Hindutva Groups See “Land Jihad” in UP

Last Sunday when Usman and his family walked over to their new home - House No. 308, Maliwada – in Meerut a surprise was waiting for them. They found a group of people standing outside the house. As soon as Usman and his family unlocked the door to enter the house, the group told them that they cannot live in the area. Soon few more people gathered outside and started shouting slogans that a Muslim cannot live in an area predominantly populated by people of Hindu faith. Forty two years old Usman and his elder brother Noman who had recently bought the house from one Sanjay Rastogi, were shocked.

For thirty two years Usman and his siblings lived in a one room accommodation in the premises of the Ismail Girls Inter College where his father worked. For their convenience they bought a portion of a two-storey house in Maliwada area, walking distance from his present accommodation.

“The people outside the new house told us point blank that we cannot live in the Hindu area. It was made a Hindu-Muslim issue. Some groups even alleged that we were doing land jihad by trying to live in a Hindu area. All of us who were born and lived our entire life here, were so shocked that first of all we could not even understand what was going on,” Usman told NewsClick.

As it turned out, all this was part of a well chalked out design. Among those who were leading the protest were leaders of BJP youth wing Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha (BJYM), Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal.

BJYM office bearer Deepak Sharma later told NewsClick that Maliwada area has a small population of Hindus and Muslims were constantly trying to buy houses there and turn it into a completely Muslim area. Balraj Dungar the western Uttar Pradesh convener of Bajrang Dal was part of the agitation. He said that Usman bought the house as “part of a sinister conspiracy to turn Hindu areas into Pakistan”.

“What is it, if not 'land jihad' that you would want to live in a Hindu area? Hindus are continuously selling their houses from Hindu areas and Muslims are buying them. A point comes when portion of the Hindu area is completely owned by Muslims. That makes rest of the Hindus living there want to shift to a completely Hindu locality,” Dungar said candidly.

He explained how “land jihad' works. “So what happens is that rest of the Hindus also start selling their houses. Muslims buy the houses and soon what was a completely Hindu dominated colony becomes a Muslim colony. This is land jihad. And this must stop,” added Dungar while announcing a “state wide movement against land jihad”.

“We are going to identify all such areas from where Hindus are being forced to leave. Then we will mobilise masses around this and make Hindus realise that they need not sell their houses to Muslims and leave because that will make the entire country dominated by Muslims. Hindu exodus is a real phenomenon which English media and you people think as just a figment of our imagination. And Rastogi's house being bought by a Muslim is just an instance,” Dungar told NewsClick.

Though Sanjay Rastogi, the seller of the house did not agree with the logic of the Hindutva groups but he chose not to speak. Perhaps he had an apprehension of retaliation.

After the high drama created by these Hindutva groups, Usman and his family was forced to forego their legal rights over the house. Rastogi was forced sign a “compromise paper” with police as the witness. The “compromise paper” declared that Rastogi will return the money he got from Usman and his family for the house.

“I do not want to say anything except that this is not the Meerut I grew up in. Something essential has changed,” Usman said. His family did not want “any trouble with anyone” so they agreed to sign the “compromise letter”.

The police however said there was no conflict. Asked if the police registered any complaint against Hindutva groups interfering with people's rights to live wherever they wanted, Senior Superintendent of Police Man Singh said, “There was no fight or conflict. It was not a big issue. The matter was sorted out with a compromise.”

Interestingly, this is not the first incident of its kind. In June 2015 an elderly Muslim woman who had recently bought a house and shifted in a Hindu dominated locality of Moradabad, found her house locked up by the local BJP councillor Vidyasharan Sharma. A Hindu hardliner, Sharma locked the house of Shahana Parveen with locks of his own and announced that he would not allow any Muslim family to stay in a Brahman neighbourhood of the city. Till date, Parveen has not got ownership of the house she bought with her hard earned money. The matter became a “law and order issue” and went to the court which ordered “status-quo” be maintained. Right now Parveen lives with her family in a rented accommodation and is yet to get her money back.

Senior BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh and former chief of its BJP unit Laxmikant Bajpayee defended the Hindutva action and said, “Everyone has the right to buy land wherever they want but I have just one question, can Laxmikant Bajpai buy land in Kashmir”.

Unsurprisingly, the Yogi Adityanath Government of UP is completely silent on this blatant denial of people's right to live anywhere they want and harassment of Muslims.