‘Our habit is to demolish’: Hindutva leader threatens Indian Muslims with bulldozers
Lucknow: A senior leader of a Hindutva group has publicly portrayed Muslims in India as habitual land grabbers and threatened them with bulldozers, invoking a symbol increasingly associated with the demolition of Muslim homes, businesses and religious properties.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Raghavendra Pratap Singh, the Uttar Pradesh state leader of Hindutva outfit Hindu Yuva Vahini, was filmed advocating the use of bulldozers against a madrasa while presenting Muslims collectively as people who seize and occupy land. Notably, authorities recently demolished parts of a nearly six-decade-old madrasa and mosque in Pipra Ramlal village in Siddharthnagar district in UP.
“Attacking, encroaching, and occupying is a habit of Muslims, but we also have the habit of destroying,” Singh says in the circulating footage. He follows the remark with an even more explicit remark: “It is the habit of Muslims to encroach; it is our habit to demolish.”
The comments drew condemnation on social media, with activists saying that Singh was openly threatening an entire religious community and pointed to the political meaning that bulldozers have acquired under BJP governments.
Singh’s threat carries particular significance in India, where bulldozers have become a symbol of what critics describe as Hindu nationalist punitive politics.
Authorities, particularly in BJP-ruled states, have repeatedly demolished Muslim homes, businesses and other properties following protests, communal violence or criminal accusations, often before any court determined guilt.
The practice became particularly prominent under Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk and Hindutva politician whose government promoted demolitions as a part of its tough approach toward alleged offenders. Similar actions subsequently spread to other parts of India.
Rights groups have described the practice as punitive “bulldozer justice,” arguing that authorities have bypassed courts and used alleged building violations to punish people before guilt was established. Muslims have frequently been among those targeted.
Hindu Yuva Vahini was founded by Adityanath in 2002, years before he became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. The Hindutva organization has been associated with campaigns around cow protection, religious conversion and the so-called “love jihad” conspiracy theory, which falsely claims Muslim men systematically seek relationships with Hindu women to convert them to Islam.
