‘Halal township’ near Mumbai spurs outrage even as Muslim tenants, home owners battle discrimination
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/halal-township-near-mumbai-prompts-outrage-in-india-even-as-muslim-tenants-and-homeowners-battle
‘Halal township’ near Mumbai spurs outrage even as Muslim tenants, home owners battle discrimination
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The controversy erupted in early September after a video advertisement for Sukoon Empire’s “halal township”, featuring penthouses and infinity pools, in Karjat went viral.
PHOTOS: SCREENGRAB FROM KANOONGOPRIYANK/X
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- A "halal township" project for Muslims near Mumbai sparked controversy and was criticised for potentially deepening India's religious divide.
- The National Human Rights Commission is investigating, after concerns were raised that the ad suggested Muslims need a separate place due to intolerance.
- Despite discriminatory housing practices, some Muslims oppose such townships, fearing imposed conservatism and fractured national unity.
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NEW DELHI - The proposed development of an upscale residential project aimed at Muslims in a city near Mumbai has raised an uproar in India, with critics condemning the move as one that risks further entrenching the country’s Hindu-Muslim religious divide.
The controversy erupted in early September after a video advertisement for the Sukoon Empire “halal township”, featuring penthouses and infinity pools, in Karjat went viral. It shows a woman in a headscarf pitching “authentic community living” with “like-minded families that share the same values” and a “halal environment” where children can “grow safely”.
Her narration is accompanied by visuals of people who look evidently Muslim, including a man in a skullcap who is seen reading the Quran. A mention of “prayer spaces” at the project is also accompanied by a domed structure that looks like a mosque.
The ad has especially angered right-wing Hindus, who have called it a threat to India’s unity and described it as a “backdoor attempt” at imposing a “syariah parallel system”.
It also prompted an intervention from the National Human Rights Commission, which asked the state government of Maharashtra on Sept 3 to investigate the matter and report back to it in two weeks.
Mr Priyank Kanoongo, the commission’s chairman, told the Indo-Asian News Service that the ad “suggests Muslims are facing intolerance and want to move to a separate place to protect themselves”.
“This is an implementation of a ‘nation within a nation’ theory,” he added. “Today, you are talking about a separate township. Tomorrow, you will want Muslim doctors. Day after, you will ask for police who are Muslim...”
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Sukoon Empire is not the first such development to provoke outrage, and it has brought to the fore India’s widely prevalent religious discrimination in urban housing, particularly against Muslims, including the affluent. It has resulted in ghettoisation across Indian cities and created a demand for residential projects targeted at them.
The market for such projects aimed primarily at Muslims is driven by middle- and upper-middle-class Muslims who seek not just safety in a gated community dominated by Muslims, but also comfortable living in an environment where they can practise their faith freely.
The proposed development comes at a time when the public display of Muslim religiosity has proved increasingly contentious, with the sight of Muslims praying in parks and other places being opposed by some Hindus and inviting police action in recent years.
Since the Bharatiya Janata Party was elected to power in 2014, the country, many argue, has become more divided on religious lines.
Yet, these “halal townships” are also opposed by many Muslims who fear they strengthen the hand of Islamic conservatives, foisting an orthodox form of the religion on residents and undermining India’s multiculturalism.
Entrenched discrimination
While India’s Constitution bans discrimination on the basis of religion, discriminatory housing practices are widespread in the country, based not just on religion but also caste, marital status, sexual orientation and even culinary preferences, with non-vegetarians shut out of all-vegetarian residential complexes.
Results from the Housing Discrimination Project, a three-year field research initiative published in 2021, reported a “profound and widespread feeling that Muslims were not welcome outside the so-called Muslim localities” in Delhi and Mumbai.
“Many Muslims who rent spaces in Muslim-concentrated localities said they were led there by their experience of being rejected by home owners elsewhere, and then by the fear of more rejections,” said the co-authors of the study, Dr M. Mohsin Alam Bhat and Mr Asaf Ali Lone.
The project’s findings were based on 340 interviews in Delhi and Mumbai, including with real estate agents, home owners and Muslim tenants.
Reasons for rejecting Muslim tenants can range from bias against their presumed dietary habits to explicitly stated Islamophobia. It is not unusual for Muslim professionals to spend months trying to secure a place to live in Hindu-dominated areas of India’s metropolises.
“Segregation in Indian cities is very much a lived reality,” said Mr Lone, who is now a doctoral scholar at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance in Canberra.
Entire neighbourhoods in India have emerged along religious and class lines over the years. Muslim ghettos, particularly among middle- and lower-middle-class sections, are common across Indian cities, a phenomenon scholars Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot have said is “primarily the outcome of organised violence”.
Divisions also run through India’s upper-middle classes. In Mumbai, apartment complexes are unofficially reserved for certain religious and linguistic communities, such as Jains, Catholics, Bohra Muslims and Gujarati Hindus. And in the Delhi National Capital Region, at least two gated communities are believed to be entirely reserved for Muslims.
It is not unusual for Muslim professionals to spend months trying to secure a place to live in Hindu-dominated areas of India’s metropolises.
PHOTO: SCREENGRAB FROM KANOONGOPRIYANK/X
A young Muslim professional, Ms Mariya Salim, told The Straits Times she spent five months looking for an apartment in Delhi in 2020. She would be told by brokers that landlords were not renting to Muslims, with one even saying “they are not nice people”.
Mr Lone told ST that the demand for a residential project such as Sukoon Empire among Muslims could be a result of the discrimination they face in securing housing in mixed neighbourhoods. “If Muslims, including those with means of mobility, are forced to live in segregated colonies, where else do they go?”
Sukoon Empire’s developers did not respond to queries from ST, but the controversy it generated as a development targeting upper-class Indian Muslims is not new.
In 2018, the development of Asset Genesis, an apartment complex described as “India’s first syariah-compliant and Halal-certified” residential project, was cancelled in Kochi, Kerala, after a similar outcry.
At times, upper-middle-class Muslims living in Hindu-dominated gated apartment complexes can find it challenging to practise their faith openly. In 2023, Muslim residents at two high-rise condominiums in Noida and Greater Noida had to call off their communal prayer sessions during Ramadan within the premises of these complexes after opposition from some Hindu co-residents.
Hindu religious ceremonies, however, are held regularly within such residential apartment complexes in these two cities. Many of them have even seen Hindu temples being constructed there illegally in recent years.
In 2024, Mr Rao Nadeem, a local politician in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, bought a house at a bank auction in an all-Hindu locality in the city, prompting strong opposition from local residents.
They alleged he had plans to convert the house into a mosque or madrasah, charges Mr Nadeem denies. Ultimately, Mr Nadeem was compelled to sell his house to a Hindu at a lower value than he had purchased it for.
Mixed feelings
Muslims interviewed for the Housing Discrimination Project said that the most common reason for choosing Muslim-concentrated neighbourhoods was the need for safety, and the sense of security in numbers provided by these locales.
Mr Saifullah Khalid, 51, a Noida-based marketing professional, told ST he understands why some Muslims seek safety in numbers, but added that it could also make them an “easy target” during episodes of communal violence.
He bought a flat in 2022 in a predominantly Hindu upscale condominium and lives there with his family. It is a choice he made despite knowing that any public Islamic religious activity in the complex can prove controversial.
He has kept his religious practices private, even though Hindu religious events are held openly in the condominium.
It is a price he said he is willing to pay so that his two children, who are now in their 20s, get to live in and experience a multicultural environment that truly represents India. “If there are 10 bad people in your neighbourhood, there are five good people too,” he added.
In 2022, Ms Yasmin Rahman, 44, an editorial consultant based in Greater Noida, and her husband also made it a point to buy a house in a mixed neighbourhood rather than a Muslim-dominated one despite facing multiple instances of discrimination when they sought flats for rent in Hindu-dominated apartment complexes.
Moving to a predominantly or all-Muslim neighbourhood such as Sukoon Empire is not something they, as liberal Muslims, are comfortable with, she said, fearing an imposition of conservative Islam in such areas.
“While religious conservatism is growing among Hindus, a very similar trend is happening among Muslims too, with Wahhabism and other strident interpretations of Islam being imposed on them,” Ms Rahman told ST.
She has been criticised by some of her Muslim neighbours for not sending her teenage daughter to religious classes and for having pictures of figures, including an artistic rendition of the Hindu deity Jagannath, in her house.
“I certainly would not live in such a township,” she added, noting that the idea of solving the problem of housing discrimination against Muslims by creating all-Muslim residential complexes is fundamentally flawed.
“You’re trying to solve the problem of persecution of one section of society but you’re actually adding to the wider problem by excluding non-Muslims or even perhaps other Muslims who do not fit into your mould... I’m very suspicious of such enterprises.”
Even Mr Nadeem told ST he opposes the idea of Muslim-only condominiums as they risk fracturing national unity. “If there are two brothers in a house, and both of them keep fighting... can that house ever prosper?” he asked. “No, that house will certainly be doomed.”
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