Ink, a thrown shoe and a police notice: the row over a Gandhi play in Bengaluru

Bengaluru Police have told a cultural academy to postpone all its performances until further orders, after a group disrupted a play on Mahatma Gandhi's assassination on 31 October and threw ink on its writer, Kannada playwright Addanda Cariappa. The BJP says the Congress government in Karnataka is stifling free speech.

What happened

The play, reported under the title Gandhi Hatya Satya, was being staged at Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy in Banashankari. In his police complaint, Cariappa said 12 to 15 people disrupted the performance, assaulted him, threw ink on him and threatened to kill him. He maintained that the play was based on references from books.

A counter-complaint by Kushal Hanumegowda and 14 others says the play portrayed Gandhi as anti-national and Nathuram Godse as a hero, and blamed Gandhi and the Congress for Partition. The protesters have demanded action against Cariappa, The South First reported.

On 2 November, while Cariappa was speaking to the media outside the academy, an unidentified person threw a shoe at him. PTI described it as a slipper.

Who the attackers were

Reports differ. ThePrint and The South First said Congress workers carried out the 31 October attack, though ThePrint also phrased it as an allegation that the perpetrators came from the ruling party. PTI's copy said only that "a group of people allegedly" smeared the ink, and named no party. We have not seen a police statement identifying the group as party workers, and the reports we read carried no response from the Congress.

The police notice

The Banashankari police inspector's notice, dated 1 November, said "complaints and counter-complaints have been registered" and that the matter was under investigation. It warned of legal action against the academy, PTI reported.

PTI said FIRs were registered on 1 November. According to The South First, police recorded an FIR over the ink attack and a non-cognisable report over the 2 November incident. None of the reports we read mentioned an arrest or listed the sections of law involved.

Cariappa had said on Facebook on 1 November that the "show must go on." He wrote that three police vans and more than 200 officers had been deployed to protect the play "for just 10 young goons."

The political argument

BJP MP Tejasvi Surya asked what kind of justice it was to attack a senior theatre artist and shield those who smeared the ink. "Freedom of expression is not alms," he wrote, and accused the police of protecting the interests of the ruling party.

Former minister and BJP MLC C.T. Ravi said Chief Minister D. K. Shivakumar had imposed an "undeclared emergency." "Justifying a violent attack in the name of supporting Gandhiji is certainly not Gandhism," he wrote. No statement from the Chief Minister appeared in the reports we read.

The playwright's background

Cariappa was appointed director of Rangayana Mysuru by the previous BJP government in 2019 and resigned after the party lost the 2023 election, The South First reported. His earlier play, Tipu Nija Kanasugalu, drew criticism from historians, who called it fictitious and propagandist. ThePrint described him as a popular author in the BJP ecosystem.

The police notice remains in force, and the investigation is continuing.