“My house was demolished in no time at all,” says the 45-year-old fruit seller, whose kitchen, fruit truck and cattle shed have been destroyed. “As I stood there and watched … (the police) just walked away.”
Scraps of wood, rusting metal, and trash line the sandy sidewalk in front of his home, where his four young children play.
His home was one of several properties in the Chhoti Mohan Talkies district of the town of Khagone, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, which were demolished by authorities after violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims erupted on April 10 – the day of the Hindu festival Ram Navami.
Experts say the demolitions are the culmination of a much deeper problem and that this is just the latest in a series of attacks on the country’s Muslim population, fueled in part by the rise of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). became.
They argue that Muslims in BJP-led Madhya Pradesh have been disproportionately punished in the wake of the violence, raising fears members of the country’s largest minority religion — about 200 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are Muslims — are being persecuted under the BJP.
They point to similar problems in the capital New Delhi, where witnesses told CNN that authorities began demolishing shops and other buildings in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Jahangirpuri on Wednesday, days after it happened after Hanuman Jayanti, a celebration violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims occurred on the birthday of the Hindu god Hanuman.
For Baig, there is an added sense of injustice.
Baig said he and his neighbors were nowhere near the scene of the clashes.
“I don’t know what’s happening in my country,” said Baig, who says he’s lived on the property for more than 30 years. “But all I can say is that I pay the price of being a Muslim.”
“My shops were demolished because I’m a Muslim”
Communal violence in Khagone erupted after groups of Hindu men waved saffron flags – a color associated with Hinduism that has become increasingly politicized in recent years – through neighborhoods at Ram Navami, a festival celebrating the birth of the revered with Muslim majority marched Hindu God, Lord Ram. The details of the clashes are disputed. Violent clashes broke out between Hindus and Muslims, with some men throwing stones and pointing guns in the air, according to a video released by local news outlets. Homes and cars were set on fire and at least one person died – a Muslim man – in the clashes, state police told reporters. A curfew was imposed in the city on April 10 to quell the violence, and some restrictions were lifted after 11 days, they said. The government said it had allocated a total of $131,000 to families affected by the violence.
But it’s the scenes of state officials grading properties that drew the most attention, with activists and citizens denouncing the move as unjust and illegal.
dr Tameezuddin Shaikh was at home on April 11 when he received a call from a friend informing him that authorities were bulldozing his son’s medical business in the predominantly Muslim Talab Chowk neighborhood in Khagone.
“I was stunned,” said Shaikh, who says he often provides free services to impoverished and marginalized families. “A curfew was imposed in the city and I had received no notification of an illegality. I live far from my medical business and with the curfew in place there was no way we could go and stop the demolitions. “
According to Shaikh, about a dozen shops in Talab Chowk have been demolished by Khagone authorities.
Madhya Pradesh Minister of the Interior Narottam Mishra described the state’s actions as a form of revenge. tell reporters on April 11: “Out of the houses where stones were thrown, we will turn these houses into a pile of stones.” He offered no proof that the residents whose homes were destroyed were linked to the violence.
Shaikh said neither he nor his son were involved in the violence. And he’s served the local community from that business for more than five decades without issue, he added.
“I am a respected name in Khagone, having served people all my life,” he said. “But all the medicines and everything in my clinic worth over 10 lakh rupees ($13,000) turned to rubble.”
Muslim group Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind has petitioned India’s Supreme Court calling for intervention in the demolitions, calling it a “violation” of India’s constitution.
According to lawyer and activist Kawalpreet Kaur, county officials “cannot take the law into their own hands and cannot be the judge.”
“You can’t decide who is a criminal,” she said.
Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Center for Policy Research, said the destruction in Madhya Pradesh was “unprecedented”.
“It is not the municipal office’s job to punish people who may be involved in stone-throwing or violence,” he said.
Ayub Khan, a resident of the Aurangpura Square neighborhood about 2 kilometers from Talab Chowk, lost seven shops when authorities demolished them a day after the violence.
Khan says he lost more than $26,000 to the destruction and now faces the daunting task of rebuilding without sufficient funds. He plans to petition the country’s Supreme Court against state officials.
“The demolished stores have been there for over 70 years and we have never received a single (government) notice,” he said. “In fact, my businesses have been torn down because I am a Muslim who refused to bow to the BJP leaders. The way the district administration is targeting Muslims after the violence in Khargone shows that they hate a particular community.”
CNN contacted the Secretary of the Home Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, the Home Secretary, the Khargone District Collector and the police but received no response.
Support for the Hindu right
Tensions between Indian Hindus and Muslims have been flashpoints for decades – even before India gained independence from the British. But when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP came to power in 2014 promising economic reform and development, pundits feared his rise could signal an ideological shift away from the nation’s secular norms and toward those of a Hindu nationalist state.
The BJP has its roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu group that counts Modi among its members and adheres to the Hindutva ideology, which aims to make India the land of Hindus.
Analysts and activists feared Modi’s election would expose India’s Muslims – about 14% of the country’s population – to exploitation.
According to Debasish Roy Chowdhury, co-author of To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, the “demonstrable subjugation and domination of Muslims through their constant humiliation and disempowerment” is “central” to the BJP’s Hindutva project.
“It’s straining the party’s Hindu voter base and helping to garner more support by constantly polarizing voters based on their religious identity through a relentless hate campaign,” he said.
And according to Chowdhury, Hindu vigilante groups are “being given more and more leeway.”
Over the past eight years, several BJP-led states have enacted new laws that critics say are rooted in Hindutva ideology. At the same time, reports of violence and hate speech against Muslims are increasingly making headlines across the country.
The most controversial new laws are in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk and politician. The state has enacted laws to protect cows, an animal sacred to Hindus, from slaughter and has made it increasingly difficult to transport cattle. It has also introduced an anti-conversion law, making it difficult for interfaith couples to marry or convert to Islam or Christianity. Recently, the BJP-ruled southern state of Karnataka banned Muslim girls from wearing religious headscarves in classrooms, prompting several to challenge the decision in the state’s top court – a battle they ultimately lost.
According to Muslim author and journalist Rana Ayyub, Muslims “feel like victims in their own country”.
“From what I’m seeing in India right now, I feel for my Muslims,” she said. “I feel for my brother every time he wears a yarmulke to Namaz (prayer) during the month (Ramadan).”
And the destruction of Muslim property during Ramadan is, according to Ayyub, “demonizing and demoralizing.”
“It’s like[government agencies]are doing it on purpose,” she said. “They are trying to tell us that (during) a month that is sacrosanct for Muslims, ‘we will demean your faith and your system’.”
The future
Baig continues to live in a small room in his house – the only one spared from the demolition – with his wife, children and ailing father.
They have neither running water nor electricity. Food is running out, he says, and with his existence devastated, Baig doesn’t know how he can afford to support his family.
“With temperatures up to 42 degrees Celsius, we have trouble calming our crying children,” said his wife Parveen.
Meanwhile, Khargone district officials have sacked numerous posts photos and videos to their official social media showing the police patrolling the streets and bulldozing more properties. “Let the harmony not be divided” read a tweet from Tuesday. “Create an atmosphere of peace and harmony.”
But Baig believes the institutions that protect him and his family betrayed him by destroying their home.
“I want to ask the government, how can a man who is struggling to make ends meet but supports his family by working hard every day have the means to indulge in (violent) activities?” asked Baig.