The Karnataka Water Poisoning Incident is Chilling, But What's More Chilling is How Our Society Chooses to Look Away

The Wire

11 hours ago

Members of the Sri Ram Sene were arrested in Karnataka for plotting to poison a school's well to frame a Muslim teacher. These Hindutva goons had conspired to implicate a Muslim teacher falsely, but it could have fuelled an anti-Muslim hatred at large.
Representational image of a classroom. Photo: Flickr CC BY 2.0 ATTRIBUTION 2.0 GENERIC
Would you poison the well from which your own children drink – if that helps you frame your neighbour and defame him or get him punished? Is hatred for your neighbour a stronger sentiment than love for your children?
This question has been haunting me, refusing to leave me in peace, ever since a disturbing incident in Karnataka came to light, where members of the Hindutva organisation Sri Ram Sene allegedly conspired to poison the drinking water of a well at a school. They thought that the blame would fall on the school's headmaster, who happens to be a Muslim, and that he would be punished for it – either transferred or sacked. Or maybe an even more stringent punishment, who knows!
In Hulikatti village of Karnataka's Belagavi district, Sri Ram Sene leader Sagar Patil and two of his associates were arrested for this shocking act. Patil had blackmailed his associate Krishna Madar, threatening to expose his relationship with a woman from another caste. Afraid of social consequences, Madar, along with another friend, Magangouda Patil, bought pesticide. They then lured a student with Rs 500 and a chocolate to pour the pesticide into the school's well.
Children drank the contaminated water. Some of them felt nausea. The children detected a strange smell in the water. An investigation followed. A pesticide bottle was found near the well. The child who was made to do it, revealed who had given him the bottle and what he had been asked to do.
It is a relief that no lives were lost. Would this fact be used in defence of the accused? Might one suggest that these Hindutva activists had calculated the pesticide dosage and knew that it would not kill or cause grave harm to children, that their actual intent was not to harm the kids but to only to incriminate the headmaster? That their true goal was not murder of children but to frame and ruin the Muslim headmaster? A noble intention and act, perhaps, just poorly executed?
What can be more dharmik (religious) in the current climate than finding new ways to torment a Muslim? And after all, do our epics not show Lord Krishna himself employing trickery against his enemies? Why then should such deceit in the name of a "greater good" not be accepted – even celebrated? Must we not admire their ingenuity?
The accused were caught, and we hope the police will pursue the case with seriousness, gathering and presenting evidence so they cannot simply walk free like the accused in the Malegaon blast case. Often in such incidents, when the accused are Hindu, police and courts seem to exercise a strange leniency – as if, somewhere deep down, they believe these men were only serving the nation.
But let us imagine a different scenario. What if the poison had done more harm? What if the pesticide bottle had not been discovered, or the child not identified? What would have happened to the headmaster then?
Would this not have become a national story, shouted across newsrooms and TV screens, feeding a pre-constructed narrative of Muslim guilt and their evil nature which does not even spare children?
These Hindutva goons had conspired to implicate a Muslim teacher falsely, but the plot could easily have served a broader agenda intensifying hatred toward Muslims at large. Thankfully, this did not happen. But that relief raises another question: why was this story buried by the media and ignored by most of us?
This silence reveals the moral collapse of our media. But it also tells us about the moral hollowness of our society. They do not see themselves as responsible to the people of India. Their role now is that of enablers of anti-Muslim propaganda. They are not interested in exposing the true face of Hindutva organisations because they themselves have turned into their extension.
Remember the COVID-19 pandemic? The media, day and night, ran false stories claiming that members of the Tablighi Jamaat were deliberately spreading the virus. Baseless reports kept getting spared that Muslims were spitting on vegetables, on food. No one was prosecuted for these lies. But the consequences were real – thousands of Muslims lost their livelihoods, many were arrested, only to be acquitted later when courts found the accusations entirely false. But no government official, no news channel faced any consequence for fanning this hate. Why?
The Hindutvavadi mind argues, it seems, that using falsehood to spread hatred against Muslims is acceptable. We know from the history of the Hindutvavadi organisations that staging false flag operations is a tested and inherited strategy. What was done in Karnataka is not the first of its kind.
Reading about the Karnataka incident, I was reminded of Lalit Vachani's documentary Men in the Tree. In the film, an old RSS pracharak, Des Raj Goyal, recounts how, during the Partition riots, his town Moga remained relatively peaceful. But his fellow RSS members taunted him: 'What's the use of your presence if Muslims are living peacefully here?'
So Goyal and his comrades printed posters saying that during Ramzan, killing infidels earns religious merit. They pasted them across town. Confusion took hold of the minds of people; fear spread like wildfire. Hindus began buying weapons. Violence broke out. In that violence, Goyal one day found her mother crying. She was grieving the death of the man who looked after their cow. He was a Muslim named Gama. He was killed in the violence. Goyal felt a deep, personal guilt. As if he himself was responsible for his murder.
A younger RSS volunteer, from another generation, narrates a different tale. Under the guidance of a shakha pramukh, 13-14-year-old boys were told to write letters that pretended to be from Muslims to one another, boasting of arms stockpiles and plotting Hindu killings. These letters would 'accidentally' fall into the hands of older boys, be discussed at home and in schools, and would stoke fear. Some parents pulled their children from the RSS shakhas – but many more began sending them there.
Even if the letters were discovered, who could trace them to a specific shakha or handler? But the purpose was served: to implant suspicion and dread in the Hindu mind against Muslims.
In recent years, Karnataka has seen incidents where Hindutva activists themselves shouted "Pakistan Zindabad" or hoisted Pakistan flags, just to frame Muslims. The assumption: only Muslims can possibly do such a thing. Once again, Muslims became suspects and cases were filed – until the truth emerged.
What the Shri Ram Sene did is what the RSS has always done.
Take the testimony of Sudheesh Minni, who worked for decades in the RSS in Kerala. In his memoir, he writes:
'I…was engaged in the activities of the Sangh with great zeal and enthusiasm. Now I am disheartened… The [swayamsevaks] I met in the journey through the Sangh movement are like the unbridled horses of lust. They sleep throughout the day and come out in the dark in search of prey like the hunting beasts… They collect weapons and sharpen them. Everywhere there is immorality and deceit… The swayamsevaks themselves cause calamities—by painting temples green and throwing a dead cow in the courtyard of temples. They collect different types of weapons… Every swayamsevak is moving to an abysmal and dangerous chasm of demoniac activities.'
In the article by Felix Paul and Neha Chaudhary, Minni's and four other ex-volunteers' confessions are laid out clearly. RSS workers, they explain, manufacture violence – then blame it on Muslims. This is part of the method. Not an aberration or an outlier.
In the Malegaon blast case, the court recently observed that the investigation was deliberately weakened. Early evidence strongly implicated Hindutva activists – but the NIA later diluted it.
Similarly, in the 2007 Ajmer Sharif bombing, three RSS pracharaks were convicted. The court expressed displeasure that the roles of senior figures like Pragya Thakur (now a BJP MLA) and Indresh Kumar were never fully investigated.
So yes, the Karnataka incident is chilling. But even more chilling is how our society has chosen to look away.
Have some parts of Hindu society become so poisoned by hate that they are willing to sacrifice their own children just to find a new way to torment Muslims?
That, perhaps, is the question that we Hindus need to ask ourselves at this moment.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.
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