Edited to add :This is not a post about Manglore pub attack.
Yeah,I am adding more to those endless posts on ‘Holy people preserving Indian culture’ floating around in blogoshpere.My friends have already put it in best words,that I have hardly anything better to say.I support you in the fight of individual freedom.Lets not make our nation another Saudi or Afghan..
Amrutha has a post on the topic,but the link she provided seemed disturbing.The author of that article justifies this incident as,‘The Rama Sainiks have done a good job in saving Hindu girls. I am not saying this. The masses in Mangalore stand by these so-called hooligans because they want to protect their women from the clutches of the oh-so-peaceful Islamic jehadis ” I was wondering when and how did islam or jiahdist or terrorism come in the frame..Reading more on the thread,I stumbled upon articles in OutlookIndia and IndiaToday,which persuaded me to have a look into the matter,from their viewpoint.Sharing some thoughts.
The incident of pub attack is not simply about moral policing or about political drama.See a few communal stirrings that the state (Karnataka ) has witnessed, especially in the coastal districts, after the BJP came to power last May.
- June 9, 2008: Temple affairs minister Krishnaiah Shetty issues circular to 34,000 temples to perform special puja for newly sworn-in CM. Order later modified after protests.
- August 10, 2008: Karnataka Rakshana Vedike attacks a group of 35 people allegedly holding a ‘rave party’ at Manchanabele Dam
- August 14, 2008: State-owned Mahabaleshwara Temple in Gokarna transferred to Ramachandrapur Math, known for its save-the-cow campaigns
- August 29, 2008: The Public Instruction Department issues notices to all Christian institutions in the state to shut down to protest the violence against Christians in Orissa. Notice precursor to statewide attacks on churches.
- September 14, 2008: With Mangalore as the epicentre, Sangh parivar activists attack Christian prayer halls and churches across state. More churches attacked three days later.
- October 16, 2008: The largest-selling Kannada newspaper claims on its front page that conversions have gone up alarmingly after Sonia Gandhi-Congress came to power. Debates the issue on its Op-Ed page for over a month.
- October 30, 2008: Bajrang Dal activists attack two undertrials in Mangalore district sub jail; sixth such attack after its chief Mahendra Kumar’s arrest on September 20.
- December 12, 2008: Aggressive posturing at Baba Budangiri by parivar leaders and Hindu pontiffs
- December 27, 2008: Hoysala Sene attacks Fuga bar in Bangalore, alleges illegal activities
- December 28, 2008: Bajrang Dal activists attack a bus ferrying students on a study tour to Mysore, saying girls and boys from different religions can’t travel together
- January 6, 2009: B.V. Seetharam, editor of Mangalore-based newspaper Karavali Ale, who followed a strong anti-parivar editorial line, handcuffed and arrested in alleged extortion case. Prior to his arrest, parivar elements vandalise paper’s office.
- January 7, 2009: Laddoos distributed in some schools across the state on Vaikunta Ekadashi. Congress demands biriyani should be distributed on Ramzan.
- January 19, 2009: An arrested dacoit reportedly confesses links with radical Hindu groups and admits to carrying out the Hubli district court bombing before the May assembly elections
- January 25, 2009: Sri Rama Sene activists attack pub in Mangalore and molest and beat up women
- January 25, 2009: Bajrang Dal activists attack a private party in Mangalore
- January 28, 2009: Muzrai department orders temples to perform special puja to ward off “ill-effects” of the solar eclipse [source]
Coming back to the recent incident of pub attack,BJP has distanced itself from Muthalik.But Outlook reports that in August 2007, when Yediyurappa was deputy CM in the H.D. Kumaraswamy cabinet, as many as 51 cases were withdrawn against parivar men, of which Mutalik is the first accused in many of these cases while VHP leader Praveen Togadia figures prominently in others.
Earlier,these guys were back of cows..They wanted the Centre to declare cow as a national animal and ban its slaughter. In March 2005, the outfit paraded naked a Muslim father and son in Adi Udupi in front of 500-600 people for allegedly “illegally trading in cows”.
However, the most common reason by far for a communal flare-up relates to the ‘mingling’ of youngsters from different communities. G. Rajashekar, co-author of The Dark Faces of Communalism, a book on communalism in Karnataka, says that according to data he has collected between May 2008 and now, there have been “14 recorded incidents of violence against Hindu girls for having been seen with either a Muslim or a Christian boy”. Prof Phaniraj, a rights activist teaching at a Manipal engineering college, says: “Since 1998, the frequency of communal incidents in the Dakshina Kannada area has increased.
The invariable plot for violence, he adds, is about a boy from a Muslim or Christian community ‘found being friendly’ with a Hindu girl, which leads to the self-styled protectors of the Hindu faith ‘intervening’ to ‘free’ the girl. Except intervening here means thrashing the boy. “We should remember that there was a sustained campaign against the Muslim community in Gujarat before Godhra happened,” says Phaniraj. Just prior to the Surathkal riots in 1998, a lot of pamphlets warning young Hindu women against going with Muslim boys were circulated.
The man who instigated the pub attack, Prasad Attavar, had in 2007 assaulted a Muslim boy at the Ideal Ice-cream Parlour in the heart of Mangalore for talking to a Hindu girl. More ghastly, however, was the 2005 incident in a Puttur cinema when two men (one Muslim) and two Hindu women working in an areca processing factory had gone to see a movie. Around 150 Bajrang Dal activists barged in, dragged the four out and assaulted them before handing them over to the police. As recently as six months ago, a Muslim and Hindu couple living together were forced to return to their native Gadag by parivar activists. “Intrusion into private spaces has become common,” says Phaniraj.
Besides the coastal districts, there has been an uneasy calm at other flashpoints like Baba Budangiri since 2004, where the Sangh parivar is hell-bent on converting the Sufi shrine with a rich tradition of religious syncretism into an exclusive Hindu pilgrimage centre. BJP leader H.N. Ananth Kumar had vowed to make it the ‘Ayodhya of Karnataka’. The Hubli Idgah Maidan issue had cropped up temporarily in September 2004 when Uma Bharati courted arrest and lost her chief ministership, but there has been little noise since then. The silence is eerie, however, and with a BJP government in power, pregnant. [source]
My dear friends,this incident is not about culture,but about religion..Its for you and me to decide on what lessons do we learn from this incident.
p.s:
On January 17, 2008, while addressing a rally in Udupi, Muthalik said: “It’s time for blasts. Malegaon is just a trailer. Every house should have a person like Pragya Singh. Every housewife will carry bombs now.”[Watch video ]..
Mangalore’s on-the-rampage Ram Sene is drawn from the ranks of the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena : http://tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne070209the_devoutly.asp
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