SACW | Dec. 5, 2006 | Sri Lanka closer to war; India: Cops, National Security; Communal Flares in Karnataka

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | December 5, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2332 - Year 8

[1]  Sri Lanka's international straitjacket (Sunil Bastian)
[2]  Sri Lanka: Reject the War for Peace Road 
(Press Release, National Peace Council)
[3]  India: Playing Cops and Reporters (Nivedita Menon)
[4]  India: Coastal Karnataka in the throes of 
communal fires stoked by the BJP (Sugata 
Srinivasaraju)

____


[1] 

Himal South Asian
December 2006

SRI LANKA'S INTERNATIONAL STRAITJACKET

The failure of Sri Lanka's peace process is 
partially due to the simplistic 
government-versus-LTTE formulation adopted by 
international mediators.

by | Sunil Bastian

While the history of the current process of Sri 
Lanka's globalisation goes back to the colonial 
period, the opening up of the country's economy 
40 years ago worked to intensify it. The civil 
war that has plagued the island nation for more 
than two decades has done almost nothing to 
undermine this dynamic. Rather, the conflict has 
brought the international system into affairs 
that had hitherto been protected on the basis of 
the nation's sovereignty. Today Sri Lanka is 
indeed a fragmented state, part of which is 
controlled by the LTTE, but all of which is now 
inextricably linked to the global 
politico-economic system.

Unfortunately, it is largely the contradictions 
of the global system that have exerted such 
influence on Sri Lanka, leading to pessimism in 
the context of the breakdown of the peace 
process. The dynamic today is relatively 
straightforward: on one side, violence and 
conflict; on the other, a framework for the peace 
process, dominated by international actors, that 
is not working. Even when the war was being 
fought at its highest intensity in the past, this 
had not been the case. For example, at the time 
of the People's Alliance regime's 'war for peace' 
strategy, war was a reality, but the space for 
peace was still open and available. Today that 
space is closed, given a procedural structure 
that seems ineffectual, while the violence 
continues.

Within Sri Lanka there have been diverse 
responses to the intervention of international 
actors in the country's peace process. The 
Sinhala nationalists and old-style leftists have 
been uncomfortable with it, and some have 
actively opposed it. Some liberal 
internationalists, on the other hand, view the 
world community as a bunch of do-gooders, eager 
to deliver peace to the island. They ignore the 
politics and power-play that are part and parcel 
of these interventions in a globalised world. The 
construction of the term 'international 
community' itself is a ploy to hide the politics 
inherent in this dynamic. What Sri Lanka needs 
today is an analysis that can highlight the 
politics of power in these interventions, so that 
its citizens can spot the contradictions, as well 
as the opportunities available to promote the 
cause of peace.

Growth in conflict
The liberalisation of the Sri Lankan economy in 
1977 was a turning point in the expansion of the 
involvement of international actors in the 
country's affairs. Sri Lanka was the first 
country in Southasia to liberalise, and the 
process generated a tremendous response from the 
aid agencies. At one time, Sri Lanka received one 
of the highest per capita levels of international 
aid in the world, both bilateral and 
multilateral. While the civil war has forced some 
donors to rethink their policies, Sri Lanka has 
consistently enjoyed the commitment of key 
donors, including Japan, the World Bank, the 
Asian Development Bank and the International 
Monetary Fund. From around the mid-1980s, the 
latter three accounted for about 75 percent of 
foreign aid to the country.

Meanwhile, the implementation of Sri Lanka's 
economic-reform process has always been more 
important to these key donors than concerns over 
the civil war. Aid from them has regularly been 
reduced, adjusted or diverted to new projects 
depending on how successful the Colombo 
government has been in carrying out the 
economic-reform agenda towards the further 
development of liberal capitalism on the island. 
The war was for a long time only of concern to 
these organisations to the extent that it 
impacted on the economic agenda. But the Sri 
Lankan economy has been performing reasonably 
well despite the conflict, with an average of 
four to five percent annual growth. This has not 
been the eight percent growth that mainstream 
economists have been hoping for in order to equal 
the East Asian miracle, and certainly Sri Lanka 
would have performed better had there been no 
civil war. But the fact remains that the conflict 
has not significantly affected the country's 
economy, which in turn has allowed donors to view 
the country as relatively 'stable'.

According to international indicators, Sri Lanka 
is no longer a 'poor' country, but rather a 'low 
middle income' one, with an annual per capita 
income of more than USD 1000. The economy has 
diversified from its agricultural base, and a 
significant portion of people now earn an income 
in sectors linked to the global economy. A large 
number also make use of global labour markets. 
Although Sri Lanka has a heavy burden of foreign 
debt, many believe that the debt-service ratio, 
meaning the proportion of export earnings spent 
on servicing foreign debt, is still at a 
manageable level. In addition, there is no danger 
of Sri Lanka defaulting on debt-service payments. 
Of course, this relative success does not mean 
that the country has solved its development 
problems. Both the economy and society show the 
usual social contradictions of a capitalist 
economy. Nonetheless, it is crucial to note the 
fact that, seen through the logic of capital, Sri 
Lanka has performed reasonably well in the midst 
of the civil war.

A number of factors explain this peculiar 
picture. First, the core of economic production 
has been confined to areas surrounding the 
capital. Close to 50 percent of the gross 
domestic product is now within the Western 
Province, close to Colombo. So long as the war is 
confined to the north and east - which were never 
particularly important economically, even before 
the conflict began - the economy can function 
perfectly well. Many sectors in Sri Lanka, not to 
mention the incomes of more and more of its 
people, depend on the health of the global 
economy. Hence, if the global economy performs 
better, so too does Sri Lanka's - regardless of 
the war. Finally, several other factors have 
helped Sri Lanka to achieve economic gains while 
simultaneously waging an expensive war: generous 
donor support, the reduction of the burden on the 
state coffers by getting rid of loss-making state 
enterprises, and the relative degree of autonomy 
that the central bank has maintained.

The entry of the Norwegians as mediators in the 
peace process coincided with the breakdown of 
this order. This took place during 2000 and 2001, 
years of a global economic recession. Then, in 
2001, the same year that a severe drought struck 
the island, the LTTE carried out a devastating 
attack on the country's only international 
airport - the nerve centre for an economy that 
depends on global linkages. These factors 
combined to produce a negative economic growth in 
2001 for the first time since Independence. The 
International Monetary fund came up with a rescue 
loan package, and the People's Alliance 
government of Chandrika Kumaratunga requested the 
Norwegians to act as mediators in negotiations 
with the LTTE.

However, it was the United National Front (UNF) 
government, elected in December 2001, that made 
use of the Norwegians' entry to sign a Ceasefire 
Agreement, embark on an extensive programme of 
economic reforms, consciously expand the 
internationalisation process, and include the US, 
EU and Japan as co-chairs of the peace process. 
The political objectives of the UNF strategy - 
led by Ranil Wickramasinghe, the nephew of former 
President Junius Jayawardene, the architect of 
Sri Lankan liberalisation - included not just 
peace, but also the pushing of the 
economic-reform agenda begun by President 
Jayawardene. This agenda, which developed 
independently of the peace process, had its 
sights on an extensive reform programme covering 
all aspects of the economy. The Wickramasinghe 
government consciously sought international 
support for both of these agendas. This strategy 
lasted for a very short period, however, and its 
neo-liberal peace was defeated by both Sinhala 
and Tamil nationalism, working side by side.

Two-sided stranglehold
The current situation is thus one wherein a war 
is being fought and fuelled by nationalist forces 
on both sides. At the same time, contradictions 
of the international set-up inherited from the 
Wickremasinghe period are not only complicating 
matters, but do not allow much hope for securing 
a long-term settlement.

The Norwegians, who are very much wedded to the 
Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) secured during the UNF 
period, are working with a framework much more 
suited to an inter-state conflict based on a 
two-actor model. Hence, the CFA recognises only 
two sides, the LTTE and the Colombo government. 
There is an acceptance of the presence of two 
armies, rules of engagement and no-go areas 
between these two armies, and rules dictating how 
either side can withdraw from the agreement.

This set-up entirely ignores the complexities of 
conflicts that build on the basis of identity 
politics. It legitimises the demands of the LTTE 
as the sole representative of the Tamils, and 
undermines space for democracy within the Tamil 
population. It also forgets that there have 
always been struggles for political supremacy 
among Tamils, even while simultaneously fighting 
the Sri Lankan state. The LTTE has taken care of 
this issue by eliminating its opponents. 
Meanwhile, the rights of the Muslim population 
have not been given due importance, thus 
pandering to a position among Tamil nationalists 
that has deliberately ignored Muslim rights by 
creating a notion of a Tamil-speaking people.

The two-actor structure of the CFA also cannot 
take into account the complexities of politics 
among the Sinhalese, which is fought through a 
problematic multi-party system. The Norwegian 
approach gives the impression of being based on 
'primordialist' interpretations of identity 
conflict, where a monolithic group of Sinhalese, 
represented by the Colombo government, is 
fighting a monolithic group of Tamils, 
represented by the LTTE. As such, the Norwegians 
are involved as impartial mediators between these 
two 'underdeveloped' communities, to find a 
'rational' solution that only Europeans can 
provide.

The formation of the 'co-chairs' group came about 
due to initiatives of the UNF government, and not 
the other way around. In order to understand the 
positions of the co-chairs, it is important first 
to focus on the individual policies of each of 
these countries. The fundamental objective of the 
Japanese, US and EU policies is one of security 
and stability, in order to continue work on the 
economic agenda, and promote capitalism in the 
island. At the very beginning of the peace 
process there were divergences from this 
position, mainly among EU countries. Pressure 
from the global 'war on terror', however, has 
pushed these countries into uniform alignment. 
The recent ban on the LTTE by the EU as a 
'terror' group is a reflection of this policy 
convergence, made with the objective of 
establishing stability.

This position is strengthened by support given by 
multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and 
the Asian Development Bank, which work on the 
basis of a similar policy perspective. Of course, 
promoting negotiations is an important element in 
this strategy, with the aim of ensuring security. 
But the fundamental motivation of supporting 
negotiations is very different from the 
objectives behind the Norwegian two-actor, 
impartial-negotiator model. Suddenly what becomes 
more important is not balancing between warring 
parties, but rather the stability of an 
established state in order to promote capitalism.

Despite the presence of this fundamental 
position, it is not one that the ruling classes 
of Sri Lanka can take for granted. Continuation 
of this policy, after all, will depend on the 
good behaviour of those elites. Developments such 
as a stepped-up military strategy could worsen 
the humanitarian crisis, increase human-rights 
violations, instigate a greater flow of refugees 
and destabilise the core areas of the economy - 
evolutions that would clearly go against the 
policy objectives of the co-chair countries. 
Similarly, any significant reversal of the 
economic agenda, or any move to undermine the 
influence of the co-chairs by courting other 
international actors, could also bring about a 
change in the international approach.

As much as the two-actor model reveals 
contradictions that undermine the chance for 
long-term peace in Sri Lanka, the policies of the 
co-chairs have their own inconsistencies. For 
example, even while calling for negotiations, two 
of these actors - the EU and the US - have banned 
the LTTE as a 'terrorist' organisation. Though 
prescriptive statements are made about human 
rights, humanitarian crises and the like, there 
remains a continuous flow of foreign aid from 
these key donors, so long as the reform agenda is 
maintained by the Colombo authorities. Promotion 
of the private sector likewise continues 
unabated, with the support of many agencies. 
Finally, although security and stability are the 
underlying motives of this approach, there is 
very little commitment to actually support Sri 
Lanka through military means.

The contradictions of this international 
conundrum create complicated problems for those 
who accept that working with international actors 
is essential in the current context of global 
capitalism. This is relevant not only for Sri 
Lanka, but for other countries in Southasia as 
well - particularly in the situations of internal 
conflict that have become such an integral part 
of the region's socio-politics. Unfortunately, 
our dominant response to these complicated issues 
is generally one of two. We either remain within 
a framework of liberal internationalism that 
naively believes in the goodness of an 
'international community'; or our response 
originates among nationalists of various guises, 
who believe in an ahistorical notion of 
sovereignty.

The time has come for us in the global south to 
break through this conceptual trap, which does 
not provide us a framework with which to deal 
with these international interventions. All our 
societies are now already a part of globalised 
capitalism. Our belief in the sovereignty of the 
nation-state will not isolate us from it. Neither 
can we afford to go along with liberal 
internationalism naively. Globalisation, while 
integrating the world, also brings out 
differences more sharply. How global factors 
affect South Asia will thus be a result of our 
own histories and social conditions. Only a much 
closer look at our specific historical situations 
will help us to identify spaces within global 
capitalism that we can make use of for our own 
purposes. And only in this lies the foundation 
for a new politics with which to deal with 
international intervention.

_______


[2]

National Peace Council
of Sri Lanka
12/14 Purana Vihara Road
Colombo 6
Tel: 2818344, 2854127, 2819064
Tel/Fax:2819064
  E Mail: peace2 at sri.lanka.net
Internet: www.peace-srilanka.org


04.12.06

Media Release

REJECT THE WAR FOR PEACE ROAD

The total breakdown of the peace process in Sri 
Lanka was manifested in stark form when an LTTE 
suicide bomber targeted Defence Secretary 
Gothabaya Rajapaksa's motorcade in the heart of 
Colombo. The National Peace Council condemns this 
attack, especially in view of the recent pledges 
by LTTE spokespersons of their continued 
commitment to the Ceasefire Agreement, and we 
call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

The abortive suicide bombing in Colombo 
epitomises the futility of the present military 
strategies being used by the parties to the 
conflict. People got killed and injured, life got 
disrupted and the situation turned from bad to 
worse. Neither will retaliatory strikes by the 
government lead to a conducive environment for an 
end to the conflict.

In his Heroes Day speech, LTTE leader Velupillai 
Pirapaharan appealed to the international 
community to recognise the just struggle of the 
Tamil people and assist them to achieve their 
aspirations. If such international recognition is 
to materialise, it is incumbent that the LTTE 
immediately halt the very actions that caused it 
to be internationally banned as well as make a 
greater commitment in its involvement in the 
peace process.  

The National Peace Council believes that the 
democratic aspirations of all the people can only 
be met through a process of negotiations in which 
the use of violence is mutually renounced.  We 
welcome the fact that the ruling party and the 
main opposition party are discussing a consensual 
political reform package which can be the basis 
for political dialogue.  We call on the 
government and the LTTE to arrest their current 
slide towards a total return to war and support 
the initiatives of the Norwegian facilitators to 
get the peace process back on track, however 
difficult it may seem.

The time has come for us reject once and for all 
theìwar for peaceî road that was tried in the 
past if we are to save presentand future 
generations ofSri Lankans fromcycles of 
humanitarian crises that a return to war will 
most certainly entail.


Executive Director
On behalf of the Governing Council


______


[3]

The Telegraph
December 05, 2006

PLAYING COPS AND REPORTERS
Nivedita Menon wonders what happens to police 
procedures and media reportage when nothing less 
than national security is at stake The author is 
reader in political science, Delhi University

Get the real picture

Here's an amusing little story. According to 
reports in a leading daily (August 26 and 
September 4), Hoshangabad police charged a couple 
with the murder of their twelve-year-old son. 
Their son was indeed missing, and a body was 
found near the railway track. The parents 
confessed to the crime, and spent over 45 days in 
jail. Six months after his murder, young Gabbar 
turned up in town. He had fallen asleep while 
selling peanuts on trains, and woke up in 
Jalgaon. There he was put into a correctional 
institution, and later, sent to Bhopal. Finally, 
he managed to convince someone to send him back 
home. Present in court, he listened to the 
government pleader arguing that the parents had 
confessed to the murder, so he could not be 
Gabbar; that the body found near the railway 
track was not that of Kallu alias Tufan, as 
claimed; and that neighbours had identified the 
dead body as that of Gabbar. The neighbours, 
meanwhile, told the reporter that they had never 
identified the dead body as his, and that this 
boy was indeed Gabbar. "We know him since he was 
born," said one of them simply, "how could we 
make such a mistake?"

As for the parents who confessed to the murder of 
a son who was alive - "They broke three of my 
fingers with sticks," said the father. The 
parents were tortured in custody for a night and 
made to sign a confessional statement the next 
morning.

A routine investigation in a poor neighbourhood, 
of a small boy's murder. Nothing at stake in it 
for the police but that of showing a solved case. 
And police pursuit of this mundane, low-profile 
incident involved torture, a forced false 
confession and falsified evidence (neighbours' 
supposed identification of the dead body). It 
further involved, in the face of incontrovertible 
evidence of the boy being alive, reiterations in 
court of the police version under oath, urging 
the court instead to prosecute Gabbar's family 
for producing another person as Gabbar.

Would this blatant miscarriage of justice have 
been reported in the media if the parents had 
been arrested on a different sort of charge? If 
Gabbar himself had not turned up alive? What if 
Gabbar had been killed in an encounter? So the 
amusing little story metamorphoses into a 
nightmarish question: what happens to police 
procedures and media reportage when nothing less 
than national security is at stake?

Last month, a woman widely known in academic and 
activist circles in Delhi - Sunita of Daanish 
Books, a small alternative publisher - was 
detained by the police in Chandrapur, where she 
had set up a book exhibition at an annual 
festival celebrating B.R. Ambedkar's conversion.

Books from her stall were seized, and she was 
interrogated for several hours over two days. She 
was able to contact friends and family in Delhi, 
and when concerned phone calls and faxes started 
pouring in, the police claimed that they had 
"clinching evidence" (a phrase they repeatedly 
used) that this Sunita was a Maoist activist from 
Jehanabad, where her Maoist husband had been 
killed some years ago in an encounter. During her 
interrogation, the official insisted that she 
admit she was from Jehanabad, despite her 
assertion that she is from Bhagalpur, and that 
she had never lost a husband to police bullets. A 
policeman told her confidently at one point, "Hum 
saabit kar ke rahenge ki aap vohi Sunita hain, 
Jehanabad ki (We will prove that you are the 
Sunita from Jehanabad)." Reports in local Hindi 
newspapers published the police version without 
any further comment or corroboration.

Let me pass quickly over the alarming fact that 
the books that were "seized" as threatening to 
national security were books by and on Marx, 
Lenin, Mao, Clara Zetkin and Bhagat Singh. That 
during interrogation Sunita was asked, "Why do 
you sell books on Bhagat Singh? The British have 
left, haven't they?" That other questions 
included demands that she explain why she does 
not use a surname and why she wears a bindi when 
her husband is dead (the one killed in Jehanabad, 
remember?) We will pass over these questions only 
because the one that concerns me here is this. 
Sunita is a well-known figure among people who 
can make a noise in high places, and so the 
police attempt to manipulate her identity failed. 
What of all the others?

In September, three letter-bombs went off hours 
before the president visited Kerala. Immediately, 
several Muslim youths were arrested and kept in 
police custody for weeks, being interrogated to 
reveal their links with Islamic organizations. 
But as investigations continued, the culprit 
turned out to be a Hindu man with personal 
grudges to settle. The slick website of the 
Thiruvananthapuram city police announced the 
closing of the case with the information that the 
accused was a "meek character with a scientific 
temperament, using an innovative method to 
intimidate his enemies." In psychoanalytic mode, 
the police statement adds: "The accused always 
aspired for peer respect as an innovator. The 
mail bombs seemed to be a 'deviant expression' of 
the desire to seek revenge and prove oneself at 
the same time."

So, not a word about the wrongly detained and 
most probably tortured Muslims, and a veritable 
certificate of merit for the Hindu culprit. Maybe 
they should induct him into the police force so 
that he can redirect his lack of self-esteem and 
scientific temperament more fruitfully - in 
hunting down the real anti-national elements.

Like, for example, Mohammad Afzal? All those 
members of India's democratic public, filling the 
coffers of mobile phone companies by SMS-ing TV 
channels that Afzal should hang - what is the 
basis of their informed decision?

The media, of course, pliantly reproduce police 
hand-outs as news. The police say they have 
arrested two Pakistani nationals, and Pakistani 
nationals they become for ever after, in 
newspapers and on TV screens, with not a single 
"alleged", "claimed", and after the first time 
(and sometimes not even then), "according to 
police reports". Even in stories that use the 
last phrase, the total lack of analysis and 
commentary makes them news items rather than 
reports of police briefings. A recent story in a 
national daily reported in alarmist style that 
senior police officers informed the paper on the 
basis of intelligence tip-offs that Maoists have 
"launched a campaign" across Jharkand, Bihar and 
Chhatisgarh - a campaign to do what? Exterminate 
the class enemy? Blow up police stations? Turns 
out the "extremists", as the police call them, 
have a sinister plan to concentrate on local 
weekly markets and perform plays and sing songs 
in local dialects! Further, taking advantage of 
the villagers' newly acquired literacy, the 
police said disapprovingly, they sell books on 
and by communist thinkers, some of which have 
been vigilantly seized. So there they are, the 
Maoist extremists, singing and performing in 
public places, and selling widely available books 
at local markets - you need "intelligence 
tip-offs" to know this? And why does the reporter 
not have an intelligence tip-off from his own 
intelligence, to add one single word more than 
what the police gave him? This story carried a 
by-line, mind you.

Of course, not always do the media simply report 
police briefings as news. Sometimes, they are 
proactive. A new Hindi TV channel last week 
indignantly reported that dangerous leftist 
literature is freely available in the cultural 
festivals that are a tradition in Punjab. Having 
spoken to the person handling one such stall - 
who acknowledged that they do use these occasions 
to propagate their political ideology - the 
channel then interviewed the SSP of police. What 
was the police doing about this blatant 
availability of books and CDs that incite people 
against the state? The SSP assured the reporter 
that he would act immediately.

People of India, I give you the media - democracy is safe in their hands.


_____


[4]


Outlook
Magazine | Dec 11, 2006

Photo:
http://www.outlookindia.com/images/bajrang_dal_karnataka_20061211.jpg
Bajrang Dal activists line up outside Sufi saint 
Baba Budangiri's dargah in Chikmagalur to perform

Datta Jayanti puja
KARNATAKA: COMMUNAL TURMOIL
A Piercing Conch Blows
Coastal Karnataka is in the throes of communal fires stoked by the BJP

by Sugata Srinivasaraju

Godhra To Mangalore

The Sangh parivar and the BJP play the communal card in Karnataka:

     * Liberating the shrine of Sufi saint Baba 
Budangiri in Chikmagalur and converting it into a 
place of Hindu pilgrimage is the main plank. The 
shrine has been billed as the "Ayodhya of the 
south".
     * Campaign launched to project Tipu Sultan as anti-Kannada, anti-Hindu
     * The Ramjanmabhoomi issue has been revived 
successfully in Dakshina Kannada district
     * There is a sustained campaign that coastal 
Karnataka is infested with Muslim terrorists
     * Effort on to communalise the constabulary in coastal Karnataka
     * 'Proactive' cow protection and moral policing on in sensitive districts

A few years ago, BJP leaders liked to refer to 
Karnataka as the party's gateway to the south.


	Today, with the saffron party in alliance 
with the JD(S) in power, there is a buzz in the 
BJP in Bangalore-that the state, like Gujarat, is 
the Sangh parivar's new laboratory in the south. 
And for those waiting for a Hindutva surge in 
Karnataka, December 6 may well turn out to be a 
red letter day.
It is on that day that the 'prestige' bypoll in 
Chamundeshwari, where JD(S) and BJP have fielded 
a joint candidate against S. Siddaramaiah of the 
Congress, will be decided. It is believed that 
victory or defeat in this poll will prove crucial 
for the ruling coalition. If the BJP combine 
wins, it will be a shot in the arm for the 
parivar. Other than being the 14th anniversary of 
the 'fall' of the Babri Masjid, December 6 is 
also the day when the Datta Jayanti celebrations 
will get under way at the shrine of Sufi saint 
Baba Budangiri in Chikmagalur district, an event 
that has been a source of communal tension.

The BJP and the Sangh's declared objective is to 
instal an idol of Dattatreya, a local Hindu 
deity, appoint their own priest and conduct Vedic 
rites and prayers. The Baba Budangiri shrine has 
always been a place where both the Sufi saint and 
Dattatreya are worshipped by both Hindus and 
Muslims. The Sangh parivar now wants to claim the 
whole shrine and keep the Muslims out.


The communal riots in Mangalore in October were a rude reminder

The Sangh parivar in Karnataka has been preparing 
for December 6. The Mangalore communal violence 
in October, in which two Muslims were killed, is 
spoken of as a 'big message' to the Muslim 
community in the state. When Mangalore was 
burning, BJP minister Nagaraj Shetty, in charge 
of the district, reiterated how much he idolised 
Narendra Modi. Yatras by BJP leaders in the 
Malnad region, western Karnataka, over the last 
few months have been done with the purpose of 
"liberating" Baba Budangiri shrine. In 1999, 
former Union minister H.N. Ananth Kumar had sworn 
that the shrine would be the Ayodhya of 
Karnataka. This time around, with the BJP in 
power in the state, the parivar feels it is 
within striking distance.

In October, a revered icon in Karnataka, Tipu 
Sultan, became the target of the Sangh parivar 
after the BJP education minister, D.H. Shankara 
Murthy, painted him as an 'anti-Hindu' and 
'anti-Kannada' ruler. These statements had come 
without any provocation, but the print space it 
consumed in the Kannada press was unprecedented. 
And the Ram mandir issue has been successfully 
revived in the communally sensitive Udipi and 
Dakshina Kannada districts where roadside 
meetings in towns and villages, sponsored by the 
Rama Mandira Nirmana Samarthana Samithi, happen 
almost everyday. "Nothing explosive may happen on 
December 6, but the very build-up and the hate 
campaign that we see in every corner of coastal 
Karnataka and in parts of Malnad is a 
well-planned strategy to intimidate the 
minorities," says Anand Kodimbala, a Mangalore 
college lecturer.


Such a meeting witnessed by this correspondent 
right outside the deputy commissioner's office in 
Mangalore on November 27 went like this: It is 4 
pm in the evening, children are coming out of 
three Christian convents down the road (St Ann's, 
Carmel and Rosario). In the crowd, there are 
young girls with hijabs (the city has nearly 40 
per cent Muslims) and nuns (20-25 per cent are 
Christians). In the vicinity there is also a 
dargah. There are more than 50 Mahindra jeeps 
with saffron flags parked. Traffic has been 
blocked. About a thousand people are squatting on 
the road listening to some astonishing 
demagoguery by pontiffs of local Hindu maths, 
including the influential Pejawar Vishvesha 
Teertha Swamiji.

The speeches are, among other things, about their 
'92 kar seva experience when Babri Masjid fell; 
the Upanishadic shlokas "found on the bricks" 
that came falling; Mohammed Afzal's hanging and 
how they would worship the judge who sentenced 
him as "Mahatma"; how the dome of the Babri 
Masjid appeared like the bald pate of then PM, 
P.V. Narasimha Rao etc. Surprisingly, there is no 
mention of Sonia Gandhi.

When Outlook asked Mangalore SP B. Dayanand why 
permission was granted for such a provocative 
meeting, he pleaded helplessness. "We denied 
permission for a protest procession. This meeting 
was only meant to give a memorandum to the DC and 
therefore we allowed it. We can't stop all 
meetings, we can only regulate them. We are 
actually in a Catch 22 situation-if we do not 
allow these meetings they will take a violent 
shape," says Dayanand. Almost all MLAs and MPs in 
coastal Karnataka are from the BJP. D.V. 
Sadananda Gowda, the state BJP chief, is 
Mangalore's MP.

An inflammatory Sangh parivar rally in Mangalore in front of the DM's office

Dakshina Kannada district, in which Mangalore 
falls, is representative of the communal tension 
in Karnataka. It is feared that if the situation 
is allowed to slip any further, it would be the 
"Godhra of the south". The October communal 
violence justifies the fear: it was the first 
time in Karnataka that a constabulary had been 
accused of being communal. A charge that was 
treated casually by the state's home minister, 
M.P. Prakash, who reportedly told a human rights 
delegation that "you cannot help the presence of 
such elements in the force".

But the stories going around of the Muslim 
victims of the riots from Prof Phaniraj and G. 
Rajashekar, who went round meeting victims and 
are authors of a history of communal violence in 
Dakshina Kannada, is disturbing. Hear this one 
about a family in Ullal, on the outskirts of 
Mangalore, where the police barged into and 
allegedly "looted" a number of Muslim homes: "The 
police did not even have the names of people who 
they needed to arrest. It is just that Muslims 
had to be rounded up," say Rajashekar and 
Phaniraj.

Like it happened in Gujarat, where there was a 
sustained hate campaign against the Muslim 
community for more than 15 years before Godhra 
happened, Dakshina Kannada too has a history of 
communal violence, which came to the fore first 
during the riots in December 1998. "We, the 
people of Udipi and Dakshina Kannada, tend to 
boast of our accomplishments as highly literate 
districts, as leaders in the banking and hotel 
sectors. Now we have one more feather in our 
caps: we are the districts with the highest rate 
of violence against minorities, courtesy the 
Sangh parivar. Simply put: there is one such 
incident of violence almost every day," say 
Phaniraj and Rajashekar.

Additional district magistrate A.G.


Bhat, who agrees the situation in the district is 
volatile, says: "There are three issues around 
which clashes happen in the district-cattle 
slaughter, elopement and eve-teasing, and 
religious conversions and processions." On the 
day we were in Udipi, there was a case of a 
Muslim boy being beaten up by Sangh parivar 
activists for talking to a Hindu girl who was his 
classmate.

Earlier, there have also been instances of 
Bajrang Dal activists storming a movie theatre in 
Puttur with the hope of catching young lovers of 
different faiths "red-handed". There have been 
attacks on youngsters taking a stroll on the 
beach. There have also been brutal murders for 
the crime of having fallen in love with a person 
of another faith. "The atmosphere is vitiated, my 
personal view is that there is a feeling of 
insecurity among Muslims here," says Bhat.

The cow-protection programme of the Sangh parivar 
in the district is pursued so seriously that in 
May 2006 a gang of 10 Bajrang Dal activists 
assaulted a Brahmin priest in Udipi district, for 
mediating the sale of cows. Similarly, the Hindu 
Yuva Sena ensured the Nejaru village gram 
panchayat cancelled the licence of Kasim Saheb to 
sell beef. In Adi Udipi, a Muslim father and son 
were paraded naked for trading in cows. In 
conversion cases the attack is mostly on the 
Protestant community.

Strangely, Opposition politicians are silent. 
Senior Congress leaders like Margaret Alva, Oscar 
Fernandes, Veerappa Moily and Janardhan Poojary 
all hail from coastal Karnataka, but they have 
been mum about the trauma of the minorities. Even 
during the October riots, they were missing. "The 
Congress leaders have forfeited the political 
space to the Sangh parivar," says Rajashekar. 
When an alliance was forged with the BJP in 
February 2006, CM H.D. Kumaraswamy had said he 
was still searching for the meaning of the word 
"secularism". One can only hope that the communal 
situation in Dakshina Kannada would offer him 
some insight.



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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.