From Partition Barracks To Skyscrapers: The Rebuilding Of A Sindhi Sanctuary In Mahim

Mumbai: One of the first residential societies in the city created to house post-Partition Sindhi-speaking refugees from Pakistan, the Navjivan Cooperative Housing Society in Mahim, is preparing for redevelopment—starting a new chapter in a six-decade-long story of a community rebuilding its life after a heartbreaking dispossession and displacement from their homeland.

The housing complex, comprising four-storey buildings, 266 apartments, an office room, and 16 shops, will be replaced by three luxury towers of more than 30 floors with nearly 600 apartments. Current members of the housing society will receive flats that are 80% larger, rent to facilitate shifting homes during the redevelopment, and a corpus as a hardship allowance. Raymond Realty will be undertaking the redevelopment project. "We have signed a Joint Development Agreement with the residents, and approvals for the project are under process," said a spokesperson for Raymond Realty.

The impending change has filled the residents with a mix of exhilaration and nostalgia for a space that has been home for generations. Anil Chawla, a member of the housing society's managing committee, was born here a year after his parents shifted to a newly constructed building in the complex in 1959. "My children were born here. We are all from displaced families," he said, pointing out the other residents of the colony sitting in the housing society's office room. Chawla does not know the name of the place in Sindh that his parents fled from in the aftermath of the country's Partition in 1947. "My parents did not encourage us to talk about that episode in their lives," said Chawla.

Unlike Chawla, who was born in the colony, Komal Gianani arrived there after her marriage in 1982. "I call myself a 'daughter-in-law' of the colony. This place is a cooperative housing society in the true sense. Families who have leased homes here are reluctant to rent elsewhere," said Gianani, who added that she loves the community gatherings for festivals and cultural events.

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Gianani's friend, Kantaa Advanii, calls herself a 'daughter' of the housing colony. "We are here for each other, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Senior people living in apartments usually feel lonely; here they do not feel alone. Even 99-year-olds participate in our cultural activities and festivals," said Advanii. She added that the colony's custodian, the management committee—including its honorary secretary, Kumar Dariara—has managed the colony in a transparent way.

Navjivan Cooperative Housing Society, Mahim, was one of four such residential colonies built in Mumbai for refugees from Sindh by Jethi Sipahimalani, a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Sindh. Another Navjivan Cooperative Housing Society came up in Chembur; the third, Bhagwan Singh Colony, was built in Matunga; and the fourth, the multi-storeyed Navjivan Cooperative Housing Society in Mumbai Central, was built in the 1970s.

Chand Punjabi, a Dubai-based businessman who has a home in the colony, said that Sipahimalani, who was an MLA in the 1930s, migrated to Mumbai after Partition. "The biggest problem faced by refugees in Mumbai was that they were staying in barracks. Sipahimalani built the housing societies after obtaining loans from cooperative society banks. My father, who was running a business in Nigeria, could afford to buy a two-bedroom flat for Rs 11 lakh," said Punjabi, who was nine years old when his family moved here.

Though it was founded as a residential colony for Sindhis, it is now cosmopolitan. Advanii remembers Ravi Shastri, the former cricketer and commentator whose family lived in the colony, training in the compound. "He broke quite a lot of windows," said Advanii.