CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Kallahalla Shridhar, Mihira |
|---|---|
| Title | Turning Karnataka Saffron: Explaining the Success of BJP in Karnataka |
| Summary | The national dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India is built on its electoral strength in the states of the Hindi belt. However, Karnataka in the south has also emerged as a stronghold of the BJP. This is puzzling considering the BJP’s ideological lineage as a pro-Hindi party and traditional support base consisting mainly of upper castes. To achieve electoral success in Karnataka, the BJP had to surmount the challenge posed by a strong Kannada subnationalism and expand its social support base beyond the upper castes. By tapping into Kannada subnationalism’s affinity with Hindu cultural elements, the BJP legitimised its Hindu nationalist ideology. Moreover, it exploited the adversarial attitude of Kannada subnationalism towards linguistic outgroups to construct the Muslim other. Further, the BJP managed to expand its social support base by offering leadership positions to Lingayats and forging close ties with influential Lingayat mathas. The religio-cultural activities of Sangh Parivar played a key role in acquiring the support of non-dominant OBC castes in coastal Karnataka. This thesis seeks to contribute to the comparative study of the BJP by developing a framework for the analysis of its politics in the non-Hindi states. |
| Supervisor | Enyedi, Zsolt |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/kallahalla_mihira.pdf |
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