Mumbai’s Muslims sing of harmony, not hurt

MUMBAI: A photograph at the house of Syed Nazar Hussain, founder of Naya Nagar, a Muslim colony in the far-flung suburb of Mira Road, has Bal Thackeray sharing a stage with then Indian Muslim League leader Ghulam Mohammed Banatwala . It was in 1979 when Banatwala and Thackeray, poles apart due to their politics, had come together to inaugurate Naya Nagar. Hussain had managed a coup by bringing two leaders who could not see eye-to-eye together, and his motive was benevolent.

"My father wanted to establish a Muslim colony and by inviting Banatwala and Bal Thackeray to the township's inauguration, he tried to send a message that if two leaders with different views could share a stage, nothing should stop Hindus and Muslims from living in harmony," says Muzaffar Hussain, Nazar Hussain's son and former Congress MLC. Former Muslim League corporator Basheer Patel recalls that the Shiv Sena and Muslim League even had a brief pre-poll alliance for the civic corporation elections in the 1980s.

This spirit of living in harmony is evident in the views of most community leaders now that the Sena patriarch is gone. They say that, though the community was the target of Thackeray's polarizing politics, they hold no grudge against him. "We will never approve of his politics, but now that he is dead, like everyone else after death he is accountable to God," says Maulana Mehmood Daryabadi, general secretary of the All India Ulema Council.

Maulana Mustaqeem Azmi, president of the Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind (Maharashtra ), said that Thackeray would be remembered as a leader who united a huge chunk of Maharashtrians. "He was a big leader of his community and we agree that some of his views did hurt us, but carrying animosity eternally is an un-Islamic act," says Maulana Azmi.

Some felt that if Thackeray had shown a little more magnanimity, he would have emerged a bigger leader. "I remember that he respected Muslim Sufi saints and he held one Sufi Badshah Mian Babu so much in respect that he went all the way to Babu's ancestral village in Saurashtra to pay tribute after the Sufi's death. If he had not taken an anti-Muslim posture, he could have become a bigger leader," recalls Farid Batatawala of the Muslim Front.

However, some activists felt that Muslims would remember Thackeray in the context of the 1992-1993 riots. "How can Muslims forget that he called them 'green serpents' ? What he did to Muslims has been recorded by the Srikrishna Commission," said Javed Anand of Muslims for a Secular Democracy.

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