UP houses demolished to punish minority protests demanding Nupur Sharma&#39;s arrest

UP houses demolished to punish minority protests demanding Nupur Sharma's arrest

Afreen Fatima

Note on an online Congressional briefing on Uttar Pradesh demolitions cosponsored by several civil rights groups* based in the US:

A Muslim activist whose house was illegally demolished by the Uttar Pradesh government over has slammed the authorities, saying they razed her home to “punish, humiliate, and harass” her family for being active Muslims.
“It is an alarming trend that… law enforcement, the government, and development authorities arbitrarily, unjustly, illegally, and lawlessly demolish Muslims households. They also punish and incarcerate Muslims for no crime at all,” Afreen Fatima, the activist, said at an online Congressional Briefing organized by 18 US-based civil rights organizations on Wednesday.
“This [demolition] was just a way to punish my father for being an active local member of the Muslim community,” she added.
The police in Prayagraj city, where Fatima lives, first detained her parents and a sister on June 12. Subsequently, district authorities razed their home even as television cameras rolled on.
Earlier, on Friday, June 11, the city’s Muslims had marched to protest BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s hateful and blasphemous comments about Islam and Prophet Muhammad last month. Without offering any evidence, the district authorities blamed Fatima’s father, Javed, claiming he masterminded Friday’s violence.
The BJP has since expelled Sharma but the police have failed to arrest her under Indian law. At the same time, Muslims across India who continue to call for Sharma’s arrest have been subjected to police brutality, unlawful arrests, and having their homes razed to the ground by Hindu extremist authorities. In Fatima’s case, her father, diabetic mother, and younger sister were all detained after the police scapegoated her father as being the mastermind behind the Pragyaraj protests.
“There was no warrant when [my father] was taken away,” said Fatima, a student leader and vocal critic of the BJP. She was at the forefront of the protests called nationwide in 2019 to protest the Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests that introduced, for the first time, a religious test in citizenship laws.
“The detention of my mother and my sister was illegal because in order to detain females for any inquiry or any investigation, the police first had to get a certain permission from the Magistrate, which was never done.”
Fatima emphasized that the family had been paying all of their taxes and utility bills, and had never received any notice that their home was illegally constructed.
“There is collective punishment to the entire Muslim community which says that you cannot speak up… I urge everyone to not just speak up about this, but to hold authorities and law enforcement and governments accountable for the arbitrary and lawless power that they exercise over Muslim bodies, Muslim houses, and Muslim lives.”
Govind Acharya, India/Kashmir specialist at Amnesty International, said that the Modi government is, “selectively and viciously cracking down on Muslims who dare to speak up and peacefully express their dissent against the discrimination faced by them… which is in complete violation of India’s commitments under international human rights law.”
“We at Amnesty are calling on Indian authorities to immediately put an end to the excessive use of force in response to large scale protests in the country… We also call for the immediate release of those who have been arbitrarily arrested solely for peacefully exercising the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, which are guaranteed by India’s constitution,” said Acharya.
“This is not just affecting activists. You do not need to be a vocal Muslim to have a target placed on your back,” said Amin Zama, Associate Director for the Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy organization dedicated to upholding civil and human rights in India. “The BJP have proved this by demolishing the homes of poor Muslims in Delhi, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh with only the flimsiest evidence connecting them to riots or illegal construction. This is clearly another step towards the genocide of 220 million Muslims, and India is drawing closer to it by the day.”
According to Ria Chakrabarty, Policy Director at Hindus for Human Rights, a nonprofit, India seemed to be, “taking notes from the Israeli hard right and pursuing a similar strategy to create an ethnonationalist apartheid state, where religious and cultural minorities live a separate and unequal existence.”
“The US government should use its human rights toolbox, especially through the International Religious Freedom Act, to punish individuals who have clearly persecuted India’s religious and cultural minorities,” Chakrabarty said.
---
*Genocide Watch, World Without Genocide, Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, International Christian Concern, Jubilee Campaign, 21Wilberforce, Dalit Solidarity Forum, New York State Council of Churches, International Commission on Dalit Rights, Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America, India Civil Watch International, Center for Pluralism, American Muslim Institution, Students Against Hindutva Ideology, International Society for Peace and Justice, The Humanism Project and Association of Indian Muslims of America

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Search This Blog