On 9 November, the Supreme Court said, “Bulldozer justice is simply unacceptable under the rule of law...Justice through bulldozers is unknown to any civilized system of jurisprudence.” On the same day, at a by-election campaign rally addressed by UP CM Yogi Adityanath, his supporters staged their arrival on bulldozers.
On 13 November, the Supreme Court reiterated that the bulldozer “reminds one of a lawless state of affairs, where “might was right.” Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, as a “star campaigner” for the BJP in other states bound for Assembly elections, is asking voters to elect the BJP’s “bulldozer model” to power.
“Bulldozer Justice” is not just Yogi’s calling card, it is Prime Minister Modi’s too. Campaigning for his second term as Prime Minister this summer, Narendra Modi said that if the Opposition won, it would run bulldozers on the Ram Temple. He taunted the INDIA bloc that it should instead “take tuition from Yogi where to run bulldozers.”
If the Supreme Court declares “Bulldozer Justice” to be lawless and the Prime Minister of the country seeks votes based on a promise to deliver “Bulldozer Justice”, surely the Supreme Court can summon him and the UP CM as heads of the executive and ensure that they are held accountable in specific and unambiguous ways?
They could, at the very least, be asked to personally pay compensation to victims of such demolitions in the courtroom, and to personally deliver an official statement on television reading out unambiguous portions of the verdict selected by the court itself.
The court could have, at the very least, prevented the PM and relevant CM from enjoying plausible deniability: by requiring them to personally go on live TV to order a stop to every single imminent punitive demolition, failing which the Supreme Court would be required to imprison them without delay for contempt.
When you have the country being ruled by leaders for whom it is not an embarrassment but an advertisement to be perceived as violators of the rule of law and constitutional provisions, the judiciary cannot claim to have done its duty. As a custodian of the Constitution, it cannot end with guidelines applicable only to the bureaucratic arm of the executive.
When the political heads of the executive usurp the role of the judiciary, it is not judicial overreach, and is, in fact, judicial duty, to issue directives requiring compliance from specific political leaders.
One might ask, political rhetoric notwithstanding, surely the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court’s 13 November verdict will make it harder for BJP governments to actually carry out punitive bulldozer demolitions? I fear that the opposite might be true.
That verdict itself states that the UP government had submitted an affidavit “that the immovable properties can be demolished only in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law.” The UP government has welcomed the verdict, saying that it would “help curb organised crime and instil a fear of legal consequences among criminals.” Indeed, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath himself had issued “guidelines” in 2022 declaring that only illegal encroachments, not the hutments of the poor, would be demolished by bulldozers.
The Supreme Court had begun hearing petitions against “bulldozer justice” in September itself, and had already declared its intention to issue countrywide guidelines to prohibit arbitrary demolitions. But even as the Supreme Court justices were saying “a house could be demolished simply because someone is accused of a crime,” Yogi Adityanath was boasting that secularists were incapable of administering bulldozer justice like him. “Only someone with a ‘dil and dimaag’ (heart and mind) as strong as a bulldozer can operate one,” he said, adding, “Those who bow before the rioters cannot take the wheel of a bulldozer.”
PM Modi’s “bulldozer” speech cited above refers to the instance of the BJP’s decades-long expertise in gaming the Supreme Court's rules, using them as a fig leaf for the very crimes they prohibit. Modi said that the INDIA bloc wanted to bulldoze the Ram Temple at Ayodhya, built by Modi and Yogi with the Supreme Court’s blessings on the ruins of a mosque that had been razed to the ground by kar sevaks in 1992, in express violation of a formal assurance given to the Supreme Court.
In spite of political speeches by the RSS and the BJP leaders declaring the intent to demolish the mosque, the Supreme Court had in November 1992 allowed a “symbolic kar seva” to proceed on 6 December, after securing a formal undertaking by the BJP government of Uttar Pradesh that the “status quo” on the structure would be maintained, and appointing its own observer to be present at the event. A speech by Atal Bihari Vajpayee who went on to become Prime Minister, made a wink-wink “in-joke” about the Supreme Court order, that drew delighted laughter and applause from the kar sevaks.
He said, “The Supreme Court has appointed its observer. It has allowed kar seva, and its order will be obeyed. The Supreme Court has said we must not construct anything, but it has allowed us to offer prayers. Prayers cannot be offered singly but as a group. We cannot stand for hours as we pray, we need to sit. Naturally, we cannot sit if there are sharp stones on the ground, the ground will need to be levelled. We will also be doing a yagya (ritual), so there will be some construction also, at least a vedi (altar) will be constructed and I don’t think that the Supreme Court has prohibited any of these things. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Everything will be decided by the kar sevaks.”
Vajpayee’s speech explained the exact manner in which the mosque would be demolished to give way to a temple, taking advantage of the terms set down by the Supreme Court itself. The Supreme Court’s own order gave the BJP leadership grounds for plausible deniability. It could say, in effect, “The Supreme Court itself permitted the gathering, setting down terms which we obeyed. Neither the Court nor we could have anticipated that the kar sevaks would get carried away and level the mosque to the ground.”
Modi’s speech is saying, in effect, we got away with demolishing the mosque and building the temple, and Yogi’s bulldozers today continue to demolish Muslim homes, shops, and mosques.
What has been the fate of other recent Supreme Court orders? In July this year, the Supreme Court stayed the directions issued by Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments requiring hotels along the Kanwar Yatra route to display the names of the owners and staff outside the shops. These directives would effectively mark out Muslim businesses, owners and staff, segregating and humiliating them, and also helping violent mobs to identify them. In September, the Yogi government issued the same directive: ordering hotels to prominently display the names of proprietors, managers and staff, and also ordering police to carry out verification drives.
Another instance is the Pegasus case – relating to the presence of Israeli spyware sold only to governments, on the phones of scores of journalists, politicians, activists and even their family members. The Supreme Court appointed a committee to probe the allegations, which then told the court that the government did not cooperate with its investigation. The Supreme Court did not demand cooperation from the government, it even failed to demand a Yes/No reply to the question: was it using Pegasus or any other software to conduct surveillance on Indian citizens without due process of law?
In effect, then, illegal surveillance using Pegasus continues undeterred by the matter having come to the apex court’s attention.
The bulldozer has for all purposes become Yogi’s, Modi’s and the BJP’s unofficial party symbol. It flaunts the reality: that lawlessness in matters of civil liberties, rights of minorities, corruption and much else, is entrenched as a stable feature of governance.
The bulldozer, even more than the Ram Mandir, is an announcement that the Hindu Rashtra features communal and authoritarian governance, fast encroaching into Constitutional territory. A sincere judiciary must not perpetuate the fiction the government today will obey judicial directives in good faith. Instead, it must show the courage and the will to dismantle the BJP's encroachments on constitutional democracy, before these become permanent structures.
(Kavita Krishnan is a women's rights activist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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