BADARPUR, India — In a rare instance of conflict between two religious communities in India, Muslims in a village in West Bengal state have ostracized a couple for converting to Christianity from Islam. Muslims in Badarpur village of Behrampur district beat Johad Sahid and his wife Taslima Oct. 28.
Later the local village committee ordered all the villagers, most of whom are Muslim, to deny the couple access to common facilities, such as water taps and toilets, a representative of the Christian Legal Association said. Such incidents are uncommon, religious leaders said, as relations are generally amicable between the two minority communities, both of which are targeted by Hindu extremists. “In the post-independence India, Muslims and Christians have been in minority, and both face problems at the hands of the majority ‘communalists’ (Hindu nationalists),” said Asghar Ali Engineer, a Muslim scholar from the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism.
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