HONG KONG — Politically motivated bulldozing has returned with a vengeance in India. Earlier this month, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, a local Muslim leader and member of the Indian National Congress opposition party watched his home, supposedly "illegally built," reduced to rubble. A district official then gloated on social media that justice had been served for recent attacks on the police. Meanwhile, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, bulldozers flattened an "illegal" shopping complex owned by a Muslim functionary of an opposition party who had recently been arrested on charges of gang-raping an underage girl.
This "bulldozer justice" is nothing new. In Prime Minister Narendra Modi's India, the homes of those merely suspected of crimes — overwhelmingly Muslims — are frequently demolished with great fanfare, usually on the pretext that they are unauthorized constructions. State governments controlled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have found an ideal tool for brutalizing Muslims and firing up the party's Hindu-supremacist voter base.
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