Bulldozing Identity Hindutva State Power and the Erasure of Muslim Heritage in India

On July 1, 2026, in the historic Dal Mandi quarter of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, workers began demolishing the walls of several mosques as part of a road-widening and "beautification" project. The mosques affected include the Karimullah Beg Mosque, Langde Hafiz Mosque, Nisaran Mosque, Rangile Shah Mosque, Ali Raza Mosque, and Sangmarmar Mosque.

To ensure security during this operation, nearly 1,860 personnel were deployed at the site. In addition to the personnel, three drone surveillance teams and multiple bulldozers were also utilised. The entire area was sealed off with barricades, bamboo fencing, and tin sheets to restrict movement through nearby roads and lanes. Drone surveillance was ongoing throughout the operation, while approximately 200 labourers were involved in the demolition work.

A few days ago, on June 29, 2026, the historic Juna Kunda Mosque in the Gandhidham area of Kutch, Gujarat, was completely demolished using heavy machinery. Authorities tore down the mosque without any prior notice.
Recently, over 23 mosques, madrasas, eidgahs, and dargahs have been demolished within just 50 days.
This wave of demolitions, which has targeted Muslim religious sites, includes structures ranging from a 1,000-year-old mosque to a 200-year-old dargah, raising serious concerns across several BJP-ruled states in India. These incidents follow a long history of destruction of surrounding islamic sites and heritage, particularly those constructed during the Timurid-Baburid periods.

Historically, one of the most significant demolitions occurred on December 6, 1992, when a Hindu nationalist mob destroyed the 16th-century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, leading to nationwide riots that resulted in approximately 2,000 deaths.

Following the Babri Masjid demolition, the Hindu nationalist party made chants of “Ayodhya keval jhaanki hai; Kaashi, Mathura baaqi hai” (Ayodhya is only a glimpse; Kashi (Varanasi) and Mathura are next), which became central to its campaign.

This refers to two other towns in Uttar Pradesh that have mosques claimed to have originally been temples. This event set a dangerous precedent, and Hindu nationalist groups are now actively petitioning courts to claim or convert other significant medieval mosques.

This mechanism of identity erasure exemplifies cultural hegemony, a theory developed by the renowned scholar Antonio Gramsci, which demonstrates how a ruling group employs ideas, media, and laws to make its extreme worldview seem normal “common sense” to the public. By embedding Hindutva ideology into everyday life, the Modi government has effectively conditioned the public to accept the weaponisation of municipal laws and heavy bulldozers as routine state activities. Tearing down centuries-old Timurid-Baburid heritage serves as the tangible proof of this project, a direct attempt to transform a diverse nation into a monolithic Hindu space.

For India’s 220 million Muslims, this enforced invisibility sends a clear, devastating message: your deep-rooted history is being erased, and your status as equal citizens is being systematically dismantled beneath the rubble of the state machinery.

Grounded in this hegemonic drive, socio-legal scholar Kathleen Cavanaugh explains how the state actively employs what she calls an “architecture of exclusion” to reinforce this homogeneous identity. Writing for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Cavanaugh asserts that under the BJP regime, “historical architectures are shaped and edited, identities are erased, and past… events are re-narrated to create an ‘official’ state story” that intentionally targets the Muslim minority.

This framework reveals that the physical destruction of sacred spaces and historical sites is not merely a collection of isolated municipal enforcement actions but a fundamental part of a nationalist state-building project that uses legal mechanisms and spatial erasure to systematically diminish Islamic contributions and rewrite the subcontinent’s civilizational memory.

Since 2014, thousands of mosques, dargahs, and mazars have been demolished, fenced off, or entangled in legal disputes across states governed by the BJP, including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. An investigation by Amnesty International into over sixty cases highlighted several concerning patterns: notices regarding demolitions often arrive too late or not at all, demolitions continue even after courts issue stay orders.

When laws are applied selectively to places of worship belonging to one community, they cease to function as neutral tools for urban planning and begin to resemble something else entirely. By categorising historic and centuries-old religious sites as mere "unauthorised structures" or "illegal encroachments" on public land, the state strips these monuments of their historical significance.

In a comprehensive investigation titled “If You Speak Up, Your House Will Be Demolished: Bulldozer Injustice in India,” Amnesty International meticulously documented the structural mechanics behind punitive actions that target minority populations. According to the Pew Research Centre's Government Restriction Index (GRI), India received a concerning score of 6.4 out of 10. This score places India among the highest global tiers for state-driven restrictions on minority worship spaces.

Today, majoritarian violence in India has become institutionalised and bureaucratized. The erasure of heritage is no longer left to the whims of mobs; it is executed systematically through official eviction notices, early-morning administrative actions, and heavy paramilitary mobilisation under state patronage. When the state actively participates in dismantling the physical markers of Muslim heritage, it signals that the security, identity, and memory of its minority citizens are being placed under threat.

The Modi-led BJP government is using its power and Hindutva ideology to systematically destroy mosques, shrines, and historic Islamic buildings across India. This is not simply a matter of urban planning; it is a direct attack on Muslim history.

By demolishing these historic structures overnight, the government attempts to erase India’s rich Baburid and Timurid past. They are employing bulldozers and state laws as tools to obliterate centuries of Islamic heritage, making it clear that they do not want any visible signs of Muslim history left in the country.

This aggressive destruction is a deliberate effort to erase Muslim identity from India. By targeting holy sites and historic lands, the Modi regime seeks to rewrite the country’s history to fit a narrow, majoritarian narrative of Hindutva.

Tearing down these buildings is a way to make over 200 million Muslims feel like outsiders and second-class citizens in their own homeland. The government is attempting to render an entire community invisible, transforming a shared and diverse nation into a place where only one religion holds significance. There is no doubt that Modi is trying to dismantle a community’s strong history. But in doing so, he is sadly also dismantling the very foundation of their citizenship.

To push back against this systematic identity erasure, a coordinated strategy combining regional diplomatic pressure and international legal accountability is essential. Domestically, Pakistan must move beyond standard rhetoric and establish a dedicated, state-backed academic and legal task force to document, translate, and archive every instance of structural demolition, using these digital repositories to consistently brief foreign embassies and international bodies.

On the global stage, the international community, led by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), must stop treating these demolitions as internal municipal matters. They must implement the recommendations of the UN's Universal Periodic Review and the 2026 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report by imposing targeted economic and travel sanctions on regional administrative heads who authorize extrajudicial bulldozer actions, while conditioning bilateral trade and security partnerships with New Delhi on the protection of minority heritage and compliance with global human rights laws.

Author: Muhammad Mehboob,
Research Associate, MUSLIM Institute.

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