Ganga belongs to all, don’t discriminate

That 14 young men were arrested by the Varanasi Police because they took a boat out on the river Ganga and broke their Ramzan fast — after a video they made of their iftar party went viral and the BJP Yuva Morcha city unit chief filed a complaint — is disquieting. A routine excursion is being painted as a crime. The accusations sound forced, disproportionate and repressive. They range from hurting “religious sentiment” and defiling a religious place to water pollution, from consuming non-vegetarian food and throwing leftovers into the river to extortion — the last has been added after boat operators belatedly alleged that threats were issued and the boat taken forcibly. What is striking is the alacrity with which the police made the arrests, and the promptness with which a Varanasi court rejected bail applications and sent the accused to judicial custody. The police show no such urgency to act on hate speech, for instance, even after the apex court has mandated that FIRs be registered suo motu, without waiting for a complaint. And in most cases, the court drags its feet till the process itself becomes punishment. But the episode is disturbing, most of all, because of the charges that lie at its centre.

They reek of intolerance and describe a shrinking — of the Ganga’s capacious myth and story. It is sacred for Hindus, of course, but it is also a river that belongs to all. The Ganga does not discriminate as it bears witness and carries family memories. Regardless of the faith of those who make it their own, it is forgiving and nurturing. The charges against the 14 young men mirror a narrowing, too, of the lived reality of an ancient and large-hearted city made of its teeming diversities. Varanasi, the Prime Minister’s constituency, is the city of narrow lanes where moving forward calls for negotiation and conversation with others, and a cultural landscape where arguments are carefully crafted and savoured, regardless of who wins or loses. It is the site, also, of ongoing makeovers that are helping it to turn its face to the future, from the renovated Kashi Vishwanath temple complex to the redevelopment of the ghats, from projects of urban expansion to those of connectivity and mobility. The attempt to divide the Ganga, to claim that only one community owns it, is jarring and out of place in Kashi.

TheYogi Adityanathgovernment must take note of the overzealousness of its police, and correct it. At stake is its own attempt to turn UP into a state that is dynamic and forward moving. That is undermined when it is circumscribed and weighed down by a politics that stokes divides.