Yeh Jo India Hai Na: Kanwar Yatra Order is Bigotry in the Name of ‘Law & Order’

6.3 lakh Hindus undertook the Amarnath Yatra in 2011, the most ever. In 2024, with three lakh devotees visiting the holy cave for a glimpse of the stunning natural ice ‘shivling’ in the first two weeks of the 45-day pilgrimage, the 2011 record may be broken.

But who carries these lakhs of pilgrims in ‘palkis’ from Baltal to the Amarnath cave? Who are the pony owners who have taken pilgrims from Pahalgam to Amarnath for decades? Who cooks and serves at the community kitchens and food stalls that dot the entire route?

They are Kashmiri Muslims. But has anyone ever said that being fed by Muslims, or being carried on the shoulders of Muslims undermines the ‘purity of the faith’ of the yatris? No. Does relying on Muslims take away from the piousness of the Amarnath pilgrimage in any way?

Surely not.

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Muslims Embraced on Amarnath Yatra, Why Not Kanwar Yatra?

So, why is this ‘purity of faith’ argument being used by Uttar Pradesh government officials to justify its dubious ‘farmaan’ of ordering shop and stall owners along the Kanwar Yatra route, to display their real names this year?

The idea is to let the ‘Kanwariyas’ know which stall owners are Muslim, and steer clear of them, and in doing so, maintain the ‘sanctity’ of their pilgrimage. But surely what’s acceptable for the Amarnath Yatra should be fine for the Kanwar Yatra as well, isn’t it?

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here, there is no room for bigotry to masquerade as piety.

Bigotry ‘Dressed Up’ as Piety

First passed by the Muzaffarnagar police, the order was extended by the UP government to all districts covered by the Kanwar Yatra route. And taking a cue from UP, Uttarakhand’s BJP government has imposed this order in Haridwar as well.

This is despite strong objections coming from the BJP’s NDA allies – the JD(U), the RLD and LJP. Even objections from the BJP’s own Muslim leader, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, have been ignored.

It may well be that a somewhat besieged chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, who has been facing very thinly veiled criticism from his own Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, and is also seen as partly responsible for the BJP’s heavy losses in the Lok Sabha elections, is trying to please his core supporters. But can that justify targeting Muslims in the state yet again?

And of course, that’s not the only problem. The UP police order is blatantly unconstitutional as well. It denies the shop owners their right to a livelihood. It is also discriminatory on religious grounds.

Is It Really a ‘Law and Order’ Measure?

Let’s examine the vague reasoning offered by the state government that the order aims to ‘avoid confusion’ for the Kanwariyas. What’s the confusion that is to be ‘avoided’? To keep a Kanwariya from inadvertently visiting a food stall or ‘dhaba’ that serves non-vegetarian food, because that can harm the ‘sanctity’ of his pilgrimage. Also, we’re told, the fear is that if a misunderstanding escalates, it could result in a ‘law and order’ problem.

But then, all that’s needed is for eateries to specify what food they serve. Anyone who has travelled on India’s roadways will know that that practice is already followed.

So, we’re back to wondering why stall owners on the Kanwar Yatra route were told to display their real names. And mind you, multiple media reports have stall owners stating that they were ‘ordered’ to display their names, and there was nothing ‘voluntary’ about it, contrary to the UP police’s claims.

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Monu Juice Centre vs Imran Juice Centre

Speaking to The Quint in Muzaffarnagar, juice stall owner Mohammad Imran said his stall was called ‘Monu Juice Centre’ because that is his grandchild’s name. Yet he was told to put his name ‘Imran’ on the display board. But his juice is vegetarian. Kanwariyas would relish his thirst-quenching ‘mausambi’ juice during their gruelling ‘yatra’.

Clearly, Mohammad Imran was told to display his name on his juice stall, because he was Muslim, and to clearly ‘identify’ other Muslim-owned shops, stalls, and ‘dhabas’. The ‘avoid confusion’ and ‘law and order’ reasoning are poor excuses to enable the economic boycott of thousands of Muslim shop and stall owners along the Kanwar Yatra route.

It is communal politics dressed up as a “law and order” measure. 

Calls for the economic boycott of Muslims by radical Hindutva leaders keep making the headlines. Such videos are shared unabashedly on social media. Censure by social media platforms or police action is mild or non-existent.

With top BJP leaders, including the prime minister, casting communal slurs in political speeches, the signalling to lower-rung BJP leaders, to administrative and police officials reporting to BJP-run state governments is evident – the targeting of India’s minorities remains fair game.

Communal Politics Flopped in UP, But No Lesson Learnt

What’s puzzling is that this UP government measure comes at a time when it is evident that communal politics is not producing political dividends. This was clearest in the 2024 Lok Sabha election in UP itself where the BJP’s tally of seats crashed from 62 in 2019 to just 33.

The legally questionable bulldozing of Muslim homes, the equally questionable ‘Anti-Love Jihad’ legislation, and the communally charged political speeches - disproportionately amplified by government-aligned media – didn’t pay off politically at all. Instead, all this orchestrated noise lulled the BJP into believing that real-life issues could be ignored.

For instance, data from the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) - essentially India’s informal sector - released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) reveals that between 2015-16 and 2022-23, Uttar Pradesh lost 8 lakh informal sector jobs.

Add two dependant adult family members of voting age to each of these 8 lakh jobless workers, and you may have 25 lakh voters disenchanted by the BJP. Add to this the thousands who saw their small businesses collapse during the last five years. Imagine their frustration watching pointless communal politics taking centre-stage, instead of having their genuine livelihood issues being addressed.

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Will NDA Allies Speak Up Louder?

Why then doesn’t the dispensation in Uttar Pradesh - and now even Uttarakhand - learn its lessons and move away from this itch to target its minorities on a regular basis? Perhaps it’s time for the BJP’s allies in the NDA, some of whom claim to have secular credentials, to talk a lot tougher with their senior ally.

Or else they could lose those very secular credentials, which could cost them more politically, than the gains from occupying the not-so-significant ministerial berths they have in the Union Cabinet.

Telling commercial establishments to essentially display the religion of the owner, takes us to the time when Jews were forced to display the Star of David on their shops and clothes in Nazi Germany. Surely that is not a comparison we want made.

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here it should never come to pass that before having a glass of ‘mausambi’ juice, we may ask the juice-seller whether he is Hindu or Muslim.

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