By Anisha Sheth
Communal incidents in Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts of coastal Karnataka were at their lowest in 14 years in 2024, according to a recently compiled report. At the same time, government data shows that communal incidents are on the rise in many districts of northern Karnataka.
The report was compiled by Suresh Bhat Bakrabail, a Mangaluru-based activist and member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, based on media coverage of such instances. But the actual number could be higher.
In 2024, the two coastal districts saw 50 incidents of a communal nature, including alleged instances of moral policing by Hindu, Muslim and unidentified vigilantes, hate speech, cattle vigilantism, and religious conversion. This is the lowest number in 14 years since Suresh started compiling the report in 2010.
Last year saw 14 instances of moral policing – 13 allegedly by Hindu vigilantes and one by Muslim vigilantes – and is lower than the 20 such instances seen in 2023. This is among the lowest reported from the two districts, the highest being 39 by Hindu vigilantes in 2014 and 17 by Muslim vigilantes in 2013.
The report also documented 27 instances of hate speech and two instances of cattle vigilantism, which is lower than the 44 reported in 2023. The highest number of hate speech cases were seen in 2022.
While instances of moral policing and hate speech have reduced, the biggest reduction is in the ‘others’ category, which includes attacks, desecration of places of worship, violence during religious processions, etc. Such incidents have reduced to five in 2024, from an average of 50 each year since 2010, and had gone up to 143 in 2015.
Senior Kannada journalist Naveen Soorinje, who has reported extensively on communalism in coastal Karnataka, says there are several reasons for the reduction in overt violence in the region in the past few years.
This story was originally published in thenewsminute.com. Read the full story here.