and numerical strength ensured their dominance of village life. Despite this, the Brahmins’ position atop the ritual hierarchy was seldom challenged in southern Karnataka as it was in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, where the caste system was ridiculed by elements of the Dravidian movement. Here, a reasonably congenial relationship existed in which the Vokkaligas accepted the superior ritual status of the Brahmins, and the Brahmins accepted the economically and politically dominant position of the Vokkaligas within villages.

Things were different in the northern half of the state. Nearly all of it was divided before independence between areas directly ruled by the British as part of the Bombay Presidency (called, to this day, Bombay Karnataka) and areas that formed part of the largest princely state, Hyderabad (called Hyderabad Karnataka), the government of which was (in sharp contrast to that of the princely state of Mysore) harshly autocratic and unconcerned about development.² Village life in both these northern regions was dominated by the Lingayats, since there were very few Vokkaligas here.

In contrast to old Mysore,³ northern Karnataka witnessed considerable conflict between the Brahmins and the Lingayats. This occurred because the Lingayat caste-cluster, which was also a Hindu sect (McCormack 1963), sprang from a religious reform movement that challenged the ritual authority of the Brahmins, and because they had their own priestly sub-caste which performed religious ceremonies reserved for Brahmins in old Mysore.

Since the maharajas’ small caste had no links to the Vokkaligas or the Lingayats, princely governments in old Mysore took care to avoid interference in village life, lest they inspire resistance.⁴ They left power relations at the village level largely untouched. So, for the most part, did the British authorities in Bombay Karnataka. The government in princely Hyderabad intruded unhelpfully at times, but in the main, it was oblivious to the rural social order.

In old Mysore, the creation of a Representative Assembly in 1882 enabled the Vokkaligas (and to a lesser extent the Lingayats, who were fewer in number in the princely state) to translate their rural dominance into significant influence in this elected body (which had quite limited powers), even as they remained loyal to the princely rulers. The Brahmins, on the other hand, had used their unrivalled advances in education to occupy a premier position — indeed, one of dominance — within the princely administration. An increasing awareness of the nationalist movement led some Brahmins, particularly those who had taken to the legal profession, to join it and to press for a less autocratic government in princely Mysore.

At the same time, the Vokkaligas and Lingayats who had captured seats in the Representative Assembly, and then in the (again, only modestly powerful) District Councils which the princely government had created in the 1930s, banded together to form a non-Brahmin alternative to the emergence of a Brahmin-dominated party called the ‘Mysore Congress’ that had tentative links to the national organisation of the same name. They were sympathetic to the nationalist movement, but hesitated to join the Congress where they feared they might have to share a considerable part of the power with the Brahmins. However, in 1937, the princely authorities unwisely arrested a Congress leader on the eve of a Representative Assembly meeting, and in reaction, the non-Brahmin party and the Mysore Congress merged to form a much more formidable Congress organisation. After independence, it came to dominate the state’s politics. This organisation was soon taken over by the Vokkaligas because of their numerical strength and their dominance of village life in old Mysore, and to a lesser degree, by the Lingayats.

To the north, in Bombay Karnataka, despite tensions between Lingayats and Brahmins, nationalists from these two groups made common cause before independence in a regional branch of the Indian National Congress. Lingayats eventually came to predominate within this organisation. The repressive princely regime of Hyderabad Karnataka, on the other hand, prevented nationalist activity from developing much strength. But soon after independence, the Lingayats (who dominated village life here) swiftly built and came to dominate a Congress organisation in this region. In 1956, state boundaries inherited from the British were redrawn to conform roughly to the lines separating linguistic regions, and the present-day state of Karnataka (called Mysore until 1972) came into being. Since in the newly enlarged state Lingayats outnumbered Vokkaligas, the former assumed a pre-eminent role in Lingayat/Vokkaliga-dominated governments. After 1956, Vokkaligas occupied many powerful posts in state cabinets, but all chief ministers, until 1972 (when Urs assumed this role), were Lingayats.

How was the Lingayat–Vokkaliga dominance sustained at the state level, and how did it influence the character of successive governments before 1972? Lingayats (mainly from land-owning sub-castes and the numerically and economically powerful Banajiga (trading) sub-caste) and Vokkaligas were elected to the state assembly in numbers far greater than their shares of the state’s population, thanks mainly to the influence which their caste fellows exercised at the village level. They then banded together at the state level to ensure that the lion’s share of the political spoils flowed down to the Lingayats and Vokkaligas at the grassroots. This system of patronage distribution enabled them to translate their dominance in terms of ownership of land into dominance over successive state governments. It also ensured their dominance over the Congress Party, which in turn occupied a dominant position among political parties from independence until 1972, when Urs became Chief Minister, as leader of Indira Gandhi’s version of the Congress which had split in 1970.

Despite the potency of the Lingayats and Vokkaligas in state politics before 1972 — which led members of both castes to see their dominance of the state government as their right — three features of state politics in that era are worth noting, since they provided Urs with favourable political opportunities once he assumed power.

First, here as in most other Congress-ruled states, the party’s political ‘machine’ distributed modest amounts of patronage to disadvantaged groups and gave leaders from these groups symbolic posts in the party and the state government. These were mainly token exercises which were aimed at keeping such groups content, while most resources served the interests of the dominant landed castes. Even the elected representatives from the disadvantaged groups had to protect the interests of the dominant castes at the constituency level as well as within the party system in order to get a share, however little, in the power structure. But by 1972, the political awakening among lower-status groups had inspired growing impatience with the prevailing arrangements. The inspiration for this largely came from Mrs Gandhi who had identified herself with the ‘have-nots’ in her battle with the old guard in her party. Urs sought to intensify this impatience in order to maintain himself in power in the face of a Lingayat–Vokkaliga backlash against his government.

Second, the flow of political patronage to the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas at the local level had mainly benefited the prosperous members of these caste-clusters. Poorer people within both castes, and especially among the Vokkaligas, had been somewhat left out. This created the possibility that redistributive, anti-poverty policies, which Urs pursued after 1972, might attract votes from those who felt excluded. This was not a major opportunity for Urs, but he set out to make the most of it, especially among poorer Vokkaligas.

Finally, during the era of Lingayat–Vokkaliga dominance at the state level before 1972, several politicians from these castes had failed to rise as high in the state-level pecking order as they had hoped. A handful of such people joined Urs and Mrs Gandhi’s version of the Congress when it split in 1970, in the hope that they might achieve senior posts which had so far eluded them. Many calculated that Mrs Gandhi’s anti-poverty slogans might enable her version of the party to garner election victories, as indeed it did at the national election of 1971 and the state election of 1972. They also reckoned (mistakenly, as it turned out) that despite these slogans, Lingayats and Vokkaligas would continue to loom large in the leadership of the party and the government. Urs found it advantageous to play upon the ambitions of these disgruntled Vokkaligas and Lingayats since they had networks of clients in different sub-regions of the state. But while he gave some o...