Nation Shocked At Murder of Scholar Kalburgi, Bajrang Dal Celebrates

NEW DELHI: Reputed Kannada scholar and retired Vice Chancellor of Hampi University, M M Kalburgi, was shot dead at his residence in Dharwad, Karnataka at 8.40 a.m.his very doorstep by a man, while his accomplice waited outside.

Professor Kalburgi was under threat from Hindu right wing groups for his progressive writings. He had been provided security, that was withdrawn just a few days before his murder by two young men who came on a motorcycle, knocked on his door, and shot him dead.

No one has been arrested as yet. The murder has been condemned across the country. The Citizen spoke to noted rationalist, Narendra Nayak, who is also the president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Association (FIRA).” It’s a very bad news. Two years ago one of our colleague and another crusader against obscurantist forces, Dabholkar, was assassinated in the same fashion, with still no leads in that case,” Nayak said.

He said that Kalburgi had supported an assertion made earlier by U R Anathamurthy against idol worship. And this was being seen as one of the reasons for right wing ire.

“Bodyguards are not a solution. When I asked Dabholkar to hire a few he said that what’s the point, if they can’t kill me they will kill someone else,” Nayak said.

Another academic, a retired professor of Kannada at University of Mysore, Panditaradhya Maisuru, was more cautious in his response. “As a researcher, Kalburgi had made many explicit remarks about this or that issue, but that shouldn’t give anyone a reason to kill him. As of yet, it would be too early to say anything about the motive behind the crime, it could be the land dispute also which he was having with his son-in-law,” Maisuru said. However, according to other media reports, the daughter of the deceased has made it clear that the dispute doesn’t have anything to do with the murder and his father had been receiving threats from the Right-wing activists lately.

Gauri Lankesh, editor of the weekly Lankesh Patrike, saw it as an unprecedented act and didn’t mince her words about the likelihood of a Hindu right hand behind it, “This type of act never happened in Karnataka. There were disagreements but they were resolved through articles, essays, and scholarly papers…. disagreements have always existed in our community.” She named one Hindu firebrand who has been very vocal in the past, “there’s this Pranavananda Swami who has been the leading agitations against Valentine’s Day in the state and had also played a major role in getting “Dhundi” banned.” Dhundi was a novel which told the story of ‘Ganapathy’ and ‘Parvati’ as an alternative to the traditional belief.

Lankesh pointed out that Swami had named many of the progressive writers and artists. As she said, “it was a hit-list sort of a thing. The names reckoned by him were—Girish Karnad, U R Anathamurthy, Banjagare Jaiprakash, M M Kulbargi, and Yogesh master. They were, he said, the “terrorist-writers. Police should probe this angle too. They should investigate whether the fundamentalists are behind this crime.”

Swami belongs to one Bharat Kranti Sena, and is a self styled god-man. “He is not even a Kannadiga. He is from somewhere else, with no credentials whatsoever to critique scholarly papers,” Lankesh said. A Bajrang Dal leader in Karnataka has issued a statement celebrating the murder.

Meanwhile several artists, scholars, and others have issued a statement condemning the violence under the aegis of Sahmat. The statement reads: In shock and horror at the murder of M.M. Kalburgi in Dharwar district in northern Karnataka, we cannot help seeing it as part of an intensifying war against critical thinking by social forces that use obscurantist belief in quest of political hegemony. The eminent Kannada writer, scholar, educationist and social campaigner has for long been associated with rationalist views which he has not hesitated to voice in public. His sharp and often acerbic comments were most often targeted at efforts to seek advantage from the retelling of history and myth for purposes of modern identity politics. Notions about the divine origin of historical figures and the growing trends of public and politicised religiosity invariably drew his scathing comment.

Like the killing of Dr Narendra Dabholkar, exactly two years ago and Govind Pansare earlier this year, the assassins have struck in broad daylight but left few physical traces. Preachers of the new religious bigotry though have left a trail of ill-intentioned and inflammatory statements that could be regarded as incitement.

The local head of the Bajrang Dal in a town of Dakshin Kannada district, has issued a celebratory statement at Kalburgi’s murder, likening it to last August’s death from illness and old age of eminent Kannada litterateur U.R. Ananthamurthy and holding out a warning to the well-known rationalist thinker and writer based in Mysore, K.S. Bhagwan, that he could be the next target.

We see the speculative remarks from local police in Dharwar about a supposed property dispute involving Kalburgi’s widowed daughter as an effort to distract attention from the heinous crime and prepare a prospective alibi for their inability and lack of will in pursuing the murderers.

Kalburgi’s killing comes even as police report a complete lack of progress, or even of credible clues, in the Dabholkar and Pansare murders. It comes as individuals accused of terrorist crimes and murderous rioting are being shown undue leniency by both prosecutors and the judiciary, because the colour of their violence accords with the political ideology that today rules the country.

We condemn the heinous killing of Kalburgi and call on all forces that stand for a sane and just social order to mobilise in the quest for justice.”

Signed by: M.K Raina, Ram Rahman, Vivan Sundaram, Prabhat Patnaik, Sukumar Murlidharan, DN Jha, Sohail Hashmi, MMP Singh, Chanchal Chauhan, Madangopal Singh, Vishnu Nagar, Asad Zaidi, Sanjeev Kumar, Irfan Habib, Shireen Moosvi, Manmohan, Shubha, Utsa Patnaik, Mihir Bhattacharya, Sashi Kumar, Jayati Ghosh, Geeta Kapur, Indira Arjun Dev, Indira Chandrasekhar, Kanishka Prasad, Kumkum Sangari, Lata Singh, Madhu Prasad, Parthiv Shah, Prabhat Shukla, Rakhshanda Jalil, Veer Munshi, Vishwamohan Jha, Zoya Hasan,