A Neighborhood in India Fears Being Blamed for a Distant Atrocity

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 in attacking a Hanukkah celebration in Australia last Sunday, was born and grew up in a quiet Muslim neighborhood here. He left almost three decades ago and seldom came back.

Now, the mass shooting, which killed 15 people and led to the arrest of Mr. Akram’s son Naveed as the second gunman, has brought unwelcome attention on their relatives and other residents of the neighborhood, 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 neighbor of Sajid Akram’s brother. Anxious about the backlash that might come from connection to a terrorist attack, many in the neighborhood have stayed indoors this past week.

Mr. 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 percent of India’s population, they account for almost one-third of its emigrants, according to a study by Pew Research Center.

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. Mr. Tajuddin said his younger brothers returned after working 12 years in Britain and the Netherlands.

“When they came back, we immediately arranged their marriage,” Mr. 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 Mr. Akram — who was killed in Sydney last Sunday in crossfire with the 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, Mr. Akram’s relatives told the police that they had had only limited contact with him and “no knowledge of his radical mind-set or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalization.” 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 Mr. Akram’s siblings live. “It is unfortunate that our colony is being dragged into this.”

Mr. Baabbad, too, once worked overseas, living in Dubai 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,” Mr. Nanisetti said.

Having lost almost everything, they turned to emigration.

Mohammed Abdul Azim was a clerk at the state education department when his brothers arranged for him to get a visa and join them in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After working abroad for 10 years, he returned to Toli Chowki, where he now lives in a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony.

He rarely sees his children. His son lives in Australia with a wife and two daughters, while his daughter lives with her family in the United States. They visit Mr. Azim once a year, and his son pays his rent and medical bills.

“They cannot visit more than once,” said Mr. Azim, 75, who says he lacks the stamina to fly to see them. “They have their jobs and their lives there. How can I travel for such long hours at this age?”

His wife died in 2007, and Mr. Azim lives alone, spending his days watching a TV that he makes sure to mention was bought by his son. His face lights up when he talks of his grandchildren, with whom he speaks using his flip phone.

Nazima Begum, a cook who has worked in the neighborhood 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 Mr. Tajuddin, the neighbor whose brothers went to Europe. “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. Mr. Tajuddin, who had grown estranged from them, owns a grocery store and a drinking-water bottling business that hardly turn a profit.

Does Mr. 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.

However, some residents have reconsidered emigration as Western countries have increasingly adopted restrictive visa rules and anti-immigrant stances. Many fear that the Bondi attack could make it even harder for them to go abroad.

Mohammed Rehan Ali, a 29-year-old engineer who owns a food truck in Toli Chowki, had dreamed of moving to Britain since he was a child. But no longer, after hearing how his friends there have been “suffering,” as he put it.

“Everything is costly, they are not earning enough, there is a lot of racism,” he said.

While Mr. Tajuddin has forbidden his own children from leaving India, he says many of his neighbors remain undeterred.

“Those who want to migrate will still go,” he said. “Those who don’t want to, won’t.”

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