By Pragati K.B.
Hyderabad: Hyderabad is a city in southern India whose residents have long gone abroad in search of greater wealth and opportunity. But it has come under scrutiny after one of its own was named in connection with an atrocity far away.
Sajid Akram, who died while attacking a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach last Sunday, was born and grew up in a quiet Muslim neighbourhood here. He left almost three decades ago and seldom came back.
The Akram family home in Hyderabad, India. Relatives of Bondi shooter Sajid Akram have told local Indian police they had little association with him since he left Hyderabad in 1998.Credit: Saurabh Yadav
Now, the mass shooting, which killed 15 people and led to the arrest of Akram’s son, Naveed, as the second gunman, has brought unwelcome attention to their relatives and other residents of the neighbourhood, known as Toli Chowki. Many were wary of being held guilty by association, adding to the frustrations and pains of being part of a Muslim minority in a country that has grown more stridently Hindu. Others protested their innocence.
“This incident brought Toli Chowki fame through infamy,” said Mohammed Tajuddin, a neighbour of Sajid Akram’s brother. Anxious about the backlash that might come from connection to a terrorist attack, many in the neighbourhood have stayed indoors this past week.
Akram, 50, was one of the roughly six million Muslims from India who have gone abroad in search of better lives. Though Muslims make up only about 15 per cent of India’s population, they account for almost one-third of its emigrants, according to a study by Pew Research Centre.
Many of these are Muslims from Hyderabad, who have been moving abroad since the 1940s; first to Pakistan, then to Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States, and most recently, to countries in the Persian Gulf. In Toli Chowki, every house has at least one close relative working in a foreign land.
Many have also come back. Tajuddin said his younger brothers returned after working 12 years in Britain and the Netherlands.
Along the quiet cul-de-sac, neighbours are reluctant to be drawn into an international news event of such horror.Credit: Saurabh Yadav
“When they came back, we immediately arranged their marriage,” Tajuddin, 52, said. The brothers then settled down in Toli Chowki with the money they had earned. “How else do you think we built this house? And threw two lavish weddings?”
When the elder Akram – who was killed in Sydney last Sunday in crossfire with police – left for Australia in 1998 in search of work, his sister and an elder brother remained in Toli Chowki with their families. Some of the few area residents who ventured outside this past week called the Akram family “respectable” but “private”.
After the attack, Akram’s relatives told police that they had had only limited contact with him and “no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalisation”. Then the brother’s family locked their house and left, worried the press would mob them.
“There are only respectable people residing here,” said Mujib Abdalla Baabbad, the president of Al Hasnath Housing Colony, the complex where Akram’s siblings live. “It is unfortunate that our colony is being dragged into this.”
Baabbad, too, once worked overseas, living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for 35 years. “All of us move abroad for the same reasons: for better safety, quality of life, higher wages, better employment.”
Emigration is part of the local culture and history in Toli Chowki and the rest of Hyderabad, according to Serish Nanisetti, a journalist and author of a book on the region’s history. The practice’s roots go back to the year after India gained independence from the British in 1947. When the new nation annexed the princely state of Hyderabad by military force, communal violence and widespread unrest followed.
“Hyderabadi Muslims were suddenly stripped of their wealth, land, status, respect and sense of security,” Nanisetti said.
Having lost almost everything, they turned to emigration.
Nazima Begum, a cook who has worked in the neighbourhood for 17 years, described a community in flux. “There are no old-timers left in the area,” she said. “They have all died or moved abroad.”
Despite the hardships of separation, families continue to send members abroad.
“There were no jobs here,” said Tajuddin. “I told them I will take care of our parents, you just go and bring back enough money.”
Since returning, the brothers now own an imported-fruits business. Tajuddin, who had grown estranged from them, owns a grocery store and a drinking-water bottling business, which hardly turn a profit.
Does Tajuddin regret not going abroad himself? “Daily! My destiny would have been so different, no? If you are foreign-returned, you get more respect, no? Your marriage prospects also look up,” he said.
Bondi Beach incident helplines:
- Bondi Beach Victim Services on 1800 411 822
- Bondi Beach Public Information & Enquiry Centre on 1800 227 228
- NSW Mental Health Line on 1800 011 511 or Lifeline on 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or chat online at kidshelpline.com.au
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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