It began with the Kote Marikamba Jatra in Shivamogga, where the organising committee surrendered to pressure from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindu right-wing groups and refused to allot stalls to Muslim vendors during the festival, despite having done so in the past.
Then came bans on Muslim vendors and traders in Udupi for the Hosa Margudi and Kollur Mookambika temple fairs, then at the Bappandu Durgaparameshwari temple, Mangaladevi temple, and Puttur Mahalingeshwara temple in Dakshina Kannada district.
Muslim traders in many places had briefly closed their shops in protest against the Karnataka High Court's verdict in the hijab case. Posters suddenly cropped up in areas of Karnataka where communal tensions had been simmering over the hijab controversy, saying permission to run stalls during the festivals should not be given to the Muslims.
Now the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti has asked the government to oust non-Hindu shopkeepers from around the Sri Anjaneya temple in Bengaluru, citing a state law which had been referred to by the Karnataka law minister in a discussion in the Karnataka Assembly on Wednesday, 23 March.