The Hindu
Bangalore, Apr 2: The State Government should acknowledge that there is breakdown of the constitutional machinery in Dakshina Kannada and ensure that the Sangh Parivar outfits do not run a “parallel administration” there, a report on cultural policing in Dakshina Kannada brought out by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka, has recommended.
The report brought out by PUCL-K on vigilante attacks on women and minorities, and released here on Wednesday records cases from 2008 to February 2009.
Study
It is based on a fact-finding mission to Dakshina Kannada by a four-member team and an extensive study of secondary material related to vigilante attacks.
Targeting young
The report points out that cultural policing primarily targets young people. Citing instances where young people belonging to different groups were hounded and attacked for freely interacting with each other, the report says: “We need to think of the young not just as victims, but indeed as agents of social transformation who through their everyday acts of fraternal living are fulfilling the promise of the Indian Constitution and thereby imperilling the ideological agenda of those who see India differently.”
The report looks at the informal “intelligence networking” of vigilante groups that track any instance of interaction among young people belonging to different groups, the manner in which they “punish” those perceived as violating the moral code, the tendency of the police to see the perpetrators of such crime as “beyond reproach” and the pervasive climate of fear in Dakshina Kannada.
‘Social apartheid’
“People begin to think twice about performing many ordinary actions such as going out for dinner or going to a dance class or drinking juice by the wayside,” says the report, and warns that these incidents have far-reaching implications beyond the immediate acts leading to a “social apartheid”.
They punish those who live by the Constitution’s promise of fraternity and seeks to produce monolithic, enclosed communities, it says.
“It rends the social fabric, increases the distance between communities, has financial implications for Mangalore in terms of job losses, and adversely affects Mangalore’s reputation as an education hub,” warns the report.
The report also makes a separate set of recommendations for the district administration of Dakshina Kannada, the police, the college authorities and the civil society.
It has annexures which give timeline of vigilante attacks, media reports, statements of Home Minister on the events and the orders of the Karnataka Human Rights Commission.
Ramadas Rao, Shakun Mohini, Usha B.N. and Arvind Narrain, who were part of the fact-finding team that went to Dakshina Kannada, were present at the release of the report.