The following is an excerpt from Mumbai: A Million Islands by Sidharth Bhatia, a forthcoming publication by HarperCollins India.

The long, nation-wide rath yatra of the BJP leader L.K. Advani, the demolition of the mosque and the rioting had finally made communal biases legitimate. Bombay’s cosmopolitan pretensions, always somewhat thin, were blown to bits.

On the ground, discrimination had always been felt by the city’s Muslims – now it just acquired a nastier edge. There began a huge migration, both out of Bombay and within the city. An estimated 200,000 people left the city in the immediate aftermath of the rioting; soon, Muslims who lived in Bombay began converging on community-dominated areas.

“Mohammed Ali Road became a magnet of sorts – people had always wanted to move out of here; now they were coming back. Property prices began moving up,” recalls Sarfaraz Arzoo, editor of the Urdu paper Hindustan, which had been launched by his father in 1940. Arzoo had covered the rioting as a reporter and was often stopped by the police. He shrugged it off as a professional hazard.

“The municipal corporation often says that the Mohammed Ali Road area and Dongri are full of illegal buildings – this is probably true; there are many legal discrepancies in them. But they came up in response to the demand after 1992-93, as Muslims came here in large numbers and needed accommodation.”

Others simply left the city and moved to the outskirts. One popular destination was Mumbra, just outside the city’s municipal borders – forty-five kilometres from Fort – but serviced by the suburban train network, which made it very attractive. Till then a somewhat somnolent suburb soon after Thane, where Mumbai ends, Mumbra suddenly exploded with this influx and began growing – it hasn’t stopped.

Mumbra was a somewhat obscure place for decades. The comfort zone for most Mumbai residents consists of where they live and where they work – if they don’t need to go there, it doesn’t exist. Mumbra sprang into the city’s consciousness as more and more people – almost all of them Muslims – began moving there.

As soon as one gets off the train in Mumbra, the difference from any other part of Mumbai becomes starkly visible. The scene outside the station is a familiar one in any suburb, with the scrum of auto-rickshaws waiting for their fares and a bustle on the roads and at shops, but the difference quickly becomes apparent – the population is predominantly and visibly Muslim: women in burqas and men in “Muslim” wear–loose pyjamas and shirts, beards and skullcaps.

I am here to see Shirin Dalvi, commentator and journalist who used to work for the newspaper Hindustan in Nagpada, Mumbai, but is a native of Mumbra. Dalvi is known to be a fearless voice, and she lost her job when one night a staffer added a photo of the notorious and controversial cartoon that had appeared in the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Conservative Muslims, who had never liked her, bayed for her blood, and after going underground for a few days, she had to resign.

She lives in a one-bedroom apartment on Khadi Machine Road, named after the quarrying machines that have worked for years on the hills that loom over the suburb. Also living with her are her daughter, son and daughter-in-law. The daughter is finishing a course in movie special effects; the son, in his twenties, is employed with his uncle who runs a travel agency; and the daughter-in-law, a commerce graduate, is planning to study further to become a teacher.

“When I was growing up in the 1970s, it was a very quiet, peaceful place – most of the land was used to grow rice, but all that began to disappear as the suburbs spread. In the late 1960s, many Muslims moved here after the riots in Bhiwandi, a small town fifteen kilometres away known for its power looms. In 1984, another bout of riots brought more families here.”

But it was only after the 1992-93 riots in Mumbai, which went on for two months with a break in between, that large numbers of migrants chose to move to Mumbra. “People came in the thousands. Temporary camps were set up and soon, well-meaning philanthropists built one-room tenements that they sold for a mere Rs 10,000; even this amount most refugees could not manage.

“Trucks and tempos used to leave for Bombay with food for those who had lost their homes, and they returned with families, most with little except the clothes on their backs. A few had lost family members. They came from all over – the Mohammed Ali Road area, Vikhroli, Bandra.”

Ironically, there was no violence in Mumbra itself. In neighbouring Thane, there were reports of rioting and killing, but Mumbra remained safe. “There has never been any communal violence in Mumbra,” Shirin says, a note of pride in her voice.

The influx into Mumbra has continued, and the population has been growing steadily. The 2011 census showed it to be eleven lakhs, but it could be more. She shows me buildings that have come up, many of them without permission, to house the newcomers. Shirin says the system – in this case, the local municipal corporation – has left Mumbra to its own devices and also discriminates against it. “There are no power cuts in any of the suburbs around, but our power goes off routinely.”

One post-1993 refugee was Shaikh Alim, who was an eleven-year-old schoolboy when his family came to Mumbra after their home in Vikhroli was destroyed. He now runs Excellence Classes, a coaching centre for local students.

Excellence Classes is on the first floor of a rundown building but looks smart and swanky inside. The outer room serves as an office and reception, with the message “May I help you” on the desk. On the wall are framed photos of the best students from Excellence, who scored the highest marks from the suburbs in state-level school and college exams. All the photos except one are of girls, most with their heads covered.

Shaikh, now in his late thirties, sits behind a desk in a small, air-conditioned room with a coffee dispensing machine in the corner. He is calm as he tells his story.

“We had lived in Hayali village in Vikhroli for about twenty years. My father worked in a transport company in Cotton Green. The ‘village’ consisted of eighty-three one-room tenements, and just three of the families, including ours, were Muslims.”

In early December, when news of violence from different parts of Bombay spread, Alim’s neighbours suggested that the family should move or send the children away. A shop close by had been burnt down but Hayali was untouched. The Alim family moved to a relative’s home but returned when it calmed down.

In January, the violence erupted again. This time, the family moved out immediately; they soon heard that their home had been ransacked and looted. “I got to know that the looters were our neighbours, including older people who had played with us when we were children. That really hurt,” says Shaikh.

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