Elections are supposed to honour democracy, but of late election time is usually when various political parties declare an open season on the democratic process. If gerrymandering fails to work, they resort to horse-trading. Promises are made, money changes hands and defections decide who gets to form the government. With the governor inviting the BJP to form the government in Karnataka despite its failure to cross the halfway mark in terms of seats won in the assembly, the newly formed post poll alliance between the Janta Dal (Secular) and the Congress have moved the Supreme Court seeking urgent relief.
Image: Hindustan Times
The SC, in an unprecedented move, held an overnight hearing on the matter. The Bench that heard the matter at 2am, comprised Justices A.K Sikri, S.A Bobde and Ashok Bhushan. Attorney General KK Venugopal represented the Union of India while senior advocate Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi represented the petitioners Dr.G. Paremeshwara, Congress MLA and H.D Kumaraswamy, JD(S) MLA. The petition drafted by Advocates Devadatt Kamat, Prashant Kumar, Javedar Rehman, Aditya Bhat and Rajesh Inamdar was filed through Gautam Talukdar. Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi stated that he has instructions from the BJP MLAs Govind M. Karjol C.M Udasi and Basavaraj Bommai.
Hearing went on till early in the morning after which the court asked for the letter given by BS Yedyurappa to the governor showing majority. This letter is to be produced at the next hearing scheduled to take place at 10:30am on 18th May, 2018. The court did not pass an order staying BS Yedrurappa’s swearing in.
In its order the court said, “After hearing the parties, we are of the opinion that it is necessary to peruse the letters dated 15th May, 2018 and 16th May, 2018 submitted by the respondent No.3 (Yedyurappa) to the Governor which find a mention in the communication dated 16th May, 2018 of the Hon’ble Governor. We request the learned Attorney General and/or respondent No.3 to produce these letters on the next date of hearing. WPD 19482/18 3 This Court is not passing any order staying the oath taking ceremony of respondent No.3. In case, he is given oath in the meantime, that shall be subject to further orders of this Court and final outcome of the writ petition.”
Rameshwar Keshri, who was reportedly connected to some vernacular daily publications as a journalist, was found hanging from a fan at a public health centre in Vishrampur, in the Palamu district of Jharkhand on Wednesday, May 16. Keshri lived in Vishrampur.
Police said that Keshri mostly worked at the training centre for sahiyas (community health workers), in the sub-centre. They are investigating if this was a case of murder. A police officer said that Keshri was at the health centre for work, but that “nobody apparently saw him either being assaulted or attempting to hang himself“. The officer said that Keshri’s body was found hanging with a gamchha, with the legs bent at the knee. DSP (Palamu) Hira Lal Ravi said that that post-mortem would be conducted. According to the DSP, based on what the police know, Keshri worked at the training centre for sahiyas and was also associated with multiple news organisations.
According to Santosh Srivastava, a journalist in Palamu, Keshri was at the public health centre in relation to a story. Srivastava said Keshri used to work with the Rashtriya Naveen Mail and also worked for the training of sahiyas. The state unit of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists has scheduled an emergency meeting over the incident on Thursday, May 17.
In 20th-century popular culture, journalists were portrayed as needy hacks desperate to write the Great American Novel. Journalism was the means to an end that few achieved.
But Tom Wolfe, who died May 14 at age 88, helped change that in the 1960s. He was one of the New Journalists, who wrote nonfiction using the techniques of fiction.
As an example: Journalists had long been trained to use direct quotations sparingly and to look for money quotes, working them into stories with stenographic rhythm. Wolfe and the others broke rules, using great stretches of dialogue, knowing people reveal their character with the words they utter.
In a business demanding informational triage, Wolfe included obsessive detail, using scene-by-scene construction to observe and describe. “Show, don’t tell” was the mantra. The New Journalists wouldn’t just say “the man wore a pocket protector”; they would examine and describe everything within: Paper Mates, Pentels, Eberhard Faber Mongol 482s.
Origin story
Tom Wolfe took an unusual path into the world of journalism that he would so flagrantly disrupt. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, he went to Washington and Lee University, but did not follow the prescribed English-lit path to becoming a Man of Letters. He majored in American studies, examining the country from the ground up. His mentor, Marshall Fishwick, had students work shifts as brick masons and garbage collectors.
Post-graduation, he sought a career in Major League Baseball. Wolfe had a good arm and was invited to spring training with the New York Giants. He was cut, so he did what people do when they don’t know what else to do: He went to graduate school. He earned a doctorate in American studies at Yale – yes, he’s been Dr. Tom Wolfe all this time. While he chipped away at his dissertation, he adopted the all-in-black look and body odor of the beatnik, moving office furniture and chatting up young secretaries, hoping one might concede to a date. No luck for the sweaty. So he brooded on the dissertation over beer, manspreading on his couch, watching late-night TV.
Stumbling into journalism
Then he saw it: “His Girl Friday.” Being a newspaper reporter looked like fun and after years of academic overload, he longed for the real world. That world with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell looked real enough, and so he blanketed North America with resumes. He got two bites, one of which was a joke offer so the New York Daily News could brag about having a Ph.D. copy boy. (He’d finally finished the dissertation.)
But the other offer was from the Springfield Union in Massachusetts. He took that job and wrote about tax rates and sewer lines. Having paid his dues, he was off to The Washington Post in 1959 and the New York Herald Tribune by 1962.
In the heady competition in New York, he soon developed a fascination with the work of New York Times reporter Gay Talese. Talese spent off-hours writing features for Esquire, which drew Wolfe’s whistle of admiration.
His style was born of deadline fear and set his course to cover the decade he considered mirthful pandemonium. His writing was freckled with Tourette’s-like ejaculations that infatuated some and infuriated others, including the editors, staff and perhaps every reader ever of The New Yorker. Wolfe’s savage parody takedown of the magazine and its beloved and cloistered editor, William Shawn, drew lifelong hatred from much of the literary establishment. E.B. White called the article “sly” and “cruel” and the reclusive J.D. Salinger called it “poisonous.” Wolfe wore such criticism as a thorny crown.
Tom Wolfe in his trademark white suit, in October 2012 – well after Labor Day. Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
He excelled in annoyance; witness his clothing. When he showed up at an autumn lawn party in his white suit – as a Son of the South, he was practically issued the thing – guests approached him sputtering with rage: “Why, it’s after Labor Day! How dare you?” And so he began dressing with insufferable flamboyance, using clothing as harmless aggression. Even people who didn’t read knew who he was: the Man in the White Suit.
In his work, he wrapped up the spiritual quest of the 1960s in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” his high-octane meditation about a generation born to affluence searching for something beyond the working definition of happiness, a spiritual and physical journey he showed through the eyes of writer Ken Kesey, who’d gone off the rails. Fifty years later, “Acid Test” stands as the best book to give to a kid who wants to know why there is such a fuss about the 1960s.
Then he asked the simple question: What do you do when you know your life has peaked? After walking on the moon, going to Walmart loses its mystique. In the 1970s he investigated for Rolling Stone how the astronauts held up after returning to Earth and going back to normal life. A decade of research followed into the nature of heroism. He produced “The Right Stuff” in 1979.
Climbing the mountain
Inevitably – because the mountain was there, demanding to be climbed – he turned to fiction. Using his reporter’s skills and determined to write a realistic novel in the manner of Charles Dickens, he spent a decade – and a very public first draft, also in Rolling Stone – to produce “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” a big best-seller, loathed by the literary community that had always despised him.
I knew him and wrote a book about him many years ago. I was with him during the research phase of one of his novels, and I marveled watching him watch people. With grace and a seeming effortlessness, he extracted stories from people, slipping into a corner to pull his notebook from his suit pocket and dash off a few lines of insight.
He kept it up the last decades of his life, producing doorstop best-sellers (“A Man in Full,” “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” “Back to Blood”) and remaining a chortling televised commentator, sowing disdain and insult like some Johnny Pissed-off Seed. Tom Wolfe on ‘Firing Line’ in 1975.
He didn’t care for acceptance by the literary community. He knew that would never happen. As an outsider who’d long urinated on the pretensions of much modern writing, he never expected to be invited into the tent.
He left behind not only his work, but validation for the journalists who have followed in his wake. He – and Talese, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer and others – celebrated nonfiction writing as an art form at least as legitimate as modern fiction. When I look back at the sore-thumb decade of the last century, there’s no definitive novel of the 1960s, but there is “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” There is no single novel that spelunks to the depths of the American character, but there is “The Right Stuff.”
In the end, he gave the world the story of 60 years of the American experience, in fiction and nonfiction. Our descendants will decide whether his work has a long shelf life, but today it can be hard to look back and imagine the grand and catastrophic spectacle without him on the sideline, taking notes.
Hindu divorce laws are in need of reform /BIGSTOCK
Barnali (a pseudonym), a 29-year-old Hindu woman, came to me with a complaint about how she was being abused and tortured by her husband. She comes from Chittagong, and is a doctor by profession.
She was in a relationship with Sudip, a businessman who resides in Dhaka. Barnali’s family had objected to their wedding. After being in a relationship for five years, Barnali left her home. The two got married in a private temple ceremony.
Gradually, their parents accepted their relationship, and the couple began living together. After a few months, they registered their marriage under the Hindu Marriage Registration Act 2012. For two years, they lived happily.
But things took a horrific turn soon after, when Barnali went back to work. By that time, she gave birth to a beautiful girl. Her husband began demanding for her to leave her job if she wanted to keep their marriage intact.
He barred her from interacting with her co-workers. By then she realized that there was no way out for her — she agreed to his demands and left her job.
She thought the nightmare was over, but the torment continued. He terrorized her all the time, and even kept a mistress on the side. He would beat Barnali for almost anything: Going out without his permission, keeping contact with friends, serving him anything less than a nice, hot meal.
Finally, refusing to suffer anymore, she decided to live on her own. The evidence of abuse is imprinted all over her body and face.
In Bangladesh, marriage and divorce-related issues are governed by the respective religious laws of an individual. The marriage and divorce of Hindus are governed by their religious laws. In India, the Hindu laws for marriage and divorce have been modernized by statutory intervention by the Indian parliament.
Unfortunately, the Hindu matrimonial issues have not been modified. Recently, there has been a recent advancement through the requirement of registration (optional) in any Hindu marriage, but Hindu divorces are not allowed in Bangladesh. Therefore, the option of divorce for a victim such as Barnali is yet unavailable in Bangladesh.
Marriage in Hindu law is regarded as an indissoluble union between husband and wife, and joins two individuals for life. It allows them to pursue duty, possessions, physical desires, and ultimate spiritual release together. It is a union of two individuals as husband and wife, and is recognized by law.
In the Hindu religion, marriage is followed by traditional rituals for consummation.
In fact, marriage is not considered complete or valid until consummation. In terms of religion, a Hindu marriage is considered as a bond for seven lifetimes. So, divorce is not recognized in Hindu law.
Under the Hindu Married Women’s Right to Separate Residence and Maintenance Act 1946, a Hindu “married woman” can seek separate residence, but there are certain grounds:
1. The husband is suffering from a disease not contracted from her 2. The husband treats her with such cruelty that it becomes unsafe or undesirable to live with him 3. The husband abandons her without her consent or against her wish 4. The husband marries again 5. The husband ceases to be a Hindu, by converting to another religion 6. The husband keeps a mistress or habitually resides with a concubine 7. If there is some other justifiable cause
However, a married Hindu woman shall not be entitled to separate residence and maintenance from her husband if she is unchaste or ceases to be a Hindu by converting to another religion, or fails, without sufficient cause, to comply with a decree of a competent court for the restitution of conjugal rights.
The suffering of women in our society is the stuff of legends. Many Hindu girls in our country stay in abusive marriages and endure the harassment of their partners — simply because of the fact that the laws of the land do not allow them the right to file for divorce.
For centuries, these women have been neglected and exploited by a male-dominated society. Women had to fight hard at every step to reach where they are today.
Laws cannot save a fraying relationship or mend a broken heart. But it can at least end a woman’s suffering by giving her relief from an abusive marriage.
Miti Sanjana is a Barrister-at-law from Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, an Advocate of Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and an activist.
This episode talks about how media dealt with Karnataka Elections, its results and PM’s Nepal visit.
In this episode of ‘Khari-Khari’, we talk about what the media shows and what it doesn’t. Bhasha talks about the motives behind broadcasting a particular kind of news. This episode talks about how media dealt with Karnataka Elections, its results and PM’s Nepal visit.
All in all though, the sheer enormity of what took place between 1933 and 1945 beggars our powers of description and understanding. The more one studies this period and its excesses the more one must conclude that for any decent human being the slaughter of so many millions of innocents must, and indeed should weigh heavily on subsequent generations, Jewish and non- Jewish. However much we may concur, say, with Tom Segev in his book The Seventh Million, that Israel exploited the Holocaust for political purposes, there can be little doubt that the tragedy’s collective memory and the burden of fear it places on all Jews today is not to be minimized. Yes, there were other collective massacres in human history (native Americans, Armenians, Bosnians, Kurds, etc.) And yes some were neither Lebanese Phalanges commentators claimed that the whole business was baseless propaganda, but elsewhere in the Arab press of the time (in Egypt and in the mainstream Lebanese press) the Eichmann affair was reported with due consideration given to the appalling events in wartime Germany. Yet according to a study of the period by Dr. Usama Makdisi, a young Lebanese historian at Rice University in Houston, Texas, Arab reports of the trial concluded that though what was done to the Jews in Germany was indeed a crime against humanity, Israel’s crime of dispossessing and expelling an entire people constituted no less a crime of the same kind. Dr. Makdisi discovered that there was no attempt to equate the Holocaust with the Palestinian catastrophe, only that judged by the same standards, Israel and Germany were both guilty of heinous crimes of enormous magnitude. My own feeling is that perhaps the Eichmann trial was useful to the Arab side during the psychological battles of the 1960s as a way of exposing Israeli callousness to the Arabs and not especially as an attempt to acquaint Arab readers with details of the Jewish experience.
Yet except for a few Jewish intellectuals here and there — for example, the American rabbi Marc Ellis, or Professor Israel Shahak — reflections by Jewish thinkers today on the desolate history of anti-Semitism and Jewish solitude has been inadequate. For there is alink to be made between what happened to Jews in World War Two and the catastrophe of the Palestinian people, but it cannot be made only rhetorically, or as an argument to demolish or diminish the true content both of the Holocaust and of 1948. Neither is equalto the other; similarly neither one nor the other excuses present violence; and finally, neither one nor the other must be minimized. There is suffering and injustice enough for everyone. But unless the connection is made by which the Jewish tragedy is seen to have led directly to the Palestinian catastrophe by, let us call it “necessity” (rather than pure will), we cannot co-exist as two communities of detached and uncommunicatingly separate suffering. It has been the failing of Oslo that it planned in terms of separation, a clinical partition of peoples into separate, but unequal, entities, rather than grasping that the only way of rising beyond the endless back-and-forth violence and dehumanization is to admit the universality and integrity of the other’s experience and to begin to plan a common life together.
I cannot see any way at all (a) of not imagining the Jews of Israel as in decisive measure really the permanent result of the Holocaust, and (b) of not also requiring from them acknowledgment of what they did to the Palestinians during and after 1948. This means that as Palestinians we demand consideration and reparations from them without in any way minimizing their own history of suffering and genocide. This is the only mutual recognition worth having, and the fact that present governments and leaders are incapable of such gestures testifies to the poverty of spirit and imagination that afflicts us all. This is where Jews and Palestinians outside of historical Palestine can play a constructive role that is impossible for those inside who live under the daily pressure of occupation and dialectical confrontation. The dialogue has to be on the level I have been discussing here, and not on debased questions of political strategy and tactics. When one considers the broad lines of Jewish philosophy from Buber to Levinas and perceives in it an almost total absence of reflection on the Palestinian issue,one realizes how far one has to go.
What is desired therefore is a notion of coexistence that is true to the differences between Jew and Palestinian, but true also to the common history of different struggle and unequal survival that links them. There can be no higher ethical and moral imperative than discussions and dialogues about that. We must accept the Jewis experience in all that it entails of horror and fear; but we must require that our experience be given no less attention or perhaps another plane of historical actuality. Who would want morally to equate mass extermination with mass dispossession? It would be foolish even to try. But they are connected — a different thing altogether — in the struggle over Palestine which has been so intransigent, its elements so irreconcilable. I know that at a time when Palestinian land is still being taken, when our houses are demolished, when our daily existence is still subject to the humiliations and captivity imposed on us by Israel and its many supporters in Europe and especially the United States, I know that to speak of prior Jewish agonies will seem like a kind of impertinence. I do not accept the notion that by taking our land Zionism redeemed the history of the Jews, and I cannot ever be made to acquiesce in the need to dispossess the whole Palestinian people. But I can admit the notion that the distortions of the Holocaust created distortions in its victims, which are replicated today in the victims of Zionism itself, that is, the Palestinians. Understanding what happened to the Jews in Europe under the Nazis means understanding what is universal about a human experience under calamitous conditions. It means compassion, human sympathy, and utter recoil from the notion of killing people for ethnic, religious, or nationalist reasons.
I attach no conditions to such comprehension and compassion: one feels them for their own sake, not for political advantage. Yet such an advance in consciousness by Arabs ought to be met by an equal willingness for compassion and comprehension on the part of Israelis and Israel’s supporters who have engaged in all sorts of denial and expressions of defensive nonresponsibility when it comes to Israel’s central role on our historical dispossession as a people. This is disgraceful. And it is just unacceptable simply to say (as do many Zionist liberals) that we should forget the past and go on to two separate states. This is as insulting to Jewish memories of the Holocaust as it is to Palestinians who continue in their dispossession at Israel’s hands. The simple fact is that Jewish and Palestinian experiences are historically, indeed organically, connected: to break them asunder is to falsify what is authentic about each. We must think our histories together, however difficult that may be, in order for there to be a common future. And that future must include Arabs and Jews together, free of any exclusionary, denial-based schemes for shutting out one side by the other, either theoretically or politically. That is the real challenge. The rest is much easier.
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.
This excerpt from the essay “Bases for Coexistence” has been published in the book ‘On Palestine’ (LeftWord Books, 2014) and has been published here with permission from the publishers.
In 1991, a jihadist research work titled “The Bitter Harvest: The Muslim Brotherhood in 60 Years” was authored by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s chief ideologue. It was a sharp confutation of the Egyptian Islamist outfit Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin’s resolution to participate in electoral process and shun the path of violence to achieve its political objectives. An extract of this sizeable book under the title of “Sharia and Democracy” has been widely circulated among the jihadist militants across the world. In this part of his literary work, Zawahiri explained as to why he believed that anyone claiming to be both Muslim and a democratic at the same time, is actually an infidel [Kafir] or an apostate [Murtad].
Now, contrast Zawahiri’s outlook with Zakir Musa’s outcry. The chief commander of the Al-Qaida-affiliate in Kashmir, Ansar Ghazwat-ul Hind, has gained enormous popularity, because of his Islamic caliphate propaganda using an ‘online ideology’ that is speedily gaining ground in the valley of Kashmir.
The jihadist rendition of Islamic caliphate vs. secular state by Ayman Zawahiri was clearly replicated in the outcry of Zakir Musa when he first appeared in the media limelight with this text of his speech: “If we are fighting for secular state, then I think we cannot be martyrs. I know we have to first fight for freedom and push out Indian army which has occupied us. But, our intention should be that we have to achieve ‘Azadi’ to establish Islamic rule and not for secular state. If we are fighting for secular state then my blood won’t be spilled for that purpose.” (Source: Kashmir Dispatch: kashmirdispatch.com/? p=149628)
Zawahiri highlighted several irreconcilable conflicts between the principles of Sharia and the premises of secular state quoting from both Qur’an and Hadith and distorting the actual meanings of their texts and other analogies. Thus, he tried to justify his untenable positions in such a cunning way that, to the theologically untrained Muslim youths, this book offered a justification for migration [Hijrah] from the non-Muslim countries to establish an Islamic state. In different territories, it was, by and large, the same tone and tenor that was reflected in the jihadist war-cry like that of the young militant in Kashmir, Zakir Musa, a former militant commander of Hizbul Mujahideen. In his video speech released in May 2017, he addressed the separatist leaders in Kashmir in these unequivocal and categorical words:
“What I said about hanging was not about All Parties Hurriyat Conference leaders but moderates who say after Azadi [freedom] we will establish a secular state. Because I know if we get freedom from India then we will have to fight those who support secular state…..I am hopeful Allah is with me, even if no one supports me. Rest, I stand on my statement. If the intention of Geelani and others is freedom for Islam and imposition of Shariah after freedom, then I am not against them……I have already said that we are fighting for ‘Azadi Baraye Islam’ [freedom for the sake of Islam]. My blood will spill for Islam and not for secular state.”
In another audio clip, Zakir Musa pitched the democratic principles of governance against the basic tenets of Islam and urged the Indian Muslims to boycott the elections and “be wary of the Congress and BJP, the Samajwadi Party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Trinamul Congress or Bahujan Samaj Party, for all are only faces of tyranny”.
Thus, pitching democracy or secularism against Islam is the key jihadist narrative that has been flogged off by the false ideologues of Islam—from Zawahiri to Zakir. But on the contrary, there is substantial evidence in the Quran and Sunnah (the Prophetic traditions) to make it possible for us to adopt both democracy and secularism as compatible to Islamic principles. It is sufficient to quote these two verses of the Qur’an: “Those who respond to their Lord and attend to their prayers; who conduct their affairs by mutual consultation and spend out of what We have provided for them” (42:38)
“So by mercy of Allah, [O Prophet], you were lenient with them. And if you had been rude [in speech] and harsh in heart, they would have disbanded from about you. So pardon them and ask forgiveness for them and consult them in the matter. And when you have decided, then rely upon Allah. Indeed, Allah loves those who rely upon Him. (3:159)”
These verses clearly exhort the Islamic principle of Shur’a (consultation) in dealing with the community affairs. In a secular democracy today, mutual consultation is a self-evident proposition. Based on this, even Muslim communities the world over are now inserting the Islamic Sharia rulings, courts and tribunals into the secular legal system and common law. Today, legal decisions based on cultural values at odds with democratic principles are accepted and incorporated into the laws of democratic countries which strengthen the religious freedom.
Significantly, in 2011, the world’s largest Sunni Islamic seminary, Al-Azhar Sharif issued an 11-clause declaration titled “document around the future of Egypt” which was read out on national television by the Al-Azhar Grand Shaikh Ahmad al-Tayyibb himself. The prominent Islamic jurists who participated in the drafting of the al-Azhar document explored the possibility of declaring a “secular” state as compatible to Islamic Shariah. After serious deliberations, the Al-Azhar ended up describing the future ideal state as “national” (al-Waṭaniyyah), “constitutional” (al-Dustūriyyah), “democratic” (al-Dimuqrāṭiyyah) and “modern” (al-Hadītha).
Thus, this declaration of the leading Al-Azhar Islamic scholars demanded the establishment of “a national, constitutional, democratic and modern state, founded on a constitution approved by the nation”. It also sought “the separation of powers, guarantees for human rights, the power to legislate given to the elected representatives of the people in accordance with the correct Islamic understanding.”
The Al-Azhar declaration premised that the principle of governance according to Shariah is merely defined by the convergence between the principles operating in governance and in the Islamic tradition. It clearly stated that there is no “religious state” in Islam, be it in its history, its legislation, or in its civilization. Islam has left to people “the administration of their society and the choice of the tools and of the institutions that realize their interests, with the condition that the comprehensive principles of the Islamic Shariah be the main source of legislation, and as long as those who follow other revealed religions may refer to their own religious principles (Shari’ah Dīniyyah) to deal with their affairs of personal status.”
Regular Columnist with Newageislam.com, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a classical Islamic scholar and English-Arabic-Urdu writer. He has graduated from a leading Islamic seminary of India, acquired Diploma in Qur’anic sciences and Certificate in Uloom ul Hadith from Al-Azhar Institute of Islamic Studies. Presently, he is pursuing his PhD in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
Modi ‘magic’ is wearing off, Congress got more votes than BJP and farmers are angry with both parties.
Image Courtesy: Hindustan Times
While Karnataka politics is in the grip of another round of expected horse trading and uncertainty, election results have thrown up a bunch of curious facts that should give food for thought to TV talking heads and commentators. Here are some of them.
1. Modi “magic” is over: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held 21 rallies in the state during the high-decibel campaign, targeting the Congress and praising his own govt. at the centre. So, it can’t be said that Karnataka’s electorate was not thinking about the Modi govt. and only concentrating on state or local issues. As the results show, BJP’s vote share has dropped by some seven percentage points since the 2014 general elections. In the 2013 elections, Yeddyurappa and the Reddy brothers had quit the BJP to float their own outfits KJP and BSRC. Adding up BJP’s vote share with these two, they had managed about 32.4% votes in 2013. From there they went up to 43.4% in 2014 and plummeted down to 36.2% in 2018. That’s a net gain of less than 4% in five years. This despite all the booth management of Amit Shah and the speeches of Modi. Surely, the “magic” is no more.
2. Congress has more votes than BJP: Strange as it may look but Congress has about 38% votes compared to 36.2% votes gathered by BJP. And yet, BJP has got 104 seats compared to 78 for congress and 37 for JD-S. This has happened because of two reasons. One, in three regions – Bombay Karnataka, Central & Malnad and Coastal – BJP has swept decisively winning 66 of 98 seats and getting a much bigger share of votes than the Congress. For example in Coastal belt BJP got about 52% votes compared to Congress’ 40%. And two, the related fact that average margins of victory for BJP were much more in these three regions than elsewhere. For example, in coastal region, BJP’s average margin of victory was 23,409 compared to Congress’ 8787. Statewide, BJP’s winning margins were not so much different – Congress was 15,818 while BJP’s was 18,954’. What all this means is that despite all the hoopla about winning Karnataka and opening the gates to the South, BJP is still behind the Congress in terms of public support.
3. BJP lost the rural and ‘rurban’ areas: In the state’s 150 rural seats BJP won 69 to Congress’ 51. But in terms of vote share BJP lost: they got 34.7% votes compared to Congress’ 37.4%. In the 20 semi-rural seats or ‘rurban’ seats, BJP lost much more heavily getting 32% votes compared to Congress’ 37%. Both parties shared 7 seats apiece, with JD-S getting 5 (23% votes) and others one seat. It was only in the 52 urban seats that BJP had an edge over the Congress getting 28 seats and 42% votes compared to Congress’ 20 seats and 39.5% votes.
4. Caste factors were broken down: If you believe the so-called election experts that fill up mainstream media spaces, caste is the biggest determinant of electoral destinies. But a closer look at all elections, including this recent Karnataka one, shows that caste is not the over-riding factor. For instance, it was said that 120 seats have significant Lingayat presence and where this went would determine the fate of Congress and BJP. But the results show that in these seats, Congress got 38% votes while BJP got 40.6%. Clearly the community voted both ways. In the Vokkaliga dominated 64 seats, it was thought that JD-S would get the vast majority of votes. But in reality, Congress got marginally more votes (34.4%) than JD-S (34.2%) with BJP getting 24.3% of vote share
5. Dalits and Adivasis were divided: Among the 36 SC reserved seats, Congress got more votes (39%) than the BJP (35%) but ended up with less seats. Conversely, in the 15 ST reserved seats, Congress got slightly less votes (38%) than BJP (40%) but got 8 seats compared to BJP’s 6. Clearly communities were not voting en bloc, as is often assumed.
Source: ECI
What these facts drawn from the detailed results show is that regional factors, farmers’ issues and jobs were the factors determining voting trends, often cutting across caste and regional lines. But the biggest conclusion is that the BJP – and its electioneering machine of Shah and Modi – have failed to win Karnataka. That is why, the post poll alliance of Congress and JD-S is a viable alternative. They have between them got over 56% of the vote share compared to BJP’s 36.2%.
