Cong's DKS ready for experiment at RSS's three-decades-old Hindutva laboratory

For the first time, Karnataka's highest decision-making body will take its political theatre to the state’s coast. Chief Minister DK Shivakumar's (DKS) government is scheduled to hold its Cabinet meeting in Mangaluru on September 18. This move by the DKS-led government is an administrative decision, but it carries a much larger political message with a vision for the 2028 Assembly elections. The Karnataka government, which is now led by CM DKS, has completed 100 days on Thursday.The venue of Cabinet meetings of the Karnataka government has rarely been shifted from the state's capital, Bengaluru, to any other place. It is for the first time in history, a government has decided to hold a meeting of its highest decision-making body in Dakshina Kannada district. Mangaluru is not merely the headquarters of Dakshina Kannada; it sits at the heart of a region that has, for decades, been one of the strongest electoral and ideological fortresses of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The coastal Karnataka belt has often been described as an RSS Hindutva laboratory, where the ideological consolidation that later spread to other parts of Karnataka and beyond found an early and fertile ground.Dakshina Kannada and Udupi are called the Hindutva laboratory of south India because the RSS and its affiliates have systematically worked at the grassroots level for decades. Indira Gandhi's declaration of Emergency in 1975 played a key role as the RSS encashed the Congress's opposition across coastal Karnataka. The displeasure towards the Congress grew in the region, as people mobilised against the Emergency.That is precisely why CM DKS's decision to take the Cabinet to Mangaluru assumes significance. The Congress party is not simply taking governance outside Bengaluru — it appears to be taking the fight into one of the BJP's most comfortable electoral territories in the country. The move comes as the 2028 Assembly elections are already beginning to shape political calculations in Karnataka. The September 18 meeting is officially about development, but every administrative decision carries a political calculation. The decision to hold the DKS government's first Cabinet meeting in Dakshina Kannada is about visibility, outreach and an attempt to disrupt an equation that has remained remarkably stable for nearly three decades.Udupi was carved out of the undivided Dakshina Kannada district in August 1997, creating the present two-district coastal configuration, with eight Assembly seats in Dakshina Kannada and five in Udupi.In the 2023 Assembly election, the BJP won all five seats in Udupi and six of Dakshina Kannada's eight seats, while the Congress won the remaining two. Overall, the BJP secured 11 of the 13 Assembly seats across the two districts.For nearly 30 years, the BJP has been winning maximum seats from the two coastal districts, barring 2013, when the Congress won a total of 10 of the 13 seats.With the 2028 Assembly polls nearing, that is the fortress Shivakumar is now seeking to breach. The Siddaramaiah factor is one of the key reasons behind his push. For the past three decades, the BJP's dominance across the Assembly constituencies of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi has been evident. The table uses election data from 2004 onward to avoid confusion, as several constituencies were renamed, reorganised or restructured. (Ai illustration/Avinash Kateel) DK SHIVAKUMAR'S COASTAL OUTREACH IS A POLITICAL NECESSITY FOR CONGRESSThe timing of these developments matter. The Congress came to power in 2023 with 135 Assembly seats, a dramatic turnaround after years in which the BJP had expanded its footprint across Karnataka. Much of that victory was powered by the social coalition associated with Siddaramaiah and the Congress's AHINDA politics.But the political architecture of the party has changed since then. Siddaramaiah's exit from the chief minister's office and his subsequent re-emergence in social justice and AHINDA politics has created a new political variable for the Congress. Recent political activity around Siddaramaiah has once again put the AHINDA bloc — a Kannada terminology combining minorities, backward classes and Dalits — at the centre of Karnataka's political conversation.For Shivakumar, therefore, 2028 is not simply a question of defending the 2023 Congress tally. It is about finding new electoral territory before the party potentially faces erosion among sections of the AHINDA coalition that is miffed after Siddaramaiah was asked to vacate the CM's post.That makes coastal Karnataka an intriguing target for DKS and the Congress."BJP has a stronghold in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi for around 30 years. The upcoming Cabinet meeting in Mangaluru is one step DKS is taking to appeal to voters in a region that has consistently chosen the BJP," Bengaluru-based senior journalist and Asianet Suvarna News Political Editor Prashanth Natu told India Today Digital.Natu, who also writes a weekly column India Gate in the Kannada Prabha newspaper, said that Shivakumar wants to reduce the BJP's seat count in 2028, and he is attempting to do so from what has traditionally been its Hindutva fortress.SOFT HINDUTVA TO WOOING LINGAYATS: DKS SERIOUSLY WANTS TO DAMAGE BJPThe strategy of DKS — who also has a soft Hindutva image that has come under attack from the BJP over Rahul Gandhi's national political ideology — becomes more interesting when viewed against the wider electoral calculations."On one end, the Congress government led by DKS is trying to gain the votes of the Lingayats, who traditionally support the BJP due to the leadership of BS Yediyurappa. On the other hand, DKS is trying to hunt the BJP's Hindutva votes of Dakshina Kannada," Natu told India Today Digital.In other words, Shivakumar's 2028 strategy could involve taking on the BJP on two fronts — first, among Lingayats, Karnataka's most dominant community; and second, across coastal Karnataka's 13 Assembly seats, which have remained saffron strongholds for decades.In central and northern Karnataka, the Congress has reasons to look at sections of the Lingayat electorate that historically gravitated towards the BJP, particularly under the political influence of former CM BS Yediyurappa. On the coast, however, the challenge is fundamentally different. There, the BJP's advantage is deeply connected to Hindutva mobilisation and a long-established organisational ecosystem.Breaking even a small portion of that vote could matter. The Congress does not necessarily need to turn the coastal belt into a Congress bastion. It needs to convert a few of the BJP's comfortable victories into competitive contests.That is the essence of seat cannibalisation by DKS. Natu, who meticulously tracks Karnataka politics, believes that the Congress is trying to encash even a minor anti-incumbency that might be on ground in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi against the BJP MLAs. Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar attended a preliminary meeting of the Karavali Karnataka Tourism Conclave at a private hotel in Mangaluru in January. (Image: @DKShivakumar/X) NOT ONE MEETING: DKS HAS A LONG TERM PLAN FOR COASTAL KARNATAKADK Shivakumar appears to understand that ideological confrontation alone cannot break an entrenched political network. Hence, development is becoming the language of his coastal pitch.The September Cabinet meeting could therefore be used to announce a package of decisions for Dakshina Kannada and the wider coastal region. The state government has already instructed departments to identify proposals concerning coastal Karnataka for consideration at the Mangaluru meeting.Tourism is central to this strategy. Earlier this year, DKS, who was then the Deputy CM, announced plans for a separate tourism policy for the coastal belt.The Karnataka Tourism Department now describes the coastal plan as a Rs 1,260-crore roadmap under the "Brand Karavali" vision.For a region that has developed a strong identity around Hindutva, the Congress needs to build another conversation. Jobs, tourism, infrastructure and economic opportunity might get Congress some ground in the citadels of the BJP. UT Khader (R), Karnataka's Health and Family Welfare Minister, is the only Cabinet minister from the coastal Karnataka region in the state government led by Chief Minister DK Shivakumar. (Image: PTI) CAN DK SHIVAKUMAR BREAK THE HINDUTVA LAB OF RSS?This is a difficult question to answer at the moment. The coast is not an ordinary electoral battlefield. The BJP's strength here is not merely the result of five-year anti-incumbency cycles. It has been built over decades through ideological networks, social organisations and a strong local political ecosystem.Natu, while speaking to India Today Digital, said that the unusually concentrated attention of DKS on the region could nevertheless help the Congress."Being a highly polarised region electorally, no political party leader has concentrated on Dakshina Kannada like DKS. This might help Congress gain some ground in the region and there is also a 2013 precedence," he said.That is perhaps the real calculation behind the Mangaluru Cabinet meeting.DKS might not be expecting to overturn the coastal political map overnight. Instead, he appears to be testing whether the BJP's 11-seat fortress can be breached before 2028.The Congress has little reason to assume that its 2023 electoral arithmetic will automatically repeat itself. The Siddaramaiah factor is changing, the AHINDA question is resurfacing, and DKS must construct an electoral coalition that is distinctly his own.The coast offers him one possible answer. If Congress can combine development politics with a more aggressive organisational presence, even a handful of seats changing hands could significantly alter the optics of the 2028 contest.The September 18 Cabinet meeting, therefore, is more than a meeting held outside the state's capital, Bengaluru. It is Shivakumar knocking on the doors of a political fortress that the Congress has struggled to enter for decades. And if the 2028 election is going to be a battle over who inherits Karnataka's political future, DKS appears to have decided that the road to that future must run through the BJP's Hindutva laboratory first.- EndsPublished By: Avinash KateelPublished On: Sep 10, 2026 07:00 IST