local sensitivities involved in Belgaum issue
The violent flare-up in the Maharashtra-Karnataka border region of Belgaum this past weekend was entirely avoidable. Had only the authorities handled the matter with care, keeping in mind the ethnic and linguistic sensitivities of the local population, perhaps the situation would not have erupted in this manner. Thankfully, there were no casualties, although 25 people, including 18 police constables, were injured, and there was some destruction of property. The situation has calmed down since then and a tenuous peace now prevails. However, the incident pushed the town to the brink, and the ensuing violence could have turned deadly. Popular passions, fuelled in no small measure by certain politicians, have been re-ignited on both sides of the Karnataka-Maharashtra border after the Karnataka Public Works Department on Friday took down a Marathi signboard that declared a Karnataka village in Belgaum to be part of Maharashtra. On Saturday, a similar board was put up and taken down again. When officials returned to the scene on Sunday to remove the plaque that had been re-installed, they met with an agitated crowd. Soon, stone-pelting and lathi charges followed.
Some have decried the removal of the board as unnecessarily provocative, but it's important to keep in mind that the action was court-certified. Notably, on July 21, a Bench of the Karnataka High Court had asked the State Government, “When the district administration is afraid to remove the board, what will be the fate of the peopleIJ” The court's intervention was on the basis of a Kannadiga RTI activist's petition to have the signpost removed. It was supposedly put up by the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, which campaigns for the merger of Belgaum into Maharashtra, then removed by a rival, pro-Kannadiga group in December 2012, only to be erected once again. This cycle is part of a larger, decades-old border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka. Since the States were re-organised on the basis of language in the 1950s, Maharashtra has wanted to absorb some 785 border villages and towns from Karnataka, such as Belgaum, Karwar, Nipani and Khanapur, which have a sizeable Marathi-speaking population. The matter has been pending before the Supreme Court for decades, and tends to flare up occasionally. Political friction between the local Marathi leadership in these border areas and the State Government is common. Also, the border dispute remains a major bone of contention between the Governments in Bangalore and Mumbai. The Maharashtra State Assembly, for instance, has passed several resolutions demanding that Belgaum and other disputed regions be placed under the control of the Union Government since the Karnataka Government allegedly tramples upon the interests of the Marathi people. Expectedly, these allegations and demands have also surfaced in this round of sparring.
Ultimately, the dispute will have to be resolved by the Supreme Court, but until then, authorities at the local and State levels must exercise caution and take prominent people from all sides into confidence before acting. Issues relating to ethnicity and identity are emotive ones, as language riots in the past and the painful birth of Telangana more recently, have proved.