Pictures of cops dressed in saffron for Vijaya Dashami at police stations have emerged in Karnataka, which has in recent months witnessed a surge in Sangh parivar activities.
Leader of the Opposition and Congress veteran P.C. Siddaramaiah has tweeted the pictures of personnel clad in white and saffron civil attire at the Bijapur and Kaup police stations on Vijaya Dashami, which fell on Friday.
Policemen at the Bijapur police station wore the white kurta-pyjamas traditional to north Karnataka, with saffron scarves around their necks or shoulders.
Their counterparts at Kaup police station in Udupi, coastal Karnataka, wore white dhotis and saffron shirts, while the policewomen wore saffron saris.
Siddaramaiah attacked chief minister Basavaraj Bommai in a series of tweets, suggesting the saffron clothes worn by the police had sent out a wrong message to the public.
“Why did you change only their uniforms @CMofKarnataka? Give them the trishul. That way you can realise your dream of a jungle Raj,” the former chief minister tweeted in Kannada.
“@BSBommai, please resign and go if you can’t govern according to the Constitution. Save Democracy,” Siddaramaiah tweeted.
Siddaramaiah alleged that Sangh parivar activists and the police were engaging in moral policing by harassing couples in the name of tradition and religion, and BJP lawmakers were supporting the perpetrators.
“On the one hand, there is police brutality against innocent young men and women. Then, lawmakers release the accused from the police station. And then there is the call for violence by distributing trishuls,” he tweeted.
A sub-inspector from Kaup police station, Raghavendra, told reporters he had organised a similar puja last year at the Brahmavar police station, 10km away, where he was posted then.
“There is nothing unusual in this (wearing saffron). It was only a Vijaya Dashami gathering of all the police station personnel, who work like a family,” he said.
Udupi MLA Ragupathi Bhat of the BJP directed a question at Siddaramaiah while talking to reporters in Udupi: “Why are you scared of the saffron colour, which we have worshipped since time immemorial?”
He added: “Siddaramaiah is saying all this to appease minorities and to link the colour saffron to violence. Siddaramaiah wore Tipu Sultan’s crown and wielded a sword (both replicas), and is now criticising the police for wearing saffron at a puja.”
A ruling party MLA, Umanath Kotian, recently got two parivar activists released on bail from a police station in Mangalore after they were arrested for harassing young men and women from the Hindu and Muslim faiths for travelling together in a car.
Last week, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had distributed trishuls among new Bajrang Dal recruits at events held in Mangalore and Udupi. While they had justified it as “trishul deekshe (initiation)”, the development had drawn flak from Opposition parties.
Karnataka, the BJP’s gateway to the south, has long been a hub of Sangh parivar outfits that engage in moral policing and attack cattle traders and transporters in the name of “gau raksha”.
