Isolated Living

Recently my friend Mumu’s fiancé has been looking for a house to buy. Finding a decent house in Mumbai that fits your budget is a difficult task for anybody. It has been more difficult for my friend as she is a Muslim, wonder what that has to do with buying a house; well it does, even in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai.

When they would contact some builders, he would assure them that he has some nice flats that they will like, the moment they gave their names suddenly the flats would be unavailable. Some of the housing societies very candidly refused to sell them flats stating with a sweet smile Sorry No Minorities. A very frustrating experience for this family, they are nothing but a normal middle class family, which pays their taxes like every other person and don’t make much fuss about who their neighbour is. Are we so narrow-minded, intolerant and discriminating that we take away the right to dwell in a place of our choice on the basis of religion.

Even when we were looking for a house, the first question the broker asked us was are you guys vegetarian or non-vegetarian. When we said that we are non-vegetarians, he straight away told us that in that case it won’t be possible to get a flat in some of the locations we were interested in cause it’s a Gujarati locality and they wouldn’t want meat eaters among them. My question is if we are such bigots then why do we leave our villages, which is made of people of our own communities and settle down in different parts of the world. If we do make other parts of world our home, than what right do we have to impose our beliefs on to others and who are we to discriminate or decide who will stay where.

Another of my friends who happens to be from the same minority faces a similar dilemma. Theirs is the most secular (I can’t use that word without flinching ) family I know. My friend and her sisters would wear bindis, they celebrated Raksha Bandhan and Holi just like any other Hindu family would do, not only that my friend would even accompany me to temples and their entire family would participate in Poojas and other religious festivities. But things changed after the 92 – 93 riots, their house and belongings were destroyed and they moved to a Muslim dominated locality in the far suburbs. Not only has this caused them inconvenience in travelling and access to services like hospitals and good schools, their lifestyle has changed drastically. My friend and her sisters have to now cover their head whenever they go out, they do not go out anymore in the late evenings. Very recently I asked her why don’t they shift back to wear they lived earlier, to which she said…….. peechle baar jaan toh bachi thi, agli baar woh bhi nahin bachi toh. So now they make do with a conservative lifestyle, even though they do not like it.

I am not being spiteful about any one community or religion, I am only wondering what makes us discriminate or think that we and our practices are superior to others? And in the long run where will such demographic shifts based on caste, class, religion lead us. No matter how educated and modern we would like to think we are somewhere the discriminating behaviour is deep rooted in our psyche.