Tales of cities: riots, boundaries and production of a Muslim space The volume examines political, economic and social factors that underlie and shape these trajectories. They rightly characterize this process as “a forcible relegation of a negatively defined community” (p21). The editors show that while ‘ghetto’ has no Indian vernacular equivalent, the discourse of ghettoization governs common sense about Muslims in India.
It is produced nostalgically with terms such as the ‘old city’, communally as the ‘Muslim area’ or more pejoratively as the ‘Muslim Ghetto’, in discussions about Muslims and the city. This rich historical relationship is often ignored in public discourse today. Muslims have an historical affinity with the urban and inhabited the city as the domain of cultural expression and economic progress. The editors also point at the layered composition of the minority community in terms of caste, class, and the rural-urban divide in India. The introduction provides the background to the complex formation of the post-colonial state and its relationship with this religious minority.
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