While Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has been hogging the limelight for his “bulldozer raj”, his counterpart from tiny Uttarakhand has not been lagging behind.
This weekend, Pushkar Singh Dhami, who has razed hundreds of madrasas, mosques and mazars deemed built on government land in his four-and-a-half years in power, staked his claim to demolition glory too.
Addressing a public meeting on Saturday, he pledged to carry on his fight against “land jihad” — a term that openly identifies the alleged encroachers as Muslims and attributes a sinister campaign to them.
“I shall continue taking stringent action against the encroachers and the land jihadis. We won’t allow anyone to disturb the demography of Devbhoomi (Holy Land) Uttarakhand,” he said at Tanakpur town in Champawat district.
Dhami went on to plug his credentials as bulldozer wielder.
“We have sealed 250 illegal madrasas and bulldozed 500 illegal structures.... I have removed encroachments from over 11,000 acres of government land,” he thundered.
Dhami is widely seen in BJP circles as a more thorough pursuer of ground-level Hindutva agendas than the more high-profile Adityanath, although his exploits have tended to pass under the radar.
For instance, Adityanath had ignored VHP sadhus’ demand to ban Muslims (mainly vendors) from last year’s Mahakumbh and the ongoing Magh mela in Allahabad. Dhami, though, has openly backed similar calls from the managements of the Haridwar Kumbh (scheduled next year) and the Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri temples.
“The temple committees are the main stakeholders at those places; the government will accept whatever decision they take,” Dhami has said.
Whether or not he coined the term “land jihad”, Dhami has popularised it across Uttarakhand, although it’s rarely heard outside the hill state.
On Saturday, the chief minister targeted the Congress, which has been accusing his government of misleading the courts with false allegations of encroachment against Muslim structures, though he didn’t name the party.
“They feel bad when we act against those who encroach on government land…. My critics are fond of those involved in land jihad,” he said.
“I pledge in the name of Mother Sharda (the deity at a Tanakpur temple) that I won’t allow any jihadi to flourish in Devbhoomi.... We will protect its demography, its religious and cultural values, and give a fitting reply to those who stand against us.”
The BJP claims that a steady flow of Muslims from outside Uttarakhand has been settling in the state since its birth in 2000 to try and “destroy its religious culture”.
Dhami was in Tanakpur to inaugurate or lay the foundation stone for ₹300 crore worth of development projects, including the beautification of the Sharda riverfront, road-widening and road repairs.
Later, addressing students at Khatima in Udham Singh Nagar, the chief minister said his government had “directly attacked love jihad and land jihad” because it tolerated “no compromise with the culture, honour and law and order of Uttarakhand”.
“Love jihad” is a Right-wing coinage that insinuates a conspiracy among Muslim men to lure Hindu women into love, marriage and conversion.
Dhami underlined that his government had enacted a law against religious conversions and implemented a uniform civil code “to ensure equal rights for all”.
