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Hindu states target Muslim restaurants amid claims of ‘spit jihad’ in India

Amin Qudsi

Muslims in two states in India are being fired from their jobs and face businesses closures under a “discriminatory” policy that forces restaurants to display the names of all their employees.

Yogi Adityanath, the hardline Hindu monk who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, was the first to introduce the new law. Last month Himachal Pradesh state, governed by the Congress party, said it would also adopt the law.

They insist the move will enforce health and safety rules and vending regulations, but residents and activists say the rules are really a thinly veiled attack on Muslim workers and establishments.

Names in India very clearly signify religion and caste and Muslim business owners in Uttar Pradesh fear this will lead to targeted attacks or economic boycotts, particularly by hardline Hindu groups.

“This order is dangerous, it forces us to wear our religion on our sleeve,” Tabish Aalam, 28, a specialist chef in the city of Lucknow, told The Guardian. “I am sure the government knows this, and that is why it is being exploited.”

Uttar Pradesh is governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) the party of prime minister, Narendra Modi, whose decade in power has been marked by growing anti-Muslim discrimination and attacks.

Adityanath is one of the most hardline leaders in the BJP. He has introduced a flurry of policies targeting Muslims or fuelling anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.

Business owners in Uttar Pradesh fired Muslim staff as a result of the new laws, fearing they would be targeted. Other Muslim-run businesses say they’ve been harassed under the policy, with some considering closure.

Rafiq, 45, the Muslim owner of a highway restaurant in Muzaffarnagar, said he fired his four Muslim employees in July after police demanded he display their names.

“Displaying names makes us vulnerable and a very easy target. If, for instance, there is communal tension that keeps taking place, we will be easily identified as Muslims and targeted.”

“Displaying names will identify people’s religions, which I suspect is intended to discourage people from eating at Muslim-owned or Muslim-staffed restaurants,” he said. So far, Rafiq said, he had resisted police pressure, but he would probably shut down his business altogether.

Calls for economic boycotts of Muslims have been prominent in the state amid attacks against Muslim vendors over the past five years. Last month, the state leader of Bajrang Dal, a rightwing Hindu vigilante group, called for a boycott of all Muslim shopkeepers.

Praveen Garg, a BJP spokesperson in Uttar Pradesh, said the policy was to ensure restaurant hygiene. He denied people were being denied employment under the policy.

“The government was obligated to take this action after becoming aware of situations in which food was purposefully contaminated,” Garg said. “There have been instances where persons from a specific community have been caught polluting meals with dirty items that a Hindu cannot consume.”

However, despite allegations by rightwing Hindu groups that there was a Muslim conspiracy to commit “spit jihad”, there was no evidence supporting the claims.

In July, India’s supreme court blocked an attempt by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments to force restaurants on an annual Hindu pilgrimage route to display names of their owners and operators. The court ruled the rules were “discriminatory on grounds of religion”.

Muslims in Himachal Pradesh state accused the local Congress party of going against its pledges of secularism and using the policy to court the Hindu-majority vote.

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