Recently taunting Muslims, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath criticized those who “say” abba jaan”, falsely claiming that earlier governments provided them with subsidized rations while depriving others. He wears his hatred of Muslims, his bigotry, intolerance towards dissent and impatience towards constitutional nuances as a badge of honour. The state he leads has become dangerously distant from the inclusive, free and egalitarian guarantees of the Constitution. He also expressed displeasure at the alleged “shameless” sympathizers of the Taliban in India. The irony – certainly unexpected – is that his administration encourages some of the religious intolerance and violence that are hallmarks of the Taliban.
Administration priority
Years before becoming chief minister, Mr. Adityanath founded a staunch Hindu youth militia, the Hindu Yuva Vahini. In his administration the lines between militant Hindutva groups and the UP Police are blurred as vigilante “police” are appointed. MITR“Or friends of the police. It gives them social authority and legitimacy and enables the police to act authoritatively with surveillance groups. It works in both directions: to prevent cow protection and ‘love jihad’ Dedicated vigilantes believe they enjoy punishment for their violent attacks and the police are routinely confused with toxic anti-Muslim propaganda.
Cow slaughter, or the alleged beef trade, has been escalated to high treason against the nation. The UP government has often used the National Security Act (NSA) for ‘cow slaughter’: In 2020, out of 139 jailed under the NSA, 76 were charged with cow slaughter. Even if their involvement in the beef trade is proven, it is difficult to understand how it attracts a law empowering the government to detain those who pose a threat to the country’s security.
The UP Police told the media about its unique “achievement” in three years, which saw 6,476 “encounters” or extra-judicial firings against alleged criminals, most of which crippled them for life. The majority were petty criminals if not innocent; And many were charged with the crime of ‘cow slaughter’.
Another major ‘crime’ among the priorities of the UP administration is inter-religious marriage between Muslim men and Hindu women, known as ‘love jihad’. Mr Adityanath directed senior police officers to investigate these alliances, and in November 2020, the cabinet passed an ordinance against what he described as “illegal conversions from one religion to another”. The assembly later passed a bill prohibiting conversion by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, inducement, fraud or marriage. But the loosely interpreted words allow police and surveillance groups to intimidate and target Muslim men who have consensual relationships with Hindu women. Within just a month of the ordinance, 86 people were booked in 16 cases, including allegations of Hindu women in love or marriage with Muslim men. But no attempt has been made to criminalize Hindu men marrying Muslim women; It doesn’t fit into the narrative of ‘love jihad’.
UP Administration Doesn’t Hide Its Enmity From Its Muslim Citizens – “Those Who Say” abba jaanIn recent months leading up to state elections early next year, the temperature of campaigns – official and social – targeting Muslim citizens and indeed diverse subclasses and dissidents has risen alarmingly. Muslim families “voluntarily” Gorakhnath agreed to leave their homes within the confines of the temple to help beef up its security. Incidentally, the chief priest of the temple is the state’s chief minister. The following month, the state’s anti-terrorism squad busted a conversion racket. claimed, in which more than 1,000 people were forced to convert to Islam. This was swiftly reported by television channels and Hindi newspapers. But several people contacted by independent journalists confirmed that they were voluntarily. had converted to Islam. The sale of meat and liquor is completely banned in Mathura. Lynchings have increased, mostly with the tacit protection of the police.
It is not just Muslims who are threatened by the strong hand of the UP state. Those who speak or report uncomfortable truths, those who protest peacefully, the downtrodden and survivors of sexual violence face the wrath of such power. But in times of disaster, like the COVID-19 tragedy, all citizens are left with the pride of a reckless state.
smelling conspiracy
Shameful rape of poor and downtrodden girls is not new in UP, but the police’s open efforts to terrorize the victims and save the socially and politically influential rapists stand out. Unnao and Hathras have become part of the shameful lexicon of the state’s indifference to sex crimes against marginalized castes. In Unnao, she threatened to assimilate herself outside the chief minister’s house for police to take action against a BJP MLA on charges of rape, but police thrashed her father in custody, who died. And in Hathras, a teenage Dalit girl was gang-raped and died allegedly by ‘upper caste’ men, the police investigation set out to prove that she was not raped, and her The body was cremated hastily in the night. The administration accused the government of an “international conspiracy” to defame the government and incite caste-riots and arrested a journalist under anti-terrorism laws, who had come from Kerala to report the case.
Speaking, writing or organizing people against state actions has also become dangerous in UP. Most peaceful protesters against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act were slammed in UP with 10,900 FIRs. Twenty-two people were killed in police firing, 41 minors were arrested, 500 notices were served for recovery from those who caused damage to public property, and those with photographs of activists and members of civil society accused of inciting violence and damaging public property. Hoardings were put up. UP. My colleagues and I visited several cities at that time and found that the police, like rioters, ransacked and looted hundreds of homes of Muslims and their places of worship.
Notorious, as reports surfaced during the second COVID-19 wave of lack of oxygen, testing and hospital beds in the state, the chief minister once again saw only a sinister plot to defame his government, and the NSA’s Under threat of detention and confiscation of properties. Among those who “spread rumours” of a reduction in health provision. He even angrily dismissed the stories of dead bodies floating in the Ganges, claiming that it is a custom for some communities to throw bodies of their loved ones into rivers. He refused to postpone the UP panchayat elections, and at least 1,600 teachers who were on polling duty died due to exposure to the virus. Once again, no apologies, only angry denials were offered to their bereaved families.
There are ominous signs that this model of Hindutva system is being emulated by the chief ministers of other states such as Assam, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. Meanwhile, UP has grown into the pitiful reality of a Hindutva state, untouched by constitutional morality.
Harsh Mander is a Richard von Weizker Fellow and peace and human rights activist, author and educator
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