SHAFAQNA– a voluntary groups in India’s Kolkata state runs the campaign Open a Door making it possible for the Muslims to find a place to live.
According to Enewsroom, in Kolkata, people were refusing to rent out their apartments or flats to Muslim youths. Call it prejudice or an increasing trend of intolerance, a phenomenon now-so-common across India, was slowly beginning to grip the cosmopolitan, progressive bhodro Bengali culture.
Numerous Muslims reported that they were denied shelter by the letting parties solely for being Muslim.
After a long search, Dr Aftab Alam and his three friends finally found a place to rent in South Kolkata, but shortly after moving in a neighbor informed their landlord that they were all Muslims.
Consequently, they were told to pack their bags and leave as, “Four Muslim men staying in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood” was considered ‘problematic’.
Dr Alam recounted the story of their eviction, saying “It was disheartening. I rented the flat to the rest after strenuous night shifts. Suddenly, the peace was disrupted…[we had] huge expectations from Kolkata.”
Alam took his grievance to social media where it came to the notice of SA group who directly approached him. SA’s volunteers resolved the acrimonious situation by engaging peacefully with the neighbours, the landlord and the tenants themselves.
“We thank them for their support at a critical time,” says Dr Alam as the Open-a-door campaign saved him from the hassle of relocating, but Alam and his friends were not the only ones facing this alienation.
An undergraduate student, Tanvi Sultana allegedly bore the brunt of “communal remarks” while looking for a flat in South Kolkata. She said that she was warned not to bring beef to her residence. However, with reconciliatory efforts made by SA volunteers, Sultana continued to reside in the same apartment. “I thank them and wish for the initiative to grow,” she said.
Accourding to The Hindu, in another incident, SA informed the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association and authorities when two students faced misbehaviour from the superintendent and boarders at their hostel “for being Muslim.” An inquiry committee is looking into this case.
An activist group in the state has launched a campaign titled ‘Open A Door’ to create awareness on the discrimination faced by Muslims when they try to find a place to live. As part of the campaign, launched on social media, the Sanhati Abhijan – Campaign for People’s Unity has called for entries create a database of house/flat owners across the state who are seeking tenants and will not discriminate on the basis of religion. The campaign was launched on June 16 on the group’s Facebook page.
“It is pretty common that people belonging to minority communities, especially Muslims, find it hard to get a house for rent except in some pockets of Kolkata. We are making a list of rental properties in which people will not face any religious discrimination,” said Kasturi Basu, a member of Sanhati Abhijan.
“We have invited only property owners and not brokers,” she added. So far, the organisation has received responses from around 10 property owners who have said they will not discriminate based on religious identity, Indian Express reported.
We are not an NGO, as we are being termed, we are a people’s collective, which aims at reducing the communal divide, which has further deepened in the past few years,” added Banerjee, a research scholar at Centre for Studies in Social Science, Kolkata. He maintained that the organization is working towards uniting people.
“We want our society to give out a strong message – We don’t believe in the communal divide. We are a new organization have members from across the society, who believe in propagating unity, peace and love in the society. Since our collective’s inception, we have been organizing dramas, cultural programmes and a number of interactive meets to propagate peace and unity,” said Banerjee.
“We have had a couple of interaction between landlords and people wanting to rent a flat, to eliminate the prejudice. We are even preparing a database of people who don’t discriminate while renting out their flats or houses. We have now decided to take a personal initiative and intervene in cases where people complain of discrimination as in this case of the four doctors and mobilize the locals to eliminate discrimination,” he added.
Adding to this, another active member of the group, Bhaskar Majumdar, said, “Discrimination on the basis of religion or gender is against the spirit of Kolkata. But given the political environment of the country, everyone is being forced to think along the communal lines. We, the members of this citizen’s initiative are looking forward to dissolving the communal divide which has sprung up off-late.”
SA volunteers sounded optimistic saying that they are driven towards breaking, “the culture of silence” which could “curb rising Islamophobia”.