When 12-year-old Noopur invited her friend Asifa home for her birthday party, her father said, "Do you really want to call a Muslim home?" Asifa attended the party but when she got to know about the reservations of the host family, she distanced herself from Noopur. "I don't want to engage with anybody who looks at me differently because of my religious identity," says the Class VIII student of a prominent west Delhi school.

Two years ago, on August 13, students of a posh Greater Noida school were exchanging greetings. "Happy Independence Day in advance," each said to the other; it was going to be a two-day school break. Class V student Abirah, however, forgot to add the "in advance" bit to her greeting. That did it. A classmate immediately started to taunt her saying, "It's Independence Day for you today because you are from 'P' [or Pakistan, apparently the geography that must not be named]." There was the factual inaccuracy - Pakistan's Independence Day is August 14 - but their barbs found their mark. Abirah, the only Muslim girl in class, was horrified. On returning home, she asked her mother, Hafiza Sheikh, if she was a Pakistani. "I told her, no, you are an Indian," Hafiza tells The Telegraph.

It is not that Muslim children were never teased about their religious identity before. The difference lately is that stigmatisation of Muslims as "Pakistanis", "terrorists", "beef-eaters", "wife abusers", "polygamists", etc. is no longer limited to the economically disadvantaged or socially conservative sections of the populace. Urban educated Muslims, professional success and consequent financial well-being notwithstanding, are also targets.

Travelling through forwards from smartphone to smartphone; echoed by the ruling political dispensation in word and deed, discussed in "in" conversations in carpeted living rooms - these stigmas have found their way into mainstream Indian consciousness as life-truths. And as happens with life-truths, they are being handed down to the next generation with all the ceremony and seriousness reserved for all things heirloom.

In the 2018 book, Mothering a Muslim, Nazia Erum writes extensively on this. Erum, who is based in Noida in the National Capital Region, captures in her book how Muslim children from affluent families are bullied by peers in elite schools across India's metros and how the current political climate is responsible for this.

In her book, she narrates the experience of one Asma Rizwan, a professor of English. When Asma was asked by a neighbour, in the 1970s, "Are you a Muslim?" she had replied, " Tum hoge Mussalman - main toh Asma hoon... You might be a Muslim, I am Asma." Erum adds, "But when a kindergarten student is asked the same today, she replies, 'Yes, I am a Muslim but I don't eat beef'."

Putting out disclaimers, even as one breathes, is tedious way to be. It is easier to bring on the counter-offence. Delhi-based counsellor Geetanjali Kumar cites one time when a Class VII student of an east Delhi school was asked to pull down his pants by his non-Muslim classmates. They had also teased, calling him "Mulla-Pulla". He retaliated with stinging gendered abuses. "During counselling, he asked me: If they are right, how am I wrong?" says Geetanjali.

Erum writes about an incident, wherein 17-year-old Raffat was called terrorist by a classmate. When his mother took up the matter with the other child's parent, the latter said Raffat too had called her child fat. "Fat and terrorist - are they same?" Erum asks.

In an open letter #MotherAgainstBullying, Erum writes: "While the situation often borders on violence among boys, it mostly comes out in the form of subtle jokes among girls: ' Kya tumhare mamma papa bomb banate hain? [Do your parents make bombs at home?]' and sometimes as misogyny along with Islamophobia in statements like 'Isn't your father angry that your legs are exposed in your skirt? Is he part of ISIS? Will he shoot us?'" Juvenile, yes, but not too different from public and political rhetoric that is turning pervasive.

Politicians such as the BJP's Giriraj Singh and Surendra Singh never tire of saying, Muslims will be packed off to Pakistan if they don't support beef ban or don't chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai or Vande Mataram. BJP MP Vinay Katiyar said Muslims should not even be living in India. "Acceptability of anti-Muslim feelings has become part of the popular culture, which is reflected in elite schools. Since the easily available Muslim is the person in your class, he or she is targeted," says Hilal Ahmed, associate professor of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

He adds, "When the non-Muslim elite children see that their Muslim peers are also equipped to avail of the same privileges as they do, they cannot fit them into the stereotypical image of the poor and suffering Muslim they have formed. By bullying, they assert their superiority, using the idiom of nationalism. The message is - you are also powerful like I am but you are a traitor and I am a patriot - commonly heard outside schools, too."

Stereotyped beliefs about Muslims might have existed in the minds of many non-Muslims for decades. But what is happening now is different.

In the existing political climate, prejudices are not just flourishing but parading as indisputable truths. Mumbai-based media professional Arif Ahmed, who studied in a convent school in Nashik, recalls how his friends used to address him by the Marathi cuss word for circumcised men but he never took offence. "There was no malice," he says. He adds, "But now, if any child calls a classmate by such a name, it would be an informed choice."

Hafiza, who is the mother of the Greater Noida school student, Abirah, says her daughter has become extra conscious of her Muslim identity. She says, "Abirah tells me not to say khuda haafiz or salaam - salutations typical to the Muslim community - over the phone when I am in her school premises."

Bangalore-based Anuradha Alize Ahmed's Bengali Hindu mother, Anuradha Basu, says, her child is not too open about embracing her "Muslim side" either. "She avoids saying her full name. I assume she doesn't want to feel out of place because she doesn't have Muslim friends," says Anuradha.

Twenty years ago when Anuradha Alize's father, Rumman Ahmed, routinely travelled to Delhi from Calcutta on train, he never gave his full name while booking the ticket. "India has had a history of communal violence. If something happens, a Muslim will be the first to be identified," says Rumman. It was a subversion of identity and as subversions go, not a happy thing, but voluntary nevertheless.

Saima, mother of Class VIII student Asifa, witnessed many riots in Kanpur in the 1990s as a child but never felt alienated. But she, too, believes that the anti-Muslim sentiment deeply ingrained in people's psyche today is here to stay. In Asifa's class, conversations about "why do Muslims pray aloud" or "why do they keep a beard" are not uncommon.

Abhishek Kabir, a law student based in Calcutta, was once told by someone that his eyes were just like a Muslim's. "This person was possibly trying to suggest I apply surma. I laughed and took it as a compliment," he says.

Mumbai-based media professional Afrida Rahman, whose children go to an international school and have never faced Muslim-shaming, plans a similar line of combat if it comes to that. "If my child is called a Pakistani, I would say, ask your friend, what's wrong with being one?" Some schools are doing their bit. At Springdales (Pusa Road), Delhi, contemporary political and social issues are discussed. But compared to the epidemic at hand, one-off efforts seem like too little, too late.

When it does not come down to finger-pointing, prejudice finds expression in social exclusion. Psychologist Rajat Mitra talks about a Muslim teen who attends school in south Delhi. He says, "Whenever she is part of a night-out plan, mothers of other girls in the group do not allow their kids to join." These things, however subtle, affect a young mind.

Often, it leads to self-censorship too. When Abirah's aunt, Ghazala Wahab, who runs a magazine on national security, narrated her niece's episode - her classmates had taunted her over the Independence Day greeting - on Facebook, her brother wanted her to remove the post fearing his child would be identified. "I was more upset with this defeatist mindset of a family member," says Ghazala.

She recalls when she was in school in Agra 28 years ago, Muslims didn't have to be so conscious of their identity. Acceptability among non-Muslim friends was never a problem. "They demanded scrumptious kebabs from my mom's kitchen but my niece never takes non-vegetarian food to school," she says.

In a situation where there is no scope for dialogue or air clearing, this dogged othering has behavioral fallouts. In some cases, Muslim children are left feeling more determined than ever to wear their religion on their person. "They are often told by the haraam police [haraam means sacrilege] they can't do this or that or they are not doing enough to be a Muslim which confuses them," says Erum.

Experts feel that for some, harbouring radical thoughts is often seen as a befitting reply to alienation, which may lead to systematic radicalisation. A study titled "Why join ISIS? The Causes of Terrorism from the Muslim Youth Perspective" by University of Huddersfield, UK, stated alienation and discrimination are common drivers of terrorism. "Radical ideologues play upon the vulnerability and pain. If you see the trend worldwide, intelligent children belonging to affluent families are getting radicalised," says Mitra.

Erum cautions in her book: "In today's political climate we have to be concerned about where and how far we are pushing our children." Indeed.