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SHO Umesh Singh said the incident took place last evening during a wedding ceremony in Paati village under Kairana police station limits.

He said some members of a particular community allegedly made lewd remarks against a women belonging to another community, leading to a tussle that grew into a clash.

The members of the two groups hurled stones at each other.

11 people, including two women, were injured in the violence, Singh said.

The injured have been hospitalised and extra police force deployed in the area in view of the tension following the incident.
 

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“It is not about communal incidents… It is not about Hindus or Muslims,” the Kairana MP told reporters here on Saturday, adding it has more to do with the law and order situation.

He had earlier said that from the names of the accused, “one can grasp who are these people”, hinting at involvement of members of the Muslim community.

The MP had earlier released a list of 346 families who had allegedly been forced to flee the town, which has 85 percent Muslim population. Kairana is in Shamli district which witnessed communal riots in 2013.

Top BJP leaders raked up the issue of alleged migration of Hindus from Kairana to attack the Samajwadi Party government in the state during the Assembly election’s campaign trail.

BJP’s rebel Anil Chauhan, who joined the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) to fight election from Kairana constituency, had earlier alleged Singh raked up the exodus issue only to prepare grounds for his daughter’s entry into politics. His Mriganka is contesting the polls on a BJP ticket.

(With PTI inputs)
 

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The world may think what it likes but the firebrand BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh likes US President Donald Trump.

Addressing an election rally in Bulandshahr on Monday for the coming Assembly polls in his state, the BJP leader said, “Similar action is needed to contain terror activities in this country.”

Adityanath also reportedly raised the alleged exodus of Hindus from Kairana and promised to deal with the issue “strictly” if the BJP was voted to power. The Times of India reported him as comparing the situation in Kairana to that of Kashmir over 27 years ago “Have you forgotten the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990?… If you do not wake up even now, you will also be forced to migrate to other regions,” he said. He exhorted voters to "remember the riots and the rapes" when you vote on February 11.

Meanwhile The Indian Express reported him as claiming at another rally in Sahibabad the same day that Trump sees Modi as his “political icon”.

Adityanath also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to not grant special rights to any minority community. “Whoever lives in Russia will abide by Russian laws and whoever doesn’t follow, should go where they like Shariat law”, he said at the rally. India’s self-proclaimed secular parties, he said, lacked the courage to speak the same language.

On Monday, another controversial BJP MLA Suresh Rana was booked by Uttar Pradesh police on charges of inciting hatred after he said that curfew will be imposed in Kairana, Deoband and Moradabad if he is elected again in assembly polls next month.

Voting for the state’s 403 seats will be held in seven phases and results will be out on March 11.

For a video clip of the BJP MP’s take on Kairana, click here.

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Discussions in western Uttar Pradesh (UP) veer around the extent to which the BJP’s campaign propaganda will go to polarize a fractured electorate; affected by factors around caste and community. The forthcoming state elections are key to the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP)’s credibility at the centre, dogged as it is by accusations of authoritarian and majoritarian functioning.
 
Any discussion of bahujan, pichda and ati-pichda politics foregrounds issues of deprivation, denials, structural –both social and economic. The moment, however, that the politics of “othering” pre-dominates, and the Hindu-Muslim divide surfaces in the discourse, perceptions shift that even impact on equations and therefore, votes. Then, the BJP and RSS feels, it is sure to play the winning card.
 
So which card will the saffron party finally throw into the ring?
 
Mid-July this year, after the party’s National Executive Meet at the historic city of Allahabad, the clarion call was sounded by the party president Amit Shah (disproved within days) of the ‘Hindu exodus from Kairana’. ‘Do you want such an exodus’ Shah had demanded, little aware that within days these false claims by the BJP MP Hukum Singh would stand discredited.
 
Shopping for poll planks that do the trick for the party that was humiliated in Bihar and Delhi before that, are other undercurrents can be felt around the districts of western and Uttar Pradesh. Hindu-Muslim or multiple caste assertion and affirmation?
 
Within this, hovers the ghost of triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code deviously collapsed into a bait for the misogynist sections among the minorities by a central government dominated by the RSS. Doubts and questions are being raised and a counter progressive questioning within mosques and localities, led by women and progressive Muslim males and the clergy is slowly beginning, also in Uttar Pradesh.
 
Today, three months after Shah’s controversial remarks on Hukum Singh’s claims, key BJP campaigners, Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah appear to be re-positioning the ‘Kairana exodus’ card.The Indian Express reported today that ‘as the BJP’s Parivartan Yatra rolled into communally sensitive western Uttar Pradesh, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh raised the pitch Monday, saying the “self-respect of mothers and sisters is being looted” in the region. He said if the BJP is voted to power in the state, it will act against “those using muscle power to terrorise people… hum dekhenge ki usne kitna ma ka doodh piya hai”. The video can be heard here.
 
Though silent on the Kairana exodus, the veiled threat was to criminals, and by extension, if the I’s were dotted and ts crossed, to Muslims. Last week, on October 27, Amit Shah’s controversial speech had harked back to the Kalyan Singh’s rule in Uttar Pradesh. He had also condemned the law and order situation in UP associating the same only with leaders with Muslim names—the underlying message, that all criminals are Muslims.

 
Kairana Background
A visit by a team of Hindu seers within days visited Kairana to probe allegations by BJP MP Hukum Singh that 346 Hindu families had fled the small town due to persecution. Swami Chakrapani, one of the five seers who visited Kairana, slammed BJP for playing the "communal card". Swami Chakrapani, president of Akhil Bharatiya Sant Mahasabha, told TOI that Hindus and Muslims alike had been worried about rising crime there.
 
On September 21, the NHRC released the findings of their investigations in Kairana. The investigation was conducted based on a complaint on the alleged “exodus” of Hindu families from the town because of increasing crime. The NHRC report has claimed that the allegations are “serious” and that several Hindu families “migrated” from Kairana because of the “increase in crime” and “deterioration” of the law-and-order situation after victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots settled there. This ‘report’ of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) was roundly condemned by activists and even the National Minorities Commission.

There was countrywide condemnation of this report.

A fact-finding team from the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) that visited Kairana on Monday has questioned the recent report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) which claimed that there had been an “exodus” of Hindu families from the area out of fear of some Muslims, reports the Times of India."We met some local families and spoke to the local administration. We found that there was no evidence to suggest there had been an exodus of any kind. I don't wish to comment on the NHRC report too much, but some of the findings seem baseless," the NCM team, led by member-in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Farida Abdullah Khan told the Times of India.
 
Last month, an NHRC report had validated the allegation made earlier by the BJP MP from the area, Hukum Singh that 250 Hindu families were forced to move out of Kairana in Shamli district of UP out of fear. "At least 24 witnesses stated that the youths of the specific majority community (Muslims in this case) in Kairana town pass lewd/taunting remarks against the females of the specific minority community in town," the report stated. From mid July through September, the party pushed this card even pushing the National Human Rights Commission to file a report that was condemned for its unprofessionalism.

The post The Myth of the Kairana Exodus: On and Off the BJP’s Poll Plank in UP appeared first on SabrangIndia.

"We met some local families and spoke to the local administration. We found that there was no evidence to suggest there had been an exodus of any kind. I don't wish to comment on the NHRC report too much, but some of the findings seem baseless," the NCM team, led by member-in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Farida Abdullah Khan told the Times of India.
 
Last month, an NHRC report had validated the allegation made earlier by the BJP MP from the area, Hukum Singh that 250 Hindu families were forced to move out of Kairana in Shamli district of UP out of fear. "At least 24 witnesses stated that the youths of the specific majority community (Muslims in this case) in Kairana town pass lewd/taunting remarks against the females of the specific minority community in town," the report stated.
 
However, in June this year, a probe by the Shamli district administration found Hukum Singh’s allegation to be bogus. As against Singh’s list of 346 Hindu families who had allegedly fled the district, the probe concluded that only in three cases families had faced “rangdari” threats and police had taken timely action in each case.
 
According to an Indian Express investigation, which tracked down 22 people who figure in Singh’s list, five had died, four had moved out of Kairana looking for better opportunities, 10 left more than 10 years ago, three had moved fearing “local criminals”.
 
Khan said the NCM team didn't find much evidence to back the NHRC claim. "For instance, the (NHRC) report claims that the rise in crime in Kairana was linked to the resettlement of refugees. There is no paperwork that can verify this. It also said that the riot-displaced persons changed the demographics of the town since about 30,000 people came and settled here. However, local NGOs said the figure in Kairana is not more than 200 people."

The latest Times of India report may be read here.
 

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Image: The Indian Express

Its finest hour was in the aftermath of the Gujarat communal riots in 2002, when it actively held the state government to account for relief, reparations and justice for the survivors. But for much of its tenure, the NHRC has often been criticised for inaction during human rights violations in contexts of communal, caste and gender violence and discrimination, extra-judicial killings, torture and forced disappearances.

However, a recent report by the NHRC, for the first time, opens it up to grave criticism not just of inaction, but of actively contributing to a majoritarian, communally-charged discourse. Its team visited the Muslim-majority township of Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh in which some Muslim survivors of the communal violence in 2013 had migrated after being uprooted because their homes and families had been attacked and they felt it was unsafe to return. The report, in effect, regards these Muslim migrants not as victims deserving the defence of the NHRC but as people responsible for contributing to raised levels of crime and the harassment of women which resulted in the “exodus” of law-abiding Hindu residents from Kairana.

The NHRC states that it acted on the basis of a complaint by Supreme Court advocate Monika Arora, but the charge of a Hindu “exodus” from Kairana because of the alleged criminal activities of riot-affected migrants was first raised by BJP MP Hukam Singh. His complaint was part of an old strategy of majoritarian communalists to paint the Hindu community as victims even when Hindu communalists perpetrate communal attacks. His communally explosive charges were disproved by investigations by The Indian Express, The Hindu and NDTV, which demonstrated that most of the 346 Hindus alleged to have left Kairana did so much earlier in search of better opportunities, or were dead or still living in the town.

The NHRC still felt it fit to reinvestigate the same communally motivated charges that had been publicly disproved. It concurs in its report that because of “the post-rehabilitation scenario resulting in resettlement of about 25-30,000 members of Muslim community in Kairana town from district Muzaffarnagar, UP, the demography of Kairana town has changed in favour of the Muslim community becoming the more dominating and majority community”. The report agrees with “witnesses” and “victims” that “the rehabilitation in 2013 has permanently changed the social situation in Kairana town and has led to further deterioration of law and order situation.”

There is much that is extraordinary about these NHRC findings. In a recent report Living Apart: Communal Violence and Forced Displacement in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, Akram Chaudhary, Zafar Eqbal, Rajanya Bose and I documented the exodus forced by communal attacks of around 50,000 Muslims, of whom around 30,000 were living in poorly resourced and self-settled refugee colonies. We described the enormous suffering of these displaced persons, forced forever to leave the villages of their birth in a continuing climate of hate and fear, moving from camps to tiny tenements, with education, livelihoods and social relationships destroyed. This exodus, caused by communal violence, spurred no action in support of the displaced persons by the NHRC. The thousands of Muslims forced to leave their villages because of targeted communal attacks are not “victims” or “witnesses” for the NHRC. They are, instead, the problem. The “victims” are the Hindu residents of Kairana town where the riot-displaced persons took refuge. It is also noteworthy that since 2013, the NHRC has taken no significant initiatives to assist riot victims.

Further, the figure of 25-30,000 persons having come into Kairana town after 2013 is a gross exaggeration. Our survey, reported in Living Apart, had found around 200 riot-affected families in Kairana. After the NHRC report, Akram Akhtar and his colleagues undertook a fresh survey in case they had missed any resettled families and found another 70 stray Muslim families in the outskirts of the town. Even if we assume an average family size of seven, this would still amount to around 2,000 persons, a far distance from the irresponsible figure quoted by the NHRC. 

The 2011 census showed that Kairana had a population of 89,000 persons, of who more than 80 per cent were Muslim. It is difficult to see then how an addition of 2,000 persons had so drastically altered the demography of Kairana “in favour of the Muslim community becoming the more dominating and majority community”, as stated by the NHRC, when it was already an overwhelmingly Muslim majority town. What is even more regrettable is that this small increase of Muslim people internally displaced by hate-violence is stated by the NHRC to have resulted in a deterioration of the law and order situation in Kairana town. Once again, this conclusion is not based on any crime figures or other data presented by the NHRC; instead, this is based on the statements of the Hindu “victims” that its team chose to speak with. The NHRC report states: “At least 24 witnesses stated that the youths of the specific majority community (Muslims) in Kairana town pass lewd/taunting remarks against the females of the specific minority community in Kairana town. Due to this, females of the specific minority community (Hindus) in Kairana town avoid going outside frequently. However, they could not gather courage to report the matter to the police for the legal action.”

Our enquiries with the local police revealed that there were no complaints of so-called “eve-teasing” or lewd remarks by Muslim youth made to them over the last year. It is highly unfortunate that the NHRC report plays into the communal stereotype that dates back to Partition — of Muslim young men sexually harassing Hindu girls. This is even more irresponsible because it was precisely this charge against Muslim youths that sparked off the 2013 communal massacre that led to the killings, arson and forced exodus of Muslims from mixed villages in the region. For the NHRC to accept these conclusions, without any credible independent evidence, reflects its unacceptable complicity in communal rumour-mongering and stereotyping.

This is a precipitous fall for the NHRC, from the heights it attained under the leadership of Justice J.S. Verma — after the Gujarat 2002 communal riots, it chose the mantle of the principal defender of the rights of a survivors of the gruesome attacks. The NHRC was unflinching and uncompromising as it documented the many failings of the state and central government in ensuring the protection, relief, compensation, rehabilitation and access to legal justice for the survivors. It was the NHRC which itself moved the Supreme Court to oversee the investigation and trial of the major massacres. From these heights, the NHRC slipped later to a record largely of wilful passivity during subsequent communal and caste massacres. But it has today allowed itself to echo communal majoritarian labelling of the victims. We have seen many public institutions enfeebled and compromised in recent years. The NHRC is too important a public institution, created as it was for the defence of the rights of the weak and oppressed, to be destroyed in this way.

(This article was first published on Indianexpress.com. It has been republished with the permission of the author.)

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(R-L) Shaukat Ali, Riyaaz Ali, Harsh Mander, Farah Naqvi and Akram Chaudhury at the press conference in Delhi

New Delhi: Expressing their anger and dismay at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) report on Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, civil society activists and people displaced by the Muzaffarnagar riots demanded that the “partisan and prejudiced” report be recalled.

On September 21, the NHRC released the findings of their investigations in Kairana. The investigation was conducted based on a complaint on the alleged “exodus” of Hindu families from the town because of increasing crime. The NHRC report has claimed that the allegations are “serious” and that several Hindu families “migrated” from Kairana because of the “increase in crime” and “deterioration” of the law-and-order situation after victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots settled there.

The issue was first brought up by BJP MP Hukum Singh, who said 346 Hindu families had left because of people from “one particular community”. This claim was denied by the state government and the list of families provided by him was found by several media investigations to be false .

The matter was also raised at the national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) in July.

Activist Farah Naqvi, who has been working with people displaced by the Muzaffarnagar riots since 2013, said at a press conference organised in Delhi that the report was nothing more that “communal rumour-mongering”.

The report said that “at least 24 witnesses stated that the youths of the specific majority community (Muslims) in Kairana town pass lewd/taunting remarks against the females of the specific minority community in Kairana town. Due to this, females of the specific minority community (Hindus) in Kairana town avoid going outside frequently. However, they could not gather courage to report the matter to the police for the legal action.
”

It adds: “In 2013, the post-rehabilitation scenario resulting in resettlement of about 25/30 thousand members of Muslims Community in Kairana Town from district Muzaffarnagar, UP, the demography of Kairana town has changed in favour of the Muslim Community becoming the more dominating and majority community. Most of the witnesses examined and victims feel that the rehabilitation in 2013 has permanently changed the social situation in Kairana town and has led to further deterioration of law and order situation.”

“This report has provided no evidence for its claims at all,” Naqvi said. “While a declining law and order is a problem for all of us, how can they communalise criminality and blame it on a particular religion? This is not what we expect from our national human rights body. There are no facts, only ‘feelings’ they have gathered from a few people.”

“And who did they speak to?” she asked. “They did not approach any of the displaced persons and speak to them. Who are these 24 witnesses?”

Two riot victims who are now settled in Kairana, brothers Shaukat Ali and Rayeez Ali, also addressed the press conference. “Our village is two km from Shamli town. During the riots, we didn’t want to leave our home. But the mob entered our house and stabbed our father. He died. We were also badly beaten, but we managed to run away with our family,” Shaukat said.

“Two days later, after we had left the village, we were told that our father’s body has emerged in a pond. We went to the police in Shamli town, they said they didn’t have time that day. The next day when they finally went, the body had been removed,” he added.

“We spent two years in a relief camp,” Rayeez said. “And are now rebuilding our life in Kairana. That is our home now. Par kuch log badnam kar rahe hain (But some people are giving us a bad name). If there is really so much ‘crime’, where are the FIRs? We have been through all this and the NHRC has not been to see us once. Now they have come out with this report, it is very disappointing.”

“If you speak only to certain groups in a communally-charged area, they are bound to say things against another community,” activist Harsh Mander of Aman Biradri and the Centre for Equity Studies said. “What the NHRC should have done is provide facts – police cases, FIRs.”

Akram Chaudhury, an activist with Afkar India in Shamli who lives in Kairana, did some digging on the NHRC’s facts. The NHRC report has claimed that 25,000-30,000 Muslims have moved to Kairana town after the Muzaffarnagar riots. Chaudhury, after conducting a door-to-door survey in resettlement areas both last year and again after the NHRC numbers were announced, said it is not more than 2,000 people.

He has filed a complaint with the NHRC, asking that they recall the prejudiced report and issue a public statement about it.

“The number they have given, 25,000-30,000, is the total of displaced people there were in all camps after the riots. They definitely didn’t all go to Kairana, they are scattered across UP. Where did the NHRC get this number?” Mander said.

“And even if they were all there,” Naqvi added, “which is not the case, why would that be a problem? They are citizens of India who were displaced from there homes. Where should they go?”

The activists also raised questions on the changes in the NHRC and the loss of an institution.”The NHRC is the highest statutory body on human rights in the country,” said Madhavi Kuckreja of Sadbhavna Trust, an NGO working in UP. “Where do we take our concerns now? Which body will deal with the human rights insecurities that exist?”

“The NHRC used to be a trusted organisation that did excellent work,” Mander said, referring to the body’s efforts after the 2002 Gujarat riots. “But in the last few years they have been passive and quiet – and now they are speaking on the other side!”

Captain Praveen Davar, member of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), came to the event in his personal capacity. After hearing what the activists and riot victims had to say, he said that he would bring the matter up with the commission. He also asked the activists to file a formal complaint with the NCM.

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Image: The Indian Express

In order to find a truth behind the claim by BJP MP Hukum Singh that many Hindu families have been forced to flee Kairana town in Uttar Pradesh due to threats from the Muslim community, The Milli Gazette, a fortnightly English language newspaper, sent a team there comprised of Ovais Sultan Khan, a social activist, Pushp Sharma, a journalist, Mazin Khan a journalist, Kauser Usman, a journalist and Mohammad Anwar, a social activist.
 
Following is the fact-finding report of the team:
A team of journalists and activists, deputed by The Milli Gazette, on June 14, 2016 visited the town of Kairana in Western Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district which is in the national news due to the claim by the local BJP member of Parliament Hukum Singh that 346 Hindu families have been forced to flee Kairana town due to threats from the Muslim community. This claim aroused much media and political interest and focused lights on the law-and-order situation in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

After Hukum Singh's allegations, National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) issued a notice to the UP government for its report on the alleged exodus, while the UP government itself ordered a probe into the issue. When our team reached Kairana, we got the news from the nearby Kandhla town that a similar list of 163 Hindu families has been released by BJP and its allied right-wing groups spelling out similar allegations.

The Kairana list had the names of four dead persons and 68 who left Kairana long ago. It also includes name of 20 families which are still living in Kairana. This indicates that these allegations are part of a well-designed plan to polarise the society ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year.

The mouthpieces of Rahshtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and different sympathisers of the RSS-BJP contributed heavily in rumour-mongering to create a communal divide on the ground in order to to strengthen the BJP. RSS mouthpieces Organiser and Panchjanya made Kairana their cover page issue and compared it with the displacement of Pandits from the Kashmir valley.

The role of some journalists and media agencies has been highly objectionable in propagating these allegations. We found that the Kairana issue was the focus of a week-long propaganda by the Hindi daily Dainik Jagaran, which was later picked-up by Zee News and others. They kept publishing stories without any verification on the ground.

On the day of our visit, Hukum Singh, an accused in the Muzaffarnagar anti-Muslim riots of September 2013, took a U-turn. Now he claimed that the alleged “exodus” of Hindus from Kairana was "not communal" but was rather connected with the poor law and order situation in the region. This again was a lie since the deteriorating law-and-order situation should cause similar exodus from many towns in the region.

The Saharanpur Range DIG Police, A.K. Raghav, sent a report to the state government on June 11, 2016 regarding this issue. He revealed that the whole effort of the local MP to polarise the situation in the town and neighbourhood is devoted to the intention for his daughter to contest the upcoming assembly elections. DIG Raghav indicated the possibility of some big communal incident in the near future. In his report, the DIG said that these groups are giving the communal angle to a every small incident. In one particular case, where a woman was raped and murdered, two Hindu names cropped up as the accused but there was political pressure to drop their names and arrest Muslims instead for the crime.

On the other hand, Shamli District Magistrate asked the SDM and Circle Officer of Kairana to probe the allegations that "jihadi elements" had forced the migration of Hindus from the town. This action came after the VHP joint general secretary Surendra Jain said on 13 June that “Jihadis are being encouraged to carry out their activities”.

Famous for its role during the 1857 revolt and the 19th century Indian classical music ‘Kirana Gharana’, this town has 80.74% Muslims, 18.34% Hindus and the rest belong to other faiths according to the 2011 Census. This is the area which had given temporary refuge to the large number of Muslims displaced during the anti-Muslim Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.

Our team found that there are many untold stories which are not coming out, and that behind this whole communal game there is a plan to win the 2017 UP assembly elections.

The day of our visit was the eighth day of fasting in the month of Ramadan. We noted that eateries were open and people were eating on the roads in this Muslim-dominated town. There was no sense of any tension on the roads, markets and mohallas contrary to what was being shown in some news channels. We also failed to see any “For Sale” signboard or writing on the walls of any house.

Kairana Station House Officer (SHO), M.S. Gill, told us “It’s not true to call it ‘Hindu migration’. It’s usual these days. Everywhere people are moving from one place to another to explore better prospects. Interested parties are raising such issues keeping 2017 elections in mind.” Kairana police station’s sub-inspector Tanwar said that “Media has hyped the issue unnecessarily. Community leaders from both sides assembled nearby and appealed for harmony.”

Famous for its role during the 1857 revolt and the 19th century Indian classical music ‘Kirana Gharana’, this town has 80.74% Muslims, 18.34% Hindus and the rest belong to other faiths according to the 2011 Census. This is the area which had given temporary refuge to the large number of Muslims displaced during the anti-Muslim Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. 

A Hindu sweet shop owner, 56, who preferred anonymity, told us: “Yes Mukim Kala gang demands ‘protection money’ and my elder brother shifted from Kairana because he had received extortion threat. But criminals target rich people irrespective of their caste or religion.” Wasim, 42, a local resident, said, “Hukum Singh has been trying to create communal violence here since 2013. But let him do whatever he can, both communities share a bond and no one can disturb this.”

One important finding was that there are political rivalries within BJP and RSS leaders in this region. For claiming more power and space within different structures, they launch different hate-mongering drives against Muslims to stay in the limelight and outdo each other. Locals said that ever since Prime Minister Modi's rally at Saharanpur on 26 May, Hukum Singh is trying hard to be in the news. The reason being that the BJP Union Minister of State Sanjeev Balyan and Meerut area MLA Sangeet Som did not allow Hukum Singh to share the stage with PM Modi on that occasion.

Our team visited markets and narrow streets in Kairana’s mohallas and also met top Police officials of the town. We came to know that 21 Hindu marriages were cancelled in Kairana thanks to the BJP rumour-mongering.

Kairana SHO, M.S. Gill told us: “who will send his daughter to Kairana if such rumours are spread?” He also observed that in his four-month duty in this area, no singal communal incident occurred and that no complaint related with communal hate or crime was made. He said that there was no exodus of Hindus in this Muslim-majority area even when the 2013 riots took place. There was also no such activity even after the murder of businessmen for extortion of money. He said, I am hearing the word “palayan” (Hindi for exodus) for the first time in my life. He further said, we found more Muslims than Hindus participating harmoniously in Ramnavami and Balaji Shobha Yatra processions in the town but no one talks about it in media. He added, there are extortion cases by local goons, particularly the Muqeem Kala gang, but his major targets are Muslims, not Hindus. He runs an extortion racket in the name of protection money. He continues to do this from inside jail where he is lodged since October 2015 along with his sharp shooter Sabir.

Our team was told by local people that the exodus cannot be blamed completely on crime. As the name of Muqeem Kala gang arises in discussion, it is clear that such gangsters only touch the super-rich irrespective of community. We were told that once Muqeem got only 40-50 thousand rupees during a heist. He preferred to throw the money back on the victim.

Local traders told us that due to limited options available, families from both communities are shifting to other cities, mainly to metros, in search of better prospects. The team was told by local people that many of the families mentioned in the list migrated primarily due to economic reasons which is a global phenomenon now. Delhi is situated at the distance of just 98 kms, which prompted many families to shift to the fast running metro which provides better prospects.

In 2014, there were a total of 22 murders in Kairana. But there were only seven Hindus on this list while the rest (14) were Muslims and one was unknown. When three Hindu businessmen were killed in 2014, there was a 7-day-strike by the market association which has a large representation of Muslim traders.

The day of our visit was the eighth day of fasting in the month of Ramadan. We noted that eateries were open and people were eating on the roads in this Muslim-dominated town. There was no sense of any tension on the roads, markets and mohallas contrary to what was being shown in some news channels. We also failed to see any “For Sale” signboard or writing on the walls of any house.

In this whole episode, an interesting perspective noted by our team is that the locals seem to enjoy the attention they are getting from media amid hope that the poor condition of the town will get highlighted and something will be done about it.

We were told again and again that the reason of the migration, not “exodus”, is the economic factor and changing aspirations of the new generation in this age of globalisation. Civic facilities are non-existent in Kairana; people have to go to Panipat or Meerut for healthcare as well as shopping. There is no scope of work here, therefore around 5-7 thousand locals travel daily to the nearby town of Panipat to earn their daily wages.

Traditionally, this was an area of Jain and Hindu money-lenders but people these days don’t go to them and prefer to borrow from easily-accessable banks with a less percentage of interest.

A traditional sweet-maker (halwai) in Gumbad mohalla, a BJP supporter, told us that there is no business in the town. Earlier, people used to come here for shopping from Haryana areas but they stopped after the 2013 riots. When we asked about his family, he said that his elder son is a bank manager in Ahmedabad, the younger one is studying for CA and his only daughter is married. He lives here with his wife and waiting to sell his property for the right price, and will settle down with his sons. What he didn’t tell us also important. His sons are not inheriting the profession of their father as there are new avenues and prospects for a much better life. Like him, many are willing to leave the place. It is not the case of Hindus alone, 150 Muslim families, according to local police sources, too have migrated to other places in the hope of a better life for them and their children.

After this “Hindu list of exodus”, local Muslims too have issued a list of Muslims who left the town showing that the migration was mainly for earning a better livelihood outside.

The ruling classes in Delhi and Lucknow are not listening to such voices. They didn’t pay attention for the uplift of the town and now they are playing the polarisation game. They promise development but deliver hate and fear instead trying to divide society which easily gets influenced due to illiteracy and lack of trust manfucatured by the right-wing extremist groups which spread rumours to garner votes and grasp power.

Uttar Pradesh Police is yet to file even an FIR against the BJP MP who made such ruckus without any logic and proof.

Our recommendations:
1. U.P. Police should without delay file a case against Hukam Singh on the charges of fabricating a false list and disrupting communal harmony.
2. In the run-up to the assembly elections next year, Police and administration in the whole of Uttar Pradesh, especially in eastern UP, should be alert as the BJP and its allied outfits will spread rumours, polarise society and cause riots.
3. Media, especially Hindi press and news channels, should exhibit more responsibility and check the facts on the ground before rushing to publish baseless rumours as facts.

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