Bengaluru, Aug. 18: “The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being conducted in various states, including Karnataka, is not merely a process of revising electoral rolls. It is a ‘Nazi-Fascist project’ aimed at disenfranchising voters and implementing the NRC through the backdoor. It is being driven by political leaders who are behaving in a fascist manner,” said senior retired IAS officer M.G. Devasahayam, who has studied the SIR process in this special interview to Kannada daily, Vartabharati.

M.G. Devasahayam, a retired IAS officer and member of the Constitution Conduct Group, has extensive experience in electoral processes and the electoral reforms required in the country. He also played an important role in bringing to light issues related to alleged vote manipulation and vote theft during the 2024 elections. In an exclusive interview with Vartha Bharathi, he spoke about the SIR process being conducted in Karnataka and several other states.

Interviewer: What is the reason for such a large number of voters being deleted during the SIR process in Karnataka? Is the problem with the process itself or with the very concept behind SIR?

Devasahayam: “SIR is a fraud on the democratic process. The way it has been designed itself is not an honest process. The Election Commission has not properly designed an SIR in accordance with the rules, regulations and constitutional provisions. According to information revealed through the RTI, SIR was not decided upon by the Election Commission of India itself.

“They have openly said, ‘We did not decide this.’ If that is the case, perhaps political leaders such as the Home Minister decided it and imposed it on the Election Commission of India. In my opinion, the Chief Election Commissioner is someone who can easily succumb to political pressure, while the other two Election Commissioners exist only in name.

“Normally, all three are IAS officers. We know how IAS officers function. We know how a scheme is formulated, how its structure is designed and how it is subsequently implemented. SIR has not been properly designed, nor has its structure been properly worked out. It is now being implemented hurriedly and in an extremely improper manner.

“They wanted to bring the NRC—the National Register of Citizens. There were massive protests against it, so they had to withdraw it.

“There are two objectives behind conducting SIR. One is to implement the NRC through the backdoor using the Election Commission. The second is to disenfranchise people. Who are likely to be disenfranchised? Those who are not organised, minorities and people who do not have documents.

“Therefore, the entire process has been conducted in an extremely improper and bizarre manner. The objective is to disenfranchise as many people as possible who are less likely to vote for the ruling party and to implement the NRC through the backdoor.”

Interviewer: So, did they begin this process without framing any proper rules? Is the mapping under SIR constitutionally valid?

Devasahayam: “Yes. That is why there is complete confusion everywhere. Instead of adding voters, the process is resulting in people being excluded from the electoral rolls. Whenever any programme designed for the people is implemented, it must be practicable and capable of being implemented effectively.

“Do you have to link it to what happened in 2002–03? They are asking whether you were there in 2002, whether your parents were there, and to establish a relationship based on that. That was 23 years ago. How can this be done practically?

“For example, I am now 85 years old. I moved from Tamil Nadu to Bengaluru four years ago. Since I am no longer in Tamil Nadu, my name has been removed from the electoral roll there. But nobody here has contacted me. How am I supposed to prove where I was in 2002? I was in Chennai in 2002, and my parents are no longer alive. They died before 2003. Therefore, this mapping is a questionable process.

“Coming to the constitutional aspect, the Constitution guarantees universal adult suffrage. It must be an inclusive process. Every citizen who is eligible to vote must be included in the electoral roll. The right to vote is also a fundamental right and a human right. If there is serious doubt about whether someone is a citizen and it is proven that the person is not an Indian citizen by birth or through any other means, only then can that person be excluded from the electoral roll.

“Otherwise, I am an Indian citizen. I was born here about 85 years ago. I have been living here. I am an Indian citizen. Why should I have to prove it? What should I show to prove it? Since I am an educated person, I may have some certificates. But millions and crores of people do not have certificates. They do not have school certificates, degree certificates or other documents.

“This is a rotten fascist-Nazi project.”

“Another problem is that the entire process has been left completely in the hands of government officials. BLOs are lower-level government staff. The entire process has been placed in their hands. It has reached a stage where an Anganwadi worker is expected to determine whether you are a citizen or not, and whether you are a voter or not.

“The role of higher-level officials has been reduced to a mere formality. The entire process has been turned into a completely bureaucratic exercise. Shouldn’t there be verification and auditing for such a massive process? Even ordinary small-scale activities are subject to verification and audits. So, for such a huge process, there should be a social audit, as we suggested right from the beginning.

“Social audits are conducted at gram panchayats and ward levels in cities. People themselves should come together. The draft electoral roll should be placed before them. They know who is there and who is not.

“Who is best placed to know who lives in a village and who its citizens are? It is the people of that village. Therefore, a Gram Sabha should be convened. The draft electoral roll should be read out and the people should be asked, ‘This is the list we have prepared. Is it correct?’

“They may say, ‘This person does not live here; they have moved elsewhere.’ Then that person can be removed. At the same time, they may say, ‘This person has been living here for many years, but their name is not on the list.’ Then that person can be added.

“After that, the panchayat should sign off on it in an open meeting. Once it is approved, it should become the final electoral roll.”

Interviewer: But where do these BLOs go? Do they visit apartments?

Devasahayam: “For example, they have still not come to my apartment. There are about 90 homes in my apartment complex. I was told that the BLO came to the manager, sat there for a short while and left. But I did not receive an enumeration form. Now they may have deleted my name from the electoral roll or may not have included me. Across the country, more than 5–6 crore people have already been removed.

“I believe that around one crore people in Karnataka will be left out of the draft electoral roll.

“Now the question is: What kind of process should we call this? I believe even the Supreme Court approved this without properly understanding the issue. This rotten process should be stopped immediately and rejected completely. I do not even want to discuss this any further.”

Interviewer: In this situation, what would you like to tell the Karnataka government and the people?

Devasahayam: “After seeing the chaos in Bihar, West Bengal and other states, we expected that this would come to Karnataka as well. Therefore, we had taken precautionary measures. I was guiding people from civil society. I told them to demand a social audit. Karnataka is a suitable state for conducting a social audit because it has a strong tradition in the Panchayati Raj system.

“On the other hand, Karnataka also has a State Election Commission. Just like the Election Commission, it can also play a role in preparing a proper and credible electoral roll. Therefore, the process should be initiated through the State Election Commission, involving panchayats and ward committees. A proper social audit should be conducted through them.

“That would give people confidence. No one should be left out of the electoral roll. People should have the confidence that their vote exists. If someone has been removed, it must be ensured that it was done for a genuine and justifiable reason.

“We held a series of discussions with political leaders on this issue because political parties should have been involved. We had a meeting with the Deputy Chief Minister. He is now the Chief Minister. All of them said, ‘Yes, it is a good suggestion. We will do it.’

“In some villages, it was even implemented on a trial basis. A note was also prepared. But before taking the final decision, they said, ‘We have to get permission from the high command.’

“One of them went to Delhi with this proposal. But the high command sabotaged it. The Congress high command office is filled with RSS elements. I do not want to name them. Some of the people surrounding Rahul Gandhi are RSS agents. They immediately sabotaged the proposal. My allegation is that they have joined hands with the RSS to disenfranchise as many voters as possible.

“If the state governments had been given the freedom to take an independent decision, they might have done it. They could have passed a resolution and even amended the process to make social audits mandatory. But according to the information I have, the high command sabotaged it.

“The Congress is behaving very strangely on this issue. They too have joined hands with RSS elements. They have not put up any strong resistance on this issue. Their approach is one of verbal opposition but inaction in practice.

“As a result, lakhs and crores of people in Karnataka too are going to be deprived of their right to vote. This is not democracy. This is a fraud being carried out in the name of democracy. That is the reality.

“Civil society has done whatever it could. But political parties have abandoned the people in the worst possible manner. Whatever happens, civil society organisations must not abandon the people. They must continue to put pressure on the Congress government. Sooner or later, all of this will come to light.”

(The original of this interview was published in Kannada by Vartabharati. The original may be read here.)

Related:

‘Forum for Electoral Integrity’ petitions NHRC over mass voter disenfranchisement under SIR

The Bihar Verdict 2025: How an election was engineered before votes were cast

Civil society warns, Election Commission is “Undermining Democracy”

The post “SIR is a Nazi-Fascist Project:” M.G. Devasahayam appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to her husband, Jumman Fakir, the family soon received a call from the Mumbai Police’s Chembur Crime Branch. Sahida had been detained on suspicion of being an “illegal immigrant”. Within days, the family was told that she had been sent to Bangladesh. Her husband says he had repeatedly approached the authorities with documents establishing her identity and roots in West Bengal, but they were allegedly disregarded. Sahida eventually called her family from Satkhira, Bangladesh.

The story, first reported in detail by Scroll on August 11, is disturbing not merely because of what allegedly happened to one woman, but because of the larger question it raises: what happens when the State begins treating Bengali identity as evidence of foreignness?

The Indian Express separately reported that Sahida was detained on July 18 and that sources said she was taken to Assam before being pushed across the border along with others. The report also provided that her family was preparing to approach the Calcutta High Court and that a migrant workers’ forum had written to the Ministry of External Affairs seeking intervention.

The facts, as reported, demand something more than administrative clarification. They demand scrutiny of the entire architecture through which a person can apparently move from being a resident of India to being labelled an “infiltrator”, detained and ultimately expelled from the country without a meaningful opportunity to contest that determination.

A woman disappears, and the State’s explanation is suspicion

Sahida’s case is particularly troubling because her family says it did not merely possess one disputed identity document. They produced a birth certificate recording her birth in Swarupdaha village in West Bengal in 1988. They produced a school certificate, a voter identity card issued in 2008, documents relating to land in Gobindapur, and records concerning her family. Her parents’ names, according to Scroll, also appeared in the 2002 electoral rolls.

None of these documents, individually, should be treated as an automatic and conclusive certificate of citizenship. That distinction matters. A voter ID, Aadhaar or land document cannot, by itself, settle every question concerning citizenship. But that is precisely why the State’s obligation becomes more important, not less.  If citizenship is disputed, the answer cannot simply be deportation. The dispute must first be investigated.

Sahida’s husband told Scroll that police asked for the birth certificates of her parents even after he had produced her own birth certificate and other documents. He said the family could not provide such certificates because they were from a generation in which birth registration was not common. That raises an obvious question: how much documentation must a poor citizen produce before the State believes that she belongs to the country in which she was born and has lived?

For months, instances of forced deportations and illegal pushbacks have surfaced from Assam, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Delhi of individuals “suspected” of being Bangladeshi nationals. In many of these cases, the family of those deported have approached the courts alleging that the removals were carried out without any disclosed nationality verification, without travel documents, and without Bangladesh formally acknowledging or accepting the individuals concerned.

Detailed reports may be read here, here, here, here and here.

The most dangerous word in this story is “suspected”

There is a profound legal difference between suspecting that someone may be a foreign national and establishing that they are one. The first is an investigative starting point. The second is a legal conclusion. Sahida’s case, as reported, appears to collapse the two. Scroll reported that the family was not given documents relating to her arrest or detention and that the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai police did not respond to questions seeking clarification about the grounds for her detention.

When the State takes away a person’s liberty, the burden of public accountability does not disappear merely because the allegation involves “illegal immigration”. If anything, the stakes are higher because the consequence may ultimately be removal from the country itself. The Constitution does not create a zone of executive immunity around immigration enforcement.

Article 21 protects life and personal liberty. Article 14 demands non-arbitrariness and equality before the law. Article 22 contains safeguards concerning arrest and detention. These constitutional protections cannot become conditional upon whether the person is socially respectable, economically secure or perceived to “look Indian”. And the constitutional question becomes particularly serious when a person is allegedly identified not through a properly adjudicated finding but through a combination of suspicion and social profiling.

The border cannot become a substitute for a hearing

Sahida’s husband told Scroll that she was detained because she was Bengali. In Maharashtra, the crackdown has become increasingly expansive. Hindustan Times reported in March that the state government told the Legislative Council that more than 2,000 alleged illegal Bangladeshi nationals had been deported in 2025, compared with 202 in 2024, and that the state planned intensive “combing operations” in slums, construction sites and other areas. There is nothing inherently unlawful about a State identifying and removing foreign nationals who are illegally present. Immigration control is a legitimate governmental function. The danger begins when the hunt for foreigners becomes a hunt for people who appear foreign.

The physical act of pushing someone across an international border has consequences that are fundamentally different from ordinary detention. Once a person is in Bangladesh, an Indian court’s ability to protect her becomes substantially more complicated. Access to lawyers, family members and documents becomes difficult. The very act of deportation can therefore create a second legal problem out of the first. This is exactly what makes Sahida’s account so alarming. According to the Indian Express, she said she was taken to the Assam border and pushed into Bangladesh at around 1 a.m. She reportedly walked for hours through muddy fields before local residents helped her and a family in Satkhira provided her shelter.

A precedent already exists for bringing people back

The danger of mistaken deportation is no longer theoretical. In 2025, several Bengali-speaking residents working outside West Bengal were detained and sent across the Bangladesh border amid claims that they were Bangladeshi nationals. One of the most consequential cases involved Sunali Khatun, her husband and their son. The Calcutta High Court’s September 2025 judgment in Bhodu Sekh v. Union of India is particularly relevant. The court examined the deportation of Sunali Khatun, Danish and their son Sabir. The authorities had argued that the family had failed to establish Indian citizenship. But the court also considered the procedure prescribed by the Union’s May 2, 2025 memorandum for persons suspected of being Bangladeshi or Myanmar nationals who claimed Indian citizenship in another State.

The memorandum contemplated verification by the State or district from which the person claimed to originate. Where a person claimed Indian citizenship and residence in another State, the concerned authorities were required to seek verification from that State and district administration. The judgment records that such verification was to be undertaken within a specified period, during which the person could be kept in a holding centre.

The Calcutta High Court ultimately held that the procedure had not been followed and described the authorities’ action as being undertaken in “hot haste”. It set aside the detention and deportation orders concerning Sunali, Danish and Sabir and directed the authorities to take steps to bring them back to India. In May 2026, the Union told the Supreme Court that it would bring back people deported to Bangladesh and verify their citizenship claims. All those six deported in this case are now back in India.

Detailed reports may be read here and here.

Notably, a separate affidavit was filed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on July 31, 2026 in Rajubala Das v. Union of India pursuant to the Supreme Court’s order dated March 21, 2025. The affidavit sought to explain the legal and administrative framework governing deportation where the nationality of a declared foreigner remains unknown or unverified. In doing so, the Union makes one of its clearest judicial admissions to date: deportation cannot even be initiated unless the individual’s nationality has first been verified by the receiving State, appropriate travel documents have been obtained, and the receiving country has agreed to accept the individual.

The affidavit fundamentally distinguishes between being declared a foreigner and being legally deportable. While a declaration by a Foreigners Tribunal may settle a person’s legal status within India, it does not, the Union now accepts, authorise the State to physically remove that individual from Indian territory. Deportation remains contingent upon a separate process involving diplomatic engagement, nationality verification, issuance of travel documents and, most importantly, the consent of another sovereign State. In other words, the executive cannot unilaterally deport a person merely because Indian authorities believe them to be a foreign national.

Detailed report may be read here.

The SIR connection makes the situation even more sensitive

Sahida’s case also comes amid intense scrutiny of electoral citizenship verification in West Bengal. According to Scroll, Sahida’s parents appeared on the 2002 electoral roll, while Sahida herself was marked “under adjudication” in the recent Special Intensive Revision process, with an appeal pending before the relevant tribunal. The fact that an electoral-roll dispute exists cannot itself establish whether Sahida is or is not an Indian citizen. But it does reinforce why administrative processes must remain separate and carefully bounded. Being excluded from an electoral roll is not the same thing as being declared a foreign national.

Indeed, in August 2025, the Supreme Court sought clarity from the Centre on the standard operating procedure governing deportation drives and specifically raised concerns about allegations that Bengali-speaking minorities were being singled out. The Court observed that while persons attempting to illegally cross into India could be dealt with at the border, once a person was already inside the country, the law prescribed a procedure.

Over the past few months, multiple petitions before the Supreme Court and High Courts have alleged that persons suspected of being Bangladeshi nationals were taken across the international border without any publicly disclosed deportation process. In several cases, families have alleged that individuals were picked up without prior notice, denied access to lawyers or relatives, and removed without any disclosed deportation order or travel documents.

Detailed report may be read here, here, here and here.

Related:

‘Deportation Cannot Begin without Nationality Verification’: Union’s Rajubala affidavit clarifies legal limits on executive power

Aadhaar, Voter ID and PAN Cannot Prove Citizenship: Calcutta High Court’s Foreigners Order and the burden of belonging

They Belong Here: An elderly couple’s victory for citizenship

Another CJP Victory: Barpeta Tribunal declares Alam Khan ‘not a foreigner’

When a narrow reading of documents decide citizenship: GHC in Aminul Hoque

‘Fairness & reason ‘: SC rules that due process is a must for citizenship determination

Gauhati High Court upholds foreigner declaration, rejects mental illness plea

The post When Suspicion Becomes Deportation: The case of Sahida Fakir and the dangerous criminalisation of Bengali identity appeared first on SabrangIndia.

When India’s speaks of women’s rights, it often collapses all women into a single box. In the meanwhile, it ignores the distinct and compounded forms of suppression endured by lower-caste women. The tragedy is – Dalit women are invisible not because they are women but because they sit at the intersection of caste, gender and poverty.

The Nation’s selective outrage and Yashika Dutt 

Lower-caste women are raped in what appears to be more of an organised and systemic way. Dalit women are raped whenever they or the men of their community are seen as transgressing the caste hierarchy as evidenced by the Khairlanji rapes and murders in 2006 and the prevalent devadasi/jogini practices (temple prostitution).

Dalit women experience caste violence aimed at controlling and monitoring their sexuality as their bodies are symbols of honour and caste authority and their exploitation has been justified by their lower social status. Dutt has noted – “every time a Dalit woman is assaulted, abused, raped or murdered, her caste matters. Even if she was not raped simply because she is Dalit, the conditions that lead to her assault are almost always affected by her status as lower-caste woman in an upper-caste male-dominated society”.

Unfortunately, this is palpable in the context of public outrage – rapes, and murders of Dalit women rarely make headlines. This closely resonates with the mainstream media’s conspicuous apathy in covering the struggle for the most basic human rights in Manipur. The refusal of institutions to recognise the dehumanizing ordeal of Dalit women compounds psychological harm. Coverage of caste-based sexual violence is often episodic, with sustained public attention reserved for only a handful of extreme cases – the Hathras case of 2020 being one of them – where a 19-year old Dalit girl was gang raped and murdered in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district.

The erasure of caste trauma from public discourse compels survivors to internally bear harms that are rooted in structural discrimination and require collective reckoning.  The accounts and experiences of the Dalit women get obscured within the folds of the dominant narratives.

The Protectors Are Perpetrators

The Constitution guarantees equality, dignity and protection against caste discrimination. Yet Dalit women continue to experience sexual violence not merely because of social prejudices (to which the Indian female population is generally subjected to) but because the very foundational institution of the criminal justice system systematically fails them. As very little information or government data concerning the particular situation of Dalit women in India is available, I will rely on the commendable ground work done by the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) and the Swabhiman Society.

Many incidents of sexual violence and rape against Dalit women that should be registered under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act are not recorded as such by the Police. This has been attributed to political pressure seeking to project a decline in caste-based atrocities in order to exhibit their purported commitment to the appeasement rhetoric of cracking down on caste-based atrocities.  Survivors of sexual violence, Dalit women and girls are silenced through threats by dominant castes. The constitutionally invalid Khap Panchayats often have an upper hand in refraining the victim families to report such instances.

The most precarious fact about violence against lower caste women is the complicity of the administration. The police, a part of the state machinery, has been reported to decline the registration of complaints. Charges are not filed because the case is designated as false by the police. The authorities often belonging to the dominant upper caste shout caste-based slurs and sexist remarks. They take money from the financially influential accused persons and direct the evidence in their favour.  In the Hathras Rape case in 2020, the girl’s brother testified that no arrest was made by the police even after 10 days of the incident was reported. A 15-year-old Dalit girl who was gang raped by security personnel in Odisha was incessantly threatened, harassed and lured by the police to say that she had not been raped by security personnel but by other local persons. When she refused to put up with the falsehood, her medical examination was re-done to obliterate any evidence of rape. Three months later, she committed suicide and, that she was raped, was written in the suicide note.  The sanction and continuation of these forms of sexual violence come from the powerful kinship networks, beginning with the families of dominant caste groups. These networks extend to the local governance, as well as the police and legal systems.

The regressive and ignominious two-finger test that has been ruled out by the Supreme Court of India is still used for the medico-legal examination of the Dalit victims. Survivors are often not provided with a copy of the medical examination report, or the families of the dead (in cases of murder) are not provided with the post-mortem reports. These are tampered with by the state authorities to show lack of evidence.

The incitement to declare oneself the subject of violation is the first step in seeking recognition and redress. This requires strategic enactment of a perception about law- one must act as if legal structures are capable of delivering justice once the harm is presented in familiar legal vocabulary. Thus, the police being the first rung of the criminal justice system, it remains to be seen how can laws instil faith in the Dalit women that the justice system is alive and will come to their rescue.

Women, Dalit women, Rege[1] and Bama[2] 

The author’s assertion that addressing women does not mechanically translate into engaging with Dalit women is aptly substantiated by Sharmila Rege. She pointed out that the category ‘woman’ was conceived as collectively, based on their being oppressed by the fact of their womanhood. The three categories were deployed in combination and this often led to exclusions around race, class and ethnicity. Since most of the vocal feminists of the 1970s were white, middle class and university educated – it was their experience which came to be universalised a ‘women’s experience’.

Bama remarked “All women in the world are second class citizens. For Dalit women, the problem is grave. Their Dalit identity gives them a different set of problems. They experience a total lack of social status; they are not even considered dignified human being.” They must endure triple oppression – class, caste and gender.

Today, the plight is such that Dalit women constitute one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups within India’s female population. They suffer from, what is called the triple burden of gender bias, caste discrimination, and economic deprivation. They are more susceptible to sexual violence due to their caste than other women. Experts write that the bodies of Dalit women are weaponised maintain and perpetuate the status quo – the oppression and subjugation of Dalit. Uma Chakravarti wrote that violence is inflicted on Dalit women’s bodies as a means of controlling caste dominance and maintaining caste purity. Lower-caste women have been denied the right to seek justice for sexual violence as it is often considered that they have no honour to be stolen.

Politics and Casteism in India 

B.R. Ambedkar observed that the caste system can be maintained only through the constraints on women’s sexuality and in this way, women are the gateways to the caste.  Sexual violence against Dalit women perpetuates and entrenches casteism in the Indian society. It is indeed ironical how such violence continues seventy-five years after the Constitution promised equality? This crisis is almost out of the mainstream political discourse. Caste-based sexual violence has occupied a relatively limited place in the election manifestos of major national parties compared to other issues.

The highest rates of crimes committed against Dalits (NCRB, 2019) were in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. The others with rates above the national average were Telangana, UP, Kerala, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Remarkably, despite the pervasiveness of the menace across States in India, violence against Dalit women finds no mention in the manifesto of the ruling party in power in most of the above-mentioned States or the Indian National Congress (INC) (in power in Telangana and leading the UDF in Kerala) and cursory treatment in the manifesto of the CPI(M) (leading the LDF as the opposition in Kerala). The reason why I found it relevant to refer to the election manifestos of the political parties is because they are instructive in revealing the manner in which political institutions conceptualise and more importantly, fail to conceptualise violence against Dalit women.

The belief that reforms aimed at women as a homogenous category will inevitably serve the needs of lower-caste women is merely a façade. Neither women nor Dalits are a monolithic category. Violence perpetrated on Dalit women is a structural and intersectional menace.  The rhetorical commitments to do away with “caste-based violence” or “gender-related crimes” or “women empowerment” or “Dalit atrocities” does not per se address the plight of Dalit or lower-caste women.  Today, Dalit women are a more vulnerable constituency within Indian women, whose experiences cannot be comprehended through a universalised lens of womanhood. In India’s caste-ridden society, upper-caste women are bestowed with greater honour, whereas the bodies of Dalit, Adivasi, and lower-caste women are considered impure and sexually accessible to dominant caste-groups. None of the existing frameworks in India are equipped to undo centuries of inherited stigma.

Promises of political representation or reservation or economic empowerment of women through financial inclusion do not even superficially cater to the misery of the lower caste women. The perception that empowerment of women is assured through economic means abandons the idea of emancipation of the lower caste women as the latter is not possible without meticulously studying the specificities of their subordination. South India is a testament to this assertion. Higher literacy rates, positive indicators of economic development and other manifestations of modernisation have miserably failed to eradicate the blot of casteism.  To borrow from Mema Chongtham, “a mirage of equality only shields prejudice, giving a lifeline to discrimination behind a façade of civility.”

Conclusion – Listen to them

Given the now proven ineptitude of governments across successive administrations and States in meaningfully assuaging the plight of Dalit women, it must now directly turn towards the lower caste women and ask – What do you need? What do you want? What do you think will help you in rising? How can the State actually support you? It is imperative for the Government to pay heed to the voices and recommendations of the Dalit women organisations, who have much more nuanced understanding of the community.

There is a need to lift them from menial jobs like manual scavenging and transform them into producers in the workforce. Dalit women are almost invisible in public life and positions of power. Though no data is publicly available on the representation of Dalit judges in High Courts and the lower judiciary, Parliamentary Committees, Commissions and high-level government officials have acknowledged the issue of acute lack of caste diversity in the justice system needs to be immediately addressed. Years of oppression and subjugation has obliterated the very confidence of lower caste women in their being. They need tangible beacons of hope to enable and equip themselves.

In my very personal opinion, though I have been generally hesitant in the deliberation over Indian issues in the international arena, it is precisely these factors that propel me to concur with what Dr. Shiv Visvanathan, a prominent social scientist, known for the concept of cognitive justice who wrote, – “One is forced to manoeuvre for international attention because only external politics might be able to leverage current paradigms”.

(The author, as student of law at the Symbiosis Law School, Pune and is grateful to Dr Ankita Chatterjee for her invaluable insights and guidance, that significantly informed and enriched this article)

References:

Cases buried by caste

Dear upper caste Indians, Hathras is not another Nirbhaya. It is a Khairlanji

The Khairlanji Massacre: Unveiling the Intersection of Caste, Gender, and Violence in Modern India – Round Table India

Dalit Women in India: At the Crossroads of Gender, Class, and Caste | Global Justice : Theory Practice Rhetoric

Unveiling the Oppressed Body: Female Dalit Body Politics in India through Baburao Bagul and Yashica Dutt

Progressive On Paper, Prejudiced In Practice: Why We Cannot Look Away From The Persistence Of Caste In South India | Feminism in India

Hathras victim was gang-raped, murdered: CBI – The Hindu

Caste Based Sexual Violence and State Impunity (English and Hindi)

EN-Haryana_Report-ENG-PDF-1.pdf

Caste and Race: Discrimination Based on Descent | Economic and Political Weekly

Dalit_Women_Talk_DifferentlyA_Critique_of_Difference_and_Towards_a_Dalit_Feminist.pdf

Disciplinary power and practices of body politics: an evaluation of Dalit women in Bama’s Sangati and P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change through Foucauldian discourse analysis | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Nine states have 54% of Dalits, see 84% of crime against SCs | India News – Times of India

‘I’m a Dalit woman, and my mental health matters’: Christina Thomas Dhanaraj

Dalit Women’s Rights Manifesto 2026 demands internal reservation in governance – The Hindu

Justice denied: Sexual violence & intersectional discrimination – Barriers to accessing justice for Dalit women and girls in Haryana, India – Equality Now

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharmila_Rege: Sharmila Rege was an Indian sociologist, feminist scholar and author of Writing Caste, Writing Gender.^[2] She led the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre at the University of Pune since 1991

[2] Bama (born Faustina Mary Fatima Rani in 1958), also known as Bama Faustina Soosairaj, is a prominent Tamil Dalit feminist writer and former teacher from Virudhunagar district, Tamil Nadu; She rose to fame with her 1992 autobiographical novel Karukku and subsequently published Sangati in 1994, which translates to “Events” in English.

Related:

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Not a Dalit Women’s Day in India

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Recent figures reported through an RTI investigation by The Indian Express suggest that India is witnessing an unprecedented expansion of government-backed content restrictions. Between March and July 2026, government agencies issued nearly 1.95 lakh blocking directions to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. According to the report, this amounted to roughly 1,275 directions every day, or approximately one direction every 68 seconds. Instagram alone received nearly one lakh directions, Facebook around 80,000 and YouTube approximately 15,000.

The scale becomes even more striking when compared with the previous period for which comparable figures are available. RTI data accessed by The Indian Express showed that between October 2024 and October 2025, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the government’s Sahyog portal. That amounted to roughly six orders a day. In the following five months, directions to just three major platforms rose to almost 1.95 lakh. Such a dramatic increase cannot be treated merely as an administrative statistic. It raises a much larger question about the changing relationship between the State, technology companies and citizens in India’s digital public sphere. And the timing makes that question even more difficult to ignore.

When protest moves online, censorship follows

A significant proportion of the latest blocking directions reportedly coincided with the student protests over examination irregularities and leaks in Delhi. The Indian Express, citing a senior government official, reported that a considerable share of the directions were issued as the NEET protests gathered momentum, particularly on Instagram. This is important because Instagram was not simply being used as a space in which the protests were discussed after they happened. It became one of the principal spaces through which the movement itself was organised.

The material compiled in the research shows how the Cockroach Janta Party’s social-media presence became central to the mobilisation, with protest announcements, videos, memes, explainers and other political content circulating rapidly among young users. The account reportedly grew to millions of followers and played an important role in mobilising people for demonstrations, including the July 20 “Sansad Chalo” march. That transformation of social media into a political organising space has a profound constitutional consequence.

A protest today does not begin only when people gather on a street. It begins when people communicate. They decide where to meet, circulate information about police action, share videos from the ground, publicise their demands and tell others what is happening. The digital space has therefore become part of the infrastructure of democratic protest itself. Consequently, restricting that space can affect far more than an individual’s ability to upload a post. It can affect the ability of a movement to organise, document itself and communicate with the wider public. This is why the reported restrictions during the protests deserve particularly close scrutiny.

Article 14, for instance, reported that journalist Sadhika Tiwari’s video showing a student allegedly being beaten by police was blocked on X following a government order. The video, according to the report, showed a crying student and did not contain hate speech, misinformation or graphic imagery. Around the same period, Meta temporarily blocked the Instagram account associated with CJP, which reportedly had more than 23 million followers, although the account was subsequently restored after criticism. The significance of such incidents lies not merely in whether one particular video was lawfully restricted. It lies in the fact that videos documenting State action during a protest are themselves part of the democratic record.

If citizens cannot see what happened on the streets, they cannot independently evaluate competing claims about what happened there. If videos documenting police conduct disappear before they can circulate widely, public debate becomes dependent increasingly upon official accounts of events. That is precisely where the problem of censorship becomes a problem of democracy.

The three-hour problem

The most troubling development, however, may not be the number of takedown directions alone. It is the shrinking amount of time available to platforms to respond to them. As Article 14 reported, the period within which intermediaries are expected to comply with certain government requests has been progressively reduced, eventually reaching three hours in 2026. The investigation linked this shrinking compliance period with the sharp increase in government takedown directions. Three hours may sound like an administrative efficiency measure. It is not difficult to see why it becomes something much more consequential when the subject is constitutionally protected speech.

Imagine a government order directing a platform to remove a journalist’s report. Before complying, the platform would ideally need to determine whether the issuing authority has jurisdiction, whether the order identifies the material adequately, whether the statutory requirements have been met, whether the content actually falls within the legal grounds for restriction and whether the restriction is proportionate. The affected journalist may also need an opportunity to respond. A court may eventually have to examine the order. Yet the platform is given only a few hours to act.

Under those circumstances, the rational institutional response is unlikely to be a careful legal assessment. It is likely to be compliance first and review later. That creates an important constitutional problem. A system that imposes severe consequences for delayed compliance but relatively weak consequences for wrongful removal creates an obvious incentive for platforms to err on the side of deletion. The consequence is what free-speech activists have long warned about: over-removal.

Lawful speech does not have to be formally prohibited for censorship to occur. It is enough for platforms to become sufficiently afraid of retaining controversial material that they begin removing content whenever there is doubt.

Sahyog and the transformation of censorship into infrastructure

The government’s Sahyog portal illustrates another aspect of this changing architecture. Introduced in October 2024, Sahyog was designed to streamline communication between government authorities and online intermediaries. In itself, there is nothing inherently problematic about creating an administrative mechanism through which lawful government directions can be communicated to technology companies. But administrative efficiency cannot substitute for constitutional safeguards.

Article 14 reported that X challenged Sahyog before the Karnataka High Court, arguing that the system effectively facilitated censorship by allowing government requests to reach platforms through a centralised mechanism. The Karnataka High Court rejected the challenge in July 2025 and characterised Sahyog as a facilitation mechanism rather than an independent censorship authority. That judicial characterisation is important, but it does not end the constitutional debate.

A communication system may technically be nothing more than a channel. The real constitutional question concerns what happens after the communication reaches the platform. If a government direction arrives through an official portal, carries the appearance of State authority and has to be acted upon within three hours, the practical ability of a platform to question that direction becomes extremely limited. The portal may facilitate communication.

But when that communication is backed by an extremely short compliance window and automated enforcement, the overall system can begin functioning as something considerably more powerful: an infrastructure through which State decisions about speech are translated rapidly into restrictions on citizens’ access to information.

When the algorithm becomes the censor

This is perhaps the most disturbing development. According to The Indian Express, Meta integrated its systems with Sahyog to comply with the three-hour requirement, allowing content identified through government directions to be restricted or removed automatically rather than waiting for a separate human review before compliance. Automation is attractive because it makes compliance efficient. But constitutional rights are precisely the kind of interests that should make us suspicious of efficiency without accountability.

A human decision-maker can, at least theoretically, ask whether a government direction is valid. An automated system cannot meaningfully interrogate the constitutional legitimacy of the State’s demand. It receives an instruction and executes it. The danger is therefore not simply that the government can order content to be removed. The danger is that a government instruction can increasingly be converted into an automated technical command. The chain becomes remarkably simple: the State issues the direction, the platform’s system receives it, the content is restricted and the user discovers that the speech has disappeared.

A citizen cannot challenge a decision that they cannot see

The question of notice is therefore central. Alt News has documented instances in which users received generic notifications stating that content had been restricted pursuant to a legal request or through an automated process, without being provided meaningful information about the specific legal basis or authority involved.

This creates a basic procedural problem. If a person does not know who ordered the restriction, they cannot determine whether the authority had jurisdiction. If they do not know which law was invoked, they cannot assess whether the restriction is legally sustainable. If they do not know why their particular content was unlawful, they cannot meaningfully challenge the decision. And if they cannot access the order itself, they may not even know what exactly they are supposed to challenge. This is where transparency stops being a policy preference and becomes a constitutional necessity. The State cannot reasonably expect citizens to defend their right to speak against an order whose existence, reasoning and legal basis remain hidden from them.

The disappearance of journalism is more serious than the disappearance of content

The consequences become particularly serious when the material being restricted is journalism. Article 14 reported that in March 2026 alone, Facebook pages belonging to at least six news and digital publications were blocked. The report also identified restrictions involving Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir, Kashmir Life, Molitics India, National Dastak and 4PM News Network, among others. The Wire, Maktoob Media and Peek TV have similarly reported restrictions affecting their content.

The problem here is fundamentally different from the removal of ordinary user-generated material. A journalist reporting on a protest is not simply generating “content”. They are creating a record of a public event. A report about Kashmir may become part of the historical record of the region, a video documenting police action may later become evidence in litigation, or a report concerning government policy may inform electoral choices. When such material disappears without clear explanation, the damage therefore extends beyond the individual publisher.

The public loses access to information that may be essential to holding power accountable. That is why the freedom of the press cannot be protected merely by allowing newspapers to continue printing. In 2026, press freedom also requires journalists to be able to reach audiences through the digital platforms on which those audiences increasingly depend.

The State’s concern about decentralised communication is not irrelevant — but it is not enough

The controversy surrounding Bitchat, Briar and Bridgefy demonstrates that the problem extends beyond mainstream social-media platforms. During the Jantar Mantar protests, demonstrators reportedly turned to Bluetooth-based mesh communication applications that could facilitate communication between nearby devices without relying entirely on conventional mobile internet infrastructure.

The government’s concern was that such systems could make lawful interception, identification and investigation more difficult. According to reports, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre issued directions seeking the removal of Bitchat, Briar and Bridgefy from major app stores and also sought action against Bitchat’s GitHub repository. Medianama reported that the notices provided intermediaries with three hours to comply, although officials later orally instructed companies not to enforce the directions.

ThePrint reported that the I4C notice to GitHub invoked Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act read with Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules and sought removal of Bitchat’s repositories within three hours. There is a legitimate public-interest argument here. Communication technologies can be abused for criminal activity, and the State cannot be expected to remain completely powerless when technology is used to facilitate serious offences. But that cannot be the end of the analysis.

The fact that a technology can be misused does not establish that the technology itself should be suppressed. A telephone can be used to organise a crime. A messaging application can be used to coordinate violence. Social media can spread misinformation. None of these facts, by themselves, justify eliminating the technology. The State must still establish why the restriction is necessary, why less restrictive alternatives would not work and why the particular application or communication mechanism presents a sufficiently serious and demonstrable threat. Otherwise, “public order” becomes a justification capable of swallowing the right to communicate altogether.

The constitutional framework is not optional

India does not indulge this issue without constitutional guidance. Article 19(1)(a) guarantees freedom of speech and expression, while Article 19(2) permits reasonable restrictions on specified grounds. The Supreme Court’s decision in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India remains a foundational judgment in understanding the limits of online speech regulation.

The Court’s decision is important precisely because it recognises that vague or overbroad restrictions can have a chilling effect on legitimate expression. The existence of a statutory power, therefore, cannot by itself answer the constitutional question. The State must still demonstrate that the restriction falls within the law and survives constitutional scrutiny. That is particularly important where the restriction affects political expression.

Political speech lies at the heart of democratic participation. Criticism of government policy, reporting on protests, documenting police action and exposing administrative failures cannot be placed in the same category as genuinely unlawful material merely because they are inconvenient or controversial. The State must be able to distinguish speech that is unlawful from speech that is merely uncomfortable. That distinction is the foundation of a functioning democracy.

Another concern emerging from the reporting is the increasingly routine character of mechanisms originally justified by urgency. Emergency powers exist for a reason. There are situations in which authorities may need to act quickly to prevent serious and immediate harm. But emergency mechanisms become constitutionally dangerous when the exception starts functioning as the ordinary route for restricting speech.

Article 14 reported concerns among technology-policy experts that emergency blocking mechanisms could increasingly become part of routine online governance, particularly because affected parties may not receive the underlying orders and therefore have limited opportunities to challenge them. The constitutional problem can be stated simply. An emergency procedure should make the State faster when speed is genuinely necessary. It should not make the State less accountable because it has chosen to act quickly. If anything, extraordinary powers should trigger stronger review precisely because they reduce the opportunity for the affected person to respond beforehand.

Platforms are not innocent bystanders

The responsibility, however, does not rest with the government alone. Technology companies have enormous power over what citizens can see, publish and circulate. They therefore have their own obligations of transparency. The Indian Express reporting indicates that Meta generally provides users in several jurisdictions with information when governments request restrictions on their content, but that such disclosures are not provided in India and some other markets because of legal and regulatory considerations. That should concern anyone who believes that users have a right to understand why their speech has been restricted.

A platform should not be able to tell a journalist merely that their report is unavailable because of a “legal requirement”. The journalist should know whether the government ordered the restriction, which authority issued the order and which law was invoked. Transparency does not necessarily prevent compliance. A platform can comply with a lawful government direction while still informing the affected user that the government sought the restriction. Indeed, transparency may be one of the few mechanisms capable of ensuring that government censorship does not become invisible.

The reported proposal by X to make government requests more visible to users therefore deserves attention. According to recent reports, Elon Musk announced that X would begin making government requests to restrict or remove content more transparent, including information about the requesting authority and, where available, the legal basis for the request.

The Indian government has understandably maintained that platforms operating in India remain subject to Indian law. But that is not inconsistent with transparency. The two principles can coexist. If the State has lawfully ordered a restriction, there should be no reason for the process to remain invisible. Government censorship should not become anonymous censorship.

India must decide what kind of digital democracy it wants

There is a legitimate State interest in regulating harmful online material. There is a legitimate public interest in combating misinformation, incitement, deepfakes, threats and criminal coordination. Technology companies cannot claim absolute immunity from the laws of the countries in which they operate. But none of these propositions answers the central constitutional question.

How much power should the State possess to determine what citizens are allowed to see, publish and circulate — and what safeguards must accompany that power?

Nearly 1.95 lakh blocking directions in five months, as reported by The Indian Express, should force that question into the centre of India’s democratic debate. The answer cannot simply be that the government has followed a procedure. A procedure that is too fast to meaningfully challenge, too opaque to independently scrutinise and too automated to permit genuine review can satisfy the appearance of legality while undermining the substance of constitutional protection.

Indian law therefore needs stronger safeguards around government-directed content restrictions. Orders should clearly identify the legal provision relied upon, the authority issuing them and the reasons for restricting the particular material. Affected users should ordinarily receive notice and have access to a meaningful appeal mechanism. Emergency orders should be subject to prompt independent review and should automatically lapse unless their continuation is justified. Platforms should publish greater information about government requests, including anonymised data that allows the public to assess how frequently such powers are being used and how often they are challenged or withdrawn. Most importantly, the burden cannot silently shift from the State having to justify censorship to the citizen having to prove why their speech should remain online.

The extraordinary rise in takedown directions, the targeting of protest-related content, the restrictions imposed on journalists and news organisations, the attempt to interfere with decentralised communication tools and the increasing use of automated compliance together point towards a digital environment in which the speed of censorship may be outpacing the speed of accountability.

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The post The State Wants the Delete Button: India’s new architecture of digital censorship appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The draft roll was handed over to representatives of recognised political parties at a meeting chaired by Punjab Chief Electoral Officer Anindita Mitra on August 13. Political parties were also briefed about the forms to be used during the claims and objections process.

Form 6 can be used for inclusion of names, Form 6A for enrolment of eligible overseas Indian voters, Form 7 for deletion of names and Form 8 for correction of entries or shifting of residence.

Nearly 20 lakh electors not covered by enumeration

According to officials, enumeration forms of nearly 1.94 crore (19.4 million) electors out of Punjab’s total electorate of around 2.14 crore (21.4 million) were collected and digitised during the house-to-house enumeration exercise. The remaining more than 20 lakh electors, accounting for 9.63 per cent of the total electorate, were categorised under the ASDD — absent, shifted, dead or duplicate — category.

The house-to-house enumeration exercise was conducted from June 25 to August 3 as part of the SIR process.

The categorisation of such a large number of electors means that the claims and objections period will be an important stage for voters who could not be covered during the enumeration exercise or whose names do not appear in the draft roll.

CEO asks electors to check names

The Punjab CEO’s office has asked electors to check their details in the published draft roll. The draft is available through the Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab website and the Election Commission’s voter services portal. A special camp was also organised at all polling booths on August 16 to help electors check their details and access electoral services. Booth Level Officers were made available at polling stations from 10 am to 1 pm for assistance.

Help desks have also been set up at the offices of District Election Officers and Electoral Registration Officers to facilitate access to the draft roll.

Citizens turning 18 by October 1, 2026 are eligible to seek enrolment, according to the CEO’s office.

Social media complaints point to difficulties during Punjab SIR enumeration

While official communication from the Punjab election authorities has highlighted voter assistance and arrangements made during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), posts and replies on the official social media account of the Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab also contain complaints from electors about difficulties during the enumeration and verification process.

On August 14, a user, Rahul Dadhwal, complained that the information available to him was incorrect and that money had been spent without resolving the issue. He wrote: “Koi v information Sahi nahi kida check kariya, sab sada paisa waste” — “No information was correct. We checked everything, and all our money was wasted.”

Koi v information Sahi nahi kida check kariya , sab sada paisa waste .

— Rahul Dadhwal (@rahuldadhwal8) August 14, 2026

The post was subsequently followed by a response from the CEO Punjab office asking the user to share personal details and a brief description of the problem through direct message so that the concerned team could assist.

Thank you for contacting Office of Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab
Please DM your name, mobile number, District, Assembly Constituency, and a brief description of your issue. The concerned team will contact you for necessary assistance.

— Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab (@TheCEOPunjab) August 17, 2026

Other posts on the same official account also raised specific concerns about the enumeration exercise.

A user identifying himself as Aditya alleged that his mother, who is alive, had been marked as deceased and consequently removed from the Punjab SIR draft electoral roll. He claimed that she had filled and submitted the Enumeration Form and questioned how the error had occurred.

@TheCEOPunjab @ECISVEEP
My mother is alive,but her name has been removed from the Punjab SIR draft electoral roll by incorrectly marking her as deceased. She had duly filled and submitted the Enumeration Form as well.Was this done intentionally to remove voters?
EPIC: TXO3368289

— Aditya (@MunishK1007) August 15, 2026

Another user, posting on August 16, alleged that members of the public were facing harassment at the hands of Booth Level Officers (BLOs), whom the user described as inadequately trained.

Great harrasment of public at BLO hands they are not well trained @TheCEOPunjab

— noreligion (@nofoodsecurity) August 16, 2026

A separate complaint from a Ludhiana resident said that she had been living in the city for more than 25 years and had shifted her residence from Ludhiana North to Ludhiana West. She alleged that she was unable to obtain her EPIC number because no BLO was helping her and that the application was showing “NO RESULT FOUND”. The complaint was addressed to the Election Commission and Punjab election authorities.

Link: https://x.com/GoyelJ/status/2089030135123267590?s=20

The responses from the CEO Punjab account in these cases were similar, asking complainants to share their details privately so that the concerned team could examine the matter.

These exchanges do not, by themselves, establish whether the complaints were caused by errors in the SIR process, technical problems, mistakes during enumeration or other reasons. Nor do they establish the extent of such problems across Punjab. However, they provide examples of electors publicly reporting difficulties with identification, enumeration, BLO assistance and entries in the draft electoral roll.

The complaints are relevant to the SIR process because the exercise involves the verification of existing electors and preparation of the draft electoral roll. Errors in recording a voter’s status, difficulties in locating an EPIC number or problems in accessing BLO assistance can potentially affect an elector’s ability to verify their entry and raise a claim or objection within the prescribed period.

Claims and objections open until September 12

With the draft roll now published, voters have an opportunity to verify their names and particulars and seek corrections or inclusion where required.

Those whose names are missing can file claims along with the prescribed declaration and supporting documents until September 12. Electors can also use the prescribed forms to seek deletion of an ineligible entry, correction of details or shifting of their registration.

The process therefore moves into a crucial claims and objections stage, particularly for the more than 20 lakh electors who were not covered through collection and digitisation of enumeration forms. The final electoral roll will be prepared after the claims and objections received during this period are processed by the election authorities.

Related:

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The post Punjab SIR draft roll published; 20 lakh electors marked ASDD, claims open till September 12 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

That distinction has become increasingly difficult to ignore. The 2026 Kanwar season was marked not simply by the ordinary logistical difficulties of accommodating millions of pilgrims, but by repeated reports of assaults, vandalism, intimidation, attacks on vehicles, confrontations with police, targeting of Muslims, pressure on Muslim-owned establishments, and an increasingly aggressive campaign around what citizens may eat or sell during Shravan. The question, therefore, is not whether the Kanwar Yatra should be allowed. It should.

The question is what happens when the State begins accommodating a religious procession to such an extent that the rights of everyone outside the procession begin to appear negotiable? That is where the 2026 Yatra becomes constitutionally significant.

A pilgrimage of millions — and a State willing to rearrange public life around it

The sheer scale of the Kanwar Yatra makes substantial administrative arrangements inevitable. Uttar Pradesh deployed approximately 35,000 police personnel, 151 companies of the Provincial Armed Constabulary and 11 companies of paramilitary forces for the 2026 pilgrimage. According to The Times of India, the State also installed nearly 29,500 CCTV cameras and deployed 395 drones, alongside 1,222 police helpdesks and 829 medical camps. The Uttar Pradesh government had announced an elaborate security and logistical plan even before the Yatra began. The Indian Express reported that round-the-clock control rooms, CCTV surveillance, additional buses and other arrangements were being put in place, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stating that nobody could stop the annual pilgrimage.

The administration’s preparations were explicitly framed around ensuring the safety, convenience and dignity of the Kanwariyas. Uttar Pradesh DGP Rajeev Krishna announced a “zero incident, zero accident” target, while senior officials discussed interstate coordination, medical preparedness, traffic management and surveillance. Again, there is nothing objectionable about this in itself. A democratic State should facilitate the peaceful exercise of religion. But the scale of accommodation raises another question: where is the corresponding obligation to protect those who are not participating in the pilgrimage?

During the Yatra, roads are closed or heavily restricted, schools and institutions in some areas are shut or their schedules altered, businesses are asked to modify operations, and entire stretches of public space are effectively reorganised around the movement of pilgrims. In western Uttar Pradesh, Hindustan Times reported extensive traffic restrictions, including the planned closure of the Delhi-Haridwar National Highway and Ganga Canal Road in Muzaffarnagar for the movement of Kanwariyas. Non-vegetarian eateries and liquor shops were cleared from parts of the route. The Delhi-Meerut Expressway was also closed to regular traffic at the peak of the Yatra, causing severe congestion on alternative routes, according to The Times of India.  Such measures can be justified when they are proportionate, temporary and genuinely necessary for public safety. But accommodation cannot become capitulation. And that distinction becomes particularly important when the very group being accommodated is also involved, in individual cases, in disrupting public order.

When a minor collision becomes collective punishment

One of the most disturbing patterns emerging from the 2026 Yatra is the repeated escalation of relatively minor road incidents into collective violence. On July 16, in Purkazi, Muzaffarnagar, a pickup vehicle reportedly brushed against Kanwariyas, reported by The Hindu. What should have been an ordinary traffic dispute escalated into an attack on the vehicle. Videos showed men climbing onto the pickup, smashing its windshield and striking it with sticks. Police intervened, registered a case against unidentified persons and began examining video footage to identify those involved.

The incident is revealing because the vehicle was not accused of deliberately attacking a religious procession. The reported trigger was an accidental collision. Yet the response was collective retaliation. The same pattern appeared in Manglaur town, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand on August 1, when an Alto collided with a Kanwariya and broke his Kanwar. As reported by ETV Bharat, a crowd reportedly pulled the driver from the vehicle, assaulted him and then vandalised the car. Significantly, the driver was himself reportedly a Kanwariya returning with Gangajal. Police eventually intervened and registered an FIR.

These incidents demonstrate that the problem cannot simply be explained as hostility between Hindus and Muslims or as attacks by outsiders upon a religious procession. The underlying problem is the normalisation of mob justice. A collision becomes “desecration”; desecration becomes an excuse for anger; anger becomes collective violence and the crowd becomes the adjudicator. That is precisely the opposite of the rule of law.

The school van attack: When even children are not outside the zone of religious aggression

Perhaps the most disturbing example occurred in Lucknow. On August 3, six Kanwariyas allegedly attacked a school van after a motorcycle associated with the group collided with the vehicle at Charak Chowk. The men allegedly smashed the rear windshield and side mirrors and threatened the driver. The van was carrying schoolchildren. The incident was reported by Hindustan Times, which provided that police subsequently arrested one person in connection with the attack.

The children were not physically injured, but the psychological dimension cannot be dismissed. A school vehicle is not an ideological adversary; a child sitting in a school van is not an obstruction to religious freedom; and a driver involved in a traffic dispute cannot lawfully be subjected to collective punishment because the other side happens to be carrying a Kanwar.

The newspaper records allegations by parents that the police initially refused to register the complaint and instead threatened action against the van for alleged documentation violations. Parents also alleged that the assault occurred in the presence of policemen who failed to intervene. Those allegations require independent investigation and should not be treated as established fact without verification. But they raise an important institutional question: what message is communicated when citizens perceive that the police are more comfortable questioning the victim than confronting the mob?

When the police themselves become targets

The violence has also extended to law-enforcement personnel. In Meerut, as reported by Deccan Herald, a dispute between groups of Kanwariyas following a motorcycle collision reportedly escalated into a fight. A head constable who attempted to intervene was allegedly pushed and beaten before police eventually brought the situation under control. The significance of such incidents goes beyond the injury to an individual officer.

The State cannot maintain public order if the police are expected to negotiate with a mob whose religious identity is treated as a reason for exceptional restraint. A police officer cannot be expected to enforce the law only when the crowd permits him to. Once a group begins attacking police personnel, damaging vehicles and obstructing roads, the religious nature of the gathering cannot operate as a shield. The constitutional obligation is precisely the opposite: the more sensitive the religious context, the more carefully and impartially the State must enforce the law.

The communal turn: When the Kanwar route becomes a map of exclusion

If the violence were limited to road accidents and crowd-management failures, it would be a serious law-and-order problem. But the 2026 Yatra has also revealed a distinctly communal dimension.

The material compiled for this piece records a series of incidents in which Muslim-owned businesses, Muslim participation and Muslim presence along Kanwar routes were specifically targeted.

On July 28 in Dehradun, members of the Hindu Raksha Dal reportedly submitted a memorandum demanding that Muslim shopkeepers remove their shops from the Kanwar route and refrain from offering food or water to pilgrims. The organisation reportedly threatened to shut Muslim-owned shops itself if they did not comply. This is an extraordinary demand. A Muslim offering water to a Hindu pilgrim is not a constitutional violation. A Muslim-owned shop selling lawful food is not a threat to religious freedom. A citizen does not lose the right to conduct a business because a religious procession happens to pass through the locality. And no private organisation has the legal authority to decide that another citizen’s shop must close because of that citizen’s religion.

Location: Dehradun, Uttarakhand

Date: July 28

Members of the Hindu Raksha Dal, led by Uttarakhand State President Lalit Sharma, submitted a memorandum at the SDM Office and declared that the Hindu Raksha Dal would not allow its religion to be “destroyed” during the Kanwar Yatra. Sharma demanded that Muslims remove their shops from the yatra route, avoid obstructing the procession, and refrain from offering food or water to pilgrims, stating that such offerings were not needed. He warned that Muslims should comply with these demands “for their own good,” threatening that the organisation would otherwise enforce them through violence. He further threatened that if Muslim-owned shops continued to operate along the Kanwar Yatra route after July 30, members of the organisation would shut them down themselves.

The danger lies in the gradual normalisation of precisely this idea. The controversy surrounding shopkeeper identity is particularly revealing. In 2024, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand authorities had directed eateries along the Kanwar route to display the names of their owners and employees. The Supreme Court intervened and stayed the directions. It permitted authorities to require disclosure of the nature of food being served but rejected the requirement that owners and employees be identified by name. The constitutional concern was obvious. A food item can be vegetarian or non-vegetarian; a restaurant can be licensed or unlicensed; a kitchen can meet or violate health standards. But the religion of the person selling the food is not a food-safety category.

The Supreme Court’s intervention therefore went directly to the danger of converting a dietary preference into a system of religious identification. The 2026 incidents suggest that the politics behind that controversy has not disappeared. The document records an alleged incident in which a Muslim shopkeeper was pressured to display his name prominently so that Kanwariyas could determine whether the establishment was Muslim-owned. This is the politics of the nameplate in another form. The underlying message is: Know who owns the shop. Know whether he is Muslim. Decide whether you will enter.

That is not neutral consumer information, rather it is communal sorting. And communal sorting becomes particularly dangerous when it occurs in an environment where vigilante groups have already threatened violence. The politics of the Kanwar Yatra in 2026 cannot be understood without examining the increasingly aggressive campaign against meat and non-vegetarian food.

This is where an individual’s religious observance begins to collide with another citizen’s personal autonomy and livelihood. Kanwariyas may choose to abstain from meat. They may insist that the food they themselves consume during their pilgrimage is vegetarian. They may choose not to enter a restaurant serving meat. None of this is controversial. The constitutional problem begins when their dietary discipline is converted into a rule for everyone else.

In Meerut, the district administration issued directions concerning food served along the Kanwar route, including restrictions concerning onion and garlic, while meat and liquor shops were to be closed or covered, according to Hindustan Times.

In Hapur, authorities ordered meat, fish, egg and other non-vegetarian outlets shut from July 26 until further orders, explicitly citing the need to ensure the peaceful passage of the Kanwar Yatra. India Today reported that the closure extended to all such outlets in the relevant area. In Delhi, the MCD ordered action against unauthorised and unlicensed meat shops along Kanwar routes and near 308 Kanwar camps. Hindustan Times reported that the order followed a meeting chaired by Delhi minister Kapil Mishra.

Again, there is an important legal distinction. If a meat shop is illegal, it can be shut. If a business violates municipal rules, it can be proceeded against. If an establishment lacks a licence, the law can be enforced. But if the underlying principle becomes “meat must disappear because Kanwariyas are passing through”, then the State is no longer merely regulating illegal businesses. It is imposing the religious preferences of one group upon the everyday life of everyone else. And this becomes even more troubling because meat businesses in many parts of north India are disproportionately dependent on Muslim workers and proprietors. Thus, what is presented as a religious restriction on food can have a distinctly communal economic impact.

From administrative restriction to vigilante enforcement

The State’s actions are only one part of the story. More alarming is the extent to which private Hindu nationalist organisations have attempted to enforce these restrictions themselves. On July 30, an incident in Ghaziabad took place where a Hindu Raksha Dal member allegedly assaulted a man transporting meat, objecting to the transportation during Shravan.

Location: Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Date: July 30

Bajrang Dal members, led by leader Pankaj Arya, assaulted a Muslim man and accused him of deliberately damaging a Kanwar carried by a Hindu pilgrim near Guldhar. They claimed the man struck Kanwar with a stick while the pilgrim was carrying Ganga water from Haridwar to Bharatpur, Rajasthan and later handed the man over to the police.

In Mainpuri, members of Hindu organisations reportedly entered non-vegetarian establishments and egg carts, allegedly abusing shopkeepers and ordering them to close. In Deoband, members of VHP-Bajrang Dal reportedly objected to the sale of chicken and called the police, after which employees were detained and meat was seized. This is where the distinction between religious practice and religious policing becomes essential.

Location: Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh

Date: August 9

Members of Vishva Hindu Mahasangh and Gau Raksha Dal, led by Golu Rathore, raided several non-veg outlets and egg carts, wielding sticks, hurling abuses at shopkeepers, and forcibly ordering them to shut their businesses, citing the Hindu month of Shravan and the ongoing Kanwar Yatra.

The most striking example of this convergence of religion, meat and administrative power came from Baheri in Uttar Pradesh, where a chicken-biryani shop near the Kanwar route was demolished after Bajrang Dal workers complained about the sale of non-vegetarian food. As reported by Maktoob Media, the owner, Mohd Salman, was detained. Police described the action as preventive and said the establishment was disturbing public peace, while municipal authorities said the structure was an illegal construction over a drain. If the structure was genuinely illegal, the administration must be permitted to enforce municipal law.

But the central question remains one of procedure and proportionality: Was the law enforced because there was an established municipal violation, or did the religious complaint trigger the enforcement action?

The Constitution does not prohibit the State from removing an illegal structure. It does prohibit the State from using public power as a disguised instrument of communal punishment. A shopkeeper cannot be punished for being Muslim. A business cannot be demolished because a vigilante group dislikes what it sells. And “public peace” cannot become a vague administrative formula through which the State converts the demands of a mob into enforceable orders.

The Kanwar Yatra and the politics of Muslim belonging

The communalisation of the Yatra has also extended beyond shops and food. Many inciteful statements from Hindu religious figures and organisations were reported where they were seen demanding that Muslims participating in the Kanwar Yatra conform to Hindu visual markers, including saffron clothing. As reported by Deccan Herald, Right-wing leader Swami Yashveer of Yog Sadhna Ashram questioned the participation of Muslims wearing skull caps or burqas in the Kanwar Yatra, stating that such attire is inappropriate for the pilgrimage and suggesting that those who participate genuinely should formally return to Hinduism. This is an extraordinary conception of religious participation.

If a Muslim chooses to participate in a Hindu pilgrimage peacefully, that should be understood as an expression of individual conscience.

Instead, the political framing asks: Why is a Muslim here?

And then: If he is here, why does he still look Muslim?

The implication is that participation in the religious life of another community is acceptable only after the Muslim has symbolically surrendered his Muslim identity. The rhetoric surrounding the Yatra has also spilled into explicitly territorial and historical claims. Slogans invoking Mathura, Kashi and Deoband, including the formulation that “Mathura and Kashi are just a glimpse; Deoband is yet to come.” Such slogans cannot be dismissed as harmless rhetoric.

Location: Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh

Date: July 14

Members of the Hindu Raksha Dal from Uttarakhand staged a protest against Darul Uloom Deoband, claiming that the site was originally a Shiv Mandir and asserting that they would reclaim it. Lalit Sharma, Uttarakhand State President of the Hindu Raksha Dal, demanded an administrative investigation, accusing the authorities of delaying the process. He asserted that if no action was taken, they would return with trishuls and perform jalabhishek at Darul Uloom. He further threatened that Kanwar pilgrims would march to Deoband, after which “everything would belong to us.” He derogatorily referred to Muslims as “topiwale,” alleged that Muslims had occupied the site for the past 100 years, claimed that digging 14 feet beneath the site would reveal “their father Shiv,” and declared that there was no need for mosques anywhere. Participants also raised the slogan, “Mathura and Kashi are just a glimpse; Deoband is yet to come.”

The same political impulse surfaced in Agra, where members of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha reportedly attempted to enter the Taj Mahal with Kanwar water, asserting the claim that the monument was actually “Tejo Mahalaya”. The Kanwar is consequently being made to carry political baggage far beyond the act of carrying Gangajal. It becomes a symbol of territorial assertion. And, increasingly, a means of demonstrating who can occupy public space and on what terms.

Location: Agra, Uttar Pradesh

Date: August 3

Members of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha attempted to enter the Taj Mahal to offer Hindu ritual prayers with Kanwar water, claiming that the monument is a Hindu Shiva temple called “Tejo Mahalaya.”

 The political nature of the Yatra was especially visible in Maharashtra. During a Kanwar procession in Muslim-majority Mumbra, BJP legislator Nitesh Rane reportedly made remarks asserting that Mumbra “was and will remain” Hindu, according to NDTV‘s reporting. The significance of such rhetoric is difficult to miss. A religious procession in a particular neighbourhood becomes an opportunity to make a claim about the religious ownership of that neighbourhood.

The question is no longer simply: Can Hindus carry out a religious procession in Mumbra?

Of course they can, subject to ordinary law-and-order requirements. The political question being manufactured is: Who does Mumbra belong to?

That is an entirely different proposition. A constitutional democracy does not assign neighbourhoods to religions. Mumbai’s Muslims do not cease to be equal citizens because a Hindu procession passes through their locality. Nor does a Hindu procession become a declaration of territorial ownership. Yet political rhetoric increasingly attempts to make precisely that transformation.

The state, selective enforcement and the constitutional line

There is an uncomfortable contradiction running through the entire Kanwar season. On the one hand, the State has undertaken extensive measures to regulate and facilitate the pilgrimage, deploying thousands of police personnel, installing CCTV cameras and drones, closing roads, diverting traffic, inspecting businesses, shutting meat shops and, in some areas, even altering school schedules. Entire districts have effectively been reorganised around the movement of Kanwariyas. On the other hand, when members of the same pilgrimage are accused of vandalising vehicles, assaulting drivers, confronting police personnel or intimidating businesses, enforcement has at times appeared hesitant, delayed or reactive. The document records several instances in which police intervention allegedly came only after violence had escalated, alongside allegations that FIRs were initially resisted or that accused persons were subsequently released on bonds. These allegations must, of course, be examined individually and should not be used to suggest that every police officer or administration acted in favour of violent Kanwariyas. Yet the recurrence of such allegations raises a larger constitutional concern: selective enforcement is itself a rule-of-law problem. A State that is willing to deploy extraordinary resources to facilitate a religious pilgrimage must be equally willing to enforce the law when individuals participating in that pilgrimage are accused of violating the rights of others.

This brings the discussion to the constitutional limits of religious freedom. The answer to the violence surrounding the Kanwar Yatra is not to restrict the right to practise religion, but to understand that right within the constitutional framework in which it operates. Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion, but that freedom is expressly subject to public order, morality and health, as well as the other fundamental rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution. Religious practice is therefore protected, but violence is not; pilgrimage is protected, but vandalism is not; devotion is protected, but intimidation is not. Similarly, while a Kanwariya is free to observe vegetarianism as part of religious practice, that preference does not automatically confer a right to determine what another citizen may eat or sell. A religious assembly is protected, but it cannot become a licence to assault a person who happens to cross its path. The State’s obligations under Articles 14 and 21 are equally important: equality before the law, equal protection, life and personal liberty cannot be subordinated to the preferences or sensitivities of a religious crowd. The Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2024 Kanwar nameplate controversy is instructive in this regard. The Court permitted authorities to regulate the nature of food being served but stayed directions requiring establishments to disclose the names and identities of their owners and employees. The distinction is fundamental: the State may regulate conduct where the law permits it; it cannot turn religious identity itself into a regulatory category merely to accommodate the preferences of one group.

When the state outsources public order to majoritarian sentiment

The otherisation being normalised through meat deserves closer scrutiny because it is often reduced to a question of religious sensitivity, when its consequences extend far beyond individual dietary preferences. Food is closely connected to identity, livelihood, caste, class and community, and for a large number of Indians, eating meat is an ordinary part of everyday life. At the same time, for thousands of workers employed in slaughterhouses, meat markets, restaurants, transportation and allied businesses, the sale and distribution of meat is a source of livelihood. The consequences become even more significant when meat-related businesses are disproportionately associated with particular communities, including Muslims. When the consumption or sale of meat is therefore politically constructed as something that must disappear from public spaces during a Hindu pilgrimage, the impact is not confined to Kanwariyas who voluntarily choose to abstain from it. It can result in restaurants being forced to shut, meat sellers losing their income, workers being sent home, shopkeepers being pressured to alter their businesses and Muslim-owned establishments becoming more visible and vulnerable to targeting. It also sends a wider social message that the everyday dietary choices and livelihoods of one section of citizens can be restricted to accommodate the religious sensitivities of another. The politics of meat, therefore, is not merely a disagreement over food; it is a question of economic freedom, equal citizenship and the extent to which one community’s religious preferences can determine the conditions under which others live and work.

This has a direct constitutional dimension. Article 19 (1) (g) protects every citizen’s right to practise a profession or carry on an occupation, trade or business, subject to restrictions imposed by law. Such restrictions must have a legitimate legal basis and satisfy the requirements of reasonableness; they cannot become constitutionally valid merely because a section of society considers a particular occupation offensive or incompatible with its religious beliefs. A lawful meat business cannot be treated as inherently illegitimate simply because a religious procession is passing through the area. If an establishment is unlicensed, violates municipal regulations or breaches food-safety requirements, the State has both the authority and the responsibility to act against it. But the basis of that action must remain the law and not the demands of a religious crowd.

This leads to the deeper institutional concern surrounding the Kanwar Yatra: the danger of the State allowing majoritarian sentiment to determine the boundaries of public order. A democratic State possesses the legitimate authority to regulate public spaces and enforce the law; a vigilante organisation does not. If the administration considers that meat shops should be temporarily closed along a particular route for a legally defensible public-order or regulatory reason, that decision must emerge from a lawful order, a clearly identifiable statutory basis and a proportionate exercise of administrative power. What cannot happen is for a private organisation to first threaten or demand the closure of businesses and for the administration to subsequently give effect to that demand, whether directly or indirectly. Such a process effectively reverses the constitutional chain of authority: the mob demands, the administration accommodates, and the police enforce.

That inversion is particularly dangerous because it allows majoritarian power to acquire the appearance of State authority. A vigilante group does not become legitimate simply because its demands are subsequently reflected in administrative action, just as a religious sentiment does not become a legal standard merely because it is politically popular. The State’s responsibility is not to determine which community is numerically or politically stronger and then organise public life around its preferences. Its responsibility is to ensure that the strength of one community cannot be converted into the power to determine the rights, livelihoods or freedoms of another. Public order cannot mean the preservation of peace by asking the more vulnerable to surrender their rights; it must mean the equal protection of all citizens, including those whose presence, food, occupation or identity may be politically unpopular.

And yet, there are alternative examples

It is important not to reduce the entire Kanwar Yatra to a narrative of violence or communal hostility. Such a portrayal would be both inaccurate and unfair to the millions of devotees who undertake the pilgrimage peacefully and to the many instances in which Kanwariyas and local communities have demonstrated restraint, accommodation and mutual respect. These examples are important precisely because they establish that confrontation between the Yatra and other communities is neither inevitable nor intrinsic to the religious practice itself.

A recent example from Bijnor illustrates this possibility. Navbharat Times reported that Kanwariyas halted their procession and switched off the DJ music to allow a Muslim funeral procession to pass. Rather than treating the funeral as an obstruction to their religious journey, the pilgrims reportedly made way for the procession and maintained silence as the funeral passed. The incident is a small but significant illustration of what religious coexistence can look like in practice: the exercise of one’s own faith does not require denying another community the space to mourn, pray or move through the same public space.

Such instances matter because they expose the artificiality of the claim that religious processions must necessarily generate confrontation with other communities. There is nothing inherent in the Kanwar Yatra that requires hostility towards Muslims; there is nothing inherent in Hindu devotion that requires meat shops to be vandalised; there is nothing inherent in religious faith that requires a school van carrying children to be attacked; and there is certainly nothing inherent in pilgrimage that requires a neighbourhood to be treated as the exclusive property of one religious community. Where devotees choose restraint, the same public space can accommodate different religious practices without one being perceived as a threat to the other.

Indeed, these instances provide a useful counterpoint to the more disturbing episodes documented during the 2026 Yatra. They demonstrate that the conflict is not an unavoidable consequence of the scale of the pilgrimage or of competing religious practices. It is shaped by choices — by the conduct of individuals, by the rhetoric of political and religious actors, and crucially, by the manner in which the State responds to both cooperation and provocation. The choice to transform religious devotion into confrontation, exclusion or majoritarian assertion is not dictated by faith; it is political.

The 2026 yatra must be understood against the history of 2024 and 2025

The events of 2026 cannot be viewed as a series of isolated disturbances detached from the history of the Kanwar Yatra. The document records at least 20 incidents of violence during the 2024 pilgrimage, while Hindustan Times reported that more than 170 Kanwariyas were booked within just five days of the 2025 Yatra in Uttarakhand for alleged offences including hooliganism, rioting, obstruction of highways and wrongful restraint. The recurrence of similar incidents in 2026 therefore demands something more than the familiar administrative response of treating each episode as an unfortunate, isolated altercation.

When vandalism, assaults, road blockages, confrontations with police and intimidation of civilians repeatedly emerge around the same pilgrimage year after year, the question is no longer simply what happened in a particular incident, but whether there is a systemic failure in the way the State anticipates, manages and responds to violence associated with the Yatra. That necessarily raises questions about how processions are regulated, what protocols are followed when a Kanwar is damaged, how quickly arrests are made, whether FIRs are registered without regard to the religious identity of the parties involved, and whether the police are exercising a different degree of restraint when the accused are members of a religious procession. It also requires scrutiny of whether Muslim-owned establishments are disproportionately exposed to intimidation, whether restrictions on businesses are genuinely grounded in neutral statutory criteria, and whether threats issued by vigilante organisations receive the same seriousness from law-enforcement agencies as threats allegedly directed at pilgrims. These are not questions directed at Hinduism or at the legitimacy of the pilgrimage. They are questions about whether the State is capable of administering a mass religious event without allowing religious identity to influence the application of ordinary law.

The Azeem Case: When a Traffic Dispute Ends in Death

The death of 27-year-old Mohd Azeem in Hapur brings these questions into their most serious and tragic form. According to The Hindu, Azeem, a mini-truck driver from Moradabad, was involved in a road collision near Garhmukhteshwar on July 31 and was allegedly assaulted following the incident before being shifted to a Delhi hospital, where he died on August 4. Hapur Police subsequently arrested Lokesh and Shivam and booked them for murder and rioting, with police stating that two of the four named accused had been arrested and efforts were underway to apprehend the remaining accused. The case, however, involves competing accounts that must be carefully distinguished.

Azeem’s family alleged that he was assaulted after the collision, while the father of the auto-rickshaw driver involved in the incident filed a separate complaint alleging that Azeem had deliberately rammed his vehicle into the auto-rickshaw. Police indicated that the competing allegations were being investigated. Those competing versions must ultimately be tested through evidence, investigation and trial rather than public speculation. Yet irrespective of how the underlying collision is eventually established, the death illustrates the grave consequences of allowing a road dispute to become a matter for collective retaliation. A traffic accident is supposed to activate the ordinary machinery of the criminal justice system — police intervention, investigation, collection of evidence, identification of individual responsibility, prosecution and trial. It must never become a progression from collision to anger, from anger to mob mobilisation, and from mob mobilisation to assault and death. Where the alleged perpetrators are members of or associated with a religious procession, the State’s responsibility becomes even greater: religious identity must neither shield an accused person from accountability nor prejudice the investigation against the victim. The ultimate test is whether the law can operate with the same force and impartiality when the accused belong to a politically influential or numerically dominant religious group as it would when the circumstances were reversed.

A pilgrimage should not become a test of submission

The 2026 Kanwar Yatra therefore raises a question that extends far beyond individual incidents of vandalism, assault or the closure of particular shops. It forces us to ask whether religious freedom is increasingly being interpreted not simply as the freedom to practise one’s faith, but as the freedom of one religious group to determine the conditions under which everyone else must live. That is not the guarantee contained in Article 25. The Constitution protects the believer, but it also protects the person who does not share that belief; it protects the vegetarian, but it also protects the meat-eater; it protects the Hindu pilgrim, but it equally protects the Muslim shopkeeper whose business happens to lie along the pilgrimage route. It protects the right to assemble and practise religion, but it also protects the right of other citizens to move through public spaces and carry on their livelihoods.

These rights do not exist in separate constitutional compartments; they operate within a common framework of equality, liberty and the rule of law. The State must therefore resist the tendency to treat criticism of violence or vigilantism associated with the Kanwar Yatra as criticism of Hinduism itself. The two are fundamentally different. It is entirely possible to respect the faith of millions of peaceful Kanwariyas while demanding accountability from those who vandalise vehicles or assault civilians; to respect Hindu religious practice while opposing intimidation of Muslim-owned businesses; to recognise the religious significance of Shravan while insisting that meat sellers and other lawful businesses retain their rights; and to facilitate a religious procession while requiring those participating in it to remain subject to the same law as everyone else. Indeed, that is what genuine secularism requires: not hostility towards religion, but equal constitutional protection irrespective of religion.

Faith deserves protection; impunity does not

The 2026 Kanwar Yatra should therefore not be remembered merely as another annual pilgrimage marked by massive crowds, saffron flags, elaborate security arrangements and traffic diversions. It should instead prompt a more serious examination of the relationship between religious practice, political mobilisation and State power. The recurring incidents — from the vandalism of vehicles in Muzaffarnagar, the attack on a school van in Lucknow and confrontations involving police, to the reported targeting of Muslims and meat sellers, threats against Muslim-owned businesses, communal rhetoric surrounding Mumbra and Deoband, attempts to turn the Taj Mahal into another site of religious contestation, and ultimately the death of Mohd Azeem — cannot simply be dismissed as a collection of unrelated disturbances. Taken together, they point towards the gradual normalisation of religious exceptionalism: the assumption that a religious procession is entitled to extraordinary accommodation, that religious sentiment can justify extraordinary restrictions, that meat can be removed from public spaces because pilgrims prefer vegetarianism, that Muslim businesses can be identified or pressured, that a crowd can punish what it perceives as an insult, and that political actors can use religious gatherings to make claims about the ownership of neighbourhoods and public spaces.

The danger lies precisely in allowing these assumptions to become normal. The answer, however, is not to diminish or delegitimise the Kanwar Yatra. It is to restore its constitutional boundaries. Faith must be protected, pilgrims must be protected and religious processions must be protected, but no person can be placed above the law merely because they claim to be acting in the name of religion. The real test of the State’s commitment to secularism is therefore not how warmly it welcomes a majority religious procession, but whether, while facilitating it, it can extend the same protection to the Muslim shopkeeper, the meat seller, the commuter, the schoolchild and every other citizen affected by it. It must be able to say to the shopkeeper that his lawful business cannot be destroyed because someone finds it religiously offensive; to the meat seller that his livelihood cannot be extinguished by a mob; to the vigilante that religious identity gives no authority over another citizen; to the politician that a neighbourhood cannot be claimed as the property of one religion; and to the Kanwariya that faith may be sacred, but it does not place anyone beyond the Constitution. The Kanwar Yatra can and should remain a journey of devotion. What it cannot become is a vehicle through which majoritarian power determines who may eat, who may trade, who may move, who may pray, who may belong — and who must simply get out of the way.

Related:

How deviant acts mar the sacred Kanwar Yatra

Faith v/s Environment: 17,600 trees felled in U.P. to pave way for proposed Kanwar Yatra route, fact-finding panel tells NGT 

Hindu-Muslim Unity: The other side of Kanwar Yatra

Kanwar Yatra episode: Pasmanda Muslims, ‘wooed’ by BJP, perhaps biggest losers

Supreme Court stays directive of state forcing food sellers along Kanwar Yatra to display names, states authorities cannot usurp power without legal foundation

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Aligarh: Woman allegedly raped while undertaking ‘Kanwar Yatra’

The post When Faith Becomes a Licence for Control: The 2026 Kanwar yatra, violence, vigilantism and the politics of meat appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to the 10 am bulletin issued on the final day of the house-to-house enumeration exercise, 2, 07, 93,916 forms, or about 21.25 per cent of the state’s electorate, were in the uncollected category. The exercise ended at 5 pm on Monday, August 17, and the final figure could change after the remaining data is updated.

महाराष्ट्रातील मतदारनिहाय गणना अर्ज (EFs) यांच्या डिजिटायजेशन आणि ‘गणना अर्ज जमा न होणे’ची स्थिती – १७ ऑगस्ट २०२६
Maharashtra’s Status of Digitization and Uncollected of elector specific Enumeration Forms (EFs) – 17.8.2026

#SIR2026 #SIRMAHARASHTRA pic.twitter.com/2g1rZO3UQP

— ChiefElectoralOffice (@CEO_Maharashtra) August 17, 2026

The uncollected forms relate to voters whose details could not be verified through the enumeration process. Their absence from this category does not by itself establish that they are dead, have shifted permanently, are duplicate voters or are otherwise ineligible.

The Election Commission’s process requires voters whose forms were not collected to be dealt with separately in the draft roll. As a result, their names are unlikely to appear in the August 24 draft unless their enumeration status is updated before publication.

However, this would not amount to permanent deletion from the electoral roll. Voters whose names are missing from the draft will have from August 24 to September 23 to file claims or objections and seek inclusion or correction. The authorities will consider these applications before the final electoral roll is published on October 27.

An official reportedly told the media that the said voters should check the draft roll once it is published and submit a claim for inclusion if their names are missing. Eligible persons can also apply for inclusion during the claims and objections period. Indian Express quoted an official from the State Election Commission, saying that, “This is not permanent deletion from the electoral roll. The August 24 list is a draft, and being left out of it does not mean that an eligible voter has permanently lost the right to vote. Voters should check the draft roll on August 24. Those whose names are missing will have one month, from August 24 to September 23, to seek inclusion or correction. Eligible persons can apply for inclusion as voters during this period,” said an official.” However as stated earlier in the report, the onus now shifts from the SEC to the individually excluded voter.

The enumeration form is used to verify the details of an existing elector. During the SIR exercise, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) visited households with pre-filled forms, which were then collected for verification and digitisation.

A form could remain uncollected for several reasons. A voter may have moved to another address, may have been away when the BLO visited, or may not have been traceable at the address recorded in the electoral roll. Urban migration and frequent changes of residence have been cited by officials as some of the reasons for the higher numbers in cities.

The SIR exercise in Maharashtra began on June 30. The deadline for the house-to-house enumeration process was extended twice before the exercise concluded on Monday i.e. August 18, 2026.

राज्यात SIR अंतर्गत गृहभेटींनंतर गणना प्रपत्र दाखल करून घेण्याची प्रक्रिया पूर्ण झाली आहे. त्याबाबतचे प्रसिद्धीपत्रक @ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/M6DrnFp7KK

— ChiefElectoralOffice (@CEO_Maharashtra) August 18, 2026

Urban districts account for a large share

The distribution of uncollected forms is uneven across Maharashtra. Four major urban districts — Thane, Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban and Pune — together account for about 94.47 lakh uncollected forms.

That is around 45.4 per cent of all uncollected forms in the state, even though these four districts account for only about 27.5 per cent of Maharashtra’s electorate.

Thane has the largest number, with forms for 28.88 lakh of its 74.51 lakh voters remaining uncollected. This represents about 38.77 per cent of the district’s electorate.

Mumbai City recorded 9.60 lakh uncollected forms, or 37.57 per cent of its voters. Mumbai Suburban had 26.99 lakh, accounting for 34.48 per cent, while Pune had 28.99 lakh uncollected forms, or 31.92 per cent of its electorate.

The figures are also high in several other districts with significant urban and migrant populations. Nagpur had 14.06 lakh uncollected forms, representing 30.32 per cent of its electorate. In Palghar, 6.87 lakh forms, or 28.88 per cent, remained uncollected. Raigad recorded 5.91 lakh, or 23.33 per cent.

Together, Thane, Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban, Pune, Nagpur, Palghar and Raigad account for around 1.21 crore uncollected forms, or nearly 58.3 per cent of the state-wide total. These districts, however, account for roughly 37 per cent of Maharashtra’s electorate.

Lower numbers in several rural districts

The pattern is markedly different in several rural districts. Hingoli had the lowest proportion among the districts cited, with forms for 8.82 per cent of voters remaining uncollected.

Buldhana recorded 9.10 per cent, while Ratnagiri had 9.93 per cent and Latur 10.62 per cent. The difference means that while nearly four out of every 10 voters in Thane had an uncollected form, the proportion in Hingoli was below one in 10.

The gap between urban and rural districts has raised attention to the challenges of conducting house-to-house verification in areas with high population mobility. In larger cities such as Mumbai, Thane and Pune, voters may frequently change residences without immediately updating their electoral details.

Number rose by 27 lakh in five days

The number of uncollected forms also increased sharply in the final days of the exercise. The figure stood at around 1.80 crore on August 12 and had risen to nearly 2.08 crore by Monday, an increase of about 27.3 lakh in five days.

At the time of the 10 am bulletin on Monday, around 1.08 lakh electors were still outside both the digitised and uncollected categories, with their status yet to be reflected in the data.

This essentially means that the 2.08 crore figure should be treated as the ‘bare minimum’ number of voters who could be left out of the August 24 draft based on the available bulletin. The final number may change after the remaining records are processed.

The publication of the draft roll on August 24 will therefore be the next major stage of the process. Voters will have one month after its publication to check their names and submit claims or objections where required.

The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on October 27, after the claims and objections received during the intervening period are examined by the election authorities.

Related:

SIR 2025-26: Dismantling the very Idea of India?

21 Opposition parties to CJI: SIR process is irregular and illegal, must be suspended

SIR and the Making of a Stateless Citizen? | R. Rajagopal Speaks Out | Teesta Setalvad

Karnataka launches SIR with 5.5 crore voters, State Govt voices transparency concerns

The post Maharashtra SIR: 2.08 crore (20.8 million) voter forms “uncollected” hence may not be listed in August 24 draft electoral roll appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Indian Express, in a social media post said, “A man was beaten to death in Jharkhand’s Chatra district on Tuesday (Aug 4) morning after villagers accused him of confining a minor girl and sexually assaulting her. A top officer in the administration said the allegations of confinement and sexual assault are yet to be confirmed. The father of the man beaten to death has filed a police complaint, and an FIR has been registered under several sections, including one related to mob lynching.

The team visited the village eight days after the incident on August 12, met the family members of Imroj, the survivor victim girl, neighbours and the in-charge of Tandwa Police Station. The team comprised representatives of Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, Karwan e Mohabbat, Sajha Kadam and United Milli Forum.

The team learnt that a mob of Bargaon’s Hindu villagers led by local BJP leader and husband of Panchayat Mukhiya Vijay Choubey stormed Imroj’s house on the morning of August 4. They tied his father, Md Sultan, to a pole outside their home and beat him. They accused Imroj of kidnapping an underage girl from a neighbouring house, keeping her hostage for two days in the house and raping her. The mob finally found Imroj and brutally lynched him. The police had reached within half an hour of the mob (after Muslims called them). But, according to the version of the family to the factfinding team, the police personnel remained mute spectators and allowed the lynching in front of them.

The girl’s house is right opposite Imroj’s house, across the street, states the findings in the report. Her grandparents stayed in the outer room of Sultan’s house for three days until August 3 as their kuchcha house had collapsed. Furthermore, the rooms in Sultan’s under-construction house do not have doors. The door at the entrance of the house also remained open most of the time as he spent a lot of time on the verandah. All the houses (all Hindu except four Muslim houses) in the lane are close to each other. Hence, the fact-finding team thinks that it is improbable that a girl from across the street could be kidnapped and kept in this house. Imroj was accused of attempting to rape/abetting the attempt to rape of an underage girl in an earlier case. People complained that he used to smoke Ganja and his behaviour was not good. Hence, the allegation needs to be thoroughly and fairly investigated, states the team’s report.

While this lynching itself is a case of communal violence, there have been visible attempts by the BJP and RSS organisations to use this incident to deepen religious polarisation. BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha President and ex-MLA Kisun Das addressed a mass meeting of Hindu families in the village on 7 August. In his speech, he can be heard saying, “Naam tumhara jab alpsankhyak hai, to kayde-kanun mein rahoge to fayede mein rahoge. Aur agar utpat machaoge, to abhi to ek gaya hai, aur bhi kayio ko jana padega”. The crowd chanted, “Jai Shri Ram” in the background. BJP leader Babulal Marandi, accompanied by the Chatra MP, local MLA and several BJP leaders, addressed a mass meeting in the village on August 9 and addressed a mass meeting. Rather than trying to bridge the communal gap, he also can be heard inciting the Hindu masses. The Hindu vegetable vendors and shopkeepers have stopped selling anything to the Muslims of the village, reports the team.

There are many serious questions regarding the police’s handling of the matter. The SHO told the factfinding team that he was informed about the missing girl on August 3 by one Vijay Choubey. The question is why he did not visit the village and undertake an inquiry. Both the police and the administration allowed BJP leaders to address meetings in the village, despite BNS section 163 prohibitions in place, and did not take any action against their hate speeches. The police officers were unaware of the Supreme Court guidelines on lynching and hate speeches.

The Dalit family lives in dire poverty. Imroj worked as a labourer, and his brothers are migrant workers. It is clear that there is an attempt by the BJP to use this whole incident and also these families to build a communal narrative against Muslims. The incident also exposed Hemant Soren government’s failure in addressing communal violence. While there were many cases of communal-violence inspired lynching under the Raghubar Das government, it has continued under this dispensation too.

Demands from the local administration and state government placed by the fact-finding team include:

• The Tandwa SHO should be removed from the investigation, and a senior officer should be made the investigating officer. The state government should ensure a free and impartial investigation in both the FIRs. The people who mobilised the mob on 4^th August should be identified and arrested, along with the perpetrators of violence.
• Strict action should be taken against the BJP leaders for their hate speeches given after the incident in the village. FIRs should be registered, as per the Supreme Court judgement in the Ashwini Upadhyay case. Action should be taken in accordance with the law against everyone who incited collective hatred, ostracism, or a sense of vengeance against any community.
• The families of the both the girl and Imroj should be provided with police and legal support for the duration of the investigation.
• The administration and police should implement the Supreme Court guidelines in the Tehseen Poonawala case, such as constitution and regular meetings of peace committee.
• The state government should ensure accountability of police and administration in cases of communal violence and lynching. The government should also undertake campaigns to promote communal harmony across the state.

The factfinding team included Praveer Peter, Priyasheela Besra, Afzal anees. Mohammed Shadab Ansari, Raja Bhuiyan and Siraj Dutta.

Details of this report rely on the press note of the organisation Jharkand Janadhikar Mahasabha, dated August 17, 2026

Related:

Judging the Judge: The communal backlash against a lynching verdict

As lynchings “normalise” in ‘New India, a Bihar imam is ‘thrashed, pushed’ from train to die in Bareilly

Dadri lynching: UP Court rejects state govt plea to withdraw charges against Akhlaq murder accused

The post Jharkand government accused of continued communal lynchings by fact-finding team appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to the data compiled by the Safai Karamchari Andolan, a civil society organisation working against Manual Scavenging – 101 sanitation workers have died cleaning sewers and septic tanks across India during the first 188 days of 2026, amounting to one death every 45 hours. The capital of India, Delhi NCR is alone accounted for 12 deaths. However, what constitutes a greater violation of human rights is the under-reporting of these deaths by the central government in order to evade liability. In an April 2026 through a release of the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment stated that, according to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis, 317 sanitation workers had died due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks between 2021 and 2025, the same release says that 89,248 sewer/septic tank workers had been profiled and validated under NAMASTE scheme. The State’s own numbers reveal a troubling contradiction: thousands of workers are recognised as performing hazardous sanitation work, yet the deaths arising from it remain strikingly few on paper. How, then, are these deaths being counted?

The state justifies this under-reporting by drawing a distinction between “cleaning human excreta” vs “accidents during the hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks”, but for the worker who enters a sewer and never comes out, there is no such distinction. The major question that we as a society should ask is that when a person dies while manually cleaning a sewer, does the legal classification matter more than the death?

If carefully scrutinised, we can find that the section 2(d) of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act, 2013 separately defines “hazardous cleaning”, whereas section 7 expressly prohibits employing or engaging a person for hazardous cleaning of a sewer or septic tank, and under Sec 33, the act doesn’t merely prohibit hazardous cleaning, it also says that local authorities and other agencies have a duty to use modern technology for cleaning sewers and septic tanks. The emphasis, therefore, should not merely be on providing protective gear to those entering these hazardous spaces, but on completely eliminating the need for human beings to enter them in the first place. Yet, despite the legislative mandate and technological alternatives, State instrumentalities continue to remain criminally silent.

In the case of Safai Karamchari Andolan & Ors. v. Union of India (2014), the Court recognised sewer deaths and directed compensation of Rs. 10 lakhs to the families of deceased workers, which was enhanced to Rs. 30 lakhs in Balram Singh v. Union of India (2023)

The documentary Kakkoos filmed in Tamil Nadu, a state which is said to have the highest number of Manual Scavengers, brings out another disturbing reality: the existence of legislation prohibiting dry latrines has not eliminated the conditions that continue to force people to manually handle human excreta. However, the practice extends far beyond the cleaning of latrines.

Garbage collectors, for instance, are often required to handle human excreta when waste from households of medical patients is disposed of in polythene bags and subsequently has to be removed by hand. In schools without adequate water or sanitation facilities, children may defecate and leave, leaving cleaners to remove the excreta with their bare hands. Yet, such workers are often not recognised as manual scavengers. Kakkoos therefore exposes the gap between the legal understanding of manual scavenging and the lived reality of those who, in one way or another, are compelled to handle human excreta.

However, the danger does not end with the indignity of the work. Manual scavengers are routinely exposed to hazardous gases such as hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, ammonia and methane, with prolonged exposure causing respiratory and visual impairment, seizures and, in severe cases, death. Constant contact with human and animal excreta further exposes them to infections such as leptospirosis. Yet, for a community already pushed to the margins by caste and poverty, access to healthcare remains limited. The physical and mental toll of such work, coupled with poor living conditions and, in some cases, dependence on alcohol as a means of coping, only deepens a cycle of vulnerability that the State has a responsibility to break.

Manual scavenging, thus, is not only a blatant violation of the human rights bestowed upon an individual by virtue of birth, but also raises serious questions about social practices continued in society in the name of “tradition”. The practice is deeply rooted in the caste hierarchy, where a birth-given identity has historically determined the occupation and social position of an individual.

Yet, despite Article 17 of the Constitution abolishing untouchability in 1949, manual scavengers continue to remain among the most disadvantaged communities within the Dalit population, historically placed at the lowest rungs of the caste hierarchy as “Atishudras”. The fact that a birth-assigned tag can continue to determine who performs such inhumane work, decades after constitutional abolition, is perhaps the starkest illustration of the distance between what the law promises and what society continues to practice.

(The author is a law student at BMS College of Law, Bangalore)

Related:

#STOPKILLINGUS Protest at Jantar Mantar on August 4 against GOI’s “cover-up” of Manual Scavenging deaths

Manual scavenger deaths: How effective is the law in preventing them?

Supreme Court bans manual scavenging in metro cities

Manual scavenger deaths: How effective is the law in preventing them?

The post The Deaths behind India’s Cleanliness appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A very special memory, which exemplifies the kind of person that Sumit Sarkar was, bears repeating here. It shows us the multiple ways in which what we believe in can shape perceptions in everyday life and perhaps even alter public discourse.

The time and place was IIM Calcutta, where, maybe in 1999, I was one of three candidates who was called to the campus for the talk, and later interview, for the job of History Professor. My talk went well, I was told, and then it came to the interview. On that panel were many, including Sumit Sarkar and another very senior and highly respected historian. I cannot remember who else was on the panel. Many questions were asked, and I nervously answered them, to the best of my ability.

But then, I was suddenly asked, by that same senior historian, about my marital status, and whether I was hoping for the job to be with my partner. I was stunned, but before I could catch my breath, Sumit Sarkar told the panel that these were not fair or appropriate questions to ask, and the matter ended there.

I did not get that job after all, ranking only number 2 in the list. But I will cherish this memory of someone who stood for the right of women not to be asked questions that would never have been asked of a man.

And I wish I had cultivated the same courage in all the positions that I later came to occupy. I cannot say I have.

Ways of Historical Thinking: Sumit Sarkar, his times and legacies

I did not have the good fortune of being taught by Sumit Sarkar. But like every (conscientious) modern Indian historian, I have indeed been ‘taught’ by him. His classic, Modern India, modestly described as a ‘textbook ’, is perhaps the most well-thumbed of my many books. Here, along with colonial masters and nationalist leaders, peasants, workers and ordinary people sprang from its pages. This was no simple inclusion: it was a conceptual break, altering our understanding of Indian history in profound ways, acknowledging the lives and actions of millions, even their failures, as the true basis on which to understand our past. But political leaders, their actions, and the periodisations familiar to students of history could not be dispensed with altogether. Therefore, the book, despite its emphasis on the novel breakthroughs of a ‘history from below’, was sandwiched ‘between the foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the achievement of independence in August 19 47’ since those sixty years ‘witnessed perhaps the greatest transition in our country’s long history’. In one memorable sentence, he signalled the
many unfulfilled promises of Indian nationalism: thus, the Mahatma succeeded in
‘drawing in the masses, while at the same time keeping mass activity strictly pegged down
to certain forms predetermined by the leader.’

Let me not dwell on the gaping hole that Sumit Sarkar’s demise had left among Indian
historians, and focus instead on the riches he has left us. His book, Swadeshi Movement in
Bengal, on Bengal’s (first) partition of 1905, and the nationalist movement that it spawned,
was full of methodological innovations, using plays, novels, newspapers, pamphlets in
addition to the more familiar colonial archive. These materials led him to ask questions
that often led to ambiguous or unsatisfactory answers. Educated unemployment and
rising prices surely fuelled the anger against the Bengal partition. But the pride-inducing
victory of a little ‘eastern’ nation, Japan, over a powerful ‘western’ neighbour, Russia, — the
Russo Japanese war of 1904-5 – also played its part, despite a relative ignorance in India of emerging critiques of imperialism elsewhere.

Sarkar also asked himself: how could a Swadeshi editorial in the Bande Mataram praise, in
the same breath, both the labour movement and the caste system, the latter for having had ‘the true socialistic aim of keeping awake in every class of the society a sense of duty to it’ ?

Or, as he would ask later, what drew upper caste men to revolutionary terrorism in Bengal,
and why has that memory endured longer than those of tribal or lower caste participants?
Sarkar was among the earliest of historians to unpack how ‘Hindu’ nationalism gradually
became ‘common sense’, with consequences up to the present day.

Sarkar’s task was to break out of the economic determinism and narrow positivism that
was the hallmark of Marxist scholarship at the time. But the work remains unsurpassed,
since it upholds the protocols of historical research, the verifiability of evidence, and as he
said, ‘the constant knowledge that my conclusions remain open to revision and change.’

Would a revised Modern India, that more correctly reflects the scholarship of the last four
decades — as many regions, social groups, practices, and events have found their historians – be at all possible in our times?

How were material conditions and cultural forms to be integrated within a structured totality? Sarkar’s companion volume Modern Times brought culture and other histories – of the city for instance, or of print media or caste – to the foreground, to understand the subaltern on her own terms. His Marxism did not come in the way of engaging with what Ranajit Guha has called the oldest (and richest) archive in India: religion. He read religion, but not as a believer; not to denigrate but to connect the celestial world to its earthly presence in meaningful ways.

In fact, Marxism enabled his interest in the nineteenth-century mystic (and rustic) Hindu
thinker Ramakrishna Paramhansa, and the petty-bourgeois, clerical ambience within
which he operated, which gave his philosophy its force and material influence, especially
among the emerging, well read, urban middle class. That contradiction needed to be
explained. Sarkar linked the belated entry of clock-time into India, and the disciplinary
mechanisms it generated, to the slavery of clerical labour, which paved the way for the
reception of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna’s ‘success’ and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s
‘failures’ were equally processes that he critically examined.

Sarkar showed us the true meaning of engaged scholarship: when India was stunned in
1992 by the shock troops of the BJP and RSS that brought down the Babri Masjid, Sarkar
and his colleagues produced a short but vital book called Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags. It
was the first serious historical reconstruction (based also on sensitive fieldwork) of what
the RSS had become, the most formidable force on the Indian political firmament.
Certainly the young people who have today given us a ray of hope should place this book at
the top of their reading lists.

Sumit Sarkar, in both his writing and his political positions, was unafraid to confront the
official left and its surrender to global capital, as at Nandigram and Singur. He would have
been the first to admit that proletarians have not been the grave diggers of capitalism,
though he welcomed those historians who showed renewed interest in labour and working
class history. I was personally honoured when this remarkable historian included me in
his review of five such books. But more striking was his intellectual openness: his choices
‘provincialised’ Bengal, by acknowledging the worlds and questions that lay well beyond it
– Kanpur, Jamshedpur, KGF, Bombay, the railway works. At a time when ‘everyone’
is a historian, and we are being trained in thinking of history only as ‘pride’ in the past, we will miss complex thinkers like Sumit Sarkar even more, for his passing no doubt signals the end of an era.

(The author is the professor (retd.), Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, New Delhi)

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