There are two off-white stone plaques in the middle of a pristinely manicured patch of green grass. On one, on the top right, are pictorial instructions that ask people to refrain from spitting, smoking or littering. To the top left are the words, “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav”, the Government of India initiative to commemorate 75 years of Indian independence and history.
Under the headline “Place where Tipu’s body was found”, the description reads thus, “In the Fourth Mysore War, the
There are two off-white stone plaques in the middle of a pristinely manicured patch of green grass. On one, on the top right, are pictorial instructions that ask people to refrain from spitting, smoking or littering. To the top left are the words, “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav”, the Government of India initiative to commemorate 75 years of Indian independence and history.
Under the headline “Place where Tipu’s body was found”, the description reads thus, “In the Fourth Mysore War, the British laid siege to Srirangapatna on 4th May 1799 AD and effectively breached the Fort at Watergate. On hearing of this storming of the enemy, Tipu moved in post haste to the spot, and in the fight, fell to the bullet of a British soldier. It was here the body of Tipu Sultan was identified, and recovered amidst heaps of dead soldiers. In recognition of the valiant Tipu, Colonel Wellesley set a stone tablet to mark the spot.” Five metres away from the first plaque, is that stone tablet; the second plaque: “The body of Tippu Sultan was found here.”
It is quite literally written in stone, but come election season in Karnataka, even this is now under challenge.
In 2022, a play by Addanda Cariappa, the former director of the cultural institute Rangayana titled “Tippu Nija Kanasugalu”(The real dreams of Tipu) suggested that the controversial figure was not killed by the British at all, but by two Hindu Vokkaliga warriors Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda. It was a claim that historians broadly repelled, arguing that there was little historical evidence; but it was a claim the BJP rallied behind. A production house owned by state horticulture minister Munirathna applied to make a film on the two men; Union minister Shobha Karandalaje said they were real, and asked why the Opposition was afraid of them; the BJP even put up banners commemorating them on March 12 ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mandya before these were hastily replaced.
Contested history aside, perhaps the answer to why the question of Tipu still rankles, lies in the sweeping, coffee-laden hills of the Western Ghats, and coastal Karnataka, where the sea may be serene and placid, but on land, there is a deep communal chasm.
It is 2pm, and 46-year-old Samanth Achandira is watching the CCTV feed from behind his counter, his coffee and chocolate shop bustling with customers. There are clouds above, but the heat has begun to settle on the plains, and around the General Thimaiiya square in Madikeri in front of him, tourists are beginning to stream in. The shop has two CCTV cameras; one that faces inside the shop, and another just at the entrance facing outward. Both were installed in 2015, a year where Coorg burned. “The one inside the shop I got because the number of customers is increasing. The one at the door I got because of what happened that year,” Achandira says.
In November 2015, Madikeri was in the throes of tension after it was announced that there would be a Tipu Sultan Jayanti to mark his birth on November 10. Achandira remembers the anger that coursed through his Kodava community. “We were all enraged. Tipu Sultan is no merciful leader. He attacked Kodagu several times, destroyed temples and killed people because he wanted to get to the Malabar coast. Ask any Kodava, and he will tell you the name Tipu elicits anger,” Achandira says.
The tension spilled onto the normally quiet streets that roll through the Western Ghats, and two people were killed that month. One was 67-year-old VHP leader D Kutappa, and the other a 27-year-old Muslim man Shahul Hamid KN. “But we hold Siddaramaiah and the Congress responsible. They are the ones that backed these Tipu Jayanti celebrations. Why force it on the state, particularly in Coorg where there are so many emotions attached. This is why, even if I don’t believe this incumbent government has done very well, the two seats in Kodagu, Madikeri and Virajpet will have BJP support,” Achandira says.
The western coast of Karnataka with 21 assembly seats including the two from the hills of Kodagu, more than anywhere else, is where religion drives politics, and life. It is here, in Udupi that hijab-wearing students were barred from entering educational institutions; the leader that most loudly led the protest, Yashpal Suvarna, now the BJP candidate from Udupi. It is here, in Bellare near Mangalore that up and coming Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha leader Praveen Nettaru was killed in July 2022, ostensibly as revenge for the killing of Masood, killed in July.
One of the men accused in the Nettaru case, Ismail Shafi, is contesting from the SDPI. “I am a Vokkaliga, and I do not believe Tipu Sultan was killed by two men. But that is irrelevant. Here, caste does not matter. We vote to preserve Hinduism,” said Pawan Gouda, a farmer from Kapu in Udupi. Grazing his cattle about 800 metres from Gouda, 22-year-old Ismail Yunus, on a summer break from his government college in Bengaluru, agrees about the need to preserve religious identity. “In Bengaluru, nobody really cares about my religion. Here, this tension has now become a part of our lives, and defines how we vote,” he says.
A Narayana, political expert from Azim Premji University said, that it was true that coastal Karnataka is more polarised around religious lines. “Kodagu for instance is completely saffronised.”
In 2018, the BJP swept these 21 seats, winning 18, with the Congress reduced to three seats, two of which it won in Uttara Kannada, and one in Dakshin Kannada. But as Narayana points out, despite the clear polarisation, not always have results been a sweep for the current incumbents. In 2013, for instance, the Congress won 13 of these 21 seats, the BJP 5, and 3 went to independents, helping the Congress to a clear majority. The glaring caveat of course is that 2013 was a year of churn for the BJP; an angry Yediyurappa had formed his own Karnataka Janata Paksha, which won 9.8% of the vote and six seats, but reduced the BJP to 40 seats and 19.9% of the vote.
Narayana said, “Even before this, only between 2004 and 2008, did the BJP do well in two consecutive election cycles in the region. Of course 2013 had its own factors, but it does show that change is possible. This time, it will be interesting to see that with all that has happened in the past two years -- hijab, halal, azaan, etc -- if the BJP can keep its lead.”
At the bustling Balmatta road in Mangaluru, undisputedly the biggest city in coastal Karnataka, home to a port and an Infosys campus, where the traffic that crawls slowly on clean but narrow roads has begun to resemble the state capital, there are signs of anti-incumbency chipping away at the BJP. Pranav Krishna has owned a garment store for close to three decades, identifies himself as a BJP supporter, but says he is thinking about what he will do come May 10.
“Because I cannot deny that this government has not done well. The 40% sarkara may be an exaggeration but petty corruption is everywhere. These roads are not being widened, and there is a water supply issue almost every year. I do not want Bommai to be chief minister again,” Krishna says.
Mangaluru’s electoral fate has mirrored that of coastal Karnataka in the past three election cycles. It has three seats in the district, and in 2008 and 2018, the BJP won two, while UT Khader of the Congress won one. In 2013, the Congress swept all three. But like in the rest of coastal Karnataka, results will centre around one defining question: of whether polarisation is strong enough to sweep any anti-incumbency under the carpet.
Balmatta Road, in the heart of Mangaluru, is perhaps a significant symbol in this defining question. For it is here, 300 metres away from Pranav Krishna’s store, that in January 2009 a group of vigilantes allegedly from the right wing group Sri Ram Sene led by Pramod Muthalik, entered the Amnesia pub, assaulted and chased out a group of men and women for “violating traditional values”.
Nine years later, despite the abundance of video footage, all 30 men accused were acquitted for want of evidence. As visuals of men and women being chased in the streets and dragged down by their hair occupied television screens across India, it was a moment that captured coastal Karnataka and Mangaluru, where there is aspiration and youthful energy but where religious fault-lines also mesh dangerously with conservative fanaticism.
Fourteen years later, and with fourteen days to go for voting day, Krishna thinks back to that day, and is still unclear about what he feels. “There are two things. One, what those that entered the pub did was wrong. Nobody should take the law into their own hands. It brought our business down for a long time, because young people started avoiding this area. Even my child now goes to restaurants and I don’t want anybody to assault him without reason. But the second thing is, I am not comfortable with all this modernity, it is not in sync with Hindu sanskriti. We cannot lose our values.”
Somewhere between those two poles that are so far apart in Krishna’s mind -- between aspiration and tradition -- is the fate of coastal Karnataka’s election.
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