Latest news with #KanwarYatris
The Hindu
26-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
BJP slams SP MLA for saying that only illiterate people go on Kanwar Yatra
Only illiterate, superstitious villagers embark on the Kanwar Yatra, Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA Ziyauddin Rizvi said on Saturday (July 26, 2025), claiming that the family members of big leaders or industrialists do not undertake this pilgrimage. 'Flowers are being showered on Kanwar Yatris. Why do no sons of an IAS officer or PCS officer, or the sons of Amit Shah, Anil Ambani or of any BJP MP or MLA go for the Kanwar Yatra?' asked the Sikandarpur MLA, addressing an SP rally at Ballia district headquarters. 'Communal polarisation' The BJP accused the SP of trying to create communal divisions, claiming that Mr. Rizvi's statement showed his religious intolerance. 'The recent remarks reflect a morally bankrupt and narrow-minded view of faith, revealing an intolerance toward religious diversity. Matters of belief should remain private, not weaponised for political gain. This rhetoric, rooted in frustration, exposes a dangerous pattern of communal polarisation. True to form, the Samajwadi Party is once again attempting to stoke division in a desperate bid to stay politically relevant,' said Pushkar Mishra, a senior BJP leader based in Uttar Pradesh. The Kanwar Yatra is a major pilgrimage undertaken during the month of Sawan, also known as Shravan, according to the Hindu calendar. The Yatra is especially undertaken by devotees of Lord Shiva, with many observing fasts and refraining from consuming meat, alcohol, and even onion and garlic during this period.
Time of India
26-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Only illiterate people, and no sons of big leaders or industrialists, go on Kanwar Yatra: SP MLA
Samajwadi Party MLA from Sikandarpur constituency in Ballia district, Ziyauddin Rizvi , on Saturday said that only illiterate and superstitious people from villages embark on Kanwar Yatra and no family member of big leaders or industrialists undertakes it. Responding to the comment, Minister of State for Transport (Independent Charge) Dayashankar Singh said that it is a matter of faith for devotees of Lord Shiv and no education is needed for it. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Management Data Science Data Analytics Product Management CXO Digital Marketing MBA Cybersecurity others Others Design Thinking Finance Leadership MCA Healthcare Degree Project Management healthcare Public Policy Operations Management Artificial Intelligence Technology Data Science PGDM Skills you'll gain: Duration: 10 Months IIM Kozhikode CERT-IIMK GMPBE India Starts on undefined Get Details Skills you'll gain: Duration: 9 Months IIM Calcutta CERT-IIMC APSPM India Starts on undefined Get Details Skills you'll gain: Duration: 11 Months IIM Kozhikode CERT-IIMK General Management Programme India Starts on undefined Get Details Speaking at a programme organised by the Samajwadi Party at district headquarters, Rizvi, a former cabinet minister in the earlier Akhilesh Yadav government, said, "Illiterate and superstitious people from villages go on Kanwar Yatra." "Flowers are being showered on Kanwar Yatris. Why do no son of an IAS officer or PCS officer, or the sons of Amit Shah, Anil Ambani or of any BJP MP or MLA go for the Kanwar Yatra?" Rebutting the remarks, Dayashankar Singh, who is also the MLA from Ballia assembly constituency, said, "This is a matter of faith. Crores of people are devotees of Lord Shiv. There is no need for education to become a Lord Shiv devotee." Live Events "People walk 120 kilometres to collect Ganga water and offer it to Lord Shiv. Lord Shiv is the God of all, and there is no need of education (to worship him)," Singh added.
The Hindu
25-07-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Political Line Newsletter: Kanwariyas: kings of faith and the mark
'Consumer is king,' the SC said, during a hearing against government directives to eateries along the Kanwar route. The marketplace of faith has many faces The right to equality and the right to practise a profession are guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. The Supreme Court (SC) recently held that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route must disclose whether they serve or used to serve meat, because that is a question of consumer rights. Kanwar Yatris are expected to abstain from non-vegetarian food, onion and garlic. The Kanwar Yatra is a pilgrimage of Shiva devotees, known as Kanwariyas, who walk to sacred spots along the Ganga, and carry its water as an offering to Shiva temples near their homes. Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments had ordered eateries to prominently display their licences as a measure of quality assurance, consumer awareness, and even public order, because in the past some yatris had created a ruckus over the use of onion, garlic, or meat products in places they chose to eat. A group of petitioners had challenged these orders, and argued that they hampered the right to practise a profession, amounted to social profiling, and discrimination against Muslims. Abhishek Singhvi, lawyer for the petitioners, also invoked 'anonymity of the marketplace' against the government orders. The SC decided not to determine these Constitutional questions and asked the eateries to display their licenses. 'Consumer is king,' the Court said. The idea that the consumer is king is a secular notion, and nothing could better express the decapitation of religion by capitalism in modern societies than this motto. But the consumer, typically seen as a soulless seeker of pleasure and gratification, is now blending faith into their market choices. Many people are carrying their faith into the market place. Capitalism is struggling to serve god and mammon at the same time. Muslims, Jews, and Hindus want faith-compliant products and services. People might think Christianity sits closely with modern capitalism, but wait! The clash between the business owner and the consumer, driven by faith, reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for a tentative resolution. In 2012, Jack Phillips, a baker in Colorado, refused to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The couple filed a case under the State's Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits businesses open to the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation. Colorado Civil Rights Commission held that the baker had violated the law. Phillips took the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that forcing him to create a cake for a same-sex marriage would violate his freedom of speech and free exercise of religion, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The SC held, on June 4, 2018, that Philip's protections under the First Amendment had been violated. The Court did not rule on the question of whether businesses can refuse service based on religious beliefs. Like India's, the SC of the United States too steered clear of triggering a trade war — or a religious one as the case may be! Federalism Tract: Notes on Indian Diversity The growing reach of the state Conducting a census among the six main indigenous tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands will not be tough as the Central Government has already made contact and is running several welfare measures for these tribes, said physician Ratan Chandra Kar. It is not a coincidence that economic and military activities in which the aboriginal people have little involvement are also increasing simultaneously. The mapping of the terrain and people is often simultaneous, with the expansion of modern economic activity. See this story, for instance. Martyrs who ceased to be Kashmir parties and the government used to observe July 13 as Martyrs' Day to commemorate the 22 civilians who were killed in an uprising against the Dogra monarchy in 1931. This year, the Lieutenant Governor's administration tried to stop Chief Minister Omar Abdullah from visiting a memorial site. He defied the order, and visited the Naqsbandh Sahib shrine. The popular movement against the monarchy was a point of contention between the national movement led by the Indian National Congress and Sheikh Abdullah, grandfather of the current Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. In 1931, he co-founded the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference — Muslims were treated as second-class subjects by Maharaja Hari Singh — which would be renamed the National Conference the next year to be in alignment with the Congress. Congress leadership and Jawaharlal Nehru were sympathetic to the movement for self-rule and Kashmiri identity, but they were also anxious about the interplay of Islamic and Kashmiri identities in Sheikh's politics. The Congress was willing to accommodate Kashmiri nationalism within the rubric of Indian nationalism but was also fixated on keeping it under permissible limits. This led to the fluctuations in the relationship between the Sheikh and the Congress, particularly Nehru. This history of the Centre alternating between suspicion and accommodation of Kashmiri nationalism was brought to an end by the BJP that nullified Article 370 in 2019. For it, any suggestion of autonomy is unacceptable. Hindutva votaries considered the anti-Dogra movement an Islamist insurrection then and now. You could read more about that history here. Hindu nationalists in India considered the native kingdoms a shield of their politics in general. Under the Centre's rule there was always restriction on the observation of the Martyrs' Day. That is a memory that sits uncomfortably with Indian nationalism — under both the Congress and the BJP. Deploying history for the present The recreation of historical events in public memory is part of nation building, and the shifting approaches to the past are a marker of present day politics. The overturning of the Martyrs' Day narrative repurposes the history of the region in tune with Hindutva. The revised history text books of NCERT are another case in point. Departing from earlier text books, the new ones, among other things, also puts the spotlight on episodes of religious discrimination by Mughal rulers. The DMK government in Tamil Nadu and the BJP government at the Centre are both celebrating the mark of a millennium of Rajendra Chola-I's expedition to the north. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release a commemorative stamp on July 27th. The Cholas were patrons of Shaivism and Rajendra Chola-I took pride in claiming that he brought the Ganga to his kingdom, reportedly forcing the kings he defeated to carry it on their head. You could watch a video commentary on this here. While for Mr. Modi this could be another occasion to demonstrate Tamil Nadu's Hindu heritage, linking it with Tamil identity, for the Dravidian parties, it is the other way around: it is about the antiquity and statecraft of the Tamil people.
Hindustan Times
23-07-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Half a month needed to dispose of garbage left behind by kanwariyas: Haridwar officials
The flow of devotees to Haridwar during the two-week-long Kanwar Yatra ended on Wednesday, but it would take another fortnight for the authorities to fully clean up the tonnes of garbage they have left behind. Several trucks with Kanwar Yatris seen carrying holy water from Haridwar via Dak Kanwar during the yatra.(Sanchit Khanna/Hindustan Times) A record 5.5 crore kanwariyas visited Haridwar this year, officials said. According to an estimate, so much waste has accumulated that a proper cleaning campaign would take at least half a month. Garbage disposal during the yatra had been a problem for the administration as the huge crowds of pilgrims made some areas inaccessible for the sanitation trucks. "During Kanwar Yatra, lakhs of kanwariyas reached Haridwar by foot and in vehicles every day. This made it impossible for the sanitation workers to take garbage trucks everywhere. As a result, regular cleaning was not done in some areas. But in the areas where they were able to go, cleaning continued uninterrupted," District Magistrate Mayur Dixit told PTI. Municipal Commissioner Nandan Kumar also admitted that constant arrival of devotees to Haridwar in the last 15 days had badly hit the regular cleaning system. "It is anticipated that about 10,000 metric tonnes of garbage has been accumulated in the corporation area. The exact figure will be known only after a day or two," he said. Cleaning of the city area has already begun; in the initial phase, urban roads and Ganga ghats are being cleaned, he said, adding that this will be completed in three days. Around thousand sanitation workers are deployed for cleaning the municipal corporation area, he added. Most of the Shiva devotees who visited Haridwar collected Ganga water from Har Ki Pauri. According to Nitin Gautam, President of Shri Ganga Sabha, an organisation that manages Har Ki Pauri, the biggest problem in the area is the plastic waste that kanwariyas left behind. This include bags, polythene sheets, plastic glasses and cups, and polythene or plastic sheets used for bedding. The Shri Ganga Sabha is engaged in the cleaning works along with the administration. They had anyway been trying to clean the ghats late at night. The major contributors to the waste in the Kanwar Mela area were the bhandaras set up by voluntary organisations and some private individuals for the service of kanwariyas, the locals said. According to Vipin Sharma, a local resident, the kanwariyas discarded the disposable glasses and plates they were served the juices and sherbets in on the roads. The municipal corporation and the district administration have however started a garbage disposal campaign, officials said, adding that if the weather remains favourable, the city is expected to be clean again in about a fortnight.
News18
22-07-2025
- Politics
- News18
Delhi CM Rekha Gupta welcomes Kanwar Yatra pilgrims
New Delhi, Jul 22 (PTI) Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Tuesday welcomed Kanwariyas showering flower petals on them at Shyamgiri Baba temple in Shastri Park area of East Delhi, according to a statement. Accompanied by Culture Minister Kapil Mishra, Gupta also applied 'tilak' on the foreheads of women Kanwar Yatris carrying water to offer to Lord Shiva temples during the auspicious 'Shravan" month of the Hindu calendar. The chief minister said her government is a 'humble servant" of the Kanwariyas, who are both a responsibility and a blessing for the administration, according to a statement from the CM office. In addition to the ceremonial welcome, the chief minister conducted a thorough inspection of the Kanwar Yatra route, reviewing security arrangements and directing officials to ensure the entire path remains safe and well-managed. She highlighted that the Delhi government has undertaken elaborate preparations this year to make the Yatra safer, more orderly, and comfortable for all devotees. The government has taken various steps to facilitate permissions for setting up Kanwar camps and provisions like electricity, food, drinking water, medicines and sanitation there. It has also provided financial assistance to Kanwar Samitis to set up camps for the devotees. 'With the help of religious organisations, arrangements such as shelters, rest areas, health services and refreshments were set up in various parts of Delhi, showcasing a unique blend of faith and public service," she said. Mishra said Kanwar Yatra is not just a religious event, but a celebration of India's cultural and spiritual heritage. Under the leadership of the chief minister, the Kanwar Yatra has emerged as a shining example of devotion, service, and respectful governance in Delhi, he added. PTI VIT HIG (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI) view comments First Published: July 22, 2025, 19:45 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
