As India completes 76 years and enters its 77th year of Independence, a lot looks different from when it all began in 1947. The mission of an independent India for all its citizens is appearing to have changed course as it now heads towards an India for the select few. What we now have is a parliament that argues over the morality of a flying kiss, sarcastically thrown, while it harbors amongst its elite, members accused of sexual molestation and a judiciary that needs to remind more than twice for its orders to be duly accepted by those in power. A provocative religious rally, a riot, a communal faceoff, and finally, a mob that metes out justice according to their own standards of it is now the blueprint that has swiftly evolved to become the modus operandi of New India in its advance towards ethnic cleansing. Nuh, a city in Haryana is now making headlines for it but they are, as is obvious, not the first. In 2020, it began with Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and quickly caught up with other states to include Hubli in BJP-run Karnataka, Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, Jahangirpuri in Delhi, and cities in Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. The markers are always the same, with only the locations and processions differing from time to time. As these bulldozers start towards buildings marked for destruction, the victims happen to be, if not always, then more often, from just one particular community that appears to have been solemnized in recent times as the invaders settled upon a foreign land. ‘Bulldozer Justice’, as the term has now been coined, is the new apparent fast-track arm of the judiciary that spares no time and effort into investigation and promptly destroys whatever stands before it after years of toil and hard work. They were perpetrators, weren’t they? Justice was needed, wasn’t it? Then what better than a giant machine that tramples everything in its wake, leaving behind nothing but rubble to salvage?
The bulldozer though has maximized itself in image and power to even ignore the calls of the Supreme Court, as in the case of Jahangirpuri, Delhi, last year, when the court ordered a suspension but demolitions continued for over an hour until a second order from the Supreme Court had to be issued and a representative took the risk of standing before a bulldozer as if to remind them which actually is the highest power in the land for deciding justice. For justice these days is in the hands of politicians and their ardent supporters, as was apparent when Jawahar Yadav, an officer on special duty to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar while speaking of the demolition drive in Haryana said that the drive would continue till all the houses and properties of the suspects were demolished. “They have disrupted peace and harmony and they will have to bear the cost of it. They have intentionally and with planning attacked the Hindu yatra that involved women and children,” he said. He spoke too soon it seems, for what followed was court intervention in Haryana.
Since brazen arrests and detentions devoid of evidence would reek of a bias, bulldozer justice under the guise of illegal structures is emerging from between loopholes as the harshest yet the cleverest ruse of modern punishment against the voiceless and powerless rungs of Indian society. While authorities argue the need for justice against perpetrators and yet bigger questions are being asked, they all fall upon deaf ears as senior journalists, the likes of Ms. Anjana Om Kashyap from AajTak climbed atop a JCB in Jahangirpuri, gloating and beaming ear to ear in the midst of destroyed homes and dreams.
As the state continued to destroy 1,208 buildings including mosques, owned largely by Muslims, in five days across Haryana without issuing a single prior notice, a total of 72.1 acres of land have been razed to the ground for the punishment of 188 people arrested, and the 57 FIRs registered in Nuh so far in connection with the July 31 violence. Only thirteen acres of land legally belong to the forest department that is claiming encroachment.
The most surprising of all reasons for the demolitions is how they have coincided with communal tensions across the three states of Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab. If the encroachments were indeed illegal, then they have existed for well beyond the day of the clashes that erupted on 31st July after an annual Brajmandal Yatra, rumored to include Bajrang Dal member Monu Manesar, a cow vigilante wanted for the murder of Muslim men, passed through the Muslim-majority district of Nuh. The Punjab and Haryana High Court questioned if the move was an “exercise of ethnic cleansing“ before issuing a notice of motion to the state government. The rhetoric of a religious procession, usually of the Hindu community, instigated by Muslim men is soon followed by immediate revengeful bulldozers that arrive at the homes and dwellings of the Muslim community to raze and remind what happens to those that stand in the way of the majority. Regardless, one wonders what was the purpose of a ‘peaceful’ Hindu yatra organizing its route to meander through well-known Muslim-majority streets, devoid of any Hindu place of worship, not to mention that it was armed to the teeth with maces and sticks even before it was met with a single stone. If the stone pelters need to be booked under FIRs for violence then what of those who came prepared for the violence even before it was initiated? Is pelting Indian citizens accusations of treason with slogans of ‘Desh ke gaddaron ko, Goli maro salon ko (shoot the traitors of our country)’ while covered in saffron, any less than the pelting of a roadside stone? If there were perpetrators, then there were retaliators too, who were in fact better supplied to cause more damage. Do their properties not come under the need for instant justice or will they, if ever booked, deserve the due process of law? Assuming the 176 people arrested were all actually involved in riots, then what has happened in this country to the protocol of ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Will a mob now decide the guilt of people even before one is presented before the courts of justice? Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind at the Supreme Court questioned, “My plea is that such instances are happening in other states also. When processions are carried out and frictions occur, homes of only one community are bulldozed and the politics in power judges what happens or doesn’t happen.” As the yatra continued its journey, a mosque in the area was set ablaze with its 22-year-old imam, Maulana Saad inside it. Were there no perpetrators in this act or does this country deal with the arson of a mosque differently? The families affected by these demolition drives insist upon their innocence and have demanded evidence from the police of their involvement in the Nuh violence. Some gullible ones still believe in upholding the constitution of this country that demands evidence for convictions.
“Look at Madhya Pradesh where the minister says that if Muslims do such a thing, they cannot expect justice. Who decides that? Who gave him that power? Somebody is in jail and his house was demolished,” Sibal asked while seeking a stay order.
Ironically, just as Mr. Sibal asked, the knocking down began even before arrests could be made to pin the demolitions on 250 shanties, home to rickshaw pullers, ragpickers, vegetable merchants, and daily wage workers, prominently Muslim inhabited, were razed in the wake of these riots merely for being in the area where riots were to ensue with not a single warning issued for evacuation. Officials claimed it was a routine exercise to rid the city of Bangladeshi immigrants residing there and had nothing to do with either the violence or the Muslims living there. Only four Rohingya men were arrested for their alleged involvement in the violence. It has become an undeniable reality that despite encroachment being a grave concern throughout India it is increasingly being associated solely with Muslims and vengeance is being exacted from just one community. Munjila Khatun, from Bongaigaon in Assam, said that she was collecting plastic bottles when she received a call from her son and rushed home. “Officials had started demolition without asking us to remove our things. They broke all of our kitchen utensils, threw our bedding, and asked us to leave the town,” she said. Abdul Hussain, a vegetable vendor, said that they requested officials to give them some time but the officials accused them of being involved in the communal violence in Nuh. “We have been punished for something we did not do. They took my son who was not even present at the violence site and arrested him. We are poor people, no one is ready to listen to us,” he added. His son is 15 years old. A minor, if not anything else.
The properties of Akram Khan, booked along with Saddam Hussain, Wahid Khan, Mausam Hussain, and Aas Mohammad for breaking and torching cars, were razed. “We were not even present at the location at the time of the violence. We have proper documents for the land and it is not at all on forest land,” said Mohammad. Khalid Mohammad, a tea vendor at Khedla Crossing, said he shut his shop soon after he saw a mob gathering. “I shared videos of the suspects with police to help them but they still demolished my shop,” he said.
Akbar Khan, 17, and his mother Ashmeena, 53, were seen loading damaged but still useful items into a mini-tractor after picking them from the debris of their pathology lab, built from a bank loan of Rupees 10 Lakh, only two months ago. “We have not yet paid the first installment. I am a widow with four sons. How am I supposed to manage everything now?” she asked. Mr. Khan said that he came to know of the bulldozers from a neighbour. “By the time we reached, they had already razed half of my lab. They did not even let us take out the expensive equipment,” he said. “They (the authorities) are saying that we were involved in violence. I can show you the CCTV footage of that time. My brother and I were here at our shop,” he added. These are not the only instances of the authority’s disregard for procedure and methodology.
Mr. Khan’s landlord, Mohammad Sahood, who owns three more shops in the area, said he had complete documents of his properties and yet hadn’t received any notice of the proposed demolition by the authorities. “My three brothers and I own eight to ten shops opposite the medical college. There was some dispute on the property with the authorities but we have won the case in the local court and the High Court also,” he said, showing his property documents. He alleged that the officials who accompanied the bulldozers tore up the documents shown to them. Vinesh Dalal, one of his tenants who ran a pharmacy shop, said, “I asked them to wait till the property owner arrives, but they did not wait and started pulling down the shops.” Aas Mohammad, a security guard at the medical college, said his house was razed down without any warning. “Although I admit I had built it on forest land, they should have given us time to take out our belongings,” he said.
Nuh’s Congress MLA Chaudhary Aftab Ahmed said “The way the Haryana government has targeted people from one community is very unfair. More than 500 people have become homeless and those who had all the documents related to their land and paid property tax annually. The allegations that they were constructed in the forest or HSVP land is baseless.”
Considering that the structures marked for destruction were indeed illegal, even then there is a process of law that is required before arriving, JCB and police guards in tow at doorsteps to announce the removal of a property. Some residents allege that notices were issued hours, or sometimes, just minutes before the demolition. Procedure demands that residents are supposed to be given a notice a week in advance to respond to, followed by another restoration notice if the reply is found to be inadequate. It is only if this process has been followed that a demolition order can be issued and a structure can be razed and certainly not in the wake of communal tensions with curfews and section 144 issued across the city.
In a video posted by Al Jazeera, hotelier Mushtaq Ahmed mourns the loss of the building that he was running for the past twelve years. Ahmed, a man with no connection to the riots, claims that all his paperwork is intact and the structure, which had belongings worth Rupees 40 Lakhs was quite legally his own property, but now reduced to dust merely because it was allegedly used for stone pelting.
Liyakat Ali, who owns a tiles showroom in Kherli Kankar village, said a demolition notice was posted a few minutes before his outlet was demolished and that he had registered the property and was running it for six years without receiving any notice from the administration.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-run municipal corporation claims they had organized a two-day anti-encroachment drive in the area to identify “illegal constructions of rioters” in Jahangirpuri and demolish them using bulldozers. “Our JCBs (excavators) and staff will go to Jahangirpuri to remove illegal encroachment from roads and government land. It is our routine exercise. We will execute it and return,” Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh said. Residents of Jahangirpuri however said that they received no notice about this drive. Jamila, whose cart was among the first to be demolished by the bulldozer, told the Indian Express, “No notice was given to us. My husband and I have been running a cart here for two decades. Ye sab badle ke bhav se ho raha hai (This is being done with vengeance in mind).”
Despite the havoc before her eyes, an appreciative Ms. Anajana Om Kashyap seemed rather dissatisfied when a JCB driver left a juice shop half demolished. “You never removed this juice corner completely, only the roof has been removed. Is there a reason why?”, she asked, sitting atop the giant machine that had arrived to serve justice. “This is the first legal action against the mosque,” Kashyap rejoiced as the JCB headed for a mosque. “The illegal construction is being completely removed.” She then headed to a gate near the mosque where people were protesting the demolition. Kashyap poked her mic towards a woman, who demanded, “The Supreme Court has given the order to stop, why are they demolishing this?”
Kashyap swiftly moved the mic to a man who said, “My name is Sonu. I’m a Hindu. Hindus and Muslims live here in harmony…Our employment has gone.” At this point Kashyap had seemingly had enough and turned to the camera, saying, “We have to go from here. Police is asking us to leave.”
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, also appearing for Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind at the Supreme Court, submitted that there are 731 unauthorized colonies in Delhi alone inhabited by 50 lakh people. “If you want to act against unauthorized constructions, you go to Sainik Farms. Come to Golf Links, where I stay and where every second home is an encroachment. You don’t want to touch them, but target the poor people,” he said.
Despite the actual machinery being used is the JCB, ‘bulldozer justice’, a term first used by UP Chief Minister Adityanath to describe revengeful, quick justice in his state during his terms quickly gained currency with others vying for the same. The bulldozer has been used by politicians as a symbol of fear to flaunt their clout in rallies and speeches to threaten just one community of what awaits them if they failed to toe the line. A similar procedure was seen last year during riots in Hubli, Karnataka when Mr. Bommai hinted that the damage caused to the public and private properties would be recovered from the rioters. “When riots took place in Uttar Pradesh, certain action was taken according to the situation prevailing over there. We are reviewing the situation in Karnataka. We will go by our law,” Mr Bommai told reporters. The same procedure was followed in Madhya Pradesh where perpetrators were dealt the bulldozer blow in the place of a legal procedure.
An elderly man, who did not wish to be named, says that both communities have suffered losses in the violence. “I own two-three shops here but most of my tenants are Hindus. Will they not suffer financially now?” he asked. “I don’t want to talk much about the government. I know we won’t get anything back now,” he added. The man’s remorse and lack of faith in the prevalent governments resonates with that of the nation at large as the world watches in horror while homes, livelihoods, and a basic chance to life is being denied to the Muslim community that has come under the blaze of communalism in a country that boasts of a ganga-jamuna Tehzeeb. One wonders if this tragedy has befallen us today or it already had back in 2014.
