Whose city is it anyway? Place, community and the fractured urban.

Saluja, Anshu (2024) Whose city is it anyway? Place, community and the fractured urban. Contemporary South Asia, 32 (4). pp. 580-592. ISSN 0958-4935

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Abstract

This paper examines the everyday processes of othering and exclusion of particular religious communities in expanding urbanscapes. It maps how deliberate contests are produced over cities’ histories, politico-cultural legacies and spatial arrangements, to isolate and displace communities. Specifically, it addresses how exclusion of Muslim residents is constructed in social and spatial terms in contemporary urban India. Focussing on the middle-sized central Indian city of Bhopal, I explore the emergent tensions that have steadily consolidated invisible, yet often impermeable, mental borders within that setting. In doing so, I highlight the disturbing implications of these processes of boundary making and solidification. I discuss what they mean for the everyday existence of people and communities, and how they produce fractured urbanisms. Drawing upon a mixed approach, I piece together archival records, press reports and a wide selection of other literature, as well as on-field conversations and observations, to examine how the city of Bhopal is sought to be reimaged as Hindu, and its socio-spatial character reconfigured, isolating and disenfranchising its Muslim residents. Finally, I reflect on the manner in which such shifts frame the exclusion of specific communities and produce a contested urban. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Item Type:	Article
Authors:	Saluja, Anshu
Document Language:	Language English
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Boundaries; city; community; Muslims; space; urban
Subjects:	Social sciences Social sciences > Public administration Social sciences > Social problems & services
Divisions:	Azim Premji University - Bhopal > Arts and Sciences
Full Text Status:	None
URI:	http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/6370
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