Hindutva as a ‘sacred form’ : a case study of Karnataka

The emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the single-largest party in the Assembly elections of Karnataka in 2018 has led to several analyses that have tried to identify the reasons behind the party’s success, despite its inability to form the government. The immediate triggers for the success of the party can obviously be located in the political strategies deployed by the central and the state-level BJP functionaries, the consolidation of dominant castes against the Congress and the failure of the Congress to weave together a winning social coalition ahead of the polls. The popularity of the BJP in this region, however, requires an analysis that deploys the lens of a longer time frame and its entrenchment outside the electoral realm. This is especially important because in most regions of the country, the Sangh Parivar operates as an ecosystem that pervades every conceivable sphere of society and a comprehensive understanding of the political outfit necessitates an unpacking of this ecosystem. In this chapter, I demonstrate how the concerted efforts by the Sangh Parivar – from holding ‘Hindu Samajotsavas’, to allying with mathas, to ensuring the expansion of its affiliates – did much to bolster the fortunes of the party. The chapter is focused in particular on the ways in which it has negotiated regional specificities in the region while subscribing to its core ideology of building a strong organic ‘Hindu Rashtra’. I argue that Hindutva in Karnataka, as elsewhere, operates as a ‘sacred form’ that is constructed through the help of symbols and discourses relating to issues of ‘liberating’ Hindu places of worship from the ‘other’, prohibition of cow slaughter, protection of Hindu culture from the onslaught of the ‘others’ and rejuvenation of Hindu institutions such as seva