A ‘Nava Karnataka’ is emerging

The new Bill was pushed through without providing much evidence of what it is remedying, or consultation with affected groups, or even with the Opposition. It did not even wait for the report of its own Legislative Committee to survey all Christian churches in preparation for an anti-conversion law, particularly in the officially acknowledged “backward” districts of Yadgir, Chitradurga and Vijayapura. Apart from incorporating provisions to interfere in interfaith marriages, the Bill also targets institutions which, on suspicion of “conversion”, may forfeit their licenses! Who knows what will follow in hundreds of educational and medical institutions run by the minorities?

The BJP government hurtles towards completing an agenda begun with its usurpation of power in 2019. For a state (Mysore) that had been completely free of the cow protection movements that raged in the Indo-Gangetic region from the 1890s on, even in the 1920s and 1930s, a new reverence for 3.5 crore livestock was in the passing of “The Karnataka Prevention Of Slaughter And Preservation Of Cattle Act, 2020”, with the conspicuous and unprecedented conduct of a “cow puja” in the legislature building. An exhaustive report (by Sylvia Karpagam et al) on the impact of the 2020 Act, compiled in September 2020, just six months after the Act was passed, reveals a startling picture. Not only have livelihoods (related to cattle rearing, transportation, slaughterhouse operations, skinning, tanning and retailing) been adversely affected, food security — related to milk, milk products, and meat — stands dangerously threatened. These are direct and observable results of the disruption to the cattle economy caused by the singular focus on prohibiting cow slaughter.

But that is not all. The new prohibitions have criminalised economic activity and engendered in its place an entirely “informal”/illegal economy in which the police/authorities and vigilantes are allowed to extort, confiscate, and even arrest, while remaining untouched by any system of accountability. Finally, although the law was intended to target the lives and livelihoods, nutritional status and well being of Dalits and Muslims in Karnataka, the report has shown widespread economic distress in all sections of the farming community as a consequence, with the only beneficiaries being large-scale abattoirs and meat exporters. In short, the meat trade has not been abolished but has only changed hands — away from small-scale Muslim and Dalit businesses largely oriented to domestic business to large-scale non-Muslim export businesses.

This seems to be exactly what the anti-conversion Bill will promote: A subcontracting of the punitive powers of the state to anonymous, assorted groups “protecting” the Hindu religion — a new layer of “rentiers”. It approves of the non-state groups that impose an arbitrary and capricious “reign of terror” in the name of a “rule of law”. This is a clear abdication of the state’s duty towards the development of its underprivileged and marginalised sections, and a push to encourage the fight over limited opportunities and goods. “Sustainable communalism” in the form of “citizen’s” groups acting to intervene in or prevent any form of camaraderie, friendships, partnerships or intimacies, particularly between Hindu women and men of other communities, has already been converted into a fine (and acceptable) art.

A joint fact-finding committee (consisting of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties-Karnataka (PUCL-K), All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ), All India People’s Forum (AIPF), Gaurilankeshnews.com) recorded as many as 71 reported cases in South Kanara alone, between January and September 2021. PUCL Karnataka has also documented 39 attacks on churches between January and November 2021. Economic boycott of minority businesses is another strategy that is now gaining popularity. In Koppal, there has been a call to shut down Muslim establishments. In Chitradurga, a tehsildar has called for an enumeration of all Christians.

The Karnataka BJP has successfully pushed all political parties towards a commitment to the ethnicised Hindu nation. And the law is created in order to violate the rule of law. A 2009 Supreme Court order on the removal of unauthorised structures (especially proliferating religious structures) on public land was finally executed by officials in Mysore district in September 2021, only to face immediate objections from the Opposition Congress and JDS. With great alacrity and uncharacteristic firmness, the Karnataka Religious Structures (Protection) Act 2021 was passed which saved unauthorised (illegal) religious structures on public land from demolition. Karnataka thus has the dubious distinction of defying a Supreme Court order, and of directly undermining municipal laws that protect and democratically develop the public spaces of the city/town or village. No wonder, then, that the police personnel belonging to at least two stations, Kaup (DK) and Vijayapura (Bijapur ), flaunted “orange” clothing on police premises on Vijayadashami day in 2021, emboldened by the support and endorsement of ministers and other politicians alike.

Despite being a beneficiary of Christian institutions until the age of 21, I have remained a conscientious atheist, which I believe (as Gandhi is said to have pointed out) is morally superior to the absolute corruption of those who speak in the name of religion. Events in Karnataka deeply and corrosively undermine its own long heritage of radical religiosity. But they also fatally wound all morality, humaneness, ideas of privacy, and the sense of self that is the birthright of every Indian citizen.

This column first appeared in the print edition on December 25, 2021 under the title ‘Nava Karnataka’. The writer is former professor of history, JNU