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By P.K.Balachandran/Counterpoint
Colombo, July 24: On Monday, the Indian Supreme Court restrained the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand State governments from enforcing an order to restaurants and food carts located on a Hindu pilgrimage route to display the owners’ and workers’ names.
The order of the two State governments drew the ire of opposition parties and liberals who dubbed it as “communal profiling” as it was meant to mark off shops and carts owned by or employing Muslims.
In what has come to be known as the “Kanwariya case”, the Supreme court ruled that restaurants could not be forced to display the names of their owners.
It suspended police orders that were actually meant to segregate Muslim vendors on a route taken each year by thousands of Hindu pilgrims carrying pots of water from the holy Ganges river.
The court rejected the police’s plea that the display of names of the owners and workers in the stalls would help pilgrims who had to follow dietary restrictions, such as eating no meat or fish during their journey.
The general Hindu view is that eateries owned by Muslims invariably serve meat and that the food is cooked by Muslims, whose touch orthodox Hindus consider “defiling” during pilgrimages.
The Court ruled that while restaurants could be expected to state the type of food they serve, including whether it is vegetarian or not, they “must not be forced” to display the name and identities of the owners.
It issued notices to the concerned police seeking their response to the petitions challenging their move. The court will take up the matter again on Friday.
While the stay on the governments’ order is welcome, the one-time order relating to a particular case, only amounts to scratching the surface of a deep-set and widespread problem of communal profiling in India, particularly in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled States in North India.
There are indications that communal profiling is likely to spread because the BJP and its cohorts are in a desperate need to get back Hindus’ support that they lost substantially as the recent parliamentary elections showed.
Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh, where the BJP is in power, have witnessed Hindu-Muslim tensions in the recent past. Opposition parties and civil society have been accusing the BJP governments there of persecuting Muslims.
Karnataka State in South India also saw communal profiling when the BJP was ruling the State.
In August last year, Hindu far-right organisations in Haryana called for a boycott of Muslim businesses after deadly communal violence broke out in Nuh district on July 31. A religious procession taken out by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad was attacked and six people, including two security guards, were killed.
The clashes soon spread to other districts. In Gurugram, a mosque was set on fire and its assistant imam, Mohammad Saad, 22, was killed.
After the violence, there were protests by various Hindu groups. At one demonstration on August 2, in Hansi town in Hissar district, Krishna Gurjar of the Bajrang Dal gave an ultimatum to local businesses to dismiss their Muslim employees or face a boycott.
According to media reports, Gujar made this announcement while leading a procession escorted by the police. Usually, the police silently observe these hateful speeches from the side lines, either because they are in agreement with what is said, or because there are no orders from the top to stop the speeches.
However, in April 2023, the Supreme Court had ordered State governments to register incidents of hate speech without waiting for any complaints to be filed.
At another demonstration on August 6, 2023 in Haryana’s Tigra village, Hindu protesters demanded the release of men arrested for killing the deputy imam of the Anjuman Jama mosque in Gurugram district near Delhi.
“There are hundreds of Muslim men working in Gurugram as carpenters, barbers, vegetable vendors, mechanics, and cab drivers, and we have always supported them. But now we will ensure they don’t get any support from anywhere as they are responsible for disrupting peace in the city,” Bajrang Dal’s Kulbhushan Bhardwaj was quoted as telling the demonstrators.
“Muslims should not be allowed to live or work in the city. We appeal to the people of the city not to rent out apartments or slums to them,” Bharadwaj added. A case was registered against him.
On August 3, more than 50 village panchayats in three districts of Haryana, namely, Mahendergarh, Rewari and Jhajjar, issued statements saying they have decided to ban the entry of Muslim traders in their areas in the wake of “atrocities committed on Hindus in Nuh”.
“No Muslim will be allowed to do any kind of business in the village such as selling things, buying cattle, begging,” the statement added.
This matter was raised in the Supreme Court on August 8 by senior lawyer Kapil Sibal.
Interestingly, the farmers of Haryana protested against the ban on Muslims. Farmers gathered in Hissar district in thousands and said that the ban was both unlawful and unconstitutional.
Again in 2023, activists of the BJP and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) took a pledge in the presence of BJP leaders of Bastar to enforce an economic boycott of Muslims and Christians. Among those present were former Bastar Lok Sabha MP Dinesh Kashyap and a former Prince Kamal Chandra Bhanjdeo.
In January 2023, The Hindu reported that a call for an economic and social boycott of Muslims was given by right-wing Hindu groups in Biranpur village in Chhattisgarh after an interfaith wedding in the village. A communal clash had also occurred, in which three were killed.
The VHP called for a State-wide bandh. Mukesh Chandak, a VHP official, administered a pledge to boycott Muslims. He also asked Hindus to put up signboards in their shops and business institutions indicating that they belonged to Hindus.
Amid communal tensions flaring up in Uttarakhand in 2023, a group of over 200 social justice organisations and NGOs wrote to President Droupadi Murmu, condemning the role of the BJP government in “hate-filled” campaign under way in the State.
The organisations that appealed to the President included several Dalit and Adivasi welfare outfits, and other prominent human rights organisations such as Teesta Setalvad’s Citizens for Justice and Peace, and other activists and outfits from over 20 States and Union Territories.
There was an alleged abduction of a minor girl in Purola district, for which a two men, a Hindu and a Muslim, were arrested. Following this incident, Muslim shop owners and residents in Uttarkashi were asked to keep their shops closed as a Hindu ‘Mahapanchayat’ was scheduled to take place there on June 15.
The Devbhoomi Raksha Abhiyan, a right-wing group, which has been at the centre of calls for the boycott of Muslim-owned shops, had called for the ‘Mahapanchayat’.
Land Jihad
In April 2023, the Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami validated the concept of “land jihad” popularised by anti-Muslim outfits. His administration there upon ordered the clearing alleged “encroachments” in the towns and forested areas, affecting Muslims mostly.
Violent incidents and hate speeches took place in Dehradun, Tiuni, Chakrata, Purola, and Imlikheda in April and May 2023. But no step was being taken by the State government to curb the harmful practice.
On May 30, 23 Supreme Court lawyers urged the BJP government to comply with court orders on hate speech and mob violence, terming the government’s inaction as contempt of court.
Sociologist Imtiaz Ahmad and economist Krishna Bharadwaj have said that the economic profiling of Muslims and their economic boycott, are among a variety of methods to break the back of the Muslims in India.
These boycotts are called for in places where either the Muslims are a significant proportion of the population or where they are mainly traders or artisans who depend on the market to survive.
Members of the other communities generally do not protest about calls for boycott of Muslims either because they approve of the communal line ideologically, or they see a potential economic gain for themselves from the elimination or weakening of competition from the Muslims.
Political parties with an eye on the votes of the Hindu majority (not just the BJP but the Congress and others too) either ignore the issue or make a token protest without doing anything to change the communal trajectory given by the BJP.
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