India Muslims Chafe Under Discrimination

Three months after coordinated terrorist attacks in India's financial capital of Mumbai, Indian Muslims are chafed at the growing discrimination since the atrocities.

"Every time there is a terror blast and a Muslim is arrested, it is as if an entire community must accept the blame," Laila Atif, 30, a marketing executive, told the Washington Times on Saturday, February 21.

"Do we demand the same sense of collective guilt from other communities?"

More than 160 people, at least a third of whom were Muslims, were killed in attacks on several Mumbai targets in November.

India blames the attack on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT), an outlawed Pakistani group fighting Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Indian Muslims staged a series of rallies to denounce the terrorist attacks, and rejected the burial of the attackers.

Muslim mosque-goers and Bollywood stars also worse black badges in condemnation of the atrocities.

"More than one-fourth of those killed in the Mumbai attacks were Muslims," said Sabitendranath Roy, a noted book publisher, has told a seminar on Hindu-Muslim relations in Calcutta.

"It's ridiculous and offensive to blame India's Muslims for such attacks just because those terrorists were Muslims and they came from Pakistan."

Systematic

Indian Muslims have complained of deep-seated discrimination in the Hindu-majority society.

"There are tens of thousands of instances of communal bias by a police force who often consider Muslims nothing more than criminals or terrorists," said Sujato Bhadra, an executive member of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights.

A three-month probe by Tehelka, a news magazine known for its hidden-camera investigations of corrupt politicians, found a "chilling and systematic witch hunt against innocent Muslims."

"Sadly, ... even the judicial process is often complicit in the terrible miscarriage of justice," the magazine's chief editor, Tarun J. Tejpal, wrote.

"India has 160 million Muslims. Even if 10,000 are radicalized, it's barely a tree in a forest. To create an atmosphere that blights the entire forest is a mistake."

Muslims have long complained of being discriminated against in all walks of life in Hindu-majority India.

Official figures show Muslims, whom make up around 13 percent of India's 1.1 billion population, are lagging behind in literacy.

Muslims also complain of being discriminated against in jobs.

They account for less than seven percent of public service employees, only five percent of railways workers, around four percent of banking employees and there are only 29,000 Muslims in India's 1.3 million-strong military.

"There is an anti-Muslim undercurrent [which] though small is dominant in levers of power and the corporate class and the business elite," said Amaresh Misra, a Mumbai-based analyst.

"It is this section which has started throwing Muslims out of companies, businesses and [apartments]."