Bengaluru: In India, the adage holds true for marriages, particularly arranged ones — it’s not just a union of two individuals but of families. In political families, this gains added significance as alliances can often amplify a party’s strength, making it a formidable force.
In Karnataka, the family tree of 92-year-old veteran Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa stands testimony to this sort of alliance-making.
His granddaughter, Akhila, Thursday married Basanagouda Patil, known as Basan, the older son of M.B. Patil, a senior Congress leader and cabinet minister in the Siddaramaiah-led Congress state government. Basan is currently not in active politics and looks after the family’s educational institutions.
“Shamanur Shivashankarappa’s family is like the Golden Quadrilateral,” said a member of the Congress party in Karnataka, referring to the family line now stretching across almost all districts of Kittur-Karnataka (formerly Mumbai-Karnataka), which consists of seven districts including Uttara Kannada, Belagavi, Dharwad, Vijayapura, Bagalkot, Gadag and Haveri. (The Golden Quadrilateral is one of India’s biggest highway networks connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. This also passes through Bengaluru.)
Shivashankarappa is India’s oldest elected MLA, the president of the All India Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha (one of the most influential and powerful Lingayat bodies in the country), and six-time legislator from Davangere.
Akhila’s older sister, Aanchal, is married to former chief minister Jagadish Shettar’s son Prashanth. At the time of their wedding in 2014, Shettar was with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress’s main rival in Karnataka.
In April this year, when Shettar was denied a ticket by the BJP for the May assembly elections, Shivashankarappa and Patil had used family ties to help the former CM decide to switch to the Congress, people aware of the developments say.
The marriage Thursday brings together three powerful families — Shivashankarappas of Davangere, Shettars of Hubli-Dharwad, and Patils of Vijayapura.
But family ties are not the only reason for such alliances. Political families seek out similar alliances to retain the influence they wield.
One of the biggest reasons is perhaps to maintain leverage and stature within a community within the same caste, even if it’s across different sub-sects.
“There is no set party structure in Karnataka. It is always family, caste (first) and then party,” Narendar Pani, a Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), told ThePrint.
“The political class in Karnataka is not ideological. In Tamil Nadu, they (political leaders) will not even attend each other’s weddings, let alone stitch marital alliances,” he added.
Pani said that family and endogamous alliances ensure bigger clout that allows such leaders to be part of any party without actually subscribing to that ideology but only with the promise of winning the seat.
Few political leaders in Karnataka can claim to have remained in one party their entire career. Moreover, these leaders maintain relations across the aisle and outside of politics.
Basan and Akhila’s wedding Thursday not only had Congress leaders like CM Siddaramaiah, Deputy CM D.K. Shivakumar in attendance, but also Janata Dal (Secular) leader H.D. Deve Gowda, and BJP’s B.S. Yediyurappa apart from several others who have attacked each other over several matters related to caste, politics and corruption, among others. The BJP and JD(S) have formalised an alliance to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and have since attacked the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government of widespread corruption to fund elections in other states, as well as next year’s polls.
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Shivashankarappa ‘extended’ influence
In 2018, speculations were rife that BJP strongman B. Sriramulu and then Congress minister Ramesh Jarkiholi were trying to bring their families together via marriage. The two leaders are from the powerful Valmiki community, classified as Scheduled Tribes (ST) in Karnataka, and wield considerable influence in the northern and north-eastern parts of the state.
This alliance did not go through.
There are examples also of how marital alliances have overcome differences on other issues like the release of the caste census. Patil is considered to be the brain behind the 2018 decision made by Siddaramaiah to accord minority religion status to Lingayats. This was opposed by the Shivashankarappa-led Mahasabha.
The Mahasabha has now also demanded a fresh caste census to be carried out in the state and Patil has maintained a stoic silence on the issue, though both will be equally impacted if the findings of the 2015 report is made public. Shivashankarappa is a Sadr Lingayat while Patil is from Kudu-Vokkaliga sub-sect of Lingayats.
But these differences do not go beyond the floor of the legislature or party offices.
“Many of my cousins and relatives are married into politically prominent families. We, by marriage, have relations with former CMs like Jagadish Shettar, Basavaraj Bommai and several others. Some of my relatives are married into non-political families as well, but these decisions are taken mostly by our elders,” Aakarsh Shamanur, Shivashankarappa’s grandnephew told ThePrint.
Shivashankarappa’s extended family goes much further.
Former Union minister and BJP MP from Davangere, G.M. Siddeshwara, is related to Shivashankarappa.
Shettar’s other son, Sankalp, is married to the daughter of late Union railways minister Suresh Angadi. Shettar and Angadi are both from the Banajiga Lingayat sub-sect.
Angadi’s wife, Mangala, is the incumbent MP from Belagavi and people aware of developments say her nephew is engaged to marry the younger son of former Karnataka industries minister, Murugesh R. Nirani, a Panchamasali Lingayat.
Shettar’s nephew is engaged to the granddaughter of former vice-president of India and CM of the erstwhile Mysore state, the late B.D. Jatti.
Former chief minister S.M. Krishna’s grandson, Amartya Hegde, married Aishwarya, the daughter of Krishna’s protege, D.K. Shivakumar in February 2021. Amartya is the son of Cafe Coffee Day founder, Late V.G. Siddhartha.
Arguably, the biggest political dynasty in the country is that of former prime minister and JD(S) leader H.D. Deve Gowda with eight immediate family members in active politics, who have stitched similar alliances.
Gowda’s grandson and H.D. Kumaraswamy’s son, Nikhil, is married to the grandniece of senior Congress legislator N. Krishnappa.
Gowda’s other son, H.D. Ramesh, is married to the daughter of former minister and Maddur MLA, D.C. Thammanna.
There are some cases where such alliances have transcended state borders too.
Senior Congress leader from Karnataka, R.V. Deshpande’s son is married to the daughter of former Union civil aviation minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Praful Patel.
Deshpande is an eight-time legislator from Haliyal in Uttara Kannada district while Patel’s political career has been in neighbouring Maharashtra.
Family comes first for most of these families that continue to expand their respective influence in certain regions of the state. Like the Jarkiholis, the sugar barons from Belagavi.
Four out of the five brothers are in active politics with two in the BJP, one in the Congress and another an Independent. Satish Jarkiholi, the public works department minister in the Siddaramaiah Congress government, and his older brother Ramesh, are considered the catalysts in the 2019 defection drama that brought down the Congress-JD(S) alliance government. Irrespective of which party comes to power, there is at least one Jarkiholi within the cabinet, as has been seen in at least the last three governments. Ramesh had openly helped his brother, Lakhan, win as an independent candidate in the December 2021 legislative council elections against the BJP’s Mahantesh Kavatagimath. Party has rarely mattered for the Jarkiholis whose first loyalty lies with family.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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