"... 'Bhoj pal', which became Bhopal, was the nucleus of a walled city which the successive rulers improved continuously. Gates were built and named after the days of the week: Pir and Jumerati on the north side, Itwara and Budhawara on the east. Others were added to these four; Imami, Ginnori, Kila Darwaza. Until the rule of Qudsia Begum, the population consisted of mainly Afghan adventurers seeking military service and with no intention of settling down permanently. Things started to change in the mid-nineteenth century.... During the colonial era, the Begums and the Nawabs added many new buildings, mostly in the Old City, or in the adjoining northern area. Shah Jehan Begum initiated the Taj-ul-Masjid, the largest mosque in India, which started in 1887, being built on the model of Delhi’s Jama Masjid and was completed in the 1970s.Her daughter created the suburb of Ahmedabad.... the communalization of Bhopal politics and society remained limited. First the Hindu and Muslim intelligentsia shared one common grievance vis-à-vis the Nawab.... In 1934, local Hindus and Muslims launched together the Mulki movement whose motto was ‘Bhopal for Bhopalis’. Local Hindus and Muslims continued to join hands against the Nawab, when as Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, he tried to defend his domination. He tied with rulers who wanted ‘to form an organization of those states which were scattered from Bhopal to Karachi’ with the support of Jinnah. Partition destroyed these plans. But then the Nawab of Bhopal resisted the merger of his state with the rest of the Indian Union. And like the 1930s with the Mulki movement, Hindus and Muslims rallied round the Congress to mobilise the masses in favour of such a merger. The Nawab conceded defeat in 1948, and Bhopal state became a Part C state of India in 1949.... Bhopal grew quickly after independence, especially after the city was made the capital of Madhya Pradesh in 1956... The relative communal harmony reflected forms of tolerance and syncretism symbolized by a practice that is today recalled with nostalgia by the elderly people in Bhopal…Certainly Hindu merchants were interested in communal peace also because their shops were often located in the vicinity of the three mosques of Bhopal, including Taj-ul-Masjid, which became the largest in India at the turn of the twentieth century... The communal peace which prevails in Bhopal is all the more remarkable as the city welcomes thousands of Muslim pilgrims every year when they come to celebrate Tabligi Ijtema, in the Taj-ul-Masjid."