Weaponising law and a lie to attack Indo-Islamic heritage
The truth is that the architecture built by the Muslim monarchs in India – Indo-Islamic architecture – is our collective heritage as South Asian people and as members of a collective humanitys
On June 21, Jannat-ul-Firdaus Mosque in Delhi was demolished citing legal violations. Sunehri Bagh Masjid and a madrasa in Sarai Kale Khan also face demolition, and earlier this year, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) demolished Akhonji Masjid in Mehrauli. These demolitions have happened despite DDA’s assurance to the Delhi High Court in September 2023, that it will not demolish any mosque or legitimate Waqf properties in Delhi. The submission came in response to a petition filed by the Waqf Board fearing that such demolitions would take place in the name of removing encroachments. How does DDA destroy Indo-Islamic heritage with such impunity?
The destruction is achieved through first, a lie: The lie that this architecture does not belong to the people of India and is not their heritage. This popular consciousness is achieved by redefining “Indian Heritage”. Over the last decade, we see extensive and exclusive promotion of temples and occasional Buddhist and Jain shrines as Indian heritage. Even temples that are constructed recently or are still under construction get comfortably narrativised as heritage. Everything else – the buildings built by Muslim monarchs and by the British -- is, by exclusion, defined as heritage that is not Indian. Out of this undesirable category, colonial structures are appropriated – renamed and redeveloped – in a language of decolonisation. This appropriation allows colonial infrastructure to be used while furthering a partisan politics of anti-colonial reclamation.
Language plays a key role in this othering. The RSS has promoted the idea that Muslim monarchs of South Asia were invaders who disrupted and destroyed a thriving “Indian” civilisation. Therefore, to reclaim the glory of India, the markers of their presence and their culture must be erased. The land of India must be purified so that a new era of Hindu-led development can be ushered in. This language features in the speeches of elected politicians as well as in mainstream discourse whereby Indo-Islamic monuments are often called “tombs of invaders”. While temples are promoted as desirable catalysts of development by reconfiguring them into hubs of tourism and universal spirituality, Indo-Islamic architecture is painted as an undesirable memento to a victimised past. This undesirability is then exploited to demolish architecture with impunity and legitimacy.
To enact and legalise destruction, the law is weaponised. In case of the demolition of Akhonji Mosque in Mehrauli, for example, DDA referred to a 1994 notification under the Indian Forest Act, 1927 that marked the extents of a notified reserve forest in the region. Similar municipal laws and building by-laws have been used to destroy other gravesites, mazars and mosques in a language of encroachment and illegality. This instrumentalisation of law allows destruction of Indo-Islamic heritage by law, not despite it. The bulldozer is, today, a political symbol in India – explicitly signifying a politics of erasure and hatred.
The use of law also allows for an argument of “the necessity of violence”. In this logic, violence is justified to achieve a greater good. Once particular settlements have been painted as unwanted, they can make way for the development of a “pristine forest reserve”, as DDA claims in the stated cases, or cleaner cities, as municipal bodies have justified while demolishing mosques in the name of removing encroachments. The proposal to demolish the Sunehri Bagh Masjid in New Delhi for better flow of traffic follows a similar logic. Scholarship has shown that such laws were used to demolish architecture of the “natives” by the British as well – including in the aftermath of the rebellion of 1857 when neighbourhoods in Old Delhi were flattened in the name of public hygiene and sanitation. The State of India seems to be repeating this colonial doctrine and its processes - only this time, against its own citizens and to destroy its own heritage.
Architecture is our easiest access to history and the site of our future imaginations. Archeology allows for an interpretation of the past and construction provides a canvas for the future. Hence, architecture becomes the subject of some of the most violent political conflicts. It was precisely to safeguard heritage from such political conflicts that the UNESCO World Heritage Sites category was developed and adopted between 1965 and 1972 by the United Nations. The idea of World Heritage recognises that contemporary politics decides the preservation or destruction of heritage, and that it can be done “legally” by sovereign nations at their will, and therefore, needs universal protection. India has adhered to the convention and its norms, is a member State, and enjoys great capital-flow and soft power from its 42 World Heritage sites.
The truth is that the architecture built by the Muslim monarchs in India – Indo-Islamic architecture – is our collective heritage as South Asian people and as members of a collective humanity. We do not find Sultanate or Mughal architecture anywhere in the world but in the Indian subcontinent. However, politics that seeks supremacy of an identity and erasure of the other will first assign a past – an unwanted one– to the other and then erase it in a spectacular display of violence and destruction. Let us not forget that it was the destruction of a mosque that generated decades of political propulsion in India.
Fahad Zuberi, trained as an architect, is Indira Gandhi Radhakrishnan Scholar of South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. The views expressed are personal