This Indian man’s house was demolished in Khargone because he is Muslim, he says
“In the blink of an eye, my home was demolished,” said the 45-year-old fruit seller, whose kitchen, fruit cart, and cattle shed have all been destroyed. “While I stood there watching… (the police) just walked away.”
Scraps of wood, rusty metal and garbage line the sandy pavement outside his home, where his four young children play.
His home was one of several properties in Khargone city’s Chhoti Mohan Talkies neighborhood, in India’s central Madhya Pradesh state, that he says were demolished by authorities following violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims that broke out on April 10 — the day of the Hindu festival Ram Navami.
Experts say the demolitions are the tip of a far deeper problem and that this is only the latest in a string of attacks on the country’s Muslim population, fueled in part by the ascendance of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
They argue that Muslims in BJP-run Madhya Pradesh have been disproportionately punished following the violence, raising fears that members of the country’s largest minority religion — about 200 million of India’s 1.3 billion population are Muslim — 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 structures in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Jahangirpuri on Wednesday, days after violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims broke out following Hanuman Jayanti, a celebration of the birthday of the Hindu god Hanuman.
For Baig, there is an extra sense of injustice.
Baig said he and his neighbors were nowhere near the scene of the clashes.
“I don’t know what is happening in my country,” said Baig, who says he has lived in the property for more than 30 years. “But all I can say is that I’m paying the price of being a Muslim.”
‘My shops were demolished because I am Muslim’
But it is the scenes of state officials bulldozing properties that gained the most attention, with activists and citizens decrying the move as unjust and unlawful.
Dr. Tameezuddin Shaikh was at home on April 11 when he received a phone call from a friend informing him that authorities were bulldozing his son’s medical shop in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Talab Chowk in Khargone.
“I was stunned,” said Shaikh, who says he often provides free services to impoverished and marginalized families. “There was a curfew imposed in the city and I had not been given any notice warning of any illegality. I live far away from my medical store, and with the curfew imposed, there was no way that we could go and stop the demolitions.”
About a dozen shops in Talab Chowk were demolished by Khargone authorities, according to Shaikh.
Shaikh said neither he nor his son were involved in the violence. And he has served the local community from that shop for more than five decades without an issue, he added.
“I’m a respected name in Khargone, 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 filed a petition in India’s Supreme Court, urging an intervention into the demolitions, and calling them a “violation” of India’s constitution.
According to lawyer and activist Kawalpreet Kaur, district officers “cannot take the law into their own hands and cannot be the adjudicating authority.”
“They cannot decide who is a criminal,” she said.
Rahul Verma, a fellow from the Centre for Policy Research, said the demolitions in Madhya Pradesh were “unprecedented.”
“It’s not a job of the municipal office to give punishment to people who might be involved in stone-pelting or violence,” he said.
Ayub Khan, a resident of the Aurangpura Square…
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