090315: Intolerance just won't ebb in BJP-ruled Karnataka

Asha Rai's account in today's Times of India succinctly (concisely, pithily and tersely) sums up the current state of affairs in BJP ruled Karnataka. Dhikkaar to this current government.
The intrinsic (inherent, built-in, basic, fundamental, essential, central, native and natural).......and inane (silly, absurd, ridiculous, idiotic, stupid, frivolous, childish, immature and mindless) rabidity ingrained in the veins of the BJP and ethos, is speedily exposing the true colours of the party and the lumpen ideals what the Party stands for - driving it to its inevitable doom - does not the BJP realize this?
Citizens of Karnataka are not fooled, and realize that it took a fork-tongued, two-faced PM-aspirant of the BJP two months - after the infamous 'Muthalik' Ram Sene incident of assault on pub-visiting girls - to condedemn it. Is LK Advani's condemnation real, or his tears merely crocodilean? ...just an election ploy, swinging on public sentiment? If Advani really meant what he said, wouldn't the intolerant moral-policing goons not be in jail by now? With no more nonsense brooked, and no repition of such petty and prejudiced acts? Without appropriate grievance-redressal action, would the perfidious hypocrite Yediyurappa continue in his BJP Chief Ministerial seat even for a day? And would his shame-of-Udipi-lieutenant, Acharya, be sitting on his 'Home' portfolio chair so smugly smiling away his wily schemes?


090315.toi.KarnatakaIntolerance
Intolerance just won't ebb in BJP-ruled Karnataka
15 Mar 2009, 0229 hrs IST, Asha Rai , TNN
BANGALORE: Has BJP's nine-month rule in Karnataka created an atmosphere in which just about anybody with a very narrow, bigoted view of culture and religion, finds it not only easy to air their extreme and highly harmful views in public but also to act on it, to the detriment of society at large?
With amazing regularity, petty and prejudiced acts that rip at the social fabric of society are hitting the headlines. Less than a week after 100 people were rounded up and put in jail for days on end for the mere act of partying, comes the news that in a town near Udupi (state's home minister V S Acharya's home town), a few Hindu activists are objecting to the installation of a statue of Charlie Chaplin just because he was a Christian!
That the statue coming up next to a temple would hurt Hindu sentiments. Can things get more absurd that this?
What's worse is the impact it has had on those who wanted to erect the 67-ft statue of Chaplin at Baindur.
While the local administration as well as the local panchayat have given permission to Hemanth Hegde to go ahead with the Chaplin project, the man himself is reluctant, given the threat of violence and hatred he feels the protest has spawned. A few more incidents like this and people will start self-censoring, not knowing from which quarter the objection will come, and for what trivial reason.
In recent months, Mangalore and the area around it have had the misfortune of being at the centre of various kinds of moral policing and episodes of religious intolerance. It started with attacks on churches and places of worship
soon after the BJP came to power.
Then came the infamous 'Mutalik episode' when Sri Rama Sene activists barged into a pub and beat up girls for no rhyme or reason in the middle of the afternoon in full media glare. Even as the reverberations of the Sene attack were yet to die down, a Kerala MLA's daughter and her Muslim friend were beaten up.