Personal choice Vs Discrimination

I have a house in Hyderabad in a area which has considerable muslim population. It has a couple of portions in the ground floor and a couple of portions in the first floor. Whenever one of the portion goes empty, I put up a to-let board and generally get a lot of enquiry calls as it is located on a main road and is well connected by public transport.

In the due course of time, I learnt one thing, whenever I get an enquiry call, my first question would be ... can you please tell me your name...the basic intention of this question is to check if the person calling is a muslim or not.

The first tenet of letting a house in this area is, not to give it to muslims as there is a sterotype that it will be tough to evict them and in general that the families are huge and that too many people cram into the given area. (this not meant to hurt anybody, really sorry if it does)

So whenever it is a muslim name, I kind of evade the letting out by citing some reason or the other. But this situation was always a very uncomfortable one. I have also come across people, who straight away ask, we are muslims...will you be renting the permises to muslims, this used to be a very painful situation...it is like somebody asking you, are you dsicriminating us ?

A few weeks back I read a few blog posts where people were, very naively asking that isn't letting out a house a personal choice ? I felt slightly better after reading these, as atleast I am clear that I am trying to fit a person whom I have just heard over phone or just met once into a stereotype, because I don't want to take chances or I don't want to get out of my comfort zone. Atleast I am aware that, I am discriminating people and hoping that the over all things in society would change, so that I need not do this.

After reading these posts I also felt happy that we have nationalised banks, govt. hospitals and schools, ration shops where people need not depend on the personal choices of some people to get some basic things in life. Cannot imagine the society a century back, when personal choices of a few dictated the lives of the general population.