'We Regret to Inform' No Jobs, No House For Muslims

NEW DELHI: “We regret to inform that we hire only non-Muslim candidates” is the unusually honest response that a young MBA candidate Zeshan Ali received from a leading diamond exporting company in Maharashtra. He said that he got the response within 15 minutes of submitting his application, a rejection based entirely on his religion despite the Indian Constitution and the law.

A stunned Zeshan shared the information with his friends, who insisted on filing a FIR and petitioning the National Minorities Commission. He told The Citizen that he was not disheartened as India was a secular country, but yes he was surprised and now more worried than he was earlier about securing a decent job.

More so as Hari Krishna Pvt. Ltd. is a leading diamond export company of the country initiated over two decades ago and has bagged many awards for their work in the market. Zeshan Ali Khan, a management graduate from Mumbai saw this as a good opportunity and while prepared for rejection was certainly not prepared for the reason cited. His two non-Muslim friends got a placement in the company. Despite several efforts the management of Hari Krishna remained elusive and “unable” to respond to questions.

This diamond company has stated a policy that many practise without declaring it. It is impossible, thus, for Muslim candidates to take up the issue even though there have been instances where lesser qualified persons have got a job and a Muslim candidate rejected. This, a young man who can be called Tariq for the purpose of this report, does not apply to the bigger corporations where the competition is largely on merit, but certainly to the B grade companies and below for whom religion is a factor.

Muslims in the bigger cities are finding it increasingly difficult to find a house with Mumbai and to some extent Delhi following the trend perfected in Ahmedabad. A Muslim resident living in a non-Muslim locality in Ahmedabad told The Citizen that his was now the only minority household left in the locality. He said that this made his family insecure, but since “we have been living here for a long while we hope we will be safe.” The point is not about actual security, but the feeling of insecurity that both he and his wife admit stays with them in the city that has segregated its residents on the basis of religion.

In Mumbai and Delhi, Muslims are finding it very difficult to get homes on rent. In ‘cosmopolitan’ Mumbai the powerful housing societies make it clear at times that they are not in a position to rent an apartment as “our older residents do not want people to cook meat here.” A investment banker representing an international company found it difficult to get a house of his choice in Mumbai and said that he was told directly by at least two travel agents that the residents had objected to a Muslim moving in. The agents, he said, were apologetic about it but warned him that it was not easy. He subsequently got an apartment, but it was not his first choice.

Delhi is fast moving in the same direction. A well known academic couple found it impossible to rent an apartment in the South Delhi localities of their choice despite months of effort. Excuses ranged from rents that were hiked beyond the acceptable values of the apartments, to having found other buyers. But as they said, “it was clear that they did not want to rent it out to us as Muslims but could not say so directly.” Unlike Ahmedabad where Muslims do not even try for a residence in an area not segregated for them, and unlike Mumbai where the residents societies are fairly open in the discrimination.

There is a great deal of concern amongst the educated minorities in particular who are finding it difficult to tackle this unstated but palpable discrimination. The police force in states has also become visibly communal, with Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh leading the roost as it were. Both these states were following similar policies under the Congress governments, whereby educated youths were targeted, arrested, with some released eventually as innocent by the courts but not before they were tortured, or had spent a virtual lifetime in jail. Many of these cases have been recorded in detail by civil rights groups, but the state remained absent in giving compensation and relief to even those acquitted by the courts. Many of them have been unable to find jobs after the jail term, with the economic condition of the families deteriorating rapidly.

(with inputs from VEER VIKRAM SINGH)