In The Name of Name (Identity): Ghettoization of Muslims in Indian Cities - Inaccessible Rental Apartments

“When it comes to Rental room hunting in Indian cities no matter if one practices the religion or is a vegetarian or not if that person has a Muslim Name, it is difficult to find a rental apartment.”

What are the popular reasons that are common in Indian cities to get rejected from Rental apartments? Being a Muslim, Single, and Non-Vegetarian. During my high school days, I heard about my brothers not getting rental apartments. Recently I have been reading about Muslims facing issues to get rooms in Indian Cities. The growing anti-Muslim - Hindutva politics is making it even worse. This is the primary reason why I chose this topic. The first time I came across the word ghettoisation was during the Velivada movement of Rohit Vemula at Hyderabad Central University (Kiliyamannil, 2022). This phenomenon of Muslims not getting rental apartments in Indian cities because of their religious identity is making them more ghettoised and alienated from society. Here I am trying to understand how the media is narrating this particular issue of Ghettoisation and trying to connect the news articles with existing academic research to connect the concepts and reality.

Ghettoisation Concepts and The Recent News Articles

The article “Right to the City” by David Harvey talks about the need that individuals and communities who live in the city should have the agency to change the city how they want it to be. The concept is applicable here in the case of Muslims not getting rental apartments in urban spaces. Because they are not able to avail the right to the city (Harvey, 2003). The paper also talks about urban violence and conflicts which are related to the struggles that communities like Muslims and Dalits face in Indian Cities. Further, Harvey explains about social justice. The free market is creating more inequalities, especially in urban areas which are capital-driven. Neoliberalism doesn't allow collectivisation. No longer does it question the structure and forgets the language of questioning the structure. David Harvey urges collectivise for social change. Connecting that with the Muslim question of Indian cities for housing. Collectivisation could be a way forward. The Utopian ideals mentioned in the paper are significant to know how to deal with these communities envisioning an inclusive urban space that can inspire movements against ghettoisation (Harvey, 2003).

The urban politics and class dynamics along with redefining ordinariness help us to understand the ghettoisation of Muslims in urban India which has the intersectionality of religion, class, and urban space. The concept of the desire to claim public space for private consumption often sidelines the marginalised like Muslims and Dalits (Srivastava, 2020). Shaheen Bagh can be an example of how the community is fighting back the marginalisation during the evolving dynamics between the state and private capital. 

The newspaper article (Alam, The Milli Gazette Online, July 14, 2024). states the growing residential segregation that Muslims face in India. The concept of “Land Jihad” which is propagated by some right-wing political groups is making the situation even worse which is created by prejudice and suspicion against Indian Muslims. The examples used in the article are from different cities of India like Mumbai, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad, and Delhi, which explains the spatial segregation and creation of ghettos, and these ghettos lack basic facilities. Often seen in cities like Delhi the Muslim ghettos become waste dumping spaces and that creates the question of the dignity of these communities “Residents of the Motnath Residency Cooperative Housing Society in Vadodara, Gujarat, are currently protesting against the housing allotment granted to a Muslim woman”. Alam (2024) states that the Gujarat Disturbed Areas Act plays a significant role in regulating property transactions between different religious communities.The author uses these examples to explain the legal barrier that complicates the transactions between religious communities further creating segregation. The article asks for policy interventions in this matter (Alam, The Milli Gazette Online, July 14, 2024).

“There is no law in India that prohibits religious discrimination while selling or leasing property” (Zaffar, The Caravan, November 8, 2019).

In a newspaper article by Hanan Zaffar (Zaffar, The Caravan, November 8, 2019), She explains why Muslims are choosing to live within Jamia Nagar to feel safe. Research conducted by Raphael Susewind says that Delhi has the highest level of segregation for Muslims among Indian Cities, which has historical roots, communal violence and the growing Hindutva politics. That is forcing Muslims to cluster in specific areas to feel safe. And there is an emergence of real estate only for Muslims. Then the question of who can afford the high-rent apartments also arises. 

The phenomenon of gentrification is also connected with ghettoisation with growing urbanisation high-income people are moving to the peripheries of the city when they can't afford the city centre. This connects with a news article by Zaffar (2019), where a person is saying he can afford the city centre, but because of his identity as a Muslim, he is choosing to stay near Jamia Nagar. So, often gentrification and ghettoisation are interlinked (Maringanti & Jonnalagadda, 2015).

The fluid infrastructure of urban India is connected with residential segregation and which is connected with the permanent temporariness and precarity as Abdou Simone Maliq explains. The growing Hindu majoritarianism and bulldozing of Muslim settlements create fear in the marginalised community which will be a reason for the precarity feeling for them in the urban spaces (Simone, 2017). 
Another newspaper article (Khan, Scroll.in, September 14, 2016) on Mumbai’s Muslims not getting rental apartments often encounter difficulties because of unspoken social codes which include marital status and the faith they follow. In Mumbai, this has existed for years now. Through different anecdotes, Khan talks about the complexities of identity, desirability and belonging in Mumbai’s housing landscape which reveals a system that excludes Muslims and marginalises them in general in the name of identity (Khan, Scroll.in, September 14, 2016).

“Jama Masjid and Okhla area of Delhi, Mumbra and Bhendi Bazar of Mumbai, and Juhapura in Gujarat chart the tale of spatial segregation on the basis of religion. All these areas facing a lack of basic amenities and poor infrastructure, mostly accommodate Muslim communities” (Yadav, Feminism in India, May 1, 2024).

Local residents protesting against the presence of Muslim women in the Hindu-dominant area of Gujarat, and residents not being ready to sell their houses to non-Hindus in Jaipur, show us the religious intolerance and spatial discrimination happening in the name of religion. In India, religion plays an important role in societal behaviour, and behavioural change takes time. But what about the behaviours getting worse with hostile politics? The writer says this segregation is an after-effect of historical events like partition and the Gujarat riots of 2002 (Yadav, Feminism in India, May 1, 2024). This is creating urban inequality, as David Harvey would say (Harvey, 2003). The writer calls for legal reforms and proper urban planning which will not exclude any person, and where they will be able to enjoy the fundamental rights, they have and where they can be assertive and claim their right to the city.

The paper by Maringanti & Jonnalagadda talks about how property owners can shape the urban landscape; in many Indian cities, property owners, in this case, landlords, give priority to tenants who fit into certain socio-economic backgrounds, which often exclude Muslims (Maringanti & Jonnalagadda, 2015). Indian cities are still running along caste and religious lines, Limiting social mobility for the marginalised communities. Many landlords explicitly reject housing for Muslims with excuses of vegetarianism. Residential segregation can be mirroring social hierarchies (Sharma, Article 14, December 5, 2022).

Conclusion

The phenomenon of chaos and precarity in Indian cities, as discussed by Gautham Bhan, AbdouMaliq Simone, and Ananya Roy, (Urban theorists) relates deeply to questions of identity in urban India. Analysing both newspaper articles and scholarly insights reveals that such issues have long been embedded in the fabric of Indian urban spaces. (Roy, 2016) (Bhan, 2019) (Simone, 2017). The growing anti-Muslim feeling in India in the context of Hindutva politics is making housing for Muslims difficult and further ghettoising the community. That does exclude them from the urban space socio-economically; psychologically, they will also be forced to have a “herd mentality.” The ghettoised community will be facing alienation. Broadly the Brahmanical forces will continue to hierarchise the society in the name of identity, caste, religion and what food one consumes. I believe the state should ensure inclusivity in the right to the city using the legal framework. And when the state itself is trying to oppress the marginalised the scenario gets worse. India, as a caste society, should always try to eradicate and annihilate the caste from all spheres, and most of the time, people try to associate caste as a rural phenomenon. After examining the ghettoisation of urban spaces, I realise that caste and religious inequality do exist in urban areas as much as they do in rural ones. This may be rendered invisible due to neoliberalism. But we cannot deny the fact: the presence of caste and religion in the urban space.

References
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