The Indian scholar and rationalist thinker Dr Malleshappa Kalburgi has been shot dead at his home in Dharwad, Karnataka state. On 31 August, two men arrived at Kalburgi’s home. One knocked on the door, claiming to be a student. He had a brief conversation with the teacher before shooting him dead and escaping on motorbike.
Police are exploring the possibility that the murder was connected to comments that Kalburgi made last year criticising idol worship. The remarks angered right-wing Hindu groups. Stones were thrown at his house and he was put under police protection, until he requested that it be withdrawn as it was affecting his interaction with research students. This week, members of these hardline Hindu groups took to social media to celebrate the murder of the professor.
Kalburgi also had enemies within his own community, the Hindu Lingayat sect, which dominates politics in Karnataka state and forms the main support base of the governing Hindu nationalist party, the BJP. He had been outspoken about traditional beliefs and practices in a book published in 1989. He was placed under police protection then, too. Eventually, citing the threat to his family, he withdrew some of the controversial passages from the book, calling it “intellectual suicide”.
Over at the Indian website The Wire, Raghu Kharnad suggests that this intellectual background could have something to do with his death:
"The context of Kalburgi’s life’s work – and the likely context of his death – is the fraught cultural politics of the Lingayat community in Karnataka. Kalburgi, a former vice-chancellor of Kannada University, was a progressive voice among the Lingayats, the middle-caste group that dominates state politics.
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"Kalburgi’s murder is less likely to implicate conventional Hindutva groups, and more likely to involve the fine rivalries and high political stakes within Lingayat caste politics"
Yet inevitably, comparisons have been made to other murders of prominent rationalist thinkers. The murder comes two years after the killing of Dr Narendra Dabholkar, in the western Indian city of Pune. Dhabolkar, who was 71 when he was shot dead, had campaigned against superstition and “fraudulent” practices. He was accused of being anti-religion, given the importance of mysticism in Indian culture; a charge he rejected. His murderers have not been caught.
See the BBC or the Indian Express for more information on Kalburgi’s death.
