Cow-slaughter, Dalit rights, Charlie Chaplin: Some things Hindutva fans in Karnataka don't like

'Karnataka’s roster of incidents of intolerance is only growing. The latest headline on the subject has been the abuse of Kannada filmmaker and writer Chethana Tirthahalli. Tirthahalli filed a complaint against a man who threatened her with dire consequences after she endorsed beef consumption and questioned certain Hindu practices on social media, newspapers reported.

Tirthahalli says she has been getting threats of rape and acid attacks for at least a year from fake identities on social media. She decided to seek help from the police after a man openly threatened her from his Facebook account telling her to stop writing for publications owned by Muslims. He also told her to stop criticizing Hindu traditions and Prime Minister Modi or he would teach her a lesson. The cold-blooded murder of Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi in Dharwad in August also worried her enough to make the complaint.

"There was always an undercurrent of intolerance but after the elections last year they are doing it openly because our Prime Minister is very much silent on all these things like Dadri and Dalit issues," Tirthahalli said.

Just a few days earlier, 23-year-old Dalit student Huchangi Prasad of Davangere was accosted by a group of men who threatened him for what they called his anti-Hindu writing. Prasad was summoned from his hostel in the middle of the night by a man unknown to him and told that his mother had suffered a heart attack and had been admitted to hospital in critical condition. On his way to the hospital, Prasad was stopped by a group of eight to ten men who seemed to take offence over the contents of a book Prasad had written a year ago...'