Karnataka polls: RSS pracharaks to media pros, BJP's Hindutva exponents

The saffron party's Hindutva exponents have all courted serious controversies with minority-baiting and combustible statements and invited criminal charges. Here's a brief profile of some of them

As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has woven in Hindutva-related themes in its Karnataka campaign while adhering to the “development” programme in its election manifesto and micro-manifestos, it has unveiled an array of faces and voices that have articulated the BJP’s position on cattle slaughter, the alleged attacks on its workers, the “withdrawal” of criminal cases against Muslims by the Congress government, the state government’s “deification” of Tipu Sultan and its “failure” to protect the Hindus. 

These Hindutva exponents — who range from original Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) whole-timers and sympathisers to farmers, media columnists and transporters — have all courted serious controversies with their minority-baiting and combustible statements and invited criminal charges. Yet, they remain unfazed in the belief that their espousal of political “nationalism” and a faith-based polity has a big constituency in Karnataka that will spell doom for the Siddharamaiah government. 

Meet this motley bunch of enfant terrible and old hands.

Pratap Simha (top left), Pralhad Joshi (top right), Sanjay B Patil (bottom right), Anantkumar Hegde (bottom left), Nalin Kumar Kateel (centre)

 

Nalin Kumar Kateel, Lok Sabha MP from Dakshina Kannada 

The Mangaluru-born Kateel, 51, runs a transport business and survives on a “simple” diet of rice “kanji” (porridge). But Kateel’s profligacy with political words and deeds has got him in trouble. In September 2017, a day after the BJP’s youth wing led a motorbike “yatra” through Mangaluru and Udupi to protest the murder of RSS activists, Kateel was caught on camera allegedly threatening a cop who tried en route to stop him. In the prelude to the 2014 elections, he claimed if Narendra Modi was elected the PM, a dollar would be available for Rs 15. First elected to the Lower House of Parliament in 2009 with the RSS’s backing, Kateel is a favourite of BJP President Amit Shah, who put him in charge of Kerala as a coordinator during the last state elections.

Kateel tries sounding less fanatical than some of his bellicose colleagues and dresses up his assertions on Hindutva with the claims that he studied in a Christian missionary school, St Philomena’s, at Puttur, counted the Bishop of Mangalore as a “good” friend and donated money to a mosque near his home in Chennavar. Kateel has vowed to win all the eight Assembly seats in Dakshin Kannada.

Prathap Simha, Mysuru MP

Unlike Kateel, Simha does not mince his words on Hindutva. He joined the BJP in April 2014 and got a Lok Sabha ticket. Simha caught the BJP’s and specifically the prime minister’s attention when he authored a Kannada book on Modi, Yaaru Thuliyada Haadi (Narendra Modi: The Untrodden Road). Simha claimed the book introduced Modi to the people of Karnataka and boasted, “in 33 days, I have gone from being a columnist to a parliamentarian”, after he won his seat.

A protégé of journalist Vishweshwar Bhat, who’s now in the BJP, Simha wrote a column Bettale Jagatu (or The Naked World) that espoused Hindutva and slammed those opposing it in a Kannada paper, Vijaya Karnataka. In June 2015, he became a member of the Press Council of India.

But he endeared himself to BJP chief Shah when he strongly opposed the Karnataka government’s birthday celebrations of Tipu Sultan in 2015 and defied curfew orders to lead a Hanuman Jayanti procession in his constituency. Shah appointed Simha as the president of the BJP’s Karnataka youth wing.

One of the multiple Facebook pages he keeps projects him as “Prathap Simha for CM” and has epithets like ‘Hindu Tiger’ and ‘Simha Garjane’ (the roar of the lion). He belongs to the Vokkaliga community that dominates the Mysuru region.

Sanjay B Patil, two-term legislator from Belgaum Rural 

Patil hit the national headlines when he proclaimed that the impending Karnataka election was not about roads, dams and drinking water but a “war” between those who wanted the Babri mosque and Tipu Jayanti and those who lionised Shivaji. Like Kateel, Patil was filmed confronting a cop for allegedly stalling a bicycle procession he took out in September 2017. Two months later, the Belagavi police booked him for demanding that chief minister Siddharamaiah should be sent to Pakistan because he was “unsure” of being a Hindu.

Patil provoked his constituency’s wrath when he sided with Maharashtra over a Supreme Court verdict on a border dispute with Karnataka. He later apologised, saying: “Even a dog guards the house after eating food given by his master. I have eaten the food of Karnataka.”

Pralhad Joshi, Dharwad MP

The name of 55-year-old Joshi comes up when there is a suggestion of a joust for the Karnataka chief minister’s post in the BJP, but he shrugs off such insinuations, maintaining that his family’s links with the RSS go back a long way. Joshi became an RSS-BJP favourite when he led a “Save Kashmir Movement” in Karnataka in the ’90s and later a march to hoist the tricolour at the contentious Idgah ground in Hubli that has an Ayodhya-like background. 

Joshi was in the news lately for correcting Shah when he mistakenly said “if ever there was a contest for corruption, B S Yeddyurappa (the BJP’s CM face) would get the first prize”. Later, Joshi flubbed his lines while translating Shah’s speech against Siddharamaiah for doing nothing for the tribals and Dalits. Joshi had said, “Narendra Modi has done nothing for the tribals and Dalits.”

Anantkumar Hegde, Uttara Kannada MP and a junior skill development and entrepreneurship minister at the Centre 

Hegde’s induction in Modi’s council of ministers sparked off speculations that he would be the BJP’s CM candidate in Karnataka. The dream, though, was short-lived. Hegde’s had one of the most successful runs as a BJP MP, having won five times since he was first elected in 1996. As a 27-year-old, he defeated Congress veteran Margaret Alva from Uttara Kannada. His personal page described him as a “fierce nationalist, a passionate social activist-turned-policy maker” whose character and thoughts were moulded by his mother, Hindu mythology, and later the BJP.

But his remarks about tweaking the Constitution and restoring the “identity” of one’s parents and “their blood”— a riff on the RSS’ theory of India’s religious minorities being originally Hindus until they were proselytised — landed him in trouble. Karnataka’s Dalits protested his remarks when he turned up for a public function in Bellary. Hegde dismissed the protestors as “barking dogs”, for which he later apologised.