Yogesh Pawar

"When accused of terrorism we are Muslims, when killed or attacked by looters, we become Asian," said Anwar Sayyed a friend in Brimingham, on chat. As the violence spread to his city where I spent a fortnight on internship with the local ITV station in August 2007, my thoughts were with the Anwar and his family.

Originally from Sialkot, Pakistan, Anwar's father migrated to the UK in 1968.

Feverish, homesick and craving for good old plain daal chawal, during my longest stint so far from home, I unburdened my woes to Anwar the pantry staffer who suggested I come home. His mother Zulekha and wife Arefa cooked palak-dal tempered with garlic, some finger-licking delicious paneer mutter with freshly made hot phulkas and stuffed red chilly achchar which made me want to weep with joy. They assumed I was vegetarian and I protested. Anwar more than made up for it with some amazing chicken tikka saalan and phulkas which he got next day to office.

I realise I am using those fond food memories to block what disturbed me most about Anwar's remark on the phone. I wondered whether Muslims in India are treated any differently. I am not going to go into the findings of the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report since these are already in the public domain. I will go by an example from my own experience as a reporter.

Fifteen km from the loom-town of Bhiwandi along Mumbai-Agra National Highway 3 is Padgha-Borivali - a largely Muslim village which has often been in the headlines. Not for its 100% literacy, not for the several engineers and techies it has produced but thanks to the police. Ever since they first picked up Saquib Nachan for his alleged involvement in the Mulund blasts in March 2003, they find it convenient to go to this village picking up youth for "terror links." Unemployed and less educated are passed off as those bought off and those with technical education are picked up for being the technical operatives of some or the other militant organisation. It is another matter that many have been let off by the courts since the charges cannot be proven with very serious observations against the police.

(This is a digression but one such police inspector in-charge at Padgha in 2003 Nitin Patil comes to mind. This wannabe body builder would actually come out with two hangers with different T-shirts and ask which he should wear to look good. For the sake of getting our sound byte and be rid of him in the shortest possible time my cameraperson or me would oblige and pick the most hideous one.)

Five months later, the Maharashtra government launched the Jal Swarjya scheme for which it got World Bank funding of Rs 1395.5 crore! According to the state government the scheme (which was to end in September 2009) would increase rural households' access to improved and sustainable drinking water supply and sanitation services; and institutionalize decentralization of Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) service delivery to rural local governments and communities in 26 districts over six years.

I discovered all this completely by accident, in March 2008, when I was in Padgha following up on my story on police excesses I saw there was a big clamour for water. I asked the villagers about the huge brightly painted 50,000 litre water tank built by the government with Jal Swarajya emblazoned in bold Devnagri font and they began laughing. "They just built the tank and forgot to lay pipelines," said a village elder who added, "Now we have lost a large part of our common grazing land and to what avail."

My enquiries with the local tehsildar and Jal Swarajya officials at the Konkan Bhavan led me to the discovery that Padgha was in fact the pilot project for this scheme which "had been successfully completed in the 26 districts." The fact that this claim had no match with the ground reality of a pitch dry water tank into which there simply no pipes leading inside or out, seemed to have little effect on the defensive officials who were more interested in knowing who was feeding me this information.

When they continued to feign ignorance, I was forced to show them a copy of a letter written to them by the villagers a year ago (17^th June 2008). "When it comes to persecution on the basis of religion we have come to live with it as unavoidable. Should we now languish without water because we are Muslims?" the letter had asked. Cut to the quick a smarting official snapped, "Why should they bring up religion in something like this? This could have happened to any village." But isn't exactly that what another arm of the government - the police- keeps reinforcing after any blast anywhere?

Eventually, when the story aired, the pipeline was laid and the villagers did get water. Wish it helped wash at least some of the feeling of hurt and persecution among locals too.