'No Muslims Allowed': How Hindutva Fuels Housing Discrimination in Uttar Pradesh

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"I bought the flat from a Hindu brother, but I was forced to sell the place after some local Hindus protested and levelled allegations that remain untrue."

These are the words of Rao Nadeem, a property dealer and chief of the Awam-e-Hind party in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. If you're a Muslim, chances are that you might have faced some level of discrimination while looking a house or a flat in many cities in India.

Housing discrimination based on religious identity in India might not be unheard of, but this phenomenon is now taking root in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.

Due to increased Hindutva assertion on the ground, instances of Muslims being denied houses or being excluded from housing societies have been rising. This, in turn, is exacerbating segregation and ghettoisation.

We went to Bareilly, Lucknow and Muzaffarnagar to show the systemic way in which Muslims are either finding it tough to get a house or have had to sell their place in the face of protests by local Hindus.

'No Allegations Were Proven': The Muzaffarnagar Case

Back in September 2024, Nadeem sold off a house within a few months of its purchase in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood in Bharatiya Colony, Muzaffarnagar.

In his case, Nadeem was trying to help out a friend in distress, Ashok Bharti, who belongs to the Valmiki community. Facing financial difficulties, Bharti wanted to sell his flat, but he was unable to find buyers due to caste bias. To help him out, Nadeem bought the flat via an open bank auction.

"To me, Nadeem is like a God who helped me," recounted Bharti when he was asked about the flat.

But this purchase came at a huge cost to Nadeem and not merely a monetary one. Local Hindus, who Nadeem claimed were part of right-wing organisations, told reporters, "We won't let a Muslim here at any cost, we will leave this place but will not let Muslims live here."

"When I got the call at around 8-9 am, the labourers were working there. Some people broke down the door, barged in, and beat up the labourers too," Nadeem recounted to The Quint.

There were good chances of a riot breaking out. Right-wing groups tried their best, they made all sorts of allegations against us and damaged items at our premises. They accused us of offering congregational namaz in the flat, possessing weapons and aiming to construct a mosque and madrasa there. Now, it's a VIP colony with CCTVs. Was any suspicious person seen entering or leaving the house? Was anything incriminating seized? No.

Rao Nadeem to The Quint

Ultimately, after facing protests, Nadeem sold the flat despite suffering some losses. He believes that the 'protests' weren't just aimed at hurting him financially, but also undermining his camaraderie with Bharti.

'Accused Us of Land Jihad': The Bareilly Case

In a similar case in Punjab Pura, Bareilly, a Muslim woman named Shabnam bought a flat on 12 July 2024 from Vishal Saxena whom she knew personally. Both families had helped each other during the COVID-19 pandemic as well.

The flat in question is near a Sufi shrine, which has some Muslim families living near it.

However, shortly after the purchase, local Hindus promptly protested, making remarks like, "If Muslims shift here, then we would not be able to live in peace".

Shabnam's brother Naseem Bashiri and the original seller of the flat, Vishal Saxena, both maintain that due process was followed in the sale of the flat and that the 'protests' are creating bad blood between communities.

They had accused us of doing 'land jihad,' that we should not have done it. They said that non-Muslims live here and they will have a problem (if Muslims shift here). There was a sense of community, no Hindu-Muslim or caste problem (between us and the seller). We also had a connection with them. When the seller (Vishal Saxena) thought of selling the flat, he said that he would sell it to us, to Shabnam.

Naseem Bashiri to The Quint

Saxena also stood up for the family. He wrote a letter to the police on 21 August 2024, stating that the locals, in collaboration with Hindutva organisations, had made false allegations around the sale and threatened a 'palayan' (mass migration) of Hindus from the neighbourhood in order to spread communal disharmony. "It was done to spoil the image of the city...the allegations against Naseem's family are also baseless," he wrote.

Naseem and family are stuck in a limbo. They haven't been able to move into the flat, nor have they found a buyer offering a respectable price for them to sell.

Mohsin Alam Bhat, a lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University in London has written extensively on housing discrimination against Muslims in metropolitan cities. He told The Quint:

"This 'land jihad' argument keeps coming up in different forms - the idea that even one Muslim family moving into a residential association is a form of aggression, a form of 'land jihad.' What we see in these examples is both a reflection of national-level politics, but also how local actors, residential association people and local politicians associated with Hindutva politics are using this as a political opportunity."

Bhat adds that, "Nobody is going to say that we won't give a house to Muslims, they would say that we won't give it to a non-vegetarian, and then you have to add another ground that you can't discriminate on the basis of eating preferences, so there are all these proxies that are constantly used."

This is something this reporter personally faced while looking for houses in Noida.

To corroborate further as to how brokers reinforce the bias, we also called some brokers in Noida who narrated how and why Muslims do not get a house easily in the city.

Muslims Denied Homes in Lucknow Too

These stories also confirm that Muslims, irrespective of the field or position they are in or the social status they have gained, end up being discriminated and reduced to their identity when looking for a house.

And this has become increasingly normalised, even glorified in New India, including the capital of UP.

Apart from the Muzaffarnagar and Bareilly cases, several cases of Muslims unable to get a house in Lucknow — famous for its 'ganga-jamuni tehzeeb' — have also come forth.

When Sameer* who works in the trading market, looked for a house for his wife and children, he faced many rejections. Ultimately, he ended up getting a flat previously owned by a Muslim family in the same building he faced the rejection in.

Sameer attributed the rising housing discrimination to two factors: One, that due to more gentrification in areas like Gomti Nagar, more influx of people from East UP, the demography of Lucknow has changed. Two, there are several private companies who sell plots, properties only to Hindus, using it as a marketing tool to further their business.

Abbas Haider, national spokesperson of Samajwadi Party, faced a similar ordeal as Sameer.

He lost his home at Wazir Hasan road in Lucknow after the building collapsed in January 2023. Tragically, the building collapse also took the lives of his mother and wife.

Following this incident, when Haider looked for flats in relatively posh apartment areas, not far from his old home, he faced rejections because of his religious identity.

This is the first time that such a thing happened to me. It is unfortunate that this is happening in this city...In some way, it is also our responsibility that such a mindset is increasing, and we should curb it. That we spread love and work towards getting our citizens closer.

Abbas Haider, SP National Spokesperson

Bhat also argued that such discrimination not only sharpens inequalities within society against marginalised groups, but also accelerates ghettoisation.

"Ghettoisation is not only when a community is pushed aside but is also given relatively poorer services in socio-economic terms and that has been spreading a lot over the past 20 years when it comes to Muslims," Bhat noted.

Haider emphasised, "Ever since BJP came to power, this ghettoisation and climate of hate have increased in the nation. But it is also true that despite facing rejections, the house that I eventually got belonged to a Hindu. So, the question here isn't 'Hindu or Muslim', because Hindu and Muslims want to live together."

(*Name has been changed to protect identity)