On July 27, as his car drove into Nettaru, a remote hamlet in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, Nalin Kumar Kateel, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) State chief, met with a hostile reception. Workers of his party and Sangh Parivar outfits surrounded and pushed his car, raising anti-government slogans.
It took Kateel, the area MP, nearly an hour to pacify the angry crowd after consoling the family members of Praveen Nettaru, 34, his one-time driver and a budding worker of the party’s Yuva Morcha, who was hacked to death by a gang of assailants a day earlier. “What is the use of BJP being in power in both the State and the Centre if they cannot safeguard their own workers?” Praveen’s mother Ratnavati told The Hindu.
Coming close on the heels of another BJP worker, Harsha, 28, being hacked to death in Shivamogga on February 20 this year, the murder of Praveen Nettaru seems to have unleashed a wave of anger and frustration among the Hindutva cadre base across the State. The two murders also come amid a virulent communal campaign against the Muslim community by Hindutva forces in the State – starting from hijab, which eventually expanded to halal meat, azaan, and an economic boycott of Muslims.
