May 6, 2013, 9:00 AM
By Rupa Subramanya
A New Twist on Ahmedabad’s Segregation
- Sam Panthaky/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
- The Anjuman-E-Islam school building in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, March 30, 2011.
Many Indian cities are segregated, but Ahmedabad is more so than most.
There are about 900,000 Muslims in the city, making up 12%-13% of its population. Some live in enclaves in so-called mixed areas like Navrangpura and Paldi on the western bank of the Sabarmati River. A few live in buildings predominantly occupied by Hindus. They are often married to a Hindu or have purchased or rented under a company name.
But the majority of Muslims live in a few well-defined Muslims enclaves, in particular the old walled city and Shah-e-Alam, and more recently Juhapura, a sprawling area known locally as a ghetto. Official figures put the population of Juhapura at 300,000; residents say it’s closer to 500,000.
In his book “Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth-Century India,” Howard Spodek, a history professor at Temple University who has spent his career studying Gujarat, says the city’s housing segregation is among the “most extreme” in India. The same goes for its history of communal violence, he and other scholars say.
D. Thara, chief executive of the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority, said the pattern of segregation in housing reflects the choice of residents rather than a policy of exclusion.
“Human beings want known parameters. They want to live with people who are similar,” she said.
Since Ahmedabad’s founding in 1411 by Sultan Ahmed Shah, residents have lived in communities tightly defined not just by religion but also occupation, caste, sub-caste and origin.
One Hindu property developer of an upscale new apartment block said he turned away a group of 40-50 potential buyers last year because they were Muslim. The buyers were willing to pay upfront and offered a premium over his normal asking price of about $45,000 for a two-bedroom apartment, he said.
“A Muslim resident would not feel comfortable in this building and so I tell a would-be Muslim buyer that you’d be unhappy if you bought in this building,” he said.
There was also a more directly commercial reason why he wouldn’t sell: “If they came to know that I sold units to Muslims, many of my Hindu buyers would pull out and my development would be in trouble.”
Two years ago, Juhapura resident Alihusain Momin realized that a property fair pitched to Muslim buyers could attract a lot of interest because they’re shut out of the larger mainstream market.
His first fair in October attracted about 20,000 people over three days. Almost all visitors were Muslims, though the fair was open to all communities, said Mr. Momin, who is a Muslim. But there were some Hindu developers among the 25 or so businesses that set up kiosks at the fair, he said.
One was Deep Builders, which erected a luxury apartment building in an area called Makarba, right next to Juhapura. Kamil Memon, a 29-year-old who handles sales for the developer, said it had sold about 50% of the units and the response from the Muslim community has been encouraging.
Mr. Momin is now planning the 2013 show. The 30-year-old said he expects an increase in the number of non-Muslim developers, adding that there’s a bright future for “Islamic branding,” or products directed at Muslim consumers.
“If Hindu businesses sell to Muslim consumers and come to learn about them, this will eventually break down prejudices and fear that have built up over the years,” he said.
“As Mahatma Gandhi taught, even if someone else doesn’t allow you to enter their community, you shouldn’t do the same thing. By being open to them, they’ll eventually learn you’re no different from them,” he added.
Segregation in Ahmedabad’s commercial property market is less rigid.
Rizwan Kadri, a 43-year-old Muslim, is a director of Associated Architects, a firm he founded in 1991 with four Hindus. The five architects studied together at M.S. University in Vadodara, roughly 75 miles southeast of Ahmedabad.
“We lived in the same hostel, so there was good bonding among all of us. We’ve been in business together for 22 years,” he said.
Associated Architects has an office in Bodakdev, an almost entirely Hindu area in west Ahmedabad featuring tony boutiques and upscale restaurants.
“It would be tough for a Muslim business to rent office space in a Hindu area unless they went the route of getting a Hindu partner who would be the public face of the business,” Mr. Kadri said.
“The exception would be the case where a Muslim business person has a strong previous friendly relationship with the Hindu builder or landlord he wants to rent or buy from,” he added.
Several builders from both communities said they had silent partners from the other community. As one Hindu builder put it, “Money has no religion.”
Rupa Subramanya writes Economics Journal for India Real Time and is co-author of “Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India,” published by Random House India. You can follow her on Twitter @RupaSubramanya.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/05/06/a-new-twist-on-ahmedabads-segregation/
