MUMBAI (AFP) — Perveez Aggarwal is a living symbol of Mumbai's melting pot.
A member of India's tiny but wealthy Parsee community, she is married to a Hindu and employs rural Muslim craftsmen to recreate ancient Persian designs on embroidered clothing she sells worldwide.
Since witnessing Muslim squatters in her neighbourhood being attacked during sectarian riots in 1992-93, Aggarwal has sought to use her privileged position to help India's underclass.
Through word-of-mouth sales to Indian royalty, New York socialites, and ladies who lunch from London to Hong Kong, her venture now brings in 85,000 dollars a year.
The income, she said, supports families of embroiderers in Calcutta, the biggest city in eastern India, and whole villages in the country's poorest state of Bihar.
"I had thought that if I had to help a particular community, I would help them," said Aggarwal, sitting in her apartment surrounded by Chinese artwork collected by her antiques dealer father.
It was after helping her impoverished neighbours escape attack 15 years ago, ferrying them out of the city in a convoy of cars and trucks, that she discovered a talent among them for embroidery.
"One of the men came back about five months later and showed me a cushion he had embroidered.
"It was garish but I thought if you can do that you can do anything, so I gave him my grandmother's sari and asked him to make a matching blouse," Aggarwal said.
To her surprise he was back the next day with a copy of the centuries-old patterns -- and a business idea was born.
Aggarwal had the embroiderers make her shawls, which she wore on trips around India and abroad for her main business, a serviced office firm.
Soon she was taking so many orders for shawls, jackets and wedding saris -- which sell for between 250 and 1,280 dollars -- that she created a new company called My Beautiful Embroideries which she says keeps seven villages in constant work.
"There were a lot of rich Muslims in India but many of them left" after Partition in 1947 divided the country to create the Islamic state of Pakistan, she said.
"Many went to Pakistan or to other countries. Those who could not afford to go are still here," Aggarwal said, explaining the poverty in which many of India's Muslims live.
A former fashion model who went into business at an early age, Aggarwal is no stranger to discrimination, having fought the prejudices of her own family to marry a Hindu.
By doing so she effectively gave up the right to call herself a Parsee -- though she does -- and her children are considered Hindu.
While Aggarwal sits at the top of India's wealth pyramid, Muslims, who account for 13 percent of the country's 1.1 billion people, are bottom by every measure.
The Sachar Committee report released in 2006 found Muslims trailed majority Hindus, and even other minorities, in everything from literacy and child mortality to bank loans received and bus stops in their villages.
By contrast, Parsees are one of India's wealthiest groups, certainly by capita. Of a world total of 100,000 Parsees -- Persian Zoroastrians who came to India more than 1,000 years ago -- 70,000 live in India, with 40,000 of them in Mumbai.
Parsees, probably best known for leaving their dead for vultures on open-air towers, are behind some of India's biggest companies, in steel, cars, airlines, textiles, soap, home appliances and shipping.
Among the success stories is Tata Group, owned by Ratan Tata whose grandfather built the iconic waterfront Taj Mahal hotel which was attacked by Islamist gunmen on November 26.
The Taj was one of a dozen locations targeted by the militants who took hostages during a 60-hour siege that ended with 163 civilians and security personnel dead, and about 300 injured.
Those attacks, which shocked the usually freewheeling commercial capital of India, have united Muslims against terrorism, Aggarwal said.
"Muslims were among the dead. All of us can see that everyone was a victim, no matter who or what they are."
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