Even as the country celebrated the victory of the peaceful democratic movement of GenZ in forcing education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign, this mayhem and anarchy on the roads formed another dimension of Modi-Yogi regime affecting crosssections of the population.
The kanwar yatra used to be a small religious affair undertaken by a few dedicated devotees until the late 1980s. Today, the kanwar pilgrimage to Haridwar in particular has grown to be India's largest annual religious gathering, with an ever increasing number of participants. This year some reports have estimated 48 million participants. It is obvious that till late 80s it was a sacred religious affair, however since late 80s with the resurgence of hindutva politics, Kanwar yatra too gained momentum. Not only the number of yatris increased many fold but the number of youngsters increased tremendously. More specifically after Yogi came to power in 2017 the government started glorifying and giving open state patronage to the Kanwar yatra. There was sprinkling of flowers from helicopters on the kanwar yatris last year and again this year too it was done in 7 districts. In Shamli district, the DM and SP welcomed them by offering flowers.
With such glorification and state patronage, the BJP regime has attracted in the name of yatris a lot of lumpen elements who feel free to take law in their own hands and do any mischief on the road. They openly consume liquor, drugs and other intoxicants. The Yogi government is very much concerned about Muslims offering namaz on the roads but lumpen kanwarias are free to do anything including vulgar songs and dance on the roads.
In fact Yogi as a means of his polarisation politics, ordered last year all shopkeepers in kanwar yatra routes to write their names on the boards. It was aimed at forcing an economic blocked of Muslim shopkeepers and deepening the Hindu-Muslim divide.
Thus Kanwar yatris have been turned into the worst kind of hooligans. They are mostly from poor backgrounds and OBC, SC origin, who obviously have no jobs and no future. RSS-BJP promotes this phenomenon of lumpenisation in order to make them hold trishul and swords in their hand. They are being converted into the foot-soldiers of hindutva brigade. It is these youth who are made to dance in front of mosques during Hindu festivals.
Can a government have any business to do with religious festivals of a particular religion? Equality of all religions is mandated in our Constitution, then how does a government welcome followers of a particular religion by offering flowers even when they become a serious law and order problem and involved in all sorts of hooliganism while the same government stops believers of minority religion offering prayers on their own rooftops?
This is the pure and simple rule of a majoritarian communal fascist state. Obviously what the BJP government is doing is against the basic tenets of our secular constitution. Democratic forces must oppose this violation of our secular democratic constitution as well as cultural degeneration in the name of religion and force the Yogi government to establish rule of law in the state.
Posing Environmental and Public Health Threats
Along with serious law-and-order lapses and a growing sense of insecurity among people walking on roads alongside Kanwariyas, there is also an alarming environmental threat posed by the huge number of Kanwariyas visiting the banks of the Ganga in Haridwar.
The Haridwar Municipal Corporation has reported collecting around 8,000 metric tonnes of plastic and other waste left behind by the yatris within the municipal corporation’s boundaries alone. One can only imagine the enormous quantity of waste left along the many highways and towns that fall on the Kanwar Yatra routes. Uttarakhand Police reported around 4.8 crore Kanwariyas visited Haridwar this year, compared with 4.5 crore last year. This increase in the number of pilgrims has reportedly resulted in around 1,000 metric tonnes more waste being generated in the town than in the previous year.
The accumulation of garbage, combined with the huge number of Kanwariyas exceeding the capacity of available civic amenities, also poses serious sanitation and public-health risks, not only to ordinary residents but to the Kanwar yatris themselves. These risks may persist even in the days following the conclusion of the yatra.
Ignoring these serious environmental and public-health concerns, the police administrations in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have instead patted themselves on the back for their arrangements, claiming that there were “less disruptions than in previous years,” despite multiple reports throughout the yatra period of vandalism and attacks on people.
