Karnataka: AIDS campaign with a difference

[Guest guest]

[Moderators note: Excerpt form the cover story of Communalism Combat

September 2006. Year 12 No.118. by G. Rajashekar and . K.

Phaniraj. G. Rajashekar is a well-known literary and cultural

critic, and a social thinker. K. Phaniraj teaches civil engineering

and is a cultural critic. Both work as coordinators of Souharda

Vedike, a communal harmony and human rights forum based in Udupi,

Karnataka]

AIDS: A campaign with a difference

Asodu is a village in Kundapur taluka of Udupi district. On March

30, 2002 an annual fair was held on the occasion of `Gende Seve'

(ritual fire walking) at the village's Nandikeshwar temple. As per

tradition this went on through the night and continued the next day,

amidst hundreds of people who had gathered here from neighbouring

villages. During this time a rumour was circulated that a Muslim

stallholder was spreading AIDS by pricking young girls with an

infected needle. Jamedar Altaf, who ran the stall along with two

other youth, Abdul Sattar and Tahir, and an old man, Karim saheb,

were beaten up and then handed over to the police present there.

All materials from the stall, including the suspect needles, were

seized. People who had allegedly been pricked by the youth stated in

their complaint that " they were pricked by a poisonous needle in an

attempt to kill " . So the police charged the men under Section 307 of

the Indian Penal Code (IPC) with attempt to murder.

Later, blood tests of both the complainants and the accused as well

as tests of the so-called infected needles were conducted at the

Kundapur government hospital, KMC hospital in Manipal and the

National AIDS Research Institute in Pune. All the test results came

back negative. According to the wound certificate issued by the

Kundapur government hospital, of the six people who had been pricked

by the needle, two had no wounds at all, two had faint scabs of

dried blood and two persons had very slight swellings or lumps.

Following this verification, the accused were then booked under

Section 324 of the IPC (attempt to harm using a sharp weapon) and

were released after the court granted them bail. The old man, Karim

saheb, was admitted to hospital; he took ill while under custody

thanks to the trauma he had suffered.

Although the due course of law had been promptly followed in the

needle pricking incident, 25 houses belonging to Muslims were

attacked in Kundapur at around 8 p.m. on the night of March 31. On a

fact-finding visit to Kundapur two days later, we saw that apart

from the walls and the roofs everything in the houses had been burnt

and destroyed. The little money or jewellery they had in their homes

had all been looted. A young girl was wailing frantically that she

could not attend her Class X board examinations the next day because

all her books had been destroyed in the attack. The residents had

lost every item of their belongings and were suddenly faced with

impending destitution. Worse still, they were wounded by the fact

that the people who attacked them had been neighbours and old

acquaintances.

As the AIDS rumour spread throughout Kundapur taluka, Muslim houses

in Kundapur town and neighbouring villages were also attacked. Even

a week after the incident communal tension still simmered in the

area. According to victims, the mobs that attacked them shouted

slogans like " Bolo Bharat Mata ki Jai (Say Long Live India) " and " Jai

Bajrangbali (Long Live Hanuman) " . It was evident that these people

belonged to the sangh parivar; the BJP had a strong base in the

constituency and had won the local Assembly seat in the last two

elections.

Local newspapers played a major role in keeping the flare of

violence burning. The leading Kannada daily, Udayavani, reported

that the attacks were a result of people's fear and their anger

against Muslims. It did not even attempt or think it necessary to

tell readers that AIDS cannot be spread in the manner the rumour

suggested. And this is a paper that brings out a weekly supplement

on health! These are newspapers that bank on communal hatred in

their keen support of Hindutva ideology.

A few months later, after people had forgotten about the incident

and there was now enough data to question the veracity of the

rumour, an utterly dishonest report in Udayavani's local edition

said: " People still live in the grip of fear following the needle

pricking incident. The number of people attending temple fairs has

reduced considerably. " This is a newspaper that reports each and

every event organised by the sangh parivar with grandiose and

activist zeal. Almost every day a report in the newspaper will tell

of how Muslims are involved in illegal cattle slaughter, the

circulation of counterfeit currency or assaulting `Hindu' women

sexually. For Udayavani, Hindutva's storm troopers are moral

brigades that protect this society. It would not attempt to

consider, even briefly, that the violence perpetrated by the sangh

parivar was a gross violation of the rule of law and a wonton

flouting of democratic norms.

The disregard shown by most people in Kundapur, their indifference

to the attacks, only demonstrates how deeply rooted the Hindutva

ideology is. Most of those whom we spoke to did not regret the

attacks on Muslims. We met two girls who were among the six people

who had filed the initial complaint in the so-called AIDS case.

Mamta and Lata were both Class IX students. Mamta's father is a

small-scale farmer in Asodu, their house is very near the

Nandikeshwar temple.

We visited them a year after the incident took place. Mamta was in

good health. We asked her mother, Lalita Shedti, if it wasn't wrong

to attack Muslims and loot their houses. She had no such

misgivings, " Only then will they learn. " But what had the Muslims in

Kundapur done to provoke this, how were they connected to the people

who had used the needle? " When anything happens to one of them, they

get together. "

Elsewhere, when we asked the same questions of a tea vendor in

Koteshwara, near Kundapur, he said, " What are Muslim terrorists

doing in Kashmir? " When we asked him how that had any bearing on the

people of Kundapur he replied, " If we hit here, it will hurt them

there. " And it was not just Mamta's mother or the man in the tea

stall, most people whom we talked to seemed to be of the same

opinion. When we posed similar questions to others they

countered, " What do you have to say about the attack on Akshardham

temple, what about Godhra, the attack on Parliament, Kashmir… " These

were questions repeatedly put back to us.

We also visited Lata's house. Lata's parents, both daily wage

labourers, had a more humane response to events and even condemned

the violence. As Lata's mother said, " There are good people and bad

people in all castes. Innocent people should not be targeted because

of somebody else's mistake. " An upper caste villager, well respected

in Asodu, one who had even contributed for the refurbishment of

Nandikeshwar temple, concurred. " All Muslims are not bad; not all

Hindus are good. If people were aware of this, such an incident

would not have occurred. "

A year after the Asodu incident, although the due process of law had

been promptly followed and the accused had faced a court trial

according to the law of the land, the BJP organised a rally in

Kundapur to `protest the inaction against the accused in the Asodu

incident and the harassment caused to Hindus by arrests of

innocents'. Yediyurappa, Ramchandregowda, VS Acharya and other top

leaders of the BJP state unit addressed the gathering. They openly

targeted the Muslim community and also condemned the police for

arresting a few people involved in the violence. Not a word was said

about the attacks on Muslims that followed the needle pricking

incident.

We met Altaf, the stallholder and prime accused in the needle

pricking case. We were naturally curious to find out whether he had

really pricked people with a needle and if so, why. Altaf freely

admitted that he had done so saying, " I did not target anybody. I

had a stall there. I never went and pricked anybody outside my

stall. Some people who visit the stalls just keep looking at the

items on display, obstructing business. Some of them even steal

things from the stalls. At every fair we lose about Rs 200-300 worth

of goods this way. To prevent this and drive people out of the stall

we use the needle to prick them. Other stallholders also do the same

thing. In fact, some vendors even use big sticks to ward off

obstructing crowds. " We believe he was telling the truth. Two

college girls from Kundapur later told us that this was not a new

phenomenon. " To keep harassing guys away, girls also use the same

technique in theatres and buses. "

Altaf is still very young. Terrified to leave his house now, he has

stopped putting up his stall at the fairs. He says he is not alone,

Muslims stallholders don't put up their stalls at fairs in and

around the Kundapur taluka any more, they are too afraid. Some

months after the Asodu incident, terrorists attacked the Akshardham

temple in Gujarat. Bajrang Dal activists then spread the rumour that

terrorists would attack the Sringeri Sharadamba temple during its

annual celebrations. Muslim vendors who have been putting up stalls

on such occasions for years were forcibly prevented by the Bajrang

Dal to do business that year.

In another incident, two Dalit girls who worked at a small Muslim

owned factory happened to fall ill. The factory owner served his

workers snacks supplied by a hotel belonging to a Hindu Brahmin.

Bajrang Dal activists circulated the rumour that the Muslim owner

had attempted to kill his Hindu employees by poisoning them. On this

occasion it was the fortunate and timely intervention by local Dalit

activists that prevented another cycle of violence against Muslims.

A petty shop located on the Kundapur-Udupi national highway was

burnt down overnight in the aftermath of the so-called AIDS

incident. The owner, a Muslim, was clueless about the reason behind

the attack or its perpetrators. When we asked him why his shop might

have been attacked he said, " It is a bad time for Muslims. " Muslims

have long been silent spectators to the growing incidence of

violence against their community.

http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2006/sep06/cover.html