Bengaluru: The Karnataka cabinet’s decision to rename Ramanagara district as Bengaluru South is part of undoing the political legacy of H.D. Deve Gowda, and creating that of another prominent Vokkaliga leader, D.K. Shivakumar, say people aware of the developments.
With a rivalry dating back decades, Deputy Chief Minister Shivakumar has pushed for the renaming in order to challenge the dominance of former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda, his son and former CM H.D. Kumaraswamy, and their party Janata Dal (Secular) in the Old Mysuru region, they added.
“Kumaraswamy has spared no opportunity to state that he created the Ramanagara district and gave it its identity. Shivakumar has long challenged this narrative and wants to use his position to reclaim the region as a Congress stronghold,” said one Ramanagara-based activist, requesting anonymity.
The district, bordering Bengaluru, was carved out in 2006-07 when Kumaraswamy became the CM and subsequently converted into a fortress of the JD(S). A hilltop in this district gained instant fame after the iconic movie Sholay was shot there.
The JD(S) largely relies on the land-holding agrarian class, Vokkaligas, for its politics. Shivakumar has had to push himself to emerge as a Vokkaliga leader.
The Vokkaligas comprise the second-largest population in the state, with decisive numbers of its members spread across southern Karnataka.
Large cities across India have expanded, transforming agricultural land on the outskirts into real-estate havens. So is the case with Ramanagara and other regions surrounding Bengaluru, where politics, in a big way, revolves around the two powerhouses of Karnataka politics.
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Cannot erase Rama from Ramanagara, says JD(S), BJP
The JD(S) and its alliance partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have objected to the name change proposal cleared last week in the Siddaramaiah-led cabinet.
Since then, the JD(S) has lent to the BJP’s narrative that the name change is an effort to “erase the name of Lord Rama from Ramanagara” as the “Congress is allergic to the name of Rama”.
“The district was carved out in 2007 when no one objected, and all agreed with the decision. But, today, there is an attempt to erase the name of Ram…. what the Congress is doing, Lord Rama, perhaps, will take care of. No one can erase the name of Rama,” Nikhil Kumaraswamy, the actor-politician son of H.D. Kumaraswamy, told reporters in Bengaluru Monday.
The JD(S) and the BJP partnered up before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The former was looking to revive its sagging fortunes and take on the Congress, which, it considers, a threat to its very survival in these parts. The latter, meanwhile, was hoping to gain a foothold in the southern districts, where it has little to no presence.
H.D. Kumaraswamy made his political debut in 1996 by winning the Kanakapura Lok Sabha seat. Three years later, in 1999, he lost his first assembly election to Shivakumar from Sathanur.
In a comeback in 2004, H.D. Kumaraswamy won from the Ramanagara assembly seat, where his family remained in power till the state elections last year when Congress’s H.A. Iqbal Hussain defeated Nikhil.
Earlier in 2018, H.D. Kumaraswamy fought and won the Ramanagara and Channapatna seats and retained the latter while his wife took over in his bastion. Nikhil lost the Mandya Lok Sabha seat in 2019, and he then went on to unsuccessfully contest from Ramanagara assembly seat in 2023.
Deve Gowda defeated Shivakumar in his 1985 political debut from the Sathanur seat. However, four years later, Shivakumar did what was considered unthinkable at the time — he defeated Deve Gowda from Kanakapura in the 1989 elections.
Since then, a battle has been raging between the two, each taking turns to dominate the other. According to people who kept up with these developments, the proposal to rename Ramanagara stems from the same rivalry.
“When Kumaraswamy and Deve Gowda came from Hassan, it (present day-Ramanagara) was Bengaluru. It was Bengaluru when he (Kumaraswamy) became CM, and he (Gowda) became PM. But, Kumaraswamy changed the district’s name after he came to power,” Shivakumar told reporters Saturday.
‘Will revert to Ramanagara by 2028’: Kumaraswamy
Ramanagara, roughly 50 kilometres from Bengaluru, was carved out of the erstwhile Bengaluru Rural district on 23 August 2007 and includes five talukas — Ramanagara, Kanakapura, Magadi, Channapatna and Harohalli.
Known as Shamsherabad at the time of Tipu Sultan, it was later renamed Ramanagara.
Now known as the ‘silk city’ of Karnataka, the district houses several industries, with Toyota Kirloskar and Channapatna Toys emerging as global phenomena.
The people of the district are conflicted over the decision to rename Ramanagara as it would entail the change of addresses, getting new documents, voter lists, and revenue papers made, and having to travel 50 kilometres to Bengaluru city, which will become the region’s headquarters.
“No new buildings that didn’t come up all these years from the time of Kempe Gowda, Kengal Hanumanthaiah (the second CM of Mysore State), Deve Gowda, or Kumaraswamy will come up now. The move is for purely political reasons. But, it will cause a huge problem to the public,” B. Nagaraju, a local JD(S) leader, told ThePrint.
Others hope that including Ramanagara in Bengaluru will extend the same benefits to the district, such as the Metro and local bus connectivity and better prices for land.
“Most politicians and officials own large tracts of land in the outskirts of Bengaluru. This region is also part of the shortlist for the construction of the new airport. So, this is a very calculated move on the part of the Congress and the officials backing it,” said one BJP leader, requesting anonymity.
There is also an aspirational value attached to the renaming, with people wanting to be identified as ‘Bengalureans’ as they were part of the same district earlier.
The Congress has also tabled the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024, which proposes to expand the city’s boundaries and is now up for further deliberations by a joint select committee of the Karnataka legislature.
“Though the bill itself does not specify the exact area it will cover, the proposal was to expand to 1,400 square kilometres from roughly 800 kilometres as of today,” said a retired IAS official, requesting anonymity.
The bill does not specify whether, after renaming Ramanagara as Bengaluru South, the district will come under the existing Lok Sabha constituency of the same name.
Kumaraswamy, however, has said that Ramanagara will revive its identity by 2028.
“Probably by 2028, perhaps we don’t have to wait that long…the district will again be renamed Ramanagara,” Kumaraswamy told reporters.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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