• BBC coverage
• In pictures: Mumbai one year after
• On The World: India Muslim community

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The people of Mumbai, India held tearful memorials today.  They were remembering the attack that militants launched against their city one year ago.  It was November 26, 2008 when ten gunmen staged the attack.  They hit the city’s biggest train station, luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other sites.  The raids killed 166 people.  Fursaj Jahani owns one of the places that was hit, the Café Leopold.  Jahani says he and other shop owners in Mumbai are back in business one year after the terrorists struck.

FURSAJ JAHANI:  We wanted to prove to the world that we won, they lost, we pull the shutters up, we’ve opened again.  You know people that had come twenty years back, thirty years back, they came back.  These are the people that supported me, supported this place to bounce back.

WERMAN:  The Pakistan based book, Lashkar-e-Taiba is blamed for masterminding the attacks.  India broke off talks with Pakistan after the violence.  Yesterday, a Pakistani court indicted seven Pakistani’s in connection with the siege.  Shashi Tharoor is India’s Minister of State for External Affairs.  He’s urging Pakistan to prosecute, convict and punish the attackers. He also says Indians should feel pride in their country today.

SHASHI THAROOR:  Today where of course we remember our grief and our mourning, a day in which a horrendous loss of life a year ago will continue to stir our consciences and our hearts.  But it is also a day to salute the courage and the bravery of so many people, our security forces, the police and then the ordinary human beings, the hotel workers, people who went out of their way to save the lives of innocents.  Let the message go today from India to the rest of the world.  India will not be terrorized.

WERMAN:  That seems to be the mood at the Trident Hotel, one of the targets of the militants.  The BBC’s Tinku Ray is there.

TINKU RAY:  I’ve spoken to people here at the hotel.  Many of them here were actually present when the gunmen entered the hotel last year and the stories are so harrowing and so eerie, I actually had nightmares last night but thankfully, it sounds like none of the staff actually left their jobs.  Both of them came back within a few days of the incident ending and people basically have really, really bounced back.

WERMAN:  I mean those scenes, those dramatic scenes are unforgettable, the scenes coming from the security cameras at some of the city’s cafes and the train station and the, of course, the gunmen storming the Taj Hotel and where you’re staying, the Trident.  What is the sentiment now among the Indians who came back to their jobs and are now working in those places?  Any sort of heightened sense of vigilance among them or it’s just kind of business as usual?

RAY:  Oh, security is just amazing at these hotels now, Marco.  You’re talking about airport type security and both of these hotels which were struck, the Taj and the Trident, have spent millions of dollars on increasing their security.  Cars are not even allowed to enter up to the doors.  You have to have your bags scanned and then you are frisked by security personnel.  It’s amazing.  But, shockingly, the station which was also attacked, this is the main station here in Mumbai, has practically no security.  I went there yesterday and we’re talking about a station where millions of people go through every single day and there was not a single bit of security to check people, stop people and I think it’s impossible to do so, that’s the main thing.

WERMAN:  Now Tinku, another target of attack was the city’s Jewish community and I’d like us to listen now to some comments from Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz who is in charge of rebuilding Habbad House.  It’s a Jewish center where six people were killed last year in these attacks.  Here he is explaining why instead of rebuilding the destroyed center, it’s been moved to another location.

RABBI ABRAHAM BERKOWITZ:  Our immediate security concerns take us to a discreet location and I must say that there hasn’t been one week that we haven’t had continued activities and we are not giving up and we won’t go away.  We will not let terror ruin our way of life.  We just are doing it very carefully, with very important steps to be taken.

WERMAN:  Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz there in Mumbai.  Tinku Ray, you said there was no security at the train station, a contrast with the elaborate security at hotels in Mumbai.  The fact that the Jewish center has moved to an undisclosed location suggests a lack of faith in Indian security forces.  Do the Jews of Mumbai feel safe?

RAY:  Well Marco, I think it’s not really a lack of faith for the Jewish community.  I mean you heard Rabbi Berkowitz, who’s from Brooklyn, he’s come here to take over the center from the Rabbi and his pregnant wife who were killed in those attacks last year and he said that the Jewish community in India has never been attacked by any of the communities here so they’ve always felt safe.

WERMAN:  And a year after these attacks, what is the plight of the city’s Muslims?  Do they feel threatened at all?

RAY:  Well that was a really surprising thing.  Following the attacks, there was absolutely no backlash and nobody in Mumbai or even India blamed the Muslim community for these attacks and especially after it was discovered that these gunmen came from outside of the country.  In fact, there were rallies and protests and marches in which people from all communities came together.

WERMAN:  The evidence points to the Pakistan based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba being behind the attack and many Indians claim the Pakistani government hasn’t cracked down enough on the group or at all.  Is the Indian government satisfied that Pakistan is taking steps to ensure similar attacks aren’t in the works?

RAY:  There’s always been this uneasy relationship between the two countries, Marco, India and Pakistan, ever since partition.  Every time there’s an attack in India, Pakistan is automatically blamed. I think this time there has been a lot more cooperation between the two governments and just yesterday we saw the Pakistani government charging seven people in connection with these attacks and I think that’s a very positive step to be taking by the Pakistani’s and I think we’ll have to see how things develop and whether the dialogue between the two countries can now resume at some level at least.

WERMAN:  Tinku Ray, one year after the attacks in Mumbai.  Thank you very much for speaking with us.

RAY:  It was a pleasure talking to you, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• ‘India’s Muslim community’ series page
• BBC coverage of the Mumbai attacks
• Muslim star Emraan Hashmi (pictured) claims housing bias

Miranda Kennedy’s stories from India were funded by a grant from the International Reporting Project.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston.  India is marking the one-year anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.  An Islamic militant group based in Pakistan is believed to have planned and executed the attacks.  That’s raised religious tensions in India.  Tomorrow, an interfaith ceremony is planned in Mumbai to memorialize the 166 people killed a year ago.  The ceremony will include Bollywood movie stars.  There are many Muslims working in Bollywood, but India’s film industry rarely depicts the lives of Muslims, as Miranda Kennedy reports from Mumbai.

MIRANDA KENNEDY: A decade ago, director Mahesh Bhatt broke the unspoken and inflexible rules of Bollywood with this film, “Zakhm.”  The movie’s very first scene is of Hindu-Muslim riots on the streets of Mumbai, a no-no in an industry in which successful films ignore ugly reality in favor of romantic plot lines. And the love story here is between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, which also breaks a taboo.  Bhatt says he made the movie as a way to come to terms with his own experience as the product of a secretive inter-religious relationship.

MAHESH BHATT: Portions of my childhood are there: why my mother was not allowed the status of a wife, how she was a closet Muslim, how she hid her faith and prayed behind closed doors, how she gave us Hindu names and sent us to Christian schools.  According to her instinct, her motherly instinct, that don’t let them tell the world that their mother is a Muslim.

KENNEDY: A generation ago, it was completely unacceptable for a Muslim to marry a Hindu in most sections of society.  It may be a little easier in today’s India, but it’s still not considered okay in the movies. Mahesh Bhatt couldn’t get any big-time backing for his film, and it didn’t do well at the box office. Indu Mirani covers Bollywood for the Mumbai Mirror.

INDU MIRANI: Films here are largely about entertainment. “I’d much rather go and see a song and dance routine.” That’s the way people think here. “Take me into another world, make me happy.”

KENNEDY: Mahesh Bhatt says the big studios steer clear of films that examine religious tensions, because such films can easily lead to protests or riots, shut down movie theatres, and cause millions of dollars of losses.

BHATT: It’s a very important thing to understand this: I can’t make an entire film which talks about the Muslims being discriminated. You can’t make a film on Malcolm X. Not ready yet.

KENNEDY: While many top Bollywood stars are Muslim and keep their names, they still can’t make movies about their own religious identity. And if commercial Bollywood films do feature Muslim characters, they tend to be stereotypes. That’s according to Kabir Khan, a director with one of Bollywood’s biggest studios.

KABIR KHAN: They’re either die hard nationalists and patriotics and will give up life for the country, or they’re these sort of monsters who come in from this terrorist factory, and nothing is in the middle.

KENNEDY: Khan tried to move away from Muslim stereotyping in this film, called “New York,” that he directed earlier this year. It cost around $5 million dollars, which makes it a big release by Bollywood standards, and it’s about an issue usually only addressed in small-budget art films and documentaries.

[Film clip plays]

KENNEDY: The main character is a Muslim. He’s profiled, detained, and tortured in custody, and then eventually turns to terrorism out of a desire for revenge.  Pretty political for Bollywood. But then, it’s not a film about India.  It’s about post-9/11 America.  Film critic Indu Mirani says that neutralizes its impact in India and makes it acceptable for Bollywood.

MIRANI: When you make a film that is about the Muslim identity in America, you’re not really setting yourself up to get into trouble, because that is not something that most of us have faced. But if you talk of Hindu-Muslim riots, that is subject that really very, very few people would touch, because that would be a film that is too close to heart.

KENNEDY: Still, the film “New York” was a lot more political than Bollywood is used to. When it drew big crowds, it was a surprise for everyone, including Khan, its director.

KHAN: I do believe that in the next three, four, five years, we are going to see big budget films which would look at Indian politics. All studios are trying to push boundaries a bit because they realize that the taste of the Indian audience is definitely changing.

KENNEDY: Most Bollywood insiders agree that Indian tastes are shifting ever so slightly away from the age-old formula of boy meets girl, sings her six songs, and marries her at the end. There’s no sign of big budget films about Indian politics on the horizon yet. But Bollywood audiences are already anticipating a second film about Muslims being mistreated in America after 9/11. The next one, called “My Name is Khan,” features Shah Rukh Khan, the biggest superstar of Indian cinema.

ANNOUNCER: Shah Rukh Khan has suffered deep humiliation at the hands of agents at a United States airport.  In fact…

KENNEDY: This isn’t a movie clip.  It’s real-life news coverage of an event which strangely mirrors the upcoming film. Earlier this summer, Shah Rukh Khan was detained for a couple hours at Newark airport as he came into the US. The Indian media responded with outrage. But some suggested the incident might not be so bad. It was free advertising for Shah Rukh Khan’s film, which, in spite of its unsexy subject matter, is expected to be a blockbuster when it comes out early next year.  For the World, this is Miranda Kennedy, Mumbai.

WERMAN: Miranda’s reports from Mumbai were funded by the International Reporting Project. Her three-part series is available at The World dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Hameedia Mosque in Mumbai

• ‘India’s Muslim community’ series page
• BBC coverage of the Mumbai attacks

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. India is on high alert this week. The country is marking the one year anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks and officials have warned about new threats from both foreign and domestic militants. The concern about homegrown terrorists in India often focuses on Muslims. But as we reported yesterday Muslims in India have largely not been radicalized to a violent form of Islam. In the second of our stories about India’s Muslim minority Miranda Kennedy reports from Mumbai.

MIRANDA KENNEDY: The streets around Hameedia Masjid, one of Mumbai’s oldest mosques, are jammed with the usual tumult of Indian life. Streams of traffic maneuver around a cow lying nonchalantly in the road. Cows are sacred to most Hindus and even in this Muslim area they respect it. Maulana Daryabadi who preaches in the mosque says that’s because Hindus and Muslims have lived side by side here for at least a century.

MAULANA DARYBADI: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: This is a country where one cannot work without the other. The Hindus and the Muslims always work together. They always need each other.

KENNEDY: Muslims may be geographically and culturally integrated into Indian society but the Mualana says that when it comes to how the authorities with them all is not equal.

DARYBADI: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: Every time there’s a blast or anything happening wrong they come and round up Muslims. We have demanded from the government to look into the matter questioning them why.

KENNEDY: His congregation tells him stories of their sons being tortured in police custody or worse of those who’ve been encountered. That’s a verb you hear a lot in India. It refers to extrajudicial killings by the police. The government doesn’t deny that these killings happen. In fact several Mumbai police offers have been dubbed encounter specialists and publicly commended for their work. The Indian government denies that police ever target people from a particular religion or community.

SAYEEDA HAMEED: There’s a long history of deprivation which starts in 1857.

KENNEDY: Sayeeda Hameed, a cabinet minister who is herself a Muslim, sites that year because it was the first major Indian rebellion against British colonial forces. The British blamed Indian Muslims and worked to undermine their power. When India declared its independence in 1947 it was a secular democracy that promised equal rights to Muslims even though many chose to move to neighboring Pakistan. Yet she says the Muslim population in India has consistently been neglected.

HAMEED: They have fallen so far behind that it’s going to take a while before we bring them on par with other communities.

KENNEDY: A government report on the state of India’s Muslims found that there actually fewer schools and roads in Muslim dominated areas than in other parts of the country. Twenty five percent of Muslim children have either never gone to school or have dropped out. Because there’s no affirmative action policy for Muslims there are less gainfully employed than all other groups in India.

[HASHMI FILM SONG]

And it’s not just the poorest of the poor who experience discrimination. It’s found even here among the stars of Bollywood, India’s prolific and lighthearted film industry. In this film Jannat, the actor Emraan Hashmi, is the romantic hero courting the young heroin.

[HASHMI FILM SONG]

Hashmi has become a sought after name in the industry in the last couple of years. He can now charge about a million dollars a film. And the fact that his name clearly identifies him as Muslim has not been a problem for him. But outside the film studios actors like Hashmi sometimes find themselves treated like Muslims rather than stars. Recently Hashmi tried to by an apartment in a well-heeled neighborhood known as the Beverly Hills of Mumbai.

EMRAAN HASHMI: Because everyone knew that there are a couple of buildings that don’t know allow people from a section and we had heard that this building don’t allow Muslims.

KENNEDY: But Hashmi and his wife really liked the place so they found a broker who was willing to try to get it for them.

HASHMI: The reason why he said that you know I’ll try to get the deal through is because I’m an actor and maybe they will overlook the fact that I’m Muslim.

KENNEDY: Although they’d agreed to pay the asking price, $700,000 for a two bedroom, the couple was refused. The co-op insists it did not deny Hashmi the apartment because of his religion but he filed a compliant with the government minority commission and publicly accused them of discrimination. Since he went public with his complaint Hashmi has realized that no matter how rich and famous he is he shares a common bond with India’s impoverished Muslim community. He’s been shocked at how many people have told him similar stories about being denied housing because of their religion. The difference is that no one paid them any attention. For The World this is Miranda Kennedy, Mumbai.

WERMAN: Tomorrow we stay in Bollywood for the third in our series of stories from Mumbai. A look at how Muslims are portrayed in Indian films.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

In the first part of the series, Miranda Kennedy looks at why not many Indian Muslims have become radicalized.

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The Taj Mahal Hotel was one of the sites attacked by gunmen

Although India’s Muslims have largely not been radicalized, the security forces have not refrained from targeting suspected homegrown terrorists.

In the second part of her series, Miranda Kennedy reports on the growing alienation of Mumbai’s Muslims.

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Hameedia Mosque in Mumbai

Emraan Hashmi

• BBC coverage of Mumbai attacks

Miranda Kennedy’s stories from India were funded by a grant from the International Reporting Project.

• Series page
• BBC coverage of Mumbai attacks

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: It was one year ago this week that India suffered a horrific terrorist attack. Ten militants arrive from Pakistan by boat to Mumbai on November 26^th. They fanned out across the city. They attacked hotels, a train station, a Jewish center, and other targets. It took three days for the Indian authorities to end the violence. By then more than 160 people were dead. Mumbai’s Muslim community immediately hunkered down terrified of a backlash. Fortunately for India’s Muslims and for their country that backlash never came. Miranda Kennedy has the first her series of reports about the lives of India’s Muslims.

NEWS CLIPPINGS: And the news tonight is dominated by a series of terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai.

There have been multiple attacks at high profile locations in the main tourist and business area of India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Nikhat Sheikh is a little ashamed of what first went through her mind last year when she heard that the attackers had laid siege to her city.

NIKHAT SHEIKH: We were very worried you know that now the kind of hatred people will have for us and then it would not be very good to say like that, there was a little relief when I came to know that no Indian was involved in this. Thank God you know.

MIRANDA KENNEDY: Thank God that Indian officials blamed Pakistani-trained militants rather than homegrown terrorists. Nine of the attackers were killed during the siege and the 10^th was captured. He’s on trial in Mumbai and could be given the death sentence for the attacks widely referred to in India as 26/11. India’s Muslim’s are a significant minority of 160 million but they’ve had an uneasy relationship with the state going back to India’s partition in 1947 when many Muslims moved to Pakistan. Those who stayed felt obliged to prove their allegiance to India over Islam and for many that feeling of insecurity remains. Nikhat sits down on the floor of her parent’s bedroom to play with her toddler son. Nikhat says she senses an increasing need amongst Muslims to prove that they’re not all terrorists. She’s writing a doctoral thesis about the impact of terrorism on her community. It’s something that especially concerns her because she has a second child on the way. Nikhat’s pregnancy shows even under her long black robe. She decided to wear it and to cover her hair with a head scarf when she went to college much to the surprise of her secular middle class family. Nikhat’s economically comfortable upbringing is unusual for her community. India’s Muslims are significantly poor and less educated than the general population.

SHEIKH: I really want to give that same kind of good feeling to my children that I had in my childhood. I was always proud to be an Indian. I never felt you know that being Muslim and being an Indian are two different things. I can be a very good Muslim and I can be a very good Indian. But now not anymore you know.

KENNEDY: Just in her lifetime Nikhat says she’s seen Muslims become more alienated from India. That’s partly due to the widespread international perception of Muslims as terrorists. After last year’s strikes in Mumbai the fear was that India was becoming a target for, or even a home for, international jihad. But that doesn’t seem to have happened.

ASHOK SINGH: There is a degree of alienation amongst the large Muslim community. There is radicalization but by and large Indian Muslims have stayed away from bombings.

KENNEDY: Ashok Singh, who studies Islam and terrorism, points out that Indian Muslims have been blamed for several domestic attacks over the years including major bombings on Mumbai in 1993 and 2006 and there’s been militant attacks in the disputed region of Kashmir for years. But there’s no evidence of any Indian ever joining al-Qaeda or any other international terrorist group. Singh credits India’s democracy saying it gives Muslims a peaceful outlet for their dissatisfaction. Irfan Engineer who runs a research center on Islam and secularism says there’s another explanation tool.

IRFAN ENGINEER: The Indian roots of Muslims are strong. We have not yet got Arabized or what they call Islamized. You know the standard Sunni Wahhabi ideology has not got roots amongst Indian Muslims. Muslims here were converted more Sufi saints who didn’t preach hatred against anyone not even against Hindus even during Muslim rule.

KENNEDY: Nikhat aggress that Indian Muslims have largely not been radicalized but she’s a little more cynical about why. Muslim’s economic status and education levels remain extremely low and they feel chronically persecuted.

SHEIKH: At least I have not seen Muslims you know in that position to take revenge. They’re too weak. They are too powerless to even think to do anything you know.

KENNEDY: She worries that her children will suffer discrimination or that her family or neighbors in her Muslim dominated Mumbai neighborhood could be blamed if there are more bombings or riots.

SHEIKH: We want out children to be safe. We want our men to be safe. We want our lives to be safe. It’s that way.

KENNEDY: For The World this is Miranda Kennedy, Mumbai.

WERMAN: Miranda Kennedy’s stories from India were funded by a grant from the International Reporting Project. Tomorrow she tells us about discrimination toward India’s Muslims.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.