Bulldozing Humanity: The Rise of Extrajudicial Power

 

Despite a Constitution that promises equality and social justice, a culture of discrimination, marginalization, and state-sanctioned violence continues to flourish in India. For over seven decades, institutional bias and bureaucratic apathy have persisted. Today, this toxic collaboration between a bureaucratic elite ("Babudom" or Kafkaseque bureaucracy) and political power structures ("Babadom" used by Partha Chatterjee in 2004 in the Politics of the Governed to depict the cult of leaders where thousands of people blindly follow one person), now armed with bulldozers, is systematically bulldozing not just homes, but humanity itself. The Constitution, the rule of law, justice, rationality, and dignity are being razed in the name of order.

Bulldozer Politics Is Not New

Article 21 of the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to life with dignity. The Supreme Court, through landmark cases like Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985) 3 SCC 545, affirmed that this right includes the right to livelihood. In that case, the Court recognized the socioeconomic realities of pavement dwellers and ruled that evicting them without proper rehabilitation amounted to violating their right to life.

The Court declared, “There can be no estoppel against the Constitution,” emphasizing that constitutional provisions serve public interest and human dignity. Despite this jurisprudence, courts have not always upheld such humane interpretations. (See Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Gurnam Kaur, (1989) 1 SCC 101. Also, Sodan Singh v. NDMC (1989) 4 SCC 155)

 A notorious precedent occurred during the Emergency in 1976, when Indira Gandhi’s government forcibly demolished homes of poor Muslim residents in Delhi’s Turkman Gate (See Engineer Asghar Ali (2007) The Minority Votes, DNAIndia.com, August 13 https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/main-article-the-minority-votes-1115376.) The demolitions were accompanied by brutal police firing and a broader authoritarian agenda that included slum clearance, forced sterilizations, and curtailment of civil liberties (Raza Danish (2015) Tragedy and Turkman Gate: Witnesses recount horror of Emergency, The Hindustan Times, June 29, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/tragedy-at-turkman-gate-witnesses-recount-horror-of-emergency/story-UD6kxHbROYSBMlDbjQLYpJ.html). The political strategy was armed with four major tactics moves that include compulsory sterilization (nas bandi), slum removal, police firing and curtailment of civil liberties (Wright Theodore P (1977) Muslims and the 1977 Indian Elections: A Watershed? Asian Survey 17(12) 1207-1220). The bulldozer, then as now, became a symbol of state repression.

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New India, Same Bulldozers

Today, decades later, the bulldozer has returned—not merely as a machine but as an extrajudicial instrument of state power. The targets remain eerily similar: the urban poor and Muslim minorities.

Despite laws that require due process—such as serving eviction notices and offering appeals—these procedures are increasingly ignored. Demolitions are often sudden, violent, and unaccompanied by any plans for resettlement.

Take the example of Khori Gaon, a 50-year-old settlement in Delhi with nearly 100,000 residents. In the middle of a pandemic and monsoon season, the settlement was demolished without warning. The residents were labeled as “forest encroachers,” and the court ordered their eviction without considering the humanitarian crisis. “We don’t want these Covid excuses,” the court stated. No hearings, no relief, no compensation—just brute force.

The state deployed heavy police presence, and residents—men, women, and children—were subjected to violence and trauma. No notices were served, no rehabilitation was planned, and no temporary shelters were provided. The very people who build and sustain cities were treated as disposable.

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The Politics of Slum Clearance

Slums are not a problem of illegality—they are a consequence of systemic failure. Displacement, poverty, lack of affordable housing, and urban exclusion force people into informal settlements. Often, these slums are not only known to state authorities but also unofficially sanctioned or even encouraged.

Yet, instead of addressing root causes, the state responds with violence. Slum clearance becomes a euphemism for class cleansing. Policies prioritize erasure over inclusion, and the poor are vilified as “encroachers,” “rioters,” or “illegal occupants.”

Forced evictions disproportionately affect women and children, causing generational harm—malnutrition, school dropouts, lost livelihoods, and increased vulnerability. Urban planning continues to ignore these costs, and the idea of humane rehabilitation remains absent from public discourse.

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Criminalizing and Dehumanizing the Poor

In places like Khori Gaon, Jahangirpuri, and Shaheen Bagh, homes are bulldozed under the pretext of punishing rioters or reclaiming land. But these demolitions function as collective punishment—used not to enforce law, but to signal power and reinforce prejudice.

By using bulldozers as punitive tools, the state legitimizes a narrative of criminality around the urban poor. Rehabilitation schemes, when they exist, are narrow in scope and exclude most affected families. The selective nature of demolitions—often targeting Muslim and marginalized communities—deepens social divisions.

This pattern reveals an alarming trend: the bulldozer is no longer just a machine. It is a weapon of majoritarian assertion, a symbol of control, and a tool for the dehumanization of the “other.”

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From Constitution to Control

The use of bulldozers today reflects a broader erosion of democratic values. What we are witnessing is not just the demolition of homes, but the systematic dismantling of constitutional rights, especially for the poor and minorities.

By bypassing legal safeguards and justifying state violence in the name of law, the bulldozer has become the face of impunity in “New India.” It is no longer about removing structures—it is about erasing people, otherizing them, diminishing their rights, and voices that do not fit into the state’s vision of urban order and cultural conformity.

True justice demands that we rebuild not just homes, but the very foundations of compassion, equality, and lawfulness that are being flattened under the tracks of bulldozer politics.