Uttarakhand: Now, BJP Seeks Ban on Non-Hindus at Kedarnath, other Hindu Shrines
After ‘Love Jehad’, ‘Land Jehad’, ‘Mazar Jehad’, ‘Thook Jehad’ and initiating action against mosques and ‘madrassas,’ the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in its’ latest “anti-Muslim rhetoric” has called for a ban on non-Hindus in Kedarnath and other Char Dham Hindu shrines.
Asha Nautiyal, BJP Kedarnath legislator, in a statement, said she would request Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami for a ban on non-Hindus at Kedarnath and other ‘Char Dham’ shrines alleging that by consuming meat and liquor, non-Hindus are not only hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus but bringing a bad name to these revered Hindu religious places.
Nautiyal said that in a recent preparatory meeting of local traders for the upcoming ‘Char Dham Yatra’ held with Rudraprayag district in-charge minister Saurab Bahuguna. She claimed the local traders had demanded such a ban.
Interestingly, Nautiyal had won the Kedarnath Assembly bye-election last year in the backdrop of the ruling BJP led by Chief Minister Dhami indulged in an “anti-Muslim campaign” that led to the targeting of some Muslim shopkeepers in the Assembly constituency. ‘Hate-mongers’ like Swami Darshan Bharati and his team were “unleashed by the ruling BJP to target few Muslim shopkeepers by threatening them and tearing bill boards from their shops,” the Muslim community had alleged.
The latest demand by the BJP was probably prompted by the fact that some Muslims from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh come every summer with their horses and ponies to provide transportation to Kedarnath pilgrims.
“There are no shopkeepers but only a few Muslims who work with their horses and ponies for the Kedarnath pilgrimage,” Trilochan Bhatt, a journalist, told this writer.
In 2021, Ajendra Ajay, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader, who also headed the Kedarnath-Badrinath temple committee had raised the issue of Muslims buying land in the hills of Uttarakhand, had created a fear psychosis among the minority community in the run-up to the 2022 Assembly elections. A survey conducted by the state administration on the alleged land purchase by Muslims had proved to be totally false.
Reacting to the latest demand, Uttarakhand Congress senior Vice-president Suryakant Dhasmana said the ruling BJP had a policy of “spreading hatred for communal polarisation” for its’ ulterior political ends.
Addressing mediapersons recently, Dhasmana said that BJP in a bid to camouflage its’ utter failures on all fronts, including Indo-US relations, treatment of Indian deportees, economic distress, Mahakumbh stampede, stampede at New Delhi railway station, was manufacturing unnecessary communal tension.
“They tried hard to communalise the situation during ‘Mahakumbh’ and later Holi, but the common people of India, both Hindus and Muslims, have defeated their nefarious designs by maintaining peace and harmony,” he added.
Meanwhile, senior journalist Bhatt, in a Facebook post, while commenting on the BJP leader’s demand said that non-Hindus do not consume liquor or eat meat at these shrines. He added that some Nepali Hindu labourers working there might have done that, adding that he can say so “since he himself had worked at the shrine as a ‘coolie’.”
This article was first published in NewsClick and can be read here.
