Secretary of the State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) G.V. Sriram Reddy said on Monday that the State government had failed to check communal forces from expanding their influence in the State.
He was speaking after inaugurating a convention on increasing communalism in coastal districts organised by the district unit of CPM, here. A book Narakada Garbha Gudiyolage was released on the occasion.
Mr. Reddy said that the Sangh Parivar had made the coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada as a laboratory for testing their communal strategies. Though the Siddaramaiah government is in power for the last four years, it has done little or nothing to check these right wing forces, he added.
One MP of a coastal district had threatened to burn the district, while another MP had beaten up doctors, he said, adding that such was the state of affairs. It was not just in coastal districts, in Chikkamagaluru, the Sangh Parivar had stuck to its Datta Mala campaign, whereas it had launched the Hanuman Mala campaign in Raichur, Koppal, and Ballari districts to attract the Scheduled Tribes to it, he said.
The fight between BJP leaders B.S. Yeddyurappa and K.S. Eshwarappa over the Sangoli Rayanna Brigade was a creation of the Sangh Parivar to attract votes from the Kuruba community, he said.
Throughout the country, the atrocities against Dalits and minority communities were rising ever since the Narendra Modi government came to power at the Centre, Mr. Reddy said.
G. Rajashekhar, writer, said that the murder of Praveen Poojary, a BJP worker at Kenjur in Udupi district in August 2016 by activists belonging to right-wing groups for transporting cattle, showed the gravity of the situation. People in rural areas could not keep their old cows because they had small cowsheds. Hence, they were forced to sell it, he said.
Despite postures to the contrary, the Sangh Parivar did not want to remove inequalities in the Hindu community. Rather it wanted unity of Hindus to assault the minority communities, he said.
K. Shankar, member of State Secretariat of CPM, Balakrishna Shetty, secretary of the district unit of CPM, and P. Vishwanath Rai, president of the district unit of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions were present.
