MUMBAI: Authorities in India’s financial capital Mumbai have razed several Muslim-owned makeshift shopfronts after religious clashes sparked by a divisive temple that was inaugurated this week by extremist Narendra Modi.
Clashes reported Sunday in parts of Mumbai, including one incident where Hindus chanting religious slogans passed through a Muslim neighborhood on the megacity’s outskirts.
No serious injuries were reported in the melee but by Tuesday, officials had called in excavators to knock down over a dozen shopfronts belonging to Muslims in that locality, according to local media reports.
The following evening another forty shopfronts were razed on Mohammed Ali Road, a major downtown thoroughfare and centre of local Muslim commerce that had also witnessed weekend clashes.
Numerous traders of all religions often build makeshift shopfronts out of canvas and wood to shield their businesses and patrons from the scorching sun and pounding monsoon rains in the city.
Municipal officials told local media that the drive was “routine” and planned before Sunday’s clashes and that it was aimed at removing illegal encroachments and easing pedestrian traffic.
So-called ‘bulldozer justice’ in India
So-called “bulldozer justice” has been an increasingly common tool of local officials in the country to punish suspected criminals by demolishing their property.
Rights organizations have condemned the practice as an unlawful exercise in collective punishment that disproportionately targets the Muslims.
Aaker Patel of Amnesty International said in a statement that this week’s campaign in the city represented a policy of arbitrarily and punitively demolishing properties of the Muslim following episodes of communal violence.
Meanwhile, reiterating its condemnation of the recent consecration of ‘Ram Temple’ on the demolished Babri Mosque’s site, Islamabad has asked the top official for the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) to play his role for the protection of Islamic sites in India, Pakistan’s permanent Ambassador to the UN Munir Akram told an OIC Ambassadorial meeting.
During a meeting held at UN headquarters in New York, Munir Akram shared with OIC colleagues a letter he addressed to the UNAOC High Representative, Miguel Angel Moratinos, in which the Ambassador said that the event in Ayodhya marked a “disturbing rise in Hindu majoritarianism in India.”
Earlier, the General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) expressed grave concern over the recent construction and inauguration of the “Ram Temple” at the site of the previously demolished Babri Mosque.
