Can former PM Deve Gowda recover from the latest electoral debacle?

If it is my destiny to rise again from the dust, then I shall do so — for no one, not even the president of the Congress party, can deny a man his due.”
As far as exit lines go, it will be hard to beat this one, delivered by Haradanahalli Dodde Gowda Deve Gowda in his last speech as prime minister to the Lok Sabha in 1997.

The earthy leader from Haradanahalli village in Karnataka’s Hassan district had reached the pinnacle of his power, with a stature far beyond the state’s boundaries, only to lose it all when the Congress withdrew support to the short lived United Front government. To an extent he did script a return. He won the 1998 Lok Sabha election, was defeated the very next year and reclaimed the same Hassan seat with a reassuring margin of over 1.9 lakh votes in 2004. And that’s the quality that those who closely know him first attribute to him: his uncanny ability to bounce back. “His willpower and resolve to fight back are incomparable — he always takes his defeats as a challenge and wins from the very place he lost earlier,” says BL Shankar, former Congress minister and erstwhile Gowda loyalist.

However, in the wake of the latest Lok Sabha election results, that resolve will be severely tested.

The 86-year-old, who thinks of politics 24x7, according to associates, has overcome many a challenge in his six-decade career. But things have possibly never looked as bleak for him and his party, the Janata Dal (Secular). Not only did Gowda lose from Tumkur, but his grandson Nikhil Kumaraswamy, lost by over 1.2 lakh votes from party bastion Mandya in a high-profile contest. Another grandson, Prajwal Revanna, is the only JD(S) candidate to win but that is small consolation.

The BJP’s unprecedented sweep of 25 of 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state has left rivals gasping for air, and has once again raised questions not just over the future of the JD(S)-Congress government in the state, but about the political future of the Gowda family and the JD(S), which are inextricably linked.

Cracks are Showing
At the moment, all the party’s energies are focused on saving the Karnataka government headed by Gowda’s son, HD Kumaraswamy.

“Deve Gowda is disappointed with the results but he has been attending meetings and speaking to party workers to keep up their morale,” says JD(S) spokesperson Ramesh Babu. (Deve Gowda declined ET Magazine’s request for an interview.)

Remaining in power has never been so crucial. “It will be a Herculean task to keep the party together —that’s why they want to cling to power,” says political analyst and writer D Umapathy. “The cadre will get demoralised if the party is not in government because the spoils of power will otherwise not reach them.”

JD(S) Karnataka president AH Vishwanath says that after the Lok Sabha results, all sorts of theories have emerged. But he agrees that if Gowda had contested from Mysore, he would definitely have won in what might be his last electoral bid. “Instead, (former CM) Siddaramaiah was bent on giving that seat to his henchman CH Vijayashankar,” he says, hinting at the perennial battle of egos between the two leaders.

The results were a reaffirmation that the alliance cobbled together by party leaders had been rejected by the cadre, used to viewing each other’s parties as arch-rivals for decades. Instead, it is the BJP which seems to have benefited. The BJP commanded 51% of the total vote share in the state, a far cry from the 2.5% it got three decades ago.



Indeed, the new aggressive BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah presents one of the most formidable challenges to the future of the JD(S). “Historically, the BJP has swallowed regional parties. (Former CM) Ramakrishna Hegde’s Janata offshoot was gobbled up whole by the BJP, and the entire north Karnataka, which is now a strong base of the BJP, was hijacked from Hegde’s faction,” says Umapathy.

So far, the Vokkaligas, the powerful backward caste in south Karnataka, largely stood by Deve Gowda. But cracks are emerging even here. A CSDS post-poll survey shows that 60% of Vokkaligas voted for the BJP this time.

Then there is the domination of the Gowda family in the JD(S), a reason it is often derided as the appa-makkala (father-sons) party. Party veterans, requesting not to be named, say there was considerable discomfort about three members of the same family contesting an election simultaneously, and add Nikhil’s candidature had been pushed by Kumaraswamy’s wife, Anitha, herself an MLA from Ramanagara. “But ultimately, Gowda had to support it, and that’s what led to the entire fiasco,” says a senior leader, requesting not to be named. “Most of the party decisions might be attributed to him but many are taken by Kumaraswamy and the rest of the family. It is the second- and third-generation members who are calling the shots now,” says another former minister.

What sets apart the latest struggle to keep the JD(S) together is also Deve Gowda’s advancing years. Despite that, the doughty politician can still spring a few surprises. Last year, he climbed 400 steps of Vindhyagiri Hills in less than an hour, to take part in the Mahamasthakabhisheka of the Gomateshwara statue in Shravanabelagola. It was not a coincidence that his bete noire, Siddaramaiah, had made the same climb a week before, and illustrates why no one can quite write off the senior Gowda.

Analyst Umapathy might be describing the future of the Gowda family and the JD(S) best, when he compares it to a burning candle, its wax melting away. “After Deve Gowda, the candle will continue to burn for some time but it will keep shrinking, till the JD(S) becomes confined to a constituency or maybe just Hassan.”