Introduction to the Second Edition

The role of human rights reports is to build a perspective and generate public opinion regarding

egregious and persistent human rights violations. One hopes that this in turn will generate a pressure

in civil society as well as the state which will make it more difficult to continue with the pattern of

violations.

Going by the logic of informing and generating public opinion, the first edition of 'Cultural

policing in Dakshina Kannada' was a qualified success. The 500 copies which were published were

distributed in just a few months. The Report was translated into Kannada and hence had a wider

outreach. Copies of the Report were given to various actors of influence in the government, political

class, intellectuals and activists. The Report itself was extracted and published in different

magazines and newspapers such as Karvali Ale and Namma Manasa in the Kannada press. It was

also widely circulated through the internet being hosted on a number of websites including those of

the People's Union of Civil Liberties ( www.pucl.org), Alternative Law Forum

(www.altlawforum.org), and other progressive websites such as www.kafila.org and

www.sabrang.org and http://ultraviolet.in/2009/04/20/pucl-report-cultural-policing-in-dakshin-

kannada/#comments . Since the publication of the Report coincided with a series of on-going events

of cultural policing in both Bangalore and Mangalore, it was cited quite widely by the national

press including Deccan Herald, Times of India, The Hindu , DNA etc. The Report was also used by

activists to speak about cultural policing issues on the electronic media. The Report fed into and

drew from the high level of media interest and reporting on cultural policing issues.

However, in an almost surreal disconnect, even while the media turned an intense spotlight on the

issue of cultural policing, incidents of cultural policing continued unabated. The Kannada edition,

which was published in September, 2009 for example, documented twenty seven incidents of

cultural policing that were reported in the Kannada Press in the two months following the release of

the English Report. This edition brings out the fact that from April of 2009 up to November of

2009, there are thirty four documented incidents of cultural policing. These incidents continued

unabated even though cognizance was repeatedly taken by an official body, the Karnataka State

Human Rights Commission.

To quote from an order of the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission regarding a newspaper

report of a Muslim youth being assaulted for daring to attend the wedding of a Hindu friend in

Mangalore:

The above incident may look to be a small incident not resulting in any grievous injury or

mortality, but it should definitely pain and disturb every lover of liberty and protector of

secular fabric of the Indian polity and cherished values and goals incorporated in the Indian

Constitution..........The Commission has had many occasions to call upon the Government of

Karnataka to take stern action against the moral police who indulge in such heinous and

unconstitutional acts. For a couple of months in the past, the situation in coastal belt was

improving discernibly, but the present incident is an event which tends to disturb the

tranquility and peace in the coastal belt. Unless the state authorities, particularly the law

enforcement authorities of the State nip these ugly heads of moral policing in the bud, there

is likelihood of these forces engulfing the entire coastal belt and the State resulting in

upsurge in violence.

The state Government seems immune to pressures either from human rights groups, adverse media

publicity, or even the orders of its own official body, the State Human Rights Commission. The

impunity which the organizations of the Hindu Right enjoy in Karnataka, got the imprimatur of a

popular mandate, with the massive victory that the BJP won in Karnataka in the Lok Sabha

elections in May, 2009, winning nineteen out of twenty eight seats including Dakshina Kannada.

Dakshina Kannada recorded the highest voting percentage with 74.44 per cent of the population

turning out to vote, out of which 49.16 per cent voted for the BJP.

The victory celebrations of the BJP candidate Naleen Kumar Kateel, who won in Mangalore, were

ominous as celebrations by BJP supporters turned violent. They allegedly barged into and

ransacked houses of four Muslim families and assaulted many people at Nettrakere in Bantwal taluk

of Dakshina Kannada district. Aboobaker, a shopkeeper, was allegedly caught by the collar without

any provocation and when he managed to wriggle himself out of their clutches and was running

towards the house of his relative Shamshir, around 50 to 60 people came after him. The BJP

supporters allegedly broke the back door and entered the house. Mr Shamshir said that they carried

lathis, soda bottles, cricket bats and cycle chains and that they damaged a refrigerator, a TV set, a

voltage stabiliser, a fan and an emergency light, and attacked him and his uncle (Mr. Aboobaker),

He went on to tell The Hindu from his hospital bed that they attacked him with a rod and smashed

his leg with a big stone. (The Hindu, 18.05.09)

The victory celebration of Mr Kateel only pointed to the shape of things to come and the increasing

boldness of the attacks by the Hindu fundamentalist forces. The Second Edition updates the

information on what has been happening in Dakshina Kannada ever since March 2009. The fact that

there has been no change in the status quo only underlines the continuing need to repeatedly

highlight the issues of cultural policing and its serious constitutional implications. The continued

nature of the attacks has been paradoxically accompanied by a sharp decline in the interest of the

English language press. This renders the need to focus on cultural policing in Dakshina Kannada all

the more urgent. Since the second edition is also coming out a good nine months after the first, we

also felt that this would be an occasion to update the Report in terms of what has been happening

since March 2009 and also place the Report in a wider context of the rise of communal forces in

Karnataka. The sudden emergence of the concept of 'Love Jihad' also alerted us to the continued

relevance of this Report and the need to republish our Report.

The feedback we received on terminology particularly on the term 'cultural policing', made us

realize that it was inadequate. We were told that cultural policing was a value neutral term that did

not sufficiently communicate the charge of policing the borders of community with a view to

producing 'self enclosed, monolithic communities'. The communal fascistic attack on Indian polity

and society of groups such as the Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sene and their aim to disrupt and

destroy fraternal ways of living were not captured by the seemingly neutral description as 'cultural

policing'.

The term that seemed to best capture the range of illegal actions aimed at destroying the idea of

fraternity in the Indian Constitution was communal policing. Communal policing, or the policing of

the borders of the community, extended not only to social and romantic interactions across

communal boundaries but also to norms of dress and choice of entertainment of women within each

community. The everyday actions of the women members of the community, be it the choice of

who they socially interacted with, or who they fell in love with, or which entertainment they choose

to attend, or what dress they choose to wear, were subject to violent attack by self appointed

vigilante groups if they transgressed certain norms of ideal womanhood. Communal policing at its

heart is also an attack on the fundamental freedoms of women, seeking to circumscribe and control

the autonomy of women. Women within the patriarchal logic of communal policing embody the

'honour' of the community and hence their freedoms are subject to control by any self-styled

vigilante group which arrogates to itself the right to protect the 'honour' of the community.

In particular, it is the young women of the Hindu community, who are coming out of the family

fold into the wider world of education and employment in cosmopolitan Mangalore, who are being

policed in this manner. The policing of the freedoms of young women from a Hindu background

apart from being communally charged, has a strong castiest logic harking back to Manu's stricture

on women which perceives women as the gatekeepers of the purity of the caste group.

It should also be noted that communal policing as a phenomenon seemed to transcend the

boundaries of the Hindu Right and even infect groups from other communities. In a chilling

illustration of the logic of communal policing, over forty cadres of the Popular Front of India (PFI)

attacked a Hindu boy who was allegedly in a relationship with a Muslim girl. As Mr. Ataullah the

District General Secretary of the PFI asserted:

The PFI does not condemn the action. However, the organisation always advises its cadres

to refrain from involving in issues such as this. But how can we or our boys keep quiet when

one of our women is courted by a boy from another community? (The Hindu, 7.10.09).

Women within the logic of communal policing have no autonomous existence of their own, and are

seen as keepers of the 'honour of the community', As keepers of the 'honour of the community',

they will perforce be 'protected' from boys from another community.

In a further twist, the Hindu Janajagruti Samithi, picked up on the PFI attack and on its website

proclaimed:

Know more about love jihad. Now where is the media who was blaming Sri Ram Sena for

pub attacks in Mangalore? Will media dare to shout against PFI? Or now there is no harm

when Muslim beat Hindu boy for roaming with Muslim girl? (www.hindujagruti.org).

Romance across barriers of caste and class that is so celebrated in Bollywood cinema is intolerable

within the worldview of fundamentalists of all hues.

While communal policing is not exclusive to Hindutva groups, one should note that the key

difference is the access that Hindutva groups have to state power which has protected and shielded a

history of continuing anti-constitutional actions. The access to state power of Hindutva groups

means that they exercise control over both the private and the public spheres rendering their form of

'communal policing' far more totalitarian. The first sign of bucking this established trend in

Karnataka is cited in a recent news report that nine Hindutva activists who were allegedly carrying

out an act of communal policing were nabbed by the police. (The Hindu, 5.11.09) This is seen as a

historic first and credit is being attributed to a new crop of police officers who appear to be

committed to the rule of law. However, one has to see if this signals a shift in the tacit state support

that communal policing receives or it remains a momentary reprieve.

It might also be appropriate to place the significance of communal policing in the violent history of

the rise to power of the BJP in Karnataka. While the Annexure I marks some of the key events that

followed the inauguration of the first BJP government, this introduction will try to understand the

wider significance and logic underlying communal policing. For this we will look critically at the

church attacks in 2008 as well as the emerging controversy on love jihad.

A. Attacks on Churches in Karnataka 2008-09: An Organized Assault on the

Constitution

The attacks on churches in Karnataka are the most wide ranging assault on constitutional values in

Karnataka by the Hindu Right. It has to be noted that till today, nobody has been held responsible

for this organized attack on the minority community. The consequences of this state of impunity

include a series of attacks as recently as September and November of 2009 in Hebbagodi just

outside Bangalore and Kavalabyrasandra in Bangalore as well as in Bidar at the northern tip of

Karnataka. The attacks reported in the press seem to be only the tip of what was happening in

Karnataka as church authorities continued to receive reports of periodic desecration and

vandalization of Christian places of worship throughout 2009. According to some church

authorities, the police were under instructions to replace broken glass and restore desecrated and

vandalized churches back to their original position. The church authorities also claimed that the

police were pressurizing the local priests not to file cases or complaints, whenever such attacks

happened. Both these strategies seem to be a part of a game plan of continuously threatening the

freedom of conscience of the minority community while at the same time ensuring that matters do

not get out of hand as they did in September 2008. This low intensity form of dispersed attack

indicates that things are still on the boil in Karnataka.

Nature of attacks in September, 2008

Getting back to the September attacks, in one horrific month in September of 2008, churches across

eleven districts in Karnataka were attacked. The pattern of attacks ranged from physical assaults on

priests to attacks where churches were burnt in some cases and in other cases desecrated.

Desecration took the form of spilling of the host from the Holy Tabernacle, or defacing figures and

statues of both Mother Mary as well as Jesus Christ and other holy figures of the Christian religion.

The nature of attacks has been more fully described in a human rights report titled 'From

Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face of the Sangh Parivar'.(http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Religion-

communalism/2009/kandhamal.html )

It was only the serious threat of Central Government action through the advisories issued under

Art 355 along with the vigorous civil society protest that finally resulted in the attacks ceasing. The

state government has appointed a one-person Commission of Inquiry headed by retired Justice B.K,

Somashekara to inquire into 'the sequence of events and circumstances leading to the attack on

places of worship'. The work of the Commission in the year following the attack merits critical

analysis separately, which we will not undertake here.

A key feature of the attacks was the complicity of the state either in the form of standing by and

doing nothing or in the form of covering up post the attack. This particular feature of state

complicity has been pointed out by commentators as one of the 'straws in the wind' indicative of a

much larger (future) assault.

Emblematic of 'state complicity' was the unprecedented persecution of the Christian community in

Davangere in 2008. Davangere throughout 2008 and beginning in 2007 was subject to a series of

brazen attacks on churches by the Bajrang Dal, Sri Ram Sene and Shiv Sena. There were regular

orchestrated protests against and attacks on some churches even as people were praying on Sunday

as well as violent intimidation of church goers by members of the above-named organisations. The

district administration, instead of taking note of these unconstitutional actions, actually perpetrated

further violations on the Christian community. Police notices were issued to some prayer halls

prohibiting them from carrying on the regular activities of the church including praying. The

Davangere Municipal Corporation issued a notice to some pastors stating that the churches were

unauthorised structures and threatening that they would be closed. The Tahslidar directed some of

the pastors as well as members of the Christian community (including a seventy year old woman

and three seventeen year old girls) to execute a bond of good behaviour under the Criminal

Procedure Code. Further, the District Magistrate in a clearly biased order directed the police

department to carry out a survey of churches and prayer halls in Davangere. The authorities, after

going through these patently illegitimate actions, sealed four churches and even went to the extent

of issuing an order under Section 144 of the Cr.P. C prohibiting assembly around one church.

The pastors and affected parties sent representations to a range of authorities from the District

Administration to the State Human Rights Commission, the Home Minister and Chief Minister--all

to no avail. What finally provided some measure of relief was a petition before the High Court by

twelve members of the Christian community. It was only the intervention of the High Court that

forced the various district authorities to retract their various unconstitutional notices and actions and

guarantee the right to practice religion to the Christian community. (Pastor Rajashekar and others

vs. State of Karnataka and others, W.P. No. 15845 if 200,) In a district where vigilante elements

work hand in glove with the administration, it was only the High Court that finally managed to

provide some relief from relentless everyday persecution to the Christian community.

Like the phenomenon of communal policing, the attacks on churches were an organized attack on

the values of equality and the freedom of thought and conscience guaranteed to all citizens by the

Constitution. Four further issues link the church attacks to the communal policing. First, it is a

truism that impunity has been granted to both the vigilante groups involved in communal policing

as well as church attacks. Second, there is a high level of state complicity that is responsible for

both church attacks and communal policing. Third, the perpetrators of the church attacks seem to

have learnt from the experience of September 2008 and decided that further assaults will follow the

methodology of those perpetrating instances of communal policing i.e., using low intensity,

dispersed attacks as a modus operandi. Finally, the link between both these forms of assault is the

ideology of the Sangh Parivar as located in the thinking of Savarkar and Golwalkar.

B. The' Love Jihad' : The Courts Gets into the Act

A new and different kind of offensive initiated by the Sangh Parivar is around what Hindutva

groups are calling 'Love Jihad' or 'Romeo Jihad’, which is the alleged use by the Muslim youth of

'love' as a weapon to 'convert' innocent Hindu girls. Underlying this offensive is the assumption that

any Hindu girl who marries a Muslim boy is a victim of 'Love Jihad', regardless of the fact that she

is legally competent to marry a person of her choice.

What has given this term a greater currency in recent times are orders of the High Courts of

Karnataka and Kerala. The first time the phrase 'love jihad' entered the judicial lexicon was in

October, 2009 when the Kerala High Court was hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by parents

whose two girls had run away and got married to Muslim boys .When the two girls were first

produced before the Court, the girls sought permission to live with their husbands, Shahan Sha and

Sirajudeen. However, the High Court turned down their request and asked them to be with their

parents till the next date of hearing. On the next date of hearing, the girls made a dramatic volte face

and told the Court that they had been “trapped” by Shahan Sha and Sirajudeen and forced to

convert to Islam. It was on this hearing this deposition that the Kerala High Court directed the

Kerala Police and Union Home Ministry to probe the alleged conspiracy under which young

Muslim boys ‘target’ college girls for conversion by ‘feigning’ love. The Court also asked the state

and Centre to look into the sources that “fund” the love jihad, the number of girls who have got

“trapped in the racket” in the past three years, and its extremist links, if any. The DGP of Kerala

filed a Report on the status of this alleged movement before the Court. However, the Court declared

its unhappiness with the Report, observing that some answers furnished in the DGP's report were

'vague'; it also appeared that statements in different paragraphs did not 'reconcile' with each other.

The High Court asked the DGP to submit reports on the basis of which the DGP had prepared his

Report. The DGP then resubmitted the requested information and observed that there was no

conclusive evidence about the existence of a 'Love Jihad' movement, where young non-Muslim

girls are trapped into marriage and converted into Islam. But he went on to say that he had received

some information from some units based on "source inputs" which suggested 'clandestine design' of

certain groups aimed at religious conversion through "deceitful means". However, he reported that

the contents of these reports lacked supportive evidence, and were often based on hearsay.

According to the DGP, this matter needed further investigation as no cogent evidence was available

in these reports to arrive at an unambiguous conclusion about the allegation of forced conversions.

On October 22, 2009, Justice K. Sreedhar Rao and Justice Ravi Malimath of the Karnataka High

Court heard a habeas corpus petition filed by the parents of a girl, Sirja Raj who married Ashkar, a

Muslim boy. The High Court, after hearing that the girl had converted into Islam and been admitted

to a madrasa in Kerala's Mallapuram district, directed Karnataka and Kerala to jointly probe the

'love jihad movement'. The girl's father had alleged in his petition that she was confined in a

madrasa after the marriage. The court asked police to submit a report on the episode within three

weeks and said the girl should in the meanwhile return to her parents in Chamarajanagar district in

Karnataka. This was despite the girl asserting that she had married out of her own free will and

wished to live with her husband.

The judges observed:

We have serious suspicion regarding the statements of the petitioner’s daughter and the case

has ramifications for national security. It has raised questions of unlawful trafficking of girls

and women in the state. So it has to be investigated by the police.

The controversy drew the attention of the Home Minister of Karnataka, V.S. Acharya who

responded with alacrity and ordered a probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) into

the existence of 'love jihad' in the State. On the next date of hearing, the DGP/CID submitted an

interim report stating that that there was no evidence of love jihad in the matter. The girl in open

court reiterated her position that she did not want to go back to her parents. It was only then that the

High Court ordered that the girl was free to live with the person of her choice. Despite the complete

absence of evidence of 'love jihad' in the case of the couple running away, the Report asserts that a

final report will be filed after 'collecting information of non-Muslim girls of Karnataka falling in

love and marrying Muslim boys since 01.01.2005.' All this is evidence of the inroads that the

ideology of ' communal policing' has made into the bureaucracy.

The 'love jihad' controversy has no basis in fact. The Report of the DGP of Kerala indicates that

there is no such group mobilizing Muslim boys to convert Hindu girls. Similarly the interim report

by the Karnataka police also failed to uncover any evidence of 'love jihad'. However, facts have not

stood in the way of vigorous propaganda around a rigged issue, wherein the regional media has

been instrumental in creating a scare about the implications of 'love jihad' for Hindu society. The

sensationalist coverage of the regional press has been matched by some thoughtless and

shortsighted statements by the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC). The KCBC has been

quoted as expressing concern about 'Love Jihad' and asking parents to be careful with their wards.

The KCBC has also been quoted as saying that a survey conducted by it in all parishes under it had

found that 2866 Catholic women had been converted to Islam in each of the fourteen districts in the

state. The KCBC shockingly refuses to acknowledge that women could consensually marry

someone of another religion and then undergo conversion. Thus it is not only the Hindu Janajagruti

Samithi and other Hindutva groups that have expressed opposition to 'love jihad' but also a

Christian group, the Christian Association for Social Action (CASA) which has told the press that

they were “co-operating with the VHP in tackling 'Love Jihad'.” If any further illustration was

required of the blindness of this position, it came in the form of the suggestion of the Kerala High

Court that the state should consider enacting a law to prohibit conversions by force, inducement and

fraud. Clearly, such a law would fundamentally affect the right to propagate religion of the Christian

community.

It is deeply ironical that Christian groups that have been the vicious target of the Sangh Parivar

during the church attacks of 2008 should now ally with the Sangh Parivar. It betrays a complete

failure to understand the links between the church attacks and the 'Love Jihad' propaganda.

'Love Jihad' : A Challenge to the Constitution ?

The core constitutional objection to those who propagate 'love jihad' as a threat to society is that

they privilege a public morality over a 'constitutional morality'. However much parents might object

to their daughters marrying someone of their own volition from another community, the choice of

the young person is constitutionally protected. The Indian Constitution is not just an instrument to

protect certain rights, but also a mechanism which will facilitate reform in 'Indian society'. In

particular, the Preamble's promise of fraternity is a bold attempt to contest the idea of India as

nothing more than a congeries of discrete and insular communities with no possibility of social

interaction among themselves. In the light of this understanding of the Indian Constitution, laws

such as the Special Marriage Act, 1954, which recognizes marriages between girls over eighteen

and boys over twenty one, regardless of considerations of religion and caste, have a social role

beyond facilitating the marriage of two parties who desire to marry each other. Dr. Ambedkar's

recognises the import of promoting inter caste marriage for the very meaning of Indian democracy.

As he puts it in 'The Annihilation of Caste':

Where society is already well knit by other ties, marriage is an ordinary incident of life. But

where society is cut as under, marriage as a binding force becomes a matter of urgent

necessity. The real remedy for breaking caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as

the solvent of caste.

The role of laws such as the Special Marriage Act is to promote the fulfillment of a vision of India

premised on the idea that communities are not insular but instead have deep fraternal relations with

each other. It is precisely this idea of India that is questioned at its very root by the concept of the

'love jihad'. The notion of love jihad is based on the premise that marriage is a relationship which

individuals may enter into only within the bounds of community. The underlying assumption is

that regardless of age, women are not permitted to enter into a marital relationship based on love. It

is meant to reinforce the idea of India as a conglomeration of discrete and insular communities

perpetually at war with each other.

The reason the concept of 'Love Jihad' has to be opposed is not only because it goes contrary to the

right to free association and intimacy guaranteed by Art 21, the right to freedom of expression

guaranteed by Art 19, and the right to equality guaranteed by Art 14, but also because it is a

fundamental attack on the very premise of the constitutional order. If the idea of India as a

constitutional democracy is to mean anything at all, at its minimum it must encompass an idea of

citizens freely determining their lives including the decision to marry across the boundaries of caste

and religion.

The Supreme Court in Lata Singh vs. State of UP, (2006 (6) SCALE 58) declared:

This is a free and democratic country, and once a person becomes a major he or she can

marry whosoever he/she likes. If the parents of the boy or girl do not approve of such inter-

caste or inter-religious marriage the maximum they can do is that they can cut off social

relations with the son or the daughter, but they cannot give threats or commit or instigate

acts of violence and cannot harass the person who undergoes such inter-caste or inter-

religious marriage. We, therefore, direct that the administration/police authorities throughout

the country will see to it that if any boy or girl who is a major undergoes inter-caste or

inter-religious marriage with a woman or man who is a major, the couple are not harassed by

any one nor subjected to threats or acts of violence, and any one who gives such threats or

harasses or commits acts of violence either himself or at his instigation, is taken to task by

instituting criminal proceedings by the police against such persons and further stern

action is taken against such persons as provided by law.

Despite the ringing tones of the above judgment, the constitutional protection of the right to choose

one's partner finds only imperfect protection in the civil law. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 mandates

that as a step prior to registration, notice of thirty days must be given of the intended marriage. This

notice of the intended marriage as per Section 6(2) has to be published by affixing in a conspicuous

place in the office of the Marriage Officer. This requirement of notice and publication of the same

has a further condition in case the individuals seeking to get married are not permanently residing

within the jurisdiction of the Marriage Office in which they file their application to get married. As

per Section 6(3), in such cases, the notice to get married has to be transmitted to the place where

the parties desirous of getting married are permanently residing and displayed by the Marriage

Officer in that locality in a prominent area. In short, the Special Marriage Act, though in principle

recognising marriages across caste and religious boundaries, puts up procedural barriers that make

it impossible for those who wish to marry against determined parental opposition to actually do so.

It is important to understand the procedural impediments in the Special Marriage Act because if a

young couple in love would like to legalize their relationship in the teeth of determined parental

opposition, this Act is a difficult and imperfect option. The safest option is really to get married

under the relevant personal laws that do not have the requirement of a public notice. Of course the

only way one can get married under the personal laws if the two parties happen to be from different

religious is if one of the parties converts to the spouse's religion.

This might very well be one of the very practical reasons for 'conversion' before marriage. A more

meaningful notion of democracy demands that we expand the range of real and effective choices

open to people by amending the Special Marriage Act and doing away with the requirement of

notice all together.

Be that as it may, clearly 'Love Jihad' poses a continuing challenge to what we mean by the notion

of freedom to make fundamental choices about intimate aspects of one's life free of state intrusion.

It is unfortunate that till now, the High Courts of Karnataka and Kerala have not seen the 'Love

Jihad' issue though the lens of the Indian Constitution, and continue to be complicit in the use of

this term which can only have deeply deleterious consequences for Indian democracy.

Concluding Comments: The Ideological Design behind the Continued Assaults by the Hindu

Right

The reason for the church attacks peddled by the attackers and their sympathizers in the Sangh

Parivar was the alleged conversion activities carried out by the Christian pastors. Similarly, the

reason proffered for the anger against 'love jihad' is the alleged 'conversion' of Hindu girls by

Muslim youth. What both these instances underline is the need to understand the deeper motivations

underlying both the attacks and the fear that 'love jihad' is made to evoke.

The continuing attacks on churches are not instigated by commonplace motives such as greed.

Similarly, the assumed fear of 'love jihad' transcends the simple fear of maintaining the purity of

one's community and betrays a larger political design. The deeper motivation is a form of animus

directed against one particular religious community. To understand the ideological reason for the

attacks on churches, we need to go back to the original theoreticians of Hindutva, namely Savarkar

and Golwalkar.

Savarkar in his essay, ‘What is Hindutva’ proclaims:

Ye who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality possess almost all the essentials of

Hindutva, and has been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the hand of violence-

ye. Have only to render whole hearted love to our common Mother and recognize her not

only as Fatherland ( pitribhumi) but even as Holyland( Punyabhumi); and ye would be most

welcome to the Hindu fold.

To quote Golwalkar:

To keep up the purity of the race and its culture , Germany shocked the world by her

purging the country of the Semitic races-the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been

manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible for races and cultures ,

having differences going to the root , to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson

for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.

The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must

learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion , must entertain no ideas but those of

glorification of the Hindu race and culture[..] or may stay in the country, wholly

subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any

preferential treatment –not even citizen’s rights.

Golwalkar in his 'Bunch of Thoughts' in a chapter titled 'Internal Enemies' refers specifically to the

Christians:

So long as Christians here indulge in such activities and consider themselves as agents of

the international movement for the spread of Christianity, and refuse to offer their first

loyalty to the land of their birth and behave as true children of the heritage and culture of

their ancestors, they will remain here as hostiles and will have to be treated as such.

From a perusal of the works of these two Hindutva ideologues, it is clear that they propagated the

perception that both Christians and Muslims are outsiders since they have their holy places (punya

bhoomi) outside the country. The Hindus are the only real citizens of India as they have both their

pitr bhoomi as well as punya bhoomi in India. Since these two communities are both outsiders,

they both deserve to have no rights and should be treated as second class citizens.

As important as the source of this ideology is, the ideology itself would be impotent if it did not

have an effective organizational form. The Liberhan Commission set up to inquire into the

demolition of the Babri Masjid plays close attention to this consideration. Justice Liberhan

unequivocally recognizes this fact:

The RSS, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal , BJP etc. and their inter se relationship have been

subjected to a detailed study in my report..... These organizations are collectively an

immense and awesome entity with a shrewd brain, a wide encompassing sweep and crushing

strength of a mob. The leadership provided by the RSS, BJP, VHP and the other mutating

and constantly transforming organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Jan Sangh, in

furtherance of the suspect theories of the founders of these organizations are consistent and

unabashed. The ends are all that matter to the core group of thinkers and the destruction of

the disputed structure was only one victorious battle in their ongoing campaign against

secularism and the multicultural society...... ( para 160.10)

Thus, the rationale for the major campaigns unleashed by the Sangh Parivar in Karnataka, namely

the church attacks as well as 'communal policing' and 'love jihad' campaign emerges from the

thinkers and activists of what Justice Liberhan called 'the immense and awesome entity' of the

Sangh Parivar. The purpose is to send out a message to the various communities living in this land

that you may do so only if you give up what is essential to your faith and become part of the

majority. Only when we understand the ideology of Hindutva, which asserts that this nation

belongs exclusively to Hindus and that all others live in India only at the sufferance of the majority,

will we be able to consistently see the pattern underlying the repeated assaults by the Hindu Right

on the minority communities of India.