Like many of you who may have paused to read this, I have long had a deep affection for Uttarakhand, stretching back several decades. Even though I am not a native of the Himalayan state, I have been a regular visitor since the mid-1990s when Uttarakhand was yet to be formally created, and was referred to as UP hills. Later, I shifted to Dehradun and for over 10 years now, I have been a contented resident, revelling in the state’s unparalleled natural beauty and the warmth of its simple and hospitable people.

But for the past few years, I have been increasingly concerned at the way our peaceful state has been getting the national spotlight—mainly because of acts of communal rage, singling out of members of the minority community, and harassment on the basis of religion, or the way someone looks—things that were simply not there till just a decade ago.

In fact, Uttarakhand had seen hardly any communal strife in the first 2 decades of its existence but now, there are instances almost every few weeks, the most recent being the incident at Kotdwar in Pauri Garhwal where Bajrang Dal activists barged into a Muslim shopkeeper’s shop, insisting that he change his shop’s name because it contained a Hindu-sounding word, ‘Baba’!

A recent report by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights has summed up the current situation succinctly, pointing out how right-wing Hindutva groups have fueled communal tensions in Uttarakhand through a surge in hate crimes, violence, and economic boycotts targeting Muslims, creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. This pattern, the report says, intensified after the 2023 incident at Purola in the Garhwal hills—where “love jihad” kidnapping allegations led to Muslim families fleeing or selling properties—and later spread to areas like Uttarkashi, Tehri, Chamoli, and Gairsain. False rumours about demographic change, dubious legal procedures that target only one community’s properties, coordinated shop closures framed as citizen movements and selective application of laws only against minority institutions has become a recurring and almost routine phenomenon over the last few years, the report goes on to add.

“Each of these methods and practices seem to operate independently, yet together they create a system where a Muslim shopkeeper cannot be sure he will have permission to work tomorrow, where a minority family cannot guarantee their place of worship will stand a year from now, where community leaders cannot protect their neighborhoods from coordinated violence. What makes this pattern dangerous is not just the violence, though significant physical violence has been documented and witnessed. The real danger appears in the routinisation of hatred and discriminatory practices in the administrative and political machinery,” the report further says.

This is no doubt a worrying trend, and I don’t think majority of residents identify with this hate-filled approach. Yet, not many speak out against what is happening in an otherwise-peaceful state. Which is why, when a local gym owner, Deepak Kumar, comes forward to protect the Muslim shopkeeper in Kotdwar who was being harassed—and gains nationwide recognition and applause for his act, it comes as a ray of hope. For all those who genuinely love Uttarakhand and want its inclusive and peace-loving fabric to remain intact, here’s wishing this ray of hope shines brighter.

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