[Reader-list] India state-run banks 'turn away Muslims': BBC

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear Pawan bhai

I agree with you when you say that we must investigate the idea that Muslims
are really being discriminated against or not when it comes to being given
houses for rent. I also agree, though not totally with some (not all) of
your ideas. For example, I know of friends of mine (Hindus) whose parents
could not get houses for rent in old Bhopal when the localities were Muslim
dominated. Equally I do understand that vegetarians may not give houses for
rent to non-vegetarian people (as I have seen examples of this). Infact, in
many cases, vegetarians even don't take the house for rent if the families
around are non-vegetarians.

But to generalize it or any other idea would be a mistake also unless there
is genuine proof of the same. Which is why I said these things should be
investigated. My father bought a house from a Muslim builder who had two
Hindus as his assistants, and this for a man who is a sworn BJP supporter
(and this is something I usually pain him about, mostly in a joking sense).
My relatives (both my maternal grandfather and also his brother) had got
house on rents from Gujaratis (and my relatives were and still are Tamils).
The people living in the colony where my house is there (I live in a hostel
in Chennai, not in Bhopal where my home is) include some Muslims and
non-vegetarians also, and what keeps them there I feel is a sort of
commonity in economic background (as opposed to religion or vegetarianism or
regionalism).

So even what you say as generalizations may not be facts, but there can be
incidents like them which make us feel that they are indeed existing, even
if at small level. Equally there are also cases of discrimination, be it
against Dalits or Muslims or even sometimes people belonging to poor
economic backgrounds. They exist.

And we can't adopt the policy of hiding ourselves beneath the sand and say
that the problem doesn't exist. It does.

Rakesh