All India People’s Forum was part of the team that came out with the report, along with People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka (PUCL-K), All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ) and Gaurilankeshnews.com.

This report traces the communal continuum at play in Dakshina Kannada in light of the incidents of communal policing and communal hate crimes from January – September 2021.

The fact-finding into the increased instances of communal incidents in Dakshina Kannada was initiated in the backdrop of the increased number of such incidents being reported in the media (newspapers and online) during the first quarter of 2021. The fact-finding was constituted after several rights-based organizations, mostly in the state’s capital, took cognizance of the issue at hand and wanted to understand the unfolding of these incidents in all its complexities to be able to engage with a process that could address the incidents.

The continuous communal agenda deployed in Dakshina Kannada now results in the inadequacy of communal policing as a framework to understand the beastly nature of violence being perpetrated in the present times. Therefore, a complimentary framework of “communal hate crimes” is proposed. Any crime that is motivated by hostility on the grounds of race, religion, caste, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity is a hate crime.

The Constitution is premised upon a rejection of both the idea of a segregation authored by law and a segregation sanctioned by society. It expressly takes on the mandate of ensuring that people can freely interact with each other in a spirit of fraternity. Dr. Ambedkar in fact notes that fraternity is another name for democracy. By its concerted attack on fraternity, what is under attack is therefore, democracy itself.

Report attached below