BY HARSHA VADLAMANI
Mangaluru, a port city by the Arabian Sea in southern Karnataka, is home to about six lakh people. It has three malls, two parks and two beaches where the young and not-so-rich can hang out—but they can’t escape the gaze of vigilante groups that impose their moral code.
Suresh Bhat Bakrabail, 70, an activist with the Karnataka Forum for Communal Harmony, compiles a list of moral policing incidents reported in the local newspapers. Last year he says 139 incidents were reported from Mangaluru and neighbourhood. The majority, 129, were attributed to Hindu right-wing groups and six to the Muslim right-wing Popular Front of India. Everything is grist to their mill, a group of Hindu and Muslim girls and boys travelling for a sports event, a Muslim man dropping off his female Hindu employee at home, a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy’s friendship in college.
The Bajrang Dal, militant youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, is the strongest Hindu outfit. According to Sharan Pumpwell, its Mangaluru-based convener for Karnataka, the organisation has 80 units in the city, about 3,000 active members and 10,000 supporters. The Sri Ram Sene, of Amnesia Pub 2009 notoriety and Hindu Jagarana Vedike, whose activists assaulted men and women celebrating a birthday at Morning Mist Homestay in 2012, are technically different, but “we’re all the same, we work together”.
The Dal motto is Seva (service), Suraksha (security), Sanskar (culture). It draws most of its cadres from the Billava and Mogaveera communities, traditionally farmers and fishermen respectively. There is no single point of entry. Some might have attended RSS shakhas as children and moved to the Dal as adults. Others might enter via the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in college or through friends already part of Bajrang Dal.
The Dal provides a sense of purpose to these young, working class men who do not have much to occupy themselves with after work. While few understand the organisation’s larger ideology, they believe they are doing something to protect their country and religion. They give their best to the cause, even if it means breaking the law or a few bones.
Bajrangis, as they like to call themselves, regularly participate in activities such as blood donation and ensuring the delivery of government schemes. But their focus is the Sangh Parivar’s favourite bogey, “Love Jihad”, and cattle vigilantism. It helps that college students, who are often victims of “action” against “Love Jihad” or moral policing do not speak out or even file police complaints due to fear and parental pressure. But the cattle transporters and sellers for whom this is a livelihood hit back occasionally.
On October 9, 2015, flower seller Prashanth Poojary, 29, was hacked to death by six men as his father watched in front of their shop in Moodabidiri, 34 km from Mangalore. He was involved in raids against illegal cattle transport and even led an attack on alleged cattle smugglers about 45 days before his murder, his father said. Sharan Pumpwell held the Popular Front of India responsible for the murder.
(Harsha Vadlamani is a photographer based in Hyderabad.)
(On the cover of May 2016 issue of Fountain Ink