KAUSHIK RAJ & ALISHAN JAFRI
“The Supreme Court has passed an order,” said tea-shop vendor Vakeel Ahmed, “but if the administration doesn't implement it, then it has no value.”
In Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, the wary Ahmed, 30, changed the name of his shop from ‘Tea Lovers Point’ to ‘Vakeel Sahab Tea Stall’ in mid-July, in deference to a state government directive asking eateries to display their owners' and employees’ names on their facades during the Kanwar Yatra.
Ostensibly, the order was to help young Hindu pilgrims on the yatra, an on-foot pilgrimage to Haridwar in Uttarakhand, to identify shops where they could be served food items they abstain from during the pilgrimage.
Ahmed, however, had to change the name of his stall again after police asked him to make his religion “clear”. This time, he changed it to ‘Vakeel Ahmed Tea Stall’.
On 22 July 2024, in response to petitions filed by human rights activists, the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the Yogi Adityanath government’s directive, but Ahmed said the stay fell well short of making him feel secure.
“Some shops have removed the boards while some boards still remain,” Ahmed said, his sense of unease despite the apex court’s order mirrored by others in the town.
Mohammad Azeem, who displayed his name on his paan and cigarette shop on 10 July 2024 after having run his establishment without a name for two decades, told us he saw hope in the Supreme Court order.
The police were no longer patrolling the area and asking store owners to display their names on their shopfronts, he said. Some owners had taken down the hastily erected name-boards.
“Some, including me, have not removed the boards,” Azeem said. “It will take time for us to feel safe enough to remove them.”
For many in this dusty western UP town, the disquiet of the past weeks evoked memories of 2013, when Muzaffarnagar witnessed one of the worst episodes of communal rioting in decades. Amongst other triggers, what escalated the violence was the circulation of fake videos, the riots eventually claiming at least 60 lives and displacing around 60,000 residents.
In recent years, the two communities drew closer in the communally sensitive town, the farmers’ movement of western UP also serving to nudge Hindus and Muslims towards cautious amity.
Most Hindus and Muslims we talked to while reporting how the police order was coercively implemented on Muslims alone said the move would cause relationships to fray and that it would widen rifts that people had worked hard to bridge. Their comments flew in the face of the state government’s contention that the directive was aimed at preventing conflict.
Over the past year, Hindutva leader Swami Yashveer has spearheaded a campaign to mark Muslim and Hindu eateries on the Kanwar Yatra route. Yet, community leaders on both sides have managed to keep the peace in recent years despite attempts by far-right Hindutva groups to inflame old wounds.
Some locals told us outsiders were keen to foment trouble. “Locals have suffered enough in 2013 (during the riots). Only outsiders are creating the conflict,” said Ahmed.
Scared that he could be attacked, Ahmed eventually closed his shop for the duration of the Kanwar yatra.
Hindus and Muslims were both reluctant to speak to journalists, but the Hindu owners who spoke to us said they didn't have any problems with their Muslim employees. All they wanted was to avoid any trouble with the state government and local police.
Muslim staff, mainly servers, as well as Muslim owners, were scared—they said this appeared to be another attempt to target Muslims, giving credence to conspiracy theories such as thook jihad and consequent action by the police and ‘bulldozers’ or demolition squads.
As a result, most businesses preferred to suffer losses over risking a confrontation.
The SC’s stay order was a ray of hope, but establishment owners remained unsure if the order would be followed for a long time.
For some, the damage was already done.
The drive by the Muzaffarnagar police led to a few expulsions during the duration of the Kanwar yatra of Muslim servers and workers.
In one case, a Muslim man was forced to quit his job as a manager in an eatery to be replaced by his junior, formerly a cook. Anil Kumar, the new manager at Shiva Punjabi Tourist Dhaba on National Highway 58, felt he had achieved something. “I used to fry pakodas earlier,” he said.
A new cook made pakodas for us. Nobody could tell if the previous manager, Inam, would find a job if he returned.
Read Kaushik Raj and Alishan Jafri’s full report here.
Also read:
.jpeg)
Write a comment ...