The patriarch is a former minister, chief minister and prime minister. One of his four sons is a former chief minister. A second son is a former minister. A daughter-in-law is an MLA. Another daughter-in-law is at the doorstep of politics. If there is one family that can claim to be the first family of Karnataka politics it is that of Janata Dal (Secular) national president H D Deve Gowda.

In a little under five decades, Gowda’s family has, on the back of the patriarch’s political fortunes, gone from being small tillers of land in the rural backyard of Karnataka to big players in power games extending from Bangalore to New Delhi.

The family of the now 76-year-old Gowda, hailing from Holenarasipur in the district of Hassan, southern Karnataka, remains an important part of every political calculation in the state, thanks to the machinations of the wily old fox himself. Though a Congressman through his twenties Gowda made his first entry into big time politics winning a seat in the Karnataka Assembly as an Independent candidate from Holenarasipur in 1962.

He became a key part of the Janata formation in the post-Emergency period and became a minister for the first time in the Janata Party government, headed by Ramakrishna Hegde in the early 1980s. In 1994, he became the chief minister of Karnataka for a Janata Dal government — a post he resigned from in 1996 when he was chosen to be the prime minister in a Third Front government — on the back of a strong performance for his party in the general elections.

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