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Back in April, militants killed 26 Hindu tourists in India-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for the attack. It's a charge Islamabad denies. But rights groups say it has left vulnerable Muslims in India, including Indian citizens, who have been paying the price in the aftermath. NPR's Omkar Khandekar has this report from Mumbai.
OMKAR KHANDEKAR, BYLINE: For the past 10 years, Mumbai resident Mustafa Kamal parked his bike opposite a police station and set up a makeshift food stall. His specialty was jhalmuri, a fiery snack of spices and puffed rice. One evening this June, two constables asked for his ID. He showed them the four he had, including a voter card.
MUSTAFA KAMAL: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: Kamal says the constables accused him of forging them, and they detained him. Five days later, he says he was shipped more than a thousand miles from home to the border between India and Bangladesh.
KAMAL: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: Kamal says an Indian border guard told him to get out of India or they would shoot him. Kamal says he was part of a group that included a few dozen people, all seized from Mumbai. He was allowed to return to India two days later, after a Bangladeshi villager filmed him and two other men sobbing near the border. The video went viral on Indian social media and caused outcry.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Crying, speaking Bengali).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Bengali).
KHANDEKAR: The Maharashtra state police that had allegedly detained him did not respond to NPR's requests for an interview. A human rights report said in July that since the April attack in Kashmir, the Indian government has forcibly expelled more than 1,500 people to neighboring Bangladesh and Myanmar. And it is the working-class Muslims who speak Bangla who are the main target, says Teesta Setalvad of the nonprofit group Citizens for Justice and Peace. Bangla is the language shared by the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh next door. We put these accusations to India's home ministry, but we have not heard from anyone. Setalvad says the crackdown was meant to be a distraction.
TEESTA SETALVAD: A terror attack of this kind creates a certain national outrage. And unfortunately, the present political leadership chooses to use this as an occasion not to answer questions about failure of intelligence, etc., but by saying that you had this very, very sinister planned infiltration to change the demography of India.
KHANDEKAR: Infiltration - it's a claim that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from the ruling BJP party, also made at the Independence Day celebrations this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: The infiltrators, Modi says, are stealing jobs, targeting women and occupying land. Ziya Us Salam is the author of "Being Muslim In Hindu India." He says infiltrators is a dog whistle for Muslims.
ZIYA US SALAM: The idea is to cater to Hindutva lobby and generate hate towards average Indian Muslims and capitalize on it at the time of elections.
KHANDEKAR: India has elections coming up in three battleground states in the next 12 months. Upping the rhetoric, Salam says, works to dodge uncomfortable questions.
SALAM: Be it employment, be it better roads, jobs, controlling inflation, constructing better schools, providing hospitals - when the BJP fails on all these fronts, they indulge in this divisive rhetoric.
KHANDEKAR: Mustafa Kamal now lives in his mother's village in eastern India. He says he wants to return to Mumbai to sell jhalmuri. If the police come to him, he says he will feed them, too.
KAMAL: (Non-English language spoken).
KHANDEKAR: "Because," he says, "when you live in the sea, you don't make enemies out of crocodiles." Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Mumbai.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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