There’s enough xenophobia going around in the West, so cases of Indians being denied housing there for being, well, Indian, do not come as a surprise. However, what if we shift the setting to India — to Delhi, specifically — and learn that at certain societies and apartment complexes, Indians are similarly not allowed? That’s definitely astonishing, but not for someone who has tried to search for homes in posh parts of the city.
Vanshika Sethi, a marketer who lives near Sohna Road in Gurugram, recounts a couple of such experiences. “I really liked this one fancy apartment, which was owned by a group of young Chinese people. The broker offered it to me but with the rent amount inflated. Upon asking him why, he responded, ‘the owners usually refuse to give the house to Indians, unless they are families. They prefer foreigners,” she recalls.
Although Vanshika never encountered an outright rejection, she did frown upon this revelation. She continues, “Being overcharged is off-putting, but it makes sense from a business point of view because foreigners are willing to pay a lot more. Not just that, they want families because they usually maintain more decorum compared to bachelors. Also, they consider foreigners ‘better behaved’.”
Another house she saw, did not have a kitchen because the owner did not want ‘masala, cooking smells to linger’. The same house, Vanshika’s broker told her, was given to foreigners as they usually ordered from outside or cooked ‘less smelly’ food.
Vanshika is not the only one with this tale to tell. On Twitter, Bloomberg correspondent Iain Marlow, recalls in a tweet, “I had one friend meet a Delhi landlord at the entrance to the place, and the landlord turned to the broker and said, in Hindi, ‘I told you, no Indians!’”
Similarly, Saptarshi Ray tweeted about the time he was asked to ‘play up’ his English accent while flat-hunting in Delhi.
Patralekha Chatterjee, another user, narrates how a Nepali journalist friend of hers was refused residence by a city-based landowner since the latter was looking for ‘foreigners’.
Upon speaking to Gulratan Singh, who operates the Delhi wing of a Hyderabad-based relocation company that has tied up with big multinationals to help settle their expats in metro cities, more layers to this trend were unveiled. He first explains that these issues only crop up in high-end localities, while they are virtually non-existent even from tier-B onwards. As for the posh localities, he says, “Whenever a foreigner comes to India on behalf of this big MNC we are associated with, Indian home-owners jump to the opportunity. They are ready to let go of their luxurious apartments even at a slightly lesser rate.”
Gulratan lists the reasons for this — “Foreigners are here for a fixed tenure, which is beneficial to the homeowner. Secondly, their homes back in their native countries are very clean and organised, and they maintain the property in the same manner here.”
However, the same company’s India-origin employees have a tougher time even if they hold senior positions. The relocator continues, “In such cases, we have to go to a B-grade condominium, where the landlord is ready to make a compromise. In every case, homeowners are extra careful where Indians are involved.”
But in a bid to be overly cautious, aren’t owners being discriminatory too? Gulratan, in response to that, narrates an example — “Once, we got an apartment set up for an Indian who held one of his company’s highest positions. Once it was vacated a year later, the homeowner discovered that one door was broken, and the polish had come out on the expensive coffee tables wherever the ex-tenant had kept hot glasses. We had a hard time getting everything restored, especially since the owner denied taking back the possession otherwise.”
The relocator does not recall a single case where a foreigner did something of a similar nature. “So it becomes a case of once bitten, twice shy,” Gulratan concludes.
Twice shy, indeed, but are all Indians really that bad? What about the good sheep in the flock, who respect living spaces, maintain cleanliness and decorum, and live peacefully? Munish Chopra, who runs a Delhi-based brokerage firm, comments on this, “I know brokers who do not even entertain calls from Indians. But now the times have changed. It’s just that people have stuck to that old mentality. Realistically, if you give your high-end home to an Indian, you face much less trouble as compared to what you were facing a decade ago. The laws are now very different too. A lot of good people lose out this way.”
