Indian
Muslims entertain a peculiar relation to cities. Historically, many of
the subcontinent’s cities—when they have not been colonial creations
(like Bombay or Calcutta)—have a Muslim origin, as their names often
suggest: Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Agra, Aligarh, Ahmednagar,
Aurangabad, Allahabad, Bhopal...the list is long. Even Delhi, though not
founded by Muslims, has been transformed by first the Delhi Sultanate
and then the Mughal Empire. This legacy comes from the traditional
affinities Islamic civilisation has had with urbanity following its
Medina utopia. But it also stems from the larger political role
bequeathed to Muslims after they came to power in India in the medieval
period and beyond. As rulers, they had to live in the power centre that
was the city. While the emperors stayed in Delhi or Agra, the nawabs,
nizams and begums established smaller cities that are, today, often
state capitals. Along with the rulers came the service gentry and the
artisans who worked for the kings and their courtiers—three groups among
whom Muslims were over-represented.
Today, and largely because of this historical legacy, Muslims
constitute the most urbanised community in India—with the exclusion of
the Parsis and the Jews. While India’s urbanisation rate, according to
the 2001 census, is below 28 per cent, 35.7 per cent of its Muslims live
in towns and cities. The gap had been even larger in earlier decades.
Interestingly, more than 50 per cent of Indian Muslims live in towns and
cities in seven states (whose urbanisation rate is in the range of
20-45 per cent): Tamil Nadu (73 per cent), Maharashtra (70 per cent),
Madhya Pradesh (63.5 per cent), Chhattisgarh (63 per cent), Karnataka
(59 per cent), Gujarat (59 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (58 per cent).
If Muslims are more numerous than any other community in cities—that
they have often built or fully refurbished—they are also on the verge of
marginalisation in most of them. Theirs is the only community (barring
the Sikhs) where the proportion of poor is greater amongst the urban
population than in the rural one. Thirty-seven per cent of urban Muslims
live below the poverty line against 27 per cent of rural Muslims—as
opposed to, respectively, 22 and 28 per cent among Hindus. This state of
affairs shares congruence with some of the findings of the Sachar
Committee, which showed (among other things) that only eight per cent of
urban Muslims were integrated into the formal sector whereas the
national average was 21 per cent for city-dwellers. In towns and cities,
Muslims make a (usually very modest) living as artisans (mechanics and
weavers, among others) or peddlers. They are not as constituent a
component of the salariat as are other communities.
The decline of the Indian Muslims harks back to the British Raj (when
they ceded their power and when Persian and Urdu lost their statuses as
languages of the court) and, subsequently, to the abolition of the
princely states (Hyderabad, Bhopal, among others) besides Partition,
which mangled the community. The rise of Hindu nationalism in the
1980s-90s also contributed to the marginalisation of the community, and
not just in socio-economic terms—the representation of Muslims among
local businessmen and lawyers is on the decline almost everywhere—but
also in spatial terms.
Fruit of urbanisation The burqa is no restraint to a workout. (Photograph by Jitender Gupta)
Communal violence and ghettoisation
In preparation for a book I co-edited with Laurent Gayer this year,
Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation,
a team of 12 Indian and French researchers analysed the situation of
the Muslim populations of 10 Indian cities: Ahmedabad, Aligarh,
Bangalore, Calicut, Cuttack, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and
Mumbai. This analysis was not limited solely among the local elite
groups (businessmen, politicians, lawyers...), nor limited in
geographical terms. While this ethnographic and statistical exercise by
and large vindicated the assessment of the Sachar report insofar as the
socio-economic decline of Muslims is concerned, the responses received
to our question “Where do Muslims live?” are more nuanced.
Many of the elderly we interviewed emphasised the past composite
culture of their city in evocative and emotional terms: they kept using
formulae such as
mili juli/mushtarka/ganga-jamuni tehzeeb.
Their nostalgia was, for the most part, misplaced since Indian cities
have always been structured along ethnic lines. Neither caste groups nor
religious communities traditionally mixed in the same building—or even
in the same lane. One of the reasons for this (self-)segregation was
deeply rooted in their food habits (and taboos).
But
the old-timers had a point in the sense that cities formed mosaics in
which different communities cohabited in the same neighbourhoods. In the
old cities—which were also known as the walled cities—next to a Brahmin
or a Jain lane, one could find a Pathan mohalla. Similarly, on the
periphery of these urban cores—especially after industrialisation
resulted in the creation of new suburbs—low-caste Muslims and Dalits
used to coexist in separate, but adjacent settlements. Many of them had a
shared culture as part of the labour movement, especially in the cities
where unions had fostered a labour culture. Ahmedabad is a case in
point: in addition to the mosaic of ‘pols’ (lanes) of the walled city,
the ‘challis’ (the dense rows of one room-houses) of the ‘Manchester of
India’ developed along these lines in the first decades of the 20th
century.
This pattern of erosion is put into practice today in many places—and
ghettoisation has been the end-result in some extreme cases. And here,
we need to formulate a new definition for ghettoisation because the word
tends to be used in a rather loose manner today. We must reserve it for
designating the gathering together of members of a community (in this
case, the Muslims) irrespective of their other social markers
(class/caste or ethnic origin, for instance) in a locality insulated
from the rest of the city (be it at its centre or at the periphery)
where state services (roads, schools, hospitals...) are not maintained
properly—if at all present.
The main factor of ghettoisation is communal violence. In riots, the
most common targets are isolated pockets of the ‘other’ community.
Therefore, the minority (whatever its religion) tends to move to safer
neighbourhoods where co-religionists are already in large numbers. These
safe havens can be in the walled cities—like in Hyderabad, Jaipur or
Bhopal—or on the periphery—as with Mumbai or Ahmedabad. In that case,
Muslims are often uprooted and dislodged from the city centres. Again,
Ahmedabad best illustrates this point. In spite of its rather modest
size, compared to Mumbai, for instance, Ahmedabad is the city where
Hindu-Muslim violence has been the more devastating over the last six
decades. Every 10 years or so, a major access of violence occurs (1969,
1985, 1992, 2002...). After each bout, some Muslims from the walled city
and the industrial belt have moved in large numbers to the periphery,
and more especially to Juhapura. Here is a ghetto of about four lakh
where middle-class people (ias, ips and IFS cadres, lawyers,
businessmen) have joined slum-dwellers for the sake of safety. The state
has neglected this locality to such an extent that no bus service
connects Juhapura to the city. Simultaneously, the Hindus who used to
live here have left and those who live in the neighbouring localities
have built walls.
While walls separating communities are making an appearance
everywhere in the world—including in West Asia—few cities (Belfast is a
notorious exception) have resorted to such lines of demarcation.
Ahmedabad is the only one we found in India. But in many places, railway
lines and roads are used as almost invisible borders between India and
what is locally known, sometimes, as “little Pakistans”.
The uprooted Homes and hearths lost to communal violence. (Photograph by Siddharaj)
Muslims = Victims?
The combination of spatial concentration and socio-economic decline
has resulted in the making of specific kinds of “Muslim constituencies”
in many Indian cities. In the old cities of erstwhile princely state
capitals, where Muslims represent a large share of the voters—Hyderabad,
Bhopal, Lucknow—local parties (the mim in Hyderabad, for instance) and
the Congress indulge in emotional politics without paying much attention
to the effective upliftment of the Muslims. They project themselves as
the defenders of the waqf properties more than they promote education.
That way, the local voters are bound to remain in the need of local
saviours. The Congress and the mim are very good at playing this brand
of clientelism which makes the ghettoised Muslims victims...of other
Muslims!
Similarly, ghettoised Muslims are not victims but actors when the
making of Muslim enclaves is due to their quest of cultural homogeneity.
Lower-middle-class neighbourhoods—like in Zakir Nagar in
Delhi—sometimes develop along these lines. They do not result only from
discrimination, but also from self-segregation on the part of families
eager to offer to their children an atmosphere free from Hindu
influences likely to “corrupt” them.
Ghettoisation can also be a blessing in disguise. In Ahmedabad, the
2002 pogrom led middle-class people to go to Juhapura, where they took
new initiatives that benefited the old, poorer inhabitants—including
some slum-dwellers. Not only somewhat better roads were developed, but
private hospitals and schools were created. This last initiative met
rising expectations of the poor whose hunger for education was even more
acute than elsewhere in India. If the relief colonies had been created
for the victims of the pogrom by Islamic NGOs, which kept telling their
“beneficiaries” that they had been punished for not being “good enough
Muslims”—and which built mosques before anything else almost—most of the
refugees do not indulge in guilt feeling any more but believe in modern
education. Some of the new Juhapura schools are so “modern” indeed that
their Islamic nature is completely obliterated. Some of them have even
adopted Hindu names....
The paradoxical, positive impact of ghettoisation suggests that the
real victims among the Muslims are not those who live in ghettoes, but
those who live in slums within cities where the Muslim middle class can
afford not to go to the ghetto, like in Mumbai and Aligarh. In Mumbai,
the Muslim middle class has been shaken by the riots of 1992-93 and is
affected by discrimination, but is more resilient than its Ahmedabadi
cousin. As a result, there are more Muslim slums—like Shivaji Nagar—than
Muslim ghettoes. In Aligarh, the Muslim university professors (and
employees) represent such a critical mass that they form an enclave by
themselves and do not mix (not even interact!) with the inhabitants of
the Muslim slums (including Shah Jamal).
Muslim social Class is a factor in Muslim fragmentation. (Photograph by Jitender Gupta)
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real victims among Muslims are not those in ghettos but those in slums
within cities where the Muslim middle class are safer and have no need
to ghettoise. |
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In
addition to these socio-economic divisions along lines of caste and
class, there are other factors of fragmentation within the Muslims. In
Lucknow, Shias and Sunnis are locked in historical rivalries—which have
to do with unequal access to power and economic resources again, and
this fracture translates in the making of additional forms of spatial
self-segregation. In Gujarat, a similar sectarian cleavage has resulted
in the insulation of the Bohras from the other Muslims. In fact, the
Bohras—trading communities who converted lately from Hinduism—do not
wish to share the pain of the Sunnis and sometimes even do not give
“Islam” as their religion to the census enumerators. Some of the leaders
of the community have decided to make peace with Narendra Modi and are
as close to the BJP as many Shias of Lucknow.
Marginalisation is not the order of the day for Muslims of all Indian
cities. Their situation is better in the south and the east than in the
west and the north. The case studies conducted in Calicut, Bangalore
and Cuttack (and presented in the book mentioned above) show that mixity
resists trends of (self-) segregation. Such contrasts are the products
of history: in the south, Islam was introduced by Arab merchants along
commercial routes in a quietist manner and Muslims felt (and were seen
to be) as much Dravidian as the Hindus did. In Kerala, they also
benefited from the Gulf connection that partly explains their relative
affluence.
But
the Muslims from Kerala are not the only ones to benefit from Gulf
remittance money. In fact, in almost each and every city mentioned
above, including Bhopal, Jaipur, Lucknow and, of course, Mumbai and
Hyderabad, large numbers of Muslim families have expatriate members
working in that part of the world. This external resource plays a major
role in keeping them afloat. But the new, emerging (if not embryonic)
middle class which is developing among the Muslims in the cities
elsewhere is hopeful that other opportunities will materialise in India
itself thanks to liberalisation. They not only expect more international
trade from the economic reforms, but also more jobs. Usually, weaker
sections—including the Dalits—long for a stronger public sector. The
Muslims (who do not get the benefit of reservations) have no nostalgia
for the Nehruvian pattern because the State has discriminated against
them more than against any other community—as evident from the figures
of the Sachar Committee reports which show, for instance, that non-OBC
Muslims represent 2.7 per cent of the psus’ personnel and 4.5 per cent
of the railways, when the Hindu OBCs are respectively 8.3 and 9.3 per
cent.
Whether the private sector will do better in this respect remains to
be seen. The Muslims who invest in education have great expectations
that may remain dead letter. In the process, they may learn to downplay
their Islamic identity like some of the best schools of Juhapura or some
of the Muslim localities which have adopted the name of Shivaji (in
Bangalore and Hyderabad) in order to conceal their Muslim character.
Whatever the result, these moves already suggest that even if
ghettoisation is not as bad as it sounds, Indian multiculturalism is in
danger.
There is much at stake there. Most of SIMI’s cadre—including the few,
radical ones who created, apparently, the Indian Mujahideen—were
educated Muslims. To alienate those who invested in education in order
to be part of the brighter part of urban India may result in the making
of “reluctant fundamentalists”, to use the title of a recent book.
(Christophe Jaffrelot is the co-editor of
Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, to be published soon in India by HarperCollins.)
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