By Gerry Shih
They rumbled into a central Indian village and tore down shops owned by a Muslim man falsely accused of kidnapping a Hindu woman. They rolled through a Delhi slum, knocking down the outer gate of a mosque that was the site of a Hindu-Muslim clash days earlier.
Justice in India is increasingly meted out not by courts but by the long arm of heavy machinery. As religious tensions have mounted in recent weeks, local officials in four districts governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have used bulldozers to summarily demolish property owned by Muslims accused of crimes, turning the hulking machines into a polarising symbol of state power under Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister and a staunch Hindu nationalist.
Bulldozers were used most recently in the Jahangirpuri neighbourhood of the Indian capital after street fighting broke out on April 16 between Hindus who had gathered in front of a mosque, waving swords and chanting abuse, and Muslim residents who hurled rocks.
Four days later, city leaders called in excavators that crushed street stalls, shop fronts and an extension of the mosque in this Muslim neighbourhood.
Standing beside a heap of crumpled metal, Rokiya, the owner of what used to be the Bismillah Kebab cart, said about 20 neighbourhood vendors, including two Hindus, saw their mobile stalls or shop fronts smashed.
She was being punished, she said, for a riot that she didn’t participate in – how could she when she was busy trying to support her family? Officials defended the demolitions as an effort to clear buildings encroaching on the road.
But in a megacity where unauthorised construction is the norm, BJP supporters and critics agreed on the underlying motive for the operation: payback.
“If you want to throw stones, then don’t live in an illegal building,” said Kapil Mishra, a BJP leader in Delhi. As India’s Hindus celebrated the birthdays of the gods Ram and Hanuman in April, Muslims observed Ramadaan. Gatherings across the country were marred by violence.
Although local news and police reports suggested that most of the clashes were sparked by processions of armed Hindu men marching into Muslim districts, Mishra claimed that the chaos was orchestrated by undocumented Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh seeking to destabilise the country – a long-circulating conspiracy theory that has regained popularity among the Hindu right in recent weeks.
Bulldozers may be seen in more and more states, Mishra predicted. “There was huge demand and public expectations that bulldozers should come to Delhi – it was on social media and on the ground,” he said. “The bulldozer has become a symbol of law and order.”
Other prominent BJP figures openly hinted that Muslims were the target of the demolitions. Lawmakers, including a party spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao, tweeted a meme that JCB – the British heavy-machinery brand that makes most of the bulldozers in India – stood for “Jihad Control Board”.
Rao later deleted his post. In Delhi, the Supreme Court put a stop to the demolitions hours after they began, questioning the legality of razing buildings without giving property owners ample notice.
When a judge suggested that local authorities were using excessive force, a government lawyer admitted that heavy machinery was not necessary for a routine street clean-up.
“It is manifest that this was retributive, and it was punitive,” said Aakar Patel, the chairperson of Amnesty International India.
“It was collective punishment reserved for a part of our society.” Patel said the demolitions were the latest escalation by a ruling party that has sought to restrict where Muslims can do business, where they can worship and whom they can marry.
In Karnataka state, women have been banned from wearing headscarves in schools. Roadside meat stalls have been banned in Gujarat, where many Hindus are vegetarians. In a business district outside Delhi, Friday prayers in public spaces have been outlawed.
The bulldozer became a divisive symbol this year during elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most-populous state. The state’s chief minister, the Hindu nationalist priest Yogi Adityanath, known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, had threatened early in his tenure to raze the homes of suspected gangsters.
As he campaigned for a second term early this year on a lawand-order platform, BJP supporters nicknamed him “Bulldozer Guru” and drove bulldozers at his rallies.
When Adityanath scored a resounding victory in February, jubilant supporters climbed atop earthmovers and danced on the raised shovels.
This month, in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, officials sent bulldozers to destroy the homes of Muslims accused of throwing stones at Hindus, although the men had not been convicted of a crime.
In the aftermath, local party members erected billboards praising Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as “Bulldozer Uncle”, a nod to Adityanath’s moniker. Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the BJP was effectively tapping into its perennial campaign planks: Hindu nationalism and economic development.
The demolition campaigns could win over moderate Indian voters who see a genuine need for slums to be cleared and streets beautified, he said.
But they are also an effective “dog whistle” for many in the BJP’s base who would like to see India first and foremost as a homeland for Hindus. “Ultimately everyone understands who the target is,” Vaishnav said, referring to Muslims.
“Whether it’s bulldozing, whether it’s amendments to citizenship laws, whether it’s dietary habits, we’re seeing religion being used as a filter to determine who belongs in India today.”
* Shih is the India bureau chief for the Washington Post, covering India and neighbouring countries. This is an edited version of his article.