By Mohammed Shahrukh

So often does nationalism make enemies out of its own people, that the playbook of controlling minorities within these regimes is a constant project of revision and addition. The most recent tactic put forth by the right-wing, nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that governs municipalities and bureacracies in several states of India, is to make use of encroachment codes to target and demolish the houses of Muslim families, most of them belonging to daily wage laborers. 

However, the absence of constitutionality and legal oversight, and the rise of such demolitions since April 2022, are revealing a troubling pattern within India’s democracy.

The festival of Ram Navami is celebrated as the birth date of the God Lord Rama, as per the Hindu religion’s lunar calendar. In December 1992, a mob of right-wing activists, led by then BJP Party President, L.K. Advani, demolished the Mughal era mosque, the Babri Masjid, claiming that it was the birthplace of Rama. What followed was a decades-long legal battle, that projected the mythological legend as a figurehead for Hindutva. Hindutva, propounded by 19th century ideologue, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, seeks to redefine the Indian identity as an ethno-nationalist construct centred around the Hindu religion, rejecting other faith’s foreign influences and co-opting legends like Rama as their symbols. 

On April 10, 2022, rallies for the Hindu festival were hijacked by proponents of Hindutva, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the Global Hindu Committee) that turned their attention to Muslim dominated localities. This led to spurious incidents of organized harassment against Muslims in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. 

In Uttar Pradesh, a mob climbed atop a mosque and planted a saffron flag on its dome. Videos emerged from Madhya Pradesh where a crowd set fire to a mosque in the city of Khargone, an event where the police were caught standing idly by. In West Bengal’s Muslim localities, men brandishing swords and chanting for the death of Muslims carried threatening messages in a festive rally through Muslim localities. 

The swords, saffron flag and destruction of symbolic religious property are all precursors to a sinister uprising within a large section of India’s Hindu community, which constitutes 79.8% of the nation’s population. The brazen threat of violence towards India’s Muslims is underpinned by the BJP’s institutionalization of impunity for its ideological patrons, where the display of video-taped murders of innocent Muslims and calls to crowds of thousands for their genocide in broad daylight, are left unpunished. 

The aftermath of the festive rallies led to violence between the two communities, followed by the arrest of 130 people across India. In Khargone alone, 104 Muslims were arrested. This punishment transferred the allegations of Hindu-perpetrated violence to the aggrieved community; a selective punishment that has come to symbolize policing under authorities led by BJP’s leaders, in this case, the State Home Minister, Narottam Mishra, who sanctioned the anti-encroachment drive and ordered the deployment of the police who, in turn, ensured the impunity for the perpetrators. 

But a far more sinister outcome awaited those in the ire of the state. Bulldozers rolled into Khargone’s predominantly Muslim neighborhoods and began an unannounced demolition of their houses. 

Shaikh Mohammed Rafiq, a 72 year old soda seller, awoke to bulldozers being led on by hundreds of police officers in his neighborhood as reported by the BBC. Rafiq’s house, among many other Muslim homes, were reduced to rubble. More than 100 kilometres away, Shahbaz Khan and his family were forced outside their house, and in the process were prohibited from carrying their personal belongings, and even the Quran, as the destruction of his livelihood proceeded with a swift ferocity. Since then, Khan has sought refuge at the local mosque. 

“We are left with nothing, but no one seems to care. Everytime we go to the police station, they shoo us away”, he told the BBC. Home Minister Mishra even publicly lauded the incident, announcing that the houses of Muslim “stone pelters” will be bulldozed.

A week later, another demolition drive began in the Jahangirpuri region of India’s capital city, New Delhi, at the behest of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), which was under the BJP’s jurisdiction, since 2017 until the most recent Municipal elections in 2023. Heedless of the Supreme Court hearing on the Jahaingirpuri Demolitions case the same morning, the relentless “anti-encroachment drive” was encouraged by Delhi’s BJP Chief, Adesh Gupta, who wrote to the NDMC mayor, saying “the illegal encroachments and constructions done by these rioters should be identified and bulldozers run over these encroachments.” BJP Member of Parliament, Manoj Tiwari blamed the violence on Rama Navami on “illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslims.”

At 11 a.m. IST, the Supreme Court requested the NDMC abstain from the demolitions with respect to the demolitions, and communicated the court order to the respective authorities. However, the NDMC officials refused to acknowledge having received the order and continued with the destruction.

At 12:45 p.m. IST, Brinda Karat, a senior member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), carried a printed copy of the court order to Jahangirpuri, finally ending the ongoing carnage. 

The BJP’s disregard for law is not accidental, but emblematic of an ongoing political contagion that encourages hate crimes against minority communities, and in the process, raises the ante for pervasive violence against their livelihoods. 

Shahrukh Alam, an advocate at the Supreme Court, appeared in court to defend the people of Jahangirpuri whose houses were razed. In an essay provided to The Morningside Post, published in The India Cable and The Wire, Alam wrote on the legality of these drives: “I am up against all the difficulties of framing a politically oppressive act as a legal issue.”

Alam questioned the Supreme Court’s refusal to treat these demolitions as a ideologically pervasive pattern, asking why of the 1,797 unauthorized colonies in New Delhi, the NDMC happened to target a Muslim dominated one. While appearing in Court, she also highlighted that the demolitions took place when a majority of the residents had already left, owing to religious violence earlier in the week. She highlighted that the NDMC order did not mention any particular sections or the exact properties to be demolished. 

“Rioters,” “stone-pelters,” “illegal Bangladeshis” and “Rohingya” have become easily accessible slurs to justify collective punishment for Muslims in India. Hardened by their regurgiation of such terminology in a largely ideologically propelled and state-backed network of ideological news channels, that echoes the language of an erstwhile Radio Rwanda in India. This terminology encapsulates the “otherization” of Muslims as an active threat to Hindus’ security; whereas in reality, it has rendered the world’s largest religious minority a hostage community.

When a city’s architecture serves to marginalize its minorities, as seems to be the case in several of India’s dense metropolises, the engines of hate are forced to view them as territorial binaries. Legality provides precision, hatred thrives on obscurity. The NDMC, which was backed by and occupied by the BJP thrived on a blanket application of the law that permissed this destruction. Were the orders purely focused on preventing encroachment, the demolitions would have been more specific, provided the affected parties relief and relocation and the time to pack up their belongings. 

However, India’s largely state-controlled media has sought to justify these demolitions as a response to “encroachment” by Muslims. The Indian police have shifted the blame for the violence experienced by Muslims onto the Muslims themselves, and the BJP and its Hindutva-affiliated organizations have mobilized entire communities to overlook and celebrate the injustice of stealing Muslims’ livelihoods.

It begins with hollow words. It begins with a narrative that is seemingly harmless. But when bigoted narratives command the parlance of communities, they give birth to shameful instances of collective action. When legal institutions overlook the collective hatred of those in power, they give their silent nod to the perpetrators of communal violence, creating space for the continuation of mass violence and a faceless bloodshed. 

Mohammed Shahrukh (MIA ‘24) is a first-year student studying human rights at the intersection of minorities and mass violence.

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