Living Together Separately: Ghettoization Of Indian Muslims
It is common knowledge that
during the last two decades, Muslim families have faced enormous difficulties in
renting houses and flats in developed residential areas, which are obviously
Hindu-dominated areas, as Hindu landlords tend to shun Muslim tenants even if
they belong to the same social class and enjoy equal or better footing in
society. In Bombay, for instance, a large majority of housing societies openly
refuse membership to Muslims. In other cities, too, it is difficult for a Muslim
to get an apartment in a housing society. Landlords and housing societies may
not openly say no to Muslims but adopt various subterfuges. If a well-known
Muslim cine artist in Bombay finds it difficult to rent a house from a Hindu
landlord, the plight of the common Muslim as well as the gravity of the
situation can be estimated. --
Ather
Farouqui
By Athar
Farougui
With
the spectre of communalism raising its ugly head all across the country, Muslim
ghettoization is emerging as a grave and complex problem that requires urgently
to be addressed. It has a decisive bearing on communalism. Unfortunately, it has
not drawn the attention it deserves.
It
is common knowledge that during the last two decades, Muslim families have faced
enormous difficulties in renting houses and flats in developed residential
areas, which are obviously Hindu-dominated areas, as Hindu landlords tend to
shun Muslim tenants even if they belong to the same social class and enjoy equal
or better footing in society. In Bombay, for instance, a large majority of
housing societies openly refuse membership to Muslims. In other cities, too, it
is difficult for a Muslim to get an apartment in a housing society. Landlords
and housing societies may not openly say no to Muslims but adopt various
subterfuges. If a well-known Muslim cine artist in Bombay finds it difficult to
rent a house from a Hindu landlord, the plight of the common Muslim as well as
the gravity of the situation can be estimated.
Muslim
ghettoization began after partition but gathered pace with slow but steady
migration of Muslims from rural to urban areas. Amongst other factors, the
abolition of zamindari was a major factor for Muslim migration to urban areas as
Muslims were the community most affected by the zamindari abolition. The second
most important factor was the emerging insecurity as with the partition mass
migration changed the sociology of demography. In the seventies and eighties it
became a worrying phenomenon. Rural India is almost entirely bereft of Muslims
except in Assam, Kerala and West Bengal. West Bengal is the only state where 65
per cent of Muslims live in rural areas and because of this factor they are not
part of a pan Islamic brotherhood. In India Urdu as a language works as a symbol
of pan Islamic identity while rural Bengali Muslims speak only Bengali. However,
this is an altogether different debate. The villages of north Indiaparticularly,
where Muslim presence was once 5-10 per cent, are now inhabited only by Hindus.
The Muslim population has gradually been forced to migrate to Muslim localities
in nearby towns. In all of north India, barring Jammu & Kashmir—which is
itself a ghettoised Muslim society—it is difficult to find even a single Muslim
family in Hindu-dominated areas even in towns and cities.
In
general, Muslims are forced to settle in Muslim-majority areas with poor
infrastructure and civic facilities, for which the government alone is to
blame.
Until
the early nineties, one could find Muslim government servants occupying
government housing in areas where the majority of the population was not Muslim.
But even here, a change has been visible since 1992. To take just one example: a
large number of Muslim teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New
Delhi, reputedly an enlightened institution with liberal outlook and social
sensitivity, prefer to live in Muslim-dominated colonies or ghettos rather than
on university campus after 1992.
The
result of this phenomenon is that all over the country Muslim families are to be
seen only in areas that can be termed as ‘Muslim clusters’. Muslim staff
members as well as the old generation of teachers at JNU, have mostly returned
to Muslim-dominated areas after retirement. An employee of the World Bank or a
foreign mission, owing to fear psychosis, is often forced to live in places like
the Jama Masjid area of Old Delhi, though his social profile certainly does not
match that of the average inhabitant of the walled city. It has become common
for families that moved from the walled city to New Delhi some fifty years ago
to move back to their old family homes simply because they do not feel secure in
Hindu-dominated areas.
Jamia
Nagar, near New Friends Colony in south Delhi, boasts a huge Muslim elite which
shifted there after 1992. Land costs here have gone through the roof owing to
limited space and tremendous demand as each new day brings more families, even
NRIs, needless to say Muslim NRIs, seeking a safe foothold inDelhi, further
straining the already poor infrastructure. Such is the state of infrastructure
here that Jamia Nagar, which adjoins the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia, a
central university, does not even have a government dispensary or a branch of a
public sector bank (though there is one on university campus). Delhi Chief
Minister Sheila Dikshit admitted the lack of these bare minimum facilities in
the area in a TV interview after the Batla House shootout. The disturbing thing
was that she had been unaware of the situation despite having been ten years at
the helm of affairs in Delhi.
Jamia
Nagar conjoins many Muslim colonies such as Batla House, Zakir Nagar, Abul Fazal
Enclave, Ghaffar Manzil, Johri Farm, Noor Nagar, and Okhla Vihar. This whole
area, with a population of about 10 lakh, is a victim of official apathy. The
situation is not unique to Delhi but prevails in all state capitals and district
towns.
No
multinational bank provides the inhabitants of Muslim colonies with credit cards
and MNC pizza and burger outlets based in nearby posh areas refuse to deliver in
these areas. The capital city of India, New Delhi, is no exception. Even housing
loans are not extended by most nationalized banks in Muslim areas
inDelhi and New Delhi, Jamia Nagar being just one example.
Who
is responsible for this increasing ghettoisation of Muslims? Civil society is
squarely to blame. Let me quote two instances that were widely reported at the
time and still haunt collective memory. The house of the famous Urdu poet Bashir
Badr, who insisted on living in the Hindu-dominated colony of Shastri Nagar
inMeerut because of his immense faith in secularism and popularity as poet
amongst Hindus, was lost to a communal blaze in late 1987. Fortunately, the
lives of his family members were saved as everyone was out at the time of the
incident. Much worse was the assassination of Zaki Anwar, a college lecturer and
Urdu writer, during the infamous Jamshedpur riots in 1978. Zaki had unshakeable
faith in his Hindu neighbours, Hindu-Muslim unity, and Gandhian philosophy. He
sat on a Gandhian-type long-drawn-out hunger strike in a Hindu-majority area to
protest against communal tension. But all that his faith and his striving for
togetherness and amity led to was his brutal killing. In both cases, it can be
inferred that the Hindu neighbourhoods did not live up to the faith of the
victims, whatever the reasons. Bashir Badr now lives in Bhopal and Zaki Anwar’s
family in Jamshedpur, both in Muslim-dominated areas. One needs to study the
case of Bashir Badr in perspective as he supported the BJP during NDA rule and
is now a Muslim poster boy of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. He made an all-India
tour during the general elections of 2004 to solicit Muslim support for the BJP
and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minster.
The
poignant story of former Member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri, brutally murdered in
a Hindu-dominated area in Ahmedabad in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, is etched in the
nation’s memory. No civil society can withstand repeated incidents of this
kind.
The Bhagalpur riots
of 1989 led to large-scale migration of rural Muslims in Bihar and the
demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, and the resultant backlash
drove the last nail in the coffin of Hindu-Muslim neighbourhoods all over the
country. As per press reports on the Bhagalpur riots, in all the neighbouring
villages of Bhagalpur, where Muslims constituted less than 10 per cent of the
population, the majority were killed and only a few managed to flee. In
Hashimpura locality of Meerut, 40 Muslim youths were taken away by the police in
May 1987 and massacred in cold blood and their bodies thrown in the
canal.
In
sharp contrast, not a single incident has been reported of a non-Muslim, in
particular a Hindu, family living in a Muslim-dominated area having faced a
similar situation during communal tension or violence in post-independence
India.
All
the same, post-1992 one can find hardly any Hindu family in a Muslim-majority
locality, which was not the case earlier. Overall, the extremely surcharged
atmosphere has forced non-Muslim families to shift out, turning their original
abodes into Muslim ghettos by default. The phenomenon of a few Muslim families
still living in Hindu-dominated areas and vice versa needs serious sociological
study.
Some
notable facts in this regard:
1. The
shameful incident of Emran Hashmi, a noted film actor of Bombay, in July 2009
and a number of other incidents of the same nature in which high-profile Muslims
were refused houses highlight the problem. As per reports, Emran [Imran] Hashmi
was ‘told by [the] Pali Hill’s Nibbana Cooperative Housing Society, [Bombay] to
go and look elsewhere’. The actor, who is married to a Hindu girl, and
interestingly whose mother is a Christian, ‘believes the housing society is
discriminating against him because he is a Muslim’. He has further informed the
media, ‘The seller, Survana, has now informed us that the society will not give
us an NOC and it has blocked the sale. We have information that this has been
done as they will not allow any Muslim in the society’.
It
would be appropriate to remember that in the past Bollywood actress Shabana
Azmi, one-time Member of Parliament and her writer-activist husband Javed
Akhtar, now a Member of Parliament himself, have faced problems getting a house
in Juhu (Bombay). As per press reports appearing at the time of the Emran Hashmi
incident, once actor Aamir Khan also filed a PIL after being refused a house in
Lokhandwala, Maharashtra.
For
a detailed report of the Emran Hashmi issue, see The Times of India, New
Delhi, 31 July 2009 which published a news items entitled ‘ Emran Hashmi can’t
get a house in Pali Hill’ on the front page with additional information entitled
‘Being a celeb does not mean you get everything’ on page 11.
The
question is: does communal ghettoisation represent the death of our hitherto
composite culture and liberal and tolerant outlook or can we still do something
to save it? Do we have the option of remaining silent? The answer is decidedly
no. The question then is: what can be done to set the clock back and foster
communal harmony? It will take a lot of courage and determination to figure out
the answers but that is the only way forward if secular democracy is to survive.
And we have to do it before it is too late. A new and reformed politics shunning
populism is a necessary step forward.
But
we have to understand that communal categorisation and communal identity
perception can be resolved only through progressive mass movements dealing with
issues pertaining to different facets of our shared life. Not for a moment does
the term progressive refer to movement prescribed by different left wing
political parties. The ideological confusion and resultant contradictions of
these parties are more dangerous than communalism itself. Movements for
literacy, education, sports facilities, employment, health care, shelter, and
community interaction can help develop a wider political and social
consciousness, thereby lessening the communal identity perception of the common
people.
This is also the only way forward if Indian
democracy is to survive. And we have to do it before it is too
late.
The
author can be reached at: farouqui@yahoo.com
10:16 PM
Sultan Shahin
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