By Kavita Mistry 
Bengaluru: At different points in his four-decade career, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah has been a self-declared rationalist, atheist, agnostic. He even turned a believer! On Thursday though, it was Siddaramaiah, the rationalist, who held a Cabinet meeting in Chamarajanagar, seeking to dispel superstition that any chief minister who visits the south-western town loses power.
“All that is superstition and there is no truth to it,” he told reporters in Chamarajanagar Friday. “The progress of society has been impeded by such superstitions. I came here 15-20 times (in the previous term) and still became a CM for a second time.”
Chamarajanagar district was carved out of Mysuru in 1997 but the region, including its taluk Kollegala, were already infamous for practitioners of ‘black magic’, fuelling the superstition.
Siddaramaiah added that his position as chief minister has become stronger each time he has visited the district, making light of a belief that many of his predecessors took seriously.
Even civil servants and other officials have avoided visiting the district, about 170 kms from Bengaluru and bordering Tamil Nadu, due to the belief that this will bring them bad luck. S.M. Krishna held a mini-cabinet in this region in 2001.
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‘Made up stories’
Each time any chief minister went to Chamarajanagar, there were fears he or she would lose power. In his second stint in office, former CM Devaraj Urs lost power within months of visiting the town in 1980. He, however, is still Karnataka’s longest serving CM.
His successors, Gundu Rao and Ramakrishna Hegde, too lost power supposedly after their visit to the town. Rao replaced Urs but was installed there by Indira Gandhi while Hegde resigned for his alleged role in the phone-tapping scandal. By the third incident, talesayers were convinced it was their visit to Chamarajanagar that brought them bad luck.
“This is nothing but superstition that has been hammered down by the people and made everyone believe it as fact,” a Bengaluru-based historian and retired professor Narsimhiah told The Print. He said that Siddaramaiah had completed a full five-year term between 2013-18 but the taint of Chamarajanagar being an inauspicious place has not gone away.
In 1988, S.R. Bommai too is said to have lost power months after his visit to the town.
Bommai was not given the opportunity to prove his majority by the governor which has since become a landmark case on the use of Article 356 that deals with the imposition of the president’s rule.
There is no taboo attached to visiting the Male Mahadeshwara Hills (M.M. Hills) in the district as it houses a sacred temple but only the town of Chamarajanagar and its neighbouring taluk Kollegala.
Veerendra Patil, in his second term in 1990, was removed as CM by then PM Rajiv Gandhi after communal riots broke out in Karnataka. Rajiv Gandhi announced his removal from the Bengaluru airport which the CM resisted. Patil suffered a fatal stroke months later.
‘Wadiyar-era myth’
Six chief ministers since then—S. Bangarappa, Veerappa Moily, H.D. Deve Gowda, J.H Patel, S.M Krishna and Dharam Singh—lost power without completing full terms. None of them had visited the town though.
Krishna held a mini-cabinet meeting in the district’s B.R. Hills in 2001.
H.D. Kumaraswamy, known for his belief in astrology, attempted to break the perceived ill-fortune associated with Chamarajanagar by visiting the town in 2007. He was due to hand over power to his alliance partner, Yediyurappa, later that year. But just a week into Yediyurappa’s first term as CM, Kumaraswamy pulled out and the coalition collapsed.
Professor P.V. Nanjaraj Urs believes that the perceived ill-omen associated with Chamarajanagara was due to a Brahmin Dewan from the Wadiyar dynasty. The region was earlier called Arikottara but was renamed after the birth of Chamaraja Wodeyar.
“There was a Maratha Brahmin, Purniah, who served as the Dewan of Mysore in 1799. As a Brahmin, he did not believe in the Shiva-centric temples in then Arikottara. He would discourage the then king, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar to go to the temples in that region as it was inauspicious,” the historian said.
The region is also home to a significant number of tribes and dalits who worshipped at these temples, which Urs says was the reason why Purniah was against any royal or other nobles visiting these regions.
This practice continued with the Palegaras or rulers also subscribing to these beliefs, manifesting as a bad omen which some political leaders follow to this day.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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