Renting while Muslim: Shutting out the other in modern India

When a housing broker in Mumbai posted an ad about a flat on the 99acres.com website he gushed about its amenities. Car parking. Cross ventilation. Natural light. Cosmopolitan society. No Muslims. No surprise it caused an uproar. Lawyer Shehzad Poonawalla filed a petition with the National Commission for Minorities against both the broker and the property website. 99acres hastily issued a statement . The listing contained offensive references to a religious community.Our company is totally against such discriminatory practices. The statement went on to plead helplessness given that at any point of time the site has over 400,000 listing which are uploaded directly by the advertisers. But it admitted it was “deeply embarrassed that our site was used in this manner.” Actually what is shocking about the whole episode is not that such discriminatory bias exists but that it was actually put down in writing so blatantly. [caption id=“attachment_1218803” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] Usually bias takes refuge behind an excuse. An agent in Mumbai told The Hindu “I have had dealings in Juhu, Bandra, Peddar Road and Colaba. Around 95 per cent of owners flatly refuse Muslims. They give excuses: a flat is not empty or relatives are coming.” That is what makes it so hard to pinpoint. “First of all, practically it is very difficult to prove the existence of this malaise,” lawyer Ashok Agarwal told The Hindu adding, “the government cannot regulate private housing.” Agarwal is right in a way. This is an issue for which there is no-one-size-fits-all legal remedy because one man’s bias is another man’s deeply-held religious or cultural conviction. But as Tarunabh Khaitan points out in a blog Law And Other Things: These narratives should remind us that behind our sanitised legalese are real people facing real consequences because of choices made by our legal system (for choosing not to act is also a choice). There is clearly a legal question here about discrimination. But it’s larger than the usual emotive flashpoint of Hindu-Muslim bias. It’s a story about the other and how we are happy to live-and-let-live but as long we don’t have to live next to the other, however we define that person. Is a Parsee housing society that only wants Parsees just as discriminatory as a housing society which specifically does not want Muslims? The Supreme Court, in fact, has ruled in favour of a Zoroastrian Cooperative Housing Society saying it could only rent and sell accommodation to members of a particular religious community citing the freedom of association under Article 19(1)(c ) of the Constitution. What about a listserve that tries to find gay-friendly housing for LGBT folks even though that is really a service for a group who might face a lot of discrimination otherwise ? Is this the same as vegetarians in Walkeshwar not wanting to rent to non-vegetarians? On the other side is the issue of personal choice. Does not everyone have a right to rent to people they are comfortable with? Can a strict vegetarian not have the right to insist on a no-meat-eater in the house policy? But can the law even determine when the vegetarianism is the pretext rather than the actual reason? A roommate or paying guest is one thing. But does one have a right to one’s neighbours? “I am not against any community, but certain communities are rough. They are not concerned about etiquette or hygiene. The [discomfort] is psychological. They can have three or four wives and a lot of children. It can get very crowded and noisy,” South Mumbai realtor Sanjay Mundra told The Hindu. Rana Afroz told The Washington Post “It is ridiculous that I have to prove to non-Muslims that I am not making bombs in my kitchen. Is this really the modern India I live in?” It is in fact the modern India we live in where our last names conjure up stereotypes that might have nothing to do with our actual lives. It’s a tricky line between not being forced to live contrary to your religious or cultural beliefs (whether misguided or not) and outright blatant unfounded discrimination. Housing discrimination is a delicate and complicated issue that requires study and statistics. What we have instead, unfortunately are anecdotes and an occasional furore whether caused by an Emraan Hashmi or a Shabana Azmi or this latest classified listing. But it actually raises a far thornier question about us. As Zainab Bawa writes on Kafila.org recounting her attempts to rent-while-Muslim: Does property ownership reinforce conservative and narrow beliefs? If yes, then does occupancy of urban space unsettle conservatism arising from both property ownership and fundamental traditional/religious beliefs? The broker on 99Acres.com might have done us a favour by at least naming the elephant in the room and putting it down in black-and-white.