Why let hate permeate trade too?

The call to deny space to non-Hindu traders for setting up their stalls around temples during the jatras and festivals is the latest among stratagems unleashed by certain outfits to trigger communal polarization in the run-up to the Assembly elections in Karnataka. The unfortunate killing of a Hindu youth belonging to the Bajrang Dal in Shivammoga has come as a handy ruse for communal organisations to go hammer and tongs with their vicious propaganda aimed at driving a wedge among major communities in the State. It is not difficult to guess that they are acting at the behest of a political party and how the trajectory will unfold in the days to come.

In a plural society, and more so in a secular democracy like India, any such call should have evoked condemnation and stringent action from the Government. But no such outright condemnation by the Government of Karnataka serves to indicate that the State dispensation is either complicit with them or does not disapprove of such acts.

Just as the jatras, temple festivals or Urs at the mausoleums of Sufi saints provide opportunities for village folk and rural artisans to display their wares, they are also occasions for syncretic bonhomie among people of diverse faith and communities. There is nothing in the Karnataka Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowment Act 1997 which applies to immovable properties that prohibits the letting out of space for temporary vendors and hawkers at fairs and festivals. In fact, the Supreme Court had even allowed tender, auction and lease of temple properties to non-Hindus in 2020. It did so through a stay on provision in the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Immovable Properties and other Rights Leases and Licenses Rules, 2003 prohibiting non-Hindus from participation in tender-cum-auction process of shops. Furthermore, any boycott or call for social boycott violates the Constitutional promise of nondiscrimination under Article 15 as it expressly prohibits exclusion of any people on the basis of religion, race, caste or place of birth.

Bommai Government’s silence and inaction over the call to socially boycott Muslims makes it abundantly plain that in an election year, it only covets communal fissures and social fault lines to etch clearer in order to reap the rich electoral dividend.

Besides the threat to peace and public order such calls pose, it is useful to be reminded that the Karnataka Government actively woos investment in trade and industries from several Arab and Muslim nations around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Would the authorities maintain a similar stance if companies and corporations from these nation either stay away due to fear or are shooed away in a similar manner by forces inimical to others on the basis of faith?