Communal incidents in Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts of coastal Karnataka were at their lowest in 14 years in 2024, according to a recently compiled report. At the same time, government data shows that communal incidents are on the rise in many districts of northern Karnataka.
The report was compiled by Suresh Bhat Bakrabail, a Mangaluru-based activist and member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, based on media coverage of such instances. But the actual number could be higher.
In 2024, the two coastal districts saw 50 incidents of a communal nature, including alleged instances of moral policing by Hindu, Muslim and unidentified vigilantes, hate speech, cattle vigilantism, and religious conversion. This is the lowest number in 14 years since Suresh started compiling the report in 2010.
Last year saw 14 instances of moral policing – 13 allegedly by Hindu vigilantes and one by Muslim vigilantes – and is lower than the 20 such instances seen in 2023. This is among the lowest reported from the two districts, the highest being 39 by Hindu vigilantes in 2014 and 17 by Muslim vigilantes in 2013.
The report also documented 27 instances of hate speech and two instances of cattle vigilantism, which is lower than the 44 reported in 2023. The highest number of hate speech cases were seen in 2022.
While instances of moral policing and hate speech have reduced, the biggest reduction is in the ‘others’ category, which includes attacks, desecration of places of worship, violence during religious processions, etc. Such incidents have reduced to five in 2024, from an average of 50 each year since 2010, and had gone up to 143 in 2015.
Senior Kannada journalist Naveen Soorinje, who has reported extensively on communalism in coastal Karnataka, says there are several reasons for the reduction in overt violence in the region in the past few years.
“Ideologically, Hindutva has consolidated in the region. What is happening now is that there are no foot soldiers joining groups such as the Bajrang Dal to carry out violence. Even though they believe in the ideology, they have made the connection between caste and Hindutva,” Naveen says.
Naveen has written about caste-based hierarchies within the extended Sangh Parivar in his book Netravathiyalli Nettharu (Blood in the Netravathi). Both in major instances of communal attacks – such as the church attacks in 2008, the Amnesia pub attack in 2009, and the homestay attack in 2012 – and other instances too, the attackers belonged to the more backward among Shudra communities, while the leaders of the Sangh organisation were largely from forward caste communities.
Mahendra Kumar, the Bajrang Dal leader who led the church attacks and eventually distanced himself from the ideology, was made a scapegoat, Naveen wrote in his book. While Mahendra Kumar, whose parents are from two Shudra communities, was arrested and jailed, MB Puranik, a Brahmin and the then head of the Vishva Hindu Parishad who claimed responsibility for the church attacks, faced no consequences.
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Similarly, Prasad Attavar, of the Vishwakarma caste, was arrested for the attack on Amnesia pub while Jagadish Karanth, the state chief of the Hindu Jagrana Vedike and a Brahmin, was not even booked in the case even though he had held a press conference stating that the Vedike had carried out the attack.
In the book, Naveen also says that many people who died in communal violence belonged to backward castes such as Billava, Kottari and Kulal. “It is important to note that in Dakshina Kannada’s bloody history of communal violence, there hasn’t been a single Brahmin Hindutva activist or leader who has even gone to jail or lost his life in the cause of Hindutva,” he says in the book.
In the past, Naveen says, youth from the Billava and other backward communities would provide free labour for Sangh events as volunteers who looked after parking and food arrangements, putting up banners on the streets and at venues. “In the past, these youths would stay out all night putting up banners and decorations. Now, they have to outsource all this to contractors.”
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Another reason that communal violence has declined in Udupi and Dakshina districts is the growing awareness of how multiple police cases, or even one, will affect their lives. “Now many people want secure lives; they focus on their jobs and work and no longer get into this because they’ve realised that they will be left to fend for themselves,” Naveen told TNM.
However, Naveen cautions that these developments do not reflect any change of mindset. “Young men still go to these events and still believe in the ideology; they’re just not willing to provide free labour and become scapegoats anymore.”
Northward bound
While the data from Suresh’s report indicates a downward trend of violence in coastal Karnataka, the Sangh’s original laboratory in the state, government data shows significant occurrences of communal incidents in the northern parts of the state and the Old Mysuru region in the past five years.
Data from the Home Department provided in the Assembly to an unstarred question in December 2024 shows 483 communal incidents in the state between 2020 and 2024. It is unclear under which sections of the law these cases were registered.
There has been a steady rise in the number of incidents in the past five years during both the BJP and Congress’ tenures in government. The numbers were 51 in 2020, 72 in 2021, and 99 in 2022 when the BJP was in power. Instances continued to rise, touching 118 in 2023 and 143 in 2024. The Congress government was elected in May 2023.
The rise in the numbers comes from several districts in northern Karnataka. Except for Ramnagara, Chikkaballapur, Chitradurga, Hassan, Chamarajanagara, Uttara Kannada, Chikkamagalur, and Udupi, all other districts of the state have recorded at least one communal incident between 2020 and 2024.
In 12 districts in the northern part of the state, several incidents were reported last year, including 22 in Belagavi, 10 in Dharwad, and nine in Koppal district.
Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, which have seen a lot of communal violence in the last two decades, throw up surprising numbers. While Dakshina Kannada district saw single-digit figures since 2022 (five incidents were reported in 2020 and 20 in 2021), Udupi had zero incidents in the past five years.
One of the most startling aspects is the occurrence of 26 incidents in Mandya in 2024 when no such incidents had been reported between 2020 and 2023. Part of the Old Mysuru region, Mandya has historically seen little communal violence, which changed in 2023 with the murder of Idrees Pasha, a cattle trader. It was followed by the Hanuman flag controversy in Keragodu village in January 2024 and the violence in Nagamangala in September.
Tumakuru, which is another district in the erstwhile Old Mysuru region, too saw cases, although in the single digits, in each of the past five years. One major campaign that Hindutva activists carried out in Tumakuru last year was over the Siddhi Vinayak Temple. Hindutva activists claimed the temple land was being handed over illegally to a Muslim business owner. However, authorities rubbished the claim, saying that the land belonged to the government and that the business had won the tender legally for the construction of a mall.
Ahead of the Parliamentary elections last year, the BJP and Hindutva organisations built a narrative of “love jihad” around the tragic death of Neha Hiremath, a young woman who had been murdered by a Muslim man for rejecting him.
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