Altaf Hussain Wani
The ancient lanes of Dalmandi in Varanasi have fallen silent, save for the mechanical growl of bulldozers and the muffled sobs of displaced families. In a brazen display of state-orchestrated erasure, Indian authorities have marked six mosques for demolition—including the 226-year-old Mirza Karimullah Beg Mosque—under the threadbare pretext of road widening. Over a hundred homes and shops have already been reduced to rubble, rendering hundreds homeless in a Muslim-majority locality that has stood for centuries. This is not urban development. This is demographic engineering disguised as governance, the latest front in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) systematic campaign to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra by annihilating every physical and cultural vantage point of its Muslim citizens.
The Dalmandi demolition drive is neither isolated nor accidental. It follows a well-worn blueprint perfected by the Hindutva regime over decades. From the criminal destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992—an act that was subsequently sanctified by the judiciary—to the recent razing of mosques and madrasas in Delhi, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh, the methodology remains chillingly consistent: manufacture a legal pretext, deploy the bulldozer, and let the courts legitimize the fait accompli. The Marble Wali Masjid, the Ali Raza Khan Mosque, and the other houses of worship now facing the wrecking ball in Varanasi are not obstacles to traffic; they are obstacles to the Sangh Parivar’s vision of a Muslim-less public sphere.
What makes this machinery terrifying is not merely the brutality of the bulldozer, but the total complicity of the Indian state. In Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has transformed the bulldozer into an official emblem of Hindu majoritarian rule, using it to pulverize Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship with theatrical cruelty while police cordons ensure no resistance is possible. In Assam, the state’s eviction drives have specifically targeted Bengali-speaking Muslim villages, with security forces firing on protesters as bulldozers advance. In Delhi, following the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2020, the municipal corporation turned its wrath on Shaheen Bagh and other Muslim neighborhoods, claiming “encroachments” while sparing adjacent Hindu-owned properties. In Uttarakhand, the BJP government has weaponized the Uniform Civil Code alongside demolition drives to squeeze the Muslim and Christian minority populations. In Manipur, the state machinery did not merely stand aside during the ethnic cleansing of Kuki Christians; elements within the police and administration actively facilitated the violence, arming Meitei mobs while blockading relief to besieged hill communities. The message is unambiguous: in BJP-ruled states, the law exists not to protect minorities, but to erase them.
The judiciary, entrusted as the final guardian of constitutional morality, has largely abdicated its responsibility, acting as a silent—or worse, complicit—observer in this nationwide project of dispossession. From the Babri verdict that rewarded the mob with the land they desecrated, to the habitual refusal of courts to intervene when bulldozers are mobilized against Muslim localities, the scales of justice have been tilted decisively toward the majoritarian mob. When petitions are filed, hearings are delayed; when stay orders are granted, they arrive after the rubble has cooled. The Supreme Court’s intermittent expressions of concern have done nothing to deter the bulldozer regimes in Lucknow, Dispur, or Dehradun.
This is not merely administrative persecution; it is electoral strategy. The BJP has built its political empire on the embers of Muslim marginalization. In recently held elections in West Bengal, the party’s campaign of communal polarization yielded massive dividends brought party to power, proving that anti-Muslim vitriol translates directly into Hindu consolidation. In Assam, the communally tailored National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) served as rallying points to isolate the Muslim Bengali population. In Bihar, the party has stoked communal fires to fracture the opposition’s social coalition. The formula is cynical and effective: dehumanize, demolish, and harvest the votes of a frightened majority.
The project is far from complete. Having turned Uttar Pradesh into a laboratory of Hindu supremacy and let Manipur burn as a warning to minorities, the RSS-BJP apparatus now eyes new territories. In Punjab, the agrarian protests temporarily checked the Hindutva advance, but the Sangh’s long-term project remains the subjugation of Sikh political assertion and the dilution of minority cultural autonomy. In Indian Occupied Kashmir, the abrogation of Article 370 was only the opening salvo. The Modi regime’s alteration of domicile laws, its crackdown on Muslim political leadership, and its settler-colonial demographic designs reveal an intent to replicate the Palestine model in the Himalayan valley—transforming a Muslim-majority region into a Hindu-dominated hinterland through state terror and demographic engineering.
Parallel to this physical erasure runs an institutional decapitation of political opposition. While RSS and BJP leaders openly call for the economic boycott of Muslims, the genocidal cleansing of “termites,” and the shooting of anti-CAA protesters—often with police standing in attendance—the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) function as the regime’s private militias. Arvind Kejriwal sits in jail; Rahul Gandhi has been hounded; opposition chief ministers face midnight raids. The law is wielded with surgical precision against dissenters, while Hindutva foot soldiers enjoy blanket impunity. Hate speech has become the official language of the ruling class, protected by a law enforcement apparatus that has been thoroughly communalized and an election commission that has lost all spine.
India is being remade. The Constitution, with its promises of equality and secularism, is being bulldozed alongside the mosques of Dalmandi. What is underway is not a development project, but a purification ritual—a fascistic endeavor to cleanse the Indian landscape of Muslim presence, memory, and political agency. The bulldozer is the true flag of this republic, and its engine runs on the fuel of minority blood and dispossession. Unless the world awakens to the reality that India’s democratic facade has been shattered by the hammer of Hindutva, the darkness descending on Varanasi’s ancient mosques will soon engulf every corner of the subcontinent where minorities dare to exist.
The writer is Chairman of Kashmir Institute of International Relations ( KIIR) and can be reached at ; @sultan1913 and [email protected]
