And bulldozing happens in non Muslim areas as well. Sometimes even middle class homes illegally built.
Just as cities in the US clear homeless encampments.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61042315.amp
If you’re a Muslim living in an illegally-built home and you were _accused_ of being involved in riots, they will bulldoze your life.
The extremists argue that this is well-deserved. Even if you agree with that, why should an entire family living under a shared home suffer for the actions of one person? They’re not just forcing “rioters” to be homeless, they are ruining the lives of uninvolved people. Where will all of the displaced kids go? What would you tell them when they riot because of what was done to them?
Just like they did with these Muslims and their Shiva temples: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/bulldozer-razes-300-ye...
If I demolished a mosque, would I be allowed to selectively demolish the homes of Hindu rioters?
You're (perhaps rather knowingly) ignoring the nuance here.
Case in point, office of a prominent Indian actor was broken by a state government which is the political rival of the government at national level, even after a high court order preventing them from doing so.
So first, i agree with you that power structures have always taken advantage of their position to shutdown their opposition.
The reason that this has become significant enough in India for someone to take note and take action, is because of the blatant and frequent application of authority in this manner and that too targeted towards a specific community. The scale is enormous and is not showing any signs of decreasing.
If you really want to discuss with civility, don't start with an accusation. I agreed with the commenter that there is definitely political motive to these demolitions and it is definitely not right to not follow procedure even if these are illegal. My point is against this belief that this is something recent. It has been always like this, no matter who is in power. It might have increased or decreased; that I don't know without stats. I am old enough to have seen media being used to create narratives like WMD in Iraq to know not to go forward with the narrative pushing in media.
> The reason that this has become significant enough
> The scale is enormous and is not showing any signs of decreasing.
There is also a narrative in media that these communal incidents have increased recently. When I looked at data on this the last time in 2020, the crime record data pointed to much higher rates of communal violence in 80s and 90s than 2010s, so I will not be sure if it has increased or is it just fanned more in media.
I am also aware it can very well be that cases are being registered less that's why the stats seem lower.
> that too targeted towards a specific community
This is something I am concerned about though. There seems to be definitely increase in overt bigotry.
It's almost as if you're trying to find a previous period with same communalism rates going back as far as you need to to prove point.
In terms of trends in the 20th century, there's been a clear noticeable jump after the current government came in, which is what should matter.
I said 90s too which is a gap of 20 years. I skipped 00s because I don't recall the data completely now, but I will check.
> In terms of trends in the 20th century, there's been a clear noticeable jump after the current government came in, which is what should matter.
00s had clearly more terror incidents in India than 10s. There were several major metros and big cities hit with blasts every year. So, one form of communal violence has definitely gone down. Even early half of 10s had much more of these than the latter half. There is a whole Wiki article that lists these incidents, you can have a look at that.
[0]: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/bulldozer-razes-300-ye...