Yogi Adityanath talks divisive, but is Shahjahanpur listening?

SHAHJAHANPUR: Morning prayers at the Arya Samaj temple here end at 8.30. After the chanting of shlokas, cries of Bharat mata ki jai and Gau mata ki jai rent the air. Locals say the chanting is routine, but the sloganeering is not. With second-phase polling in UP on, cornershop conversations mostly dwell on the political possibilities. One talking point is the fate of the town's traditional Holi Ka Nawab procession, if SP candidate Tanveer Khan unseats BJP's seven-time MLA Suresh Khanna.

The procession has been an annual Holi affair for as long as the locals can remember. "A Muslim man is appointed Nawab, dressed and fed for two days. The night before the procession, he's made to drink so much that he's nearly senseless. Next morning, the procession travels through most of the old city, with the Nawab being beaten with brooms and sticks," says Rajesh, bystander at a sweetmeat shop near Town Hall.

The tradition has faced opposition from Muslims because it's inhuman and hurtful.With the event having triggered riots in the past, mosques are covered in oil cloth lest the crowd throws ink or colour at them.


To prevent trouble, security forces walk with the procession. Masoom Raza Khan, a local, approached Allahabad HC last year urging a halt to the tradition. His plea was turned down, the court said the matter fell within the district administration's jurisdiction. Neither SP's Tanveer Khan nor BSP's Mohammed Aslam has promised to discontinue the tradition. Even so, the population is beginning to get polarised on the back of rumours that the procession will be discontinued if a Muslim wins.

Communal differences have entered drawing room discourse, though there's been no untoward incident in the district.

BJP MP and 'Hindu Hriday Samrat' Yogi Adityanath has played his part in inflaming passions. At a Jalalabad rally on Monday he claimed SP government's Kanya Vidya Dhan (KVD) was open only to Muslim girls. That isn't true. KVD can be availed by all girls from BPL homes who've passed Class XII. In Jalalabad, where BSP's Neeraj Maurya is a frontrunner, and BJP's Manoj Kashyap trails behind the SP contender, Adityanath insists the Muzaffarnagar riots could've been prevented if anti-Romeo squads existed.

But at a dhaba outside Katra constituency , Nathuram Dubey says, "The politicians will disappear the day after the polls. We must live and work together."