The Bengaluru City Police recently registered a suo motu FIR against a woman for holding a placard which read “Umar Khalid Zindabad”, “Sharjeel Imam Zindabad” at a students’ protest. Neha Bora, National President of the All India Students’ Association, during her visit to Bengaluru last week, slammed the Congress government in Karnataka for its action and said that parties who claim to be against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) must lead by example rather than pay lip service.

This is not an isolated incident. Even as senior Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi have been vocal about Israel’s war on Palestine, the Bengaluru Police booked three suo motu FIRs against pro-Palestine demonstrators. Two of these have been quashed by the High Court of Karnataka. Police even disrupted multiple indoor meetings where pro-Palestine films and issues were being discussed. While no police permission is needed for indoor meetings, the unwritten rule in Bengaluru seems to be that the local police need to be kept in the loop.

Extreme caution

Irrespective of the party in power, the Bengaluru City Police have been accused of being “risk averse” regarding protests and dissent. The police have often weaponised the Licensing and Regulation of Protests, Demonstrations and Protest Marches (Bengaluru City) Order, 2021, which mandates that all protests can be held only at Freedom Park.

The order came in response to a suo motu PIL taken up by the High Court over protests causing traffic disruptions. Significantly, it also came close on the heels of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, during the BJP’s tenure, when the pavement outside a mosque called Bilal Bagh turned into a site of protest. Several activists argue that protests being restricted to Freedom Park are ghettoised and invisibilised. A campaign to reverse the 2021 order, after the Congress came to power in 2023, has not yielded any results.

The police argue that they did not allow pro-Palestine protests, for if they had, right-wing groups too would have held pro-Israel demonstrations and the situation may have escalated. Recently, stand-up comic Kunal Kamra had to shift his stand-up show at a venue in Whitefield, after a little-known Hindutva outfit opposed it. To the government’s credit it ensured he performed at another venue. Earlier, shows by stand-up comic Munnawar Faruqui were cancelled twice during the BJP regime following a similar campaign.

Azim Premji University recently lodged a criminal complaint against its own students for holding a discussion on the 1991 Kunan Poshpora incident in Kashmir without prior approval from the administration, after activists from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad barged in and vandalised the University’s campus. Persistent campaigns by Hindutva groups prompting the police to either deny permission or try to make venues back out are not uncommon.

In a rare instance, recently, the police gave security for a discussion on Umar Khalid’s book at the Bangalore International Centre, after the organisers refused to back down despite a campaign. However, the police registered a suo motu FIR against a woman for holding a placard hailing Umar Khalid, following a shrill campaign by Kannada television news media.

A slow approach

Despite the Congress coming to power with a thumping majority in 2023, a rare feat in Karnataka in decades, it has been slow in countering the Hindutva agenda, for fear of what has been called “playing into the hands of the BJP.”

For instance, following the new Home Minister Priyank Kharge’s face-off with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) over it not being registered and that it should take government’s permission before using public spaces, the State Cabinet recently approved the Karnataka Regulation of Use of Government Premises and Public Property Bill, 2026. However, it was not tabled in the just-concluded legislature session. Even as Mr. Kharge insisted on the RSS taking permission for their Vijaydashmi route march in his constituency Chittapur in 2025, the RSS was allowed to hold route marches in 100 places to mark its centenary.

Neither has the Congress repealed the two “communal laws” — the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, and the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act, 2022 — it promised to roll back in its 2023 manifesto.

adhitya.bharadwaj@thehindu.co.in