Azhar Meghani

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Mohandas Pai has some advice for Indian Muslims. Stop getting ghettoized. Stop the victimhood narratives. Participate in politics as equals.

He is a former CFO of Infosys. He is not an unlettered man. Which makes this worse.

Let us ask the question he refuses to ask. How does a ghetto come into existence?

It Usually Begins With Violence

Earliest ghettos were created by post-partition violence. Partition drove Muslims into concentrated pockets in every major Indian city. What began as emergency shelter became permanent address. But later the process became systemic.

In 1992 and 1993, Bombay burned. The Srikrishna Commission documented what happened. Electoral lists were accessed by marauding mobs, corroborated by witness testimony and independent investigations. The mobs had addresses. They had maps. The violence was organized. The organization required information that only the state possessed.

Muslims who survived did not return to their old neighborhoods. They moved to Muslim-majority areas. Not out of preference. Because those were the only places where they had any chance of surviving the next riot.

This is how the ghetto begins. Not with a choice. With a massacre.

Gujarat in 2002 repeated the lesson. So did Muzaffarnagar in 2013. So did Delhi in 2020. Each riot produces the same outcome. Muslims are pushed out of mixed neighborhoods. The ghetto grows denser. The surrounding city grows more uniformly Hindu. And then someone like Mohandas Pai tells them to stop getting ghettoized.

The Law Finishes What the Riots Start

Gujarat's Disturbed Areas Act requires government permission for property transactions in designated areas. In practice, it makes it nearly impossible for Muslims to buy property outside existing Muslim-concentration zones.

Originally passed by a Congress government, it has been amended repeatedly by BJP to make it more restrictive. As recently as March 2026, the Gujarat Assembly expanded it further, giving collectors power to seize property outright. A 2022 academic paper in Urban Studies confirmed the law is now used for the opposite of its stated purpose. Not to prevent ghettoization. To enforce it.

This is ghettoization written into law. It is not a victimhood narrative. It is a law. And it is getting worse.

The Social Ostracization

Everywhere else in India, the same result is achieved without a law. Landlords refuse to rent to Muslims. Housing societies bar Muslim buyers. Real estate agents steer Muslim clients away from certain localities.

The result is the same. A Muslim family with money, education, and ambition cannot buy a home in large parts of any major Indian city. The Sachar Committee documented this in 2006. The government that commissioned the report received it and did very little with it.

The Bank Does Not Lend

No credit means no business. No business means no local economy. No local economy means no way out. The ghetto locks itself shut. By design.

There is no affirmative action to break this. Not from BJP. Not from Congress. Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes have constitutional and legislative frameworks. Muslims, who score below the national average on nearly every development indicator in the Sachar report, have nothing equivalent. What exists is a patchwork of state-level schemes, routinely underfunded, routinely shelved.

Mohandas Pai does not mention this gap. He mentions victimhood narratives instead.

Muslim Ghettos Are Unofficial Government Policy

The ghetto is not a problem for the Indian state. It is a solution.

Once a Muslim population has been packed into a bounded area, it becomes easy to manage. The state does not need to build schools there, or hospitals, or roads, or anything that signals these citizens matter.

It needs only to maintain order. One police station per neighborhood, maybe two, to keep them inside. That is the only government office that functions reliably in Muslim-concentration areas across Indian cities.

Muslims are packed in like sardines. Sunlight is scarce. Open space is non-existent. The infrastructure that makes urban life livable is absent.

Once the geography of exclusion is bounded and legible, it becomes easy to ignore them in policy, easy to target them in elections, and easy to tell them, as Mohandas Pai does, that this is their own fault.

This is not neglect. Neglect is passive. What has been done to Muslim neighborhoods is active, consistent, cross-party, and multigenerational. It is policy.

The Inequality Is State Sanctioned

Equals participate from positions of equal standing. Equal standing requires equal safety from communal violence, equal access to housing, equal access to credit, equal presence of the developmental state, equal political representation.

None of this exists.

A community that has been periodically massacred into relocation, expelled from mixed neighborhoods through law and social pressure, denied loans, denied infrastructure, and concentrated into areas the state then starves of every resource except policing, that community does not have a ghettoization problem.

It has a persecution problem.

The ghetto is where the persecution is executed. The cruel joke is, India doesn't need detention camps. It has Muslim ghettos.

What They Will Say Instead

Not one person who disagrees will engage with these arguments directly. Because the arguments are empirically grounded and direct engagement means conceding ground. Instead, here is what is coming. You can match what you read to the number.

1. "But there are Muslim ghettos all over Europe." Europe has nothing to do with India. We are talking about Indian law, Indian riots, Indian administrative policy, Indian government reports. Bringing up Europe is not a counter argument. It is a change of subject. It is also largely false. Muslim concentration in European cities has entirely different historical and economic causes. But more importantly, it is irrelevant. Stay in India.

2. "Muslims should buy houses legally instead of encroaching and building illegally." Muslims are denied loans by banks. Muslims are barred from buying property in most neighbourhoods. Muslims are pushed by riots into whatever space remains. Buy with what money? Buy where? From which landlord who will actually sell? You are blaming people for not walking through a door that was locked from the outside.

3. "Why don't Muslims develop their own ghettos?" The roads outside Muslim homes are not cleaned by the municipality. The drainage does not work because the government has not built it. The schools are absent because the government has not funded them. Muslims are not the municipal corporation. They are citizens who pay taxes like everyone else and receive nothing back. You are throwing someone into the sea and asking why they are not swimming.

4. "Muslim ghettos exist because Muslims prefer to live together." Muslims lived in mixed neighborhoods in Bombay before 1992. The riots ended that. Homes were burned. People were killed. The survivors moved to where they felt safe. That is not a preference. That is survival. There has been sustained coercion for over seventy years. Call it what it is.

5. "But India is a secular country, why does it have Muslim areas." The Sachar Committee was appointed by the Indian government. The Srikrishna Commission was appointed by the Indian government. Both produced reports documenting exactly what this piece describes. Secularism is a constitutional value. It is not an automatic condition on the ground. Saying India is secular therefore Muslims are not persecuted is not an argument. It is gaslighting.

None of them, including Mohandas Pai, will interact with what is actually wrong. Because the purpose is not to debate. The purpose is to dehumanize Muslims and blame them. The purpose is to hide their oppression behind obfuscation and victim blaming.

Pūchhte haiñ vo ki 'ġhālib' kaun hai
Koī batlāo ki ham batlā.eñ kyā”

[Waquar Hasan @WaqarHasan1231]

"It's being said that my son was killed over suspicion of being a Muslim. Why would you kill Muslims? Are Muslims not human? You will kill any ordinary Muslim on the roads," said mother of Aryan Mishra.

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@gettinglostdoc Hurley, Syed, Locke, in that order !

[History Cell @HistoryCell]

"हमें छोड़ दिया जाए तो आजीवन क्रांति से किनारा कर लेंगे।" -सावरकर

"हमारे साथ राजनीतिक बंदी जैसा ही व्यवहार किया जाए और फांसी देने की जगह गोलियों से भून दिया जाए।" -भगत सिंह

[Hasan Toor @hasantoxr]

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[Sukhada @appadappajappa]

If you earn more than Rs.64,380 per month, you earn more than 95% of India.

That also means you hold more power than you think.

You can help someone from the bottom 10% with an amount as low as Rs.100

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[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

Earth's rotation visualized in a stunning timelapse that follows a fixed point in the sky.

Credit: Martin Giraud

[Subin Dennis @subindennis]

Horrible move. The BJP government is considering allowing trading in water in commodity exchanges. In other words, water could be privatised, and speculators could make profits while water prices go up, making water less and less accessible to the vast majority of people.

[Ian Clark @IanActivated]

Me at 46:
- Overweight
- Facing 3 chronic diseases
- Depressed
- Balding

Me at 64:
- Healthy weight
- Living and thriving with no diseases
- Happy
- Full head of hair

Here are 5 steps I took to heal myself and age backwards without doctors, health insurance or medication:

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@EWA_Audio I ordered the A106Pro from Amazon, it is awesome! The size is perfect :)
Works great for playing music but does not connect to the phone audio while calling, any setting that I am missing?

[Süpermen @supermenlikzor]

Beni tanıyanlar bilir yemin ederim bu çocuk benim ama kanıtlayamam puhaha harika

https://t.co/n3MMEZRNa4

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@TheBikingLawyer What is the legal speed limit on the cycling lane?

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@ahmairport Thank you for the quick response. Do I need an RT-PCR or Rapid Antigen Test before boarding?

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@ahmairport I am arriving from Canada via Abu Dhabi. Could you please advise what the COVID related requirements for International arrivals are?

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@TPSOperations
Will TPS clarify and provide information to the local community on what happened at the intersection of Don Mills Rd. and Overlea, that caused the entire road closure for more than 36 hrs?

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@barandbench @threadreaderapp unroll

[Cheri DiNovo @CheriDiNovo]

Bell laid off 100s and received 122 Million in relief during COVID. How about giving 122 Million to mental health initiatives rather than a pathetic 5 cents per video for million worth of PR?? #BellLetsTalk #BellYouShutUp

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@ForestCgGov
एक दुर्लभ नजारा:
अमरकंटक के कबीर घाट में दिनांक 15 दिसंबर 2021 को शाम बजे 5:30 तीन सीयार विचरण करते हुए दिखाई दिए।

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@DelhiAirport I am travelling from Canada (not at risk country) to Delhi via UK (at risk country); I'll not be exiting the airport or cross immigration while transiting thru UK. Do I have to undergo PCR testing and 7 days home quarantine?
https://t.co/GqTXAKuj6N

[Azhar Meghani @chotechacha007]

@DelhiAirport How does one home quarantine if one lands in IGI but is travelling to another state on a domestic flight. The guidelines for international travellers document at
this link does not address this. https://t.co/XPcJS2mAln