Menu, Not Owner’s Name/Religion, is Relevant to Kanwariya Pilgrims

Newsreel Asia Insight #290
July 23, 2024

The Supreme Court of India has issued an interim order, halting the enforcement of directives in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand that mandated eateries along the Kanwar yatra route to display the names of their owners. The court decided that these establishments need only to show the type of food they serve, stressing the irrelevance of the owner’s name or religion in serving the Kanwariya pilgrims.

Police in the two states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had issued oral orders mandating that restaurants and roadside carts along the Kanwar route display the names of their owners on boards, as devotees consume only vegetarian food during the pilgrimage. Critics argued that displaying names could reveal the owners’ caste and/or religion, promoting religious and caste-based divisions and potentially inciting violence, especially given the heightened risk of communal unrest during religious festivals.

The Kanwar pilgrimage is an annual Hindu religious observance where devotees, Kanwariyas, undertake a journey to collect water from the Ganges River during the month of Shravan in the Hindu calendar. These pilgrims, primarily young men, travel to various sites considered sacred, often covering long distances on foot, to gather water that is later offered at temples dedicated to their god, Shiva. They walk through the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan.

In the order passed on July 22, the Supreme Court was responding to multiple petitions challenging the state directives, including one from the NGO Association of Protection of Civil Rights (APCR).

A bench comprising Justices Hrishikesh Roy and S.V.N. Bhatti stated, “Until the returnable date having regard to the above discussion, we deem it appropriate to pass an interim order prohibiting the enforcement of the above directives,” as quoted by The Indian Express. They further clarified that while food sellers could list the offerings, disclosing the names or identities of owners or employees was unnecessary.

Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, representing one of the petitioners, criticised the directive’s basis, arguing that there was no “rational nexus” behind the move and dismissing it as a potential source of communal tension. “Giving of names of employees and owners does not serve any purpose,” he stated.

The petitions filed by professor and political commentator Apoorvanand and activist Aakar Patel, along with a Member of Parliament from the Trinamool Congress Party, Mahua Moitra, were particularly vocal about the discriminatory nature of the orders.

Apoorvanand and Patel’s joint petition pointed out that the directives could encourage discrimination based on religious and caste identities, in direct violation of Article 15 of the Indian Constitution. They stressed that the directives compromised the privacy and safety of shop owners and their employees, exposing them to potential economic and social targeting.

Moitra’s plea explained how the Uttar Pradesh government’s policies had worsened conditions for economic boycotts against Muslim minorities, under the guise of respecting pilgrims’ dietary preferences.

“In forcing the disclosure of the names of proprietors and even those of their staff, on the stated ground of respecting pilgrims’ dietary choices, makes it clear that ‘dietary choices’ is a pretext, or a proxy, for the compelled disclosure of personal — and, in this case, religious — identity, through the disclosure of names,” read Moitra’s petition. “The upshot of this is to create a socially-enforced economic boycott on Muslim shop owners and workers, and the loss of their livelihoods,” Mahua Moitra said in her plea.”