Out here, it is illegal for anyone on a bike to wear a helmet. That doesn’t seem right and it isn’t. “Not illegal, but can you see even one person wearing a helmet?”

I do…later, not at 8 in the morning of Friday, April 27, the last date for withdrawal of candidature, when the sun’s out but the cops aren’t. “That’s ’coz the police will stop you if you do. The locals know that, so the only people you’ll see wearing helmets here are out-of-towners.”

Karnataka in April-May is hot…so hot that even the police go easy on ‘unprotected’ bikers. “These four months, they won’t stop us,” said a Good Samaritan of Gulbarga, divisional headquarters of HK, Hyderabad Karnataka, a semi-arid region comprising six northeastern districts formerly under the Nizams of Hyderabad, in early April. “It’s just too hot to wear one.”

The heat’s got be a reason here too, the heat coupled with the humidity…Kanara, Karavali, coastal Karnataka is muggy. But no, that’s not the reason it seems. “Terrorism. There are terrorists here na, that’s why.”

The unreliable source is a man on the street, off the street, drinking his morning cuppa near Shamsuddin Circle on NH 66 (ex NH 17), India’s stunning west coast highway that you better not drive down lest the view sends you careening into the Arabian Sea.

Khalnayak nahi, he’s a Naik. Namadhari Naik. Roughly 70,000 votes out of 2,14,694, one in three, the demographically strongest community in the segment.

Terrorism? Bullshit, the helmet thing is only due to the weather, they’re just jealous because we are richer, says one of around 40,000 Nawayath voters, devout Muslims (“So no alcohol and no pork, eh?” “No, man, absolutely not.”), economically powerful, numerically not so much, not even when clubbed with the 15,000-odd other, less prosperous Muslims, some Dakkhanis from inland Karnataka, some Bearys from Mangalore and some Mappilas from Kerala, here in search of a livelihood.

The distinctions simply don’t matter to most non-Muslims. As far as they’re concerned, all of them, including the Nawayaths, are outsiders. Others. The non-Muslims are more than willing to talk. The language is a bit of a hurdle, most only speak Kannada, but polarisation doesn’t get lost in translation, the signals are picked up by the eyes as much as the ears.

The language isn’t an issue when it comes to Muslims, both Nawayaths and others, but getting one to open up is. Ironically, it’s what makes othering them, thinking of them as outsiders, people who don’t belong, easier – what they speak and what they don’t. That and the more obvious duo. For a quarter century now, commerce and religion have been playing chicken here.

Ordinarily, they pull out of each other’s way. But every once in a while, they collide head-on, pick themselves up, dust themselves off, back up and race towards each other.

This is Bhatkal.

****

Tuesday, May 15. The aftermath of the latest head-on collision. Sunil Naik of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) beats the incumbent Mankala Subba Vaidya of Congress by nearly 6,000 votes. A reversal of the verdict last time around, a restoration of order – in the 40 years since a Nawayath last became its lawmaker (Siddiq Mohamed Yahya Bin Umer in 1978 and SM Yahya in 1973 – both from Congress), Bhatkal has always sent a Namadhari Naik to the Vidhan Soudha. Like almost every politically dominant community in the world’s largest democracy, it has no party affiliations, only loyalty towards its own leaders, who play musical chairs for tickets.

Brace yourself (also, suffix the surname Naik in your head).

Ram Narayan, RN: Janata Party, 1983, won; 1985, won; Congress, 1989, won; JDS, 1999, 4th.

Yashodhar: JDS, 2004, 3rd; 2008, SP, 3rd. JD: Congress, 1999, won; 2004, 2nd; 2008, won; March 2017, BJP.

Shivananda: BJP, 1999, 2nd; 2004, won; 2008, 2nd; 2013, Yeddyurappa’s rebels (KJP), 3rd; Jan 2014, JDS; Apr 2014: Ghar wapsi.

For four polls in a row, it was a fight between three or more Naiks; the last of those, a lesson in electoral politics five summers ago.

A singular summer in 2013, Vaidya vs three Naiks (JD, Shivananda and BJP’s Govinda) vs a Nawayath (Enayathullah Shabandri, JDS, backed by Majlis-e-Islah Wa Tanzeem — Tanzeem for short, an influential socio-political organisation that safeguards the Nawayaths’ interests and also tells the community which button to press on the EVM).

The Tanzeem had gone all out in support of its candidate. The Bhatkal Muslim Jamaats, area-based organisations under its umbrella in Dubai, Riyadh, Mumbai, Bangalore, wherever Nawayaths have a presence (and this is not an insignificant number, roughly 10-12,000, mostly in the Gulf) bore the travelling expenses of anyone willing to go back home to vote. As per very rough estimates, about 40 per cent availed of the offer. Still, Vaidya, an Independent and a Mogaveera, a community of Kannada-speaking fisherfolk won, getting the bulk of the non-Namadhari, non-Nawayath votes while reaping the rewards of the three-way Namadhari split. Lesson learnt.

Last month, BJP gave the ticket to a Naik, Sunil, not JD or Shivananda, but if there was disaffection, it didn’t give rise to rebel candidacies. Other developments in the five-year interim: May 2013: Vaidya visits Tanzeem. June 2014: Vaidya joins Congress. December: Paresh Mesta, an unfortunate death, a (murder?) mystery, a polarisation plank on a platter. March: HD Kumaraswamy visits Tanzeem but cannot secure support for JDS. April: JDS gives the ticket to a Nawayath, SM Amjad not Shabandri. SM Amjad withdraws at the eleventh hour. It’s a head-to-head contest. May: Polling. Results. Not entirely unexpected. The fault lines were visible when I visited last month.

*

Thursday, April 26. The bus starts from Karwar at noon. It can’t take its usual route into Ankola. It overtakes the entourage that has stopped for lunch at a wayside Udupi hotel. The driver takes a tad too long to exit Kumta, and irate khakis force the bus to go back to the very end of the queue.

The bus gets held up again, this time at Honnavar.

The entourage stops for tea at Murdeshwar, at RNS Residency I hear later, and the bus finally makes it to Bhatkal, five hours later. Blame the bandobast for the roadshow of an SPG protectee and the incumbent Chief Minister. No laal batti, but an entire highway worth of traffic still being held up at various junctures. It’s evening not afternoon. Is it too late? A fork in the road. Left, the highway down to Udupi, Mangalore…Kerala. Right, the road into the main town of Bhatkal, the promise of Nawayaths. But where are they? “Down this road, just keep walking and ask for ‘2 number market’.” Market No. 2? “No, ‘2 number market… Dubai market.” Oh, ‘2 number market’. “Just ask for Dubai Market…someone might take offence if you say ‘2 number’.”

The first unreliable source, the first hint of a fault line. Keep walking. Not too many people on the road to Dubai Market; a few zip past on bikes, heading up the slope, heading north, but not too far up north. To Venkatapur, where Bhatkal taluka begins, where Rahul Gandhi is going to address the crowd.

My son is going to be up on the stage with him, beams an elderly gentleman sitting in his balcony, a Nawayath. Newcomers (or perhaps the nine who came?) from Yemen (or maybe Iran?) and intermarried with the native Jains…a lot of water has flown down the Venkatapur and the Chowtani, two rivers that bookend Bhatkal, into the Arabian Sea in the 12 centuries since a dhow made its way up the latter.

In the post-truth era, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Islam arrived in the subcontinent via sea, not land, in the form of traders, not warriors, with dates and horses for sugar and spice and everything nice available along the Konkan and the Malabar.

One such bunch came to Bhatkal, now smack dab in the middle of Karnataka’s modest coast (India’s seventh largest state by area has just 300-odd kilometres of coastline running roughly parallel to NH 66 and the lone Konkan Railway track, longer only than West Bengal and Goa), almost. Halfway between Karwar and Mangalore, almost. Halfway between Panvel and Thiruvananthapuram, almost.

“If you go on past the Jamia Masjid, you can still see the spot where they first landed,” says Moulavi Abdul Aleem Qasmi, the editor of Naqsh-e-Nawayath, a fortnightly newspaper in a language sans script, not entirely unlike another language sans script. Or perhaps Nawayathi is just a dialect of Konkani, the language of the locals back when the traders (or persecuted people…many potential triggers, myriad theories; the truth, a mix perhaps) landed, a language that is a part of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India since 1992 but was, for a while earlier, controversially considered to be a dialect of Marathi.

A fork in the road. Konkani, left to right. Nawayathi, right to left. Konkani, also Roman, Malayalam, even Kannada and Perso-Arabic, but officially Devanagari. Nawayathi, Perso-Arabic, Nastaliq. Some might say a mix of nine but it doesn’t add up…Konkani, obviously. Marathi, maybe. Persian and Arabic, of course, the origin theories. That’s four. What else? Malayalam? Tulu, the tongue of Dakshina Kannada and northern Kasaragod? Surely they are too far. Urdu? By all accounts, it dates to the 12th century; Nawayathi is older. So…Kannada? Only in the last six decades or so, if at all, and there’s the bone of contention, a linguistic bone that slowly metamorphosed into a religious one. “I brought my kids back from Bombay to Bhatkal, made sure they learnt Kannada, you must if you’re in Karnataka,” says the elderly gentleman behind the counter at Sandow Halwa. (Things a Bhatkali would like his town to be known for: 1. Sandow Halwa, a nutty, milky sweet treat sans milk that is uniquely Bhatkal, but unlike Dharwad Pedha does not have a Geographical Indication (GI) tag.)

His isn’t a particularly popular view among the Nawayaths. “When we go to Dubai, we are not forced to speak Arabic, why do we have to speak a language that is not ours at home?” asks a youngster. The Sandow Halwa elder himself does not speak or read Kannada, although he understands it swalpa swalpa (a little). He didn’t really need to. In his younger days, Bhatkal was not part of a well-defined Kannada-speaking territory.

After the fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the death of Tipu Sultan in 1799, Kanara became a district of Madras Presidency; 60 years later, the coastal Karnataka district was bifurcated, North going to Bombay. Bhatkal was its southern extremity; it remained so for a decade after independence until 1956, when Mysore (Karnataka since 1973) came into being courtesy the linguistic reorganisation of India’s states.

Over the century-and-a-half of British Raj, Nawayaths, traders mostly, textiles, hotels (lodging as well as “fooding”), et al, set up shop in Bombay, Madras (things a Bhatkali would like his town to be known for: 2. Moulana Company, established in 1888, makers of lungis etc. with origins in Bhatkal, now facing stiff competition from mills.), Calcutta (on and around Lower Chitpur Road near Nakhoda Masjid, according to all three elders including Qasmi), Dhaka and Karachi, home to a few super rich Nawayaths dealing in gold and pearls. Then came 1947 – and partition, the biggest “himaakat” as far as Qasmi is concerned. “Batwara nahi hota toh sab log saath mein rehte the poora, Akhand Bharat.” Yes, that term. The dream of an undivided India is not the preserve of a particular parivaar.

Romance transcends religion and other boundaries, especially when it comes to seniors like Qasmi, 75; legal contracts like marriages don’t.

Nawayaths are highly endogamous, and the super rich who stayed back in Karachi are great prospective matches for the mere rich of Bhatkal. Here, like elsewhere in the country, Pakistani passport holders have to report to the police station and submit written affidavits mentioning the duration of stay and purpose of visit; they are not allowed to go else. “Now, people (from Pakistan) think twice before coming here”, laments Qasmi.

*

“Matanaḍuvudilla…baat karna nahi aata hai.” It’s Friday, he has to get ready for Jumma, but he’s nice enough to take some time out, half an hour no less, even at the risk of running a tad late in order to answer some of my questions.

That the integration in Kanara is less than in, say, Hyderabad Karnataka is obvious. But why? And what role has it played in coastal Karnataka becoming the cauldron of communalism, the hotbed of Hindutva in the state? Are those labels even fair?

I’m at the home of Dr Mohammed Haneef Shabab, ex-general secretary of Tanzeem, and he’s telling me about the time he had to make do without the knowledge of Thai in Bangkok. “‘How much?’ ‘Six baht’ ‘Four baht?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ok.’” Ah, just like an outsider amid Kannadigas – purely transactional. Nawayaths, landed, moneyed, employ others, both non-Muslims and non-Nawayath Muslims (one in four Muslims in Bhatkal is either a Dakkhani or a Beary or a Mappila), as domestic help, shop hands, etc. Then there are the fisherfolk, tens of thousands of them in the Bhatkal-Honnavar area, who profit from the Nawayath’s fondness for fish; some have even managed to build sprawling mansions for themselves, just like the Nawayaths they get bulk of their business from.

“It’s more of an obsession really,” a Beary tells me a couple of days later in Mangalore. “I mean, we too love fish. A Mangalorean anywhere else in the world will order fish, finish it and then say, ‘it’s not as good as back home.’ But those Nawayaths, it’s like that’s all they talk about, what fish they’re having for their next meal.” Sort of corroborated what I am told in Bhatkal…“See, if there are two of us and one last piece of some desirable fish, say king fish…we like the bigger and better varieties…so the two of us, we will try to outbid each other. And this happens even when there is no shortage in supply, just to show the other person that we can afford to,” says the young Nawayath who doesn’t care for the imposition of Kannada. “We don’t care for the smaller fish, and because of what we’re willing to pay, the prices of the bigger fish, king fish and all, have gone up. Others can’t afford them anymore.”

Some Bearys might talk dismissively about Nawayath ego, but in Bhatkal, prosperity is a source of pride. Land reforms were a setback, but at around the same time in the early 1970s started the Gulf Boom that helped recover, well, lost ground.

Those who came back from other parts of the country soon made their way to the Gulf (“Most have their own business… the few who are employees of others are in higher management, not like the construction labourers or taxi drivers from Kerala that you hear about”; that Nawayath pride again) and stayed there, coming back once in a while, sending money back home. Within Karnataka, I am told, remittances to Bhatkal are next only to Bangalore; so far, I’ve been unable to find the figures to verify this claim – please feel free to get in touch if you have any leads; my email ID is chatterjikaushik1@gmail.com.

Purely transactional ties are easy to snap when the other bonds are weak, be it linguistic or cultural or religious. In Hyderabad-Karnataka, Bidar, Gulbarga etc, there’s a much higher degree of integration – there’s Sufi poetry in Kannada, and it’s not very uncommon to find a non-Muslim who can read and write Urdu (a friend from Belgaum learnt to do so during his decade-long posting in Bidar). Bhatkal, Kanara, busy looking West, not so much. “In Hyderabad-Karnataka, even Hubballi, you can find Muslims who go to temples… not in Bhatkal. Here, if a Muslim goes to a temple, he is ridiculed by his own community,” says Shabab.

Nawayaths are devout Muslims; like Bearys further down the coast but unlike the Dakkhanis inland, they are Shafi’i not Hanafi, two of four Sunni fiqhs (schools of Islamic jurisprudence).

The differences are relatively minor – pertaining to praying and marrying and shellfish attitudes – but they do exist. Additionally, Nawayath men’s attire makes them stand out – the topi-kurta-lungi combo, although more and more youngsters are foregoing the kurta for a shirt; Shabab’s son, Ismail Zoarez, managing editor of the local news website Bhatkallys (another way to spell Bhatkalis), is wearing a tee with the peace symbol on it.

In the absence of any real integration, schools and colleges were the only real confluences…make that estuaries – let’s keep it real, keep it coastal. “In my batch, 1974, I had six non-Muslim classmates,” recalls Shabab. “In fact, one of them was the gold medallist; I was the runner-up.” But those estuaries have silted…been silted, believes Shabab, by Sangh activity since the 1970s.  “First we were ISI agents, now it’s ISIS.”

Bhatkal, a town in which three out of four are Muslims but a taluk of Uttara Kannada district in which two out of three are Hindus, escaped the aftermath of Babri Masjid, the riots and the Bombay blasts. Almost. A tale of two Aprils in quick succession that rocked the quaint town on the coast. 1993. It was the first of April. The annual Ram Navami rath yatra, the procession of the chariot from the main bazaar to the Devasthan, had just ended when some nasty rumours started to circulate. During the yatra, people lob bananas at the chariot in order to make their wishes come true; that year, it was alleged that stones, not bananas, had been chucked. Fooled on Fools’ Day? “Some Muslims were supposed to be responsible for the stone pelting, but there’s no proof that there was any stone pelting at all, never mind Muslims or Hindus,” says Shabab. “For nine months until December that year, Bhatkal was burning. Once or twice a month, curfew would be clamped for three or four days. And then, the riots stopped, but only once cases were lodged against, among others, a certain Anant Kumar Hegde, allegedly a part of the riotous mobs. The second April was of 1996.

“Aadmi bura nahi tha, no one in need would return from his office empty-handed, he would hardly take any consulting fees from the poor,” says Inayatullah Gawai, editor of local news website Sahil Online. “Just that, well, he was an RSS/BJP man.” In the Assembly elections in 1994, the year after the riots, Dr U Chittaranjan, an RSS karyakarta originally from Dakshin Kannada who had previously contested from Bhatkal (and lost) as a Janata Party candidate in 1978 (to SM Yahya) and as an Independent in 1985 (to RN Naik), became the first BJP lawmaker from the constituency, polling over half the valid votes. It was the 10th of the month. Campaigning for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections was going on in full swing. What follows is an urban legend. After the gathering at his residence, one that may or may not have included a certain politician, dispersed, Chittaranjan was called for dinner by his wife, so he went to switch off the TV. The dog, who used to bark every time a stranger would come up to the house, did not bark. From the window, someone fired a bullet at the MLA. It went through his jaw, through his skull. Other rumours are too licentious, not to mention too libellous to type. Just the facts, then. A month later, Anant Kumar Hegde became the Member of Parliament for the first time from Kanara (now Uttara Kannada).

In 1999, around the time Congress’ Margaret Alva prevented a Hegde hat-trick in Lok Sabha—he has completed one since then, making it five wins out of six; “I have a feeling he (Hegde) will be parachuted into the state from the Centre sooner rather than later,” says Shabab—a deal was struck at the Assembly level.

“To keep the saffron in check, we (Tanzeem) had a pact with the Namdhari association,” says Shabab. A common candidate, supported by the two numerically strongest communities. One term for Namadharis, one term for Nawayaths. “They asked for the first term, we supported JD Naik, he won.” Then, just four years later, the divorce. “A year before the next elections, we approached them as we needed to prepare our candidate, but the top Namadhari leaders said their association had been dissolved. They deceived us.” The divorce, just four years after the marriage of convenience between the two communities who had the most to lose in case of riots redux, has hurt the Nawayaths more, especially in the last decade or so. Things a Bhatkali would like his town to be known for: 3. Bhatkali biryani, a layered biryani that is low on oil and spices, high on onions and flavour… But Bhatkal biryani doesn’t jostle for space with the variants from Hyderabad, Lucknow, even Malabar or Ambur, on the menus of restaurants across India. Plus, biryani is the food of terrorists, Ujjwal Nikam said so, and lawyers don’t lie so it must be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Mohammed Ahmed Siddibappa and Shah Ahmad Mohammed Ismail Shahbandari don’t ring any bells. Yasin Bhatkal and Riyaz Bhatkal do, as does Bhatkal, “terror town”, “terror factory”… “Where are these factories?” says an irate Ismail. “TV channels air footage from Pakistan saying, ‘this is Dawood Ibrahim’s home’. I say, please come to Bhatkal, please find out where these factories are.” But the names have stuck, as has the reputation. It’s what makes it easy to seek votes in the name of religion. “It’s there all over WhatsApp and other social media,” says Shabab. “Hindus vs Muslims. Patriotism vs terrorism. Paresh Mesta vs Yasin and Riyaz. Gau rakshak vs gau bhakshak.”

It’s why travellers, at best, halt along the west coast highway for a quick biryani at Kwality or Pai’s Fishland and proceed south to Mangalore or north to Gokarna, without venturing into the main town. The biryani on the highway is either chicken or fish, understandable given the average Bhatkali’s love for the latter. But where’s the beef? Nowhere to be found. Friday, most of Bhatkal is shut, another easy plank for polarisation (never mind the BPOs and the IT companies that work on Pacific Time), and in any case it’s quite close to the elections. But there is beef here to be found. Usually at homes but also at a rare restaurant, halfway between the Devasthan and the meat market. The market sells beef too but it only advertises mutton. Beef is expensive in Bhatkal. The blame is placed on how active certain Sangh Parivar outfits are in the area, but there’s also a conspiracy theory – it’s the meat traders themselves who tip the cow vigilantes about their competitors’ supply, keeping prices high (Rs 250 a kg as opposed to Rs 140-180 in northern Karnataka). There’s always a conspiracy theory when it comes to meat. Through 2016 and 2017, there were several instances of animal parts – head, bones, meat, blood – being found at temples in Bhatkal.

Revati Revankar, a police sub-inspector, suggested that BJP members were involved and her seniors were shielding them; she was promptly suspended for “dereliction of duty”. And there are conspiracy theories even when the matter is not meat. As soon as they made helmets compulsory, I am told, helmet shops cropped up all over the place, one every 100 metres or so. Helmets are made mandatory every couple of years or so no matter who is in power in Bangalore, to rather vocal protests from Hyderabad-Karnataka and Bombay-Karnataka. It’s too hot, they say. So do the Nawayaths. And the others? Even they just want to beat the Heat.

*

If anytime you find yourself in Bhatkal and want to beat the heat, have a Lutfi, which is perhaps no. 4 on that list of things a Bhatkali would like his town to be known for, “it’s more popular here than Coke or Pepsi” and it tastes great with the biryani.

A while after downing one that hot Friday, Ismail took my leave rather abruptly at the assistant commissioner’s office; a couple of hours later, I learnt that SM Amjad, the JDS candidate, has withdrawn at the 11th hour. He later resigned from the executive membership of Tanzeem, saying he was pressured to do so; Ismail says there was no pressure, that the community leaders had convinced Amjad to not split the vote. Doesn’t really matter what the truth is, those things play tricks on the minds of voters.

Vaidya cosying up to the Tanzeem was also not seen in a particularly favourable light by the non-Muslims, perhaps even the non-Nawayath Muslims (a section of them had chosen Vaidya over Shabandri in 2013). Vote for identity, to hell with development. “What development? Look at this,” the tea-drinker had said, pointing at under-construction roads. “Has he (Vaidya) just realised before the elections that there are roads that need to be built?”

His isn’t a popular opinion – many across religious lines praised Vaidya for his developmental works, specifically roads. “Idhar nahi, khedegaon mein.” Not here, but in the villages. Not enough, not in India, not in Karnataka, not in Bhatkal. Development isn’t what makes the Jamaats pay return airfare for Nawayaths to come and vote. And it’s because the Tanzeem-backed candidate wasn’t one of their own that not as many Nawayaths came back in time for the polls – liberal estimates put the number at 5,000, mostly from across India (including a busload from Bangalore), a handful from the Gulf. The uncast votes might have made a difference, as might have NOTA, a distant third with 1,986. Maybe things will change if the two most influential communities kiss and makeup, perhaps even enter into a ménage à trois with the fisherfolk. Maybe. Don’t hold your breath.