For the first 22 years of my life, I lived with my family in Jamshedpur. I had always known two things — I wanted to be a journalist and Jamshedpur had very few opportunities to offer me. In October of last year, with a job and a dream, I decided to move to Delhi. I was happy and excited about the move, until I started looking for accommodation. One call with a broker, in a desperate hunt for a flat, showed me how sheltered I had been until then from bigotry.
I am a Muslim woman in India and my story is just one more among the many tales of encountering Islamophobia, which seems to be on the rise. Where it may once have been covert, it is no longer so — whether in political speeches or calls for boycott of Muslim businesses or in thinly-veiled propaganda in films like The Kerala Story, which receive the support of many in power.
For me, the experience of Delhi feels like a rejection. Multiple homeowners refused to rent their homes to a Muslim woman. They cut calls mid-sentence, some refused to pick the phone up. Multiple brokers informed me that the properties’ owners would have a problem with “Mohammedans”.
I had one goal when I moved to Delhi — finding a world where I could thrive, like women before me have done, regardless of their socio-cultural background. That hope was shattered early on. As I sought to build an independent life, I was reminded of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, in which she emphasises the need for personal space — both physical and mental — which would enable new experiences for women. Woolf argues that for women to emerge as independent individuals (or good writers), they have to gain economic independence, which in turn, necessitates a private space, without any patriarchal hindrances.
One particularly upsetting incident took place not in Delhi, but on a flight from Ranchi to Delhi. I struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me. She told me she was a teacher. Over the course of the two-hour long flight, we spoke of my job — its highs and lows — and her daughter’s career. She asked me, “What does your family do?” Upon telling her that they run a wholesale fruit business, I felt her shift and the air around me suddenly felt charged. She whispered that a similar business was being run by Muslims in her area. There was a tone in her voice which made me feel like I was being accused of something — of being a Muslim. I didn’t confirm her suspicions. She had no idea I was a Muslim. At the end of the journey, she told me it was nice meeting me. I wish I could have said the same.
It is doubly hard for a Muslim woman in India to find a suitable “room of her own”. Women like me have to combat not just patriarchy, but also Islamophobia. The double burden of being a Muslim and a woman living in India is exhausting. The more I attempt to claim space to live and to thrive, the more resistance I encounter. Access to the kind of room that Woolf described would mean independence from religious and patriarchal notions that, otherwise, would limit us from realising our greatest potentials.
ariba.ie@indianexpress.com
