It’s down to 86-yr-old Deve Gowda to revive JD(S) as family politics, poll rout threaten party

Former PM Deve Gowda will have to step up to resurrect JD(S), which has seen a shift of its voter base, while having to deal with his family's ambitions.

H. D. Deve Gowda | Arijit Sen | Getty Image

Bengaluru: At 86, former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, who has had a 65-year stint in politics, should be at the fag end of his career. A crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections coupled with familial strife, however, has only re-emphasised the importance of elder statesman to his party, the Janata Dal (Secular).

The JD(S) is in the doldrums in Karnataka after winning just one of the seven Lok Sabha seats it contested. To make matters worse, barring newly-elected Hassan MP, Prajwal Revanna, the Gowda clan suffered humiliating losses in Mandya and Tumkur, where the former prime minister himself contested.

Now, strife in the family — with no member to match his political heft — a shaky coalition and the very distinct possibility of the JD(S) being pushed into political wilderness has put the onus back on Deve Gowda to resurrect the party.

Aware of the reality, the JD(S) patriarch has got down to work. He turned down the offer from Prajwal Revanna, who announced that he was ready to vacate his Hassan seat for his grandfather, and Friday, a day after the Lok Sabha results, called a party meeting to send out a strong message — the JD(S) is in a do-or-die situation and needs saving.

“My concern is how to save a regional party,” Deve Gowda told the media following the meeting. “I am very concerned about how we could strengthen our base and I take responsibility for the performance of the party.”

The task ahead, however, is a challenging one. Not only has Deve Gowda’s party been decimated, his son H.D. Kumaraswamy’s government is also at the brink of collapsing. The JD(S) patriarch also has the added responsibility of ensuring that the rebuilding of the party includes a strong succession plan for his sons and grandsons.

Not one to give up

The JD(S) supremo will first have to contend with the rocky coalition that his party shares with the Congress in Karnataka. There are murmurs in the state’s political circles that the BJP may engineer a downfall of the Kumaraswamy government in wake of the coalition’s drubbing.

There has also been bitter acrimony between the two parties, particularly in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. Senior leaders such as the Congress’ Siddaramaiah, JD(S) state president H. Vishwanath and even Chief Minister Kumaraswamy have routinely traded barbs.

Many in Congress also blame the JD(S) for the poll debacle, arguing that the latter’s insistence on Mandya and Tumkur, Congress bastions, hurt the national party. The poll defeats will only add to the chorus against the JD(S).

There is also a feeling, even within the JD(S), that its workers and core voters of Vokkaligas moved away from the party and worked for BJP candidates, particularly in Mysore constituency.

“Across the southern districts, JD(S) workers and supporters backed the BJP,” said a leader who did not want to be identified.

The loss of support of the Vokkaligas has put the party on a sticky wicket. For Deve Gowda, however, this is familiar territory. The former prime minister has been written off a number of times, only to make a comeback. “I will rise from the dust. I will be back,” he famously said when his United Front government was about to fall on 21 April, 1997.

He was back in Parliament in 2002, after winning a Lok Sabha bypoll from the Kanakapura constituency but not before he lost the 1999 elections from Hassan.

In all, Gowda has lost two assembly and three parliamentary elections but has never lost political relevance in the state.

“Deve Gowda will be a politician as long as he is alive. He has been a politician without a constitutional position many times but never irrelevant,” said JD(S) leader Tanveer Ahmed. “He may have made some wrong decisions but does not make wrong calculations.”

Karnataka BJP spokesperson Malavika Avinash said she will not be surprised if Deve Gowda contests again in the next parliamentary elections.

“He has been defeated earlier too in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections,” she said. “His politics will continue to thrive as long as he does. However, the JD(S) which was on the decline, has been weakened tremendously by the BJP with these 2019 results.”

Strife in the family

The former prime minister will also have to address the strife closer home — in his family.

From obsession with politics, bitter sibling rivalry, pressure from a daughter-in-law to an overambitious third generation, the Gowda family has it all.

There have been incessant murmurs of the strained relationship between Deve Gowda’s sons, Chief Minister Kumaraswamy and Public Works Minister H.D. Revanna. This is being blamed for the poor decisions that the JD(S) made ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Deve Gowda first gambled with his political legacy and family pride by choosing to vacate Hassan and contest from Tumkur, a Congress bastion that he demanded as part of the coalition seat-sharing formula. He also took Mandya, another Congress stronghold, for grandson Nikhil Kumaraswamy. Both lost, with the only silver lining being that Prajwal managed to win at Hassan.

Deve Gowda’s decision to vacate the Hassan seat for Prajwal was the result of a promise that he had made to Prajwal’s mother, Bhavani, the wife of Revanna. Bhavani had been demanding an opportunity for her son to join active politics as he had for the last five years been building his network in his father’s constituency of Holenarsipura in Hassan.

Deve Gowda gave her his word, and Hassan went to Prajwal Revanna.

That, however, meant that the former PM had to surrender to the demands of his younger son, Kumaraswamy, who sought a seat to launch his actor-son Nikhil into politics. Nikhil’s candidature was a result of Gowda trying to assuage egos and bring peace in the family rather than smart politics.

All of this, said political analyst A. Narayana of the Azim Premji University, makes the future very bleak for the JD(S).

“Even if Deve Gowda may not want to retire, age is not on his side. The party does not have a second line leadership with any promising vision,” Narayana said.

He added that the BJP’s rise could further hurt the party’s prospects.

“The JD(S) has been a caste-centered party and the caste (Vokkaligas) backed it to the hilt. Now, people are unhappy about it becoming a family-centered party,” he explained.

“The caste has moved away from the party to some extent in this election. Moreover, the BJP is going to offer new political avenues to aspiring Vokkaliga politicians and after Deve Gowda, his family will not be able to stop that shift.”

Deve Gowda is 86 years old and not 89. This copy has been updated to reflect the correct age.