Nahid Hasan, an MLA of Samajwadi party and of Uttar Pradesh has appealed the Muslim community to boycott the shopkeepers and traders who support BJP. Hasan is MLA from Kairana constituency. He has been educated in Australia and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Holmes Institute in Sydney. The shocking hate-speech inciting communal divide and segregation from such a highly educated member of the Muslim community and elected representative is condemnable. The video of Hasan has gone viral on social media and more and more people faced the threat of being radicalized by this video.
As per 2011 census data, Kairana tehsil is Muslim majority and 52.94 percent of the population belongs to the community. Hindus constitute only 45.38 percent of the population. Nahid Hasan’s irresponsible and hateful statement puts at risk the safety and well being of the Hindus present in the area.
30 year old Nahid Hasan is not new to the electoral politics. His father Chaudhary Munawwar Hasan was a MLA in the 11th and the 12th legislative assemblies of Uttar Pradesh as well as a Member of 11th and 14th Parliaments. So, he comes from a very well established political family and the speech was not made in rage. It was a well thought out statement aimed to weaken the Hindu community as majority of the shop owners belong to Hindu trading community.
Most of the business owners belong to Hindu trading communities in Kairana area as is the case in a large part of the country. The Marwari/Khatri/Jain businesspeople across the country are involved in trading and shop keeping. Nahid Hasan demands boycott of businesses of BJP supporters in a veiled attack on mainly Hindus and is overrules the democratic right of individuals to practice their voting rights.
Last year, Nahid Hasan had reportedly also threatened a gang-rape survivor who was a minor, and also forced her to withdraw the case. The family of the victim came up with an audio clip to prove the allegations.
What’s abominable is that none of the mainstream media house is giving any serious coverage to Nahid Hasan’s hateful call for boycott of BJP supporters, probably because the perpetrator belongs to “minority community”. It is shameful that the mainstream media has decided to go comatose over this issue and is yet to term this as a religion based act of terror, simply because it is mostly the Hindus and not Muslims who are at the receiving end of it.
Kairana had become a hot bed for various crimes directed towards Hindus by elements from the ‘minority community’ which was in majority in the area. This issue was first raised by Late BJP MP Hukum Singh in the national media from where it became a hot topic and got some of its due share of limelight. The allegations of crimes against Hindu community members and the subsequent exodus from Kairana had been proven by a National Human Rights Council (NHRC) report published in 2016. Nahid Hasan, as an elected representative should have known the possible consequences of his words, but there is also a chance that MLA Nahid Hasan wished for those consequences after all.
According to the report, at least 250 Hindu families had migrated from Kairana due to hooliganism and extortion threats. Village Jahanpura in Kairana had 60 Hindu families but after the exodus, the Hindu population was reduced to zero, a rude reminder of what future could hold for the Hindus of Hindu-stan. Many Hindu families had abandoned village Panjeeth in Kairana. At a press conference, Late Hukum Singh had also claimed back then that there have been at least 10 communal killings in the town. He had compared the Hindu exodus from Kairana to that of Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus from the Valley.
The ‘hate speech’ by Nahid Hasan is condemnable and the Yogi government should take stern action against this. People like Hasan are dangerous to the already communally charged society in Kairana. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the BJP goes by the slogan, ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas’, elected representatives like Nahid Hasan from the Samajwadi party are openly promoting hate, boycott and segregation in an area that is already vulnerable to communal intolerance and violence.