(Image source: Teona Tsintsadze/Getty Images)

In the northern Indian district of Mathura, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, 30-year-old Mohammad Balu works at the delicate craft of anklet-making—an art he has practiced for over a decade. He sits beside his brother, their hands moving in sync, assembling tiny metal pieces as they always have. But now, they work beneath open skies, surrounded by debris.

Their home in the neighborhood of Nai Basti was one of dozens reduced to rubble on the morning of August 9, 2023, when police and railway authorities arrived without warning. Bulldozers followed. “We were living as usual until that morning,” Balu recalled. “No prior notice, no time to gather anything. People were crying. Families had lived here for fifty, sixty years. And in minutes—it was all gone.”

Local authorities said the demolitions were needed to upgrade the old railway line by replacing its narrow tracks with wider ones. But for residents, the erasure felt too deliberate—too precise—to pass as mere urban development.

In Nai Basti, life now clings to ruins. The neighborhood mosque, where elders once gathered for evening prayers, no longer stands. Windows that once eavesdropped on childhood secrets are now shattered frames facing the sky. A Sufi shrine—its stone cool in the shade, scented with roses and incense—is missing. What remains are only faint outlines in the dust, and memories held by those left to remember them.

Kadir Khan, 50, sat under a tree beside the wreckage of his home. “They’ve turned our lives to dust,” he said, gesturing toward the rubble. “We understand now—this is about removing us. They don’t want Muslims here.” He pointed to a row of intact homes just behind his, all of them Hindu-owned. His own house, now flattened, had shared a boundary wall with them.

Mathura, a city revered by millions of Hindus as the birthplace of Lord Krishna, is at the center of a heated religious dispute. At its heart lies a mosque adjacent to the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple—one that Hindutva groups claim was built on the ruins of an ancient temple. Dinesh Falahari, a leader of the Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi Mukti Sangharsh Nyas—a right-wing vigilante outfit that sees itself as fighting for a Hindu state—insists that the mosque “stands exactly where the original Krishna temple once did.”

Falahari boasts of having filed complaints and petitions that led to the removal of nearly a hundred “illegal minarets” across Mathura. “I myself wrote to the Railway Ministry demanding the removal of encroachments on railway land,” he told The Revealer. “These Muslims are invaders—they have grabbed land wherever they could in this historic city.”

By his own admission, it was his letter to the Railway Ministry that laid the groundwork for the clearance operation that razed over 135 Muslim homes in Nai Basti.

Over the past year, the bulldozer has become a powerful emblem of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for a “New India”—one that critics warn is growing increasingly exclusionary. Under what is now being called “bulldozer justice,” Muslim homes and businesses are being destroyed in the wake of communal conflicts and political dissent under the pretext of illegal construction or encroachment. Many of the incidents have been reported in states governed by the ruling Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

(Image source: Salman Ali/Hindustan Times/Getty Images/TIME Magazine)

Fahad Zuberi, a columnist and doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, observes that the Bharatiya Janata Party has increasingly used demolitions as a tool of majoritarian governance. “Bulldozers are being used to flatten Muslim neighborhoods under the pretext of removing ‘illegal encroachments’ or punishing alleged rioters,” he said. “It is collective punishment dressed up as urban order.”

A year-long documentation of state-led evictions by Frontline Magazine in 2024 recorded 48 cases of housing rights violations across 16 states and union territories in India. These demolitions resulted in at least 7,407 homes being razed, rendering approximately 41,085 people homeless. Nearly 37 percent of these demolitions specifically targeted Muslim homes and localities.

In recent years, India has witnessed not only a rise in instances of “bulldozer justice” disproportionately targeting Muslims, but also a sharp surge in organized hate speech. According to a 2025 report by the Washington-based India Hate Lab, there were 1,165 documented hate speech events in India in 2024—98.5% of which targeted Muslims. Alarmingly, 29.2% of these events were organized by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and nearly 80% occurred in BJP-governed states.

The report underscores the central role played by political leaders, Hindu monks, and religious figures in stoking anti-Muslim sentiment. This included calls for outright violence, the economic boycott of Muslim businesses, the destruction of Muslim residential properties, and the seizing or demolition of Muslim religious structures.

Today, hate speech in India is a deliberate political tool, with Hindu nationalists weaponizing religious imagery to incite fear and resentment. They increasingly frame Muslims as existential threats, and brand political dissenters as “pro-Muslim” or “anti-Hindu”—a tactic aimed at polarizing voters and consolidating majoritarian support for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“There’s an alarming ease with which hate speech is being normalized,” says Raqib Hameed Naik, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. “People know there will be no consequences, especially when they see those in the highest offices—sometimes even the Prime Minister—openly spewing hate without facing any accountability.” This impunity, Naik explains, creates a ripple effect: “Society begins to internalize the idea that hatred against minorities is not just acceptable, but justified.”

The impact is twofold. On one hand, hate speech pushes minorities further to the margins, reinforcing the notion that they do not belong. On the other, it lays the groundwork for real-world violence—bulldozer justice, lynchings, and targeted attacks—especially when such actions are framed as legitimate punishment. “There’s a direct correlation,” Naik says, “between hate speech and hate crimes. And when these punishments are directed at minorities, they are not only tolerated—they are celebrated.”

Among the most glaring manifestations of this are punitive demolitions, where the homes and livelihoods of Muslim families are destroyed in the name of law and order. Crucially, the Frontline report from 2024 found that one in every four of these 48 documented cases was a punitive demolition—carried out explicitly as a form of punishment. In every such instance, it was Muslim families who were targeted.

Throughout India today, communal tensions rise, violence erupts, and Muslims are swiftly labeled as rioters or criminals—often without due process. What follows is state-sanctioned retribution. Bulldozers roll in to raze the homes and businesses of the accused, transforming law enforcement into a spectacle of punitive retribution.

Demolition as Punishment

The typical pattern for “bulldozer justice” is an orchestrated sequence of communal flare-ups followed by targeted demolitions where the bulldozer is deployed as both intimidation and collective punishment.

This cycle came into sharp focus again in early 2025, when Chhaava, a Bollywood historical drama, inflamed an already volatile atmosphere. Centered on the life of 17th-century Maratha king Sambhaji Maharaj—who was captured and brutally executed by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb—the film stirred intense public emotion, particularly in Maharashtra, a western Indian state historically tied to Maratha identity. Audiences were seen weeping in cinemas and chanting incendiary slogans, reacting to the film’s graphic portrayal of Mughal violence and its glorification of Hindu resistance.

This cinematic narrative quickly escalated into real-world unrest. On March 17, 2025, Nagpur, a city in Maharashtra, erupted in violence after Hindutva groups organized a protest where they set an effigy of Aurangzeb ablaze. The situation spiraled when rumors spread that a piece of cloth with Quranic verses had been burned during the demonstration. A clash between members of the Hindu and Muslim communities left at least 30 people injured and led to widespread vandalism—homes were set on fire, and vehicles were torched.

The next day, the police filed multiple reports against leaders and participants from both communities and arrested over 50 individuals, many of whom were Muslim. Additionally, although a Hindu group organized the initial protest, two Muslims who belong to the Minorities Democratic Party, Fahim Khan and Yusuf Sheikh, were named as main conspirators and charged with sedition. The Nagpur Municipal Corporation then decided to demolish the houses of the two accused. The corporation claimed that the houses had illegal encroachments. The two accused men filed a plea in the Bombay High Court and demanded a stay of the demolitions in line with the Supreme court order against bulldozer justice.

But the following day, civic authorities, backed by police, arrived at Khan’s house with bulldozers and demolished his two-story property, citing unauthorized construction. They also demolished parts of Yusuf Sheikh’s residence. Ayaz Khan, Yusuf’s brother, disputed the demolition, claiming legal ownership of the property since 1970. “This is an act of revenge. We have no involvement in the riots,” Ayaz said. “On Saturday, when it was a holiday, the NMC handed us a notice. We showed them the documents proving the property was sanctioned, but they refused to accept them, citing the holiday. When we returned, the demolition order had already been issued. The court reprimanded the NMC and stayed the demolition. But we’ve still suffered losses due to their actions.”

That same choreography of punishment also played out in the heavily militarized terrain of Kashmir. In the wake of the deadliest civilian attack in two decades—an April terrorist strike in Pulwama—authorities demolished at least seven residential homes within 48 hours.

Authorities claimed that all the houses belonged to members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group designated as a terrorist organization by several countries. Some of these individuals, they alleged, were involved in the Pahalgam attack.

Following the demolitions, the sister of Asif Sheikh, one of the five suspected militants, told The Wire, “When I arrived, my mother and sisters had already been taken away by the police. That night, I saw a man in camouflage—perhaps there to plant a bomb. We have no idea about the attack in Pahalgam. This house was built by our grandfather. We only had a two-room share in it, but they destroyed the entire structure.”

She added, “Even if my brother was involved in the Pahalgam attack, what does our family have to do with it? Why are our parents being punished for something they didn’t do?”

These bulldozer actions continue despite a November 2024 Supreme Court ruling, which mandates that demolitions should not proceed without a prior show-cause notice and a minimum 15-day period for the affected parties to respond.

“These cases shock our conscience,” the court remarked. “The residential premises of the appellants were demolished in a high-handed manner…There is something called the right to shelter, and something called due process.” The bench reminded the authorities—particularly the development authority—that the right to shelter is a fundamental part of Article 21 of the Constitution. It further emphasized that the law mandates providing affected parties with a reasonable opportunity to respond before any demolition action is taken.

Yet, cases like those in Nagpur and Jammu continue to defy constitutional safeguards—often justified in the name of “security”—with little to no adherence to due process. But these instances are far from isolated incidents.

“These punitive demolitions are not random acts, but part of an expanding state playbook,” said Malini Ranganathan, Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. “If you think about the bulldozer in terms of the city, it is literally a tool of obliterating claims to space and belonging. It is a tool of banishing and erasing certain populations from urban citizenship. It is a tool for terrorizing certain populations into submission and ensuring their obedience,” she said. “This has been shown throughout the world and throughout time—wherever and whenever the bulldozer has been used. So, in this way, the bulldozer in India today serves as a weapon to erase or at least minimize Muslim belonging and legitimacy in the city.”

Examples abound. In Madhya Pradesh’s Mandla district, several Muslim homes were bulldozed because the police found beef in their owners’ refrigerators and cows in their backyards–—acts framed as violations of cow protection laws, but widely seen as a signal that non-Hindu ways of life won’t be tolerated. In Madhya Pradesh’s Jirapur village, after a conflict between Muslim and Dalit communities, 18 Muslim homes were demolished, with another 30 partially razed.

In Mumbai’s Mira Road area, the state government demolished fifteen properties owned by Muslims in Haidary Chowk following communal riots that broke out in January. Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh—authorities in Bareilly razed eleven Muslim homes after violence erupted during a Muharram procession on July 18. In Delhi’s Mansarovar Park, during a May 2 demolition drive, only the Muslim-majority settlement was selectively targeted—just a day before Eid.

This trend of punitive demolitions persisted well before 2024. In 2022, following communal violence during a Hindu festival in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone, authorities demolished 16 houses and 29 shops belonging to Muslims. In Delhi’s Jahangirpuri, days after clashes during a religious procession, bulldozers razed approximately 25 Muslim-owned shops and homes—continuing the drive even after the Supreme Court ordered a stay.

These cases of bulldozer justice are not only limited to homes and businesses—in the past year alone, several places of worship have also been targeted. In January 2024, the Delhi Development Authority demolished the 700-year-old Masjid Akhonji in Mehrauli. In July 2024, another Mosque in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, was vandalized and partially destroyed by a mob.

“With the rise of Hindutva politics in India and its far-right undercurrents, the construction of anti-Muslim sentiment has also become a political demand seeping across the country,” says Zuberi, the columnist and doctoral student at MIT. Zuberi examines this phenomenon through the lens of political socialization—the process by which certain political values become embedded in everyday life and public opinion. While political socialization can encourage egalitarian shifts, such as growing acceptance of historically marginalized communities, it can also entrench exclusionary ideas. In the case of bulldozer politics, Zuberi argues, it normalizes the belief that demolishing Muslim homes is a legitimate form of collective punishment.

The State on the Frontlines of Hate and the Monk Who’s the Bulldozer King

While the bulldozer has become a broader symbol of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of authoritarian efficiency, it is most strongly associated with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath—a hardline Hindu monk in saffron robes who has built his political brand on Muslim hate. Under his leadership, Uttar Pradesh not only recorded the highest number of demolition drives in 2024 but also emerged as the state with the greatest number of hate speech incidents. Adityanath himself topped the list of politicians and far-right figures espousing hate speech last year.

Since taking charge in 2017, after the BJP swept to power in the state with a historic mandate, Adityanath has become the party’s second-most recognizable figure after Modi. Known for attracting massive crowds on the campaign trail, Adityanath has repeatedly invoked the bulldozer as a symbol of decisive justice—particularly during his 2022 re-election campaign, when he pledged to use it against “criminals,” “mafias,” and “rioters.” The first high-profile bulldozer action under his government came in 2020, when authorities demolished the home of a “gangster” accused of killing eight police officers. That same man was later killed in a so-called “encounter”—a term often used in India to describe extrajudicial killings by police.

But the bulldozer is far from a neutral symbol of state strength or justice. Under Adityanath, it has become a tool of Hindu nationalism. His election speeches frequently employed anti-Muslim rhetoric, branding Muslims as “rioters” or likening them to “Taliban” sympathizers. As the bulldozer emerged as the unofficial mascot of the BJP’s tough-on-crime image, its message was unmistakable: the so-called criminals largely belonged to communities outside the Hindu mainstream. These slogans, combined with his government’s record of demolishing Muslim homes and businesses, earned him the nickname “Bulldozer Baba.” In a state where Muslims have historically shaped its commercial and cultural fabric, these actions are more than symbolic. Uttar Pradesh has become a testing ground for the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda, offering a template for replicating Muslim marginalization elsewhere.

(Image source: Minaj Khan/The New York Times)

During the 2024 elections, Adityanath rallied crowds with slogans like “batenge to katenge” (if we divide, we will be cut) and “ek hain toh safe hain” (if we are united, we are safe)—thinly veiled calls for Hindu unity against perceived external threats.

As Zuberi aptly put it: “India’s diversity is being reduced to a religious binary. If Hindus, across all castes, must stay united, then who exactly is the ‘other’ that the BJP is rallying against?” In this framework, Muslims are the perpetual internal enemy—one that must be controlled, disciplined, and ultimately, erased. The bulldozer has emerged as the most potent symbol of that erasure.

Adityanath’s bulldozer politics have not only reshaped the political landscape of Uttar Pradesh but have emboldened Hindu nationalist organizations across the country. They’ve fueled the rise of smaller, more militant local outfits and encouraged far-right figures—like Dinesh Falahari—to incite hate with impunity. At rallies and online, calls for economic boycotts of Muslims are now casually blended with warnings against “love jihad”—a baseless claim that Muslim men are attempting to convert Hindu women through marriage—and “land jihad,” a conspiracy theory alleging that Muslims are deliberately acquiring land to expand their influence. Other BJP-ruled states—particularly Madhya Pradesh, Assam, and Gujarat—are increasingly mirroring Yogi Adityanath’s bulldozer-style governance.

The bulldozer is now an icon of Hindu nationalism, paraded at Hindu supremacist rallies, glorified in Hindutva pop songs, and rolled into Muslim neighborhoods not just to demolish property—but to broadcast power. Under Adityanath, it has become more than a machine. It is a rallying cry, a visual declaration of a state’s shift from governance to spectacle, and from justice to retribution.

But Zuberi cautions that the normalization of violence is no longer limited to BJP-ruled states—it is beginning to seep into those governed by other parties as well. “As the government continues to portray Muslims as an imminent threat to the nation, these narratives take deep root in the public imagination,” he warns. “Even non-BJP states may eventually respond to this polarization with the same hatred that now drives official actions in BJP-ruled regions.”

Aakar Patel, executive director of Amnesty International India, echoed the same idea. “Once majoritarian laws take hold, rolling them back becomes immensely difficult,” he said. “Legislation that criminalizes beef possession or bans interfaith marriage may originate under one political regime, but the laws outlast the government. Without a robust defense of secular values in politics, reversing this trend will be nearly impossible.”

Anuj Behal is an independent journalist and researcher focusing on issues of urban justice, gender, and migration in India.