New Delhi: Over two weeks have passed since Abdul Razzak, a hotel-owner in Gujarat’s Kheda district, saw images of his hotel being flashed across the local media as a part of what he calls a “smear campaign”.
The owner of Rangoli Hotel, Razzak heaves a weary sigh today, even as his voice appears flummoxed.
“Ours is a completely vegetarian hotel. And we are not even affected now, because actually our license was cancelled in June 2023. I don’t know why they’re running this campaign and list now all of a sudden. It looks like a political stunt,” the 57-year-old hotel owner said.
Razzak’s hotel is part of a list of 27 hotels and highway-based eateries purportedly run or owned by Muslims that has been subject to a targeted online campaign since January this year.
On January 23, the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) cancelled the licenses of 27 hotels and eateries, stating that buses would no longer stop at these places on their highway routes. The reason cited was that Muslim hotel owners are using “Hindu names”.
In a notice issued in Gujarati, the GSRTC reportedly said, “Citizens had noticed that some of the hotels that won the bids and signed deals with the GSRTC were using Hindu names even though they were owned by Muslims.”
According to The Federal, this government notification goes on to add that “[T]here were demands to investigate such hotels and take appropriate action. Accordingly, GSRTC took action and cancelled the permits of 27 such hotels.”
What ensued was a campaign where several rightwing social-media users, and news outlets including Times Now and Zee News Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh, carried reports of Muslims falsely “using Hindu names” to run their hotels, and the cancellation of their licenses owing to the same.
Screengrab from a Zee News broadcast on January 24, 2025.
Meanwhile, Gujarat’s minister of transport, Harsh Sanghvi, issued a clarification on X claiming that these hotels’ licences were cancelled owing to hygiene and safety standards.
“GSRTC has permanently stopped buses at 27 hotels due to dirt and unhygienic conditions!
This step has been taken for the convenience and hygiene of our passengers. We have instructed our department to monitor all other bus stops and hotels so that they follow the rules and provide the best services to the passengers,” Sanghvi tweeted.
‘False alarm’, ‘targeted campaign’, say hotel-owners
Even as the official reason remains unclear, the owners of the blacklisted dhabas and hotels find themselves unduly targeted. Owners of at least three of the 27 listed hotels told The Wire that their respective tenders with the GSRTC had already been cancelled, much before this list was issued.
“The tender for our hotel was stopped some 2.5 years ago, so the GSRTC license was also cancelled. We still have private bus operators and vehicles come and stop at our eatery. We maintain the best of hygiene to our abilities, and its pure vegetarian food. What are they doing by putting out a list now?” said S, the owner of Hotel Relief in the Siddhpur region who requested anonymity.
Although S is a Muslim, he asserted that the majority of their dhaba’s staff is Hindu, and more crucially, “The argument of using a supposed Hindu name doesn’t even make sense, because our hotel is named Hotel Relief. How is that a Hindu name?”
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Hotel Rangoli’s owner Abdul Razzak chimed in, adding that his hotel’s name is also a religion-neutral one, and hence the claim of Muslims “misusing Hindu names” does not stand. He also pointed to how Hotel Shreeji – another dhaba located in the same district of Kheda – was owned by a Hindu and “only managed by a Muslim”, but even that had seen its license cancelled.
The hotel owners went on to say that they couldn’t understand why this issue was being raked up now, and emphasised that their licenses had been cancelled years ago.
Each year, the GSRTC opens bids for highway-based dhabas and hotels, and enters into a contract with the eateries that secure a tender. The arrangement mandates that these eateries become the designated food and recreation stops for buses and other state-run transport. Razzak pointed out that many of the 27 blacklisted dhabas had won tenders in the past and were primarily “vegetarian only” eateries.
“For years, these hotels have been given tenders annually, and they were frequented by state bus routes. I have been running our hotel since 2011, why is this a problem only now? And if they had to publish a list of such hotels, why was it done by right-wingers on social media, and not by the GSRTC who had already cancelled licenses more than a year ago? They just want to defame Muslims, and I don’t know why,” Razzak sighed.
With hotel owners still in the dark as to why their licenses were cancelled and such a list made public, a sense of anti-Muslim targeting remains afoot. Ahmedabad-based lawyer and human rights activist Shamshad Pathan pointed to the “strange timing” of the list, even as no conclusive proof exists as to “whether all these 27 eateries are all owned by Muslims”.
“Some of these establishments had their GSRTC licenses revoked years ago. And we haven’t been able to verify if all the blacklisted ones are owned by Muslims. Some must be owned by Hindus. This looks like a political stunt to frame a certain kind of narrative against a community,” Pathan said.
The incident wouldn’t be the first in the state either.
In 2021, Hindu locals protested against the launch of Hotel Blue Ivy in the cosmopolitan town of Anand in Gujarat. Over a hundred locals gathered outside the hotel’s premises and sprayed ‘ganga-jal’ and chanted ‘Ram dhun’ religious songs, opposing the opening of a hotel in the area after two of the hotel’s three owners were found to be Muslims.
Blue Ivy’s Muslim co-owners also hailed from the Cheliya community, which is associated with the food and hospitality industry. The community is estimated to own and run over 2,000 restaurants across Gujarat, Maharashtra and parts of Andhra Pradesh.
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Sharik Laliwala, a political science researcher and PhD student at the University of California Berkeley, told The Wire that the community also faced the brunt of violence in the 2002 pogrom.
“In 2002, there were several cases of Muslim-owned dhabas and restaurants that were attacked. For example, Topaz near IIM Ahmedabad. The Cheliyas continue to have restaurants both in cities and the highways, including vegetarian ones. There’s been a malicious campaign ongoing against them on WhatsApp and social media,” he said, emphasising that bus operators cancelling licenses didn’t lead to much impact on revenue. Private operators continue to stop at these dhabas.
In the communal carnage that ensued in 2002 in Gujarat, the Times of India reported that having religion-neutral names like Tulsi, Aashirwad, Bhagyodaya, etc. failed to protect the ostensibly Muslim and Cheliya-owned establishments from the mobs.
Meanwhile, in February 2022, members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal in Gujarat also raised demands that these eateries be shut down.
VHP leader Pravin Togadia later said on X: “From today, we are issuing a warning to all bus services, asking them to not stop at these Muslim-owned dhabas. If they do, there will be violent consequences. Vigilant Hindus in Gujarat should inform us if they see any buses stopping for snack breaks at Muslim-owned dhabas on highways.”
Vigilantes from the VHP and Bajrang Dal have gone on to organise “raids” on such dhabas and hotels, and protest against the purported misuse of so-called Hindu names by Muslim hotel-owners.
Elsewhere, the BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand drew flak for issuing diktats in 2024 ordering hotel and dhaba-owners to display names of their employees publicly if they fell along the Kanwar Yatra route, citing religious sentiments during the pilgrimage. Although the Supreme Court later stayed the authorities’ move, several Muslim hotel owners – even of wholly vegetarian restaurants – along the western UP Kanwar route have been affected over the past few years, with some forced to fire their staff, or transfer ownership for safety’s sake.
Sabah Gurmat is an independent journalist.
