by Rupam Jain Nair

NEW DELHI - For many of India's 140 million Muslims, the general elections that start on Thursday serve only to highlight their community's sense of isolation and neglect.

As a major voting bloc, their support should be much sought after - but few parties hold strong attractions for Indian Muslims, who often live in congested urban ghettos and face widespread prejudice.

Last year's attacks on Mumbai by suspected Islamists have added to the suspicion and even hatred that Indian Muslims experience.

'Some political parties show sympathy, some talk of sidelining Muslims and some just hate us,' said Aftab Ahmed, a Muslim shopkeeper near Delhi's Jama Masjid, India's biggest mosque.

'We are treated as an issue not as human beings.'

A victim of communal violence, Aftab's cousins were killed and his father's shop was ransacked by Hindus in 1947, when the subcontinent was divided into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.

In the past 62 years, tensions between the faiths have been a common flashpoint in India, often triggered by political parties and fundamentalists keen to whip up their own supporters.

Traditionally, the ruling Congress party has enjoyed the support of many Muslim voters by following a policy of appeasement - promising Muslims more jobs, better opportunities and improved safety.

But Muslim community leaders say little action has followed, and the Muslim vote has now splintered into many different regional parties.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), currently leading the opposition, came to national prominence on its Hindu nationalist policies, and maintains bitter relations with Muslims.

Its manifesto reiterates a commitment to build a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque demolished in 1992 by radical Hindus.

The mosque's destruction sparked Hindu-Muslim violence that claimed around 2,000 lives, but the BJP formed its first national government in 1996 and ruled again between 1999 and 2004.

'Give me one good reason why Muslims should live in India,' said Mehroob Bano, a Muslim lawyer in Gujarat state who is fighting for the release of Muslims accused of burning a train and killing 59 Hindus in 2002.

At least 2,000 Muslims were hacked, beaten, shot or burnt to death in the revenge riots that followed. The causes of the train fire are disputed with at least one subsequent inquiry concluding it started accidentally - a finding that was rejected by the Gujarat state government.

'We are targeted, humiliated, labelled as terrorists and even thrown in jail for years without trial,' Bano said.

Campaigning for this year's elections has again been stained by religious disputes, most clearly when Varun Gandhi, the great-grandson of India's first premier Jawaharlal Nehru, was accused of making a "hate speech" against Muslims.

A committee formed by the outgoing Congress administration found that Muslims were educationally and economically deprived, and had a status similar to Dalits, the low caste Hindus formerly known as "untouchables".

The committee also stated that Muslims have to deal with banks that are reluctant to give them loans, and that many Muslims - who make up more than 12 per cent of the population - are not registered to vote.