In Karnataka’s Mandya district, green turns saffron

Yusuf Khan looked distraught as he recalled the night of September 11. Khan, who is in his 30s, said that he and his brother had flung themselves across the entrance of Sadhana Textiles to prevent more than 100 masked men from causing damage. “But the mob simply shoved us aside. They removed petrol from my two-wheeler parked outside to set the shop on fire. We tried to douse the flames using water from our house and the overhead tank, but the fire raged on,” he said.

The apparel shop was located on the ground floor and Khan’s family lived on the second floor of the building, located in Nagamangala town in the political hotbed of Mandya district in southern Karnataka. Khan’s family owns the building.

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The violence broke out during the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. A procession was on its way to immerse the idol of Ganesh and deviated from the scheduled path “by a bit”, said the police. The procession allegedly went close to the Ya Allah Masjid in Nagamangala, halted, blasted music, shouted slogans, and burst firecrackers. This led to a confrontation and violence, they added.

The mob allegedly attacked over 20 business enterprises that night. The government, which is looking to compensate losses suffered by these establishments, has listed Khan’s tenant for compensation. But the damage to the building and his family is still to be estimated, Khan said.

“My tenants [who are Hindu] are upset and our family is staring at a bleak future,” Khan said, while his brothers moved household items to a temporary home a few metres away on the narrow lane off the Nagamangala-Bellur Highway.

Since then, political leaders have kept the embers alive by constantly trading charges. Janata Dal (Secular) leader and Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Steel H.D. Kumaraswamy, who represents Mandya in the Lok Sabha, claimed that petrol bombs had been used in the violence. The Leader of the Opposition, R. Ashok, and Union Minister Shobha Karendlaje, who belong to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), alleged that the Popular Front of India, which was proscribed by the Indian government in 2022, was involved in the violence. They demanded a probe by the National Investigation Agency.

The police dismissed these claims and booked cases against the two BJP leaders for derogatory comments on social media. Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister and local MLA N. Cheluvarayaswamy, who belongs to the Congress, which is the ruling party in Karnataka, appealed to leaders from “outside the constituency” not to politicise the issue.

Rising intolerance in Mandya

Academics, activists, and analysts view this incident as yet another indicator of the rising intolerance and growing influence of Hindutva groups in Mandya, where the Vokkaligas, an agrarian, land-owning caste, are politically influential.

From the 1970s, Mandya was one of the strongest bases of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a movement that fought for better agriculture practices, subsidies, and farmers’ welfare. Many villages barred the entry of politicians during the movement in the ’70s and ’80s. The leader of the KRRS, K.S. Puttannaiah, was elected an MLA from this district in 1994. His son, Darshan Puttanaaiah, now represents the Melukote Assembly constituency in Mandya.

In the 1990s, as the conflict between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the sharing of Cauvery river water intensified, Mandya became a fulcrum for protests by not just farmers, but also pro-Kannada organisations.

After the 30-year period between the 1970s and 1990s, “the influence of ideology-based Dalit and farmers’ movements, which were a force to reckon with, waned,” explained Dalit leader Guruprasad Keregodu, 65, from Mandya district. “These groups become faction-ridden. Their organisational set-up weakened. The political leadership of the Congress lacked the ideological strength and commitment to hold them together. It was against this background that we saw the growth of right-wing politics.”

The BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014. From 2019, when the party assumed power in Karnataka too, BJP and Sangh Parivar outfits have made several overt attempts to polarise the district. Most significantly, they have been vilifying Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler who died fighting the British in Srirangapatna in Mandya. The BJP has been alleging that Tipu was “anti-Hindu” and demanding that lessons on him be dropped from history textbooks.

In 2022, as the row over the ban on hijab raged in Karnataka, a hijab-clad college student, Muskan Khan, from Mandya was heckled by a group of saffron-shawl-clad boys. The video of this incident caught international attention.

As Assembly elections drew close in 2023, BJP leaders claimed that it was not the British but two Vokkaliga chieftains, Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda, who had killed Tipu. The party erected an arch in the names of these chieftains to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the district. These were promptly removed when the Vokkaligas protested.

This year, when a flag bearing Hanuman’s portrait was removed from a 108-ft-tall flag post at Keregodu, near Mandya town, it led to a confrontation between the Congress government and the Opposition parties — the BJP and the JD(S). The situation threatened to turn into a communal flash point. The flag was eventually replaced with the national flag.

The situation has come to such a point that a Congress councillor in Nagamangala said, “Today, we have to behave and act like BJP workers to convince voters even though the BJP does not have a base in places like Nagamangala. Communal feelings have seeped into people’s mind and into electoral politics.”

Shops were ransacked during a clash between two groups during Ganesha procession recently at Nagamangala in Mandya district of Karnataka.
| Photo Credit:
K. Bhagya Prakash

The police, however, had begun to take serious note of the growing right-wing influence in Mandya district years before these developments. In 2018, they arrested Naveen Kumar K.T., the first accused in the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh, from Mandya.

Footprints in Vokkaliga heartland

Vokkaligas have traditionally consolidated behind the JD(S). Keregodu argued that there is a “general dislike” among the people of the community for Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. “Siddaramaiah hails from the Kuruba community. Now, the JD(S) is in an alliance with the BJP. Hence, many have turned towards the BJP,” he said.

The BJP has never formed the government in Karnataka on its own strength and has had to rely on engineered defections. It is attempting to make inroads in the Vokkaliga-dominated Old Mysore region, where Mandya is a key district. The party is yet to grab a substantial number of seats in the Vokkaliga heartland, especially in Mandya where it has managed to win just one Assembly seat, and that too in a bypoll in 2019.

According to BJP sources, the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), believe that unless the party finds space in Vokkaliga politics, it will be difficult for the national party to cross the simple majority mark on its own. The BJP managed to increase its vote share from 5.9% in 2018 to 13.8% in the 2023 Assembly elections in Mandya district, though it did not win any seat in the election. Despite losing a significant chunk of the vote share in coastal, Kittur, and central Karnataka, where it has a strong base, the BJP’s vote share in the Old Mysore region went up by 3% points.

According to historian Talakadu Chikkarange Gowda, one of the reasons for the BJP’s growth is the high level of unemployment among the youth. “They are being misguided on religious lines. There are hardly any employment opportunities,” he said. “Either you stay in the village to do sundry jobs on fields or migrate to Bengaluru or Mysuru for employment.”

Gowda said that Mandya was always progressive and quickly adapted to liberal views. Through the ’70s to the ’90s, the district boasted of a large number of followers of the celebrated poet, Kuvempu, known for his liberal views. These followers called themselves Vishwa Manavas (universal human beings).

“They were Left, Dalit, and farmers leaders. The political leadership was well-read and qualified. In contrast, the current leaders are businessmen-politicians disconnected from the grassroots,” Gowda explained. He also pointed out while the present Mandya BJP leaders do not have an RSS background, as most of them have migrated from either the Congress or the JD(S), the RSS shakhas (theological schools) seem to be slowly increasing.

Impact of the JD(S) alliance

In 2023, the JD(S) lost four Assembly seats in Mandya as the BJP increased its vote share. Before the election, Kumaraswamy had taken on the BJP to blunt the Uri Gowda-Nanje Gowda narrative. He had also criticised the party for the hijab controversy. However, his party fared poorly in the elections. The JD(S) believes that Muslims “abandoned” it in favour of the Congress, which “forced” it to align with the BJP for its political survival. When the Keregodu flag row erupted, Kumaraswamy sported a saffron shawl instead of the party’s green, which left many stunned. While the JD(S) is being seen as a beneficiary of this alliance in the near future, there is fear in the party that the BJP will slowly erode the regional party’s dominance in Vokkaliga politics and eventually in other parts of the State too.

Over the years, celebrations of Hanuma Jayanthi, Sri Ram Navami, and Ganesha Utsava have increased in Mandya both in scale and numbers, said leaders across the political spectrum. All parties donate funds to religious events. “The mob mobilisation for the Ganesh immersion is a show of strength and an intimidation tactic,” acknowledged a Mandya-based BJP leader.

“We don’t remember people wearing mala for Hanuma Jayanthi at Srirangapatna or Vokkaliga homes celebrating Varamahalakshmi festival. The BJP does not have the strength to leverage this at present, but there is hope that all this will help us increase our base later,” he said. “Muharram processions have increased in scale too. Local dynamics have changed.”

In K.R. Pete town in the district, Kumar G., who runs a business, demanded to know what was wrong in attending a shakha. “We will be made more aware of what is happening around us. There is nothing wrong in asserting our rights. Why should there be appeasement of Muslims always? I have many friends attending the shakha,” he said. RSS shakhas could be earlier be seen only in Mandya town, but now they are growing in rural pockets too, he added.

“Earlier, the green thorana and banana stem were the symbolic hallmarks of our festival in rural areas. Now we have saffron buntings and flags. To have a huge number of flexes for festivals has become common. Simple bhajans at Rama Mandirs during Ram Navami or Hanuma Jayanthi have given way to bigger celebrations funded by politicians. Some of our progressive movement friends have also shifted to the BJP,” observed Guruprasad.

Cheluvarayaswamy, however, refused to concede this. “Yes, they are making efforts to communalise Mandya. But their efforts will be futile. I don’t think the Sangh Parivar has increased or will increase its footprint. The BJP has increased its vote share because of the individual popularity of its candidates,” he contended.

Amidst the unceasing political slugfest over the Nagamangala violence, the town has limped back to normalcy. Leaders from both communities have asked the district administration to form a coordination committee to ensure that festivals are conducted peacefully. At a peace meeting held in the aftermath of the violence on September 15, leaders from both communities recalled the bonhomie that existed between them in the past. They hoped that they would return to those “good times”.

sharath.srivatsa@thehindu.co.in