C. N. Ashwath Narayan is a Hindu supremacist politician from the southern state of Karnataka, notorious for his anti-Minority activities. He served as Karnataka’s 8th Deputy Chief Minister from 20 August 2019 to 26 July 2021.

Narayan has actively participated in demonizing Muslims in the region. He provides patronage to and ensures impunity for the hate mongers and anti-Muslim propagandists in the state.

He is an ardent advocate of anti-Minority conspiracy theories like ‘love jihad’ and the forceful conversion of Hindus by Christians.

In December 2020, while he was the deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, he announced that his government would introduce laws to curb ‘love jihad’ and ‘cow slaughter.’

In December 2021, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties released a report regarding attacks on Christian minorities in the state throughout the year. The report documented 39 incidents of violence against Christians in the state from January to November 2021.

“While these attacks on the face of it appear to be geographically spread out, in reality, they arise out of a far sinister concerted political project of reducing Christians to second-class citizens who must not be allowed to exercise their constitutionally provided fundamental right of religion,” the report said.

Narayan simply negated the facts and said, “there is no question of attacking churches or Christians. Some people might have prepared it to create this kind of perception, this kind of campaign.”

Meanwhile, his government enacted an anti-conversion law against the so-called forceful religious conversions on the pretext that Hindus were rapidly converted to Christianity and Islam by coercion or allurement.

During a campaign rally in Karnataka for the forthcoming elections, he invoked the communally divisive binary of Savarkar versus Topi Sultan. (Tipu Sultan was the Mysorean Muslim emperor who ruled in the 18th century and died fighting the British Colonizers. Savarkar developed the Hindu nationalist political ideology of Hindutva. He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu extremist organization. During his incarceration at the time of India’s freedom struggle, he wrote multiple mercy petitions to the British, begging for his life).

While addressing a rally in Mandya, Karnataka, Narayan said if the BJP loses the Karnataka Assembly elections, then Siddaramiah, “who admires Tipu,” will come to power. “Do you want Tipu or (V D) Savarkar? Where should we send this Tipu Sultan? What did Uri Gowda Nanje Gowda do? You should finish him off the same way,” he said.