Halal homes? Outrage! But sorry, regular flats not for you either

In yet another spectacular display of selective outrage, Maharashtra’s ruling BJP has discovered its latest existential threat: a proposed 'halal lifestyle township' near Karjat, 100 km from Mumbai. Apparently, Muslims trying to live in houses where they won’t be turned away at the gate is now a “direct assault on constitutional values”.

Party spokesperson Keshav Upadhye fumed that using religion to promote real estate was unacceptable and “divisive”. That would be almost touching in its idealism — if Muslims weren’t already routinely shown the door when they apply for flats in Hindu housing societies. One might call this hypocrisy, but in the world of Indian politics it passes for consistency.

The National Human Rights Commission has taken notice of the Karjat project and MahaRERA is busy checking paperwork, because nothing alarms the state quite like Muslims daring to organise their housing in a country where the phrase “no Muslims allowed” has appeared more than once in rental ads.

Upadhye thundered that projects like Karjat build “walls of religious separation”. One wonders where he was when Mumbai brokers openly admitted they wouldn’t show properties in Hindu colonies to Muslim clients, or when a Muslim couple in Noida was turned away from a housing society because “residents were uncomfortable”, or when late-night protests broke out in Moradabad's posh TDI City housing society after a house in the Hindu-majority colony was sold to a Muslim doctor.

Apparently, discrimination is acceptable when it’s unspoken and practised by private societies — but intolerable if Muslims seek to bypass it by creating their own safe spaces.

To really drive the point home, Upadhye reached for the ghosts of 1857, invoking Sir Syed Ahmed Khan as though a township in Karjat were the second coming of Partition. The historical melodrama was perhaps meant to mask the awkward reality that Muslims today often find their housing options shrinking to ghettos — not by choice, but by exclusion.

“Everything will be halal in the society,” promised the township’s marketing. To Upadhye, this was practically jihad with bricks and mortar. If allowed, he warned, “tomorrow we could see separate colonies for every religion”. The irony, of course, is that tomorrow is already here: many Hindu co-operatives quietly (sometimes not so quietly) maintain religious exclusivity, while Muslim buyers are steered away.

The spokesperson went so far as to call the project “land jihad”, a phrase designed to conjure conspiracy while ignoring plain facts. The plain fact being that Muslims in cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Delhi are routinely denied homes in 'mixed' societies — remember the Gujarat housing boards that effectively corralled Muslims into Ahmedabad's Juhapura, or the brokers in Bengaluru caught on camera refusing to rent to them?

So, to summarise the BJP’s position: Muslims cannot buy into Hindu-majority neighbourhoods, because that’s unsettling. They also cannot build their own neighbourhoods, because that’s divisive. They must simply exist, housing optional, preferably invisible.

One wonders if the next innovation will be a government directive telling Muslims exactly which pavements are designated for sleeping on. After all, unity demands sacrifice.