As temple season begins in Karnataka, saffron groups target Muslim vendors

As the season of temple fairs gets underway in Karnataka, more instances of rightwing groups singling out Muslim vendors are being reported from the state.

Earlier this week, Muslim vendors were not allowed to set up stalls during the jathre (temple fair) at Shivamogga and Kapu following pressure from rightwing groups. 

Throughout the week, posters and banners calling for a boycott of Muslim businesses have come up at various places.

A similar incident was reported on Friday from Kalaburagi district in the north where a saffron outfit took out a campaign to boycott non-Hindu vendors during the Sharana Basaveshwara jathre, local daily Kannada Prabha reported. In Shivamogga on March 25, Muslim vendors were returned the advance they had paid up for stalls at the Channabasaveshwara Swamy Rathotsava, the newspaper reported.

A day earlier, there were reports of Hindutva outfits in Belur (in Hassan district) and Yediyur (in Tumkur) demanding that non-Hindus vendors be kept away during the fairs scheduled to take place next month.

Meanwhile, in a village in Chikmagalur district, banners seeking to keep out non-Hindus from putting up stalls have come up during the ongoing Kola Utsava, according to a report in Deccan Herald.

Raising the issue in the assembly on March 23, Congress legislator UT Khader called for action against those putting up such signs. “Some posters and banners are coming up in public places and these don’t even have any organisation’s name on them,” said Khader. “But if the police were to take action, a strong message would go out to those putting up these banners.”

In a few instances, like in Mulki, the event organisers deserved applause for getting such banners removed, he said.

The Bappanadu Shri Durgaparameshwari Temple at Mulki (a coastal town 30 kilometres from Mangalore) is an ancient shrine with a syncretic tradition – the temple  procession starts from the ancestral house of Bappa Beary, who, according to the local legend, was a Muslim merchant who helped construct the temple.

Temple authorities said earlier this week that they had permitted nearly 50 Muslim traders to put up stalls but that these vendors left on their own, out of fear, The Hindu reported on March 24. The hereditary trustee of the temple, Dugganna Sawant, said that a banner had been put up by a group calling itself ‘Hindu Bandhus’, which didn’t want stalls to be allotted to non-Hindus. “We do not have any links with people who installed that banner,” he was quoted as saying.

In its response to the concerns raised by Khader, the Karnataka government clarified that the Hindu Religious Institutions And Charitable Endowments Act and Rules, 2002, prohibited the leasing of space near Hindu religious institutions to people of different faith. “If these banners were outside the premises, we will rectify,” Law Minister JC Madhuswamy said.

Former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy, while speaking in the assembly on March 23, referred to reactions on television that suggested that the boycott was seen as a response to a bandh call given by Muslim traders in Karnataka to protest the hijab verdict. “Calling for a bandh is not anything new. Various organisations have given calls on different occasions but that does not mean we can exclude them from society,” Kumaraswamy said. “I’m not going into the rules of giving contracts within temple premises. But, here, it is a matter of livelihood. If we create this kind of atmosphere in society, where will we end up?” he said.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Karnataka Street Vendors Associations has urged the government to intervene in the matter, pointing out that existing regulations allowed street vendors to carry out business at fairs and that denial of permission to non-Hindu vendors ran contrary to these rules.