Has anybody heard of Kundapura? Non-Kannadigas can still be pardoned, but do any of the start-up ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls in Koramangala and HSR Layout know of it? Why you ought to know: not as exotic sounding as Coorg, sadly, Kundapura— uthappamed between Udupi and Karwar—offers some breathtaking sights. It has two rivers to its north and east, and the backwaters leading to the Arabian Sea in the west. As you drive through Maravanthe beach in the area, you witness this incredible aqua tug —sea waves lashing at the road on one side and the Souparnika river calmly flowing on the other. In fact, the stretch on the national highway 17 (now renumbered as 66), between Karwar and Mangalore, should be one of the most breathtaking routes once the work for its four-laning is over.
But underneath Kundapura’s blue seas and golden sands, its waterways full up to the brim even before the monsoon arrives and its dense coconut-palm-rimmed fields throbbing with vitality, the social fabric has many wrinkles, and some tears. It is at the heart of coastal Karnataka, always edgy with communal tension. More so now, during elections, as political parties fan the embers. The region, dotted with Hindu matts, like the influential Sri Krishna matt in Udupi, also has a sizable Muslim population. But long-time residents feel there is a new influx from adjoining Kerala, their purses fat with dinars and dirhams from Gulf countries, who are setting up shop here. Om Prakash Mathur, the BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan who has come a long way from home to manage the 21 seats in the coastal region, seems to have found his peg. When we meet him in the college town of Manipal, he emphasises that this is the ‘Hindu belt’ that his party will sweep. There have been at least 11 murders here in the run up to the elections, both RSS workers and fringe Muslim leaders have been killed. We meet U.T. Khader, the current food and public distribution minister of Karnataka, at an old-age home run by Christian missionaries outside Mangalore. He goes on to list all these shootings and stabbings in chilling detail, explaining the political reason behind each one of them.
