TAs the sun beat down on a carpeted parking lot in Mudipu Junction, on the outskirts of Mangalore, Karnataka, volunteers set out red plastic chairs and set out tables full of biryani and fruit for the public. iftarThe moment Muslims break their fast during Ramadan.
But this was no ordinary iftar. India is in the midst of a general election, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seeking a third term, and factionalism rife.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, a powerful organization, is going all out in Karnataka. Karnataka is the only state in southern India where it has a foothold. Its presence in other southern states is negligible. This is frustrating for a party that has proud ambitions to reshape the political landscape for generations to come.
In the last general election in 2019, the BJP won 25 out of 28 seats in Karnataka. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party may not be able to repeat such a decisive victory this time. The National Congress party had been in the opposition for 10 years at the national level, but won a stunning victory in last year’s provincial elections.
It is not yet clear whether the BJP candidate will resort to the party’s familiar tactics of exploiting religious divisions and polarizing the electorate, but given the stakes so high, the campaign is a vicious one. There is a possibility that it will become.
Under these circumstances, the organizers iftar They said they decided to invite Mudipu’s Hindu and Christian residents to a meal earlier this month.
“After decades of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s divisive politics, the Hindu-Muslim polarization in the region is so deep that we wanted to polarize it. iftar For everyone. Let’s sit, eat, talk and remember that we are all Indian,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, who owns several businesses in the area.
Among the non-Muslim attendees were Dr. Surekha Shetty, a local Hindu gynecologist, and Sister Fira, a Catholic nun. “I live here. I work here. I want to get along with my Muslim neighbors, so I accepted the invitation,” Shetty said over the sound of movie music blaring from the speakers. he said while shouting.
long history of collective violence
Mangalore is a major city in the beautiful coastal region of Karnataka. Seen from an airplane, it’s an idyllic stretch of 320 miles of sandy beaches along the Arabian Sea, surrounded by a forest of palm trees.
However, since the 1990s, the region has been a stronghold of Hindutva, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hard-line nationalist Hindu ideology, which calls for the establishment of a Hindu rather than a secular state.
Dubbed the “laboratory of Hindutva,” the coastal region has been a hot spot for the party, with certain divisive policies ranging from bans on cow slaughter and halal to moves to ban Muslim merchants from setting up stalls at Hindu temple fairs. It has become a kind of testing ground to see what kind of impact it will have. .
Unlike North India, where Muslims make up 14% of the population, Muslims make up 24% in Karnataka.
Mangalore is a modern, wealthy and multicultural city thanks to the influence of the countless waves of merchants who came to our shores over the centuries. The city is a center of education, with many schools and universities founded by the church. However, residents say tensions remain behind the scenes. “There is a long history of communal violence in this region. It doesn’t take anything to cause a flare-up,” said Shivani Kava, a local journalist.
Mangalore Bishop Peter Paul Saldaña has narrated the shocked reaction of a Christian teacher in a local school who was fired on the orders of a Bharatiya Janata Party politician. They alleged that the teacher, Sister Prabha, had insulted Hindu gods and “poisoned” the children’s minds against Hinduism. Bishop Saldaña claimed that he had simply recited Rabindranath Tagore’s poem “Work is Worship” in his English class.
“We tried to convince management not to fire her until an investigation was conducted, but they fired her anyway,” Bishop said.
At another school, St. Aloysius College, some students gathered in the shade of a long hallway for an hour of cramming before exams. Jose Monastery winced when I told him the exam was about the Constitution. “We don’t even know if there will be a constitution if the Bharatiya Janata Party wins,” he said.
With few jobs available, their parents encourage them to go to the Gulf or seek wealth in the West after graduation. “If the Bharatiya Janata Party comes back, there is no future here,” says Fiza Mayin, a psychiatry student. “As Muslims, we have nothing. People don’t even look at the candidate. They look at his religion and judge.”
“The decisive one is Mr. Modi.”
Observers would not go so far as to call this a change in mindset, but the Bharatiya Janata Party has removed two of the state’s senior sitting legislators known for hate speech, Ananth Kumar Hegde and Nalin Kumar. He points out that he was fired. Cateel. The latter infamously told party members last year to “focus on love jihad, not on drains, roads and development”.
Ashish Goyal, a Congress supporter, said: “Given the Congress party’s victory in the state elections and its many benefits, there is a possibility that the Bharatiya Janata Party will tone down its polarizing narrative and talk more about development.” said.
Mr. Goyal believes that the welfare benefits his party has been handing out since coming to power in May last year will appeal to voters. Political scientist Sandeep Shastri, academic director of the NITTE Education Trust, takes a more cautious view, questioning whether Congress can create a public perception that the benefits are reaching everyone. He said it was on.
“But the key factor is Modi,” Shastri said. “Elections here and across India are about him and him alone. There is no one else. If the Bharatiya Janata Party can put Mr. Modi at the center of the issue, it will be difficult to defeat.”
Prime Minister Modi has set a very ambitious target of winning 400 seats for his party and its allies out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha.Ann Opinion poll by India TV-CNX An article published last week suggested that this may not be a pipe dream. The report said Prime Minister Modi’s coalition government could win 393 out of 543 seats, which would amount to a stunning victory.
As for Parliament, opinion polls show it is likely to be wiped out with only 40 seats, the lowest on record and worse than the record low of 52 seats in the last general election.
in iftarOrganizers wanted to bring together people from all communities, but politicians from the BJP were also invited. No one came.
