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Mathura: Afroz Alam was known for running a restaurant in the heart of Mathura’s Bharatpur Gate since 2010. His business employed a whole host of people – waiters, chefs, grocery suppliers, poultry suppliers and managerial staff.

But in September 2021, when the Uttar Pradesh government declared 22 wards of the Mathura-Vrindavan Nagar Nigam area to be a holy pilgrimage site, several people in these wards – including Alam – lost their livelihoods.

The UP government intended to ban the sale of liquor and non-vegetarian food items in these 22 wards notified as “pavitra teerth sthal (holy pilgrimage sites)”, and nine additional wards had been given the same status previously, according to local authorities. After the area around Krishna Janmabhoomi was declared a pilgrimage site, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) department in Mathura cancelled the licenses of several meat shops and non-vegetarian restaurants located in certain areas (including Daresi Road, Machhli Mandi and Kathauti ka Kuan) as part of the enforcement of the ban. The restrictions covered not just retail meat shops/restaurants but also slaughterhouses (which engaged in bulk meat processing/wholesale operations) inside the restricted zone.

Beyond butchers, religious buildings and business, a lot has changed in Mathura in the last decade. The Wire spoke to locals and saw a tear in the fabric of friendship between Hindu and Muslim communities.

Altaf’s daily routine is simple. His day is dictated by the five prayers he must offer to maintain his inner calm. Without namaz, he believes life loses its balance. But there is one more thing that he never forgets – to put his saffron gamcha on his shoulder whenever he leaves the house. The 30 year old believes this cloth protects him.

“This is for my safety. Local extremists have targeted me too many times for being Muslim. Sometimes they make an issue out of the chicken that I buy, sometimes they call me a ‘threat’ to security. I wear this so that they take time to identify me before assuming that I’m a ‘threat’ as always,” he explained.

The muezzin recites the azaan at the Gulshan e Raza Mosque. Photo: Tarushi Aswani

For Mujeeb Ur Rehman, an Islamic scholar and social worker who has grown up in a Mathura which symbolised syncretism, the Mathura of today seems like a parallel reality. “I will tell you about an incident which happened with me. Some friends and I got on a bus to travel outside Mathura. I am 55 and my friends are almost of the same age. When we got on the bus, people were asking each other not to give space to us Muslims. The politically produced hatred has trickled down to something as minimal as a bus seat. We traveled standing because of this,” Rehman shared.

In August 2025, locals told The Wire that an elderly Muslim man was attacked in Mathura for selling non-vegetarian food, even though he was far away from the wards where it is banned. “A man of my age was attacked and humiliated by random Hindu men claiming to belong to a Hindu group. Muslims are being labelled as termites and certain Hindu leaders are facilitating this – and in this every Hindu feels above the law,” Rehman continued.

The slaughterhouse in Manoharpura was shut in 2021 and has become a garbage ground now. Photo: Tarushi Aswani

Another local, Maqsud Ali, who used to run a non-vegetarian restaurant, sits idle now. Ali understands that his inability to earn from the restaurant is........

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