A young Muslim activist whose house was bulldozed by the authorities in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh says it was an \u201cact of vendetta\u201d by the government for the protests over comments made against Prophet Muhammad by officials of the country\u2019s right-wing governing party.
Surrounded by a large posse of police in riot gear, authorities in Uttar Pradesh\u2019s Prayagraj city on Sunday brought in earthmovers to demolish Afreen Fatima\u2019s house as dozens of media people recorded the demolition.
Within hours, the two-storey building was reduced to rubble and its belongings \u2013 furniture, books and photographs \u2013 thrown on an empty plot next to the house. Among them was a poster that said: \u201cWhen injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.\u201d
The demolition came after days of protests by India\u2019s Muslims against the anti-Islam remarks by two members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earlier this month, triggering a diplomatic backlash against New Delhi.
As several Muslim nations demanded an apology from the Indian government, the Muslims in India saw the remarks by the BJP\u2019s Nupur Sharma and former Delhi media cell head Naveen Kumar Jindal as yet another instance of the right wing\u2019s hate speech against the minority community which has spiked since Modi came to power in 2014.
As global outrage grew, the BJP suspended Sharma and expelled Jindal, saying their comments do not reflect the party\u2019s views and asking its spokespeople to be \u201cextremely cautious\u201d on religious matters while speaking on news channels. Meanwhile, police in the Indian capital filed cases against the two and others for \u201cinciting hatred\u201d and other charges.
But Muslim groups said the moves were not enough and held large protests in several cities after the congregational prayers on Friday, demanding the arrest of the duo. Two teenagers were killed and dozens wounded in the protests. Hundreds of protesters were arrested.
The protests in Prayagraj \u2013 earlier known as Allahabad \u2013 on Friday following the Muslim congregational prayers turned violent at some places, with police firing tear gas and baton-charging as demonstrators marched and allegedly tried to burn a police vehicle.
A BJP spokesperson said Uttar Pradesh\u2019s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed hardline Hindu monk, ordered officials to demolish any \u201cillegal\u201d establishments and homes of people accused of involvement in the protests.
At least two other houses belonging to Muslims were also demolished in Uttar Pradesh over the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Absolutely illegal\u2019 \u2018Collective punishment\u2019 A young Muslim activist whose house was bulldozed by the authorities in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh says it was an \u201cact of vendetta\u201d by the government…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>Fatima\u2019s family was not even home when their 20-year-old house in Prayagraj was torn down.
Hours after Friday protests in the city, police raided the house and took away her 57-year-old father Mohammad Javed, mother Parveen Fatima, 52, and teenager sister Somaiya.
\u201cAt around 8:50pm on Friday, police came, saying they want to talk to my father. They asked him to accompany him to the police station. That is it. They did not tell us if it was a detention or if it was an arrest. There was no warrant that was shown,\u201d Fatima, 24, told Al Jazeera TV during an interview on Sunday.
Javed, who is a politician belonging to a Muslim party, was charged with rioting and the police soon declared him the \u201cmastermind\u201d of the protests in Prayagraj \u2013 a tag flashed immediately on TV screens across the country.
Parveen and Somaiya were detained by the police and released on Sunday morning. \u201cMy mother and my sister were illegally detained for more than 30 hours,\u201d Fatima told Al Jazeera TV.
Fatima rejected the allegations against her father and called the bulldozing of their house an illegal act committed by the authorities.
\u201cThe demolition is absolutely illegal because it is not even my father\u2019s property. The house belongs to my mother,\u201d she told Al Jazeera over the telephone.
\u201cWe had been paying our house taxes for around 20 years and not once did we receive any intimation by any development authorities of Allahabad that our house is illegal. Why were they even taking our taxes if it was an illegal house?\u201d she told Al Jazeera.
The family shared water bills and house taxation documents to back their claim.
Fatima said the house was demolished without a court of law proving the charges against her father. \u201cWithout proving the allegations that my father was a mastermind of protests, which he was not, they punished us,\u201d she told Al Jazeera.
\u201cWe were not demonstrating on Friday. None of us were part of the protests that happened in Allahabad. We were at our house, it was a Friday, so we offered our prayers and were in the house all the time,\u201d she said.
Javed\u2019s family has termed his arrest \u201cunjust\u201d, calling him an activist who had been working on civic matters with the Prayagraj administration.
\u201cHe would assist the administration on so many civic and law and order matters. So this has come as a shock to us,\u201d Javed\u2019s son Mohammad Umam, 30, told Al Jazeera. \u201cHe was not a part of the protest nor did he know who the protesters were or who organised them. The police are making up a fictitious story to implicate my father.\u201d
On Saturday night, city officials pasted a notice on the entrance of their house, calling it an \u201cillegal structure that would be demolished on Sunday\u201d. The notice asked the family to vacate the property before the demolition.
\u201cWe saw our house crumble down. We had lived all our lives there. It was our home for 21 years. We had some amazing and defining moments in that home that shaped who I am,\u201d said Fatima. \u201cIt is all so painful.\u201d
The family\u2019s lawyers have moved the Allahabad High Court challenging the demolition and demanding a penalty from the state government for the loss of property. Since the court was closed on Sunday, they could challenge the demolition order before it was conducted.
The family\u2019s petition to the high court says Javed was not the legal owner of the house.
\u201cParveen Fatima was gifted the house by her father before her marriage,\u201d family counsel KK Roy told Al Jazeera. \u201cUnder the Muslim Personal Law Property Act, the husband cannot have a share in the property of his wife. Since Javed has no right over the property as per law, the notice in his name is illegal. We have challenged the notice and sought a penalty of at least 10 crore rupees [$1.3m].\u201d
Police justified the demolition, saying they followed the prescribed process. \u201cThe allegations are wrong. We applied all the due processes and after that took action,\u201d a police spokesperson told Al Jazeera. A civic official was quoted in the local media as saying the house was an \u201cillegal structure\u201d that was \u201cbuilt without getting its map passed by the Prayagraj Development Authority\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Fatima called the bulldozing of her house \u201can act of vendetta against her family\u201d, adding the demolition was part of the policies of the Hindu nationalist government against Muslims exercising their democratic right to protest.
The authorities in Uttar Pradesh bulldozed two other Muslim houses in Saharanpur district over the weekend, while the house of another Muslim in Kanpur city was demolished over the religious riots over remarks against the Prophet.
\u201cRemember, every Friday is followed by a Saturday,\u201d Mrityunjay Kumar, media adviser to Chief Minister Adityanath, tweeted on Saturday with a photo of a bulldozer.
Adityanath is often dubbed \u201cbulldozer baba\u201d (bulldozer monk) by the local media for his policy of demolishing homes of those who protest against the government. Other states have followed suit even as lawyers and activists have questioned the policy\u2019s legality.
The demolition of properties gathered pace in April this year when authorities in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh state \u2013 also ruled by the BJP \u2013 bulldozed houses and shops belonging to Muslims following religious violence during a Hindu festival.
\u201cBulldozer has become a signifier of targeted violence against Muslims in India, with demolitions being deployed not as punishment of an individual for violation of law, but as a form of collective punishment that seeks to demoralise and deter anyone who questions the government or their majoritarian politics,\u201d Fawaz Shaheen, a legal activist associated with Students Islamic Organisation of India, told Al Jazeera.
On Sunday, as police and administration began to close in on Fatima\u2019s house, Indian social media was filled with outrage as people expressed their solidarity with Fatima and her family through hashtag #StandwithAfreenFatima.
Social media users questioned the silence of the opposition parties, asking why their leaders and supporters did not protest in Prayagraj to stop the demolition or tweeted about it. Many also asked why the Muslim legislators in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly were not speaking out.
Fatima rose to prominence during nationwide protests led by Muslim groups to demand the repeal of a controversial citizenship law passed by the Modi government in late 2019, which critics said violated India\u2019s secular constitution. The law fast-tracked Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from India\u2019s neighbouring countries who came to India before 2015.
Fatima, associated with a student group called the Fraternity Movement, was elected president of the women\u2019s college students\u2019 union at the Aligarh Muslim University, India\u2019s largest minority institution based in Uttar Pradesh. She finished her masters in linguistics last year from New Delhi\u2019s Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she was elected a councillor in the students\u2019 union.
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