SINCE Narendra Modi’s Hindutva government came to power in India, life has been systematically made unbearable for Muslims. One after another, anti-Muslim laws have been passed, and a steady stream of tactics and conspiracies has been deployed to push them away from Islam. Attacks on mosques and their demolition continue as a grim, ongoing campaign. The saffron brigade has prepared a list of more than 3,000 mosques, shrines and dargahs marked for destruction. Another report claims that as many as three lakh Muslim sacred sites are now in the crosshairs. What began with three mosques has grown into hundreds, then thousands, and now hundreds of thousands. According to one estimate, more than 50,000 mosques have been demolished since 1947.
After the destruction of the Babri Masjid, Hindu extremists had already raised the slogan: “Ayodhya is only a glimpse; Kashi and Mathura still remain.” The Babri episode remains the darkest chapter in India’s so-called secular history. The Indian Supreme Court, in a decision widely seen as a betrayal of justice, allowed a Ram temple to be built on the site of a 500-year-old Muslim historical and cultural landmark purely on the basis of faith. The foundation stone was laid by Modi himself, an RSS pracharak and Hindutva prime minister, driving the final nail into the coffin of Indian secularism.
The BJP’s Hindutva campaign has accelerated sharply, with its ugliest face visible in Uttar Pradesh under the patronage of the state’s openly Hindu-supremacist chief minister. In September 2026, news emerged of the demolition of a century-old historic mosque in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh — a development that triggered anger and outrage in Pakistan as well. The Foreign Office lodged a protest and urged the international community to take immediate notice of the systematic targeting of Muslims by Indian authorities and the continued desecration and demolition of their places of worship under state patronage. Modi’s Hindutva government is bent on erasing Muslim heritage and identity from India. From occupied Kashmir to the rest of the country, bulldozers are being used to raze mosques, madrasas, dargahs and shrines. The destruction of these sites is not random; it is intended to give fresh life to the ideology of Hindutva.
Yogi Adityanath’s government in Uttar Pradesh has left no tactic untried in targeting Muslims. Samajwadi Party legislator Iqra Hasan was denied permission to visit the site of one such mosque and was detained when she protested. After the demolition, bricks stamped 1909 and a 20-foot-deep well were reportedly recovered from the rubble. The mosque committee had already submitted records in court proving its antiquity, including a 1 January 1911 electricity bill.
In Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, a 600-year-old historic mosque was marked for demolition on the pretext of providing a path for Hindu pilgrims. Muslims across the city made every possible effort to save it. In August 2026, a mosque built according to a 1918 map was demolished in Mussoorie. These are not isolated incidents. Across India, mosques are being declared temples one after another and then brought down. In July 2026, five mosques were demolished within 24 hours under the cover of “encroachment.” In Bahraich, Siddharthnagar and elsewhere, around 20 mosques and several madrasas were destroyed. The 185-year-old Noori Masjid in Fatehpur, along with sites in Muzaffarnagar, was wiped out of existence. In BJP-ruled states, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana and Rajasthan, more than 25 Muslim sacred sites, shrines, dargahs and mosques have already been demolished. In Uttarakhand alone, over the past five years more than 300 holy places including mosques, mazars and dargahs have been destroyed. In Gujarat, under the then leadership of Narendra Modi, some 500 shrines, mosques and dargahs were set on fire. The bulldozer campaigns against mosques are not administrative actions; they form part of a deliberate, organized policy aimed at wiping out Muslim culture and civilization. In the border districts of Rajasthan, eight mosques and shrines have so far been either demolished or forcibly vacated. In 1991 India passed a law under which no place of worship that existed in its form as of 15 August 1947 could be altered or demolished. The Babri Masjid was deliberately kept outside the scope of that Act. The Muslim community had hoped that after the sacrifice of Babri, the remaining mosques would be safe. That hope proved false.
A long legal battle continues over the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, dating from the era of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. It is claimed the mosque stands on part of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. With court permission, scientific surveys (ASI surveys) have been conducted inside the mosque.
Similar petitions have been filed against the Shahi Idgah in Mathura, declaring it the birthplace of Lord Krishna. The 16th-century Mughal-era Jama Masjid in Sambhal has also faced claims that it was once a Hari Har temple, and surveys were ordered. In recent years a new method has been added to the false claims of discovering temple structures beneath mosques and shrines: the so-called “bulldozer policy.” Mosques are being razed overnight by bulldozers. Across India, Muslims live in a state of insecurity, and Modi’s communal government has openly embraced anti-Muslim hostility. On the one hand the Modi government talks of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”; on the other, it never misses an opportunity to push the largest minority against the wall. Preparations for complete Brahmin rule in India are complete. A particular section of the Brahmin caste seeks to dominate the entire subcontinent through extreme power. Within India it has already succeeded. All key administrative and important affairs of the country are now in the hands of people of this specific Hindu-Brahmin mindset. Muslims are routinely portrayed as criminals. Impartial investigation of cases has been made impossible. The press and media, too, are under the control of the same Brahmin minority.
All countries of South Asia remain uneasy about India’s Akhand Bharat ambitions. Extremist Hindu leaders have repeatedly expressed their desire to realize the dream of Akhand Bharat. In 2022, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat announced that the dream of Akhand Bharat would be fulfilled through force. New anti-Muslim laws continue to be enacted to strip Muslims of their religious, political, social and historical identity. These developments demand urgent notice not only from Pakistan but from the entire international community.
—The writer is Chairman, Tehrik Jawanan Pakistan.
