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:

Punjab University’s former dean writes to CJI: Bihar SIR threatens democracy, alleges ECI overreach & voter disenfranchisement

Non-Electors within Electors: ECI reports over 61 lakh potential exclusions

Bihar’s untraceable electors spiral by 809% in just one day, ECI reports 1 lakh ‘missing’, 15 lakh Bihar voters yet to submit forms

SC: ECI’s ‘wisdom’ on revision of electoral rolls challenged, does a disenfranchisement crisis loom over Bihar, with thousands being declared ‘‘D’ (doubtful) voters?

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

Pay heed to Article 21 and its order in the Kanwar Yatra case: SC to Kerala Gov’t

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:

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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:

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

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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)

The post Sumit Sarkar: Engaged scholarship, ways of historical thinking, an enduring legacy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At one level, the case concerned two women who said that they had voluntarily embraced Islam and were subsequently confined by their father. But the legal question before the Court was considerably broader: can the alleged illegality of a person’s religious conversion justify the continued physical confinement of that person when she is an adult, competent, and unequivocally asserts that the choice was voluntary?

The Court answered in the negative. More importantly, it refused to allow the criminal investigation into the alleged conversion to collapse the distinction between two separate questions: whether the conversion was lawful, and whether the women could lawfully be detained.

“The present case discloses an exceptionally grave and egregious violation of constitutional rights. The corpus, despite being major, educated and legally competent women, were deprived of their liberty for a prolonged period commencing from the year 2021, solely because they exercised their constitutionally protected freedom of conscience and chose to profess a religion different from that professed by their family. Such prolonged and coercive confinement strikes at the very foundation of constitutional democracy, which recognises the autonomy of every adult individual as sacrosanct and beyond the reach of parental or societal control. The constitutional guarantee of personal liberty cannot be permitted to yield to familial disapproval, social orthodoxy or executive apathy.” (Para 65)

“Before parting, this Court deems it necessary to reiterate that the Constitution does not confer upon parents a licence to incarcerate their major children merely because they disapprove of their faith, beliefs or personal choices. Constitutional rights cannot be eclipsed by parental authority, social morality or majoritarian sentiment. The liberty of an adult individual is inviolable, and any attempt to suppress that liberty by force or coercion invites the constitutional scrutiny of this Court and attracts appropriate public law consequences, including the award of monetary compensation for the infringement of fundamental rights.” (Para 66)

The former, the Court held, could be examined by the competent authority or court. The latter was squarely before the High Court in habeas corpus jurisdiction. The judgment consequently becomes a strong reaffirmation of decisional autonomy, freedom of conscience, the limits of parental authority, the scope of habeas corpus against private detention, and the State’s public-law liability when its machinery permits an unconstitutional deprivation of liberty to continue.

Two adult women before the constitutional court

The petition concerned Anshu Bhatia @ Amina Anshu Bhatia, aged about 35 years, and Diya Bhatia @ Zoya Diya Bhatia, aged about 20 years. By an order dated July 30, 2026, the State was directed to produce both women before the High Court. They were subsequently produced before Justice Sandeep Jain by police officials from the Cyber Crime Police Station, Agra.

The Court then did something crucial for a habeas corpus proceeding involving allegations of coercion: it interacted with the women directly. Anshu told the Court that she had voluntarily embraced Islam in 2020, describing the decision as a conscious and independent choice motivated by mental peace, spiritual fulfilment and inner solace. She stated that the decision was not the result of inducement, influence, coercion, undue persuasion or any extraneous consideration. She further stated that her father strongly opposed the decision and subsequently confined her within the parental home. According to her, physical restraint, intimidation and sustained mental harassment were used to compel her to renounce the faith she had chosen and return to Hinduism.

Diya, who had completed her education up to the Intermediate level, similarly told the Court that she had voluntarily embraced Islam in 2021, motivated by personal faith, conscience, mental peace and spiritual solace. She too denied force, fraud, coercion, undue influence or allurement.

Both women consistently maintained before the Court that their decisions were voluntary and conscious and arose from their own individual faith and freedom of conscience. They also denied that their conversion was motivated by an extraneous, unlawful or pecuniary consideration or intended to advance the interests of any individual or organisation. The dispute therefore came before the High Court in a very specific constitutional form: Were these adult women unlawfully confined by their father against their own wishes?

The State’s case: This was not merely a family dispute

The State strongly opposed the habeas corpus petition. The father had lodged Case Crime No. 228 of 2025 at Police Station Sadar Bazar, District Agra, alleging that the women had been subjected to forcible and deceitful conversion from Hinduism to Islam. The FIR was initially registered under Section 87 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

During investigation, the investigating agency subsequently added:

• Sections 61(2), 111(3), 111(4) and 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023; and
• Sections 3/5(1) and 5(2) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.

The State argued that the addition of these provisions demonstrated that the allegations of voluntary conversion could not simply be accepted at face value. But the State went considerably further. Its case was that the alleged conversion was part of a larger and organised conspiracy with ramifications for the sovereignty, integrity and unity of the nation.

It claimed that the investigation had uncovered material indicating the involvement of organised persons pursuing a coordinated design to disturb the social fabric through unlawful religious conversions.

The State also referred to alleged involvement of foreign entities and external influences, arguing that the investigation was continuing and that releasing the women could prejudice the proceedings. It further contended that the women had been projected as victims in the criminal case and that allowing them to reside with persons allegedly connected to the investigation could influence witnesses, prejudice the prosecution and frustrate the administration of criminal justice. The State therefore attempted to place the case within a much larger framework of public order, national interest and security.

The High Court was not persuaded.

Findings of the Court

• What is the scope of habeas corpus?

Before determining whether the detention was illegal, Justice Sandeep Jain examined the nature of the writ itself. The Court relied upon the Supreme Court’s judgment in Home Secretary (Prison) v. H. Nilofer Nisha, where the Supreme Court explained that habeas corpus is available wherever a person is deprived of personal liberty unlawfully or without justification.

Importantly, the Supreme Court authority recognises that habeas corpus is not confined to State detention. It can also be invoked against private detention. The Allahabad High Court quoted the principle that the writ is available for release from detention not only by the State but also from private detention. This becomes central to the case as the father was not a State official exercising a statutory power of detention. The alleged confinement was taking place inside the parental home. But that did not take the matter outside Article 226. The constitutional inquiry was simple: Was there lawful authority for the restraint?

• A parental home is not a legal prison—but it cannot become one

The judgment’s treatment of private detention is especially significant. The women were allegedly confined in their parental home. That fact could easily have been used to characterise the dispute as a family matter. Thankfully, the Court refused to do so. Habeas corpus exists precisely because the law is concerned with the fact of unlawful restraint, not merely the formal label attached to the person exercising it. The relevant question was not whether the father believed he was acting in the interests of his daughters. The question was whether he had legal authority to restrain two adult women. The Court ultimately found that he did not.

• Majority marks the constitutional end of parental custody

The Court relied on a line of constitutional jurisprudence concerning the autonomy of adult women. One of the authorities discussed was the Supreme Court’s decision in Soni Gerry v. Gerry Douglas. There, the Supreme Court held that once an individual attains majority, she is entitled to make her own choices and that courts should not assume the role of a super-guardian merely because a parent disapproves of that choice.

The Allahabad High Court also considered the Kerala High Court’s decision in Rajamohan MS v. State of Kerala, which dealt specifically with parental attempts to restrain an adult woman. That decision recognised that parental authority may extend to advice, counselling and guidance, but not to confinement or detention against the wishes of an adult daughter.

The Allahabad High Court reproduced the proposition that an adult major woman cannot be treated as a “chattel” and that parental authority does not give a parent the right to keep her under restraint against her will. This jurisprudence supplies the conceptual foundation for the present ruling. Once adulthood is attained, the parent-child relationship does not disappear. But its legal character changes.

• The Court rejects the idea that parents know what is “best” for adult women

The reliance on Rajamohan MS case is particularly important because it confronts a deeply embedded paternalistic assumption: that parents should be permitted to control adult women’s decisions because they believe those decisions are wrong, imprudent or harmful. The jurisprudence cited by the High Court rejects that logic.

An adult’s decision does not lose constitutional protection simply because the decision might later prove to be unwise. The Kerala High Court authority, quoted in the judgment, makes the point that courts cannot permit the concepts of parents about what is “right and good” for their adult daughters to override the daughters’ own assessment of what is right for them. This principle is particularly relevant in the present case.

The women’s choice concerned religion—a matter inherently connected to conscience and identity. The Constitution cannot recognise individual autonomy while simultaneously allowing family members to exercise a veto over the individual’s conscience.

• Reliance on Shafin Jahan to hold that constitutional courts are not super-guardians

The judgment also invokes Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M., one of the Supreme Court’s most crucial decisions on individual autonomy. The High Court notes the Supreme Court’s recognition that constitutional courts may exercise parens patriae jurisdiction for persons who are incapable of exercising free will, such as minors or persons of unsound mind. But that principle cannot be extended to competent adults simply because their choices are controversial or disapproved of by others.

The Supreme Court in Shafin Jahan emphasised that decisions concerning intimate and personal matters belong to the individuals concerned and that neither State nor society can intrude into that domain merely because they disapprove of the choice. The Allahabad High Court uses that jurisprudence to reinforce a fundamental distinction: A constitutional court protects an adult’s autonomy; it does not replace it.

The Court therefore did not ask whether it believed the women’s religious choice was sensible. It asked whether the women themselves had made the choice freely. Once the answer was yes, the constitutional duty was to protect that choice from unlawful restraint.

• The Court personally tests voluntariness

This is where the Court’s interaction with the women becomes legally decisive. Justice Sandeep Jain recorded that the responses of both women were: “spontaneous, coherent and unequivocal.”

Nothing emerged during the interaction to suggest that they were acting under coercion, fear, inducement or undue influence. On the contrary, both consistently asserted that they had voluntarily embraced Islam as a matter of personal faith and conscience. The Court therefore did not simply accept the women’s claims because they were petitioners. It independently interacted with them. This matters because the State’s central argument was that their assertion of voluntariness was false and that they had been made instruments of an organised conversion network. The Court found no material before it sufficient to draw that inference.

• Article 25: “Freedom of conscience” includes the freedom to change faith

The Court then turned to Article 25. It held that the constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience necessarily encompasses the right of a competent adult to adopt a faith, renounce a faith, or change her faith according to her own free will, belief and conviction. The Court did not conceptualise Article 25 merely as protecting the practice of an inherited religion. It recognised conscience as a matter of individual choice.

The Court held that such a decision is an essential facet of: individual autonomy, dignity and personal liberty. It is therefore protected not only under Article 25, but also under Article 21. If freedom of conscience means anything constitutionally, it cannot mean merely the freedom to remain within the religious identity assigned by one’s family. It must include the freedom to arrive at one’s own conviction. And where an adult voluntarily changes her faith, that choice cannot ordinarily be dictated by either the family or the State except within constitutionally permissible restrictions and the authority of law.

• The Uttar Pradesh Conversion Act does not answer the detention question

The State relied heavily on the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. The Court acknowledged that the Act provides the statutory framework governing unlawful religious conversions and prescribes procedures concerning conversions. But the Court made an important jurisdictional observation: The vires of the 2021 Act had not been challenged before it. Nor was the legality or validity of the alleged conversion itself the subject matter of the habeas corpus proceedings. Any question concerning compliance or non-compliance with the Act was therefore left to the competent authority or court. The Court then reached the central distinction: “The legality of the conversion and the legality of their detention constitute two distinct and independent issues.” This distinction is the backbone of the judgment.

The Court went further. It said that even assuming, for the sake of argument,  that the conversion had not been carried out strictly according to the procedure prescribed under the 2021 Act, that assumption would not itself authorise the father to continue confining the women. This is a crucial rule-of-law proposition. An alleged violation of one law does not automatically create a power under another law to deprive a person of liberty. If the conversion was unlawful, the State could investigate it. If an offence was established, the criminal law could operate.

But the father could not become the custodian of the women merely because he believed their religious conversion was illegal. The State could not use the pendency of that investigation to permit the confinement to continue. Thus, the Court separates regulation from detention. The State may regulate conduct through law; however, it cannot manufacture a detention power that the law does not confer.

• National security cannot rest on assertion alone

The State’s invocation of sovereignty, integrity and national security was also examined closely. The Court found that, apart from broad assertions based on the FIR and the pendency of investigation, no material had been placed before it demonstrating that the voluntary exercise of religious choice by these women, by itself, constituted a threat to the sovereignty, integrity or security of the country. The Court therefore refused to accept the argument.

The court held that mere apprehensions, however serious they may appear, cannot substitute legally admissible material while adjudicating upon the fundamental rights of citizens. This is not a finding that national-security considerations can never justify restrictions on liberty. Rather, it is a rejection of conjecture as constitutional evidence. The seriousness of the allegation does not eliminate the need for material. A court deciding whether a fundamental right has been infringed cannot treat the language of “national security” as a substitute for proof.

• The Court refuses to infer an “oblique motive”

The Court also rejected the suggestion that the women were merely instruments in a larger unlawful design. After interacting with them, the Court said it could not discern material warranting an inference that they had acted with an oblique motive or had been reduced to instruments in the hands of an individual or organisation pursuing an unlawful agenda.

Such an inference, the Court held, could not legitimately be drawn from conjectures, surmises or allegations that remained to be tested before the competent criminal court. This distinction is significant as the Court did not adjudicate the criminal allegations, rather it simply refused to allow untested allegations to determine the constitutional status of the women before it. The criminal investigation was therefore left intact. But it was not allowed to become a basis for continuing their detention.

The investigation arising from Case Crime No. 228 of 2025 would continue strictly in accordance with law. But, the court held that mere pendency of a criminal investigation cannot, by itself, furnish a lawful justification for curtailing the liberty of adult citizens, particularly where they are not subject to any judicial or other lawful order of detention.

This is one of the judgment’s most important safeguards. A criminal investigation is a process for determining whether an offence has been committed. It is not, by itself, a source of custody. The existence of an FIR cannot turn a private residence into a lawful detention centre. Nor can the seriousness of the allegations eliminate the requirement that any deprivation of liberty have legal authority.

Parental authority yields to constitutional liberty: Compensation and directions

Having found the detention to be wholly illegal, the Court did not confine the remedy to a declaration that the women were free. It recognised that where a serious and prolonged violation of fundamental rights has already occurred, an order of release alone may not provide an adequate constitutional remedy. The Court therefore invoked the established jurisprudence on constitutional compensation, particularly Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar and Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa. These decisions establish that constitutional courts exercising jurisdiction under Articles 32 and 226 can award monetary compensation for egregious violations of fundamental rights as a public-law remedy. Such compensation is distinct from ordinary private-law damages and is intended to provide meaningful redress for the breach of a public duty to protect fundamental rights.

Applying this principle, the Court found the present case to involve an “exceptionally grave and egregious violation of constitutional rights.” It took into account the fact that the women were adults and legally competent, the prolonged nature of their deprivation of liberty, the circumstances in which the confinement allegedly followed their exercise of freedom of conscience, and the mental and psychological consequences of the restraint. The Court also considered the failure of the State machinery to discharge its constitutional obligation to protect their liberty. It described the conduct as a “flagrant affront to the Rule of Law” and found that the State, rather than securing their release, had allowed the detention to continue under the ostensible cover of criminal proceedings. The award of compensation was therefore not presented as punitive damages or an ex gratia payment, but as a constitutional remedy flowing from the gravity of the fundamental-rights violation.

The Court consequently held the father and the State of Uttar Pradesh jointly and severally liable to pay ₹25 lakh, with the amount to be equally divided between the two women. The judgment also incorporated an important mechanism for individual accountability within the State machinery. After satisfying the compensation award, the State was permitted, subject to due process and an opportunity of hearing, to recover the stipulated share from the father and from any delinquent public servant whose acts or omissions contributed to the unconstitutional deprivation of liberty. This aspect of the order is significant because it moves beyond merely compensating the victims and raises the question of institutional responsibility for allowing an unlawful deprivation of liberty to persist.

The Court’s directions were also designed to restore the women’s practical autonomy, rather than merely declare their freedom in abstract terms. It directed that they were free to reside at any place and with any person of their choice and restrained the father from interfering with their personal liberty, movement, residence, profession or religious choices. The State authorities were directed to ensure that no interference was caused to their peaceful life and liberty and to provide protection if required. These directions recognise that liberty can be undermined even without formal physical detention. If a person is denied access to her documents, finances, educational records or other personal belongings, her ability to independently exercise her constitutional choices may remain substantially constrained.

Accordingly, the Court directed the father to hand over the women’s passports, educational certificates, identity documents, bank passbooks, cheque books, conversion-related documents and other personal belongings within seven days, with the State authorities directed to ensure compliance where necessary. At the same time, the Court carefully limited the scope of its intervention: it did not determine whether the alleged conversion was legally valid, whether the criminal allegations would ultimately be established, or whether any offence had been committed. The investigation was permitted to continue strictly in accordance with law. The significance of the judgment therefore lies in the balance it draws between investigative power and individual liberty: the State remains free to investigate an alleged offence, but neither an investigation nor parental disapproval can become a substitute for lawful authority to deprive an adult of her liberty.

The complete judgment may be read here.

Related:

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Brij Bhushan Acquittal: The system vs the wrestlers

The post When Family Becomes Custody: Allahabad HC holds adult women’s faith, residence and liberty cannot be placed under parental control appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a conversation with Sabrang India, Sanjay Tickoo, president of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), said the latest incident must be understood against the backdrop of targeted killings, repeated security concerns and what he described as a persistent failure to address vulnerabilities faced by Kashmiri Pandit employees.

The immediate trigger is a purported threat letter circulated online in the name of the United Liberation Council (ULC), which warned Kashmiri Pandits working in the Valley to “change their ways” and published the names and phone numbers of employees. Police are reportedly verifying the authenticity of the letter, while security officials have suggested that the group could be a front or shadow organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

According to The Indian Express, six employees, all from the Revenue Department, were named in the letter. The newspaper reported that departments, particularly the Revenue Department and School Education Department, had informally asked Kashmiri Pandit employees to remain at home or take leave, although the Director of School Education denied that any formal instructions had been issued. The New Indian Express likewise reported that Pandit employees had been asked to work from home for some time.

The detailed report may be read here.

Tickoo, however, argues that the immediate controversy over the letter obscures a much deeper problem.

A threat that cannot be seen in isolation

According to Tickoo, targeted killings of Kashmiri Pandits began to re-emerge as a serious concern from 2021 onwards. On October 5, 2021, prominent Kashmiri Hindu pharmacist Makhan Lal Bindroo was shot dead inside his pharmacy in Srinagar. Two days later, on October 7, Supinder Kour, a government school principal, and Deepak Chand, a teacher at the same school, were shot dead inside the school premises in Srinagar’s Eidgah area. These killings were part of a broader spate of targeted attacks against civilians, including Kashmiri Pandits and non-local workers. Government data recorded four Kashmiri Pandits among those killed by terrorists in 2021, further deepening the sense of vulnerability among the community and raising renewed questions over the security of those living and working in the Valley. The killings generated widespread fear within the community and renewed concerns over whether Kashmiri Pandits working in the Valley could be adequately protected.

The security environment subsequently intensified, with security forces conducting anti-militancy operations and authorities questioning individuals suspected of having links with militant networks, including alleged overground workers.

But for employees under the Prime Minister’s employment package, the problem was not limited to attacks themselves. The availability and circulation of personal information of employees became a recurring security concern. Around 6,000 Kashmiri Pandits have received government employment under the Prime Minister’s Special Rehabilitation and Employment Package, introduced in 2010 as part of the government’s effort to facilitate the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits displaced from the Valley following the outbreak of militancy and the mass displacement of the community in the 1990s.

The employment package was premised on an important condition: beneficiaries were expected to work in the Valley. But, as Tickoo points out, the same requirement that forms the basis of the rehabilitation policy also leaves employees particularly vulnerable when security deteriorates.

The lists that keep resurfacing

This is not the first time the publication of employee details has raised alarm. In December 2022, Kashmiri Pandit employees protested after a purported hit list released by The Resistance Front (TRF) named 56 Kashmiri Pandits working in the Valley under the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package. The employees demanded a high-level investigation into how official information identifying them had reached a militant organisation.

At the time, the employees were already protesting outside the Relief Commissioner’s office in Jammu following the targeted killing of Rahul Bhat in Chadoora on May 1, 2022.

The concern was straightforward: if the State had collected the personal information of employees for the purposes of rehabilitation and employment, how was that information reaching organisations issuing threats against them? Tickoo told Sabrang India that the problem has never really been resolved. According to him, lists containing details of Prime Minister’s Package employees have continued to circulate publicly on social media.

He believes the same publicly available information is now being exploited again. Tickoo said that while a larger list of around 20 employees is allegedly available on social media, the latest threat letter specifically identified seven employees with their full names and phone numbers. This differs from reports in The Indian Express, which identified six employees named in the purported letter.

For Tickoo, the issue is therefore not simply the existence of a threatening poster. It is how such specific personal information continues to become available in the first place. “How are these posters being posted on social media?” is the question he says the government must answer. More importantly, he asks, who is providing private information about government employees to those circulating the threats?

‘Since 2022, meetings have resulted in nothing’

Tickoo said the issue has repeatedly been raised with the government. According to him, several meetings have taken place with the Secretary of the Home Department since 2022, but they have not resulted in any meaningful resolution of the concerns raised by Kashmiri Pandit employees.

The latest episode comes after a period in which violence and insecurity have again been building in parts of Kashmir. Tickoo referred to the recent killing of a policeman in Anantnag and the subsequent killing of two migrant workers in Kulgam. The Wire reported the killing of policeman Ashiq Hussain Qureshi in Anantnag on June 22 while he was deployed for Amarnath Yatra duty, followed by the July 31 killing of two migrant workers from Chhattisgarh at a brick kiln in Kulgam.

The sequence, Tickoo argues, has heightened apprehension that further attacks could take place, including against minorities and migrant workers. For him, the responsibility ultimately rests with the government. Tickoo described the situation as a security lapse on the part of either the Union government or the Jammu and Kashmir administration, while expressing frustration that neither level of government has accepted responsibility.

When security concerns undermine rehabilitation

The contradiction at the heart of the Prime Minister’s Package is difficult to ignore. The government encourages displaced Kashmiri Pandits to return to the Valley and provides employment as part of its rehabilitation programme. Yet when security threats emerge, the immediate response is reportedly to ask those very employees to stay indoors or remain away from work.

That contradiction has existed for years. In 2022, after a series of targeted killings, Kashmiri Pandit employees staged a prolonged protest and demanded transfers outside Kashmir. The Indian Express reported that employees protested for around 350 days and sought permanent relocation to Jammu. The government rejected the demand and instead relocated some employees to areas considered safer within the Valley.

Tickoo argues that the latest episode risks producing the same outcome: employees who have been asked to return to Kashmir are once again made to feel that their presence there is unsafe. And the consequences extend beyond the immediate threat.

According to Tickoo, when employees leave the Valley because they feel unsafe, they risk losing the benefits attached to the rehabilitation package because those benefits are linked to their continuing residence and employment in Kashmir.

In other words, the employee is caught between two vulnerabilities: remaining in Kashmir despite a credible fear for personal safety, or leaving and potentially jeopardising the very rehabilitation benefits that were meant to facilitate their return.

‘They cannot simply return to work’

The latest threat has also created a practical problem for the employees whose names and numbers were published. Tickoo said that once an individual’s identity and telephone number have been publicly circulated alongside a threat, simply telling that person to return to work does not address the fear created by the threat.

The issue is particularly serious, he argues, because several of the employees named in the latest poster work in departments where their official responsibilities may place them in contact with people who have vested interests in government enforcement.

Tickoo specifically referred to employees working in Regional Transport Offices and alleged that private agents operating around these offices had historically relied on bribery to obtain driving licences and vehicle fitness certificates. According to him, the arrival of Kashmiri Pandit employees under the Prime Minister’s Package and their adherence to official procedures had disrupted such practices. He alleged that this could be one reason why employees working in these positions had become targets.

These claims are Tickoo’s allegations and would require independent investigation. But they point towards another dimension of the controversy: whether threats against government employees are connected not only to their identity as Kashmiri Pandits, but also to the particular government functions they perform.

The problem of the ‘unofficial’ order

Another striking feature of the present episode is the absence of a formal government order. The Indian Express reported that departments had verbally instructed Kashmiri Pandit employees to remain at home, while the Director of School Education publicly denied issuing such instructions. The Wire similarly reported that employees had received work-from-home directions through departmental or internal channels, without a publicly available formal order.

Tickoo says this informality is not accidental. According to him, governments in Kashmir often avoid issuing formal orders in such situations because an official directive to keep an entire section of employees away from their workplaces would amount to an acknowledgement that the security establishment has failed to protect them.

He also argues that a formal order could invite judicial scrutiny, particularly if employees are effectively prevented from discharging their duties because of their identity. The result, he says, is a system of verbal instructions in which everyone understands what is expected, but nobody formally accepts responsibility for the decision.

The question of the source

For Tickoo, the publication of phone numbers is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the latest episode. He questioned how individuals operating underground could obtain such specific information and circulate it publicly. He also questioned whether the source of the information could be traced and why the authorities had not yet established who was behind the dissemination of the posters.

The question is particularly significant because the purported threat does not merely make a general warning against a community. It identifies individuals. That transforms the issue from a broad security concern into a question of data security, official confidentiality and institutional responsibility. If employee lists are available openly on social media, the government must establish how they reached the public domain, whether official databases were compromised, whether the information was leaked deliberately or inadvertently, and whether those responsible for the disclosure can be identified.

Without such an investigation, the cycle is likely to repeat.

A growing lack of faith

Tickoo also spoke of what he described as a wider erosion of faith in the security establishment. According to him, people in Kashmir have been warning the Union government for the last three to four years that something appeared to be building up. Those concerns, he believes, have not received adequate attention. The latest threat therefore carries significance beyond the employees reportedly named in it.

If employees believe that their personal details can be obtained, that threats can be issued against them, and that the government response will be to ask them to remain indoors rather than identify the source of the threat, confidence in the security system inevitably weakens. For the Kashmiri Pandit community, this is particularly consequential because rehabilitation itself depends on a measure of trust.

Rehabilitation cannot mean confinement

The contradiction becomes even sharper against the backdrop of public celebrations and government campaigns in the Valley. The Wire reported heightened security arrangements ahead of Independence Day, including additional checkpoints, frisking, night patrols and surveillance. At the same time, authorities and BJP workers have been organising Tiranga rallies, cultural programmes, sporting events and other public activities as part of the Har Ghar Tiranga–Vande Mataram campaign.

Tickoo questions the contrast. If a minority community is being informally asked to remain indoors because of security threats, he asks, how can the government simultaneously claim that normalcy has been restored and organise public celebrations across the Valley?

For him, the issue is not opposition to public celebrations. It is the contradiction between projecting normal public life and privately instructing a vulnerable section of the population to restrict its movement. The question is ultimately one of whose normalcy is being protected.

‘Why are the Pandits still suffering?’

Tickoo’s larger argument is that the government cannot continue treating every such episode as an isolated security incident. The latest threat may be attributed to a purported militant organisation. The police may establish that the letter is genuine or fabricated. The perpetrators may eventually be identified—or they may not. But, Tickoo argues, the underlying problem remains.

Over the past several years, Kashmiri Pandit employees have faced targeted killings, threats, protests, demands for transfers, security restrictions and repeated uncertainty over whether they can safely continue working in the Valley.

A rehabilitation policy that requires employees to live and work in Kashmir cannot succeed merely by providing employment. It must also ensure that they can move freely, access public spaces, perform their jobs and live ordinary lives without being forced into periodic confinement because of their identity.

The latest threat therefore raises questions that go beyond the purported organisation behind the poster. Who has access to the employees’ personal information? Why have repeated concerns about leaked lists not produced a satisfactory answer? Why are employees once again being asked to stay indoors instead of being given a transparent security assessment? And how long can a rehabilitation policy function if its beneficiaries repeatedly feel compelled to leave the Valley for their own safety?

For Tickoo, the larger failure is one of accountability. He argues that when security lapses occur, the State can point towards an organisation, a militant network or actors across the border. But if threats are able to reach identifiable employees and disrupt their everyday lives, the State must also account for the security failures within its own institutional framework.

The danger, he says, is that anyone could claim to represent a fabricated organisation, circulate threats and create fear and disruption, while the government simply attributes the episode to forces operating from across the border. That, however, does not answer the question of how the information reached them. Nor does it answer the question of why, after years of assurances and repeated meetings, Kashmiri Pandit employees continue to feel that their return to the Valley comes with an unresolved risk.

The latest threat letter may disappear from social media. The informal work-from-home instructions may eventually be withdrawn. Employees may be asked to return to their offices. But unless the questions around security, accountability and leaked personal information are answered, the larger problem will remain: a community encouraged to return in the name of rehabilitation, but repeatedly reminded that its safety in the Valley remains uncertain.

Related:

This is what we feared: Sanjay Tickoo on the rising attacks in Kashmir since March

Pleas of non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits have fallen on deaf ears: Sanjay Tickoo

Time has come to go on fast unto death: Sanjay Tickoo

Kashmiri Pandit leader Sanjay Tickoo talks about Governor’s Rule in J&K

A Kashmiri Pandit fact-checks The Kashmir Files

10 reasons why Kashmiri Pandits feel betrayed in the Valley

The post ‘How Can Rehabilitation Work If We Are Not Safe?’ Sanjay Tickoo on the fresh threat to Kashmiri Pandit employees appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand, June 28 – July 5, 2026

Chronology of Incidents

June 28- Ilaichipur, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

BJP MLA for Loni, Nandkishore Gurjar at the inauguration of local development projects is seen addressing a large crowd stating that 99 percent of Indian Muslims were originally Hindus. He added that those who were “weak” converted while those who were “strong” fought “demons” rather than convert.

This was not an isolated incident during the reporting period. Gurjar was also implicated in another hate speech delivered on July 3, which will be listed down in the chronology. (See incident number 6)

CJP is dedicated to finding and bringing to light instances of Hate Speech, so that the bigots propagating these venomous ideas can be unmasked and brought to justice. To learn more about our campaign against hate speech, please become a member. To support our initiatives, please donate now!

Incidentally, two hate speeches in 2025 according to IHL’s report traces directly to Gurjar. On March 17,  2025 in Loni, Uttar Pradesh, Gurjar referred to Muslims as “demons” and “beasts” while glorifying the demolition of Babri mosque. On April 26, he administered an oath to protest attendees, urging them to identify and expel all those who “support Pakistan,” referring to them as “topiwallas,” “jihadis,” and “Rohingya Bangladeshis.”

In addition to this documented history of communal speeches, Association for Democratic Reforms records show that Gurjar has multiple criminal cases in which charges have been framed, including:

• IPC Section 295: Injuring or defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class.
• IPC Section 436: Mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy a house or other property.
• IPC Section 332: Voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from the discharge of duty.
• IPC Section 506: Criminal intimidation.
• Three charges under IPC Section 147: Rioting.
• Two charges under IPC Section 148: Rioting while armed with a deadly weapon.
• Two charges under IPC Section 353: Assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from the discharge of duty.
• IPC Section 427: Mischief causing damage.
• IPC Section 504: Intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace.

All of this taken together indicates a recurring pattern of inflammatory public statements—often a precursor to targeted violence- alongside a long-standing record of criminal proceedings.

June 29– Champawat, Uttarakhand

Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, at a Mukhya Sevak Samvad outreach event, Dhami credited his government with implementing the state’s amended anti-conversion law, running Operation Kalnemi, and “freeing” over 12,000 acres of government land from what he called “land jihad.” He also invoked “love jihad,” “thook jihad” (spit jihad) and “mazar jihad” (shrine jihad), calling them anti-social and anti-national. He further accused the political opposition of appeasement politics for opposing action against “illegal” encroachments and mazars (Muslim shrines).

https://www.facebook.com/hindutvawatchIn/videos/location-champawat-uttarakhanddate-june-29at-the-mukhya-sevak-samvad-program-chi/1751173735881458/

This rhetoric is a verbatim repetition of Dhami’s script which he has used in at least half a dozen recorded speeches since 2024 in Haridwar, Dehradun, Chamoli and Sagar. Reported by The Quint and Deccan Herald.

According to IHL, Dhami has “emerged as the most prolific hates speech actor in 2025, with 71 speeches.”

“CM Dhami and his colleagues frequently invoked the anti-Muslim conspiracies of “love jihad,” “land jihad,” and “spit jihad” alongside fear-mongering about demographic change,” the report states.

June 30– Dehradun, Uttarakhand

A Vishwa Hindu Parshad-Bajrang Dal leader Vikas Verma, at a weekly Hanuman Chalisa gathering cited an unverified case of Hindu students allegedly forced to remove their tilak, kalava and janeu at school. He accused Christianity and Islam of long targeting Sanatan Dharma and welcomed Uttarakhand’s dissolution of the Madrasa Board as he alleged madrasas teach students that non-Muslims are “kafirs” who should be beheaded. He also claimed that those who choose to educate from madrasas will not hesitate to practise terrorism.

Verma has delivered near-identical claims about mosques, madrasas and “anarchists” at the same weekly event before. Im May this year, he also led a right-wing group to a prominent footwear showroom in Dehradhun and a clip was circulated where they were purportedly seen selectively confronting Muslim staff and even snatching their name tags and writing “jihadi” on it.

An investigation published by The Wire found Dehradun Bajrang Dal members running dedicated social-media pages built around similar content.

June 30– Loni, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Hindu Raksha Dal leader Sunny Bajrangi, at a Hanuman Chalisa event called “love jihad” a “termite” eating away at Hindu society. He alleged “jihadis” hide their identity to trap Hindu women, and warned that demographic change would become unstoppable within 20 years unless Hindus unite.

July 1- Domariaganj, Siddharthnagar, Uttar Pradesh

Former BJP MLA Raghvendra Pratap Singh at an event marking Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s birth anniversary said “love jihad” was rising rapidly and cited an unverified ‘kidnapping’ allegation of a Hindu woman against a “Mulla.” Singh urged BJP workers to watch for “vidharmi” (heretic/anti-faith) and “kukarmi” (evildoer) elements. He also called for scrutiny of Christian missionary activity.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaavObxMIgW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

In February 2022, a report by Citizens for Justice and Peace documented two FIRs for hate speech against Singh. CJP quoted far more extreme past remarks, including threats to “get their blood tested” against Hindus who did not vote for him. Read the report here.

July 3- Loni, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

The incident again implicates Nandkishore Gurjar, the BJP MLA for Loni who was also the perpetrator in the current reported incident 1. At the inauguration of a road-widening project, Gurjar called Muslims “pigs” and a “disease.” He praised a village for barring any “jihadi” from settling there, and said hospitals now stood where   these “pigs” once roamed. He warned residents against renting warehouses to “Bangladeshis” and vowed to drive them out.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dad_ttrsEyL/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Ten months earlier, in September 2025, Gurjar was filmed at a yoga event in Baghpat saying, “Swines and Bangladeshi Rohingyas are being settled here, and they will ruin the country.”

July 4- Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh

Vimlesh Sharma of the Shri Ram Sanatan Seva Samiti and the Gau Raksha Dal along with a group of 15-20 men confronted a Muslim man over alleged remarks about a cow. In the video, they are seen repeatedly slapping and hurling abuses at him as he tries to offer an explanation. The group dragged him to a shed, and forced him to kneel and touch a calf’s legs and later chants “Jai Shri Ram.” Sources also document that he was forced to drink cow urine.

Location:Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, India ,
According to reports, Vimlesh Sharma, State President of the Shri Ram Sanatan Seva Samiti, along with members of the Gau Raksha Dal, allegedly assaulted a Muslim man after accusing him of making objectionable remarks about a cow.

The… pic.twitter.com/BFPrrT5Ik1

— Rising Falcon (@TheRFTeam) July 5, 2026

The Siasat Daily also reports that the Hindutva group’s own Instagram post accused the man of threatening a violent, blood-soaked Holi.

In a video posted on X, Vimlesh Sharma justified the assault by alleging that the victim had abused their mothers and sisters and mocked their dietary practices, stating that these actions prompted the group to respond as they did.

Location: Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh

Vimalesh Sharma, the state president of Shri Ram Sanatan Seva Samiti, released a video in which he said that he beat a Muslim man accused of making offensive remarks about cows and forcibly made him drink cow urine. https://t.co/K8zCAB2L17 pic.twitter.com/eYt8ux4M8Q

— The Muslim (@TheMuslim786) July 7, 2026

According to media reports, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Barabanki Superintendent of Police stated that the police were unaware of the incident.

Congress MP Syed Naseer Hussain has condemned such acts of forced religious worship and described it as “deeply disturbing.”

The assault and humiliation of a Muslim man in Barabanki, including forcing him to perform religious acts against his will, is deeply disturbing. Such acts are not expressions of faith but crimes that violate human dignity and the Constitution.

When vigilante groups believe they… pic.twitter.com/jq7Hlgb0Ki

— Dr Syed Naseer Hussain, M P (@NasirHussainINC) July 4, 2026

July 5- Kaintholi, Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand

One, Amit Thapliyal along with a few associates stopped a Christian Sunday prayer meeting, asserting that Hinduism is the village’s only permitted religion. Thapiyal accused attendees of attending for payment, and told them to surrender their Scheduled Caste (SC) reservation benefits if they wished to practice Christianity.

Assessment

No reports of any FIR or case registered has emerged against any of these incidents. Most, in fact, were not found reported in mainstream media at the time of writing. This unfortunately is evidence if such were needed of the cavalier and casual manner in which legacy and mainstream media treats such hate speech; avoidance of which allows for a continued prevalence of a culture of impunity. However, the videos show a pattern of anti-minority mobilisation that is consistent with established scholarship on communal politics, majoritarian nationalism, and hate speech in India. They demonstrate how political rhetoric, vigilante action, and symbolic performances of dominance reinforce one another to construct religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, as threats to the nation, culture, and social order.

The incidents are examples of moral panic and conspiracy framing in which minority communities are portrayed as engaging in coordinated efforts to undermine the demographic, territorial, or cultural integrity of the Hindu majority. This assessment is not to paint any one community as total saints and another as perpetrators. However, such rhizomatic organisation and hate speech by creating an atmosphere of perceived threat only legitimises exceptional state action and public hostility.  They create an imagined internal enemy whose existence justifies exclusionary politics.

The repeated and exhausting invocation of various forms of ‘jihad,’ portrayal of Muslims as ‘Bangladeshis,’ or ‘swines,’ disruption of Christian prayer meetings, and performative humiliation by asking someone to forcefully chant a religious slogan suggest diffusion of a shared ideological repertoire of how political authority and vigilante mobilisation reinforce one another.

Importantly, 3 out of 8 incidents have been attributed to a sitting Chief Minister and an MLA. This convergence of official political speech and vigilante action is a significant feature of democratic backsliding and ethno nationalism. Uttarakhand held municipal elections on June 9, 2026, and Uttar Pradesh has delayed its three-tier panchayat elections, with voter-list work underway through the summer of 2026 across nearly 58,000 gram panchayats

But a similar language appearing across chief ministerial speeches, local political leaders, and organisations such as the Bajrang Dal, Hindu Raksha Dal, and cow-protection groups suggests the diffusion of a shared ideological repertoire. One that is unconstitutional. However, such language has frequently been used, even at a national level, including from the head of government.

The trajectory of hate speech leading up to the 2024 General Elections has been documented by India Hate Speech Monitor. It can be accessed here.

Several of these incidents cannot be separated from a broader, well-documented campaign. Since May 2025, Indian authorities have detained and, in many cases, summarily expelled thousands of people to Bangladesh, a substantial number of them Bengali-speaking Indian Muslims with valid citizenship documents. UP has seen its own share of wrongful detentions of West Bengal migrant workers holding valid Aadhaar and voter identification.

In Uttrakhand, disruption of prayer meetings is documented. In July 2024, an 11-person FIR followed a mob attack on a Dehradun prayer meeting that vandalised a crucifix.

Uttarakhand: Hindutva mob attacks Christian prayer meet in Dehradun. A group of Hindutva ‘activists’ barged into the house and assaulted people including women present inside, Forcefully entered inside the house and vandalised a Christian cross, prayer room and bedroom, made… pic.twitter.com/BLD7vbXp2Y

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) July 16, 2024

Similarly, in May 2022 in Purola,Uttarakhand a prayer meeting was stormed by an armed group. The coercive demand to renounce SC reservation status is a recognisable feature of this genre nationally. However, the groups are also apprehensive of forced-conversion practices.

Sections 196 and 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 penalises promoting disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will. This is the only remedy for hate speech between religious, racial, linguistic or regional groups. The maximum sentence is three years, rising to five if the act occurs at a place of worship or religious ceremony.

However, the structural problem, independent of any single case, is enforcement and conviction rates. In May this year, the Supreme Court said that separate guidelines for heat speech were unnecessary. This climb-down by the apex court to its own earlier interventionist directions and orders around such mobilisations is also a sign of institutional disregard to a culture of growing anti-minority public rhetoric. A detailed analysis on the Supreme Court’s final judgement on the issue may be read here and here.

According to IHL, documented 1,318 hate speech events nationally in 2025, roughly four events a day, with 98 percent targeting Muslims either alone or alongside Christians.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Tanishka Shah)

Related:

Targeted as ‘Bangladeshis’: The hate speech fuelling deportations

A Targeted Campaign: The orchestrated crackdown on Bengali Migrants and the rising pushback from courts, Bengal government, and civil society

India Hate Lab Report 2025: How Hate Speech has been normalised in the public sphere

The post A week of anti-minority hate that grips UP-Uttarakhand appeared first on SabrangIndia.

These rising classes, coming up due to industrialisation, communication and modern education, looked forward to a country where  an inclusive nationalism will ensure the peace and progress of the country. Class-wise this was a broad generalization,  while few exceptions were scattered here and there. To oppose or ignore these trends towards modern India, we also had the declining sections of earlier rulers/dominant sections of society who were steeped in the feudal values of hierarchy of caste and gender. Those; who were rooted in the values of patriarchy and glorified the times when the values of Kingdoms/feudalism prevailed. They mostly opposed the freedom movement and insisted on ‘glorious ancient’ times.

They imposed a method of looking backwards while walking forwards. These tendencies came from the landlords. Kings etc. who were scared of the ripples of empowerment of workers/Dalits/women and Adivasis. They typically glorified their kings of their religion and the social values related to those times. The Muslim League had mainly support from the nawabs and Landlords, while Hindu Mahasabha-RSS had supporters from Rajas, Landlords and clerics. They opposed the emerging values of democratic society, modern education for all and struggle against the British. These tendencies regarded religion as the base of Nation, well-articulated by Savarkar in his book, Hindutva or ‘Who is a Hindu’. This was a painful counter to the ongoing anti-British struggle of the national movement. The partition of the country on the basis of religion was the biggest stab in the back of Indian Nationalism.

The Constituent Assembly well represented the diversity of the country. Ambedkar who had burnt Manu smriti was asked to chair the crucial drafting committee. Soon after the Constitution was formed, the RSS mouthpiece Organiser came with a scathing criticism of this on the grounds that it does not have the ancient values of Manu smriti. The images of Ambedkar and Nehru were burnt by these elements.

The independent India had the twin leadership of Nehru-Patel, both staunch followers of Gandhi. While Patel successfully integrated most of the Princely states, Nehru implemented the vision of Modern India by ensuring that the Constitution is implemented in letter and spirit. ‘One person One Vote’ was implemented successfully and roots of democracy were planted deep with Nehru’s undying faith in democracy and secularism, which in a way are twins. His plan of Modern education (IITs, IIMs, AIIMS to name a few) laying the foundation of the public sector, focus on irrigation and implementation of reservation policy did ensure some march towards equality. Some commentators who compare Pakistan and India’s plight a few decades earlier stated that India’s achievements and Pakistan’s failure (In education, industrialization) can also be attributed to many factors, but the central factor was the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru in India.

Now from the last few decades the rise of Hindu right wing, RSS and its progeny have changed the direction of national goals and ideas. Now authoritarian politics in the name of Hindu religion is taking the CenterStage, and has undermining the idea of India which emerged during our freedom movement. Those who were standing on the by lanes and opposing the freedom movement and its values of inclusion and equality of all are now dominating and the development of the country has come to a halt. The walls of hate against religious minorities are out to demolish the values of fraternity in our society. The recently held movement against the failure of the examination system has definitely broken the arrogance of this regime, but the direction and goals of Hindu nationalism are very much intact. The battle to restore our democratic spirit and values of the Indian constitution needs a protracted and long struggle.

RSS combine has sowed hatred very deep in the society, it has also infiltrated all the facets of Indian state. The dissatisfaction due to its policies has peaked and surfaced strongly with the Cockroach movement. This has ensured that the inhibition imposed by the ‘elected autocratic’ regime may loosen up a bit for the time being. The deeper wound inflicted by the RSS combine may not be easily overcome. It has affected the body politics in a very deep manner. A regime change from the one committed to Hindu nationalism to the one devoted to the Indian Constitution is what is needed in the due course. The false hood-based narratives which have made a place in popular understanding need to be countered by the narratives built around love and friendship of Indian people from centuries, the narratives around which Bose, Gandhi, Patel and Nehru strove to instil them among the in the Indian people. The Jantar mantar phenomenon is the first step towards recovering India’s being as the centuries old civilization struggling to make its deserving place in the comity of nations.

The condition of minorities needs to be brought to the level of ‘equal citizenship’. The Authoritarianism of the Government needs to be undone and we need to resume nation building on a rational and scientific basis. The Jantar mantar initiative is just the beginning, a long way to go to restore the dreams of Gandhi and Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and Subhash Bose, Maulana Azad and Sardar Patel. Wishing all a happy Independence Day.

Related:

Sharia, Manusmriti or the Indian Constitution

Identity issue to the fore: Vande Mataram controversy

The post Looking Forward to 79th Independence Day: Whither Democracy! appeared first on SabrangIndia.