The seat-sharing and power-sharing arrangements that secularists Gowda and Hegde had with the BJP in the past decade caused a fundamental alteration at the grassroots level to facilitate the saffron surge. "In fact, the very first non-Congress government in the state that came to power in 1983 was supported by 18 BJP legislators from outside," recalls author and Lohiaite D.S. Nagabhushan. However, the first formal seat-sharing arrangement happened when Hegde aligned his JD(U)/Lok Shakti with the BJP in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections. This was after his expulsion from the Janata Dal when Gowda became prime minister. Although the alliance did not help Hegde much, it benefited the BJP by helping it capture the imagination of the dominant Lingayats of north Karnataka, over whom Hegde had a hold.
With the passing of Hegde and also J.H. Patel, the BJP ended up consolidating the vote base of the breakaway Janata Dal in north Karnataka. From a vote share of 16.99 per cent in 1994, the BJP touched a vote share of 28.33 per cent in 2004 to become the single largest party in the state. By 2008, when it came to power on its own, it had touched 33.86 per cent. When it supported the Hegde government from outside in 1983, its vote share was 7.93 per cent.
If Hegde made electoral alliances, Gowda’s JD(S), under the stewardship of his son H.D. Kumaraswamy, allowed the BJP to taste power for the first time in 2006. In the euphoria of the moment, Kumaraswamy had cheekily said that he was "still searching for the meaning of secularism". In 2007, when the JD(S) bungled on its power-transfer arrangement, the BJP swept the polls on a sympathy wave in the May 2008 elections. To a significant extent, the anti-Congress vote had shifted from the Janata parivar to the BJP. "The JD(U)’s alignment with the BJP in 1998, however flawed, was a political decision. It was forced by George Fernandes on J.H. Patel. But the Gowda-Kumaraswamy decision in 2007 was born out of personal ambition. We can’t trust the anti-BJP politics of the JD(S)," says Nagabhushan.
In the coastal districts, the Congress too has to share the blame. Without an effective programme in place, it conceded political space on the coast after the Surathkal riots in 1998-1999. This despite some of its senior leaders like Oscar Fernandes, B.K. Hariprasad, Veerappa Moily, Margaret Alva and Janardhan Poojary hailing from the district. So the blame for the so-called rise of the BJP in Karnataka must rest with the very people who are crying themselves hoarse over it.
