Saralnama
“This is a society in which no single caste can be dominant and the source of any kind of power will have to be some form of multi caste alliance,” political theorist K Raghavendra Rao noted about Karnataka in the 1983 book Shift in Indian Politics. The book came at a time after the Congress Chief Minister Devaraj Urs (1972-1980) upended a traditional power alliance between dominant castes in the state — Lingayats, Vokkaligas, and Brahmins — and established a Congress base among the backward castes (OBCs), Scheduled Caste (SC) groups, and Muslims. While the Congress’s vote base expanded beyond dominant castes during the Urs period, there has been a growing sense in the party in recent times, especially among younger leaders and following the rise of the BJP on the Hindutva plank in the 1990s, that the social justice plank alone will not help it win Assembly elections in the future. There is a constant ideological struggle within the state Congress at present on whether the party should rely only on its tried-and-trusted vote base or attempt the Hindutva game played by the BJP, which has ruled the state twice since 2008. Many of the older generation Congress leaders,… (Updated 25 Aug 2025, 15:08 IST; source: link)