Sonia and Papalal at home. Picture by G Vijayalakshmi

Hyderabad, March 21: She doesn’t know if she should be called Anjali or Benazir or Sonia, but the seven-year-old knows one thing: religion can sometimes be more dangerous than a terrorist’s bomb.

Orphaned in a blast three-and-a-half years ago and taken home from the site by a Hindu man, the Muslim girl has become the object of a tug-of-war between Hindus and Muslims in her Hyderabad neighbourhood.

“This year too, we couldn’t celebrate Holi with our neighbours. The Hindus boycotted us and the Muslims jeered at us,” said her foster father Papalal, a 36-year-old house painter.

The Hindus of Chudi Bazar want Papalal to take Sonia out of school and leave the locality — they don’t want her studying or playing with their children. Sonia’s classmates taunt her with the Telugu word for “untouchable” that was once used to insult Dalits.

Activists of a radical Hindu group have repeatedly attacked Papalal and Sonia on their way back from school, and once the girl was hit by a stone.

Muslim boys and women heckle her as “kafir” when she passes by their homes, alleged Papalal. Local maulvis have summoned him and asked that he either hand the girl over to a madrasa or embrace Islam with his family.

According to Papalal, the clergy often refer to Sonia in their sermons as a symbol of Hindu militants’ “war on Islam”. They want the girl’s name changed to Benazir Fatima.

Papalal and his wife Jayashree had initially named her Anjali but later switched to Sonia because “it’s neither Hindu nor Muslim”.

Sonia doesn’t know what her real name was; all she was able to tell Papalal was that she was the daughter of Fatima Begum and Pasha.

The painter remembers the evening of August 25, 2007, well. He had been working at a temple when twin blasts went off in the city — one at a nearby snack bar, Gokul Chat Bhandar, and the other at the Lumbini Park auditorium.

Papalal rushed to Gokul, where he found the girl, then aged about four, crying: “Ammi, ammi.” He took her to a hospital and later to his home although the police had told him to send the child to a government orphanage.

“She brought us luck. My wife conceived soon after and gave birth to a girl, whom we have named Ekta (unity). My business too improved,” Papalal said.

“Although we gave her the Hindu name Anjali, we did not bring her up as a Hindu. We would often take her to the mosque and also let her offer namaz at home.”

Their troubles began when the media spotlight fell on them during the blast’s first anniversary in August 2008. Then the boycott, the threat calls and the attacks began.

Papalal says he filed complaints with Shainayatganj police station after each of the three attacks, in September 2008 and in March and August the following year. Eventually, prodded by the state human rights commission, the police began dropping in at their home from time to time to ask about their safety. That stopped after a few weeks.

Papalal is thinking of moving to another neighbourhood but isn’t sure if that would make any difference. “Now it’s not just about Sonia; we also have to think of what effect all this may have on Ekta,” Jayashree said.

The couple regret the day in 2008 they had agreed to be interviewed on TV. “I did not think of any religion when I saw the crying, frightened and injured girl amid the devastation of the explosion,” Papalal said.