In the wake of the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22, communal violence was reported in parts of Delhi and Mumbai — cities with a large population of Muslims. While the minorities were targeted by armed Hindu groups who ran amok asserting their superiority, a seemingly ‘benign’ question floated on social media: why do “Muslim areas” even exist in the first place? A social media influencer couple – Abhi and Niyu – posted on social media platform X: “In India there cannot be an area designated to a particular religion,” — putting the blame so to say on Muslims for apparently creating ghettos. As uninformed as the couple’s opinion was on the issue, they were not the first to express these views. Several journalists in their quest to appear “neutral” have asked similar questions about the existence of Muslim ghettos.
What these questions ignore is that ‘choice’ to live in ghettos is not born out of a want to ‘other’ majority communities, but out of the fear of violence from majorities.
“Fearing for their security, Muslims are increasingly resorting to living in ghettos across the country. This is more pronounced in communally sensitive towns and cities,” said the Sachar Committee Report, which studied the social, economic, and educational status of Muslims. This study was published in 2006, and the situation remains the same in this decade.
“Muslims do not choose to live in the ghetto, rather the 'ghetto' is created as a result of historical exclusion, due to neglect or outright persecution by the state or organised violence,” said Faizan Ahmad, a scholar studying equality law at the University of Oxford. “The effect of partition violence, the successive episodes of communal pogroms , such as the Babri demolition and the 2002 Gujarat pogrom has also contributed to reconfiguring of Muslims in the city. Muslims are faced with a trade-off between security and development,” he explained.
For instance, Juhapura in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, took shape as India’s biggest Muslim ghetto after a series of attacks on Muslims. In Gujarat, the state itself allowed the ghettoisation through the ‘Disturbed Areas Act 1991,’ which allows the state government to declare riot-prone urban areas as ‘disturbed’. The sale of property in these ‘disturbed areas’ requires additional permission from the collector’s office. While the intent of this law was to stop distress sale of properties in riot-prone localities following incidents of religious violence in the 1980s and 1990s, it has been misused with the justification of stopping ‘Muslim takeover’ of Hindu-dominated localities, according to the study Paradoxes of Ghettoization: Juhapura ‘in’ Ahmedabad, 2021. And if someone violates the law, the offender can be punished with a six-year jail term.
“Under the Gujarat Disturbed Areas Act, the district administration can declare any specific area to be 'disturbed', and then land cannot be sold without the approval of the district administration. While the text of the law is religiously neutral, it is used almost exclusively to prevent Muslims from buying property. Hindutva groups exert pressure on the administration and claim that the demography of that area is under threat, and that they are not comfortable with meat eaters, or that it will lead to 'law and order problems'. More and more areas are being demanded to be declared as 'disturbed' to maintain the 'purity' of upper caste Hindu localities,” Faizan said.
“So on one hand Muslim localities are neglected in terms of development, infrastructure, water, electricity and sanitation etc, and on the other they cannot migrate to other places even if one has the means to, because they are not allowed to buy property there,” he explained.
The threat perception aside, several communities prefer to live in clusters, argued Khalid Anis Ansari, Professor of Sociology at Azim Premji University.
“Not just Muslims but many communities like Brahmins, Reddys, Dalits, and others often continue to live in separate clusters by choice. For example, Brahmins may prefer to live in Jayanagar in Bengaluru. Community-based neighbourhoods and spatial segregation are a South-Asian phenomenon often driven by a shared sense of community and forms of life,” he said.
He added that the reasons for the ghettoisation of communities are complicated and not governed simply by an external threat perception or discrimination. “At times, these ghettos are cherished. Many communities refuse to be part of a cosmopolitan society and embrace modernity,” Ansari said.
Muslims are also demonised and accused of changing the demography in places like Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttarakhand, through the conspiracy of ‘land jihad’ – a term popularised by journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, known for his blatant anti-Muslim comments. In 2020, the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) Union Territory administration scrapped the Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, or the Roshni Act (2001), a law which granted ownership of state land to unauthorised occupants to raise money for the hydroelectricity project. Several right-wingers celebrated this moment, claiming that the law had enabled ‘land jihad’ – an alleged holy war for land to change its demography. However, later the government backtracked after learning that several of the beneficiaries of these schemes were non-Muslims.
Besides safety being the reason for Muslim migrants taking refuge in Muslim-dominated areas, the community also faces discrimination because of their religion. In cities, caste Hindus refuse to rent their properties to Muslims. A study by the Housing Discrimination Project conducted in Delhi and Mumbai, found that Muslims face considerable discrimination in finding houses on rent. “In Delhi and Mumbai, brokers consistently conceded that they refuse certain prospective tenants, especially Muslims. In some cases, they revealed their own biases during interviews. In numerous instances, they said they felt Muslim tenants could be a “liability”,” the study said.
The Housing Discrimination Project published its study by conducting 340 interviews — including with 199 brokers, 31 home owners and housing society members, and 97 Muslim tenants.
The discrimination, which Muslims irrespective of their social class face, has led to properties being developed specifically to house Muslims.
“The practice of widespread rental discrimination in cities has been confirmed by various studies — many Muslim tenants, who are seen as potential criminals or a liability, find it difficult to find accommodation; landlords don’t want to take the 'risk'. Brokers themselves advise Muslims to look for houses only in so-called 'Muslim areas' because the posh south Delhi localities won't take them. Broker networks are also divided along religious lines,” Faizan said.
Ansari said that while housing discrimination forces many marginalised Muslims without any cultural capital to live in ghettos, some privileged Muslims too prefer to live in segregated communities where their orthodoxy and hegemony remain unchallenged. “The aristocratic Muslims also practise discrimination. In south Delhi, in their neighbourhoods, they sometimes do not allow other cultural communities to rent houses. Like Brahmins who do not rent houses to Dalits or others for their meat-eating practices, Muslims too have their reservations against those who eat pork or consume alcohol,” Ansari said.
While Muslims living in ghettos get a sense of security because of their numerical strength, the Sachar Committee Report found that Muslims living in ghettos are neglected by the state. “Muslims living together in concentrated pockets (both because of historical reasons and a deepening sense of insecurity) has made them easy targets for neglect by municipal and government authorities. Water, sanitation, electricity, schools, public health facilities, banking facilities, anganwadis, ration shops, roads, and transport facilities — are all in short supply in these areas,” the report said.
The ghettoisation of Muslims has severely affected women, as they do not venture beyond the confines of their ‘safe’ areas. “Increasing ghettoisation of the community implies a shrinking space for it in the public sphere; an unhealthy trend that is gaining ground. Social boycott of Muslims in certain parts of the country has forced Muslims to migrate from places where they lived for centuries; this has affected their employability and means of earning a livelihood. Ghettoisation, therefore, has multiple adverse effects: inadequacy of infrastructural facilities, shrinking common spaces where different SRCs (socio religious category) can interact and reduction in livelihood options,” the Sachar Committee Report said.
Abhi and Niyu’s tweet also overlooks the discrimination that marginalised communities like Dalits, Tribals etc face — they too are forced to live in ghettos with poor amenities, and are officially identified as ‘encroachers.’ They also fail to acknowledge that in India, some regions are designated for certain communities. Under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, land cannot be acquired by other communities in the Scheduled Areas. The Scheduled Areas are created to protect the tribal communities from being exploited and to preserve their culture without altering the demography of the place.
Apart from this, in some states like Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, non-natives are not allowed to buy land. Some of these states have legislations prohibiting sale of land to outsiders as a measure to prevent displacement of tribal communities.