On the issue of bulldozing and bulldozers, one may ask: Is there no other civilized way to ensure that citizens are not uprooted in this ruthless way, with nothingness staring out ? by Humra Quraishi
Last week’s visual shots of a Delhi Police sub-inspector kicking and slapping namazis offering Friday afternoon prayers on the road outside a mosque in the Inderlok locality of the capital city left me appalled. Though, as I have been writing all along, nothing really shocks one in these fascist times, but those shots were much too horrifying. It went to relay how very third class and rotten we have become. How the system has failed us. Disasters taking place, atrocities heaped, every single day, yet we sit all too muted.
Also, it got me thinking that if all these violent attacks are taking place out there in the open in the national capital, then what must be happening inside jails and prisons, where the inmates are completely at the mercy of the jail staff and there are supposedly no mobiles and cameras to expose the targeted assaults. Denting and bulldozing of human forms!
Whilst on bulldozing and bulldozers, homes of hundreds demolished as never before. Men, women, children forced to sit or squat or stand outside their demolished dwellings. One is provoked to question: where are all those who harp on the safety of girls and women? Don’t they realize that with homes and abodes demolished, entire families are forced to survive without a roof over their heads. So very vulnerable they are! Yes, their vulnerability at the peak, when they are forced to sit by the road side.
Even if one is told that demolitions are on because those structures were built on un-authorized lands, then one may ask: Who’d given the initial go-ahead? Who all are part and parcel of the entire nexus? Is there any level of accountability? Is there no other civilized way…civilized measures undertaken to ensure that they are not uprooted in this ruthless way, with a nothingness staring out? And when school sheds and madrasas are demolished, it is the very end of education for those trying to learn the very basics. Can’t alternative building structures be offered so that the learning process is not ruined or disrupted in an atmosphere where dismal realities and poverty stare in the face?
It is significant to mention that in the latest round of the bulldozing spree in the capital city, the home of Wakeel Hassan in Delhi’s Khajuri Khas locality was also ruined …bulldozed. Yes, he’s a man who along with his team saved the lives of the trapped miners in Uttarakhand. Today, he and his wife and children sit outside the demolished home! One can imagine their anger-cum-disgust-cum-frustration at the treatment meted out to them. In fact, when citizens raised much hue and cry and pointed out that this man, Wakeel Hassan, was the saviour of the trapped miners, the authorities offered him some alterative shelter which he’s rightly refused to take as it’s a matter of his home which he’d built over the years with his hard earned money. With school-going children, why should he get dislocated from his familiar home surroundings at this crucial stage of his life!
