On June 10, more than 30 residents of a housing complex in Vadodara protested against the allocation of a flat to a 44-year-old Muslim government employee under the Mukhyamantri Awas Yojana. They claimed that the presence of a Muslim woman and her teenage son in the complex posed a “threat and nuisance”.
The incident underscored the deep-seated prejudice against Muslims in India. It also reflects a broader pattern of internal displacement faced by India’s Muslims, particularly over the last decade under Bharatiya Janata Party rule.
Similar instances of anti-Muslim bigotry have been seen across India. In June last year, Muslim traders in Purola in Uttarakhand, were threatened and their shops vandalised, forcing over a dozen families to flee. In March, a similar situation unfolded in Dharchula town, again in Uttarakhand.
After the violence in Haryana’s Nuh in August, the only community affected by the government’s “bulldozer justice” were local Muslims.
These attempts at displacement have been evident at least since the nationwide riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. Many riots or disturbances have led to the forced relocation of Muslims from neighbourhoods with mixed demographics to ghettos.
This has been particularly visible in Mumbai and cities in Gujarat. After the riots of 1992-’93, Mumbai saw Muslims flocking to Mira Road and Mumbra. In Gujarat, after the riots of 2002, Ahmedabad saw the expansion of Citizen Nagar and Juhapura, home to around five lakh Muslims.
Many of these areas are often referred to as “Chhota Pakistan” by the Hindu residents.
This population movement may appear to be voluntary but it is, in reality, a coerced response to the state’s failure to protect its citizens, forcing them to seek safety on their own.
Human rights crisis
Even though these instances have been widely reported and criticised, the widespread displacement that Muslims face gets normalised as a byproduct of sectarian tensions rather than the human rights crisis that it actually is.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.