It’s wedding season in Purola. There is a cacophonous celebration in one part of the town, carrying the music over a fair distance. Pahadi is the soundtrack of the party, with trippy Garhwali and Himachali numbers ruling, along with an occasional song merging Garhwali lyrics with the staples of Urdu poetry, celebrating ishq, of the beintaha (all-consuming) sort. The noise and the crowds are very different from the ones that had seized this town in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district over a month ago, the echoes and signs of which continue to reverberate.
But Purola is now trying to slowly go back to what it once was: a quiet town with a dusty, chaotic marketplace, the hub of the beautiful villages that surround it. Over 140 km from state capital Dehradun, it falls near the Yamunotri yatra route but not on it; it’s on the way to where the famous Har ki Doon trek starts but it’s not that close for most tourists to stop by. So, it has remained a place where people run their shops, tend to their apple orchards and fields (the red rice grown here is famous in the state), and generally go about their business.
Then, on May 26, that changed when Ubaid Khan, 24, whose family runs small businesses in town, and motorcycle mechanic Jitendra Saini, 23, were found trying to allegedly lure a 14-year-old girl away. They were arrested a few hours later. News spread, there was anger on the streets and no one really knows quite how, but this had become a case of ‘love jihad’, a term right-wing organisations use to label marriages of Muslim men and Hindu women, unspooling a chain of events that led to calls for Muslims to leave. Many did. According to some estimates, of the 45 or so Muslim families in Purola, 14 left.
The poster that went up on Muslim shops in June, asking them to leave. (Special Arrangement)
‘Was born here… where does one belong?’
The rally on May 29, called by VHP and supported by the Purola Vyapar Mandal, was large and some in the crowd pulled down hoardings of a few shops owned by Muslims — about 40 of the 700-odd shops in town are run by the minority, many of these dealing in scrap.
Mohammad Ashraf remembers the procession stopping by at his house for a good 20 minutes, chanting that ‘love jihadi’ and Muslims leave Purola. Some in the crowd were outsiders, some familiar faces, says Ashraf, whose father Baale Khan came to Purola from Bijnor in 1978 as a 22-year-old in search of work. Over the years, the family started quilting and making mattresses, and now run two shops selling cloth and ready-made garments. In 1986, they bought the house they now live in.
“I was born here. If even after all these years, we are considered outsiders, then where does one belong? When the procession started heaping abuses at us, our children asked us, ‘why are they saying all this, have you done something?’ I didn’t know what to say,” says Ashraf, who studied at the RSS-run Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Purola.
There was nothing in his growing up years to suggest that things would come to this pass but the shrill rhetoric of love jihad and land jihad has slowly taken root in the hill state where traditional insecurity about outsiders from the plains coming and changing its demography and culture is now being directed primarily at one religion.
Baale Khan – one of the oldest residents of Purola – at his shop. Express Photo by Devyani Onial
Muslims make up 13.9 per cent of the population of the state, according to the 2011 Census, most of whom live in the plains of the state. Of Purola’s population of over 33,000 people, Muslims make up less than even one per cent, which is what makes many believe the incident is being talked up to polarise with an eye on the 2024 elections.
“If you talk to someone about love jihad ten times, chances are that on the eleventh occasion he will start to think maybe there is some truth in it. There were two accused in this case, one Muslim, one Hindu. Ek ka toh love jihad tha, doosre ka kaun sa jihad tha (Even if you grant one was up to love jihad, what about the other)?,” says Ashraf, who thinks “jealousy over the prosperity” of some Muslims in the region in part fanned the agitation.
Some accuse resident Muslims of encouraging travelling salesmen – those who allegedly “peddle drugs and indulge in illegal activities” — to settle down in the town. “Why would we do that: We are equally wary of them,” says Ashraf, adding that they have now reopened their shops. “If the local people had really been against us or angry, we wouldn’t have been sitting here,” he says.
But following the incident, Ashraf has installed CCTVs in his house and video records all journeys he takes out of town. “What if I am accosted on a lonely road, and they bring a woman and photograph me with her and frame me for love jihad? It’s a real fear,” he says.
“We have lived here all these years with respect. Dil hi toot gaya iss sab se (We are heart-broken). Maybe in a year or so we will leave,” says his father.
Sitting in a sweets shop where a myna surreptitiously lifts the cover of a plate to peck at some namkeen, Brijmohan Chauhan, head of the Purola Vyapar Mandal (traders’ association), presents his case. “We didn’t say Muslims should go, we said love jihadis should go. Those who did no wrong are still here, those who went probably had something to hide. We just want to say, qaede mein rahoge toh fayde mein rahoge (If you abide by the rules, it will be good for you), ” he says. Ramchander Rana, owner of the shop, nods in support. “We have to be cautious. See, even after this incident, there have been similar incidents in neighbouring Tyuni, Gauchar, Arakot.”
Chauhan intervenes. “The Muslim boy arrested here used to call the girl from his friend Jitender Saini’s phone, calling himself Ankit and ensnared her. Their modus operandi is to win vulnerable girls with gifts or promises of marriage and convert them. They get funding for this,” he says. This is love jihad, he says, explaining the theory has spawned legislation in a number of states, making religious conversion for the purpose of marriage illegal. Last December, the Uttarakhand Assembly passed a bill making the state’s anti-conversion law more stringent.
Two boys, a girl, and a bogey
About three kilometres up a road flanked by pine trees, Purola SHO Khajan Singh Chauhan sits in what has to be one of the best corner offices, with a spectacular view of terraced fields and mountains. The SHO is still puzzled about how the name Ankit entered the narrative. This is where Kerala Story meets Purola story, he says, referring to the recent controversial film that showed Muslim men posing as Hindus to lure Hindu girls to marry them with the aim of converting them. “We checked the call records of all three. The girl had never spoken to the two boys before this incident,” he says.
Chauhan says the police station gets a lot of calls regarding women, many of them being cases of elopement. But since none till now had involved a Muslim, they had not warranted such attention.
Chauhan was on duty on May 26, when the minor girl accompanied by her maternal aunt and uncle came to the station to file an FIR against the two accused. The girl, says the SHO, was looking to go to Dehradun and the two got a tempo to take her away but were accosted by her aunt and her uncle’s friend who followed her. The accused were arrested but the police and the family were not prepared for the storm that followed.
The Purola police station. Express Photo by Devyani Onial
In his village in Purola, the 14-year-old girl’s uncle, a school teacher, is still trying to weather it.
He was a schoolboy when his three-month old niece came to live with them after her parents died. With his parents ailing, he married early to bring her up. “I don’t want to say anything other than please read my complaint. I have mentioned both the accused in it. Everything that I want to say is in it,” he says, admitting though that he never imagined that the incident would take on a religious colour and would result in Muslims being asked to leave. In the last month, he has barely stepped out of his house, seized as he is by questions from the media and acquaintances.
‘Love jihad… doesn’t it sound fictional?’
The storm in Purola has been in the making for some years now. Senior BJP leaders in the state speak constantly on love jihad and land jihad – Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said that in a bid to check rising cases of love jihad after the Purola incident, the government would undertake background checks for people who have recently moved to Uttarakhand. The state has also taken the lead to usher in a Uniform Civil Code with the committee constituted to frame it set to submit its report to the government next month.
VHP’s working president in Purola, Virendra Rawat, rattles off recent cases of ‘love jihad’ in the state. “There have been 47 such cases just this year,” he says. He is not quite sure where he’s got the names and numbers from, but thinks it must be from the media.
Meanwhile, Dehradun-based Darshan Bharti, who leads the Devbhoomi Raksha Abhiyaan, the right-wing organisation in whose name the posters asking Muslims to leave Uttarakhand before the mahapanchayat on June 15 were issued, is clear about what he thinks should be future of the state. “Why did our ancestors live in these formidable mountains?” he asks before proffering an answer. “To protect their roti, choti and beti (livelihood, religion and daughters). But after the state of Uttarakhand was formed, outsiders, especially Muslims, started coming in and love jihad spread. Now it should end. We have no problem, though, with the pahadi Muslims, those who have been staying here for over a hundred years,” he says.
He says he was in Purola the night the posters came up. Though he denies his hand in putting up the posters, Bharti doesn’t discount the possibility that some of his followers may have done it. He was one of the participants of the controversial Dharam Sansad in Haridwar in December 2021 that saw participants spouting hate speeches against Muslims. Last month, he forced a BJP leader in Pauri to cancel his daughter’s wedding to a Muslim. “He sent out invitations for the wedding. Why should he celebrate such a wedding in our devbhoomi? What kind of message was he sending out to Muslims and to other parents,” he says.
At her small dhaba at Dharasu bend that caters largely to pilgrims making their way to Yamunotri, Kavita Barthwal talks of her two daughters, one who is studying nursing in Dehradun and another who is pursuing a BSc in Uttarkashi. “I constantly worry over the possibility of them falling in love with Muslims. News such as that of a Muslim boy stabbing a girl 16 times last month frightened me. My daughters always say that there is nothing like this love jihad,” she says.
The road lined with pine trees leading to Purola
While everyone in and around Purola remembers news of crimes committed by Muslim boys against Hindu girls, crimes committed by Hindu men are rarely discussed.
Outside Purola, a 16-year-old and her cousin are grappling with the stricter rules their parents are enforcing. “We too get a bit scared after hearing all these things. In any case, we avoid talking to Muslim boys but why should the entire community be blamed for what one person did,” they ask.
Ashish Panwar, a 29-year-old old school teacher, meanwhile, says employment, not love jihad, should be the issue the state must focus on. “Naukri maango toh danda milta hai (you ask for jobs, you are beaten). There are so many vacancies in the state that are not being filled, there are recruitment scams, no jobs. Phir ek berozgaar aadmi andbhakt hi banega (what else will an unemployed person become but a blind follower),” he says.
In Purola, as in many places in the states, the young have worries other than love jihad. There is discontent over unemployment and in a state which has traditionally sent its men to the armed forces, the Agnipath scheme that will recruit soldiers for just four years has upset many.
A young man, standing not far from the house of the girl at the centre of the uproar, says he is still puzzled over the phrase that’s fast gaining currency in the state.
“Love jihad,” he rolls the phrase off his tongue. “Bada kalpanik nahin lagta yeh shabd (doesn’t it sound fictional)? It’s also very insulting. Are we saying that girls can’t make up their minds, that they have no agency,” he says, breaking off to answer his phone. His mother is on the other end, asking who he is talking to. He looks a bit chastened. “But seeing all this trouble, I think it’s best to just listen to your parents and marry whoever they choose,“ he grins, making his way back home.
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