In 1980, Congress legislator H.C. Srikantaiah mass-defected from the Congress (Urs) to the Congress (I), taking 84 MLAs with him. In a stroke, it unseated D. Devaraj Urs, then in his second consecutive chief ministerial term. Urs had lasted less than a year in power.

But Srikantaiah would live to permanently regret his backstabbing. His fond hope of becoming the next chief minister was blown by Sanjay Gandhi, who sidelined him and installed R. Gundu Rao, a Brahmin, in the coveted seat. Gundu Rao and his Man Friday, F.M. Khan, part of Sanjay’s inner circle, had quietly rigged things in Delhi.

Devaraj Urs died a broken man in 1982. But few Congressmen showed any sympathy for the manner in which he had been betrayed. In fact, Devaraj Urs had been paid back in the same coin — just ten years earlier, Urs had engineered the ouster of Chief Minister Veerendra Patil and succeeded him by lobbying with Indira Gandhi.

On her part, Indira Gandhi revelled in orchestrating and watching these abominable games. Pitting state leaders against one another and replacing them at whim was one method to keep her power from being challenged. From Uttar Pradesh to Karnataka, the list of Chief Ministers she barred from completing their terms is quite long.

Rajiv Gandhi followed his mother’s precedent during his one-term tenure as Prime Minister. He was responsible for shunting out the self-same Veerendra Patil as Chief Minister and installing S. Bangarappa in his place in 1990. Rajiv gave the dismissal order from the Bangalore airport. Bangarappa, likewise, was unceremoniously dethroned in just two years and Veerappa Moily took his place.

All these ousted Congress Chief Ministers, from Veerendra Patil to Devaraj Urs to Bangarappa, had another trait in common. They quit the Congress and formed their own party — only to return to the mothership and then quit again and then return and then quit…

A similar situation is currently playing out in Karnataka but with vastly altered power dynamics.

Every notable Congress leader, including Mohandas Gandhi, had remarked that the Congress is a party of factions. The façade of unity was kept oiled only by the freedom struggle. When the British departed, the fissures cracked wide open and after Nehru’s death, became full-blown explosions erupting with sickening regularity.

From the 1960s,........

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