[Reader-list] safety assurance to northeast people, no houses for Muslims

[Javed]

Everyone is assuring the people from Northeast that they can stay back
and their lives will be safe, and this action should be appreciated.
But what we are ignoring here is that Bangalore and many of our
cities/towns are basically prejudiced, not only towards what they call
"chinkis" but also against the Muslims and other minorities. Today,
everyone is opening their hearts out for north east guys, but the same
people will never give a house on rent to a Muslim. Will anyone start
a nation-wide campaign against discrimination to Muslims in giving a
house on rent? I think the problems of Muslims are perpetual and
permanent compared to what the people of north east are facing today.
Would you disagree with me?

This report had come out from Bangalore just last month.

------------

India’s IT powerhouse is mired in social prejudice
Sudipto Mondal
BANGALORE, July 8, 2012

HOUSING APARTHEID The property and real estate sections of free
advertisement-only newspapers offer the best insight. Most
advertisements titled ‘for vegetarians only’ were from areas such as
Jayanagar, Basavangudi and Malleshwaram.

In the last 30 years, his firm has helped thousands of people find
properties of their choice. He is one of the biggest names in the
highly competitive real estate industry of Bangalore. Fardeen Ahmed
(name changed) is equally well known as a philanthropist who has
associated himself with several progressive and secular causes. But
then, in the summer of 2009, he was rudely reminded that his standing
counts for little in a city where landlords hide their prejudice
behind a mask of modernity.

Ahmed was renovating his ancestral bungalow in Shivajinagar and wanted
to move temporarily to a rented house. He wanted a house in a
‘respectable’ locality that suited his class. But to ‘respectable’
house owners, Ahmed and his family were just meat-eating Muslims. With
an army of his own employees and all the financial resources at his
command, it took Ahmed several months to find a house on rent that
satisfied his sense of status. He is still recovering from his sense
of ‘hurt.’

Dalit feminist Ruth Manorama was reminded of her identity less than a
year after she was honoured with the Alternative Nobel Prize or Right
Livelihood Award. In 2007, Ruth wanted to shift her office from
Jayanagar 4th Block to a more spacious building a few metres away.

“It was a large house owned by a seemingly nice, English-speaking,
elderly Brahmin couple," she says. But they refused to give her the
house on rent. "After the award, I had been featured all over the
newspapers and it was well known that I am Dalit and Christian,” she
says.

The couple, retired scientists with a son working overseas, explained
that they could not rent the house to a non-vegetarian. “I wanted the
house for an office. It is not like I wanted to turn it into a
Biriyani hotel,” she says, still smarting from the insult.

Dalit poet and Chairman of the Kannada Book Authority Siddalingaiah
had a similar experience in upper-caste and class dominated South
Bangalore.

“Because of my name, most house owners thought I was a [so-called
upper caste] Lingayat. But my dark skin gave them doubts. They felt no
shame in asking about my caste and I felt none in telling them that I
am Dalit,” he says. The negotiations would quickly end after the house
owners discovered his caste.

“For many house owners, we are dog-eaters, prostitutes or drug
addicts,” says an office-bearer of the Naga Students’ Union who did
not wish to be quoted.

During the ‘Justice for Richard Loitam’ campaign in April, hundreds of
students from the North-East took to the streets alleging that Richard
was the victim of a hate crime. Several agitators had told The Hindu
that they are treated as foreigners in Bangalore. Most complained they
could not find a house on rent.

Bangalore’s real-estate industry has several prominent Muslim names.
All of them denied the existence of an apartheid-like system when The
Hindu spoke to them. None wished to be quoted on the controversial
subject.

Seven Raj, the proprietor of the well known Sevenraj Estate Agency,
says, “These things are very much there. But as far as possible, I
don’t do business with communal-minded people.”

“I don’t have a religion and I don’t ask my clients theirs,” he says.

According to him, the most guarded areas in the city are also those
endowed with the best infrastructure. House owners in Jayanagar,
Basavangudi, Malleshwaram, Sadashivnagar, Indiranagar, Rajajinagar,
Upper Palace Orchards, Koramangala and J.P. Nagar hold some of the
worst prejudices, says Seven Raj.

“In these localities, neighbours gang up against an owner who dares to
rent his house out to somebody from a lower caste or a minority
community,” says M. Paari, a former Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike
Corporator.

Paari feels that much of the blame for segregation should go to
agencies such as the Bangalore Development Authority. “A caste-wise
survey of some of the residential layouts formed by the BDA will show
that all the prime plots have gone to upper-caste applicants. Dalits
and Muslims get allotments only in EWS (Economically Weaker Section)
colonies,” he says.

Paari’s claims of segregation are borne out by a study conducted by
the NGO Jana Sahayog in 2004-05 titled ‘Anthropological Study of Slums
in Bangalore.’ Isaac Arul Selva says, “Eighty-five per cent of
Kannada-speaking slum residents were from the so-called untouchable
communities. Sixty-five per cent of non-Kannada speaking residents
were from communities considered untouchable.”

The property and real estate sections of free advertisement-only
newspapers offer the best insight. Most advertisements titled ‘for
vegetarians only’ were from areas such as Jayanagar, Basavangudi and
Malleshwaram.

The true meaning of ‘vegetarian only’ emerged when this reporter
contacted some of these owners. “This is a Brahmin layout. We do not
want any SC/STs,” said a woman before slamming the phone. “No Kashmiri
Muslims. Other Muslims are ok,” said one owner from HRBR Layout.
Another owner from HSR Layout said, “We don’t mind Muslims but we want
only clean Muslims.”

Lawyer Byatha N. Jagdeesha says, “Vegetarian only is just the code to
say Brahmins only. If they put out what they actually mean, they can
be booked under the Indian Penal Code and the SC/ST (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3614002.ece