The teeming streets of this suburb of Mumbai are notable for two things: that most of the people are Muslim, and that a decade ago the streets were not teeming at all.
Since then, as if in a small replay of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, Muslims have migrated to this Mumbai suburb by the hundreds of thousands, creating a stark segregation.
PHOTO: REUTERS
They came seeking safety -- comfort in numbers -- after riots with Hindus left more than 1,000 Muslims dead in 1992 and 1993, many of them in Mumbai. The riots were quickly followed by bombings blamed on Muslim underworld figures seeking revenge. That further heated up the anxiety, and the exodus.
Now the atmosphere is heightened once again, because of two bombings in downtown Mumbai that killed 52 people on Aug. 25. No one has taken responsibility or been arrested, but many believe Muslim militants are to blame.
India's Muslims -- about 14 percent of the population of more than 1 billion -- are often characterized as a breed apart from Muslims elsewhere. They did not join al-Qaeda; they did not surface in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. They have chosen to live in secular India, as opposed to its Islamic neighbor Pakistan, and most see India's democracy and constitution as providing them sufficient rights and redress.
Moreover, average Muslims in India have evinced little passion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has so animated Islamists across the globe, although a scheduled visit by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, on Sept. 9 is generating opposition.
Indian Muslims have even stayed away from the insurgency in Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, other than the Muslims living in the state. Many Muslims say the hardline sentiments found in their religion, especially in marginalized areas like this one, are a reaction to the growing strength of fundamentalism among India's Hindu majority, a strength that is both social and political.
A decade ago Hindu nationalist leaders set out on a national pilgrimage that many Muslim youth saw as a provocation and a threat. In 1992, Hindu nationalists demolished a 16th century mosque that they said had been built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, and the Mumbai riots and carnage followed soon after.
A few years later, a Hindu nationalist-led central government was formed. And early last year, riots in Gujarat state left at least 1,000 Muslims dead -- carnage that many Muslims believed reflected governmental indifference, if not connivance.
"After Gujarat, the sentiment in Mumbra was very high," said Moazzam Naik, an official with Jamaat-e-Islami, a decades-old Islamic political movement. He did not agree with Muslim extremists, but saw the sentiment growing.
Among those extremists are the now-banned Students Islamic Movement of India, which the police have blamed for five smaller bombings on buses, trains and in markets between December 2002 and July of this year. Some officials have suggested the movement could be responsible for the Aug. 25 blasts as well, though they have not offered evidence.
The student movement was founded in 1977 as a sort of youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, to encourage young people to follow Islamic principles, such as avoiding alcohol.
By the 1980s, its radical nature became clear, and Jamaat began distancing itself from the offspring.
SIMI's true believers, many of them highly educated people in professions, grew their beards, urged women to cover up, and said idol worship should be banned, an implicit attack on Hinduism. They rejected conciliation and some believed violence was justified.
But even as Mumbra residents profess not to support SIMI, they do not condemn it. They are helping to support the defense of 22 men -- most members of the student group at one time -- arrested in connection with the earlier bomb blasts. It is less a question of supporting SIMI than opposing government tactics, they say.
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