- Thursday, February 27, 2025
According to some Muslim shopkeepers from the area who fled to their villages in eastern India, members of hardline Hindu groups had asked them questions about their businesses and families.
By: Shubham Ghosh
MORE than 3,000 poor Muslims have left a business hub near Indian capital New Delhi this month in the wake of communal clashes between the majority Hindu and minority Muslims and sporadic attacks against them, according to local residents, police and a community group, Reuters reported.
The report added that shops and shacks ran by Muslims were closed along with their houses in two large slums in the area, suggesting that they were not present in the locality after more than a week passed by following the killing of seven people in the clashes that broke out in Nuh and Gurugram districts of the northern state of Haryana, adjoining the national capital.
The violence started on July 31 when a religious procession organised by Hindu right-wing outfits was targeted and a mosque was attacked in retaliation. It took the police two days to bring the situation under control.
However, minor attacks targeting members of the minority Muslim community continued for days, leaving families scared and they started moving to a new centre of Gurugram, one of India’s major business and technology hubs with offices of more than 200 Fortune 500 companies, to find a livelihood, the report added.
Incidents of stone-pelting, arson and vandalism of two small shrines of Muslims in the locality forced many Muslim families to leave their single-room houses behind and take shelter at a train station before departing, witnesses told the news outlet.
“Many of us spent the entire night on a railway platform because it was much safer there,” Raufullah Javed, a tailor who fled to his home village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, told Reuters over phone.
Mufti Mohammed Salim, the Gurugram chief of Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind, a leading Muslim body, suspected that more than 3,000 Muslims had exited the district following the violence.
According to some Muslim shopkeepers from the area who fled to their villages in eastern India, members of hardline Hindu groups had asked them questions about their businesses and families.
“Some Hindu men came in a large group and started asking questions such as how much money I earn,” Shahid Sheikh, a barber who fled from Tigra village, home to more than 1,200 Muslim families, told Reuters.
He added that many Muslims thought it would be best to leave for the time being. He also said that some Hindu owners of shops rented out to Muslims wanted them to vacate, the report added.
While it is alleged that attacks on Muslims in India have grown since prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, its leaders claim that Hindu-Muslim clashes have happened in the past as well and their frequency has gone down after they came to power.
Haryana police said they had arrested more than 200 men from both Hindu and Muslim communities in connection with the violence. The state’s home minister from the BJP, Anil Vij, said he had received reports of Muslim people leaving but added that the situation was completely under control.
