Cong Digs Itself a Hole in Dharmasthala

For two months, Karnataka has lived not in the light of truth but in the fog of gossip. A temple town of service and sanctity was turned into a morgue of imagination, thanks to the Congress government’s genius for dithering. Dharmasthala, where people usually go to cleanse sins, was dragged through mud it did not deserve.

The rumour was monstrous: women raped, silenced, buried in mass graves. If true, it would have shaken civilisation. If false, it would scar society. Either way, it was not something to be toyed with. But the Congress government did just that—it turned rumour into spectacle.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah first brushed away the demand for an SIT. Then, like a man who changes clothes depending on the weather, he ordered one anyway. His ministers contradicted one another like quarrelling shopkeepers. One said conspiracy, another said compulsion, and the result was that nobody knew whether to fear or laugh.

And then came the theatre. A masked man, CN Chinnayya, with a skull in hand like Hamlet. He did not ask “to be or not to be”—he declared “to dig or not to dig.” So they dug. And dug. And dug. The earth gave back nothing, but the image of digging itself became the truth. It was a circus without clowns, except that the government was playing the part.

Later, the skull turned out not to be from Dharmasthala at all. Nobody asked the obvious: Who gave it to Chinnayya? Why was he travelling around like a state guest? When the play was over, he was discarded without even a lawyer by his side. Used, milked, and abandoned. That is politics at its dirtiest.

If Chinnayya was the stage actor, Sujata Bhatt was the tragedienne. She wept for her daughter, Ananya, said to be raped and buried. Later, it appeared Ananya might never have existed—her photograph as fake as the claims. Nothing is more obscene than inventing a daughter to stir a mother’s grief. It was emotional fraud of the worst kind, and the government allowed it to poison society.

Meanwhile, YouTubers, online prophets, and AI tricksters filled the air with lies dressed as news. The Women’s Commission, which should have spoken, remained mute. Delay became complicity. And while Karnataka suffocated under fear, the Congress government fiddled with words.

The damage spread. Kerala politicians demanded inquiries. BBC and Al Jazeera gleefully painted Dharmasthala as a house of horrors. Kannadigas abroad were asked humiliating questions: did their temples hide mass graves? When a government fails to defend its people, foreigners will write their history.

Finally, the SIT’s spades came up empty. Excavations gave nothing. The mountain of rumour gave birth to a molehill. But lies, once planted, are hardy weeds. They outlive facts. The Congress, by legitimising rumour with official inquiry, had already crowned falsehood king.

For women, this was the cruelest cut. For weeks they lived with the thought that sacred soil might conceal the vilest of crimes. Fear became trauma. The government did not protect them; it exploited their anguish for political theatre.

So we are left with questions that no SIT will answer: Who handed over the skull? Who scripted the ghost story of Ananya? Who benefitted from the fear? And why did the government act like a stagehand instead of a watchman?

The truth is simple. This was not governance—it was abdication. Rumour became ruler, and Congress was its loyal servant. Dharmasthala, like it has done for centuries, will outlast this tempest too. But Karnataka has learned a bitter truth: the Congress government will not shield you from lies. It will dance to their tune.

And the people, like always, are left paying for the ticket to a show they never wanted to watch.