Ethnicization of religion in practice? Recasting competing communal mobilizations in coastal Karnataka,South India

Introduction

The consecutive electoral victories of the Bharatiya Janata Party (henceforth BJP), the Hindu nationalist party, in the general elections in 2014 and 2019 consolidated the ascendance of Hindu nationalism, ushering in the rise of a new hegemony in the socio-cultural and political spheres of India. This supremacism has manifested in a sustained ideological attack on the principle of secularism, systematic undermining of secular institutions and increased attacks on religious minorities, which have attracted scholarly attention in recent times (Hansen, 2019; Jaffrelot, 2019; Palshikar, 2018). Taking a cue from Sammy Smooha (2002), Christophe Jaffrelot has argued that, carried by the ideology of Hindu nationalism, India is moving towards becoming an ‘ethnic democracy’ where the majority ethnic group (Hindus) is perceived as forming the core of the nation and the religious minority groups are perceived as a threat to the integrity and existence of the ethnic nation (Jaffrelot, 2017, 2019). In this context, it is important to examine the construction of the ‘Hindu ethnic majority’ at the grassroots, especially given the fact that caste identities and caste-based hierarchical order continue to be the structural attributes of Hinduism. Crucial to this rise of Hindutva hegemony is the calibrated process of monolithic religious identity construction through a systematic encompassing of caste identities under the religio-political identity of Hindutva bolstered further by a vicious campaign of enemy-making carried out by Hindutva vigilante outfits, owing allegiance to the cause of Hindutva, targeted at minorities, especially the Muslims. Hence, it is imperative that these twin processes (that are inextricably linked with each other) be examined in detail to understand the complex matrix underpinning the emergence of Hindutva in contemporary India and the plausible transformation of the country into an ethnic democracy.

In this article, we use the concept of ‘ethnicization’ to argue that, in contemporary India, religious mobilizations in politics must be seen as an integral process to produce and naturalize purported differences into antagonistic ethnic identities in an attempt to claim larger stakes in the emerging political processes. Following Barth (1969), we understand ethnicization as a dynamic process of boundary-making, rather than the articulation of a given set of coherent, essential cultural traits. Here, the focus is not on the substantive and already existing groups but on the ways and conditions under which the relational, processual and dynamic process of ‘ethnicization’ takes place (Brubaker, 2002). As Rogers Brubaker (2002) describes, ethnicization is a political, social, cultural and psychological process for the construction and reification of powerful crystallization of group feeling, cohesion and collective solidarity. According to him, ethnic conflicts should be treated as instances integral to the production of ethnic identities, rather than understanding them as emerging between already existing ethnic groups. He suggests that the analysts of ethnic conflict should foreground the relational and processual process of ethnicization rather than uncritically adopting ethnic categories as given (Brubaker, 2002).

We invoke the concept of ethnicization – instead of adopting the more conventionally used framework of ‘communalism’ – to analyse religious contestations for several reasons. The framework of communalism presupposes the ‘mobilization of an existing substantial religious identity’ that comes into conflict either because of the innate properties of religions (Juergensmeyer, 1988, 1997) or because of the changing characteristics of religion under conditions of modernity (Das, 1989; Madan, 1987; Nandy, 1985). We found this framework useful to a certain extent to describe the religious contestations and conflicts often mediated through a secular state during both colonial and postcolonial periods. However, the framework of communalism is inadequate to characterize the contemporary scenario in India in the context of the ascendance of Hindutva to state power, undermining the secular character of state institutions, its hegemonic rise in the civic as well as social spheres of society and its institutionalized system of religious vigilantism and violence carried out by vigilante groups owing allegiance to this ideology. In this context, we agree with the characterization of the revitalized form of Hindutva supremacism as neo-Hindutva implying the expansion of Hindutva beyond institutional and ideological boundaries of the Sangh Parivar1 and its near-complete encapsulation of state, civic, institutional and political spaces (Anderson and Longkumer, 2018).

The framework of ethnicization also helps us to critically look at the mobilization taking place among a section of Muslims as a response to counter the Hindutva onslaught and the decline of secular spaces and institutions. We observe that, in a marked difference from the conventional Muslim politics centred on the minority identity, a perceptibly new form of political mobilization is taking place based on radical Islamic identity but overtly couched in secularist claims and rhetoric. These articulations thrive on the fear and insecurity of Muslims in the country, harping on the language of securitization and physical protection of the community by highlighting the failure of the secular state apparatus. Hence, these efforts are aimed at generating a radical Islamic identity as a means of mobilization of Muslims into a monolithic ethnic-religious category. We note that the Popular Front of India (PFI), a Muslim organization, that emerged as a response to Hindutva, which we examine in this paper, represents such a form of engagement with far-reaching consequences to intercommunity relations as well as the practices and discourses of secularism in the country.2

In this paper, we analyse the current scenario of religious conflicts and contestations in the coastal region of the South Indian state of Karnataka to understand forms of ethnicization taking place within a section of Hindus and Muslims. We argue that the institutionalized violence and moral vigilantism carried out by militant groups of both communities, facilitated by the collapse of intercommunity civic spaces and secular institutions, need to be understood in the context of two competing forms of ethnicization taking place in the region, that is, the predatory ethnicization by Hindu nationalist network and the counter-predatory ethnicization led by radical Muslim organizations. Appadurai describes predatory identities as those achieved through the mobilizing of a ‘threatened majority’ whose social construction requires the extinction of the other (Appadurai, 2006). What characterizes coastal Karnataka is not simply sporadic instances of religious violence symptomatic of what is happening in several other cities in India, but an institutionalized system of religious vigilantism carried out by Hindutva militant groups that use violence to create exclusivist moral communities of Hindus. Responding to this process and capitalizing on the pervasive alienation and anxiety of the Muslims in the region, radical Islamic organizations are engaged in counter-predatory ethnicization of Muslim communities by articulating the language of self-defence and securitization. The paper argues that the competing processes of ethnicization of religious identities leave the socio-cultural spaces in coastal Karnataka highly polarized on religious lines and secular institutions weakened and compromised. The field work for this study was conducted between March 2018 and April 2019 in coastal Karnataka, particularly in the city of Mangalore.

Culturalization of caste identities and the creation of Hindutva identity in coastal Karnataka

It is imperative that the historical background of the current process of ethnicization among Hindus in coastal Karnataka3 be traced back to colonial times as the colonial institutions and forms of governmentality were instrumental in redefining and, to a large extent, consolidating primordial identities such as caste and religion in India (Appadurai, 1981; Bayly, 1989; Cohn, 1996; Dirks, 2001; Madan, 1997). Missionary activism, aided and abetted by the colonial state, led to the introduction of English-medium schools such as Basel Mission English Medium School in 1836 and modern industry like the Basel Mission tile factory in 1860 in Mangalore along with systematic proselytization towards Christianity,4 thereby disrupting the prevailing socio-cultural atmosphere of the region (Shetty, 2008). Lower castes such as Billavas, sidelined by the dominant groups, saw missionary activity opening up opportunities for modern education and employment and a significant number of them willingly converted to Christianity for upward mobility (Kuthar, 2019). Unnerved by these developments, the influential upper-caste Gaud Saraswat Brahmins organized themselves against the threat of backward caste mobility by forming units of the Brahmo Samaj in the 1870 s and later the Arya Samaj in 1918 to foster a monolithic Hindu identity.5 The shortcoming of both organizations was that they were confined to the upper castes and failed to build a broad social alliance of Hindus across castes in the region. The subsequent decades saw the emergence of radical Hindu organizations in the region that articulated Hindu identity in terms of nationhood, which marked a decisive shift in the trajectory of Hindu identity formation in the region. The beginnings of radical Hinduism taking shape in the region was marked by the activities of the All India Hindu Mahasabha in 1920s and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the 1940s, which organized public meetings exhorting Hindus to unite against the perceived threat of other religions, especially the Muslims (Kuthar, 2019; Tambs-Lyche, 2011). The RSS initially remained a marginal player in the socio-political discourse of the region as the then highly popular Congress party (founded as the Indian National Congress in 1885 and which took a leading role in the independence movement), holding the appeal of nationalist fervour, exercised a hegemonic influence over all major communities, including Muslims and Hindus. The RSS initiated a new campaign in Udupi in October–November 1952 by organizing a ‘cow weekly’ under the leadership of Swami Vishwesha Thirtha, the then seer of the Pejavara Mutt, who later became the founding leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the frontal organization of the RSS.6 In spite of forceful efforts at Hindu mobilization, their political yield was insignificant as the Hindu organizations remained on the periphery of electoral scenarios in the region until the 1970s.

Sweeping socio-economic changes took place in coastal Karnataka in the 1970s. The land reforms initiated in 1974 in the state helped the backward castes to attain social mobility and facilitated their entry into the fields of trading, business, politics and import–export businesses. Members of these castes also began migrating to the Gulf countries (seven countries [Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates] in the Persian Gulf that are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council) and to various metropolitan cities in India such as Mumbai and Chennai seeking better job opportunities (Assadi, 2002; Damle, 1993; Pani, 1983). The opening up of the Indian economy in 1991 and the cash inflows from the diaspora in metropolitan cities and the Gulf region led to a revival of various ritual practices within these communities, assuming a significant symbolic value of representing a revitalized Hinduism (Assadi, 1999). For example, deiva aradhane, a form of ancestral worship closely associated with agrarian practices prevalent among the Tulu-speaking communities in coastal Karnataka, was significantly revitalized (Assadi, 1999; Kuthar, 2019). The celebration of local deities and rituals fostered a homogenized religious community as espoused by the Hindutva ideology. As scholars point out, this revitalized exhibition of Hindu identity enabled the Sangh Parivar to build a social coalition bringing together the dominant castes such as the Bunts, the backward classes such as the Moghaveeras and the Billavas as well as the upper-caste Brahmins (Assadi, 1999, 2002). The internal divisions and hierarchies were sought to be buried as they were layered with the discourse of an emergent, revitalized and unified Hindutva identity.

Although the lower castes and Dalits continued to be excluded from the socio-cultural and religious spheres of upper castes, they were included in the political rituals of Hindutva, which provided them with a sense of inclusion and recognition. Ornit Shani (2007) describes this process as the rise of ethno-Hinduism in which Hindutva provides a new kind of patronage to unite Hindus within the Hindu social hierarchy without altering its existing social structure. For example, the Hindu Samajotsav (festival of Hindu society), an annual conglomeration of the Hindus that began in Mangalore in 1981, has grown in size and has spread to other places in Karnataka and neighbouring places in Kerala. This meeting is hailed by the organizers as a show of strength of the Hindu religion surpassing caste differences. As a part of the huge conglomeration, massive processions named Shobha Yatra are organized in which passionate Hindu nationalist slogans are raised (The New Indian Express, 2010). Quite often these processions turn aggressive, culminating in attacks against the religious symbols and sites of the Muslims; the recent one is the attack on Badriya Juma Masjid in Puttur during a Hindu Samajotsav held in 2015 (Narayanan, 2015). Hindu nationalist leaders, known for their inflammatory speeches, make use of the Samajotsav platform to deliver hate speeches and provocative statements against minority religions in general and Muslims in particular.7 Most of these utterances escape the gaze of law as law-enforcement agencies remain indifferent to them and even if cases do manage to be filed, they are subsequently withdrawn under political pressure.

As evident in the foregoing narrative, an assessment of the caste dynamics and its relation to the rise of Hindutva in coastal Karnataka reveals that the construction of a monolithic Hindutva identity materialized through two processes. The first is the ‘culturalization of caste’ where caste was primarily depicted as an axis of cultural differences within the Hindu social order and not an axis of inequality and hierarchy, thereby leaving its structural character unchallenged (Natrajan, 2012). This culturalization of caste enabled the construction of a unified political identity of Hindutva, which encompasses every caste even as the caste boundaries and hierarchies are preserved in the guise of legitimate cultural differences. In this process, the lower and backward castes are not merely accommodated based on their allegiance to the Hindutva ideology but rather recognized as socially and culturally diverse ‘home-grown’ groups and given recognition in the political rituals of Hindutva (Natrajan, 2012: 168). The increased participation of these lower castes in Hindutva mobilization has also been explained as a product of the extensive grassroots network of several Hindutva voluntary organizations such as Seva Bharati and Rashtrotthana Parishad (The Council for National Development) among the socially backward Hindu castes (Chidambaram, 2012; Thachil, 2014). In the second process, the ‘externalization’ or ‘displacement’ of caste conflicts into communal conflicts where the social tensions and anger emerging due to changing caste relations were successfully redirected against Muslims by a series of discourses that depicted Muslims as social and economic exploiters (Menon, 2006; Shani, 2000, 2007). This ‘externalization’ was rationalized by a narrative of ‘Muslim threat to Hindu society’ enabled by discourses such as love jihad and cow protection and by the growth of Hindutva vigilante organizations. The perpetual and everyday violence against minorities by the new vigilante Hindutva militants is the major strategy of ethnicization in contemporary coastal Karnataka and emblematic of the rise of ‘neo-Hindutva’ in the region, which we will discuss in detail in the next section.

Neo-Hindutva and the centrality of moral vigilantism

The consolidation of a Hindutva identity built as a political and religious coalition of caste groups against the ‘external others’ became more evident in the socio-cultural spheres of the region in the 1980s and 1990s and soon turned the tables in the electoral arithmetic of the state. The BJP won parliamentary seats for the first time in the 1991 general elections, and by 1994, it became the second-largest party in the Karnataka assembly, winning 40 seats ahead of the Congress party, which won 34 seats.8 In 2006, it grew to the status of a coalition partner in the state government, sharing power with Janata Dal (Secular). The BJP went on to form its own governments in 2008 and 2019. In parallel, the growing appeal of Hindu nationalism in the coastal region, which is of interest to our study, was characterized by everyday violence against minorities, especially Muslims, which was legitimized through a series of discourses. This sustained attack and its accompanying discourses provide important insights into the evolution of neo-Hindutva in contemporary times.

According to the data compiled from the local media by the Komu Souharda Vedike (Communal Harmony Forum), a civil society organization working for the restoration of religious harmony in Karnataka, around 1088 incidents of communal violence have taken place in the coastal region of Karnataka between 2010 and 2018. These include violence related to cattle vigilantism, moral policing, alleged religious conversion and desecration of places of worship, among others. According to the reports, the main perpetrators of this violence are a group of militant Hindutva vigilante organizations formed in the region after the 1980s, all inspired by the project of ethnicization of Hindu identity. They include the Hindu Yuva Sena, which was established in 1970 and which aggressively took up the campaign for cow protection in the coastal regions of Karnataka (Mondal, 2015); the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the VHP, which established itself in Mangalore in 1994; the Hindu Jagaran Vedike (HJV), which was directly affiliated to the RSS, formed in early 1990s; Sri Ram Sene, founded by former activists of the Bajrang Dal in 2006. These vigilante organizations, mostly made up of lumpen elements, although united in their commitment to the cause of Hindutva ideology, compete with each other for media attention and public visibility. In terms of organizational structure, these groups significantly benefit from what Javeed Alam identified as the politics of alibis: an ostensible autonomy, which offers the constituents of the Hindu nationalist network great manoeuvring flexibility to intervene in different spheres of society so that the network can selectively take up or deny the acts of allied organizations depending on the circumstances (Alam, 2004). Economic and commercial interests also play an important role in the functioning of these organizations as many of them successfully use their clout and negative images for furthering their commercial interests. Dhirendra Jha explains how a prominent local leader of the Bajrang Dal runs a manpower company that supplies security guards to many Muslim establishments in Mangalore city to safeguard them from the harassment of other Hindutva vigilante organizations (Jha, 2017: 62). The active involvement of these organizations in shaping the socio-religious identity and civic sphere of coastal Karnataka is central to understanding Hindu–Muslim relations and the process of ethnicization in the region.

The perpetrators deem violent attacks to be aimed at protecting the ‘Hindu culture’, a loose term used quite often to describe a highly puritanical and arbitrary conception of a Hindu moral community. These attacks, all of which are premeditated, were targeted at people, spaces of social interaction and religious spots to firmly send out the message that those who appear to be seen violating the moral order of Hindu culture would be punished violently. One of the most notable patterns of violence unleashed by these vigilante groups is often described as ‘moral policing’: the unseemly spectacle where lumpen elements violently intervene in the spaces of intermixing of genders, especially people belonging to different religions and assault them without any provocation. These spaces could be an ice-cream parlour, a restaurant, a public park, a cinema hall or any other places where intermixing of gender and religion takes place in a city like Mangalore. Through a series of such brutal attacks, these organizations could send out the message that intermixing of Muslims and Hindus, especially the forming of a friendship or relationship between Hindu girls and Muslim boys, is against ‘Hindu culture’ and would not be tolerated. These attacks gained considerable legitimacy in the wake of what Hindutva forces controversially claimed as ‘love jihad’, alleging that Muslim youth were feigning love to non-Muslim girls only to convert those girls to Islam in a systematic manner (Strohl, 2019). Most often, the members of these Hindutva vigilante organizations who work as bus conductors, autorickshaw drivers or restaurant bearers would alert the leaders about potential targets. Then a coordinated assault would be carried out on these hapless victims by vigilante Hindu groups. Such instances of moral policing have been reported to have seeped into educational institutions as well, forcing students from different religious communities to be hesitant over developing close friendships with each other and restricting their friendship circle to the same religion. Even study tours from some colleges were not spared and subjected to attack by Hindutva militant elements as Hindu and Muslim students were spotted travelling together. Taking moral policing to obnoxious levels, some Hindu vigilante groups found friendship between the same gender disagreeable, attacking two women friends – one Muslim and the other Hindu – near Mangalore city on 12 July 2018 when they were visiting the ailing relative of the latter. The attackers legitimized their violence by alleging that the Muslim woman was trying to convert her Hindu friend to Islam.

The vigilante groups also assumed the role of protecting Indian culture from the corrupting influence of ‘western culture’ and carried out a series of attacks on birthday parties and pubs in and around Mangalore city generating wide publicity. In one of the notorious attacks, on 28 July 2012, around 50 activists of the Hindu Jagaran Vedike, led by its leader Subhash Padil, attacked a birthday party at a homestay in Mangalore and allegedly beat up and molested 12 youth, including five girls (Pinto, 2012). The attack was justified by Jagdish Karanth, the state head of the Hindu Jagaran Vedike, by portraying it as people’s outrage against ‘rape of Indian culture’. He said:

It is true that the leadership was provided by Hindu Jagarana Vedike activist Subash. It is a tragedy that Mangalore has come to a state when people have to take the law into one’s own hands to protect Indian culture. What was taking place in that resort in the name of birthday party was the rape of Indian culture and it was local people who responded as they felt that their culture must be protected from these evil influences. (PUCL Report, 2012: 19–20)

Apart from moral policing that targets Muslim youth, the campaign for cow protection is another pretext in which targeted attack against Muslims are unleashed in the region. Vigilante groups identify those who transport cattle and mercilessly beat up the traders, alleging that the cattle are being taken to slaughterhouses. In a case of mistaken identity, Praveen Poojary, a local BJP leader, was beaten to death in coastal Karnataka’s Udupi district allegedly by the activists of the Hindu Jagarana Vedike in August 2016. Violence associated with cow vigilantism is routinely justified by these groups as attempts to protect the Hindu culture that worships and venerates cows. On top of moral policing and cow vigilantism, there were systematic attempts to provoke violence out of normal circumstances with a view to incite communal conflict. For example, in January 2012, six members of Sri Ram Sene were arrested in Sindgi in Karnataka for raising the national flag of Pakistan on a government building in a Muslim-populated area to deliberately create communal tension.

Emerging scholarship on the changing forms of Hindu nationalism has described these new militant vigilante Hindutva organizations using the category of neo-Hindutva. This term is understood as the ‘ways in which Hindu nationalism permeates into new spaces, organizational, conceptual, territorial and rhetorical’ (Anderson and Longkumer, 2018: 371). It aims to capture the expressions of Hindutva that ‘operate outside or on the peripheries of the institutional and ideological framework of the Sangh Parivar’ (Anderson and Longkumer, 2018: 373). Anderson and Longkumer (2018) make a distinction between soft and hard neo-Hindutva. The label of soft neo-Hindutva applies when Hindu nationalism is propagated in not so obvious ways, in expressions that are often concealed, denying explicit linkages and commitment to Hindu nationalism; whereas hard neo-Hindutva is ‘not reticent about being connected with Hindu nationalism, but, for various reasons, often departing from the positioning and praxis of the Sangh’ (Anderson and Longkumer, 2018: 373). Following this argument, we are inclined to conclude that the meanings and implications of the extensive and institutionalized form of vigilante violence in the region is a central strategy as well as a manifestation of hard neo-Hindutva. Scholars like Shani and Menon have argued that the vigilante violence unleashed by the Hindutva militant groups works through an externalization of caste contradictions (Menon, 2006; Shani, 2010) whereas Cook (2019) traces the genesis of this violence and moral policing to the tension and contradiction between Hindu nationalism and market-led neoliberalism in Mangalore. For Cook, the moral ordering through vigilantism gives a sense of coherence and control amidst the rapid cultural and economic change brought about by rapid globalization, a view also echoed by scholars such as David Strohl who highlight the tension between moral panic on love jihad and the individualized political subjectivity promoted by the neoliberal conception of citizenship (Strohl, 2019). However, these explanations seem inadequate, in our view, as they fail to provide an understanding of the almost century-old ideological foundation of Hindu nationalism and its inextricable connection with the changing notion of citizenship in contemporary India. We, therefore, feel that vigilante violence undertaken by the Hindutva militant groups cannot be adequately explained as merely a manifestation of tension between Hindutva nationalism and neoliberalism. Instead, we go further to argue that they are the very constitutive of the ideals of nation and citizenship promoted through the project of ethnicization in the neo-Hindutva discourse.

The Hindutva discourse on nationalism and citizenship is built around a series of powerful cultural tropes. For example, Charu Gupta (2001) has interpreted Hindu nationalism as imagining the nation using multiple gendered metaphors, predominantly nation as a ‘Hindu woman’ who needs protection from the ‘other’. This imagination most often is manifested in the metaphor of the mother, such as ‘Bharath Matha as motherland’, ‘Hindi as mother tongue’ and ‘cow as mother’ (Gau Mata), all of which are under threat from Muslim and western influences (Gupta, 2001). The common thread in the discourse of moral policing and love jihad is the gendered moral obligation of the Hindu males to protect Hindu women from ‘lustful and virulent’ Muslims and ‘immoral western culture’, though the use of gendered metaphors that vary with regional contexts. The violence unleashed in order to protect women and ‘Hindu culture’ becomes a means to safeguard the Hindu family and Hindu nation and also to restore a normative moral, social relation, which is increasingly corrupted by the influence of the ‘other’ (Cook, 2019; Gupta, 2001; Strohl, 2019). In this sense, moral vigilantism becomes an essential way of realizing the moral order of the ethnic nation in which religious communities remain in separate and mutually exclusive social, physical and imagined spaces. We also argue that it is against this background of vigilante activism and reproduction of violence in neo-Hindutva’s ethnicization that we need to understand the changing contours of Muslim politics in the region.

Emerging muslim radicalism as counter-predatory ethnicization

The rising march of militant Hindutva in coastal Karnataka has directly brought about the waning political influence of the Indian National Congress, though a significant section of Muslims continue to vote for the party.9 For a substantial section of Muslims in the region, the Congress party represents a failed promise of secularism, a political organization incapable of representing and protecting their interests or resisting the onslaught of virulent Hindutva. The Congress’s political failure in the region paved the way for novel forms of political mobilization among Muslims and it is important to analyse these dynamics as they are heavily influenced by the emergence of neo-Hindutva and the collapse of secular ideals and institutions.

In 1998, following a bloody riot near Mangalore city, which claimed 10 lives including six Muslims, the Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) was established by local Muslim youth as a collective forum to resist Hindutva attack on Muslims. In 2006, the KFD merged with the National Development Front, a militant Muslim organization founded in 1993 in the neighbouring state of Kerala to resist the rise of Hindutva. The National Development Front evolved into the Popular Front of India (PFI) in 2006 and launched its political front named the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) in June 2009 to make a foray into electoral politics. It is important to critically examine the politics of PFI and their mode of mobilization to understand the changing contours of political mobilization among Muslims and its impact on the democratic political processes in coastal Karnataka. We stress that, contrary to its claim as a secular organization established to ensure development of downtrodden people, the political mobilization of the PFI employs radical religious identity at the grassroots, makes questionable claims about its secularist positions and engages in a counter process of ethnicization of Muslims to confront the onslaught of Hindutva.

The PFI is the later avatar of the National Development Front, an organization founded in the Kozhikode district of Kerala in 1993 by a group of Muslims in the immediate aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition,10ostensibly as a protest against the pacifist politics followed by the Indian Union Muslim League (henceforth the Muslim League), the mainstream political party of Muslims in Kerala. In comparison with conventional Muslim political parties such as the Muslim League, the PFI does not use the term ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ in its constitution but rather portrays itself as a secular organization interested in the development of Indian society. However, in spite of its avowed secular posturing, the PFI remains an exclusivist Muslim organization not willing to give membership to people from other religious communities. However, the membership of the SDPI, its political wing, is open to the public irrespective of religious identity, but in reality, it remains predominantly a Muslim political party with only a nominal representation of other communities. Contrary to its claims of being non-religious in character, the PFI is often found to deploy radical Islamic identity for grassroot mobilization and has been accused of engaging in a series of violent incidents with specific religious motifs.11 Consequently, almost every Muslim religious and secular organization and political party in Kerala has branded the PFI as a radical Muslim outfit, and the organization is accused of stoking religious polarization and violence in the state. The PFI systematically uses Hindutva violence against the Muslims especially to buttress its argument for a unified, monolithic Muslim community and believes that the secular ideals, institutions and mechanisms have failed miserably in India, leaving the community to fend for itself. This emphasis on self-defence, articulated through deep distrust towards the ideals and institutions of secularism and realized through mobilization based on radical Islamic identity, makes the politics of the PFI extremely significant in the coastal Karnataka region as well.

In coastal Karnataka, the absence of moderate communitarian Muslim political organizations and the gradual decline of the Congress party provided sufficient space for the PFI to emerge as a radical and militant response to Hindutva aggression and violence. Given the lack of opposition from secular parties or state apparatus to Hindutva combat, a series of activities and public campaigns carried out by the PFI and the SDPI in coastal Karnataka played a significant role in instilling a sense of courage and confidence among the Muslims of the region. The SDPI intervened in several public issues and adopted bold and assertive positions, especially in matters related to police excesses and foisting of false cases on their cadres. They were successful, to a large extent, in convincing a section of Muslim youth that self-protection is the only way forward, and all state institutions, including the police and judiciary, were partisan. A stress on self-protection is identified to be a major theme in the propaganda mechanism of the PFI. For instance, the organization initiated a nationwide campaign titled ‘resistance is not offence’ in 2017. Inaugurating the campaign on 25 August 2017 against a spate of lynching attacks by cow-protection vigilantes in several parts of the country, the national president of SDPI, A Sayeed, exhorted the youth by stating that:

Muslims and Dalits must acknowledge that their security is now in their own hands. They have to come out with free hands and free mind to take over the mission of self-protection. Nobody else will come to protect them. (SDPI website, 2017)

Similar to the Hindu nationalist groups in the region, the PFI also organizes massive public spectacles to demonstrate its organizational prowess and physical strength. The PFI used to organize massive ‘Freedom Parades’ in Mangalore every year on 15 August to commemorate India’s independence. The Freedom Parade was meant to be a ‘show of strength’ of the organization where the party showcases its might through a massive parade and a physical drill of its trained volunteers clad in uniforms. Mimicking the Republic Day parades held across the nation, the top office-bearers of the PFI receive a salute from uniformed cadres, who conduct a march-past, and deliver passionate speeches to the gathering. These parades, while ostensibly portrayed as a show of patriotism, are also a visible exhibition of well-trained and disciplined warriors among Muslim youth who are ready to protect the community. The organization could thus ingeniously combine its display of patriotism with a show of strength.

However, the discourse of self-defence and assertive Islamic politics is only one part of PFI’s politics of ‘Muslim empowerment’. The PFI often embraces a radical and exclusivist Islamist politics, which involves a long series of violent mobilizations on the ground, leading to further religious polarization and distrust among communities. A host of secular organizations and civil society groups in coastal Karnataka that previously held alliances with the PFI in their fight against Hindutva later distanced themselves from the organization. The activists of these organizations point out that many of the activities of PFI mirror those of militant Hindutva organizations and their secularist claims are unfounded. They felt that the PFI effectively used the human rights discourse and secular rhetoric to mask their religious mobilization and, in effect, their ideological basis is as problematic as that of Hindutva (Author’s interview, 2019).

The PFI has been accused of indulging in attacks against inter-religious couples, targeted political killings and large-scale violence emulating the modus operandi of vigilante Hindutva organizations. These incidents provide credibility to the criticism that the PFI, similar to the politics of its bete noire Hindutva organizations, is also aiming at the creation of an exclusivist Muslim community based on radical Islamic ideals. Local newspaper reports and the data compiled by civil society organizations document a series of instances of moral vigilantism in which the PFI is implicated.13 Between 2010 and 2018, around 60 incidents of violence and vigilantism by Muslim groups were reported in coastal Karnataka and the PFI figured prominently in these incidents (Pinto and Misquith, 2018). In his article on Mangalore, Ian M Cook observes that moral vigilantism was not only confined to the Hindu organizations, but a third of such instances of vigilantism between 2013 and 2015 were carried out by Muslim organizations (Cook, 2019). Members of the PFI were also allegedly involved in violence that broke out in Kyatamaranhalli (Mysore) in 2009 and around 38 cases were registered against the members of the PFI following the incident (The News Minute, 2015).

In coastal Karnataka, the PFI also appears in the forefront of aggressive mobilizations on various ‘Islamic' issues’ such as a controversy regarding the ‘ban on Hijab’ in one of the colleges in Mangalore and against the documentary maker Irshad Uppinangady for discussing the increasing restrictions upon Muslim girl children with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the coastal region in his documentary (Sayeed, 2016). Contrary to the absence of any invocation of religion in its constitution and official discourses, the PFI fills the various pamphlets issued to cadres, its writings and speeches with verses from Quran and drawings from Hadiths. How do we understand these peculiar forms of counter-predatory ethnicization of Muslims spearheaded by organizations like the PFI?

Various commentators of minority politics have observed that in the post-Babri, Mandal and Sachar era, Muslim politics has shifted to a plebeian, citizenship and right-centred politics from the traditional identity-centred, inward-looking communitarian politics.14 (Alam, 2008; Hansen, 2000; Jodhka, 2007). They argue that, especially after the Sachar Committee report in 2005 exposed the socio-economic backwardness of Muslims in India, Muslim politics in general has taken a secular turn with more emphasis on issues related to social and economic development of the community rather than identity-related issues. While these arguments are plausible in the contexts of the above-mentioned studies, we argue that a closer look at such novel forms of Muslim politics is required to grasp their ideological character in a neo-Hindutva era. In particular, we find recent works such as those of Arndt Emmerich problematic for its characterization of the PFI in coastal Karnataka as a model of right-centred citizenship politics of Muslims (Emmerich, 2019). Emmerich seems to have accepted the claims and arguments of the PFI office-bearers without dispute and moreover, he does not venture into examining several allegations of violence and religious radicalism put forward by the state, secular organizations, and most importantly, other major Muslim political and religious organizations, against the PFI.

We observe that, while the PFI vouches for its ‘positive politics’ (characterized by assertion of constitutional rights and citizen politics based on development discourse), its grassroot mobilization revolves around the single agenda of opposing Hindutva organizations through the deployment of radical Islamic identity as a means of political engagement. Closely echoing the organizational structure of the Sangh Parivar, the PFI remains the ideological core, whereas the SDPI, its political front, and a host of other feeder organizations for women, students and religious ulamas function as independent units under the guidance of PFI and provide the functional flexibility and independence to these political articulations. They abundantly employ Islamic idioms, theological frameworks and resources at the ground level to create a moral Muslim community to fight Hindutva.15 In this process, the organization conceals its religio-centric ideological foundation by combining it with a forceful articulation of nationalist claims and secularist rhetorics. Organizations like the PFI, in spite of its formal secular character and official discourses, thus remain Muslim-exclusive groups, deploying radical Islamic identity in their move towards ethnicization. These organizations, in spite of their ‘invisibilized radical Islamic’ identity and overtly secular rhetoric, understand Islam as a socio-political blueprint and as a political project in progress, which many times goes against the very spirit of modern secular ideals (Santhosh and Visakh, 2020: 56). Such forms of ‘defensive ethnicization’ emerge as a response to the hegemonic and predatory ethnicization of Hindu nationalism, especially in the absence of a credible secular political alternative with substantive commitment to the ideals of secularism. As the PFI mobilizes the anxieties and insecurities of minorities in the wake of Hindu nationalist violence through the discourse of ‘self-securitization’, it imparts a sense of an ethnicized religious community whose existence and survival hinge on the theological and organizational resources provided by their religion, Islam.

Ethnicization of religion and implications for citizenship: Discussion and conclusion

The competitive ethnicization espoused by the Hindutva organizations and the PFI has imbued coastal Karnataka with communal tension, ready to be sparked at any moment, where modes of vigilantism have become institutionalized in its articulation. Besides the frequent, low-key communal violence and attacks, targeted killings of activists of both organizations have emerged as a sad trend in the region. A few weeks before the 2017 Karnataka assembly polls, the region was rocked by two consecutive political killings. On 21 June 2017, Ashraf Kallai, a 35-year-old leader of the SDPI, was killed in broad daylight in Bantwal near Mangalore (Deccan Herald, 2017). The SDPI accused the RSS of killing Kallai and in some days, a few suspects, including the local leader of the Bajrang Dal, were arrested (The Hindu, 2017). After two weeks, on 6 July, Sharath Madiwala, a 28-year-old RSS activist, was stabbed to death at BC Road, allegedly as an act of retaliation by the SDPI activists (Ameerudheen, 2017).

We stress that violence unleashed by militant Hindutva organizations using the discourses of love jihad, moral policing and cow protection is strongly etching the ethnicization of religious differences through the construction of a monolithic, radical and aggressive Hindu identity by concealing caste differences and by demonizing Muslim as the operational other.16 We argue that, in coastal Karnataka, violence prevails as an integral mode of political mobilization because it is central to the competing process of ethnicization in the region: in the predatory ethnicization of neo-Hindutva as well as the counter-predatory ethnicization of the PFI. These competing forms of ethnicization have produced a vigilante public in the region by radically restructuring inter-religious relations with greater implications for institutions of democracy such as citizenship and secularism.

The troubling entrenchment of competing ethnicization and the formation of vigilante public in coastal Karnataka assumes greater significance given the inability of the BJP of making major electoral gains in the southern states of India, often described as BJP’s ‘southern discomfort’ (Manor, 2001). Karnataka has remained an outlier to this trend, voting the BJP to power in the state where the party still holds a considerable electoral advantage. Political parties in the state, including the BJP, have been involved in forming inclusive rainbow coalitions of dominant social groups involving dominant Hindu caste groups such as Vokkaligas and Lingayats whose permutations and combinations varied in successive elections, preventing an enduring communal polarization of electoral outcomes (Assadi, 1999, 2002, 2013; Manor, 2001). In Tamil Nadu, the largest South Indian state, the two regional parties that have roots in the anti-Brahmin Dravidian movement – the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK, which can be loosely translated as Dravidian Progress Federation) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) – have been dominating state politics since 1967, with strong patronage networks across all religious and caste communities leaving no room for politico-religious mobilization (Chidambaram, 2012; Subramanian, 1999). Similarly, the political discourse and party competition in the neighbouring state of Kerala is dominated by a bipolar coalition system lead by Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Indian National Congress respectively, enabling an amalgamation of class and non-antagonistic communitarian mobilization (Biju, 2017; Chiriyankandath, 1996). Clearly, coastal Karnataka shows a clear deviation from the overall trend in southern states, including other parts of Karnataka, and has become suffused with communal unrest due to its unique demographic and socio-cultural characteristics, which has led to a strident rise of Hindutva politics with the active support of almost all caste groups; this, in turn, encourages a concomitant ethnicization among the Muslims of the region. In a sense, coastal Karnataka represents a unique case of ethnicization of religion and resultant violence, facilitated by active Hindu vigilante groups and assertive radical Muslim organizations such as the PFI, unlike many other parts of Karnataka where the latter does not have an active presence.

Citizenship is a key entitlement through which competing demands for membership are made and the nationhood experienced in practice. Ornit Shani describes the centrality of citizenship in a democracy as it forms the basis for attaining a full membership, the terms of participation and a sense of belonging in the social body (Shani, 2010). According to her, Indian nationhood and democracy are built and held together by negotiating and balancing four predominant conceptions of citizenship: the liberal conception, the republican model, the non-statist conception and, finally, ethno-nationalist conception, albeit without leading to a monopoly of any single type (Shani, 2010). However, the discernible erosion of the ideology as well as practices of secularism at the grassroots and the rise and hegemonic influence of neo-Hindutva have led to the unprecedented dominance of an ethno-nationalist citizenship discourse, contributing to the transformation of contemporary Indian democracy, which is being increasingly characterized as an ‘ethnic democracy’ (Jaffrelot, 2017, 2019). Sammy Smooha (2002), who formulated this idea to characterize contemporary Israel, points out that:

Ethnic democracy is propelled by an ideology or a movement of ethnic nationalism that declares a certain population as an ethnic nation, sharing common descent, a common language and a common culture. Non-members of ethnic nation are not only regarded as less desirable but are also perceived as a serious threat to survival and integrity of the ethnic nation. (Smooha, 2002: 477–478)

The neo-Hindutva violence in coastal Karnataka has to be viewed as an enactment of ethno-nationalist citizenship. Citizenship is implemented through the double logic of democratic rights and security (Banaji, 2018; Telle, 2013). In the case of the ethno-nationalist citizenship discourse, the notion of citizenship as a means to democratic rights is completely obliterated and monopolized by the discourse of security. Violence is a productive discourse for security as it clearly produces ‘dangers’ to security (the virulent Muslims) and the ‘object’ to secure (Hindu self) (Anand, 2007). Thus, in the neo-Hindutva discourse of coastal Karnataka, violence against minorities is an effective way to secure ethno-nationalist citizenship and such violence is justified using representations of the ‘Muslim as a threat’ to the security of the Hindu body politic (Anand, 2007). The representation of the ‘Muslim as a threat’ is created by a series of discourses such as cow protection, love jihad and moral policing. The Hindutva activists often resort to singling out Bhatkal – a Muslim majority coastal town north of Mangalore, which happens to be native place of the founder-leaders of the banned Islamic terrorist organization Indian Mujahideen – to illustrate the spectre of Islamic terrorism closer to home. The Hindutva campaign of the Bhatkal connection to violent Muslims, and therefore to terrorism, has generated significant appeal among the Hindus against the backdrop of national and global discourses of Islamic terrorism and violence.

The protection of Hindu women from ‘Muslims and western other’ is imagined as a civic and political obligation in the interests of the nation and its enactment becomes an integral part of attaining citizenship. Through sustained violence, the vigilante groups are involved in the production of a public sphere that eventually becomes conducive to ethnic democracy. Banaji (2018: 335) describes this as ‘vigilante public’ to imply:

…wholesale co-optation of India’s caste Hindu populations to the cause of the Indian far right. Feelings of group superiority and cohesion are enhanced by verbal and physical actions against those positioned as anathema to vigilante public sentiment.

While the neo-Hindutva organizations have formally discredited and have distanced themselves from the secularist moorings of Indian democracy and polity through their discourses and activities, for the minorities, especially Muslims, constitutional secularism remains the only legal avenue to claim complete citizenship in the country. Constantly pressured to prove their commitment and loyalty towards the country, Muslims are invariably forced to articulate their position by using a language of secularism and nationalism in their political discourses. For example, a political party – the Muslim League – has been championing the democratic mainstreaming of Muslims in Kerala through a ‘communitarian’ form of politics by demonstrating its commitment to ideals of pluralism and secularism through its decades-long activities (Chiriyankandath, 1996; Mannathukkaren, 2016). Here, the secularist credentials of the organization are legitimized on the basis of its commitment to the substantial values of secularism such as pluralism and toleration as the Muslim League does not use the Muslim identity for the mobilization of Muslims by targeting an ‘other’. On the contrary, organizations such as the PFI assume the position of a Muslim-exclusive group and deploy a peculiar combination of formally secularized official discourses and radical Islamic identity at the ground level to facilitate ethnicization. While these new formations appear as a reaction to the Hindutva onslaught, they subscribe to almost similar modes of thinking as the Hindu right and are propelled by a belief in the political prospects of a homogenized religious identity. In the end they, unfortunately, feed into each other.

The politicization of religion and its eventual ethnicization is significantly changing the contours of democratic politics and the discourse of citizenship in India. Especially the ethnicization of the majority community and its political ascension has resulted in the decline of secularism as a treasured ethico-political principle and an institutionalized value system in the myriad articulations of state governmentality across the country. The crumbling of secular ideals has also radically altered the civic spaces and everyday interactions of people, jeopardizing the sustenance of important values such as pluralism, tolerance and inter-religious harmony. For a country of bewildering diversity in terms of religion and ethnicity, these transformations will have far-reaching consequences on its political engagements and citizenship discourses in the future.