The chief minister of India’s most populous state backed a plan on Friday requiring restaurants and roadside eateries to display the names of their owners, despite criticism the move was aimed at dividing establishments by religion.
Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed Hindu monk who heads Uttar Pradesh state, said the diktat would be enforced along a route taken by thousands of Hindu pilgrims during the holy month of Shravan every year.
The decision was taken to maintain the purity of the faith of the pilgrims, known as “kanwarias,” local media reports said, quoting an order from the chief minister’s office.
But critics of the move said it was meant to stop Hindus from patronizing eateries owned by Muslims.
Rights groups say hate crimes and violence against India’s large Muslim minority have been on the rise since Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.
The restaurant order has sparked widespread outrage, with one opposition politician saying it was meant to stop Hindus from buying anything from a Muslim shop “by mistake.”
“This was called apartheid in South Africa and in Hitler’s Germany it was called ‘Judenboycott,’” lawmaker Asaduddin Owaisi said in a post on social media.
Mahua Moitra, another opposition lawmaker, wrote, “What next? Muslims to wear equivalent of Star of David on their sleeve to mark themselves?”
Uttar Pradesh has been governed by Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party since 2017, when it appointed Adityanath as chief minister.
During his tenure, Hindu mobs have launched a spate of attacks over so-called cow protection — the cow being a sacred animal for many Hindus — and committed other hate crimes that have sown fear among the state’s Muslim population.
