Reclaim the night

With widespread anger among the youth against the moral police of the Sangh Parivar and sharp intra-party hostility against 'dictator' BS Yeddyurappa,  it's not going to be a red carpet for the BJP

Girish Nikam Bangalore

A group of college students in Bangalore in their final year of graduation were planning to go on a motorbike trip outside, before they broke up. Though they all had girlfriends or friends who were girls, some of who wanted to go along on that trip, the boys decided against it. Their reason: "We didn't want to be accosted by these Ram Sene goons and create a mess," one of the students remarked.

Life for youngsters in Karnataka, used to the free-flowing ways of urban Karnataka till some time back, has become tension-filled and worrisome in the last one year. Ever since the advent of the first BJP government south of the Vindhyas, incidents of moral policing and attacks on minorities' and their places of worship have multiplied.

In Bangalore, a couple of youngsters, first-time voters, discussing the pros and cons of the elections, were overheard talking of how BJP has to be voted out, if they wanted a "normal life". There seems an unanimous current against the rather retrograde muscle-flexing of the "Hindutva Taliban". How far this derision with the ways of the moral vigilantes, who are inevitably associated with the ruling party, will have an impact on the voting pattern, is yet to be assessed. However, what is visible is the growing disenchantment among the urban youth about the BJP and the ways of its parivar.

Meanwhile, this campaign against the minorities and moral vigilantism has been able to recruit to its ranks, host of young people, mainly unemployed and under-employed, especially in the semi-rural areas, who have been spreading fear, like in the Mangalore pub attack, as well as instances in neighbouring Puttur and Udupi.

Reports of young men and women, voluntarily refraining from being seen together in public places, especially as a couple, are being reported from many parts, mainly in coastal and south Karnataka. Simultaneously, the resistance to such actions is also growing, as concerned liberals and secular-minded people have started forming civil society groups and holding demonstrations. One such 'Reclaim the Night' programme, held in the first week of April across many cities in the state, has been quite successful.

For the BJP, this southern state -- which it won after decades of working on the ground and persistent communal polarisation by the RSS and VHP - is the key if it can even think of upsetting the UPA applecart at the Centre. Having won 18 of the 28 seats in 2004, its biggest challenge is to retain it. Though it won the assembly elections last year and managed to set up its first state government in the south, the party has been shaken with inter-party rivalries ever since. And the state government shows no direction. Chief Minister, BS Yeddyurappa, who achieved his life-long dream, has in the bargain acquired an image of a "dictator" among many of his cabinet and party colleagues. His one-year term in office has been full of controversies which include several incidents of moral policing and anti-minority violence, which his government is seen as quietly and tacitly encouraging. Stories abound about the "impending war" within the cabinet, and the disgust being expressed by several senior colleagues of Yeddyurappa.