Religiosity,Space-making,Exclusion: ‘Kanwar Yatra’ Celebrations in a North Indian City

Abstract

Through an ethnographic study of Kanwar Yatra celebrations in a north Indian city, this article seeks to highlight the changing notions of public religiosity and mass celebrations in contemporary India. This article will first show how the festival of Kanwar Yatra is invested with diverse forms of religious performance and carnivalesque celebrations. In itself, these celebrations especially provide young people with avenues for fun and entertainment that combine ideas of lower middle-class consumerism with religious fervour in a public space. However, the evolving spaces that are built, even in the momentary conclusion of such a festival, are based on wider strategies of belonging and identity, often complicated further with the involvement of the state. Influenced by the projects of socio-cultural actors and political institutions, this article ultimately argues that Kanwar Yatra celebrations reproduce ideas of spatial domination, exclusion and surveillance of communities, with severe implications for minorities, especially Muslims.

Introduction

The recent and growing significance of the Kanwar Yatra celebrations in north India each year demands serious attention. Over the last few years, the scale of this festival has reached newer heights in terms of intensity, societal participation and state support (Kumar, 2018a; Panwar, 2019). This article will show how the Kanwar Yatra celebrations are invested with varied forms of religious performance, devotion and spectacle. It entails community mobilization and activation of social networks within the majority community and the subsuming of caste identities into the wider ambit of Hindu identity. Marked by acts of public religiosity, this festival is an apt example to understand the growing intertwining of religious and national identity, state-led patronage of religious interests and the changing notion of religion as a ‘competing ideology’ in contemporary India (Ahmed, 2023). Moreover, the growing youth participation in the Kanwar Yatra celebrations is reflective not only of the rising trends of a ‘new consumptive religiosity’ among young people in western Uttar Pradesh but also an expression of ideas of fun and entertainment that combine ideas of lower-middle class consumerism with religious fervour (Gopinath, 2019; Jodhka, 2017; Kumar, 2018a).

However, this article will also show how the evolving spaces that are built, even in the temporary conclusion of a festival, are based on strategies of social otherization and exclusion. With the involvement of the state and the consistent efforts of a host of socio-political actors, this festival ultimately acts as a tool for political mobilization and majoritarian aggrandizement in Uttar Pradesh. Through diverse initiatives, the use of language that emphasizes the differences in communities and their rights on the city, acts of regulation and blatant discrimination, the festival reproduces spatially influenced ideas of domination, demarcation and surveillance vis-à-vis diverse communities. These developments ultimately create severe anxieties in the everyday lives of minorities, especially Muslims.

Through an ethnographic study of the celebration of Kanwar Yatra in the North Indian city of Meerut in western Uttar Pradesh in July 2022, this article argues that the notions of public religiosity and mass celebrations are undergoing vital changes in contemporary India. With a thick description of the festival, the article will look at the multiple elements, practices and actors that constitute the Kanwar Yatra celebrations and its far-reaching consequences for notions of religiosity, space-making and exclusion in the following sections.

Celebrating Kanwar Yatra

Primarily practised in the Gangetic plains, the festival of Kanwar Yatra is age-old and celebrated by millions of people across different parts of north, central and eastern India (Sati, 2021). While generally observed by a small number of people over the years, several journalistic and scholarly works show that the festival became widely popular in the late 1990s, especially following the first wave of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh (Kumar, 2018a). ¹ However, there has been a massive rise in its popularity especially in the last decade. Kumar (2018a, pp. 115–119) has documented the rise in participation of Hindus, especially young people in Meerut and western Uttar Pradesh, in the Kanwar Yatra celebrations as recently as 2016. In his field site of Khanpur, a village in Meerut district, he notes that the number of people participating in the yatra increased from a paltry one or two to more than 30 each year (Kumar, 2018a, p. 115). This is an example of just one village in Meerut district.

Majority of the devotees, predominantly young men, participate in an arduous journey carrying the holy Ganges water from designated pilgrimage spots to prominent Shiva temples in the Gangetic belt or local shrines in their villages or towns during the Hindu month of Sawan/Shravana. ² Especially, during July–August every year, millions of devotees walk barefoot with containers carrying the holy Ganges water over their shoulders with the help of a sling, called kanwar.

Meerut is one of the key cities on the pilgrimage journey for millions of devotees travelling or walking across western Uttar Pradesh from the holy sites in Uttarakhand. The former National Highway 58 that passes through Meerut, now broken into several segments between the city and the temple towns of Haridwar and Badrinath on the Himalayas, is packed with devotees. Moreover, Meerut is also significant as one of the prominent religious sites for several pilgrims in western Uttar Pradesh. The city is known for its famous Aughudhnath Temple, which is home to one of the oldest shrines dedicated to Lord Shiva. ³ Several devotees travelling through Meerut offer their prayers and perform rituals at the temple before walking towards Delhi or Hapur in west Uttar Pradesh.

Religious Performance and Nationalistic Imaginations

The Kanwar Yatra revolves around the pilgrims or devotees who walk for long distances carrying the holy water from various pilgrimage spots across Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. The performance and completion of this arduous pilgrimage remains the most critical element of the festival and conforms to many of the characteristics of immersive physicality and long journeys common to other religious traditions in South Asia (Kent & Kassam, 2013).

Devotees who engage in the pilgrimage are called Bholes or Kanwariyas. The term ‘Bholes’ comes from Lord Shiva’s name himself who is also referred to as ‘Bhola’ or the innocent one. The use of a common term Bholes at once denotes an exalted religious status for the pilgrims as well as a blurring of the lines of social hierarchy. Several reports have suggested how a growing number of intermediate castes, other backward classes, and Dalits have been participating in the Kanwar Yatra over the years (Kumar, 2018a, 2018b; Panwar, 2019). A significant section of the pilgrims in Meerut involved young men from rural, lower middle classes. ⁴ With the use of a common name for all those participating, the devotees are bound in an essential identity as bhakts [devotees] of Lord Shiva under an overarching Hindu identity.

More importantly, the sartorial choices and practices associated with the decoration of the kanwars also showcase the increasing conjunction between Hindu religious identity and nationalistic imaginations. During the Kanwar Yatra celebrations in Meerut in 2022, as the devotees walked back with the holy water, they dressed up in largely similar ways, denoting a sense of festive jubilation and faith-based mission. Most of the Bholes carrying the kanwars wore shorts that were easier for walking or running. They predominantly wore saffron-coloured t-shirts, sometimes with images of Lord Shiva on them. A few of them also sported beads or rudraksh on their neck or wrists, along with ghamchhas [piece of cloth] tied to their heads or around their necks. During the festival, a huge number of roadside hawkers set up stalls in Meerut selling different kinds of flags, ghamchhas and t-shirts of varied colours and designs. These t-shirts were either saffron in colour or styled in the colour of the Indian flag, with the image of Lord Shiva or Lord Rama or the word ‘Om’ printed in Hindi on them. Several of these stalls sold matching glasses or men’s accessories such as beads, bracelets or neck chains as well. For young men walking through the city, these stalls were significant as they crafted their sartorial appearances during the journey.

The Bholes carried the holy water in a variety of ways too. Ritually, most devotees carried pots, either steel or mud, on either side of a long bamboo stick called kanwar and used it as a sling on their shoulders. These kanwars may just be a single, long stick used to carry pots or containers of water. However, few of the devotees put up designed fibre or plastic structures on top of the kanwars that were usually tent-shaped or looked like an elongated arch as well. These were found in multiple colours, but most of the devotees extensively used the three colours of the Indian flag or a solid saffron colour to decorate their slings. These tent- or arch-shaped slings were then decorated with small pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses and handkerchiefs pinned to their body. Apart from the pots or small containers of water, devotees carried various offerings and religious objects needed for the festival within these kanwars. Devotees used an extensive array of multi-coloured plastic flowers to decorate their slings further. On the top of these tent- or arch-shaped slings, most kanwars had a combination of trishuls [tridents] and mini-Indian flags stuck to it.

Emulating the practice of the carrying of taziya during Moharram processions, a lot of young men also carried heavy, custom-made kanwars on their shoulders in groups (Jaffrelot, 1993). These kanwars were generally three- to four-storeyed structures built over a thick bamboo pole that goes horizontally through the middle and is used as a sling. The structures themselves were built with the help of smaller bamboo shoots and wooden planks. As these heavy structures rose from the ground, the layers of woodwork were filled in by a variety of designs such as domes or arches of varied shapes and sizes made up of plastic, cardboard or steel fibre plates. These were then covered with colourful clothes, frills and plastic flowers. The top of these structures was often shaped as the peak found at the top of Hindu temples [shikhara] in north India. Essentially resembling a mini-temple, devotees place trishuls [tridents] or saffron flags on top of these structures.

Several devotees also came with huge tableaus which were either being pulled manually or connected to the back of tempos or trucks. Each of these tableaus contained different forms of Lord Shiva known through the Hindu mythological texts, decorated with flowers and colourful lights. Another common feature throughout the Kanwar Yatra was the use of flags of different kinds by devotees. In Meerut, devotees used the Indian tricolour, Jai Shree Ram or Angry Hanuman flags, or plain saffron flags as well. They would either be carried individually, tied to makeshift tents and other structures in the public spaces, put up on the kanwars themselves, or tied to motorcycles or vehicles used during the festival. In course of the festival, several pilgrims also used images of national and state politicians on their kanwars and flags, thus further combining notions of religious denomination and national identity. Scholars from western Uttar Pradesh have noted the rising trends of the use of pictures of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath and the Indian flag among others as early as 2014 (Panwar, 2019).

Youth Participation and ‘Consumptive Religiosity’ ⁵

The rising practice of such festivals among young men has been a result of the absence of political and social alternatives with the gradual decline of farmer’s politics and the rise of Hindu nationalism in western Uttar Pradesh (Kumar, 2018a, p. 44; Pai & Kumar, 2018). The relations among diverse caste and religious communities have undergone significant changes with a breakdown of previous dynamics of rural power structures and economic diversification over the last three decades (Kumar, 2018b). Moreover, following the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 and the emergence of the Hindu right-wing as the most prominent political actor, these changes have become dominant elements of the social life in the region (Singh, 2016). Several Jat interlocutors from the Chaudhary Charan Singh University (CCSU) in the city noted that they had been undertaking the yatra annually for the last three years. ⁶

However, the rise in the spate of religious performance was also a response to the growing crisis of unemployment or underemployment (Jeffrey 2010; Jodhka, 2017; Kumar, 2018a). In Meerut, several interlocutors—especially young rural, lower-middle class men from the Jat and Gujjar communities—referred to the increasing frustration due to a lack of secure sources of income and long periods of immobility. ⁷ In the absence of secure, well-paying jobs, long periods of immobility and concerns over preparation for government recruitment, participation in religious activities such as the Kanwar Yatra combined religious notions of struggle with public manifestations of toughness, thereby feeding into youth conceptions of masculinity. This form of religious performance provided avenues to showcase their abilities in the form of athletic showmanship and masculine prowess and develop new cultural styles (Jeffrey 2010, 2012).

For a section of young men from the rural, lower middle classes, the Kanwar Yatra celebrations entailed performative elements such as carrying of slings of different shapes and sizes for long distances and participating in competitive games associated with the festival within Meerut. Like lifting weights in a gym, young men placed their shoulders below the thick bamboo poles and lifted the custom-made kanwars up or walked with the tent- or arch-shaped slings at a stretch. The custom-made, heavy kanwars were carried on a rotational basis by designated young men who helped each other throughout the journey, taking the structure forward one at a time. As the young men walked steadily, they were followed by large groups of devotees travelling in trucks or tempos. Few of these young men who carried these heavy kanwars also represented particular districts, villages or organizations, thereby displaying a sense of competition and pride attached to the performative endeavour.

During the final days of the pilgrimage in Meerut, several young men showcased their religiosity in innovative ways as well. A group of young men representing a local club in the city designed a huge kanwar with two rectangular pillars on its side and the idol of a 2-ft tall and 1-ft wide Shivling (idol of Lord Shiva) attached to a platform in the middle. The pillars were roughly 6–7 ft tall, made up of glass fibre plates, with the images of Lord Rama on all four sides and a bright light placed inside the pillar to illuminate the same. The entire structure, along with the idol and the rectangular pillars, was then covered with a bunch of flowers and colourful frills. Unlike other structures which Bholes would carry themselves, this group pulled it in the form of a chariot due to its heavy weight.

In several places across Meerut, large groups of young men representing various caste associations, villages or towns in the region, or even coaching institutes, engaged in relay races as well, carrying the holy water from one point to another. Celebrated as ‘Dak Kanwariyas’, young men ran as relay marathon runners for a certain distance before handing it over to another pilgrim. A significant section of young men from rural families preparing for government jobs such as the armed forces or state police participated in these games. Such participation and representation provided a sense of respect and value for several unemployed or underemployed young men from rural, lower middle classes. A Gujjar interlocutor from one of the district’s development blocks in the north participated as a Dak Kanwariya in the relay race organized within the Meerut city. He had been preparing and training for recruitment in the army for the past two years and ran every day within the Cantonment area. Running in front of CCSU, his friends took videos of him which then appeared on a social media page on Instagram titled ‘Gujjar Youth Kingdom’. ⁸

Sacrality and Carnivalesque Celebrations

During the last days of the festival, the celebrations assumed carnivalesque proportions in Meerut in July 2022. With dozens of tents and colourful lights all over the city, the public space was turned into a vast platform for the display of religiosity, physicality and devotion. The city came to a standstill with major roads blocked inside the city and the administration diverting traffic from highways that connect Meerut to neighbouring districts. Apart from the designed kanwars and tableaus, a common sight through the city were mobile DJs—speakers set up on the back of trucks that played a mix of devotional or movie songs, especially regional in nature.

Throughout the main roads across the city, Hindu shopkeepers and businessmen put up posters and hoardings extending greetings on the holy month. Especially in the central part of the city, in areas near the Aughudhnath temple and the central business area on Abu Lane and Sadar Bazaar, the streets were decorated in different coloured lights and large posters of Lord Shiva were put up. Food joints, sweet shops and small eateries especially put up posters of revised food menus that were being sold during this period, keeping in mind the need to prepare and strictly sell pure vegetarian meals that did not contain either onion or garlic.

Several members of diverse vyapar sangh [business associations], which included neighbourhood-run associations, caste-based committees or associations supported by right-wing socio-political leaders, set up makeshift tents along the roads earmarked for the yatra. These included the main roads passing through the city, connecting the devotees to the districts of Ghaziabad and Delhi in the south-west or Hapur and Bulandshahr in the south. These tents known as Kanwar Seva Shivirs or Kanwar Seva Samiti (meant to serve devotees) were found in different sizes across the city and catered to the needs of the pilgrims.

These tents comprised three or four principal zones as per their sizes. Most of the big tents included a huge, elevated platform that served as a resting area for any of the devotees walking back to their destination. Other than the resting area, these tents had a zone dedicated to an open kitchen or bhojanalaya wherein strictly vegetarian food was being prepared constantly for the resting pilgrims and for distribution among other devotees on the road or in the community. The tents also had a separate space for huge DJ systems with boom box speakers and colourful, disco-like lightings. Lastly, many of the tents set up a makeshift temple or platform wherein they placed the idols of Lord Shiva in his diverse forms and other Hindu gods and goddesses such as Lord Hanuman, Goddess Parvati, Goddess Kali, Lord Ganesh or Bhagwan Parshuram. In some tents, the avatar of Nataraj was also placed within the tent. The entire area was normally enclosed with flowers and offerings, with an elaborate set of lights illuminating the idols. Several of the tents put up donation boxes in front of the idols as well.

A few of these tents also provided health checkups and medicine to the devotees, including bandages and ointments for injuries on the foot among other things. Touted as seva karya [service work], these tents become havens for celebration and community-bonding during the pilgrimage. With a goal to serve the devotees walking on foot and ‘helming the call of faith’, the Kanwar Yatra therefore sought to link sections of the population and civil society with a mass festival and its celebration. ⁹ Members of the different vyapar sangh collected donations months in advance before the pilgrimage commenced, thereby activating networks of community members and believers alike. More importantly, the family members of the businessmen also became a part of the activities inside such tents, especially the women of the household who performed both religious and ritualistic tasks while aiding in the management of the tents, food distribution and service of the devotees.

As mobile DJs on the back of trucks and DJ systems in seva shivirs played over-the-top, beat-driven electronic music, the streets were also filled with pilgrims dancing and singing to the tunes of songs, ridden with religious and cultural symbols and language (Bharat, 2021). In some tents, the pilgrims broke into dance face-offs among themselves, often dancing on the top of buses or platforms made near the tents, while in other tents, devotees enjoyed regional variations of ‘launda naach’ with sets of young men dancing in front of large groups. ¹⁰ As the fervour reached its peak towards the end of the festival when offerings are made across Shiva shrines, huge groups of young men walking in processions faced-off via DJ battles too. In Meerut, a huge stage was set up with boom box speakers and disco lights near the Shivaji Chowk at the junction of the Mawana Road and the Delhi–Roorkee Road. As DJs representing various districts and caste associations faced off against one another, the street turned into a common theatre for entertainment and fun.

These were strictly male-dominated spaces wherein young, male Kanwariyas engaged in and participated in diverse forms of leisure and fun, combining notions of lower-middle class consumerism with religious fervour (Kumar, 2018a, p. 117). The banter, frolicking and entertainment associated with Kanwar Yatra and its public display on the streets helped young people relish the ‘public arena’ for themselves by challenging the common imaginations of a bourgeois public space (Gopinath, 2019, p. 101). It provided avenues for young people from varied castes within the rural, lower middle classes with marginal resources to engage in diverse forms of entertainment and fun at a low cost. ¹¹ Reversing ideas of ritualistic traditions and civility on its head, sections of the pilgrims essentially used the festival as a vent for the ‘release of social frustrations’ (Ghosh, 2000; Gopinath, 2019, p. 101).

Interestingly, during my fieldwork interviews and observation with a varied set of youth political leaders and those participating in the Kanwar Yatra celebrations, several of my participants also conceded that a section of the massive crowds, especially the youth, were only interested in the fun and entertainment around the festival. A youth Gujjar leader associated with the BJP noted, ‘Many young people enjoy such festivals. They connect with the feeling of hysteria. They are not really interested in all the religious aspects and traditional significance of the Kanwar Yatra’. ¹² However, such assertions were underlined with caveats too. The Gujjar leader reiterated, ‘But the yatras are ultimately representative of devotion too. All who participate are believers of “Sanatana Dharma”! People could not express their religiosity in public like this before’. ¹³ Therefore, the line between religious performance and sacrality was selectively amenable. Religious sanction and state support allowed a few sections of young men to participate in the pilgrimage and find varied ways to expand the horizons of fun, as long as they also portrayed notions of sacrality and belief within the 10 days of the festival, even if in varying degrees.

Space-Making and Ideas of Belonging

In Meerut, the ideas of fun and devotion around the Kanwar Yatra celebrations were subverted by visions of majoritarian aggrandizement and exclusive sacrality as well (Gopinath, 2019, p. 104). With the involvement of a diverse set of socio-political leaders and the state, the festival was embedded in ideas of belonging and identity (Anderson & Jaffrelot, 2018). The spatial nature of the Kanwar Yatra celebrations was dependent on an exclusive imagination of two things: a puritan idea of the sacrality of the space and who belongs in it. These notions were then mapped onto the public spaces of Meerut.

The process of space-making connotes a certain set of relations and interactions among varied actors that are often mediated on the basis of ideologies and specific meanings (Harvey, 2001; Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1996). Several works in India have shown how right-wing organizations used varied strategies to imbue physical spaces with ideological constructs or meanings in the last two decades (Deshpande, 1995, 1998). Using Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopia, Deshpande argued that right-wing organizations put in considerable ideological labour to provide physical spaces with vital meanings that mirrored a certain utopia ultimately fuelling a sense of religious empowerment or majoritarian pride among the Hindu community. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the re-imagination of Ayodhya is a crucial example in this regard. Similarly, Kanungo’s work showed how Varanasi was reimagined and represented as ‘timeless and Hindu’, bereaving it of its Muslim historicity and imposing a ‘Hinduscape’ (Kanungo, 2022).

However, in contrast to the re-imagination of a place as part of a movement or projects of reclamation, this study provides a granular insight into the making and unmaking of a diversely populated space like Meerut primarily through the temporary conclusion of a festival and its implied consequences for the everyday life of diverse communities. ¹⁴ This finds resonance in more contemporary work on the transformation of India’s public spaces post liberalization, globalization and the rise of the Hindu right (Gopinath, 2019). Gopinath documents how the Ganesh festivals in Mumbai are reterritorialized and exploited as an expression of Hindutva nationalistic identity (Gopinath, 2019, p. 103). This re-imagination of Mumbai, a global city with heightened levels of urbanization, reveals a cultural project that is inspired by ‘ethnic and religious sensibilities’ (Gopinath, 2019, p. 105). The relevance of these developments became significant in the context of Meerut as well, especially vis-à-vis its social and political atmosphere post the successive election of a majoritarian government in the state since 2017.

In Meerut, the celebration of Kanwar Yatra involved the distinct demarcation of spaces for the pilgrimage and their temporary conversion into sacred passages for Hindu pilgrims. Public spaces, roads, and localities were refurbished and reproduced as sacred spheres encompassing a projection of a ‘pure’ space, belonging to the majority community, conceived and converted for the enactment of rituals and rites reserved for the same. In the carrying of water through these sanitized paths, formation of seva kendras, playing of DJ music on the streets and public display of religiosity on the streets, the city encompassed and reflected a particular sacred meaning conforming to an idea of ‘Hinduness’ as defined by a set of socio-political leaders associated with its organization. The demarcated nature of the spaces not only signified an assertion of the social status of the majority community in varied spaces but also highlighted the community’s right to dominate the city in the celebration of a religious ritual, thereby fomenting the institutionalization of a new kind of social hierarchy around religion (Deshpande, 1998; Grant, 2005).

Additionally, political leaders from the ruling party, members of diverse affiliate organizations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and other right-wing organizations also put up posters across the city, extending greetings to the Kanwariyas with accolades for their services to the Hindu religion. In several locations across Meerut, especially near the Aughudhnath temple, organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Yuva Vahini and Hindu Rashtra Seva Sangh put up tents or seva shivirs, offering a diversity of facilities to the devotees. The members of these organizations usually put up huge posters of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath on these tents, along with their own banners and standees on the side. These banners or standees also included the pictures of all the volunteers or members associated with the organization along with their names and positions marked beneath them. On several occasions, few of the young men wrote sevaks [servant] beneath their names to portray their sense of gratitude to the pilgrims. These carefully crafted acts served both the public images of these young men associated with the right-wing organizations as well as projecting the importance of the pilgrims by extending ideas of respect and value to those participating in the festival.

Following the cue of the state government, each of these organizations carried out special samman samaroh [felicitation ceremonies] to acknowledge and present Kanwariyas with gifts and honour for their dedication and service to the Hindu religion. Separately, throughout the pilgrimage, political leaders and members of these organizations showered flower petals as part of the Pushp Varsha Samaroh on pilgrims walking through the city. These acts elevated the status of the Bholes, who were portrayed as divine and special in their service to the religion. But, most importantly, they also put forth ideas of the larger magnanimity and inclusivity of the majority religion. Consequently, for diverse intermediate caste, backward classes and Dalits, the participation in the yatra pushed the boundaries of belonging while re-imagining definitions of identity within the larger ‘upper caste’-oriented Hindu religion. ¹⁵

Exclusion and Surveillance

Consequently, the differences in communities and their right to the city were enacted and cemented through diverse initiatives, use of language that emphasizes the differences, acts of regulation and blatant discrimination. Political support or state patronage of religious festivals is not unprecedented in a country like India (Bhargava, 2013). In Uttar Pradesh, however, the state government used regulations of varied nature as a trope to delineate and impose notions of spatial domination around Kanwar Yatra, thereby institutionalizing ideas of religious hierarchy (Bardhan, 2022).

Over the years, especially since 2017, there has been increasing state-led patronage of festivals such as the ‘Kanwar Yatra’ (Panwar, 2019). The Uttar Pradesh chief minister has enacted diverse sets of rules and formalized processes to elevate the status of those participating in the yatra. From blocking highways and diverting traffic to showering rose petals on Yatris, the government seeks to underline its priorities in the conduct of the festival. In Meerut, the District Magistrate was entrusted with the task of showering rose petals on the Kanwariyas from a helicopter in 2022 (Singharia, 2022).

The patronage of Kanwar Yatra and its use as a tool to perpetuate notions of belonging and exclusivity was evident in the administration’s conception of social relations and dynamics of power between varied communities as well. In conversations with a local police official manning the roads for the pilgrims near the Meerut-Hapur Road junction, the latter said, ‘Do din raaste band honge toh kya ho jayega. Itna toh seh hi sakte hai sab’ [What will happen if the roads are closed for two days. Everyone can tolerate this much.]. This was significant because such assertion and outright expression of religious practice was not commonplace and unconditional in contemporary times, especially for minority communities in Uttar Pradesh (Hasan, 2021).

Moreover, throughout the Kanwar Yatra, all shops selling non-vegetarian food, even groceries and meat shops, were ordered to remain closed. ¹⁶ Using arguments such as ‘peace between communities’ or ‘offending the religious sentiments of the majority community and pilgrims’, political actors and members of Hindu right-wing affiliate organizations successfully clamped down on such businesses and customarily made sure that no individual would open their shops during the 10 days of the yatra. Surprisingly, the state directive only required the shops associated with meat to remain closed, while liquor shops could remain open. However, they had to be covered with a black cloth.

There was a slew of eateries, food joints and shops that sell meat of varied kinds on the Budhana Road, one of the main roads of the city through which the devotees normally passed in Meerut. These commercial units predominantly belonged to Muslims but were also owned by members of a few other communities. As the business associations did not object to the closure of meat shops or related joints, most Muslim shop owners and daily wage earners either completely shut off their businesses or tried to sell ‘vegetarian’ food to make their daily living.

The economic pinch of the closure of business for several days and livelihood crisis was only made worse by the fact that these were also the most segregated parts of the city, predominantly housed by Muslims. Segregation has remained the most common lived experience of marginalized communities across the country, with Meerut being no exception (Gayer & Jaffrelot, 2012). The fear of state suppression, active surveillance and rumour mongering based on fake news or misinformation circulated on ‘alleged involvement’ of Muslims in the Yatra further complicated the everyday challenges of segregation. Few Muslim interlocutors, who had grown up in villages around Meerut for decades and lived in these neighbourhoods in the city, mentioned how they could not participate in such festivals anymore.

We used to go to the Augudhnath temple with our childhood friends. They gave us prasad and sweets. I cannot go there now. There are Bajrang Dal members who roam around scanning everyone’s vehicle numbers now. If they find out you are a Muslim, they will accuse you of ‘Love Jihad’ and beat you up. ¹⁷

Significantly, these varied ideas of spatial domination and exclusive sacrality were engraved in the public space by the consistent efforts of a host of socio-political actors as well (Grant, 2005; Palshikar, 2018). Several young and older men associated with diverse right-wing organizations roamed around the city to ‘protect the sanctity’ of the festival and respond in case of any issues. ¹⁸ Belonging either to affiliate organizations under the RSS such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the Bajrang Dal, or independent right-wing fronts such as the Hindu Yuva Vahini and Hindu Rashtra Seva Sangh, they engaged in what Sanjay Srivastava calls a set of practices that sets out to mark the social contours of life in varied spaces (Srivastava, 2010). Srivastava’s study of young men involved with the Bajrang Dal in Delhi illustrates how a set of young Bajrang Dal activists refashioned themselves as masculine and strong enough to protect Hinduism against continuous assaults from outsiders by policing streets, their homes and their cities and articulated a mastery over space through social processes of exchange, conflict and control.

During the last days of the Kanwar Yatra, the author came across a seva kendra set up by the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad (AHP), an outfit started by Praveen Tagodia, the former chief of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in 2018. With huge idols of Lord Shiva, Parvati, Ganesh and Hanuman installed on one end of the pandal, the remaining area in the makeshift tent was divided in three zones: a bunch of old and middle-aged men were busy preparing pooris and a vegetable curry to serve pilgrims, a small stage was set up with space in the front for people to sit on chairs or on the floor and a space which had rows of long bamboo poles for Yatris to keep their kanwars and rest. On the stage, there were pictures of Bharat Mata atop a lion and a bhagwa [saffron] flag in hand with the Indian map as her backdrop, Lord Rama seated on a throne and the joint picture of Lord Rama and Sita with Hanuman near their feet. There was a huge backdrop behind these pictures that read: Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad Sabhi Shiv bhakton ka Hardik abhinandan karta hai [AHP heartily greets all Shiva devotees].

While clicking pictures of the tent, a middle-aged man with tika on his head and a dagger placed in a sheath attached to his belt came forth followed by a group of young men. After enquiring about the author’s religion, he gestured to walk in, saying, ‘Are you a Muslim? You should not worry if you are a Hindu. Only Muslims are not allowed to come in here’. ¹⁹ Post highlighting his Kshatriya Rajput lineage, he mentioned that he was one of the office bearers of the AHP in the district and one of the main organizers who oversaw the preparations and activities at this seva shivir. Explaining the significance of the Kanwar Yatra, the ‘organizer’ and his followers stated that it was a ‘celebration of Hinduness’. ²⁰

The AHP worked on the principle of ‘Hindu first’ and used their organizational links to help the community in all possible ways. As the ‘organizer’ showed around the tent, he referred to how they had caught a bunch of Muslim men who had apparently spat on a kanwar in one of the Muslim-dominated areas of the city. ²¹ Irrespective of the truth in any such claims, the members of such organizations kept using such narratives to justify their actions in the city. Organizations like the AHP had connections and networks with several other right-wing outfits in the city and were working in tandem. They especially wanted to appear ‘ready’ if there were any untoward incidents following the Udaipur case. ²² The ‘organizer’ was unhappy that the central government was not doing enough to protect Hindus in their own country. Several of his followers from the AHP were designated at specific positions across the city, to ‘keep a watch’ on the ‘well-being of Hindus and ensure the successful completion of the yatra’. ²³

Conclusion

Using the Kanwar Yatra celebrations as a case study, this article has sought to provide a granular view of the multiple elements, practices and actors that constitute public religiosity and mass celebrations in a North Indian city like Meerut today. Conforming to most South Asian religious practices, this festival too is invested with characteristics of public display of devotion, mass social participation and aspects of physicality. Significantly, using diverse forms of language and common practices, the festival has been instrumental in perpetuating a larger, nationalized ‘Hindu’ identity while subsuming the diverse units of caste within the social fabric. It has also become an avenue for the growth and reproduction of imaginations of fun, frolicking and leisure for diverse sets of young men from the rural, lower middle classes.

But most importantly, the article shows how a cohort of socio-political leaders and the state subvert the trends of rising religiosity with their visions of majoritarian aggrandizement and exclusive sacrality. The celebration of Kanwar Yatra essentially becomes an avenue for the public display and practice of exclusionary and divisive space-making strategies, thereby positioning religion as a ‘competing ideology’ that needs to be engraved in a public space and its boundaries guarded in particular ways. Even in the temporary conclusion of a festival, these developments ultimately entrench deepening anxieties around marginalization, alienation and segregation in contemporary India.