Tears of a clown: The comic genius of Yeddyurappa

By Rahul Jayaram Every Indian kid playing cricket quickly learns this piece of wisdom: When your team wins the toss, always always always, choose to bat first. At the maidan, gully or in the driveway, the team that bats first gets to tire the opposition out. Or run away after a batsman accidentally breaks a window-pane. Or create a scuffle and not bowl after batting first. Cricket may be a sporting game at the test level, life in the gully, like politics, is not fair. In October 2007,  cricketing mantras became metaphors for Karnataka politics, especially for those assembled outside the state BJP office to protest their leader being conned out of his turn at the crease, or more precisely the throne. Twenty months earlier, Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa, head of Karnataka’s BJP unit, had joined hands with H D Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular) to forge a coalition government to rule the state. As per the agreement, the JD-S’s Kumaraswamy would be chief minister for the first twenty months, while B S Yeddyurappa played second fiddle waiting for his turn.  In cricketing lingo, Kumaraswamy got to bat first, and with predictable results. [caption id=“attachment_19977” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“So it was that in October 2007, the CM-in-waiting’s countenance bore the fury of a boy who had bowled and fielded all day, only to be snatched of his turn to bat. Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP Photos”]  [/caption] So it was that in October 2007, the CM-in-waiting’s countenance bore the fury of a boy who had bowled and fielded all day, only to be snatched of his turn to bat. At the party meeting, Yeddyurappa’s slit-like eyes began to well up as rage alchemized to grief. It was the first of what would be many famous instances, when Yeddyurappa would weep in public. Karnataka’s crying (future) CM was born. Within a week, Yeddyurappa had already become the favourite muse of the cartoonists of the Kannada press.  BJP party workers raved and barked and abused the Gowdas of the JD-S (and later withdrew support). Yeddyurappa, soon armed with a full majority in the legislature, stormed back into power, and has since gone from strength to strength – as the state’s chief jester. A weeping, shouting, clowning caricature whose weaknesses would miraculously prove to be his greatest strengths. The weeping madonna of Bengaluru Yeddyurappa is an effortlessly lachrymose personage., crying more often than most toddlers. Over the last year or so, he can stake the claim of being the single-most harassed chief minister, perpetually besieged by either from Governor H R Bhardwaj, the BJP headquarters-backed factions, the Reddy brothers or his own children’s predilection for illegally acquiring Bangalore Development Authority plots. He’s had so many occasions to weep that Yeddyurappa has often seemed less CM than a overwrought patriarch in a Kannada serial – without the glycerin. “You have to wipe the tears off the faces of the people,” a paternalistic Advani (himself a well-reputed public crier) remonstrated Yeddyurappa at a national BJP meeting back in 2009. He immediately concurred. “From now on,” he said to the crowd, “I will not cry in public anymore … I will wipe the tears off the faces of the people of Karnataka,” he declared. And then he thundered: “I will develop the state like anything.” The crowd cheered. Unable to handle the accolades that came his way, he wept again. This time out of joy. Yeddyurappa’s penchant for tears has often helped soften the harsher aspects of his personality. This is a man who threw a chair at his BJP rival Ananth Kumar for allegedly fomenting divisions in the state unit. And he has not been above putting his command over street Kannada to stentorian effect against the backers of the Reddy brothers. Indeed, B G Gujjarappa, a well-known Bangalore-based political cartoonist, sees a boiling furnace beneath the surface. [caption id=“attachment_19978” align=“alignleft” width=“355” caption=“Cartoon by B.S Gujjarappa. “]  [/caption] “Have you ever seen him smile? He’s always grumpy and angry and agitated. Plus we know that he’s highly religious. So in one of my cartoons I depicted him as the grumpy saint Durvasa Muni,” he says. Comedian in chief Yet despite the various scandals and brawls that have marked his tenure. Yeddyurappa’s image in the media is less threatening than comic. That BSY has an uncanny knack for playing the buffoon surely helps. For example, carried away with post-World Cup fervour, he promptly awarded Bangalore Development Authority plots for the players. Never mind that none of the members of the Indian team were from Karnataka or that the Chief Minister doesn’t have the authority to assign BDA plots. Indeed, the next day a viewer sent a joke to a Kannada TV channel saying that Yeddyurappa had been misquoted. Yeddyurappa actually meant that if India won the World Cup in 2015 in Australia and New Zealand, he would award land plots for players Down Under! Can one expect any less from a man who vowed to do suryanamaskarams in the buff every morning to save his political career? Yeddyurappa’s media coverage has been one long line of unintentionally funny photo-ops. Who can forget a bespectacled Yeddyurappa wearing an avuncular half-sweater (in the middle of summer) high-fiving a bewildered Andrew Strauss after the India-England World Cup encounter in Bangalore. Or the amusing photos of him playing a spur-of-the-moment game of cricket with state Power Minister, Shoba Karandlaje on a visit to a municipal school near Mysore. The joker in the pack Given the unceasing parade of tears, tantrums, and media antics Yeddyurappa’s political success seems puzzling. But as Bangalore-based academic Sandeep Shastri explains, “I am not inclined to believe that it has adversely affected his image. Those who wish to take him seriously do so in spite of the display of his public emotions. But this also becomes useful fodder for those who are averse to his politics and leadership. At times, [his weeping] portrays a leader as being very human and when he overdoes it, it becomes ridicule.” Moreover, Yeddyurappa’s antics may seem weird only to the English-speaking elite of his state. “For the elite he may seem bizarre and absurd. But that is not Yeddyurappa’s constituency,” Shastri clarifies. The CM is the biggest leader of the influential Lingayat community in the state, and with one very significant policy achievement to date. Even his fiercest critics concede that Yeddyurappa has dealt a body-blow to the Opposition this year when he put together a separate, ambitious agricultural budget – a first for any Chief Minister since Independence. “The budget has surely helped,” says Shastri, “As for graft charges, those who perceive him as corrupt would swing away from him irrespective of caste. Given the fact that Karnataka has a CM from the Lingayat caste after a long time, corruption charges won’t dent his base.” And his comic reputation may have its upside: “The middle-class also chooses to focus only on this aspect of his persona. But by doing so, on keeping the lens on his personal angularities, the public glare is clearly away from his political leadership.” Sometimes playing the fool is the smartest brand of politics. Just ask Laloo Yadav. And here is the video of Yeddyurappa crying: