The BJP has a major problem on its hands in the twin coastal Karnataka districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada, the heartland of the Sangh Parivar in southern India. Hindutva activists at the cadre-level belonging to organisations such as the Bajrang Dal, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and Hindu Jagarana Vedike (HJV) have broken formation to join a rebel Hindutva leader who is mobilising thousands of people in the region with a purpose: unseat Veerendra Heggade, the 21st Dharmadhikari or hereditary administrator of the 800-year-old Dharmasthala temple in Belthangady taluk of Dakshina Kannada.
Heggade also happens to be a BJP nominated member of the Rajya Sabha and was conferred the second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, soon after the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014. The protests against Heggade have changed colour considerably since they first started in 2012 over the death of Sowjanya, a 17-year-old girl who was raped and murdered.
Back then, Left groups including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were part of the agitation demanding a CBI enquiry into the death alleging that the killers were being protected by Heggade and the Dharmasthala management. The matter calmed down after the police arrested a man named Santhosh Rao for the crime.
But the issue exploded in a big way again in June this year when the Special CBI court in Bengaluru exonerated the suspect. The acquittal revived the allegations against Heggade. This time, however, the Left is nowhere in the picture and the face of the movement is Mahesh Shetty Thimarodi, a Hindutva leader who became a part of the Sangh Parivar in 1992. He subsequently started his own right-wing outfit, the Rashtriya Hindu Jagarana Vedike, after severing ties with the Sangh Parivar.