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Religious thugs in southern India

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Hindus, Muslims and Christians all live together in the southern Indian town of Mangalore. Their young people are told not to mix with one another. If they do, they face gangs of religious thugs. The BBC’s Tinku Ray has the story.

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MARCO WERMAN:  In India rapid economic development has changed the way many people live.  That’s generally a good thing.  More income often means less poverty.  But occasionally modern India comes into conflict with traditional India and that sometimes leads to violence.  That may be what’s going on in the southern Indian town of Mangalore, as Tinku Ray reports.

TINKU RAY:  Coastal Mangalore is a fast developing town in the shadow of India’s IT hub, Bangalore.  It’s peppered with air conditioned malls; half built new roads and several colleges full of aspiring young students.  In this branch of a western style coffee shop, young people gather to enjoy the moment.  But there’s a dark undercurrent here.  Any small show of affection can lead to being hunted down and beaten.  Because of the groups of violent young men who are intent on creating fear among the young, especially Muslims and Hindus mingling.

FEMALE VOICE 1:  I am a 21-year-old student.  I am a Hindu.  But I know a Muslim guy at school.  We went to the ice cream parlor together.  There were four or five people who forced us into an auto rickshaw.  They took us to another place where they questioned us, then hit him in the face.

RAY: I spoke to dozens of terrified women and men who had been victims of the so-called moral police.  They are independent vigilante groups, Muslims and Hindus, imposing their will on the people of Mangalore.  Victims wouldn’t speak on record because of fear and humiliation.  What you hear are the voices of actors reading the victims’ statements filed at police stations in the past year.

FEMALE VOICE 2:  I am a 17-year-old college student.  I am Hindu.  This evening I was coming back to Mangalore on a bus.  At one of the stops, a friend of mine called Ashraf got on.  Later three or four people forcibly stopped the bus and a couple of them took Ashraf to the back while one person questioned me.  They asked who he was.  I answered he’s my brother, but he told them he was just my friend.  Then they beat us.

FEMALE VOICE 3:  I’m studying for a Master’s in Information Technology and I’m Christian.  On Saturday I was in the cyber café with a Christian guy.  But when we came downstairs, seven or eight men kidnapped us.  They took us to a shop where they started hitting us.  I recognized them; they were Muslims who were furious because they thought I was a Muslim girl with a Christian boy.

RAY: There are several “moral police” forces in Mangalore.  Some from the youth wings of political parties.  Many linked to Hindu groups, but also Muslim vigilantes.  One of the biggest vigilante groups is the Hindu Nationalist Bajrang Dal.  Their leader Sharan Pumpwell, rules the streets of Mangalore.  His and the other moral police groups freely admit using violence because they are so strongly opposed to Muslims and Hindus being together.

INTERPRETER:  Mostly our informers tell us that there is a Muslim boy with a Hindu girl and that’s when we come in to judge.  It’s never pre-planned, but when our temper gets out of control, we might pick up a big rock and throw it on his head.  Our girls and women are not following the culture they’ve been taught. They come home at 1:00 in the morning.  They don’t wear Indian clothes.  This is not what our ancestors desired.  This is not our culture.

RAY: Mangalore has long been a meeting point of Muslim trading communities, Christian missionaries, and the majority Hindus who for centuries, have lived in peace.  But recently religious tensions in the region have grown.  And so has the power of the moral police.  In fact, many people, from shop keepers and bus conductors, to taxi drivers are informants.

A.S. RAO:  The incidents that I started noticing from the day I landed here, mainly were these guerilla actions on couples having a good time.

RAY: Many young couples have come to enjoy themselves on a sandy beach near Mangalore.  Superintendent of Police for the region, A.S. Rao, is watching for trouble.  He was posted to Mangalore last year after a high profile attack on a bar.  He says the general public often supports the moral police because they’re opposed to a new generation of young Muslims and Hindus who flaunt traditional social conventions.

RAO:  I would suddenly get a call from some bystander at a bus stop saying that a couple was beaten up and the guys just escaped from there.  Then we would just be looking in the dark as to who these guys were.

RAY: A.S. Rao told me that his job is so difficult because many police officers sympathize with the groups.  After all, he told me, the police are a reflection of society.  Journalist Sudipto Mondal has covered the issue extensively in the region.

SUDIPTO MONDAL:  There’s a certain amount of patronage from society itself.  There are definitely parents who support it and think that these guys are protecting their children from debauchery or whatever.  I’m sure it’s an unpleasant experience for them, not as much because their child has been beaten, but because it’s out in the open that it is a matter of family honor.  So there is definitely a sense of shame that makes parents tend to say okay well, I’d rather have not gone through this experience, but thanks to you guys, my daughter has been saved.

RAY: Young people, even in small towns, have been exposed to worlds beyond their own.  That’s led them to move away from their parents traditional values.  The rise in power of the moral police is evidence of a back lash.  For The World, I’m Tinku Ray in Mangalore, southern India.

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