Uttarakhand must fight intolerance
Preventing an escalation will need the state’s political class and its administration to resist the easy gains of communal strife
Boards announcing a ban on entry of “non-Hindus, Rohingya Muslims, and hawkers” into villages in Uttarakhand are not just a trampling of constitutional values, but also a brazen attempt to further communal divides in the state that has seen such tensions rise over the past few years. Stray incidents, which should have been resolved as the law-and-order issues they were, have been given a communal colour and used to stoke divides. The latest flare-up occurred last week in Chamoli when an incident involving a Muslim miscreant led to a mob targeting the community by ransacking Muslim-owned shops and attacking their property. Last year, such unrest was reported in Uttarkashi over an alleged abduction involving two accused, a Hindu and a Muslim — both were later acquitted by the court — with posters threatening Muslim establishments and giving the community a “deadline” to leave for good.
The state police are now removing the boards and investigating who these put up, but the matter is not merely an administrative one. Underpinning such instances is an interest in normalising interfaith polarisation and making it part of the mainstream. This, in turn, lends itself to a politics of playing on divides in a state where a clutch of districts have significant minority populations.
Preventing an escalation will need the state’s political class and its administration to resist the easy gains of communal strife. Instead of allowing tensions to fester, reconciliatory measures need to be mounted at the earliest, beyond the removal of the offending boards. Several instances, including pronouncements by top state leaders to demonise interfaith relationships and push for demolition of structures associated with minority faiths, inspire little confidence. But the imperative to contain internal disharmony in a border state quickly and comprehensively should be clear to all.
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