Mumbai: When Misbah Quadri, 25, a media professional, came to Mumbai five years back, she was shocked to find that this cosmopolitan city was no different from her home-state Gujarat when it came to Muslims renting or buying a house.
“I was used to that kind attitude in Gujarat where they tell you on your face that Muslims are not welcome and therefore cannot buy or rent houses in the main city, apart from Muslims being relegated to the confines of the old, walled city in Ahmedabad,” Quadri told Gulf News.
But the situation in Mumbai, too, is equally difficult when Muslims want to rent flats or even buy one within the city so that they are close to their work places.
It was her religion that got her evicted from a Wadala flat she had planned to share with two other girls. Now she is back to house hunting all over again and is compelled to live as a paying guest till she finds a flat, which is far more convenient to live in, she says.
Whilst discrimination or intolerance based on religion or cultural habits is unconstitutional under Indian law, an activist-lawyer Shehzad Poonawalla, who took up Zeeshan Khan’s case a week earlier when the latter was denied a job because he was Muslim, has moved the National Commission of Minorities (NCM) for an inquiry in to Quadri’s case.
The young woman has filed a complaint with the local station but says, “The petition that was filed with the NCM will now be submitted to Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria.”
What happened more than two weeks ago has left her angry and furious at the discrimination she has had to encounter. “It is disgusting to go through this bias time and again,” she says.
“If you want Muslims to become a part of the mainstream, they have to be allowed access to better schools and facilities. Muslims are being labelled as uneducated but even educated ones, including those doing well in the corporate sector, have faced some kind of prejudice.”
It breaks her heart that even in this age of social media, “our society is so insensitive to Muslims.”
After a lot of searching, she says, she finally found a flat in Wadala which was advertised on social media by two girls seeking a room-mate. “When I went with my luggage, I got a call from the broker in charge of the flat who told me I could not move in because I was Muslim,” she says.
“He asked me whether I wore the Muslim attire and when I asked him, ‘what do you mean?’ he said, ‘do you wear the burka?’”
When she said she did not, the broker said in that case the residents may not find out she is a Muslim and that she could stay provided she signed a “no-objection certificate” stating that she would not hold the flat owner, broker or builder responsible if she faced harassment.
Even her flat mates were thrown out for supporting her.
Discrimination against young, well-educated Muslims who want to move out of their Muslim-dominated pockets and live in Hindu-majority or other areas to join the mainstream is nothing new. Recounts a young woman, who faced a similar plight, “Around five-six years back, my husband and I were keen on buying a flat in Dadar since it was convenient for the family — close to my husband’s office and my little sons’ school. But unfortunately, we were rejected everywhere because we were Muslim and could find just one flat in the entire teeming area of Dadar.” B
ut persistence paid and this family finally managed to buy a flat in this area.
In another incident, where the husband was Muslim and his non-Muslim wife went house-hunting, it was all fine until she revealed her husband’s name. She was politely told how Muslims were not welcome. The couple, too, eventually found a flat in a posh suburb though the humiliation of discrimination is never forgotten.