Bandra Diaries: Muslims move in, supplanting Catholics

Editor's note: The Bandra Diaries is an occasional series that details life in today's India.

MUMBAI, India — To residents who have lived in Bandra for generations, the northern suburb of Mumbai has completely morphed over the last few decades.

You used to be able to walk down the street and hear a neighbor playing Beethoven on his piano, but today it's all traffic and hawkers and high-rises. Residents say their neighbors barely make eye contact.

Bandra, they say, has lost much of its charm.

It has also lost many of its Catholics.

After the Portuguese colonized Bombay in the 16th century, they gave Bandra to their Jesuits. Bandra has since been known for its large Catholic population and beautiful churches. There is an old saying that if one went to the top of the famous Bandra church Mount Mary and threw a stone, it would hit a pig, a priest or a Pereira, a common Catholic family surname.

“Pigs were a part of everyday life,” said Clement DeSylva, author of a collection of non-fiction sketches called "Bandra Buggers." He explained that Bandra’s predominantly Catholic community used pigs for a variety of purposes. “You would just sweep your food off the plate, and the pigs ate it."

“I remember growing up with pigs all over the place,” said DeSylva’s wife, Annabelle Ferro, as she sat in the kitchen of their Bandra apartment.

But the suburb has seen much of its Christian population sell their bungalows to developers and move north to suburbs like Malad or to other countries in the West. As the Catholics left, Hindus and Muslims moved in. While there had been some Muslim families in Bandra throughout the 20th century, a big shift began in the 1990s when other parts of Mumbai were deemed unsafe for Muslims.

Goats, one could say, have replaced the pigs. And many of the Catholic families who remain are not particularly happy about it.

DeSylva and Ferro say that goats — the animals that Muslims eat often — are not like pigs. While Muslims only bring in goats ahead of holidays, DeSylva said, pigs were part of everyday life, even used for waste disposal.

Some Catholics point to the ritual slaughter of goats on the recent holiday Eid al-Adha as an example of how they believe the Muslims who have moved into Bandra do not have the same standards for hygiene and respect for others as Catholics do.

“The goats are an important trigger for prejudice to be expressed,” said Naresh Fernandes, the former editor of Time Out Mumbai and a lifelong Bandra resident. “This is the ultimate alien spectacle: having animal sacrifice on your doorstep.”

In addition to during the goat sacrifice, Muslims face a general sense of resentment from some Catholic families.

Muslims are "not very clean," they have too many children and they squeeze large families into tiny apartments — these are some of the things Catholics say about Muslims in Bandra, according to one Catholic writer and lifelong resident of Bandra who did not want to be named.

“I wouldn’t want to buy a house where my neighbors were Muslim, to be honest. You do want to know when you come home someone’s not spitting paan on your walls,” she said, referring to the betel nut product. “It’s not something you want to say, but at the end of the day, it’s the truth.”

Much of the resentment directed at Muslims is misguided, said Fernandes. He said the anger stems from frustration with one of the early builders — a Muslim — who had a reputation for using heavy-handed tactics to convince Catholics to sell their bungalows.

As wealthy Muslim families bought up these properties, the Catholics who sold their land made a great profit.

“My brother has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. How the hell did that happen?” Fernandes said with a laugh. “The fact is we have sold out.”

But rather than be frustrated with the builders or the Catholics who sold their bungalows, there is resentment against the Muslims who moved in.

Furthermore, much of the anger should be directed at politicians who have used poor Muslims as a voting bloc and allowed slums to grow, Fernandes said.

As DeSylva drove through a slum in Bandra Reclamation, he pointed out politicians’ billboards next to the Islamic green star and crescent flags. He passed the public restroom, a concrete structure with four doors in a row. He said it isn't enough to serve the whole community, and some have no choice but to defecate on the road.

He then drove to Bandra Station, where on Friday afternoons hundreds of Muslims take over the area in front of the mosque, kneel on rugs and pray in the path of commuters. Yes, Hindus take over the streets for festivals like Ganesh and Holi, DeSylva said. But Muslims abuse the system by doing this every single Friday.

And yet, while the resentment over how Bandra has changed over the years simmers under the surface, the suburb continues to be relatively tolerant and peaceful.

Muslims celebrate Eid-al-Adha by slaughtering sheep, goats, cows and camels to commemorate Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son on God's command. Here, a young Indian boy is surrounded by livestock in the market in New Delhi, Jan. 8, 2006. (Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images)

“I haven’t grown up being profiled or feeling like a minority,” said Karishma Attari, a Muslim writer who grew up in Bandra. Sitting on her leather couch wearing tight jeans and a tank top, she said she does not wear a veil except when she goes to a mosque. “We’re generally considered the OK ones, the progressive ones,” she added, noting she belongs to the Bohra Muslim sect.

One of her cleaners, 18-year-old Rashida Mandol, who moved from Calcutta to Bandra’s slums, said she wears a headscarf on the streets and also has not had any problems.

While Muslims say it can still be difficult to find an apartment in Bandra, it is much easier than in nearby neighborhoods like Khar and Juhu.

Bandra has also been safer for Muslims than other areas of the city. When many parts of Mumbai burned during the 1993 religious riots, Bandra remained untouched. Some argue that Bandra’s calm during the riots is one of the main reasons Muslims have felt safe enough to move here.

“In India,” Fernandes said, referencing the Mumbai riots and those in Gujarat in 2002, “we have a different standard for racism.”