SHAPING A CITY: MUMBAI’S BALOCH COMMUNITY

MumBAi is Currently

home to about 1,500 Muslim Baloch, scattered mainly across slums in the western suburbs of Mumbai and the fringes of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

While the

Baloch were hired by the British to work in quarries, the Makranis arrived in India a century earlier as mercenaries of the Gujarati Nawabs.

Muslim BAloCh Are different from

the Bhagnaris or Hindu Baloch of Mumbai. “Bhagnaris migrated after Partition and built Kataria Colony in Dadar, which is where they still live,” says Rehman Baluch.

The BAloCh people did not figure in

the Bombay census until 1901. “In that year, the population was cited at just 20 to 30, given the nomadic nature of the community and the way they were moved between quarries in Gujarat and even Uttar Pradesh. But by the mid-1930s, the population had grown to more than 100 Muslim Baloch,” says Vikalp Kumar, former researcher at Delhi University’s Cluster Innovation Centre, whose thesis titled Balochi Language in India was presented at the 2014 Karachi Conference.

BeCAuse of their sturdy

build, they were employed mainly as stone quarry workers and as such contributed to Mumbai's changing urban landscape as they helped raise its skyline and build its railways.

(Top, LR) Fateh Mohammed aka Makrani Master, during a shoot for Jugnu, 1973; Makrani Master withayoung Rekha in 1979; Raees Baluch with Katrina Kaif during a stunt shoot for Ek Tha Tiger, 2012; Shah Rukh Khan covered in fake blood with Gosu Makrani...