India: Mumbra the town - Muslim refugee settlements after the Mumbai riots of 1992

The Indian Express

A town on the fringes

Sukanya Shetty : Sun Dec 16 2012, 01:53 hrs


Mumbra, once a marshy strip of land in the suburbs of Thane, became one of the largest Muslim refugee settlements after the Mumbai riots of 1992. Twenty years on, Mumbra is trying hard to move on

It is easy to own a house in Mumbra, easier still to build one. “Buildings as tall as eight storeys have come up here in the past few years. Some do not even have lifts. But people buy them. After all, it is affordable. If a buyer is looking for a flat here, it is unlikely he will get one with all legal documents in place,” says Hussain Wagle, who calls himself a “legal builder” and a “native” of Mumbra—as opposed to the “outsiders” who fled Mumbai to make this wasteland their home after the riots of 1992. Much like Mumbra’s construction business, its residents know the best way to grow is vertically, with memories of the riots tucked away in layers of time.

Till about 20 years ago, Mumbra, sandwiched between Thane creek and Parsik hills, was a marshy strip of land with a population of 44,217—most of them Konkani Muslims like Wagle and a few migrants who worked in Thane and made Mumbra their home. That changed with the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the riots that followed in Mumbai. Muslims from different parts of Mumbai fled 35 km north to Mumbra. It’s now an ‘overpopulated’ suburb of Thane with a population of a little over nine lakh, 80 per cent of them Muslims.

Twenty years after the riots, Mumbra has come to represent the damage majoritarianism can do. Besides those who fled the riots of 1992, in the years that followed, as spaces in Mumbai shrunk, Muslims who sold their properties to cash in on the skyrocketing price of land, moved to Mumbra to be with their “own people”.

“With Mumbai witnessing a drastic change in the last two decades—Bandra Kurla complex simply transformed the city—many Muslims sold their land at handsome prices to resettle in Mumbra. It was a easy bargain and a better life with our own people,” says Ibrahim Kadri, who lived in Bharat Nagar in Mumbai’s Bandra East until 2001 where he ran his hardware business. “I am glad I decided to shift to Mumbra. I invested half the amount in buying a spacious flat in Mumbra and also run a perfume business,” he says.

Cheap land also brought in migrant workers. “Everyone aspires for a pucca house. A hut in Mumbai is more expensive than a 2-BHK flat here. There has been a constant demand for newer buildings,” says Anwar Noorie of Mumbra Samachar, a weekly newspaper.

Seven years ago, 31-year-old Salman Abdullah left his village in Dharwad district of Karnataka to a rented space in Mumbai’s Behrampada slums. “I lived there with my wife and two sons. But the living conditions there were bad and so I moved here,” he says. Every morning, Abdullah takes the local train to travel almost 45 km to Mumbai’s western suburbs, where he works as an “executive” in a telecom company. It’s a routine most men in Mumbra follow to get to work.

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It’s not easy to get people to talk of the riots. While people talk about victims getting off in hordes at Mumbra’s railway station between December 6 and 10 in 1992 and January 6 and 20, 1993, personal stories are told with great reluctance.

“Bhooli bisri baat hai. Kyon yaad kara kar zakhmon ko taaza karti ho (Why reopen old wounds)?,” says Mehmood Ashraf, whose wife and son were killed in a mob attack at Sewree, central Mumbai. Ashraf is now re-married. His wife, too, had lost her family in the riots. “Rehana’s brother Mohammad has been missing since the riots,” says Ashraf.

Bilal Sarguroh was a 19-year-old in Bhandup, Mumbai, when rioters struck on December 10, burning down his house in Pathan Colony. After spending half a year in a relief camp and later with some relatives, Bilal and his family decided to do what over 1,000 other riot-affected families did—“resettle” in Mumbra.

Bilal, now 39 and a graphics designer in Mumbra, says his lasting image of the riots is that of a man in white shorts, wielding a knife. “I don’t recall the man’s face. Only that he held a knife menacingly and how I ran for my life. Now it seems unreal, almost as if I were hallucinating,” says Bilal. He was then in his second-year of graduation at a local college in Bhandup. “The first 19 years of my life were long and satisfying, but for some reason, I do not have anything exceptional to say about my next 20 years in Mumbra. Maybe I forgot to live after moving here,” says Bilal.

One of the most serious findings of the Justice B N Srikrishna Commission, which probed the Mumbai riots, was that the riots resulted in the ghettoisation of Muslims. It’s what Hasina Khan, one of the most vocal voices in Mumbra on women’s issues, calls “a systematic process of ghettoisation”. Khan runs Awaaz-e-Niswaan, an organisation that works on women’s empowerment.

“Personal security was the only thing in the minds of the community when they moved here. Mumbai amongst the majority seemed unsafe and most middle-class and lower middle-class Muslims made Mumbra their permanent address,” she says, adding that it was this feeling of persecution that continued to bring people to Mumbra in later years. “The Bhiwandi riots of 1984 and the post-Godhra riots of 2002 uprooted a few hundreds. Many shifted to be with their relatives in Mumbra,” says Khan.

This insecurity heightened the sense of identity. Many more skull caps and burqas define the town of Mumbra now, earning this place uncomfortable names—“mini Pakistan” and “terror city” to name a few. “There are common biases—every man in a skull cap is a potential terrorist and every burqa-clad woman in a local train will disembark at Mumbra,” says Shafi-ullah Ajmeri, a teacher at a private school at Kurla.

It worsened after the police claimed to have unearthed a few SIMI links and with the death of Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old from Mumbra who was killed along with three others in an alleged police encounter in Ahmedabad in 2004. But Mumbra is trying hard to put the past behind, says Noorie of Mumbra Samachar. “Ask the new generation about SIMI and you will be met with a frown,” he says.

“After the Ishrat Jahan case, political intervention has been so high that no such police excesses have happened here. Mumbra’s name has been virtually cleared off the terror list,” says NCP leader Jitendra Ahwad, the MLA from Thane. “Crime rates have gone down too. The first half of the decade was a volatile one. But with community involvement and political pressure, things have got better.”

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But not everything has changed for the better. It is a town in neglect, faring worse even when compared to Diva and Kalva, poor neighbourhoods that lie on either side of Mumbra on the Central line of the Mumbai Suburban Rail Network. “While Diva and Kalva do not have more than two hours of load shedding, Mumbra is plunged in darkness for nearly eight hours a day,” says Javed Ahmed, who works for a tailor in Mumbra.

There are few job opportunities, barring those in Mac Industrial Estate, a small-scale company that manufactures automobile spare-parts. “It is not that we do not have educated people in the community, but there are no options available. Development has not kept pace with the population explosion,” says Mohammad Ali, a primary school teacher in a municipal school in Mumbra.

The population of 9 lakh has no municipal hospital, only two primary health centres that remain open for a few hours in the morning. Mumbra has a 13-bed private maternity home with no paediatrician. The nearest hospital is in Kalva, six kilometres outside the city.

The town has two municipal schools. One, a shabby four-storey building, serves as the space for nine municipal schools of Thane. “Children sit in crammed rooms, there are few teachers, the toilets are overflowing and there is no potable water connection in the school,” says Parvez Fareed of Umeed Foundation, which has been working towards accountability and better governance in Mumbra.

But these crowded schools also spell hope for Mumbra, says Mohammad Ali, a teacher in a municipal school. “It’s a sign that more and more families want to send their children to school. Formal education has almost phased madarsas out of Mumbra,” claims Mohammad Ali. There are only three functional madarsa in Mumbra now. Private schools have moved into this space—about 70 of them cater to the growing aspiration of the town’s people.

Farhana Khan, whose daughter Firdaus studies in the private Abdullah Patel Girls High School, blames the local MLA for not taking note of this aspiration. “He is more concerned about Taliban militancy in Pakistan or the attack on a girl (Malala Yousafzai) there. He fails to understand there are thousands of Malalas here, who want to study and do something with their lives,” she says.

A town in numbers

The 1991 Census put Mumbra’s population at 44,217. Mumbra’s population is now a little over nine lakh, says MLA Jitendra Ahwad. But registered voters are a mere 1.75 lakh. In the 2011 Census, the cumulative population of Thane, of which Mumbra is part, is 1,10,54,131

Only two municipal schools in Mumbra, which caters to over 6,000 girls and boys. Three madarsas—Al-Hadis, Darul-fallah and Gareeb

Nawaz Ashrafiya

According to the Thane Municipal Corporation, 123 illegal buildings in Mumbra have been served notices. Hundreds more have been accused of flouting CRZ rules along with other violations

While a small budget flat is available for Rs 4-5 lakh, newer one-BHK flats sell for anything between Rs 16 lakh and Rs 22 lakh

Brush with infamy

In September 2011, the ATS arrested Haroon Naik, a resident of Mumbra, in a fake currency case and later booked him for his alleged role in the July 13, 2011, blast

On September 25, 2010, the ATS picked up 10 maulanas for alleged terror links and released them later

In 2009, Parvez Shaikh, a computer professional, was questioned for his alleged role in hatching a conspiracy to eliminate the then Chief Minister Ashok Chavan

In June 2004, Ishrat Jahan Shamim Raza, a 19-year-old college student from Mumbra, was killed by the Gujarat police. The Ahmedabad police claimed she and three co-passengers were Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives on their way to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi

In April 2003, two terrorists owing allegiance to the Lashkar-e-Toiba were nabbed from Mumbra

In March 2002, Thane police raided a flat in Mumbra and arrested four men who they alleged were Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists

In December 2001, Abu Hamza was arrested in Mumbra in the Parliament attack case

In April 2001, SIMI activists were held in Mumbra