Abstract
This chapter interrogates the secularist notions of Mumbai’s public life through the tensions between mainstream cityscape as (Hindu) nation-space and Muslim locales as excluded territories. While shared conceptions of locality play an important role in the creation of “imagined communities”, political violence plays a significant role in the way urban localities are ruptured, created and transformed. The violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 remains a landmark in the communalisation of Mumbai’s landscape. This chapter traces recollections and memories of communal violence decades later, which have come to transform Shivaji Nagar, a predominantly Muslim basti (locality) in Mumbai. Based on ethnographic material, it argues that intense political contestation that juxtaposed notions of nation, locality, community and individual, as experienced during these events is significant to the construction of belonging in Muslim localities. The experience of communal violence has made the notions of belonging to a locality a political process, contributing to the construction of collective identities. The violence not only reconfigured communal identities locally but the transformation of localities and neighbourhoods that followed stands as signifiers of these processes even today.
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Notes
- 1.
Karsevak is a volunteer to a religious cause; it is a term popularised by the Sangh Parvivar (group of right-wing Hindu organisations) to refer to volunteers at the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
- 2.
Accounts of the dispute around the birthplace of Ram suggest that the conflict dates back to the eighteenth century and has since been revived by factions of the Hindu right on several occasions in the past including in December 1949 when someone broke into the mosque and installed idols of Ram and Sita following which thousands of local Hindus assembled and proclaimed this event a miracle. In 1984, the Ayodhya issue was revived by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) with the formation of the Sri Ramjanmabhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti (Committee of Sacrifice to Liberate Ram’s Birthplace) in order to “liberate” Ram, prisoner of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. For a detailed account, see van der Veer (1987), Tambiah (1996), and Jaffrelot (2007).
- 3.
Hindutva (literally, “Hinduness”), a term coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. BJP adopted it as its official ideology in 1989.
- 4.
Nearly two hundred demonstrators, mostly Muslim, had been killed and hundreds wounded (see Hansen 2001a).
- 5.
Aaarti is a Hindu religious ritual of worship, a part of puja, in which light from wicks soaked in ghee (purified butter) or camphor is offered to one or more deities; Maha aarti is a grander version of aarti.
- 6.
Sainik literally means soldier; here it refers to a party worker of Shiv Sena.
- 7.
This account is based on several writings that documented and analysed the events leading up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid and its aftermath. These include academic writings (Engineer 1995; Tambiah 1996; Hansen 2001a; Jaffrelot 2007; van der Veer 1994), state-appointed fact-finding missions as well as those by activists and progressive citizen’s groups (Justice Srikrishna 1998; Indian People’s Human Rights Tribunal 1994; Agnes 1993).
- 8.
- 9.
The word basti means settlement in Hindi and Marathi. I use the term basti, as opposed to slum, as this is what is colloquially used by those who reside there to describe their locality.
- 10.
Shivaji Nagar is situated in M (East) Ward of Mumbai, which, according to the Mumbai Human Development Report (2009), has the lowest Human Development Index at 0.05, much lower than the city’s average of 0.56. For a detailed account on the history of Shivaji Nagar and its living conditions see Contractor (2011).
- 11.
This is an unofficial estimate based on the information provided by local NGOs and elected representatives in the area. Official sources do not give segregated data based on religion and language.
- 12.
A detailed account can also be found in Engineer (1993). The Srikrishna Commission Report (Srikrishna 1998) offers a balanced view based on the statements of the witnesses who deposed before the commission, which included members of the police force and Shiv Sena.
- 13.
Behrampada in Bandra (East) was another basti locality that saw a blatant bias of the police, which functioned in tandem with local Shiv Sena goons in killing, looting, and damaging property (see Agnes 1993).
- 14.
Mohalla Committees were set up all across the city as an interface between the police and members of the public in an attempt to foster communal harmony, engage in conflict management, and promote tolerance through peaceful co-existence between Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods. This initiative was much like techniques of governance employed over the past century that aimed at getting together responsible individuals from neighbourhoods but did not do much in preventing incidences of violence as was expected of them.
- 15.
“Nearly 20 years on, no justice for parents of Mumbai riots victim”, The Hindu (Online edition) accessed at http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/nearly-20-years-on-no-justice-for-parents-of-mumbai-riots-victim/article4145369.ece (on 8 September 2013).
- 16.
See http://www.sabrang.com/srikrish/atr.htm (on 15th May 2013).
- 17.
Also the presence of Hindu temples inside police stations and their premises or the prominent display of Hindu deities has been noted in Muslim localities located in other parts of the city (see Hansen 2001a).
- 18.
Thirteen blasts took place across different locations in the city claiming 250 lives and injuring 700 people (Hansen 2001a).
- 19.
Hansen (2001b) notes that a significant factor to the dependency on “informers” is the nature of police postings contributes to the dependency of a network of informers in the neighbourhoods that are created and maintained through the flows of hafta (regular bribes or payoffs and other economic transactions).
- 20.
One such instance was the implementation of a slum resettlement project involving a predominantly Muslim basti locality located close to the Mumbai international airport. The resettlement was carried out as a security measure in the light of “9/11” terrorist attacks in USA (see Contractor et al. 2006).
- 21.
“Abu Azmi slapped by MNS MLA for taking oath in Hindi”, The Indian Express (Mumbai), 9 November 2009.
- 22.
According to this Section, “whoever commits dacoity shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine”. This Section also describes the role of witnesses: “there the presence of informant and other witnesses at the time and place of incident was established and their positive evidence regarding the way in which the dacoity was committed found reliable having no previous enmity with accused, no case of false implication established therefore, conviction of accused under section 395 was just and proper’ (Chhedu versus State of Uttar Pradesh, 2000 Cr LJ 78 (All)).
- 23.
The reference here is to the bombings that took place in the western line of Mumbai’s suburban railway network on 11 July 2006 that killed 209 and injured nearly 714 people. The police detained nearly 300 suspects, mostly Muslims.
- 24.
“Mumbai blast suspect dies”, http://twocircles.net/2011jul17/mumbai_blast_suspect_dies.html (accessed on 8 September 2013).
- 25.
“Suspected IM has feared for his life”, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-20/mumbai/29909203_1_crime-branch-faiz-bomb-blast (accessed on 8 September 2013).
- 26.
“NGOs denounce Mumbai blasts investigations for its ‘predetermined line’”, http://twocircles.net/2011jul21/ngos_denounce_mumbai_blasts_investigations_its_’predetermined_line’.html and “Samajwadi Party demands judicial probe of Faiz Usmani’s death”, http://twocircles.net/2011jul20/samajwadi_party_demands_judicial_probe_faiz_usmani’s_death.html (both accessed on 8 September 2013).
- 27.
MNS chief Raj Thackeray more specifically targeted the Samajwadi Party for protesting against the custodial death. See “Raj Thackeray attacks north Indian migrants”, http://twocircles.net/2011jul18/raj_thackeray_attacks_north_indian_migrants.html (accessed on 21 August 2015).
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Contractor, Q. (2017). “Jab Babri Masjid Shaheed Huyi”: Memories of Violence and Its Spatial Remnants in Mumbai. In: Jayaram, N. (eds) Social Dynamics of the Urban. Exploring Urban Change in South Asia. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3741-9_8
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