Bengaluru: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to achieve out to the influential Vokkaliga neighborhood in Karnataka Friday, unveiling a 108-foot-statue of Kempegowda, the Sixteenth-century chieftain who laid the foundations of town that turned Bengaluru.
The Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP) which has to this point relied closely on the state’s dominant Lingayat neighborhood for votes, is now seeking to broaden its help base.
“I look ahead to being within the vibrant metropolis of Bengaluru tomorrow, eleventh November. I’m honoured to be getting the chance to unveil a statue of Sri Nadaprabhu Kempegowda,” Modi tweeted Thursday.
I look ahead to being within the vibrant metropolis of Bengaluru tomorrow, eleventh November. I’m honoured to be getting the chance to unveil a statue of Sri Nadaprabhu Kempegowda.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 10, 2022
Few in Karnataka are as eulogised as Kempegowda, who belonged to the Vokkaliga neighborhood (historically the landed-gentry concerned in agriculture) and whose identify dons Bengaluru’s airport, railway and bus station, landmarks, installations and localities.
The Rs 100 crore statue, dubbed the ‘Statue of Prosperity’, and adjoining theme park additional add to this lengthy checklist of landmarks named after Kempegowda, in a Vokkaliga-dominated metropolis that accounts for 28 out of the 224 meeting seats.
The disclosing of the statue comes at a time when the Bengaluru metropolis company polls proceed to be delayed, leaving certainly one of India’s IT-hub with no elected illustration since September 2020.
The BJP is eager to faucet into the Vokkaliga help loved nearly completely by former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) in current elections, with a portion of it going to the Congress.
Caste is a vital consider Karnataka and influences each side of social and political life. The Lingayats and Vokkaligas are believed to account for practically 16 per cent and 14 per cent of the inhabitants respectively, despite the fact that there is no such thing as a empirical information to show this.
The BJP, underneath former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, has been backed by the Lingayats in elections since 2008, whereas the Vokkaligas are recognized to help former PM HD Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular).
The Congress depends on the help of minorities, backward lessons and Dalits.
The BJP is now reaching out to the Vokkaliga neighborhood, whose votes are sometimes the deciding consider elections in a number of districts of the Previous Mysuru area, the place the saffron outfit has little or no presence.
The BJP should win in these constituencies to be able to get an impartial majority within the meeting.
In the meantime, the Congress’ D.Ok. Shivakumar of the Congress, additionally a Vokkaliga, is desperately searching for the neighborhood’s help his personal bid to outmaneuver Siddaramaiah.
In its two phrases in authorities within the state (2008-13 and since 2019), the BJP was in a position to identify just one Vokkaliga chief minister — D.V. Sadananda Gowda in 2011 — however has since continued with Lingayat names, together with Basavaraj Bommai, who changed Yediyurappa final yr
Coincidentally, 11 November (Friday) can also be noticed as Kanaka Dasa Jayanthi in Karnataka, to commemorate the lifetime of the Sixteenth-century saint. Kanaka Dasa is revered by all communities within the state, however notably by the Kuruba neighborhood through which he was born. This group has since 2013 at the very least stood firmly with Siddaramaiah.
“Modi, who belongs to the backward neighborhood is providing floral tributes to a saint (Kanaka Dasa) who was a beacon for the entire society. The PM will even bathe flowers on Maharshi Valmiki (a poet-saint finest recognized for authoring the Ramayana) (whose statue is) located adjoining to the statue of Kanaka Dasaru,” Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai stated in an announcement Thursday.
The Valmikis, categorized as scheduled tribes in Karnataka, are a robust neighborhood and the state authorities’s determination in October to extend reservations for scheduled tribes from three per cent to seven per cent, is more likely to profit the BJP, particularly with such grand gestures by the Prime Minister.
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Appropriation of Kempegowda’s legacy
Born to Kempa Nanje Gowda in 1513, in a village close to modern-day Yelahanka — now on the outskirts of Bengaluru — Kempegowda-I used to be a chieftain or Palegara underneath the Vijayanagara kings.
Historians and several other documented items of proof point out that the statue of Kempegowda that the prime minister unveiled barely resembles the precise one who died six centuries in the past.
“The essential drawback is with the imagery of Kempegowda, as one can see the distinction between the unique footage, carvings and the statue that’s being unveiled,” claimed a Bengaluru-based political analyst, requesting anonymity.
The statue is an extension of the apply underneath the BJP to ‘lionize’ such personalities with ferocious masculinity and appropriating his id with the Hindus relatively than solely with Vokkaligas, the analyst quotes above added.
ThePrint reached Dr C.N. Ashwath Narayan, minister for increased schooling and Electronics Info Know-how & Biotechnology for remark, however obtained no response until the time of publication of this report.
The BJP has, in the meantime, began a marketing campaign to gather ‘holy mud’ for the occasion.
“To mark the event sacred soil collected from over 22,000 places throughout the state was obtained and combined symbolically with the mud beneath one of many 4 towers of the statue,” Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, Karnataka’s minister for increased schooling stated.
Members of this neighborhood have the decisive vote in a number of constituencies within the Previous Mysuru area from the place the JD(S) attracts nearly all its energy.
Origin of Bengaluru
The identify Bengaluru seems for the primary time in a Ganga inscription dated about 900 AD, in accordance with a number of historians who’ve documented the lifetime of the Sixteenth-century chieftain.
In line with historian T.V. Annaswamy’s e-book, Bengaluru to Bangalore: City historical past of Bangalore from the pre-historic interval to the top of 18th century, even the origin of the phrase can’t be attributed to Kempegowda.
A number of authors and historians have identified that the time period ‘Bendakal uru’ or metropolis of boiled beans, believed to be how the phrase Bengaluru took place, shouldn’t be related to Kempegowda, however with Hosala dynasty king Veera Raya-II, practically 300 years earlier than Kempegowda’s time.
Maya Jayapal in her e-book, Bangalore-Roots and Past, writes that the identify was derived after an outdated lady serving boiled beans to Veera Ballala Raya-II (1173-1220) when the ruler was misplaced and hungry after searching.
The opposite potential origins of the phrase Bengaluru are Benda Kada Uru (metropolis of burnt forest), Bengavalaru (city of bodyguards), Bengakalla Uru (city of heated stones), Benge Tree (Raktha Honee in Kannada and Pterocarpus marsupium in Latin), in accordance with a number of historians.
“Impressed by its strategic location and business significance, Kempegowda determined to shift his capital from Yelahanka to Bengaluru. Accordingly, he obtained the permission of Achyuta Devaraya (king of Vijayanagara empire between1530-1542) to shift his capital and erect a mud fort at Bengaluru,” Annaswammy writes in Bengaluru to Bangalore: City historical past of Bangalore from the pre-historic interval to the top of 18th century.
Bengaluru was already a well-protected settlement and business centre alongside the southern roads. However Kempegowda is credited by historians with rising its significance, creating caste-wise buying and selling localities, stationing a garrison, construct temples, lakes and ‘Kalyanis’ (tanks) and administering the area with nice ability and acumen which might ultimately lay the foundations for Bangalore metropolis in 1532.
Simply when town was rising in significance, Kempegowda established an impartial mint and began circulating his personal foreign money, Virabhadra Varaha, with the picture of his household deity, which was seen as him exceeding his authority and igniting dormant fears throughout the Vijayanagara Kings of chieftains going rogue and searching for independence.
He was imprisoned for 5 years and was launched on cost of an enormous sum and Yelahankanadu was restored to him.
Nonetheless, a number of accounts by different historians, together with the Yelahanka Naraprabhugala Shasana Samputa by the Bangalore college, have questioned these claims.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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