Housing Discrimination

Very recently, the case of a Muslim girl being denied stay in Kolkata was reported by Madhumita Datta in the Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika. The girl, Nishat Rima Laskar, had taken admission in Jadavpur University in the department of mathematics. But, she was unable to get any accommodation as a paying guest in the neighbourhood of the university, simply because she is a Muslim. One landlady categorically told her father, after learning her name: “I do not rent my house to any Muslim.” At present, Nishat travels about one and half hours daily from her home in Joynagar–Majilpur, in the South 24 Parganas district, to the university in order to attend classes. Room allotment to the students in the university hostel was to start after 15 August 2018. Nishat lamented, “I got such an inhuman treatment in the city, which I did not experience in my village.”