Rather than engaging in introspect, authorities in BJP-governed states responded to the electoral setback by inventing novel methods to harass, humiliate and attack Muslims.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi. He writes literary and cultural criticism.
Muslims continue to be persecuted in India despite the weakening of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the fountainhead of anti-Muslim hate and violence, in the recently held elections.
The BJP failed to secure a majority and was only able to form a government with support from a number of regional parties which claim to be secular. It was hoped that having a smaller number of MPs in the Parliament of India would chasten the BJP and its new “secular” allies would act as a brake on the party’s anti-Muslim policies.
Just over a month after the formation of the new government, those hopes have already been belied. Authorities in BJP-led states, including the police and civil administration, have started inventing novel methods to harass, humiliate and attack Muslims following the election.
The most recent example is from Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-ruled state that sends the largest number of MPs to Parliament.
Earlier this month, the state police issued orders requiring restaurants and even roadside food carts along a route taken each year by thousands of Hindu pilgrims to put the names of their owners and employees on display boards.
The police claimed the order was given to “help pilgrims” who travel on foot to sacred sites during the holy month of Shravan to avoid buying food from establishments that may be serving items that do not conform with the holy conduct that they have to follow in their pilgrimage.
The states of Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh quickly followed suit and issued similar orders, making it compulsory for all their business establishments to display the names of their owners and their employees prominently. The authorities in the city of Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, an important Hindu pilgrimage destination, went as far as to say that those who fail to implement the order would be penalised with hefty fines.
This, of course, is not just an innocent policy “helping” Hindu pilgrims keep to their vegetarian diet, but a clever way of identifying establishments owned by Muslims and ensuring that Hindus do not give them their business.
The authorities deny that the policy is discriminatory towards Muslim businesses, claiming that it is “religion neutral”. They say the new requirement does not target any particular religious group, but fail to explain how knowing the names of a restaurant’s owners and employees helps Hindu devotees decide whether it serves food that is in line with their dietary requirements.
The authorities say past instances of restaurant owners “hiding their identities” led to “confusion” in the minds of the Hindu devotees, which in turn caused “law and order problems”. What the police mean by this is that some Muslim business owners gave their eateries Hindu-sounding names, and when some of the pilgrims eventually learned that the owners or employees were actually Muslim, they indulged in violence. The police’s argument is that making all business owners and restaurant employees announce their names up front would prevent disorder and violence.
This is a strange argument. If it is the Hindus who cause disorder, over their perception of the identity of a shop’s owner and employees, why should Muslims be the ones to take action to prevent further aggression? And how would the revelation of the identities of the owners and employees of a given eatery remove confusion from the minds of the Hindus?
For example, McDonald’s gives franchises to both Muslims and Hindus all across India, but every branch serves exactly the same food. Is there a difference, from the point of view of customers, between a McDonald’s branch owned by someone called Ram and one that is owned by another called Rahim Ali? Does the identity of the owner or the servers in any particular branch impact in any way the content of the food on offer?
This new rule is obviously designed not to help Hindu pilgrims avoid consuming food that is in foul of the holy conduct they are expected to follow in some inexplicable confusion, but to encourage them to not visit Muslim-owned establishments with the implicit assumption that any food they consume in such a place could somehow pollute their bodies.
To strengthen their arguments, some in favour of the new rule recirculated with renewed vigour old propaganda that Muslims “sell food items after spitting on them” and that they “deliberately mix impure things in the food to defile Hindus”. They tried to justify the police orders by saying Muslims can simply not be trusted to keep to food hygiene standards and thus Hindus have the right to know if an eatery is owned by one of them.
These rules ordering restaurant and food cart owners to reveal their identities, at their core, are nothing but a state-sponsored instigation to Hindus to boycott Muslim shops, or even the Hindu-owned ones that dare to employ Muslim workers.
The order understandably caused an uproar, but the Uttar Pradesh government doubled down and said that it would apply the requirement not only to the businesses on the pilgrimage route, but to all establishments across the state. Other states later followed Uttar Pradesh’s lead and also expanded the scope of their orders.
The matter was soon taken to the Supreme Court. The bench tried to make sense of the police order . The justices wondered if the authorities would also like to know the identity of the farmer who had grown the crop of wheat or rice used to make the food items sold on pilgrimage routes. After all Ramsharan, a Hindu, can very well sell vegetables that were grown by Rahmat Ali, a Muslim! How far can one go in ensuring the sanctity of food?One of the judges went so far as to share his experience of choosing an eatery owned by a Muslim over a Hindu owned eatery as he ensured international standards of hygiene.
In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that restaurants cannot be forced to display the names of their owners, and stayed the controversial police orders. The justices said that while restaurants could be expected to state the type of food they serve, including whether it is vegetarian, they “must not be forced” to display the names and identities of their owners or employees.
Despite being suspended, at least for the time being, the police orders directed at restaurant owners and employees sent a clear message to India’s Muslims: the authorities in this country will never miss an opportunity to persecute you because of your identity.
Indeed, the BJP’s power and authority is tied to the continued persecution of Muslims. If they cannot kill Muslims in large numbers, they will push them into destitution through attacks on their livelihoods – all to communicate to their Hindu supporters that they are fighting to protect their supremacy in society.
This is why as they forced businesses to reveal the identity of their owners the authorities simultaneously banned halal certification. Observant Muslims need to know whether the things they are using which contain animal products – cosmetics, for example – are halal or not. It is important for observant Muslims to know whether alcohol or material related to prohibited animals has been used in the manufacture or processing of medicine or cosmetics that they use.
What objection can one have to Halal certification? It does not interfere with the religious practices of non-Muslims. It does not in any way affect the lives of Hindus. Does the sight of halal certification defile the BJP’s supporters?
What can be the reason for banning halal certification and forcing Muslim shop owners to reveal their identities other than making the lives of Muslims more difficult?
This new cycle of violence against and persecution of Muslims in India has baffled many analysts. They had thought that the reduced strength of the BJP in Parliament would force it to introspect and discipline itself Instead, it has become more brazen and more violent.
This is believed to be the result of an inner power struggle within the BJP. Some claim Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to shift responsibility for electoral losses to state leaders like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. By dialling up the persecution of Muslims in his state, the argument goes, Adityanat is communicating that he is actually more cruel and committed to the cause than Modi, and therefore deserving of his position. There is likely some truth to this line of argument. Not only in Uttar Pradesh but all across BJP-led states, it appears the authorities are racing each other to increase the pressure on Muslims to prove their Hindu nationalist credentials and cement their positions within the party. Regrettably, when it comes to the BJP, even major electoral upsets and internal power struggles appear to translate into further violence against Muslims rather than more thoughtful governance.
Today, we are witnessing a renewed attack on Muslims in India because the ideology of the BJP is essentially anti-Muslim and anti-Christian and cannot survive without inflicting violence on these minority groups. The Muslims and other minorities will remain under attack in India as long as the BJP remains in a position of power – alone or within a coalition government. What is more concerning today, beyond the party’s continued instigation of violence against Muslims, however, is the newfound willingness of all state institutions like the police and civil administration to execute these ideologically motivated attacks. Completely aligned with BJP positions, they are now proactively harassing and persecuting Muslims and discriminating against them without being forced to do so by the political leadership. This means Muslims will be facing more immediate and serious threats in their daily lives in this new era in India.
