Just an old story of the 1960s old rivalries towards the Muslim fishermen triggered by saffron brigades’ being repeated again to their misery.
The Supreme Court has asked to maintain the status quo on Eidgah Maidan, in Bengaluru. Despite best efforts to try to install Ganesh panels during the recent festival, High Court’s decision was overruled and there will be no Ganesh pandals there. Karnataka is under the radar for communal reasons and Muslim fishermen, workers and students are starting to feel victimized.
This leaves me wondering if it was was Coastal Karnataka, what would be the judgement? Why did Coastal Karnataka get saffronised? How did it turn into a very vitriolic Hindutva laboratory? These are stunning changes that transpired in just a few years that leave us baffled.
For a long time until a few years back, their Tulu identity was more powerful than their Hindu identity and the residents there were demanding a separate state – the culture, and the practice all being different from central, south or north Karnataka. Recently, change was slipping through and we do not see the demand for statehood anymore.
Rivalry stirred in the 1960s, fueled due to the success of Muslim fishermen
Going back in time, Muslims were always a powerful trading community in Coastal Karnataka but their trade was overshadowed by the political leadership in the area mostly concentrated in the hands of Gaud Saraswat Brahmins. The sharp cutting edge of the Gaud Saraswat Brahmins’ power was felt by these trading communities more so in the last few years.
The trade rivalry continued to blow up; with a constant sense of tension and tussle at the market where the trade took place. Tales of relationships between fisherwomen belonging to the Mogaveera community (SC/ST) and the Muslim traders who bought fish from them were spun to stoke communal tensions and overnight enmities seem to spark up in rage more than love.
These common, harmless interactions between the traders and fisherwomen became a popular method to evoke violence from the Hindus in the future: the danger of ‘their men falling in love with our women’.
Jan Sangh was trying hard to turn anybody against the Muslims. They turned the internal problems between Muslims and the Mogahveeras to their advantage, by stirring up the communities against each other. As such, they were already feeling threatened by the domination of Muslims in the fish industry. Vicious opinions were spun around that “They are getting rich by selling our fishes” remain to this day.
Businesses were harmed, Muslim shops and houses were ransacked, and trucks and masjids burnt down. All this happened in the 1960s.
Locals noticed that the men who were ransacking and burning down shops and trucks were not from the neighbourhood. For many years, the efforts of the Jan Sangh to establish Muslims as different hadn’t worked. But for the first time in 1968, it finally had.
The Moghaveeras were the only Tulu community to be swept up in the religious frenzy of 1968. The Hindu movement continued to retain a mostly Brahmin character. Over the years, the Sangh has managed to bring a more mass character by using populist cultural methods, as it did in Nagpur.
The 1980s Malicious Enmity Stoked
In the 1980s, another vicious rumour broke in Ullal where Muslims participated in the games organised as part of the Janmashtami festival. The greased pole was laced with pig fat. The rumour further alienated these two communities.
The 2021 and 2022 Movements to Divide Hindus and Muslims Further
Last year, a small town witnessed a rally by Hindutva groups, who went around town chanting derogatory slogans against the Prophet and the Muslim community, in response to a video of cow slaughter that allegedly took place in the region. The investigation later revealed that the video was shot close to a decade ago, during Bakrid in 2011.
A miscreant lifted the video from an old phone at a repair shop, circulated it widely and mobilised a protest. What irked the Muslim community was that three or four Mogaveera fisherwomen — who mostly sell to Muslim customers — took the lead in the offensive sloganeering. Incensed, the Muslims announced a boycott of the entire market of 40 fisherwomen. They have let bygones be bygones, but bitterness remains.
Constantly creating issues like hijab row and meat ban by vested interests, communal polarization in the coastal districts of Karnataka is almost complete now, leading to sharper societal divisions. It is now spread to Malnadu and Northern regions.
Congress had played into the “polarisation trap” by its lack of maturity in its dealing with communal issues on many occasions, resulting in an erosion in the party’s vote base. By contrast, the social base of the JDS — the Vokkaliga heartland of Old Mysore (southern Karnataka) remains intact, thankfully. That is why the many conscientious efforts to inject communal poison into the body politics have not gathered momentum in these parts.
But, until when?
Views expressed in the article are those of author.