Brazil, not Togadia, is the big worry here

It took Ahmed, his idli-vendor son Tahir Basha (28), wives and children three days to get to the Babu Budan Dattatreya Peetha in the Babubudangiri Hills, 290 km west of Bangalore from their home in distant Adoni, Andhra Pradesh. All over the now-bald hill-top, families are breaking coconuts at the revered shrine, resting or cooking on crude wood fires.

But the peace was shattered only four months ago when Vishwa Hindu Parishad rabble-rouser Praveen Togadia stood here and swore to make the shrine—venerated by both Hindus and Muslims—‘‘another Ayodhya, and Karnataka another Gujarat’’.

Could it happen here, in this land of hills carpeted by endless silver oaks shading coffee shrubs, sprawling estates, quaint red-tiled villages and wildflower-edged roads, where even Ayodhya and after sparked no riots between Muslims and Hindus?

Sageer Ahmed grins, then laughs loudly. ‘‘Well, let them try, it just isn’t a political issue, or any issue,’’ says Ahmed (60), the local legislator and Karnataka Housing Minister who’s running for his fifth term.

Karnataka has certainly seen the rise of the BJP, of widening divisions in its society, but here in Ahmed’s Hindu-dominated stronghold (Muslims are 10 per cent) no one raises an eyebrow at his long-standing tradition: offering puja at the 13th-century Konandaramaswamy (Sri Rama) temple before filing every election nomination.

‘‘I am a devout Muslim, but I’ve always done this,’’ explains Ahmed (60), a fast-talking energetic man dressed in traditional khadi. It’s late evening and local Muslim leaders are waiting to cubbyhole him in a room in a downtown hotel in Chikmagalur (literally, younger daughter’s town), a salubrious town of 90,000 that is the headquarters of India’s coffee heartland.

If Chikmagalur is to be the epicentre of a southern Hindu wave, the Sangh Parivar may have simply picked the wrong place. The MP may be from the BJP, but the five legislators aren’t: four are Congress, one Janata Dal. The district hasn’t forgotten its lost daughter: Indira Gandhi—the main road is I G road—who after her Emergency darkness was swept back to power by Chikmagalur’s Raptorous electorate in 1978.

The Muslim presence is continuous all along the drive from Bangalore: mosques, burkha-clad women and men in skull caps. So is the easy co-existence. Houses are mixed and it isn’t uncommon to see military hotels serving pork—eaten by many Hindus on the plains—nestling beside Muslim establishments.

Chikmagalur district is a slice of the Malnad, the lush lower belly of Karnataka, a long swathe of land fattened on the plains by endless coconut plantations, banana and papaya and in the hills by king coffee—now the reason for despair. Lord of his 100 lush acres, D M Shankar (50) explains how the market for coffee—the world’s largest traded commodity after oil—has been in the doldrums for three years, coinciding with a three-year-long failure of the rains. India accounts for only 3 per cent of the world’s production, but in Chikmagalur, which grows 70 per cent of India’s coffee, the slump is a disaster.

Vietnam has come from nowhere to corner 12 per cent of the market. ‘‘All we can hope for,’’ says Shankar, who survives by exporting high-quality coffee directly to an Italian company, ‘‘is a frost in Brazil (it owns a third of the market).’’

The last frost in Brazil came a decade ago, followed quicky by a boom and the freeing of coffee prices, previously fixed by the state-run coffee board. The excesses of that era now haunt Chikmagalur. Planters recklessly took loans from eager banks and expanded, built pretty colonial-style mansions (complete with white picket fences), bought cars freely and had lavish marriages.

The hills are now Rs 1,500 crore in debt, rues planter S V Manjunath, whose survival technique is to grow trail pepper and cardamom along the silver oaks. And after a three-year repayment holiday, the loans will finally be called in this year.

So, in an economy ruled entirely by coffee—if you aren’t an elite planter, you could be roasting, packaging, blending, supplying fertilisers, machinery and much more—Hindu-Muslim tensions aren’t the first thing that come to mind. Still, in his house in a narrow lane, a disquiet has gripped retired Hindi and Urdu college lecturer Mohammed Ali (76), for the first time in his life. He reminisces of how he and his Hindu friends grew up together, shared joys and sorrow. They still do, he reiterates, but there are differences. ‘‘Now Hindus talk for Hindus and Muslims talk for Muslims,’’ Ali says quietly. ‘‘We are not North India, but slowly, a poison seems to be entering our minds.’’