JUST days after its inauguration, the LuLu Mall in Lucknow, the capital of northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and one of the most religiously polarised, has courted a controversy.
Videos have surfaced on social media showing people from the country's minority Muslim community offering prayers (namaz) inside the mall's shopping arena. The incident is said to happened on Tuesday (12).
Hindu organisations in the state where prime minister Narendra Modi's Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, objected to the incident and asked all Hindus to boycott the mall.
On Thursday (14), Shishir Chaturvedi, the national spokesperson of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, was quoted as saying by India Today, "People offered namaz sitting on the floor in LuLu Mall, this video proves that government orders were violated in the mall. The government has directed that namaz cannot be offered in public spaces."
"I will request chief minister Yogi Adityanath to take action on such incidents and ensure that it does not happen again.”
The organisation also submitted a written complaint to Lucknow Police against the mall authorities over the viral video.
Adityanath, who is a poster boy of India's Hindutva politics, was present at the inauguration ceremony of the mall on July 10, along with the chief of the LuLu Group, MA Yussuf Ali. Several hundreds visited the massive mall, the first set up by the UAE-based group in north India and the fifth overall in India.
Reactions also poured in on social media with many expressing anger over people offering namaz inside the shopping mall. They asked why the people were allowed to pray in the open and not in a designated prayer area.
However, there were also people who did not find any problem with it. One social media said while Modi could carry out Hindu rituals at the new parliament building of secular India built with public money, why some Muslims could not offer prayers at a mall owned by an individual.
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