New Delhi: A Hindutva outfit has proposed to conduct ‘Govardhan Puja’ on Friday, November 5, at the Gurugram namaz site in Sector 12A which has seen Muslim prayers disrupted for close to two months now. Among invitees are BJP’s Kapil Mishra and militant Hindutva leader Yati Narsinghanand.While Mishra told Indian Express that he will attend the event, Narsinghanand will not attend, according to the report.The puja, at the designated namaz site, is being organised by the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti which has 22 groups under it.On Sunday, October 31, the Samiti announced that it would conduct the puja at 11 am on November 5. According to the Samiti, the gathering could have around 5,000 people. “After prayer, dhol and nagaras would be played at the site and prasad would be distributed,” the umbrella group’s state president told Express.Reports said representatives of the Muslim community had said that they would relocate if provided an alternative space or if property belonging to the Waqf board was cleared of encroachments.Mishra told Express that he believes that this is a legitimate “movement for citizens’ right for free roads”. “No one has the right to block roads every week,” he said.This is not the first time Mishra has advocated for “freeing roads.”At the time of the agitations against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2019-2020, Mishra had taken up the Hindutva cause vocally. In a speech he gave in northeast Delhi’s Maujpur just before riots erupted there in February 2020, he had threatened to take the law into his own hands if the police did not clear anti-CAA protesters from their sit-in spots. Former top cops, minority bodies and civil society fact-finders have said Mishra’s speech had incendiary effect, but Delhi Police has not acted against him.Dasna Devi head priest Yati Narsinghanand, another Hindutva leader that The Wire‘s investigations have revealed to have given speeches that exhorted people to commit violence during the Delhi riots, also supported the Govardhan Puja at Gurugram.Since September, rightwing groups have been protesting against namaz, even those at designated spaces, alleging ‘land-jihad’ and unsubstantiated ‘misbehaviour’ against local women. The protests have been steadily building in size and intensity. Last Friday, October 29, Gurugram police detained 30 protesters. Gurugram SDM Anita Chaudhary had told NDTV that “full protection would be given to the people offering namaz in the 37 designated places”.By Wednesday, November 3, the Gurugram administration had retracted permission to perform namaz at eight of the originally designated 37 sites. Authorities had said the decision was taken after “objection from local residents and resident welfare associations”. Altaf Ahmed, speaking as a representative of the Gurugram Muslim community, told The Wire that the administration was effectively pressuring the Muslim community to conduct namaz only at mosques, and that if there were any objections from any of the 37 approved sites at which namaz would take place, the permissions would be retracted.Civil group takes a standAhmed is a member of the Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch, a civil society group in Gurugram which on Tuesday issued a statement against the sustained rightwing harassment of the Muslims conducting namaz in the city.In the statement, the Manch says, “The Gurgaon we know is a vibrant and culturally diverse community…We cannot put the fate of our city in the hands of a few hate mongers who have chosen the path of violence to further their own agenda.Aarti Jaiman, director of the ‘Gurgaon ki Awaaz’ community radio and member of the Manch, said to The Wire that this was fundamentally an issue of the constitutional right to practice one’s religion as per Article 25. “If I have the right to have my Jagannath Yatra and Kanwar Yatra and Ram Leela for 10 days in the maidan, then the Muslims have the right to do their namaz in the maidan, which is frankly less time than the Ram Leela going on for 10 days.”
