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Three months after the terrorist siege of India's commercial capital left more than 160 people dead, the bodies of nine Muslim attackers remain in a city morgue because local Muslims refuse to bury them.
The rejection of Muslim tradition that requires bodies to be buried swiftly, usually the day after death, reflects Indian Muslims' outrage at the attacks as well as fear that it will be seen as tainted - even though the attackers all appear to have come from neighboring Pakistan.
"These terrorists are a black spot on our religion; we will very sternly protest the burial of these terrorists in our cemetery," Ibrahim Tai, the president of the Indian Muslim Council, told the British Broadcasting Corp. last year.
After the siege, Mumbai's Bollywood stars as well as worshippers at mosques across the country wore black badges to express their condemnation. Once again, India's Muslims felt pressure to prove themselves patriotic because their religion had been linked to violence.
"More than one-fourth of those killed in the Mumbai attacks were Muslims. It's ridiculous and offensive to blame India's Muslims for such attacks just because those terrorists were Muslims and they came from Pakistan," said Sabitendranath Roy, a noted book publisher, at a seminar on Hindu-Muslim relations in Calcutta after the attacks.
Indian officials have not blamed local Muslims for the attacks, yet the community has expressed a sense of nervousness.
"There is no denying of the fact that in everyday life Muslims are victims of discrimination in Hindu-majority society," said Mr. Roy, a Hindu whose Center for Hindu-Muslim Understanding organized the seminar.
With more than 150 million Muslims, India has the world's second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia. India's Muslims alone could form the world's eighth-largest country, ahead of Russia and Nigeria. But Muslims comprise only 13 percent to 15 percent of India's 1.1 billion people.
Sixty years after the partition of British India into Hindu-dominated India and Muslim Pakistan, India has had three Muslim presidents, Muslim cricket stars and a film industry presided over by Muslims.
But in general, Muslims remain second-class citizens. They are poorer and less educated than Hindus, figuring lower than many lower-caste Hindus on several social indicators. Muslims also face discrimination in finding jobs and housing.
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