Sinister move to polarise communities

The directive by the police authorities under the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, asking eateries on the Kanwad Yatra route to display names of the owners, only extends the Bharatiya Janata Party’s polarising campaign to a new territory i.e., food.

Though the Supreme Court has stayed the order till Friday when it will be taking up the argument further, the mala fide intentions of the government are plain and need no elaboration.

Kanwar Yatra (July 22 to August 2) involves lakhs of devotees of Lord Shiva who traverse through several cities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana balancing pots of holy water of River Ganga across their shoulders.

The UP government has attributed the directive to its desire to ensure that the food served to the yatris does not hurt their religious sensitivities.

What remains unconcealed in the directive is the official intention to jeopardise business prospects of food stalls run by the sellers belonging to Muslim and Dalit communities by invoking the historically practised distinctions and discriminations of acceptable and unacceptable sources of food.

This may be the innovative way the Yogi administration has devised to introduce fresh polarisation between communities. With the dawn of the new age, the Railways and public eateries had eliminated all such divisions at least in urban areas and on travel routes.

The thin veneer of deception sought to be applied by the UP Police or administration does not befool anyone. While the communally divisive stratagem has been condemned by several political parties, including some of the constituents of the National Democratic Alliance, it remains to be seen if the Yogi administration desists from such ‘unique’ initiatives in taking polarisation further.

The larger question that needs to be asked is whether the state should take upon itself the task of aligning the sanctity of food with people’s beliefs. How does the state assume that role?

Shouldn’t this be left to the discretion and judgement of the people—yatris in this case—to decide from where to source food during the pilgrimage and find ways to apply their religiously mandated rules in matters of diet.

Food and clothing are a personal choice and the state’s interference other than ensuring their supply, safety and reasonable prices, is bound to raise scepticism. The diversity in choice of food by communities across the nation is humongous.

Should a state mandate naming of eateries by their owners to enable people to discern the permissibility of food served or supplied by them?

The apex court which is yet to pronounce its fiat, must be lauded for perceiving the sinister move to communally polarise the populace with its comment wherein it observed that ‘food sellers must not be forced to serve names of owners, staff employed’.

The intent of the move to segregate and exclude sellers of food on the basis of their religious identity is a clever move to prompt pilgrims to buy food from the ones whose names sound like their own.

It is rather a matter of satisfaction that members of civil society have taken note of the preposterous intention and challenged the validity of the directive in the highest court of the land.