Muslims face a property crunch in Mumbai
** this was written last year. this is not about muslims from other nationalities not allowed to buy property for security reasons, this is about their own citizens openly facing bias because, wait a minute, they eat beef?! then stop caling yourself a DEMOCRACY!!**
New Delhi - - In the fast-paced financial hub of Mumbai, Muslims are finding it difficult to buy, rent or even sell their houses and are increasingly forced to live in ghettos.
Ghetto has come to be a word exclusively reserved for Muslims, who started facing exclusion after a Muslim underworld kingpin set off multiple bombs in Mumbai in 1993, triggering large-scale riots between Hindus and Muslims.
‘If you are looking for a house in Mumbai, never utter three words - Muslim, meat-eater, drinker,’ says Jami Ahmed. The radio station marketer, who lives in Mumbai with a Hindu friend, says he has been unable to take a house on rent because of his religion.
‘Many Muslims feel that this attitude stems from political hostility towards Pakistan. Whatever is Islamic, is from Pakistan, and whatever is from Pakistan is Islamic and thereby symbolic of Islamic fundamentalism, which is another form of terrorism,’ says Fatima Batool, a journalist still looking for a buyer for her house in Mumbai.
Even well-to-do Muslims find it tough to make headway when it comes to property.
Sophiya Chaudhary, a Muslim video jockey with music channel MTV and married to a Hindu, has been looking to buy a house for close to two years. ‘Everything goes well,’ she told newspaper Mumbai Mirror, ‘until the time I reveal my Muslim lineage.’
‘While it was a norm earlier in lower middleclass localities, the bias against Muslims is becoming common in more affluent areas too. Most Muslims live in ghettos,’ says Sandeep Sadh, CEO of the Mumbai Property Exchange.
Under laws governing the western Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, housing societies cannot discriminate unless the building is built by a charitable trust.
A Supreme Court judgement in 2005 that upheld the right of co- operative societies to restrict membership to their community has institutionalized insularity.
The trend to live as a clan already exists, as exclusive community enclaves for Parsis (Zoroastrian), Catholics, Hindu Brahmins, and other communities, dot the city.
In August this year television actor Amir Ali, alleging discrimination, moved a local court, saying he was denied a house because he is a Muslim.
PV Kamath, an eminent property lawyer, says there are at least 15 housing societies in Mumbai, in which 10.6 per cent of the population is Muslim, seeking to amend their bylaws after the court’s judgement.
‘If things continue this way we will make a Yugoslavia out of India,’ author and rights activist Asghar Ali Engineer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
‘After the serial blasts in Mumbai by Muslim terrorists in 2006, Muslims have no option but to look at Muslim-dominated pockets,’ real estate consultant, Yogesh Ganjawalla, says.
‘We can’t take a risk. If anything happens, both the landlord and police look for property agents,’ real estate agent Narendra told newspaper The Telegraph.
Requirements of members of minority communities also have to be taken into account, says a developer on condition of anonymity.
‘I am put off by the sight of goats and green flags (a reference to the Pakistani flag) during Eid,’ Sunil Chabra, a Hindu businessman, told the Tehelka magazine.
‘So I found a place in a Jain (conservative Hindu community) housing society, where no animal flesh or eggs are allowed to be cooked, eaten, and, as far as possible, touched.’
But living in the society left him embittered. ‘It’s hypocritical,’ he says, ‘because I have seen members of my society eating meat and swilling alcohol at restaurants outside.’