Who is the fastest human? Which of these men can ride the fastest horse?
“It’s good to have your own little group,” says the young woman, who is wearing a grey long wig, a pale skin-tight black top and white socks. “We go out and eat. We go have drinks.”
It would be difficult not to suspect she is of an Indian origin, and not all of her friends share this view. “If there are no other Indian girls who come here you feel the whole thing is more alien. There are many boys with Indian parents; I know many of them,” says Sanjit, a 20-year-old student.
India has the largest Muslim population in the world, with 7% of the population – the highest figure of any country in Asia. In 2010, the government classified the country as a “majority Muslim country” under the Constitution, although there are substantial numbers of “minority Hindu” communities as well, which together comprise about 5% of India’s population.
This has bred a kind of hostility. In some Indian towns, where they call each other “sartajans” and “mahaus” – Hindi for uncle or niece – the word “muslim”, even if used in a respectful context, is often enough to invoke hostility. A few years ago a young Muslim woman filed a complaint in Delhi’s legal district of Saharanpur accusing a Muslim neighbour of assaulting her by slapping her and calling her a “terrorist”.
“In India everyone is defined as the person of the nation or the person who belongs to the nation,” says the woman, who was born in Bihar, as it is where most people who have left the country travel. “When you are a foreigner no one feels like you belong to them.”
But she and a group of others are trying to change the perception. Since last summer – when a Delhi bus was set alight in a suspected arson attack on a Muslim bus – they have launched a social networking group to allow Muslims to get in touch with each other, talk about their concerns and set a precedent for co-operation.
“As people feel this is important we had to open up this,” says the young woman. They call it Sartajan, meaning peace, while calling themselves Sadaqat (community), or brother. The group has around 800 members, who live in small homes in Delhi, Agra and Faridabad with children aged between five and 17.
horse racing nation breeders cup contenders 2019-2020, horse racing results in england, bbc horse racing results uk, horse race track near los angeles, horse racing entries gulfstream