Religious and Gandhian Discourses in Karnataka

In July of 1921, Congress workers, as part of the national Noncooperation movement inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, picketed a liquor shop in Dharwar, a district in the southern part of the Bombay Presidency (now in modern Karnataka). Two young men had earlier fined an untouchable man for public drunkenness (as part of a local Congress temperance campaign) and were arrested by the police for looting and sentenced to six months' hard labor. The charge and the sentence were both commonly seen as unfair, and the Congress was working to organize opposition to the capricious punishment. Emotions were therefore raised and the pickets were larger than they had ever been in Dharwar. The police indiscriminately opened fire on the crowd that had gathered in Khilafat Maidan, and when the dust settled after the ensuing riot, three people were dead and several more injured (Narayan 1988, 112).

Gangadhar Rao Deshpande (later dubbed the “Lion of Karnataka” for his efforts in the movement for Indian independence and Karnataka unification) had rushed from Belgaum, where he had been organizing similar pickets at Gandhi's behest, to research the events on behalf of the All India Congress Committee and to preside over the funeral procession. He and 29 other Congress and Khilafat party members were arrested on trumped up charges of arson and looting in Dharwar; Deshpande and a few others were acquitted, since they had not actually been present, but most of the other activists were imprisoned, despite efforts by the party and its lawyers to mount a defense (Halappa and Krishna Rao 1964, 127).