After a brief lull in 2011 and the early part of 2012, incidents of moral policing and violence are back in the coastal town of Mangalore, Karnataka. Situated between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, the town with a population of just under 5 lakh, has been a hotbed of aggressive Hindutva nationalism ever since the 2009 pub attack case, when members of the Shri Ram Sene vandalised a local pub and beat up the customers there in the name of moral policing.
Four years later, not much has changed. It has been three months since local journalist Naveen Soorinje was wrongfully jailed on charges of conspiracy, unlawful assembly, rioting with deadly weapons, criminal trespass, causing grievous hurt and assault on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty.
Soorinje’s crime? On 28 July 2012, he had captured on video camera a similar attack, this time on youngsters having a party in a private homestay. The whole nation was stunned with pictures of goons belonging to the Hindu Jagarana Vedike (HJV) — an outfit affiliated to the Sangh Parivar — roughing up young boys and girls, some even molesting the girls.
Whereas the Karnataka High Court cleared Soorinje of all the charges, it denied him bail simply for not having informed the police. On 31 January, following a campaign to free Soorinje, the Karnataka Cabinet cleared a note for dropping all charges against the 24-year-old scribe. As this article goes to print, it would have been a month since the note reached Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar for final approval.
Such attacks on the media are not a new phenomenon in Mangalore. On 5 February, the Karavali Ale newspaper had carried a story citing police reports that Keshav, an HJV activist, was the main drug peddler in the Surathkal area. Keshav is a known associate of Satyajit Surathkal, a big name in the HJV, and was arrested by the police with 650 gm of marijuana in his possession.
In response, HJV activists attacked the newspaper’s office, ransacking it and causing injuries to the staff. Two senior staff members had to be hospitalised. A week later, another staff member was waylaid in the dark and attacked with iron rods, sticks and other weapons.
This was not the first time Karavali Ale had been attacked. The paper used to come under regular attack from the Sangh Parivar when Soorinje was a reporter there. “The fear of another possible attack has reduced my staff strength from 20 to four,” says BV Seetharam, editor and proprietor of Karavali Ale.
Sudipto Mondal of The Hindu remembers the time when he came very close to being assaulted by the Sangh Parivar. “Subhash Padil, one of the perpetrators of the July homestay attack, was also part of the infamous pub attack in January 2009. He had once threatened to stab me with a trident,” recalls Mondal.
Incidents of violence have come to characterise Mangalore even more in the recent past and have now become commonplace. Human rights group People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has documented 300 incidents of violence by right-wing fringe groups between 1998 and 2012 in Mangalore. Interestingly, 253 of these happened after the BJP assumed power in 2008. The Bajrang Dal has itself claimed that its cadres have carried out more attacks in the past two years and “rescued more girls” than what has been reported.
“A lot of what we do does not get reported these days because we do not alert the media all the time… Plus, (Hindu) girls usually learn the lesson,” says Puneeth, a young Bajrang Dal worker. “We don’t find them mingling with Muslims boys that often anymore.”
Mangalore PUCL Convenor Suresh Bhat Bakrabail, 67, who has painstakingly documented all such attacks from newspapers, says it is simply impossible to keep a tab on every incident, as “it’s almost on an everyday basis. There’s always something in one or the other newspaper every day”. A look at a few incidents from 2012 alone gives an idea of what he means:
1) 23 January: During a local fair, the police had to resort to lathicharge to control an unruly mob. What started as a harmless conversation between a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy selling watermelons, soon catapulted into a full-blown crisis, when around 150 Hindutva activists first beat the boy, Nazir, and then went around breaking shops belonging to Muslims.
2) 27 February: A Hindu girl working at a beauty parlour had requested a Muslim boy working in the mobile shop next door to help her down the shutters at closing time. As the boy was helping her, a group of people led by the owner of a local garage suddenly appeared on the scene and attacked both of them.
3) 16 March: Prakash Poojary, editor of Hi Udupi magazine, was beaten up by BJP members and Hindutva activists, while distributing the magazine in town. Poojary said that he was attacked for writing about the St Mary’s Island rave party (a State-sponsored event to promote tourism, in which tourists were found consuming psychotropic substances). “If you wish to write about Hindu organisations, be prepared for the consequences,” he recalled his attackers as saying.
4) 17 March: Six people, allegedly of the Sri Ram Sene, barged into the offices of Karavali Maruta, a local Kannada magazine, and ransacked the office. The group was angry about an article criticising them.
5) 7 April: Hussain, 53, was on his way to Mangalore to sell cattle, when a group of Bajrang Dal activists started following the tempo he was driving. Scared, he tried to speed away, but the vehicle veered out of control and overturned at Kottara. According to Hussain’s son Nazir, “the incident took place at around 6 am”. Hussain’s leg was trapped under the vehicle and the Bajrang Dal men, instead of helping him, attacked with swords and wooden planks. This happened in front of a police station.
6) 12 May: Members of the Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva outfits of the twin districts, Udupi and Dakshina Kannada, such as Durga Vahini and Matru Mandal, objected to the screening of the film Katari Veera Surasundarangi. They said that the film portrayed Hindu gods and goddesses in a poor light. The activists vandalised theatres, forcing owners to cancel the screening.
7) 24 June: Members of an alleged local Hindu outfit assaulted a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl because they were talking to each other in a deserted spot. The boy was then handed over to the Mangalore South police.
8) 4 September: Sabira, a student of Government College, Bellary, was sitting with her friends — all Muslims — inside the university campus during a bandh called by the ABVP, when they were accosted by the outfit’s members. Sabira was beaten so badly that she had to be admitted to a hospital. Three months before that, ABVP members had pulled her burqa when she was returning home and had threatened her against wearing it to college.
Shockingly, Hindutva groups do not express any regret at the provocations and incidents of violence. On the contrary, they seem to take pride in their work and speak of it in gloating terms.
Sharan Pumpwell, district president of the Bajrang Dal, is one of those Sangh leaders in Mangalore who have been able to bring several boys into the Dal.
“More than 7,000 Hindu girls have been abducted by Muslims, who force them to fall in love and convert. We are the ones who rescue them,” says Pumpwell. Interestingly, Pumpwell also runs a security agency where his men provide security to one of Mangalore’s biggest malls, City Centre, which is owned by a Muslim. The mall also has one of the poshest pubs in Mangalore. When asked about it, Pumpwell was reluctant to say anything.
On its part, the police denies that it plays a partisan role in such incidents. “We do not tolerate moral policing,” says Pratap Reddy, IGP (Western Range). “Our primary concern is to diffuse the situation, so that it does not go out of hand. Sometimes, the police take the boy or the girl out of the scene for their own safety. However, that does not mean we endorse a particular kind of morality.”
The rise of Hindtuva in coastal Karnataka dates back to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the 1990s, when LK Advani came to Mangalore as part of his Rath Yatra. According to K Phaniraj of the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike (Karnataka Forum for Communal Harmony), the Sangh launched a big movement in 1989 to consolidate castes like Poojaris, Bunts, Billavas and Moghaveera, and revive Hindutva.
The impunity with which these groups operate also stems from the political backing they seem to have got over the years. In August 2007, the then deputy home minister BS Yeddyurappa dropped as many as 51 cases against Sangh Parivar activists, including Shri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik. According to media reports dated 28 January 2009 (four days after the infamous pub attack case), the state Cabinet withdrew more than 42 cases registered against Muthalik.
Again, on 20 February 2010, the Cabinet took the decision to withdraw 17 criminal cases registered against ABVP members. And on 17 June 2010, the state Cabinet withdrew all pending criminal cases against Sangh Parivar activists. In one stroke, the Cabinet withdrew cases against the persons responsible for the attacks against minorities in various cases.
In a strict electoral sense, the stakes seem even in Mangalore. In the eight constituencies of the Dakshina Kannada district, of which Mangalore is a part, the Congress and the BJP have four seats each. But the Sangh Parivar enjoys an overall control over the district administration. “They have cadres and booth-level workers, and can mobilise various outfits during elections, which the Congress lacks,” says UT Khader, an influential Congress leader.
Phaniraj, in fact, believes that Mangalore holds the key in many senses. “I do not feel that Hindu votes will go away from the BJP simply because they have been corrupt in the past five years,” he says. “The cards are currently held by the Hindutva forces in Mangalore. Whenever it wants, the saffron brigade can pull out a joker and change the game.”
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