The state of Odisha, otherwise notorious for lying low even in exceptional political situations, has, in the last fortnight, occupied news spaces like no time before. Three barbaric incidents, which came in quick succession, have made people sit up and take notice.

First came the public humiliation and battering of two Dalit men suspected of cattle smuggling by self-proclaimed cow protectors in Ganjam. Then, came a preventable stampede that killed three and injured over 50 devotees during the much-celebrated Jagannath Rath Yatra in Puri. Finally, there was the brutal assault of a municipal officer in Bhubaneswar by Bharatiya Janata Party workers. These events are being discussed as some of the most tragic and shocking in Odisha’s recent history. It is as if someone suddenly cast a proverbial curse on this extremely god-fearing state.

But they have also transformed into a hotly-contested political controversy that has put the spotlight on the one-year-old BJP state government, especially against the comparative backdrop of how the former dispensation of Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal had successfully administered big events without glitches and kept a tight vigil on possible law and order problems throughout its 24-year-old regime.

Two of these incidents mark a distinct turn towards violence as a method for political dominance – something that Odisha had never seen in abundance. Odisha has witnessed intense competitive politics and sharply critical narratives against incumbents but vigilante action by political forces, especially along the lines of what one often sees in northern states, have been rare. This was also a reason why Odisha has never had cause to appear on the front pages of newspapers very often.

While the Rath Yatra is not a stranger to accidents, the stampede in Puri, which sees lakhs of devotees turn up during the festival every year, was somewhat unprecedented because this was the first time that the state BJP government attempted to showcase it as a global event by sending out thousands of invitations to VVIPs, including industrialists like Gautam Adani. Its focus clearly was to use the event as an opportunity for good press, forgetting the mammoth administrative exercise it entailed. The Congress alleged that over 5,000 inner cordon passes were issued to BJP politicians from across India by the Mohan Chandra Manjhi government during the Rath Yatra, treating it like a private event of “billionaires, cronies, and camera crews, at the cost of ordinary devotees”.

Caste, class and Hindutva

Let us get some things right. Odisha has always been a deeply casteist society, and anti-Muslim views were often articulated in private spaces. However, its caste consciousness and resultant caste relations were never marked as much by extreme violence, as they were by widespread and structural discrimination against marginalised groups. However, a large section of Odisha-based observers now believes that ever since the BJP formed its government, its leaders, who had become extremely restive in the opposition benches during the 24-year-old BJD regime, have acted in ways that have implicitly normalised caste and class violence,

Such extreme violent atrocities, like one saw over the last month, is not common in Odisha. Although the BJP has worked hard in warming up to marginalised groups like adivasis, Dalits, and under-represented OBC groups, the larger social shift has been the other way around.

Landed caste groups, including both dominant OBCs and the so-called ‘upper’ castes were powerful even during Patnaik’s rule, but they got very little rope to show-off their political dominance. Patnaik chose to characterise his regime through a series of programmes that highlighted his welfare measures for the poor, and he often did that with a firm hand. At the same time, he empowered the bureaucracy and made service delivery as his priority. As a result, a large majority of BJD legislators and their supporters also did not feel powerful enough to challenge such an arrangement and assert their own political weight. The situation was more or less the same during the previous regimes under the Congress, whose leaders strictly followed Nehruvian socialist doctrines.

Communal violence

Much of that has significantly changed in the last one year. BJP’s aggressive Hindutva and its compulsive thrust to expand its footprint very quickly has empowered its ground-level leaders to such an extent that they have not hesitated in promoting and encouraging violence as a way to exercise their political  control over state machinery and resources. Historically-entitled landed caste groups have found in Hindutva aggression an opportunity to consolidate their own political and material significance in a state where the poor had symbolically remained at the centre of all administrative and political initiatives for years.

Such violence has shown itself in various ways. Several incidents of cow vigilantism, sporadic anti-Muslim violence, and caste atrocities have emerged over the last two years. In May, 2025, a few Muslim Bengali migrant workers were beaten up by Hindutva workers in Sambalpur, leading to an exodus of hundreds of Bengali migrant workers from Odisha. This has further led to an escalation between Odisha and West Bengal, whose chief secretary Manoj Pant has now officially written to his Odisha’s counterpart, urging him to put an end to such “harassment” of Bengali workers. 

Soon after the BJP came to power in 2024, communal riots rocked Bhadrak and Balasore towns, which have substantial Muslim populations. The impunity with which Hindutva activists have spread hate and fear in recent days marks a distinct break from the administrative and political prowess that Patnaik had shown in reining in communal propagandists in the state, especially since the time when he broke ranks with the BJP after the 2007 Kandhamal riots. 

Bhubaneswar-based senior journalist Rabi Das says, “Ever since the BJP has come to power, it has tried to expand its Hindutva footprint through some dominant caste groups that have felt marginalised during Naveen Patnaik’s years. They are now trying to usurp the power that BJD politicians had on the ground. The lower-level bureaucrats like the BDOs, municipal or Panchayat officers have often come under their attack. They feel threatened and scared.”

Officials 

Similarly, civil society in Odisha has regularly raised concerns about high-handed officials, often without much success. But the way the municipal officer was kicked, dragged, and assaulted by a politically-charged mob marked an escalation that is rare in Odisha.

Das says that the unprecedented strike by the Odisha Administrative Officers (OAS) in the aftermath of the assault on one of their colleagues by BJP workers may be the immediate trigger but their discontent has been brewing everyday, as BJP leaders and their supporters have been on the mission to hijack government offices across Odisha.

The OAS union has refused to buckle under pressure, as it thinks that the BJP government hasn’t done enough to bring the BJP workers who assaulted the municipal officer to task. Notably, it has also asked for security cover of all administrative officials working in the state. The continuing strike has brought public services to a complete halt in all districts of Odisha, even while the Manjhi government has tried hard to placate the officers’ union.

These incidents that have come to the fore are not isolated. They signal a societal churn that is currently underway – a shift that is borne out of the change in political order and challenges the hard-earned democratic foundations of the state.

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