It was on the 21st of February 2022, only recently, when it was reported that a Karnataka youth was brutally attacked by Islamists because he posted a bunch of emoticons on a post about the Islamic tyrant Tipu Sultan. On February 19, A youth named Prakash Lonare had allegedly commented with a ‘smiley emoji’ on a post dedicated to tyrant Tipu Sultan triggering an enraged mob of 15-20 people who attacked him. The mob had attacked him with sharp objects, including knives because Lonare had no affection towards a despot who had unleashed Islamic barbarity against Hindus.

Tipu Sultan, an Islamic tyrant, was hailed as a “freedom fighter” by the Congress party on several occasions, up until recently before the government in Karnataka changed. Commemorative stamps were released in his honour (1947) and events were held to lionise the despot.

Tipu Sultan’s reign was so fearsome that thousands of temples were looted and desecrated, pujaris fled due to the fear of getting killed or converted and women took their own lives because they did not want to be dishonoured by the tyrant or his tyrannical barbarians. In 1788, there is evidence that Tipu Sultan gloated about taking 40,000 Coorgis and forcefully converting them to Islam. After that, he inducted them into the Ahmadi army. Thereafter, he forcefully transported over 7,000 Muslim families who belonged to the upper castes of the Muslim communities to Coorg so as to change the demography of the area.

In a letter Tipu Sultan wrote to his military officer, Sultan talks about how his marauding was in the service of Islam. He wrote, “With the grace of Prophet Mohammed and Allah, almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. Only on the borders of Cochin State a few are still not converted. I am determined to convert them also very soon. I consider this as Jehad to achieve that object. Your two letters, with the enclosed memorandums of the Naimar (or Nair) captives, have been received. You did right in ordering a hundred and thirty-five of them to be circumcised, and in putting eleven of the youngest of these into the Usud Ilhye band (or class) and the remaining ninety-four into the Ahmedy Troop… I have achieved a great victory recently in Malabar and over four lakh Hindus were converted to Islam”.

Despite the copious amounts of documentation of the Islamic scourge by Tipu Sultan, Hindu youths in Karnataka are still attacked for merely laughing at this lionisation of a barbarian. Karnataka was ravaged by Islam, to an extent, that Mandyam Iyengars, to this day, spend Diwali mourning, because, on the day of Naraka Chaturdasi, Tipu Sultan rounded up 800 Hindus and slaughtered them at Melkote.

Given their history, one would expect that the push back against Islamism raising its ugly head would be fierce in Karnataka. We got a glimpse of that recently when Kannadigas stood strong against the Hijab controversy in colleges and started a campaign against Halal meat. Neither of these issues came from a place of bigotry or hate. There are legitimate reasons why each of these issues found resonance with the local Hindus of Karnataka.

On the 3rd of February 2022, more than 20 hijab-wearing female students were prohibited from entering Bhandarkar College in Kundapur, Karnataka’s Udupi district. The PU College problem first came to light on January 2, 2022, when six Muslim female students insisted on wearing hijab in the classroom, in violation of the uniform rule. The reaction by the Hindus boys on campus was swift and peaceful. They wore saffron scarves to school, which they promptly removed to enter the classrooms. The point of their counter-protest was simple – “We can wear our faith on our sleeve too. Like we did with the saffron scarf. But we removed it because we respect uniform rules. You must too”. What transpired was not entirely unexpected. Incidents of Muslims stone pelting, attacking Hindus, students and sundry came to light. After the global Left ecosystem lied through their teeth about the controversy, claiming that India was “banning” Hijab, the courts finally adjudicated the case, ruling that schools had the right to uphold their uniform rules and therefore, Hijab need not be allowed inside school premises.

Delhi riots accused Asif Iqbal Tanna went as far as to say that the Hijab row in schools and colleges was an affront to Sharia. Evidence emerged of Islamic organisations funding the pro-hijab protests and a reward was announced for a hijab-wearing student who had merely walked, shouting Allahu Akbar, passing Hindus who were sloganeering against the imposition of Sharia in their educational institutions.

The global Left and Islamists of all shades came together to stand against Karnataka Hindus and uphold Sharia. To put things in perspective, a Burqa is worn by Muslim women because Sharia says any show of skin by the woman may titillate the men enough to rape them – it is just that simple. We can, as much as we want, call it religious faith or a choice between modesty and promiscuity, but the foundational principle that Islam seems to follow in this aspect is that a woman’s skin (even if the “woman” is as young as 5 years old) bears the sole responsibility of arousing desperate men to rape them.

It is this very tyranny of Islam that several women, from Afghanistan to Iraq, risked their lives to escape. Do we remember this iconic image that was hailed across the globe, even by those who were fighting FOR Hijab in India? At that time, they had hailed the courage of the marginalised Muslim women.

Or do we remember this picture? Of a woman ripping away her burqa after she escaped the captivity of ISIS?

It is in a democratic and free country like India where Liberals, who themselves walk around in short dresses and shorts, have the luxury of propagating an attire that is the symbol of oppression in the Islamic world, for those countless women who are enslaved, abused and oppressed.

Be that as it may, in India, the case was only limited to the donning of a Hijab in colleges and schools, breaching the uniform rules of that institution. Despite the garment being wildly oppressive, India has in no way banned the Burqa. While the global ecosystem had a reason to lie and twist facts, the Hindus of Karnataka had the fortune of remembering their history so they are saved from a repetition of the tyranny. Any demand for Sharia compliance is the first step towards Islamisation of a people, whether we like to acknowledge the naked facts or not. Karnataka Hindus, who have had to bear the brunt of Islamic despots, fought not against a woman’s right to wear what she wants, but the imposition of Sharia and the forced acceptance it seeks to find among Hindus. They fought against the normalisation of the thought that women need to cover themselves in an all-encompassing black robe simply because the slightest sight of their skin can titillate men. They fought against Islamic organisation and their manufactured controversy to normalise Sharia as the “secular” tenets of the nation.

The other issue where Kannadigas were vilified was that of the recent Halal controversy. A Hindu organisation started a nationwide agitation against Halal meat because it is inherently discriminatory against Hindu butchers and the proceeds of Halal almost seem like a Jiziya that Hindus need to pay. The meat is butchered after reciting the Islamic shahada, only Muslims are employed in the industry, and almost every major business has exclusively acclimatised itself to bow down to Islamic demands in the industry. While the liberals constantly claim that Halal is a dietary preference, one has to realise that Halal is anything but that – it is the blatant, naked and shameless imposition of Islamic tenets on non-Muslims – including Sikhs who, per faith, consume only Jhatka meat.

If you combine the two issues together, what the Islamists and their liberal ideological compatriots are saying is that Hindus have to, mandatorily, in the name of secularism, accept the Muslim community’s religious tenets as their own because it is their “choice” to disrespect Hindus’ preferences and even the opprobrium of such a skewed perspective makes one a bigot at best and a genocide enabler at worst (sans proof, of course).

Essentially, unless the Hindus give up their freedom of choice to respect the Muslim community’s unreasonable impositions, Hindus are marginalising the seemingly already marginalised Muslims – the very Muslims who are enforcing Islam on practising Hindus.

The vexatious propositions that Hindus are being made to submit to, and the Kannadigas are gloriously resisting, reminds one of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s rants as the Moplah Muslims were massacring Hindus while demanding a Caliphate in Turkey, during the Khilafat movement.

“If the Mussalmans of India offer non-cooperation to Government in order to secure justice on the Khilafat, it is the duty of every Hindu to co-operate with their Moslem brethren”, Gandhi had said. It is to be kept in mind that this speech was made in August 1920 when the Muslims had already started to massacre Hindus in their demand to establish a caliphate and in their support for the caliphate in Turkey. Not just this, in 1921, while thousands of men were being slaughtered, women were being raped and children were being slaughtered, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi told Hindus that they essentially had an obligation to remain “non-violent”. While the Moplah Muslims were massacring Hindus because of their Muslim fanaticism, Gandhi blamed the government for angering the Muslims enough that they became “indisciplined and violent”.

The Kannadiga Hindus are fundamentally being told that they have no right to resist the cultural genocide that is being attempted by the Islamists and the Leftists because they have an obligation to simply accept the impositions of Sharia and Islam as the normal order of the day so the brotherhood between Hindus and Muslims, the mythical brotherhood that has often resulted in the genocide of Hindus, remains intact.

Kannadigas, who are bravely resisting such obtrusions are promptly branded bigots, much like the Gujaratis who have, for decades, exercised their agency to resist such advances. While the Malabar Hindus being killed, raped and converted were called “despotic landlords” marginalising the “poor Muslim peasants” who were doing the killing, Gujarati Hindus were vilified after their state was thrown into chaos because of Islamic hoards burning Hindus to death.

They were called genocide enablers for merely remembering their own genocide. They were called violent extremists because they remembered how Hindus were burnt alive on a train by Islamic barbarians who wanted to savour the smell of Hindu blood and burning flesh. They were called the soldiers of a despot because they chose, repeatedly, to vote for a government that they believed would treat all citizens equally instead of claiming that Muslims had the first right to resources.

Kannadigas stand at a similar precipice today. They will be blamed for polarisation, they will be called Hindu extremists and fascists, and they will be branded as bigots simply because they wish to do today what they could not do while Tipu Sultan and Haider Ali scourged their state. At the time, except for instances of local resistance, one would be hard-pressed to think of a mass movement of Hindus that resisted the reign of tyranny unleashed upon them by the likes of Tipu. Local, valiant warriors fought and laid their lives down, saving a temple here and a temple there. Today, however, the sitch is different from what it was back then. Hindus, Kannadigas, in one voice, are resisting the imposition of Sharia and the flagellum of Islamic oppressors. They are, the young and the old, in one voice, saying thus far and no further. They are, in unison, saying they will not let another Tipu ravage their culture and be called a “freedom fighter”. The Gujaratis were left alone. Hindus would do well to stand by the Kannadigas as they embark on this uphill battle.