By Charlotte Greenfield and Aftab Ahmed
- Summary
- Muslims in Delhi increasingly congregate in enclaves after 2020 riots
- Popular enclave of Jamia Nagar is overflowing, residents and real-estate agents say
- Experts link rising segregation to Islamophobia under BJP, which says it doesn’t discriminate
- Muslim enclaves often have poor economic and educational infrastructure
NEW DELHI, Oct 18 (Reuters) – In February 2020, Nasreen and her husband Tofik were living in Shiv Vihar, an upcoming neighbourhood in northeast New Delhi. But that month, riots erupted targeting Muslims like them and Tofik was pushed by a mob from the second floor of the building where they lived, according to a police report he filed days later from hospital.
He survived, but has a permanent limp and was only able to return to work selling clothes on the street after spending nearly 3 years recuperating.
Soon after the riots the couple moved to Loni, a more remote area with poorer infrastructure and job prospects – but with a sizable Muslim population.
“I will not go back to that area. I feel safer among Muslims,” Tofik, who like his wife goes by one name, told Reuters.
Reuters interviewed about two dozen people, who described how Muslims in the Indian capital have been congregating in enclaves away from the nation’s Hindu majority, seeking safety in numbers following the deadly 2020 riot and an increase in anti-Muslim hate speech. Details about this phenomenon, which has led a major Muslim neighbourhood in Delhi to effectively run out of space, have not previously been reported.
There is no official data on segregation in India, whose long-delayed census also means that there are few reliable figures on how much Muslim enclaves have grown in the past decade. Muslims comprise about 14% of India’s 1.4 billion people.
This story was originally published in reuters.com. Read the full story here.