At first glance, it is business as usual on National Highway 334. Like every monsoon, the wide road stretching from Haridwar in Uttarakhand to the plains of North India is dotted with men in saffron.
These are kanwariyas – thousands of young men carrying matkas, or earthen pots, full of water from the river Ganga back to their cities and villages. The Kanwar Yatra is a centuries-old pilgrimage of the devotees of the Hindu god Shiva.
But something has changed. In the highway skirting Jwalapur, a small town six kilometres ahead of Haridwar, the food stalls set up to serve the kanwariyas look different.
The names of those who run these eateries are pasted upfront, for all visitors to see.
On July 19, the Haridwar senior superintendent of police Pramendra Dobhal put out a formal order that eateries must display their owners’ names.
Several of the shop owners told Scroll the order followed a meeting with the Haridwar legislator from Bharatiya Janata Party, Madan Kaushik, who told them that they would be allowed to set up stalls only if they carry their Aadhaar cards and display their “religion and caste” outside their shops.
Kaushik confirmed that the eatery owners came to meet him on July 18. “I told them that they should put up their names on the shops as ordered by the government,” he told Scroll. “But I did not ask them to mention their religion and caste.”
The diktat ensuring the public display of identity is inspired by the directives of the BJP government in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.
On July 15, the police in UP’s Muzaffarnagar district asked eateries on the Kanwar Yatra route to label their shops and carts with the names of their owners. On July 19, the move was extended to the entire state to “ensure that there’s no confusion” – the Haridwar administration passed a similar order the same day.
Opposition leaders and civil society activists have argued that the policy’s actual motive is to discriminate against eateries run by Muslims. Even the BJP’s allies, including the Rashtriya Lok Dal in western UP, the Janata Dal (United) and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) in Bihar, and the Ajit Pawar-NCP in Maharashtra, have expressed displeasure at the directive.
According to a report in the YouTube news channel The Red Mike, officials have asked several eateries in Muzaffarnagar to not employ Muslims during the pilgrimage.
On July 22, the Supreme Court, responding to several petitions by civil society activists, academics and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, stayed the directives of both UP and Uttarakhand governments. The court, however, said that the eateries should display the type of food being served.
The eateries
In Haridwar, owners of food stalls near Jwalapur told Scroll that the local authorities had bulldozed their stalls when the pilgrimage began.
The stalls on the highway near Jwalapur have come up over the last two weeks, selling fruits, water and food to kanwariyas, exhausted by the weight of the matkas and the humid afternoon.
Pammi, 33, sat in her shop with two teenage sons. Her family has been setting up eateries on the highway for kanwariyas for nearly a decade. “My shop was demolished twice by the police earlier this month,” she said. “This had never happened before.”
Hundred metres ahead, Anju and Pooja Kashyap, who run separate eateries, recount similar stories. “The police officials said that we cannot run these shops on the highway,” said Pooja. “Both of our families incurred a loss of Rs 5,000 because of the demolition.”
This is a common story for all eateries here. And yet, they are all functional now, thanks to a simple compromise.
“On July 18, my husband and about 20 other eatery owners met MLA Madan Kaushik to discuss our problem,” Pammi told Scroll. “He said that we could set up our shops again but on two conditions – we have to carry our Aadhaar cards and print our names on the banner to show our religion and caste. This has not happened before.”
At least four other eatery owners confirmed this claim.
Pammi, a Dalit, has put up a poster that simply says “Tilak Ram” – her husband’s name. Other eateries do not make an explicit mention of caste too: like the “Sushil Kumar Bhojanalaya” and the “Manoj Kumar Bhojanalaya”.
Anju’s banner says “Khatu Shyam Bhojanalaya”. But in the top left corner, in a smaller font, is her husband’s name, “Anuj Kashyap”. Kashyaps are listed as an Other Backward Class in Uttarakhand.
Then there are eateries that have not put up any posters, like the one owned by Ruby Mishra, a Brahmin. “My banner is still at the printer’s shop,” said Mishra, smiling.
Despite the ambiguity of caste, the banners make one thing clear – all the eateries here are owned by Hindus.
Muslims make nearly 34% of Haridwar district’s population, according to the 2011 census.
“Even if Muslims want to set up a shop, we won’t let them,” said an assertive Mishra, whose husband drives a tempo. “The Muslim caste has no values. They can add anything to the food served to the kanwariyas. Over that, they eat cows, whereas we worship them.”
This is a widespread sentiment among Hindu shop-owners. Satendra Rajput, 28, who sells Chinese dishes to the kanwariyas, said that he had heard how Muslims spit or urinate into the food they serve to Hindus.
“Mohammedan ye koshish karte hai ki humara dharam-bhrashth ho jaye,” he said. Muslims try to violate our faith. “I have seen it in the news and on YouTube.”
The claim that Muslims spit into food they cook has been a popular Hindutva disinformation trope that picked up during the Covid-19 pandemic, often called “thook jihad”.
Rajput is a Lodhi, a caste listed as an OBC in Uttarakhand. Outside the Kanwar Yatra season, he runs a cosmetic store in Haridwar.
But there are exceptions. For instance, Pammi does not believe that Muslims are trying to corrupt Hindus. “They hardly put up shops here,” she added. “During Kanwar Yatra, Muslims don’t even venture out much on the highway. Why defame them like this?”
What kanwariyas think
In their weeks-long trek across North India, kanwariyas are supposed to stick to a few rules: they do not consume alcohol, non-vegetarian food, and any food item that includes onion and garlic.
In Haridwar, many of them share the worldview of the eatery-owners. Like Himanshu Verma, a 19-year-old Dalit, who was enjoying an afternoon siesta at Ruby Mishra’s eatery.
“Before I left, my father told me: 'don't eat anything untoward’,” said Verma, who studies in a management institute in Noida. “I wouldn’t have to tell her [Mishra] that she shouldn’t add onion and garlic to my food. That’s because she’s Hindu. But can you assume that in a Muslim’s shop?”
At a cigarette cart half a kilometre away, the fears of Faridabad resident Vivek Gautam, 21, are more acute. “Muslims will serve us chicken to violate our faith,” he said.
Other kanwariyas had little to say about the policy but were reluctant to smear Muslims. Anshu Saini, 20, a kanwariya from Delhi, had also done the pilgrimage last monsoon. “In Meerut last year, I saw many Muslims do good things for us during the yatra,” he recalled. “They gave us food and first-aid. Here, most of the eateries do not even provide water. My friends and I will eat at a Muslim eatery if we get drinking water and facilities to take a shower.”
A tired Bablu Sawariya, a 28-year-old Dalit from Rajasthan, also said that he would eat at a shop run by Muslims, provided that it has “good arrangements”.
Back home, Sawariya works in the human resource department of a manufacturing firm. “At my workplace, I work with Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs,” he said. “Can I do my job by discriminating against Muslims and Sikhs? I can’t. Banners with names shouldn’t be necessary for these eateries.”
He then paused, and quipped: “These kanwars that we carry are also made by Muslims. Does that make our pilgrimage impure?”
The kanwar-makers of Jwalapur
The word ‘kanwariya’ comes from ‘kanwar’ – the colourful carriers made of bamboo and cloth that the young pilgrims bear on their shoulders for hundreds of kilometres during the yatra.
In Haridwar district, most of the kanwars are made by Muslim artisans in Indra Basti, a neighbourhood in Jwalapur.
The kanwars can range from anywhere between Rs 500 to Rs 25,000, depending on their size and the scale of intricate artistry on the cloth.
The arbitrary diktats of the Haridwar administration do not plague the artisans here, who live in cramped gullies and small rooms.
Men, women and children spend most of their day tying together bamboo sticks, adorning them with cloth printed with Hindu iconography, and pasting decorations on the cloth.
“This is the government, it can do anything,” said artisan Sonu Abbasi, 35, when asked about the banner policy. “Those who are wise know what is happening. But if we don’t make kanwars, how will most people do the pilgrimage?”
Shaqib, 16, told Scroll that making kanwars is an ancestral practice in his family. “My father did it and so did my grandfather. We do this because it promotes brotherhood,” he said, while carefully draping a green cloth around a four-foot tall carrier.
Most artisans shy away from expressing their views on the local authorities’ demands to install names outside highway eateries. But those who do take a poor view of it.
“It is a tactic to divide,” said Mubarak Ali, 34, while working on a kanwar that says ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and carries the angry face of the Hindu god Hanuman – ironically the iconography associated with the extremist outfit Bajrang Dal. “After all, we don’t discriminate between Hindus and Muslims when we buy raw materials for these kanwars.”
The kanwar-makers underscore their disagreement with the authorities by pointing at the skill and hard work they put into their craft.
“On most days, we work till 4 am. And the work here starts three months before the Kanwar Yatra,” says Sohaib Siddique, 23, who has been making kanwars since he was eight.
A smiling Ali pointed to his little daughter, who dipped a small paintbrush into a box full of glue, brushed it on a kanwar, and then stuck shiny floral decorations on it: “Hindu children sit at home and study. But look at my daughter. She has been doing only this for three months.”
All photographs by Ayush Tiwari.
