Azam Khan

In the early morning of September 5, 2026, as Saharanpur embraced sleep, all five main gates of the district's Collectorate complex were sealed, turning it into a cantonment. Amid a heavy deployment of police, Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), and Rapid Action Force (RAF), six bulldozers and JCB machines reduced the more than century-old mosque located within to a heap of rubble. This is not merely the demolition of a physical structure; it is a living document of the ongoing conflict in India between the institutional power of the state, accelerated legal processes, religious identity, and democratic resistance. When the judiciary and administrative machinery work together to declare a religious site an "encroachment on public land" and remove it, it is natural to question whether this is an impartial 'rule of law' or 'rule by law'. Factual and legal background: From complaint to demolition This mosque is believed to date from before Independence. The local Muslim community and the mosque management committee claim that it was registered in revenue records since 1911 and that its history is linked to the names of Wahid Khan and Yakub Khan. The dispute began in 2025, when a local leader associated with a right-wing organisation submitted a complaint to the District Magistrate, alleging the mosque's illegal encroachment within the Collectorate complex. The subsequent events are an example of unprecedented administrative dynamism:July 16, 2026: The City Magistrate declared the premises an "illegal encroachment" under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act. The administration ordered the mosque committee to vacate it within 30 days and imposed a fine (compensation) of Rs 6.41 crore. July 20-September 2, 2026: The mosque management committee challenged this order before the District Judge. On September 2, 2026, the district court dismissed the committee's appeal and upheld the city magistrate's order.September 4-5, 2026: Days after the district court's order, before the parties could exercise their right to appeal to the High Court, the mosque was sealed, and demolition began at 5 am on September 5. The administration's stance was clear and unequivocal—illegal construction on public land was being removed in compliance with the court's order. Political and social criticism criticised this as "over-administrative activism" and a violation of the fundamental principle of natural justice. Kairana MP Iqra Hasan was placed under house arrest to prevent her from travelling to Saharanpur; local MP Imran Masood called it a trampling of constitutional rights, and human rights activists questioned who was behind the hasty action. Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Violence To view the Saharanpur incident as a local dispute or a campaign against administrative encroachment would be to ignore its ideological depth. To understand the nuances of this phenomenon, German philosopher Walter Benjamin's 1921 essay (Zur Kritik der Gewalt / Critique of Violence) provides an essential intellectual lens. In his philosophy, Benjamin dissected the interrelationship between violence (Gewalt—legitimate force and violence) and law. Benjamin asks how law resorts to violence to maintain its power and justify itself. He outlined two fundamental forms of violence: Law-making Violence: The initial force that establishes a new state, sovereignty, or legal order. Law-preserving violence is violence used to maintain the established legal framework, ensure obedience to it, and enforce its orders. The use of bulldozers in Saharanpur is precisely what Benjamin calls law-preserving violence. The state argues that it is not committing violence, but rather "compliance with the law". Benjamin raises a poignant question here: Is the purpose of law to establish justice or merely to preserve the power of the law itself? In the Saharanpur incident, when the administrative machinery descends with full force on September 5, it subordinates the plaintiff's legal rights (the right to appeal). Here, law becomes an abstract entity whose function is not to seek a moral balance but to establish its sovereignty unquestionably. According to Benjamin, this legal power of the police and administration in the modern state becomes highly suspect and dangerous because the boundary between law and violence is completely blurred. Police administrations, under the guise of court verdicts, commit acts that are contrary to the normal humane objectives of law. Demolitions carried out in the dark of dawn, the transformation of entire areas into cantonments, and the suppression of dissenting voices through detention – all these are manifestations of the 'institutional violence' that the state calls 'law and order' (peacekeeping). The politics of 'encroachment' and the erasure of history The Saharanpur incident raises another serious question: Who decides the definition of 'public land' and 'encroachment'? Proponents of the mosque claim that when it was built, the Collectorate did not exist. Islamic jurisprudence and Indian Waqf law have a well-established principle of Waqf by User, under which if worship has been carried out continuously at a place for decades, it is legally regarded as religious property. In addition, the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, prohibits changing the character of any religious place that existed on August 15, 1947. But when the state's modern administrative gaze falls on historical and residential memory, it merely confines it to a "revenue record and map". For the state, it becomes not a 100-year-old place of worship but an unauthorised structure built on a plot number. Walter Benjamin, in his reflections on history (Theses on the Philosophy of History), wrote that history is never neutral; the ruling class always reinterprets the past according to its present interests. When the mosque's rubble was cleared, a covered well emerged from beneath it; this well was a physical witness to the fact that there exists an ancient layer of that land which cannot be erased in modern files. The metaphor of destruction within an institutional site The most ironic aspect of this entire matter is its location, the Collectorate premises. The Collectorate is the constitutional face of the state in any district, the highest centre of justice, order, and public service. When six bulldozers and hundreds of armed soldiers are required to demolish a place of worship within the same complex overnight, it leaves a profound question mark on the internal health of democracy. This scene sends a message to citizens that a hundred years of history, tradition, and coexistence are worthless in the face of the might of the state. Benjamin made it clear that when the state uses the technicality of law to suppress moral justice, the system begins to lose its legitimacy. When law is disconnected from human empathy, historical context, and equal civil dignity, it ceases to be an instrument of justice and becomes a mere weapon of repression. The demolition of the mosque is not merely the fall of a building but a symbol of the diminishing moral foundation of legal processes in our collective constitutional life. Walter Benjamin's philosophy cautions us against making the mistake of simply mistaking law-enabled violence for "justice". Whenever the power of law is used to erase the memory, identity, and religious rights of a segment of society in the name of administrative efficiency, it will no longer be called the "rule of law" but a display of sovereign power. The demolition of the mosque is not merely the fall of a building but a symbol of the declining moral foundation of legal processes in our collective constitutional life.

Azam Khan

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