Thousands of people, including citizen groups, activists and various other organisations attended the Sahabalve Samavesha, a convention for peace and harmony held in Karnataka’s Udupi district on Saturday.
Amid the recent communal tensions going on in the state, this unity march was conducted to spread message of communal harmony. More than thousand people led by kambala runners or the traditional buffalo racers of coastal region in Karnataka took a peace march from Hutatma Chowk in Udupi’s Ajjarkad to the Christian School (Mission Compound).
Addressing the gathering on Saturday, Human Right activist, Yogendra Yadav said. “We have this country’s soil with us, we have Sufi legacy, Basavanna, Bhagat Singh, Maulana Azad, we have Ambedkar’s constitution with us. We are not empty handed. We will fight and win.
“Sedition law, who is patriotic and who is not, who is national and who is anti-national?” Yadav said that some people keep giving these certificates to others. Those who bring people of this country together are the patriots, those who try to divide them on religion etc are anti-national. We know who are Anti-nationals.”
The peace convention, attended by hundreds of people from all faith, also included pilivesha dancers or tiger dancers, a traditional art form in coastal region and people playing the dafli, a folk instrument.
Further talking about the demolition drive which took place in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, he said that the bulldozer is not just being run over some buildings, “but on the foundations of India, on the culture of India, on the Constitution.”
“Some people claim Hindi is national language. Hindi is 200 years old, kannada is 2500 years old. How can Hindi speaking people be landlord and kannada speakers be tenants? They want to make one religion landlords and the other religion tenant,” the human rights activist said
Retired IAS officer and social activist Sasikanth Senthil also spoke at the convention. He said, “The concept of Bharath has not been celebrated for long. We celebrate Deepavali, Ramzan, Christmas. We have not observed Indian-ness for long. Since 50 years this idea of India, a Bahutva Bharata has been celebrated. This samavesha is the start of the celebration of this Bahutva.”
