On April 12, 2025, a 20-year-old madrasa in BD Colony, Panna district in India’s Madhya Pradesh, was demolished, marking the first reported instance of a Muslim-owned property being targeted under the newly enforced Waqf Amendment Act. Bulldozer demolitions have become a grim norm in India over the past several years, but this action holds particular significance because it is the first one conducted under the shadow of the controversial Waqf Bill passed by the Indian Parliament.

This incident is not an isolated administrative action. It signals the beginning of a systematic assault on Muslim institutions under the convenient guise of legality. The Waqf Amendment Act has paved the way for the large-scale demolition of Muslim properties across India, and many fear that its devastating reach will soon extend into occupied Jammu and Kashmir, where India is already waging an unrelenting war against a people, their faith, identity, and memory.

In occupied Kashmir, the machinery of demographic change and cultural erasure is already well underway. From arbitrary property seizures to the undermining of Waqf Board autonomy, India has consistently used bureaucracy as a weapon against Kashmiri Muslims. With the Waqf Amendment Act now in force, the script has been finalized: bulldozers will soon come for Kashmir’s Masjids, khanqahs, graveyards, and religious schools under the pretexts of “development,” legality, and “public land.”

This is more about identity than land. It is about erasing history, dismantling legacy, and silencing memory. It is about rewriting the cultural and spiritual landscape of a people by destroying the very institutions that preserve it. India has already criminalized resistance in Kashmir and now it seeks to criminalize even presence. The objective is no longer control but complete erasure of anything that resembles with Islam.

The demolition under the Waqf amendment bill in Panna is just the beginning. What has long been tested in Kashmir is now being normalized in India. But in a reversal of India’s usual colonial experimentation, this time the “bulldozer justice” was trialed in India itself and will now be replicated in Kashmir with renewed force. The larger project of de-Islamizing the disputed region is already well in motion.

This campaign of destruction will advance unchallenged if Indian Muslims continue to remain in a state of denial. It is time to awaken from the deep slumber and devise serious strategies to safeguard their Muslim identity, institutions, and heritage. Unfortunately, much hope is lost when some of the most prominent Muslim leaders and politicians in India have become more loyal than the king himself, wearing the robes of Hindutva in a different shade and serving the majoritarian project in the name of pragmatism.

Kashmir, however, must remain alert. The bulldozers are on the move. The destruction has already begun. It is wrapped in silence, but it grows louder with each structure that falls.