After Gujarat and UP, the Karnataka communalism template

What is happening in Karnataka has implications for the rest of India; will it create a new template for communalism?

The age of nation-building that involves burying differences as opposed to accentuating them is clearly over. Karnataka now appears to be the site of a huge political experiment that involves trying to make millions of people think like a mob, motivated largely by anti-minority impulses. Polarising issues are, according to local analysts, the means to the ends of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retaining power in the southern state that has elections within a year. The fact that the party is in power in the state - the outcome not of direct electoral victory but defections from other parties - makes it possible to conduct this socio-political experiment in the petri-dish of the southern state with great gusto and abandon. From the hijab controversy to the "banning" of Muslims from conducting trade and setting up stalls in religious fairs associated with Hindu sites to earlier attacks on Christian congregations, the state is witnessing rigorous Hindutva mobilisation.

Also Read — Hijab row, a chance to become truly secular

Conversely, in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP just won a significant election, there were not too many live and new polarising issues at play. True, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath did describe the recently concluding elections as being about 80 per cent vs 20 per cent (and Muslims make up 20 per cent of the state population) but polarisation had reached a saturation point, and the BJP bettered a spirited Opposition campaign by creating a sentiment around welfarism in a desperately poor state. Besides, there was rigorous election management and outreach by the BJP/RSS cadres. Significantly too, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) collapsed, and much of its Dalit vote went to the BJP.

Yet, it must be noted that the core Hindutva constituency in the nation's most populous state has arguably increased in actual numbers, although that alone would not have made it possible for the ruling party to prevail without other factors at play. As the three contested Hindu sites at Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya are also located in the state, there is obviously a strong cultural and identity element to the BJP's success.

As an election panellist on a leading TV channel, I noted a biographer of the chief minister and fellow panellist stating that the victory of the saffron-robed CM implied that the state would no longer be known first for the Taj Mahal. He was clearly suggesting that Hindu motifs would now overshadow the Taj Mahal legacy, a statement that reveals the psychological complex and obsession with a certain history.

This statement gave insights into the larger question that has fascinated me for some time: how do people define themselves by apparently hating another set of people and having deep historical grouses? The entire Sangh Parivar's promotion of the film, The Kashmir Files, is obviously linked to validating the idea of Hindu persecution at the hands of Muslims. It's a sentiment and psychological position that seeks to justify the targeting of minorities through words, actions and policy.

Also Read — The Kashmir Files: Using art for the cause of hate

After all, in the first past the post system, to reach the threshold of electoral victory, it is not necessary to get all the people to think alike but enough of the people to be actively mobilised against the existence of minorities and to support symbolic and real acts against them. Simultaneously, there must be a certain indifference among others who do not care enough to resist what is happening. There is a formula at work here that has succeeded in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and the western state of Gujarat. It is currently dramatically at play in Karnataka.

Gujarat had its own particular history, but the bloodbath of the 2002 riots settled matters very substantially in favour of the BJP as Narendra Modi would emerge as the "Hindu hridaya samrat" ( the emperor of Hindu hearts) and would subsequently go from strength to strength eventually moving to capture Delhi. Gujarat would also witness the almost complete ghettoisation of Muslims in satellite townships/slums such as Juhapura outside Ahmedabad, to which the minority community would move - from middle-class professionals to daily wage earners.

It's worth recalling that Narendra Modi was selected to go to Gujarat some months before the scheduled state elections to replace the discredited BJP leadership that then held power in the state. He actually contested his first elections after the Gujarat riots had taken place, and his career would be built in the aftermath of that violence.

The Uttar Pradesh experience has been more complex and has many more layers to it, including the limitation of Mandal-era politics, the popularity of Narendra Modi in the Hindi belt and now, apparently, Yogi Adityanath. But it's also worth remembering that no major riot has taken place during the rule of Adityanath, although there was a vicious crackdown on the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protest in 2020.

Yet, as we witness the segregation of Muslim traders and hawkers in Karnataka, it's worth pointing to one facet of life in Uttar Pradesh. The state is the centre of several small-scale industries, from the brass industry of Moradabad in the west to the silk weavers of Varanasi in the east, where many of the artisans and workers are Muslims while owners are overwhelmingly Hindus, although, in some instances, minorities also run their own businesses. Even if they live separate lives, there is no desire to disrupt the economic cycle that binds people.

We have not yet reached the point where non-Muslims would refuse to be wed in those exquisite Benarasi silk sarees because they would have been woven by a Muslim weaver. Indeed, in the part of West Uttar Pradesh, where the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 took place and ruptured economic and social relations between Jats and Muslims, the two communities have begun to heal and now work together because it's an economic necessity.

What is happening in Karnataka has implications for the rest of India. Will the southern state create a new template for communalism? Or will it recognise that communal hatred cannot be good for the soul but is eventually bad for the economy as well?

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.