Deepak Kumar from Kotdwara (Uttarakhand) is having to pay the price for raising his voice against communal divisions.
Deepak Kumar of Kotdwara (Uttarakhand) is paying the price for raising his voice against communal divisions. He owns a gym in that city. Before January 26, the number of people (members) coming to this gym for exercise training was 150. Now it is down to a dozen. The reason is that some Hindu organizations including Bajrang Dal have called for a social boycott of him. This call was given after he came to the rescue of a Muslim shopkeeper and during this action, his name was revealed as 'Mohammad Deepak'. According to media reports, on January 26, a group of Bajrang Dal activists came to the shop of a Muslim garment seller and demanded that he remove the word 'Baba' from the name of his shop.
The group claimed that the word 'Baba' gave the impression that the shop belonged to a Hindu. When the shopkeeper rejected this demand, the shop counters started being vandalized. Deepak, who was passing through the area, intervened. He insisted on stopping the riot and also said that the demand of the Bajrang Dal activists was not legitimate. When someone asked him what the shopkeeper thought of him, he said, 'He is my relative.' When someone else asked his name, he replied: 'Mohammad Deepak'. Being the owner and trainer of a gym, the rioters could not stand his exercise passion, but they did give him various threats while leaving. Now these threats are being given a practical form, in the form of his social and business boycott.
This entire development shows to what extent communal poison has become a part of the public mentality in many parts of our country. Uttarakhand is the state where there are many pilgrimage places of Hinduism. Out of the total population of this state (1.25 crore), Hindus constitute 83 percent. The percentage of Muslim and Sikh population is 13.9 and 2.34 respectively. For three centuries, harmony has been maintained between the Hindu and Muslim population in this hilly region and incidents of communal tension have been minimal. But now this phenomenon has changed. Uttarakhand is being used as a testing ground for Hindutva tyranny by communal forces with the direct and indirect support of the state government. It was in this state that the Unified Civil Code (UCC) was first implemented. This means that now a single civil code is applicable to the residents of all religions. This is a direct attack on the Muslim Personal Law, which is part of the Indian Constitution. Although the Uttarakhand High Court has upheld this move of the state government as constitutional and legal, the final decision on this is yet to come from the Supreme Court. In the same state, it has also been made legally mandatory to write the name of the owner on the shop signs.
The motive of this move was also to increase the division between Hindu and Muslim communities. The intrusion of Hindus into the services provided by Muslims for the convenience of devotees and pilgrims near Kedarnath, Badrinath and other pilgrimage sites has now become a part of the social welfare programs of the state government. Due to this government approach, the Muslim community is losing employment and unrest is increasing. The patronage of communal forces is also giving rise to violent incidents. In Dehradun, a shawl seller was beaten up because he was a Kashmiri Muslim. In the same city, two Kashmiri workers were also beaten up because they were Kashmiri. It was natural that this would cause protests in Kashmir. It is good that the High Court has taken strict notice of this incident.
The attitude of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami's government towards the atrocities being committed by such acts of Hindutva organisations is both one-sided and unreasonable. Police action is slow in every case of atrocities against the Muslim community, while the police have been showing full readiness against every incident related to the Hindu community. Such bias should stop. At the administrative level, humanity should get more attention, less religion. Chief Minister Dhami has often claimed that there were no riots in Uttarakhand during his rule. This claim is only technically correct.
The fact is that the maximum number of incidents of marginalization of the Muslim community have also taken place during this regime. How negative their consequences may be in the future, this matter should also be seriously considered. It is a happy trend that despite the government patronage of communal poison, the conscience of humanists like Deepak Kumar is still alive. Civilized society should show the courage to stand up for those with such conscience.
