Mumbai suburb clashes, bulldozer action hit a colony that emerged out of an act of communal harmony

NAYA NAGAR in the Mumbai suburb of Mira Road that finds itself in the midst of communal tension, following the Ayodhya Ram Temple consecration, was once imagined as a haven precisely against this.

Around 44 years back, two men representing opposite ends of the political spectrum had come together to lay the foundation of the housing colony in Thane district – one was Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the other Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader G M Banatwala.

On Tuesday, a dozen-odd allegedly illegal shops belonging to the minority community were bulldozed by the local administration, two days after a clash broke out when a procession celebrating the Ram Temple with provocative slogans was stopped as it passed through the area.

The sprawling Naya Nagar, located in close proximity to the Mira Road Railway Station, was the brainchild of social activist and real estate developer Syed Nazar Hussain, who wanted to turn the swampy area into a planned residential zone for the Muslim community.

Hussain invited slurs of a “conspiracy” to set up a “mini-Pakistan”, but he had the last laugh when Thackeray appeared together with Banatwala to give the colony his blessing in 1979. This was the time when the Shiv Sena was seeking all possible support to claim power in the then Bombay Municipal Corporation. The Sena and IUML, in fact, had a tacit political understanding in the mid-70s, with the League’s Corporators backing the Sena candidate for the mayoral elections.

While the Sena-IUML bonhomie did not last, Naya Nagar’s foundations as a symbol of communal harmony proved stronger, with the colony avoiding communal strife even in the tension following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

The peace prevailed even as the riots that