On May 28, 2021, 11 houses in close proximity to the
Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur were proposed to be acquired by the Uttar
Pradesh Government citing reasons of security. Later reporting revealed
that most of the residents had signed their consent on the proposal
under pressure and fear from the state apparatus. These houses have been
occupied by Muslim families for nearly a century and it is important
for us to reflect on the fact that exclusively Muslim households were
shortlisted for the construction of security posts and other facilities
in the area.
Alarming as it is, the incident in Gorakhpur is a small scale example
of similar strategies of homogenising urban neighbourhoods on communal
lines that the government has been implementing in many other cities and
states across the country. An imagined threat to law and order and
safety of the inhabitant of these areas always fronts these strategies
as their rationale.
Take for example the election rhetoric in Assam. Page 13 of the BJP’s
manifesto for the assembly elections in Assam featured their promise to
enact “appropriate laws” to curb “the menace of love jihad and land
jihad” in the state. Although it is granted only three lines in the
entire manifesto, the issue of “land jihad” was featured prominently in
the Union home minister Amit Shah’s speech on March 26 in Guwahati. The
party emerged victorious in the polls, and therefore, these laws are
likely to be formulated and implemented.
“Land jihad” is a conspiracy theory in the Hindutva narrative that
claims that Muslims are waging a religious war on Hindus by buying real
estate in Hindu majority areas with the aim of dominating the
neighbourhoods and gradually executing a Hindu exodus. Just like the
rhetoric that created legitimacy for the “love jihad” law preceded the
legislation in Uttar Pradesh, the rhetoric around “land jihad” gained
pace in BJP’s election campaign in Assam. More importantly, just like
there are no records or legal definitions of “love jihad”, the “menace
of land jihad” also remains undefined and unrecorded and targets
consensual real estate transactions between individuals.
While we have seen in Uttar Pradesh what a law against “love jihad”
looks like, it remains unclear what would a law against “land jihad”
seek to achieve and how will it try to do that? If, however, we want to
understand what kind of laws work the narrative of “land jihad” in our
cities, we must look at Gujarat.
Gujarat has unique legislation concerning the buying and selling of
real estate in its cities. The legislation is called The Disturbed Areas
Act, 1991, and restricts the exchange of real estate between people of
two different religious communities. In the areas declared as
“disturbed”, the exchange can only take place if an application for the
same is approved by the district collector.
The law was enacted in 1991 and sought to prevent distress sale
following an event of communal violence. Over time, however, areas that
have not seen communal violence in several years continue to remain
categorised as “disturbed” and the state has since added more areas to
the list — sometimes without an incident of communal violence.
In Ahmedabad alone, over 750 areas are covered under the Disturbed
Areas Act, 1991. Later amendments in the Act have made it much easier
for the district collector to declare an area as “disturbed”. The
amendments state that an area can now be declared “disturbed” on the
basis of just a “possibility” of communal riot or polarisation (‘What
has changed in Gujarat’s Disturbed Areas Act’, IE, October 19, 2020).
The Act — in its vague language — is widely used to prevent Muslims
from buying properties in “Hindu dominated” parts of a city, thereby
segregating neighbourhoods. It is also a tool of communal politics. For
example, Sangita Patil, the MLA candidate in Gujarat Assembly Elections,
2017, promised her voters to get her constituency of Limbayat declared
as “disturbed”. Upon winning the seat, she fulfilled the rather ironic
promise and the area was declared “disturbed” in October 2017 in order
to “…stop them (Muslims) from spreading into Hindu areas”. Similar
impositions were done in posh neighbourhoods of Rajkot in January 2021,
and in some cases, like that of Bhayli in Vadodara, residents themselves
demanded that their area be categorised as “disturbed” after some
Muslim families were allotted houses in Bhayli under the Pradhan Mantri
Awas Yojana. The coming of Muslims in Bhayli was seen as a disturbance
in the “peace-loving Hindu neighbourhood” (‘Residents demand Bhayli under Disturbed Areas Act, threaten to boycott polls’, IE, February 13, 2021).
The characterisation of minorities as the unwanted other forms the
socio-political space that allows for legislations like the Disturbed
Areas Act to operate. And in most instances, we see the narrative of
“land jihad” — an unverified, undefined and unrecorded problem — as an
integral part of the rhetoric. We see this in the manifesto of BJP and
in Amit Shah’s aforementioned speech in Assam as well.
The promise to enact laws against land jihad features under the
heading “Protection of Civilisation in Assam”. As the suffix implies
“land jihad” is allegedly executed by Muslims and therefore, the
“civilisation” of Assam needs protection from Muslims buying real
estate. It also implies that it is the Hindu population of the state
that has the first right over the land and Muslims buying land in an
area of their choice is a religious war waged by an illegitimate
outsider.
Amit Shah also accused Badruddin Ajmal, the leader of All India
United Democratic Front (AIUDF), of “changing the identity of Assam
through land jihad” again implying that the identity of Assam is not
inclusive of Muslims and Muslims buying land in Assam morphs its
identity into something that it is inherently not. In this context, the
Union home minister also used the word “infiltrator” to refer to the
perpetrators of “land jihad”, further characterising the minorities as
unwanted others.
Over several decades and generations, as we see in Gujarat today,
such a political and legislative system produces cities that are very
starkly segregated on communal lines. Polarisation of the people through
hate speech, riots and propaganda provides the social consent to create
and operate communal legislations in the city. As legislations legalise
communal identity as the qualifier of the right to live in certain
areas of a city, the divide is executed into the built form — in
neighbourhoods, roads, apartment buildings and even government housing —
preventing people from living in diverse neighbourhoods and reducing
the interaction between communities to a minimum while also denying
minorities the right to buy properties in the neighbourhoods of their
aspirations.
What we do not know, we fear, and increased segregation, followed by
reduced interaction and lack of familiarity, perpetuate and promote
communal stereotypes. The dirty other — created through propaganda and
political hate speech — is reinforced and the built environment — now
segregated — creates a more expansive space to incorporate and sustain
legislations like the Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, and potential
legislations like the one the BJP has promised to enact in Assam.
Socio-political rhetoric creates polarised cities through legislation
and polarised segregated cities further contribute towards divisive
politics. Intolerance is created and sustained through a form of
structural violence that gradually produces geographies of alienation
and segregation.
Recent developments in Gorakhpur, the BJP’s manifesto in Assam and
the political rhetoric of “land jihad” in the election campaign imply
that the party intends to export the aforementioned politics of the
built form from Gujarat to other states of the country where it sees the
opportunity to translate the politics of Hindutva into an urbanity of
hate.
Zuberi is an academic and writes about politics, culture, architecture and city studies
