Essays

Remembering 1992

Organised violence, especially the kind that is directed towards a particular section of the society, usually takes place, in a state of exception, where law is indefinitely suspended without necessarily being repealed. In this state of exception the political subject, stripped of citizenship and associated rights, is reduced to, what Giorgio Agamben calls, bare life, where one's agency over own life is severely curtailed. Marked out and banished from the society with no legal protection, the bare life can be extinguished by anyone without attracting any moral or legal strictures.    

Dislocation

Cities have long been imagined as sites of filth, corruption, alienation and despair. This dystopic vision emerges from the fact that urban agglomerations, as they grow on the back of accumulation of economic and political resources reproduce sharp inequalities among its inhabitants. Yet, on the other hand, cities have also presented themselves as beacons of hope to people who find opportunities of dignified livelihoods diminishing elsewhere.

Hardening Divides

In the last two decades, that is after the violence of 1992-93, Mumbai has not seen any instance of large scale sectarian violence. The city though has since been polarised along narrowly defined identity lines, a phenomenon that adequately reflects in the emergence of exclusive neighbourhoods and housing units. The aftershocks of the violence continue to reverberate behind the façade of an uncanny calm as visible and invisible borders restrict free movement and interaction.

Struggle for Justice

The common leitmotif that marks the most of 1992-93 narratives is of the denial of justice. Several people we spoke to shared with us their frustrating experiences of having little or no recourse to justice during and after the violence. Thousands of people who suffered at the hands of unruly mobs have yet not either seen their tormentors being convicted in the court of law or received any compensation for the loss of lives, property or trauma they suffered, in spite of the recommendations of the official commission of inquiry.

Peace Initiatives

We have an expansive and sophisticated vocabulary to describe our differences and violence yet have little facility with modes of thinking and articulating that enable us to engage with the ideas of compassion and peace. This archive would not have been complete without bringing into its fold the memories and accounts of those who resisted the onslaught of communal forces and went about patching the ripped social fabric of the city.

Media Representation

The precursor to the violence of 1992-93 was an event that took place around 1500 km away from Mumbai. On 6 December, 1992 a large mob of Hindu karsevaks entirely destroyed the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. In the days following the demolition several places in the country found themselves descending in a spiral of mistrust and violence. Mumbai, then Bombay, was one such place. 

Exploring Themes

Dislocation
Hardening Divides
Struggle for Justice
Peace Initiatives
Media Representation

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