Bengaluru is a cosmopolitan city and nuclei of cultures where every person from India and abroad lived together in amity and peace. That was until the devil of polarization peeped out to do a tandav, dance of fury, during the last few elections. If a few parties went out of their way to please the minorities, they had grossly erred in branding them as a separate entity and infused the idea of a vote bank into their heads.
The ruling BJP party, BJP, turned the manifestations of grouping the minorities in the name of secularism to its advantage. They have shown the opposition, the other side of the coin, by trying to consolidate the majority of Hindus, the advantage proven in the most populous state of India, Uttar Pradesh, which incidentally has 19.26% Muslims. Karnataka has 12.91% Muslims (2021). Isolating them could be done only by generating issues flaming passions of Hindutva groups, who have become custodians of culture and religion.
Karnataka will be facing the State elections in Apr-May 2023. Their youths, thus, have become the adjudicators of cultural contents, food, dresses worn and overall behavioural acts of the minorities. The recent brouhaha over the hijab worn by the girl students is an example of a non-issue blown out of proportion, the appeal against the High Court decision now resting in the Supreme Court. The Muslim traders downed the shutters in protest of the court’s verdict upholding the ban on hijabs.
Those traders now face the wrath of the temple committees, which have dusted off a 2002 Congress govt passed a law to ban Muslim traders in Hindu religious fairs. The ban started in Shivamogga and was followed by Kote Marikamba. Now, Temples in Karup, Udupi, Tumkur, Hassan, and Chikmagalur have decided to allow only Hindu traders in their religious fairs. However, the law, Sub-rule 12 under Rule 31, relates only to not leasing land, building, or area near Hindu temples to non-Hindus. Belur Channakeshava temple in Hassan, Siddhalingeshwara in Tumkur, and the 800-year-old Bappanadu shrine, near Mangaluru, built by a Muslim merchant Bappa Beary of Kerala and a symbol of communal harmony too, have joined the ban chorus.
Amid this heat, a new divide is attempted over halal and jhatka meat. 79% in Karnataka are non-vegetarians. Traditionally butchery has been the domain of Muslims, slaughtering animals in the Halal method, bleeding the animal to death. On the other hand, the Hindus kill by Jhatka with a single cut, dismembering the head. Until a few weeks ago, none bothered about eating halal meat. The new clamour that Hindus must not eat Halal meat has hit the businesses of many Muslim meat sellers in the State.
There may be many newer divisive ploys, which may be ready o the cards in the simmering cauldron of Karnataka politics, now relying more and more on such polarisation of the majority Hindus as a means of winning elections.
I do not eat meat and consider killing a painful act, jhatka or halal. However, I have no business pontificating on practices pursued aeons by religious communities. If the hijab is unimportant in schools, it must be viewed as a means to integrate all our country’s children without discriminating against any based on their faith and practices. We, as a nation, respect courts and protesting against court orders on the issue by traders was an ill-advised act by their leaders.
Malik Kafur plundered Srirangam temple. He left the Renganatha idol to his general Abdullah Hussain Kasanbi Badshah, who gifted it to his daughter, Surathani. The girl fell in love with Renganatha, and when the idol was retrieved and hidden by an art troupe. Surathani came in search of the idol at Srirangam temple but failed to locate the idol, where she fainted and died. She was revered as ‘Tulukka Nachiyar,’ depicted in the temple. This was our true India, displaying tolerance and inclusion.
It is easier to divide than to integrate, and the politics of division must end to better our country.
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
