Md Jubair: As Karnataka gets closer to state elections, RSS head honchos have come up with a clever ploy to target the Tiger of Mysore, Tipu Sultan. The timing of the release of the book by a Muslim hater Mr Addanda C Cariyappa is interesting.
The book ‘Tipu Nija Kanasugalu’ is published by Ayodhya Publications, an allegedly Muslim-hate publishing group, and it has a prelude by Bhyrappa and back page content by Chakravarthy Sulibele. Tipu Sultan is revered within the South Asian region as a symbol of resistance against colonisation by the British, even within India Tipu Jayanti (birthday) is still celebrated by Muslims, Sikhs, and secular Hindus to commemorate his struggle for freedom and rule of law.
Last year, Pramod Muthalik, the Sri Ram Sene chief, and members of the extreme Hindu rightwing organisation were detained as they tried to disrupt the program of Tipu Jayanti at Bangaluru. In our columns on suppression of the Muslim community in India, we have regularly highlighted that the RSS cabal in India is trying to rewrite history and science to expunge the inferiority complex in Sangh Parivar about 2000 years of slavery in India. However, this narrative against the colonisation of India is now being strengthened to demolish four walls of history. We had highlighted the ‘attack on Indian history by RSS’ in a previous article which suggested the reasons for this new phenomenon.
If we go into details of the RSS agenda being packaged for the Indian public, particularly from 2014, the BJP needs to demolish four walls of history and culture due to political exploitation. Nehru is to be stigmatised and discarded as a leader to ensure the Congress party doesn’t make a meaningful comeback, British rule of India has to be projected as an inglorious past to overcome the inferiority complex, the Muslim rule and civilisational contribution to India is to be rubbished to keep Indian Muslim community on the defensive and pre-Muslim rule of India by Central Asian and Persian civilisations needs to be discarded to connect the Hindu youth with Maurya and Gupta empires. Coming back to the issue under discussion, the Muslim community in South India led by the former chairman of the District Wakf Board Committee Mr B’S Rafiulla filed a case against the publication of the said book in November, the publication stayed for a month; after an absurd case hearing by Bengaluru court, the book ‘Tipu Nija Kanasugalu’- Real Dreams of Tipu, was cleared for release and publication in mid- December last year. Although the next hearing has been fixed for 23 Jan this year, it will allow the author and publisher to release the book, and thus meet the objective of RSS hatemongers in the next elections.
On top of this absurdity, the BJP is launching its book, “Siddu Nija Kanasugalu,” ahead of the Karnataka Assembly elections. According to insiders, the saffron party has compared Tipu Sultan to the former chief minister and prominent Congressman Siddaramaiah. The book would focus on the alleged mismanagement of the state while Siddaramaiah served as its Chief Minister. Karnataka state elections are due in May this year, currently, BJP-led NDA is holding 119 seats followed by the Congress alliance with 69 seats and trailing by Janta Dal(Secular) at 30 seats. 2018 May saw the previous assembly elections. H. D. Kumaraswamy was appointed chief minister of the state when the Janata Dal (Secular) and Indian National Congress coalition formed the state government. The coalition government fell in July 2019 as a result of some Congress and JD(S) assembly members resigning. B. S. Yediyurappa was appointed chief minister after the state government was subsequently formed by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Yediyurappa resigned as chief minister on July 26, 2021, and Basavaraj Bommai, a leading Muslim hater, was sworn in as his replacement on July 28 of the same year. The rise of the BJP in South India, especially in Karnataka, was managed by RSS through a persistent campaign of Hindutva and hate politics.
From 1985, when BJP got only two seats, to the current majority of 119, the rise of the party is now a fact. BJP has played on caste, communalism, and Muslim hate as the main plank of its strategy. While the sugar-coated Hindutva nationalism campaign was launched by BJP in the eighties, higher castes in Karnataka were more supportive of the BJP’s anti-reservation stance in response to the Mandal Commission. The Mandal Commission report in 1980 exposed the demographic realities of India, especially the fact that the 77 percent disenfranchised population belonging to backward classes was being ruled and exploited by 23 percent of the upper caste, mainly Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaish. Initially, the majority of the BJP’s supporters were Brahmin, but in later years, more Lingayats joined the party as well as some Vokkaligas. Lingayats and Brahmins make up the majority of the party’s state leadership. By the 2000s, the party had enlisted the help of additional groups, including the OBCs, Dalits, and Vokkaligas, by using communal concerns as a motivator.
As gleaned from research material in India, after Kerala, Karnataka has the second-highest percentage of Muslims among the peninsular States of India. Hindutva activists believe that Muslims are present and increasing in number in this southern State, which is evocative of the Ganga plains States in the northeast. They make up 14 percent of the population as of the 2011 census, in Karnataka, Muslims are widely represented everywhere except a few southern regions. They are particularly prevalent in a few areas scattered throughout the State.
One such pocket is found in the northern districts of Bidar, Gulbarga, and Bijapur. Muslims make up 20 percent of the population of the first two and 17 percent of the population of Bijapur. The attack on Tipu Sultan and his projection as a fundamentalist and ruthless Muslim ruler is part of the RSS agenda, surely the debate on this book a few months before the Karnataka state elections would trigger anti-Muslim feelings in the Hindu community, giving a clear edge to BJP.
