K’TAKA DALITS ENTER TEMPLE, FACE BOYCOTT
bull of Kottihalli village temple vanished on May 19. The runaway bull was found within hours, but the timing set tongues wagging.
It was Day 1 of a four-day fair of Goddess Kucchangiyamma. On the third day of festivities, for the first time in Kottihalli’s history, Dalits entered the temple under an agreement engineered by the police.
The fair ended abruptly that day, shortly after the Dalits came out of the temple. There was to be no Day 4 of the fair in the village of 200 households in Tumkuru district, around 75 km northwest of Bengaluru. “The bull ran away because of the Dalits,” is a jibe Kottihalli’s Dalits allege they heard from Hindus. “We also heard the bull had stopped eating because Dalits entered the temple,” said Mahalingaiah, 53, a Dalit resident of the village.
A day before the fair, police had held a peace meeting between Dalits and Hindus. The Dalits had petitioned the police to ensure they faced no castebased discrimination during the event.
“We entered the temple about 5 am on May 21, but the priest refused to perform the puja,” added Mahalingaiah. “The priest agreed after police intervened. We offered prayers till about 7 am.” He added, “After we came out of the temple, the savarnas (Hindus) started taking down decorations around the temple. We were told the fair had ended.”
Tumakuru deputy superintendent of police, K Nagaraj, said, “We had gathered all the residents and told them that temple entry for the Dalits would have to be allowed. Everybody had agreed.” Police saw the agreement crumbling.
Kottihalli’s Hindus insist the fair being called off was not related to Dalits entering the temple. “An old woman who lived near the temple had died about a week ago and, as is the norm, there is a period of mourning. That is the reason the fair was called off,” said Ranganna, 45, a Vokkaliga (savarna), who runs a fair price shop in the village. “It is all a misunderstanding. We have lived in the village as members of the same family.”
But Ranganna’s account incensed the dead woman’s son, Kumar, also a Vokkaliga.
“How dare they say the fair was called off because of my mother’s death? The mourning period ended three days before the fair. If they really were mourning for my mother, they should not have conducted the fair at all,” he said.
After the fair’s abrupt end, Dalits claim Hindus stopped interacting with them. Kottihalli has 50 Dalit houses located in a cluster in the northeast of the village.
Police organised yet another peace meeting on Thursday to resolve the crisis, but the Hindus did not turn up. An elderly Hindu resident of the village who did not want to be named said Dalits had enjoyed reservation, drawn the benefits of education and were more affluent. “You cannot say anything against them, even if they have benefited from the state’s largesse.”
The temple priest, Chikkanna, who belongs to the Kuruba caste (classified as an OBC), justified his reluctance to assist Dalits in offering prayers. “I told them that they could conduct the puja themselves.” The village has two Kuruba households and members of these families have traditionally been the priests.