When did Bengaluru turn ‘Communal’?

Pasts without Prejudice

Bengaluru has been no stranger to ‘communal’ disturbances, especially since the 1990s, but they have not dislodged the special place occupied by the event known as ‘The Bangalore Disturbances,’ of 1928 also known as the ‘Ganapati Galabhe’ or ‘Hindu-Muslim Garshane’. In the wake of what has unfolded in DJ Halli and KG Halli since August 11, 2020, we could ask what that earlier moment tells us about ‘Mysore’s first communal riot’ as some popular accounts have it.

First, the term ‘communal’ in Mysore State had quite a different connotation from its use in the Indo-Gangetic belt. The Miller Committee Report of 1918, which paved the way for reservations for ‘non-Brahmins’ to public service was often referred to as the ‘Communal G.O’ and the term had no pejorative meaning. ‘Rallying around the cow’ was not a preoccupation in Mysore at a time when it was more or less monopolising public life in the Indo-Gangetic region. Instead, there were fierce inter- and intra-caste rivalries about honours and insignia used by Hindu religious leaders in Mysore from the late 19th century.

Also, in striking contrast to the predictable ways in which the faultlines have developed in 2020, were the unexpected positions taken by members of the bureaucracy, the government itself, the press and people in public office. A little image of the Ganapati in a Sultanpet school became the focus of a struggle between upper caste members of the Congress Right (notably Ramlal Tiwari, Jamakhandi Bhima Rao and H V Subrahmanyam), journalists such as Veerakesari Sitarama Sastry Vishwakarnataka’s Thi Tha Sharma and Muslims of the old city, led by Municipal President Abbas Khan. Though the disturbances of July 28-30, 1928, a largely schoolboy affair, were not major, and resulted in ‘wounds and bruises’ not fatalities, it shook the state government and public life of the city. A committee headed by M Visvesvaraya investigated the causes of the event and suggested possible remedies for the future.

1928 showed that communal riots, and government responses to them, are simply not alike, and are certainly not pre-ordained. For instance, N S Subbarao, then Director of Public Instruction, first passed the order for the removal of the idol, and held firmly to the view that “a school is no place of worship” (disagreeing with the later government decision to reinstall it). Abbas Khan resigned from his post as Municipal President following the riots. Both the committee and the Government of Mysore firmly denied any longstanding rivalry between Hindus and Muslims, acknowledging that “the objectives of the crowd underwent rapid changes” through the course of the ‘riot’. Moreover, the government, while proscribing four newspapers during the disturbances, refused to accept the committee’s suggestions that it “start one or two good daily newspapers” for fear of being accused of organising publicity.

No doubt, the galabhe was a turning point in the city’s history: Bangalore’s first sedition case was against Surya Narayan Rao and Sitarama Sastry. But there is nothing to suggest that the charge that “Muslims are permeating all levels of the administration” gained much traction at that time or even later. The enquiry revealed neither longstanding communal differences nor conspiracies; instead, the ‘vernacular’ press was “inciting communal hatred and jealousies in the mofussil.” Was the Miller Committee Report of 1918 the “apple of discord” as the Visvesvaraya Committee had it?

Many witnesses pointed to the simmering resentment of Mysore Brahmins whose monopoly of the administration had been displaced; public meetings addressed by Sitarama Sastry and many petitions to the government voiced that resentment. At what point did the Brahmin discontent turn into anti-Muslim sentiment? Were the road-widening measures of Abbas Khan merely the acts of an inspired Municipal President or a deliberate attempt to remove all religious markers from roads? Did the jubilance of the Hindu mobs following resumption of worship spark the violent response of the Muslims? Most important, how did local municipal issues acquire nationalist colour in a state where such feelings were only weakly developed?

The Visvesvaraya Committee agreed that disallowing worship in a public school and so close to a mosque was correct; its own answer to such convulsions was the urgent secularisation of public life, vigorous economic development and the adherence to ‘merit’ as lasting remedies. These were vain hopes, and the ‘second Bangalore disturbances’, referring to serious rivalry between football clubs in the cantonment in 1931, resulted. But for some decades at least, Mysore was insulated from similar inter-religious strife, not least because the Mysore administration, under the Maharaja and the Dewan, remained firmly committed to giving “adequate representation to all communities in the public service...” Yet, the Bangalore Disturbances revealed how fragile were the networks of camaraderie and religious commingling, so true of the old city, in the face of unchecked rumour and determined exaggeration in the ‘vernacular press’. In short, it took effort to produce even that brief disruption.