In the recently concluded elections, with Yediyurappa, who returned to the BJP’s fold in 2018, once again being sidelined, Siddaramaiah helped the Congress win 135 of the 224 assembly seats in the state, with party’s Lingayat candidates boasting the second-best strike rate after Scheduled Tribe candidates. His outreach also helped to consolidate Muslim and Dalit voters for the party.

If this focus on backward classes makes Siddaramaiah sound like an old-world socialist, it is because he is. And his concept of Ahinda isn’t borrowed from Urs but inspired by the original socialist, Ram Manohar Lohia. “To understand Siddaramaiah’s ideological background, one has to study Lohia,” said Mohan Kumar Kondajji, a member of the Karnataka legislative assembly, and a close associate .

Kondajji was 24 when he first met Siddaramaiah on the sets of the Kannada film Ellindalo Bandavaru in 1979. “Siddaramaiah made his debut in movies before entering electoral politics,” said Kondajji. The film was directed by P Lankesh, a journalist turned film-maker and father of Gauri Lankesh. “Siddaramaiah used to visit the film set to talk to us about political developments because we shared similar ideologies, and he ended up playing a role in the movie,” recollected Kondajji.

And now, of course, he has emerged the hero of a story he himself scripted (at least in part).

The socialist with big dreams

Born on August 3, 1947, Siddaramaiah was the second of five siblings born to Siddarame Gowda and Boramma, in the then remote village of Siddaramana Hundi, 20km from Mysuru. The first of his family to gain higher education, he carved his own path and studied law at Mysuru University, the city where he would later practise. But in college, the seeds of his political career had already been sown.

“In 1971, I joined the Samajwadi Yuvajana Samiti of Lohia. Professor Najunadawamy, who was a professor of law, who I met in my first year of law, was the primary reason behind that. He taught me politics, and when I was in college, the professor organised a movement against the policies of then-chief minister Veerendra Patil. That is where my politics began,” Siddaramaiah said in a speech in August 2022.

Indeed, his first foray into mainstream electoral politics in 1983 was backed by the Bharatiya Lok Dal, a party staunchly opposed to Indira Gandhi, and led by former prime minister Charan Singh, a close associate of Ram Manohar Lohia. He fought the 1983 elections on a BLD ticket from Chamundeshwari in the Congress pocket-borough of Old Mysuru, and won. Midterm elections came around in two years, and by this time Siddaramaiah had joined the ruling Janata Party under Ramkrishna Hegde. He won again, and became the minister for animal husbandry and veterinary services, and also served as the first president of the Kannada Kavalu Samiti (Kannada Watchdog Committee) that sought to implement Kannada as the official language of the state.

Over time, even though he did suffer personal electoral losses, like in 1989, Siddaramaiah’s stock grew and grew. Politically, he leveraged his identity as a Kuruba, one of Karnataka’s most significant backward classes. Administratively, he was known as thorough and diligent. He grew ever closer to one of the state’s primary political poles in HD Deve Gowda, rising to the post of secretary general under him. In 1994, he returned to the state assembly, and was made the finance minister.

The mid-’90s were a time of great churn in Indian politics, and in Karnataka. In 1996, a motley crew of 13 political parties led by the Janata Dal formed a national coalition in Delhi, and Deve Gowda rose to become prime minister. In Karnataka, JH Patel was the chief minister, but Siddaramaiah was his deputy. By 1999, the United Front government fell, the Janata Dal split, Siddaramaiah was sacked, and Gowda broke away to form the Janata Dal (Secular).

In the 1999 elections, the first foray of the JD(S), the party only won 10 seats and Siddaramaiah lost as a Karnataka tired of political instability threw its weight behind SM Krishna’s Congress, giving them 132 of the 224 seats.

Five years later, Siddaramaiah won from Chamundeshwari, and as the JD(S) entered an alliance with the Congress, he was again deputy chief minister to the Congress’s Dharam Singh.

But the ambitious Siddaramaiah was disappointed with the role. He was close to Gowda, but the stature of HD Kumaraswamy was rising, and it was becoming clear that Deve Gowda would only relinquish control of the party to his own family. “Siddaramaiah holds a grudge that despite being such a big leader, he missed the opportunity to become Chief Minister because of Gowda’s actions. His anger grew because he believed that Gowda never lobbied for him with then Congress president Sonia Gandhi for him,” said a JD(S) leader who requested anonymity.

The leader who finds a way

By this time though, Siddaramaiah had become a leader in his own right. His role as JD(S) general secretary and multiple terms as deputy chief minister had meant he had toured the length and breadth of the state, growing increasingly popular as the one leader that was not Lingayat or Vokkaliga, the two largest communities in Karnataka, and the fundamental premise of the construction of Ahinda. “Siddaramaiah’s Ahinda went even further than Urs, and he used his learnings from Lohia. Even within that framework, Urs focused on Muslims and influential Dalits. Siddaramaiah reached out to even more of the marginalised,” Kondajji said.

Siddaramaiah began touring the state, holding massive Ahinda conventions, much to the ire of the ruling JD(S) and Deve Gowda. By September 2005, the relationship had grown untenable. He was sacked first as deputy CM, suspended, and finally exited the JD(S). “Even as deputy CM, he was attending Ahinda rallies. His involvement in these was influenced in his strong belief in this as a strategy, but also his political ambition to be chief minister,” said BL Shankar, a Congress leader and political author. “His involvement in the movement was influenced by his strong faith in the ideology and his political ambition (to become the CM),” he added.

Shorn of a party, Siddaramaiah contemplated a return to law, but eventually decided to revive the little-known All India Progressive Janata Dal, created in 2002, but by then defunct. “The party contested some local elections and had little impact,” said the JD(S) leader quoted above.

His relationship with the JD(S) at an end, there were only two parties in Karnataka that could cater to Siddaramaiah’s chief ministerial ambitions. Minorities were one of the key elements of Ahinda, and the right wing BJP was out of the question. The Congress was looking for a backward class leader. It was a perfect fit.

In 2006, he contested the Chamundeshwari bypoll on a Congress ticket, and won by just 257 votes. Since then, there has been no looking back. “Siddaramaiah’s entry to Congress definitely shook equations within the party. It is not a secret anymore in the party that (Mallikarjun) Kharge who was an aspirant for the chief minister’s post was sent to central politics on Siddaramaiah’s insistence,” said a senior Congress leader, who didn’t want to be named.

In 2013, Siddaramaiah led the party to a clear majority winning 122 seats. It was an elections full of caveats. The BJP’s mass leader Yediyurappa had broken away and floated his own Karnatakla Janata Paksha, taking the Lingayats with him. But Siddaramaiah was finally chief minister, and as an administrator, looked to consolidate his position among his constructed constituency. There was the Ksheera Bhagya scheme that gave free milk to schoolchildren; the Krishi Bhagya scheme to give subsidies to farmers to build ponds; the Runmukta Bhagya scheme to waive loans of members of the SC, ST, OBC and minority communitiis, and a scheme to waive loans taken by farmers from cooperative bodies.

There were other political moves that were unsuccessful in the short term. He pushed for a separate religion for Lingayats, and a separate state flag, pushing regionalism hard. On the issue of Lingayats, he said in 2018, “It is not our idea. The demand came from within the community. We have just forwarded it to the Centre.”

By 2018, Yediyurappa had returned to the BJP, and in a state where political fortunes swing wildly, the Congress won 79 seats, and the BJP 104. The Congress and JD(S) did form an ill-fated one-year government with Kumaraswamy at the head, but inevitably the BJP returned to power.

Four years later, however, Siddaramaiah’s moves have paid off. The Lingayats may not have moved en masse, but a combination of the perceived disrespect to Yeddiyurappa by the BJP, and the overtures the Congress has made over the years saw a shift in votes. Siddaramaiah has leveraged this, plus his traditional Ahinda vote, and will now be Chief Minister. There will be challenges ahead; a resurgent BJP; a 2024 campaign in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity will be more significant than in a state election; and even a challenge from within, perhaps from deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar. But it would be futile to bet against Siddaramaiah. Those close to him insist that the socialist lawyer with big political dreams somehow finds a way.