Gowda family’s illusion of being above the law

 H D Deve Gowda’s recent speech at his party meeting in home base Hassan,  has raised uncomfortable questions about how a former Prime Minister understands power, process, and restraint. His public attack on the Siddaramaiah government for rewarding officers of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the Prajwal Revanna sexual offence case was not merely intemperate—it exposed a deeper belief that institutions exist to serve families, not the law.

Rewarding police officers for successfully handling high-profile, politically sensitive cases is routine administrative practice. Governments of every party have done it. To describe such recognition as “revenge” against the Gowda family is to deny the very idea of rule-based governance. Coming from a leader who has headed both the state and the country, this appears less like confusion and more like grievance.

More disturbing was Deve Gowda’s direct threat against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah—his claim that he would “fix” him when he got the chance. Such language belongs to street politics, not constitutional democracy. A former Prime Minister threatening a sitting Chief Minister for actions taken through legal process undermines the dignity of public office and normalises the idea that power is something to be settled personally, not institutionally.

This rhetoric cannot be separated from the political reality confronting the Gowda family. The JD(S), once a decisive force in Karnataka politics, is now a diminished party surviving largely as an adjunct to the BJP. In the last Assembly elections, it could manage barely 20 seats in a 224-member House. There is no evidence that its position has improved since. If anything, its base has further eroded.

Yet, against this backdrop, Gowda's son, H D Kumaraswamy has declared that he will return to state politics and become the next Chief Minister. On what authority, and through what arithmetic, remains unclear. Leadership in a democracy flows from numbers and public mandate—not from lineage or assertion. When electoral strength is shrinking, such claims sound less like strategy and more like daydreaming.

Underlying both the threat and the claim is a sense of entitlement -— the belief that the Gowda family has a natural right to rule, and that setbacks are the result of conspiracy rather than consequence. Siddaramaiah’s endurance in office only sharpens this resentment. A former protégé not only occupies the Chief Minister’s chair but thrives in it, having already surpassed the tenure of earlier stalwarts.

What emerges is not the image of wronged leaders, but of a political family struggling to survive politically. In a democracy, power is not inherited, threats do not create mandate, and institutions are not instruments of personal revenge. Forgetting that truth does not restore authority—it only hastens its loss.