Politics can turn the seemingly indispensable into the expendable. The present fate of B.S. Yediyurappa, the former chief minister of Karnataka who has had to relinquish his chair ‘sans coercion’, is a case in point. Mr Yediyurappa had been the architect of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s meteoric rise in Karnataka, the first southern state to fall into its kitty. His ouster has led to considerable speculation about the probable causes. His advanced years and the persistent charges of corruption — Mr Yediyurappa had been ‘sacked’, leading to a split in the BJP some years ago — are factors that may have gone against him. But these, at best, are partial explanations. In Kerala, the BJP had chosen an octogenarian as the chief ministerial candidate; so Mr Yediyurappa’s age is unlikely to have been a formidable obstacle. The real reason lies in the transformation that the BJP has undergone under the watch of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. There is a perceptible shift in favour of centralization within the party, with the leadership in New Delhi frowning upon ambitious or independent regional leaders. Mr Yediyurappa is both. He carved out his own path to political glory by cobbling together an ingenuous coalition along the lines of caste and community to bring the BJP to power. His ambiguity towards Hindutva may not have gone down too well with a leadership that is known to be hawkish ideologically. For a party that is accustomed to poking fun at the Congress for its reverence to the ‘high command culture’, the BJP is, arguably, doing a splendid task of imitating the top-heavy architecture of its principal adversary.

The shadow of corruption may limit Mr Yediyurappa’s ability to manoeuvre but the Lingayats — they form 17 per cent of Karnataka’s population — including the influential seers of mutts, have rallied behind the deposed chief minister. With Mr Yediyurappa’s exit, the broader social coalition that he had stitched to propel the BJP may unravel. If this were to happen, the party is likely to incur political costs in the next assembly elections. Mr Yediyurappa has, so far, pledged fealty to his bosses but the word is that the BJP’s immediate future in Karnataka could well hinge upon the fact whether Mr Yediyurappa retains the stomach for taking the fight to the BJP. The southern pot, evidently, will be on the boil for a while.