Indian Muslims under pressure in Mumbai aftermath

By Bappa Majumdar and Krittivas Mukherjee

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - In a government morgue in Mumbai lie the bodies of nine Islamist militants responsible for killing 179 people in a bloody attack on India's financial hub.

The deadly rampage happened in November, but India's Muslims have refused to bury the gunmen, distancing themselves from the killings in a country where Hindu nationalists often whip up anti-Muslim sentiment after such attacks.

"We strongly believe terrorists have no religion and they do not deserve a burial," said Maulana Zaheer Abbas Rizvi of the All India Shia Personal Law Board, a body for framing Muslim laws.

Leaders of India's 140-million-strong Muslim community have denounced the November 26-29 Mumbai attacks and thousands of Muslims have marched in protests against the bloodshed. It has been the strongest rejection yet of Islamist violence by Indian Muslims.

"We have lost our children in the Mumbai attacks too. And we, as Indians, share a common grief and demand justice," said Maulana Mehmood Daryabadi, general-secretary of the All-India Ulema Council, one of the biggest groupings of Muslim sects.

In Muslim neighborhoods in the capital, residents observed low-key celebrations during an Islamic holiday in December.

Imran Ahmed, a book-seller, did not buy any new clothes for his children during the festival and did not distribute kebabs to neighbors as he does each year.

"So many people were killed by the terrorists. How could I celebrate?" asked the bearded book-seller, sitting outside his shop in the narrow, congested streets of Old Delhi.

TENSION

For now, the issue of burial of the militants has been averted as Indian officials say the corpses are still needed for their investigation. At the same time, contacts are underway to convince Pakistan to take the bodies, so far to no avail.

Tension between India and Pakistan has flared in the wake of the attacks, blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

As the two rivals bicker, India's Muslims have been caught in an uncomfortable position in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, which have intensified their feelings of being under siege even though Muslims make up about 13 percent of India's population.

Indian Muslims lag in health care, literacy and income. Official figures show Muslims are underrepresented in government jobs and the judiciary. Yet they are overrepresented in the prison populations in many Indian states.

Until recently India boasted that its Muslims, at least outside troubled Kashmir, had not embraced Islamist extremist violence of the type promoted by al Qaeda.

That has changed in recent years, with Indian Muslims thought to have carried out a series of bomb attacks on Indian cities this year and last.