Authorities riding bulldozers razed a number of Muslim-owned shops in New Delhi before India’s Supreme Court halted the demolitions Wednesday, days after communal violence shook the capital and saw dozens arrested.
Shop owners weeded through the rubble of their shops afterward to collect their belongings. But for nearly an hour after the Supreme Court order, officials continued to demolish structures, including the outer entrance and stairs leading into a mosque. They stopped the bulldozers just outside the entrance of a Hindu temple, about 50 meters from the mosque, and began to retreat, spurring outrage from Muslim residents who said they were being targeted.
Anti-Muslim sentiment and attacks have risen across India in the past 10 days, including stone-pelting between Hindu and Muslim groups during religious processions and demolitions of a number of properties, many belonging to Muslims, in another state last week.
On Sunday, police arrested over 20 suspects a day after communal violence broke out during a Hindu religious procession in New Delhi’s northwest Jahangirpuri neighborhood. They said Hindu and Muslim groups threw stones at each other during a procession to mark the birth date of the Hindu god Hanuman, leaving eight police officers and a civilian injured, local media reported.
Officials say their demolition drive targets illegal buildings and not any particular community. But critics argue this is the latest attempt to harass and marginalize Muslims, who are 14 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population, and they point to a pattern of rising religious polarization under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Shop owners weeded through the rubble of their shops afterward to collect their belongings. But for nearly an hour after the Supreme Court order, officials continued to demolish structures, including the outer entrance and stairs leading into a mosque. They stopped the bulldozers just outside the entrance of a Hindu temple, about 50 meters from the mosque, and began to retreat, spurring outrage from Muslim residents who said they were being targeted.
Anti-Muslim sentiment and attacks have risen across India in the past 10 days, including stone-pelting between Hindu and Muslim groups during religious processions and demolitions of a number of properties, many belonging to Muslims, in another state last week.
On Sunday, police arrested over 20 suspects a day after communal violence broke out during a Hindu religious procession in New Delhi’s northwest Jahangirpuri neighborhood. They said Hindu and Muslim groups threw stones at each other during a procession to mark the birth date of the Hindu god Hanuman, leaving eight police officers and a civilian injured, local media reported.
Officials say their demolition drive targets illegal buildings and not any particular community. But critics argue this is the latest attempt to harass and marginalize Muslims, who are 14 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population, and they point to a pattern of rising religious polarization under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
