Muslim Traders at Karnataka’s Temple Fairs: The 2022 Dispute

In March 2022, Muslim traders were excluded from several temple fairs in Karnataka as Hindu nationalist organisations pressed for restrictions on their participation. Auctions, stall allocations and the right to continue trading became points of conflict. Behind the argument were people whose working lives were closely connected to the fairs.

A fair was part of local life

The Indian Express’s April 2022 account of Karnataka’s fairs places the controversy in a wider social setting. N. S. Rangaraju, a former head of ancient history and archaeology at the University of Mysore, described these gatherings as expressions of a locality’s culture. People who had moved away returned for them. Religious observance sat alongside entertainment, shopping and time with neighbours. Another interviewee, retired development-studies professor M. Chandra Poojary, described the fairs as opportunities for recreation within an agricultural way of life.

That combination emerges in the recollection of Shaily Prabhakar, a retired teacher from Sullia. She told the newspaper that, as a Christian child, she looked forward to the Shree Chennakeshava temple fair. When her town had fewer shops, she saved money to buy bangles and other things there. Her memory concerns the pleasure of taking part as well as the purchases themselves.

These accounts help explain why a restriction on sellers could disturb more than a commercial arrangement. The fair brought different parts of local life into the same place. A trader’s presence belonged to that shared experience, even when trader and customer practised different religions.

The working year behind a temporary stall

For Hussain, a toy seller from Haleangadi, the seasonal circuit was an inherited livelihood. In a report first published on 29 March 2022, The Indian Express described him as 54, with 35 years in the business his father had followed. He said the season stretched from November to April and took traders to dozens of festivals and Urs gatherings.

His account was specific about the uncertainty involved. A stall could require rent of ₹8,000–₹10,000, besides paying people who helped run it. Some occasions brought a profit; others did not. The money earned through the season helped carry the household through the rest of the year. Those figures describe his experience, rather than a standard income for every vendor.

Hussain also spoke about spending months alongside Hindu traders, sharing food and helping with one another’s work. Suleiman, another long-established toy seller interviewed in the report, said he had decided to leave the trade. The prospect of exclusion threatened both an earning routine and relationships built through repeated seasons together. Hussain said he did not want his children to continue in the toy business.

The livelihoods connected to a festival could extend beyond the stalls visible to visitors. Deccan Herald’s report of 23 March 2022 included an older maker of the special firecrackers used for temple celebrations, car festivals and Harake Yakshagana performances. He recalled receiving many requests before the pandemic, followed by a decline. By the time of the interview, he said, no offers to supply that year’s temple festivals had arrived. He described roughly 20 families earning through this work.

His account adds a different concern to the stallholders’ experiences: whether work would be commissioned at all. It does not establish that every missing order resulted from a religious boycott; the report also records the earlier fall in demand after Covid. What it shows is a supplier facing uncertainty at the same time as traders were questioning their access to the fairs. The economic setting involved people preparing goods for the celebrations as well as those hoping to sell directly to the crowds.

How restrictions entered the auctions

The Indian Express reported on 22 March that the Hosa Marigudi temple in Kaup had excluded Muslim traders from its 18 March auction. Committee president Ramesh Hegde confirmed that a resolution limited participation to Hindus.

At Puttur’s Mahalingeshwara temple, the newspaper described an invitation restricting eligibility for the auction on 31 March to Hindus. The notice concerned stalls for the temple’s forthcoming annual festival. The newspaper was unable to obtain a response from the temple authorities. These were decisions about who could compete for trading space before the fair opened. A seller could therefore lose the opportunity without ever arriving with a stocked stall. The reported notices and resolutions made religion a condition of entry into that allocation process.

NDTV’s report of 23 March records the discussion from several positions at Hosa Marigudi. Mohammad Arif, the Udupi street-vendors’ association secretary, said representatives had met the committee and been told that only Hindus could take part in the auction. Executive officer Prashanth Shetty acknowledged pressure from right-wing organisations and said the decision followed discussions. Arif also linked the change to Muslim groups’ recent participation in a shutdown protesting the hijab judgment; that was his explanation of the circumstances.

The same report included Hindu traders who were unhappy with the division. Snack seller Ram Sait spoke about previously doing business together and the sense that the traders had now been separated. Devaraj, who sold items used in worship, questioned dividing fellow citizens in this way.

Their responses matter because they prevent the dispute from being reduced to two communities each holding a single view. A campaign sought exclusion; an official described the pressure behind a decision; traders who stood to remain eligible criticised it. Their different positions also show why the interests of people earning at the fair cannot simply be assumed to match the demands made in their religion’s name.

Shivamogga’s dispute involved the stall contract

At Kote Marikamba in Shivamogga, a report by News9 on 23 March described a further layer between the temple and individual sellers. The temple’s general secretary, Manjunath, said organisers had approached people involved in a previous tender rather than launching a fresh process. He alleged that the person first selected withdrew after threats, and that a replacement accepted the arrangement at the same price, more than ₹900,000. His description concerned the contract for allocating the stalls, rather than an individual seller’s rent.

According to Manjunath, the committee later discovered that Muslim traders were not being allotted shops. He expressed distress at that outcome. This was his account of the arrangement, including the alleged threats, rather than an independently established finding about everyone involved.

The distinction is useful: organising a festival, holding the contract for its stalls and deciding which trader receives a space are not necessarily the same role. Here the committee secretary described a decision arising through the contracted arrangement. That makes the allocation process part of the story, alongside the public demands for exclusion.

Bappanadu: an offer of space did not settle access

The News Minute’s 26 March report from Bappanadu, near Mulki, records a sharper disagreement. Hamid, one of three clothing traders visiting from Uttar Pradesh, said they were asked their names and told to leave because they were Muslim. He distinguished ordinary business losses from the hurt of being rejected specifically because of his religion. Bajrang Dal member Amith Shetty acknowledged that the group had put up banners and told traders from other religions to leave.

Hereditary trustee Duggana Savanth gave a different account of the temple’s role. He said Muslim traders had been allotted stalls but had returned to say they did not want them. An unnamed toy seller, who described three decades of trading at the fair, said his allocation had instead been withdrawn. According to him, the committee returned his ₹500 payment and warned that it would not take responsibility for trouble.

Those accounts should remain distinct. They disagree about the committee’s conduct, but each concerns whether sellers could actually use the fair. The returning of a fee, an assurance that stalls were available and an activist’s demand to leave describe different experiences of access.

Daijiworld’s report of 23 March records managing trustee Manohar Shetty addressing what would happen if there were trouble. He said it would not be possible to protect everyone. In his account, prospective traders were told about the situation and licences were issued if they accepted it.

The report also described an emergency meeting after which the committee removed banners presented in its name. New banners then appeared claiming to represent Hindus more broadly.

Permission came with a warning about protection. A seller therefore had more to consider than the rent or likely sales. The decision also involves whether setting up is worth the risk of confrontation. It does show why a temple’s declared willingness to issue permission was not, by itself, a complete answer to traders’ concerns about taking their places at the fair.

There were decisions to resist exclusion

In Nelamangala, the response described by one organiser was different. Jagadeesh, a member of the Basaveshwara temple committee, told The Indian Express on 23 March that people identifying themselves as Bajrang Dal members had asked it to bar Muslim vendors from the forthcoming festival. He said the committee refused and sent them away, citing generations of trading together. This was the committee’s stated decision at that point, rather than a report observing the later festival.

Street vendors also responded collectively. The New Indian Express reported on 26 March that the Bangalore Pragatipara Beedhi Vyaparigala Sangha and allied organisations had condemned the campaign against Muslim sellers. Their statement framed it as an assault on street vendors’ livelihoods. They criticised pressure on temple committees and the state government’s response, while pointing to the difficulties vendors already faced in dealings with authorities.

The organisations also described an incident in Bengaluru’s Vijayanagar in which religious flags had been placed on Muslim traders’ shops. They said vendors stayed united and the flags were removed.

The response brought an occupational perspective into the argument. These organisations spoke about sellers as fellow workers whose ability to earn was being threatened. Their intervention therefore belongs alongside the statements of politicians and religious campaigners: people working in the trade were also trying to shape how the dispute was answered.

The government’s position and the legal objection

In the Assembly on 23 March, law minister J. C. Madhuswamy invoked a rule against leasing temple property to non-Hindus, according to The Indian Express. He said the government did not encourage the restrictions and would act against obstructive banners outside temple premises. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai pointed to decisions by those holding leases and said the government would examine the matter.

These statements drew a distinction between temple property, those managing its commercial use and trading outside the premises. They were the government’s position during the dispute, rather than a court’s determination of each stallholder’s rights.

PUCL Karnataka challenged that approach in its open letter of 28 March 2022. It argued that Rule 31(12) of the 2002 temple-property rules concerned leases of immovable property and should not be applied to the temporary permissions under which vendors occupied fair stalls. It also argued that excluding traders by religion conflicted with constitutional protections, including Article 15. It pointed to religious equality in access to shops and public places, linking that protection to earning a living.

The difference between a lease and a temporary licence was central to PUCL’s objection. In its reading, citing a restriction on property leases did not establish authority to deny every short-term trading place at a festival. Its letter asked the authorities to withdraw the exclusions, act against those organising the boycott and clarify officials’ statements.

These were PUCL’s arguments. They explain the legal challenge being made at the time without turning it into a judgment that had already settled the controversy. The disagreement concerned both the kind of permission a trader held and whether a religious restriction could lawfully be imposed through it.

The education dispute that formed part of the background followed a separate legal course. Our account of Karnataka’s hijab rules and the 2026 order follows that school and college question. It does not determine the outcome of the temple-stall disputes described here.

The separate Supreme Court case

A Supreme Court order relevant to the discussion came from Andhra Pradesh proceedings. In T. M. Rabbani v G. Vani Mohan, on 17 December 2021, the Court considered contempt petitions concerning shop auctions and leases. The order referred to its earlier stay of an Andhra Pradesh High Court judgment.

The judges reaffirmed that a licence holder’s religion could not justify barring them from bidding for a shop or receiving its lease. The direction included shops in a shopping complex constructed by the state government. It instructed the respondents not to exclude shopkeepers or tenants on that basis and disposed of the contempt petitions.

That is a concrete judicial direction in those proceedings. Its setting matters: it concerned the Andhra Pradesh litigation, not a decision overturning the disputed Karnataka provision. It cannot be presented as proof that the Karnataka fair disputes had already received a final ruling on their merits. The two states’ proceedings should retain their separate identities.

The April attack near Dharwad

On 9 April 2022, The Indian Express reported that at least four Muslim vendors’ pushcarts had been vandalised near the Sri Nuggikeri Hanumantha temple in Dharwad district. The report attributed the attack to activists said to belong to Sri Ram Sene.

Nabisab, a watermelon seller, told reporters that a group arrived while he was alone and damaged his stall. He said he had bought six quintals of watermelons (600 kg) and sold only one quintal (100 kg). He had traded there for 15 years without previously facing such a problem, according to his account. Here, the immediate loss included stock already purchased and brought to the trading place, rather than only the opportunity to attend a future fair.

A temple official said poorer vendors had been permitted to sell produce, flowers and worship items. The official described a memorandum demanding the removal of Muslim traders and said the attack occurred before a decision on it. This episode therefore involved damage to an established trading place while the temple’s response to a demand was still, in that official’s account, being considered. It was a Dharwad incident, separate from the coastal fair auctions.

The police response developed over the following days. The Indian Express’s 12 April follow-up quoted Superintendent of Police P. Krishnakant as saying that four arrests had been made on Sunday and that eight people were named in the first information report. Police were searching for the others.

The follow-up records an investigation and arrests, rather than convictions or a final account of criminal responsibility. It establishes that police action had followed the incident, while leaving the eventual outcome of the case outside the account given in that report.

A separate Sri Lankan chronology

Complaints about Muslim traders’ access to public markets also arose in Sri Lanka in 2019. A June report hosted on the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka’s website, and credited to The Island, described the Commission’s concerns about traders being denied access after the Easter attacks of 21 April. They included people who had registered and paid for kiosks at weekly fairs. The Commission sought a response from local-government authorities.

The Commission’s annual report separately identifies the anti-Muslim violence in Kandy in March 2018 and the attacks following the Easter bombings in 2019. These were earlier Sri Lankan events, not consequences of the Karnataka disputes of 2022. The reported concern about access to trade offers a comparison; the countries, dates and incidents remain separate.

The questions put to India later in 2022

On 15 November, three UN Special Rapporteurs addressed the temple-fair exclusions in communication AL IND 9/2022 to India. They relayed allegations, expressed concern about discrimination and asked for information about the reported events, the application of the cited temple-property provision and safeguards for religious minorities.

They also urged interim measures to halt alleged violations and prevent recurrence, with accountability if investigations supported the allegations. This was a request for explanation and action, not an adjudication establishing every reported fact. Its focus connected the local disputes to a wider question already apparent in the traders’ accounts: whether people could participate in economic life without being excluded because of their religion.