Merely days after tensions erupted in Keragodu village in Karnataka's Mandya district over a Hanuman dhwaja (flag) being replaced with the National Flag, a green flag hoisted near a dargah in Bengaluru's Shivajinagar was taken down on Tuesday, 30 January.
The said flag hoisted on a pole near the Hazrat Syed Jamal Shah Qadri Dargah at Chandni Chowk in Shivajinagar was replaced with the Tricolour by a group of locals and the members of the dargah committee, amid a post on X by Karnataka BJP MLA Basanagouda R Patil.
In the post, Patil said:
"Is it not against our flag code to fly a green flag similar to the colour of an enemy country in a public area? Remove this immediately and fly the national flag here. Shivajinagar is in India, not Pakistan."
The MLA retweeted a post by a user who shared the picture of the flag, saying: "This flag is flying at Chandni Chowk in Shivajinagar, Bengaluru. What religion is this flag? Congress leaders should answer."
The Shivajinagar Police, however, told The Quint that the flag had been in the area for "a long time … about 10-15 years."
"We informed the locals about the said tweet. To avoid any untoward incidents, they took down the flag and replaced it with the Tricolour. The situation is peaceful here – it has always been peaceful. Nobody has ever raised any questions about this flag before," an official from the Shivajinagar police station told The Quint.
What the Locals Said
Speaking to the media, Syed Akmal, a social worker from the area, said that on Tuesday, "the police called us and asked us about the flag. We said we didn't know who put it up and that it had been there for years."
"We discussed [the controversy] with the committee members of the dargah, took down the flag, and put it inside the dargah. Then, we replaced it with the National Flag."
Akmal added that "everyone lives in unity here, there are no issues. We celebrate all festivals together. There was no pressure or force to remove it. We just don't want what happened in Mandya to happen here."
Protests broke out in Keragodu village on Sunday, 28 January, over the district administration taking down the Hanuman flag that was hoisted on a recently installed 108-foot pole, citing the authorities had only given permission to hoist the National Flag and the State Flag on the said pole.
The row has triggered a political slugfest in Karnataka, with members of the BJP, Janata Dal (Secular), and Bajrang Dal staging protests in different parts of the state.
(With inputs from Abubaker Siddiqh from Bengaluru)
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