The Wrong ‘Miyan’, Kentucky Fried Chhaap & Other Stories of Hindutva Overzealousness

In BJP’s third term a picture is emerging of the adarsh or ideal Hindu. Hinduism is an umbrella term, which contains within it many Hinduisms. In the Hindutvavadi formulation, a single version should prevail, the sanatani one. The adarsh Hindu lives in a town with a Hindu name, forsakes meat and alcohol, and bathes in the polluted waters of the Ganges.

One would have thought that the Hindutva project would have a closure of sorts at some stage, after all the imaginary wrongs of history had been corrected and the status quo restored. But no. It looks like the project will go on ad nauseam; it’s a never-ending story. If one wants to stretch a simile and put a perversely positive spin on it, one can compare what’s happening to improvisational jazz, with its spontaneous invention of melodic solo lines or accompaniment parts.

It has reached a point where saffronists have run out of ideas; they are constantly inventing tradition, plucking things out of thin air, seeing a problem where none exists. In other words, they are losing their grip on reality. The eyes are seeing things and their ears hearing things that do not exist. 

Hinduism was always a jam band of sorts; in the hands of the monomaniacal BJP though, everything is reduced to the numeral 1: one nation, one election, one religion, one leader, one community, one God -- the nationalised Ram. In the utopian saffronist world, Muslims and Christians would convert to the majoritarian religion, which has already subsumed Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. 

Take the case of renaming towns and cities in Uttarakhand, the model Hindutva state, a lab for the Hindu Right project. Like Trump constantly fiddling with tariffs, the CM Pushkar Singh Dhami keeps adding more names to the list of renamed places.

The renaming follows a simple pattern: erase all traces of Muslim presence. So McLeodGanj is fine but Mohammed Ganj is not. Its new name is Guru Govind Singh Nagar. More than 15 areas and roads have been renamed across four districts. Mohammadpur Jat is now Mohanpur Jat, Khanpur Kursali is Ambedkar Nagar, Idrispur is Nandpur, Khanpur is Shri Krishnapur, the wonderfully evocative Akbarpur Fazalpur is Vijaynagar, Nawabi Road is Atal Marg, Sultanpatti nagar panchayat is Kaushalyapuri, and so on. 

Dhami justified the exercise in fairly abstract terms: “Renaming of the places is being done to align with the public sentiment and Indian culture and heritage, so that people can draw inspiration from the great personalities who have contributed to the preservation of culture.”

Some questions: What exactly is public sentiment and how is it determined? A straw poll? What exactly is ‘Indian culture and heritage’? ‘Indian’ stands for Hindu and has no room for Muslim culture and heritage. Wasn’t Akbar a ‘great personality’ who worked for the ‘preservation of culture’? So why is Akbarpur now Vijaynagar? Do ordinary citizens really draw inspiration from the act of renaming, and wake up enthused by renewed energy, or is it only politicians and bureaucrats?

This brings us to the peculiar and comical case of centuries-old Miyanwala, a victim of Dhami’s overzealousness – a dire affliction of the bhakt. According to bhakt logic, any name vaguely sounding Muslim has to be excised: ‘sultan’, ‘nawab’ etc… So why not ‘miyan’? Except that, in this case, they got the wrong miyan. 

Residents have pointed out that the locality was named after ‘Mian’, a title for a Rajput clan in Uttarakhand, with no connection to the Mughals and Muslims. 

The historical name was a symbol of their heritage, honouring elders and ancestors. Local historian Ajay Singh Rawat told the TOI that the Garwhal kingdom was always independent, and that “it even challenged the might of the Mughals. It never came under their influence. So Miyanwala has no connection to them.” Jitender Singh Miyan, a resident, is quoted as saying, “They have not read the history and do not know anything about the Rajputs.” 

Historically, the Mians were recruited by Garwhali and Kumaoni kings for important do-or-die battles.

In a letter to the DM, the residents wrote: “Our identity has always been, and will always remain tied to Miyanwala...certain politicians have attempted to change the name of our home, and are trying to divide our society. Let it remain Miyanwala.”

This is what I meant when I said that saffronists are now plucking things out of thin air, conjuring something from nothing. The state government doubled down with a bewildering defence: “People are trying to create division. They claim the name is associated with Kshatriyas, but is there any Kshatriya greater than Lord Ram? He is the pride of the Kshatriya clan.” Lord Ram triumphs all in the new regime, but why change the name when it had no Muslim roots at all? Even repelling the Mughals militarily doesn’t count.

Let’s do a thought-experiment. In India, our names have a religious underpinning. It’s an unsaid rule that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis – basically all Indian communities – name their offspring drawing from their own tradition. There is no law that prohibits breaking this rule; it’s more a matter of convention.

Suppose I was called Inzamam Krishna Mehrotra or Imaad Mehrotra. Will the Hindutvavadi then demand that I, as a Hindu, change my name? Will we extend this obsession with changing names to children born to interfaith marriages (now called ‘love jihad’)? 

Let me plant a devious seed. If we really want to conjure something out of nothing, why not pass a new law laying down nomenclature in families: if a Muslim man marries a Hindu woman then at least one child will have a Hindu name. (The Pataudis would be in big trouble). As I said earlier, there is no end to the Hindutva project; it’s pregnant with endless possibilities.

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Speaking of plucking things out of thin air, take the fish market-and-Kali temple controversy in Delhi’s CR Park. What was not problematic for decades is suddenly a no-no. 

Speaking about the group that visited the market during Navratri, fish-seller Dinesh Das told The Print: “It was evening time when some people came to our market. These people came for two days and, citing Sanatan Dharma, asked that the fish market near the temple be closed. At the time, no one understood who they were and that it would lead to such a big controversy.”

He added: “We are also Sanatanis, but we eat fish because it is a part of our culture. The temple next to the fish market was also built by us and for the last 60 years, both the temple and market have been running without any dispute.”Another fish shop owner told The Indian Express that he opens his outlet only after offering prayers at the temple.

Looks like the Hindutva revisionist history project is accompanied by a revisionist religion project. Forget about the Kali temple being adjacent to a fish market, offerings of meat have always been allowed in select temples. The Kamakhya Devi Mandir in Guwahati is the most well-known example, but there are others like the Patiala Kali Temple where devotees offer goat and chicken meat, “especially when their wishes are fulfilled”.

In his book, Folk Art and Culture of Gujarat, Jyotindra Jain lists the various goddesses worshipped in the region: Khodiar, Vindhyavasini and Mandavri. Each has a shrine ascribed to her. “To all these goddesses blood sacrifices were offered,” Jain writes, “and the number of animals to be sacrificed on the state account was fixed.”

Seen in this light, the neo-vegetarianism of Hindutva seems like a top-down imposition. Ayodhya now prohibits the sale of meat along the Panch Kosi Marg, encompassing the Panch Kosi Parikrama – a 15-kilometre area around the Ram Temple. The Dominos and KFC there have gone ‘pure veg’. Kentucky Fried Chicken might as well be called Kentucky Fried Chhaap now.

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In 2019, Yogi Adityanath announced a ban on the sale of alcohol around temples. Liquor vends were shut down in a 250 metre radius. Our devotion is now measured by the metric system. The state decides the number of metres and kilometres of forbidden periphery.

Earlier this month, the Madhya Pradesh government banned liquor in nineteen Hindu religious sites. One of the positives of these bans is that the metropolitan Indian is now aware of the names of places she didn’t know existed: Datia, Multai, Amarkantak, Kundalpur, Salkanpur, Bandakpur, Barmankalan, Barmanpur (the renaming exercise would be purer if we also removed ‘bar’ from the names) and Linga.

Not to be left behind, Uttarakhand announced its own list. In March this year, the government approved a new excise policy for 2025-26 that includes a mandate to revoke the licence of liquor shops near religious areas. This month, the Uttarakhand High Court, while hearing three petitions against non-renewal of six liquor vends in Rishikesh, on the grounds that these are located near “holy places”, said: “It is an irony that a particular place is called a ‘holy place’ when the entire state is called Devbhoomi...The paradox in the approach is that if six shops are permitted to vend liquor, it would affect the sanctity of the holy town, but serving liquor in bars and restaurants would not affect the sanctity of the holy town. There cannot be anything more paradoxical and ironical than this.” 

The counsel for petitioners had argued that while licenses of restaurants and resorts were renewed, only his clients’ licenses were not, because the six shops were located close to the boundary of the prohibited area. Reprimanding the excise commissioner, the court added: “Prima facie there is negligence and abuse of power. There cannot be anything more high-handed than this. This is the height of arbitrariness.” The matter is subjudice. 

Leaving aside this particular case, there are temples in India where offerings of liquor are made: Kal Bhairav in Ujjain, Kali Mata in Connaught Place, Delhi, Tarapith in Birbhum, Bhanwal Mata in Jodhpur and Baba Bhairo Nath in Mumbai. The idea of prohibition around temples is clearly a post-BJP phenomenon.

Eric Hobsbawm coined the phrase ‘The Invention of Tradition’. What we are seeing in India under the BJP is the invention of agenda, ritual and lines of taboo. What’s ironic is that many of those affected might well have voted saffron in the last election: the Rajputs of Miyanwala, the Bongs of CR Park and the imbibers of U.P., Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. Their political choices have come back to haunt them. A bit like some of those who voted for Trump, who suddenly find themselves out of a job after Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. Reality bites.

The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India

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