Mumbai's Muslims and the 26/11 Attacks

At a government hospital morgue in the Indian city of Mumbai, nine dead bodies lie unclaimed. These are the bodies of the terrorists killed by security forces after they launched a series of assaults on the city last year. Over 170 people were killed and 300 injured in the carnage that began on November 26.

For a year now, the bodies could not be buried in the usual way. Ordinarily the Mumbai police hands over unclaimed Muslim bodies to the Muslim graveyard authorities for burial. Only this time, the Muslims of Mumbai, through the city’s Muslim Council, have categorically refused to allow the burial of the terrorists in their main graveyard, the ‘Bada Kabrastan’

"We wrote letters to the graveyard authorities that you should not allow this thing to happen", says Sarfaraz Arzu, a member of the Muslim Council. "Their bodies should not be allowed to be buried within our graveyard. We think that what they have done was totally unacceptable, even according to the teachings of Islam. So we were of the opinion that the attackers had distanced themselves from Islam, they were not following the teachings of Islam. So they had denied themselves the right to be buried among Muslims."

A journalist and editor of a local Urdu daily ‘Hindustan’, Sarfaraz Arzu says that after the attacks, Mumbai’s Muslims are keen on drawing a distinction between themselves and the terrorists claiming to be followers of Islam.

Suspicions, but no violent backlash

The city’s Muslims are also tired of being branded as terrorists, says Mohammad Aslam Ghazi from Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious Muslim welfare organisation. Ghazi says that there have been many cases where Muslim men are arrested on suspicion of terrorism, although there is no evidence. "These are the kind of incidents where Muslims have the feeling they are being falsely targeted. We feel that there is an anti-Muslim propaganda where certain people have malicious objectives."

Mumbai is no stranger to communal tension. Heavy Hindu-Muslim riots occurred in 1992 and 1993. These were over the demolition of the Babri Masjid Mosque by Hindu fundamentalists in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. After the terrorist attacks on November 26, many people in Mumbai and elsewhere feared an anti-Muslim backlash as an act of revenge, especially by Hindu fundamentalist groups.

Yet there have been no signs of this so far. Since the attacks, Muslims holding Indian national flags have come out in large numbers to condemn the acts of terror against their homeland. This, combined with the Muslim refusal to bury the terrorists’ bodies, has led to a feeling of unity among Hindus and Muslims, says Sarfaraz Arzu.

Widespread discrimination

The lack of violence against Muslims is a positive sign for Mumbai, a city of people from diverse religious, regional and linguistic backgrounds. But everyday life for Muslims in Mumbai is far from easy. Since the riots in 1992 and 1993, more and more Muslims are being forced to move to primarily Muslim-dominated areas in Mumbai, leading to a kind of ghettoisation, says Jatin Desai from the Citizen’s Initiative for Peace, a network of people and NGOs working for communal harmony in the city. "In cosmopolitan areas, there is an unwritten code that the flats will not be sold to Muslims. It is unfortunate, but it is growing. So this is leading to a feeling among Muslims that they are being discriminated. And this is rightly so."

It may be a long time before a mechanism is found to bridge this divide. Until then the citizens in the bustling metropolis of Mumbai seem to have realized that in their everyday fight for survival, the last thing they should do is turn against against each other.

Author: Pia Chandavarkar (Mumbai)
Editor: Grahame Lucas