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. Driven to the city by poverty and aspirations of a better future such migrants, while trying to make a living in the bustling urban environment, also shape it in definite ways. They create habitable spaces out of nowhere and run the city with their unassuming intellectual and physical efforts.
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Themes
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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. With the rapid informalisation of the work opportunities and almost half of the city’s population being reduced to live in slums, the city is also being reorganised along the class lines. The sight of improbably high steel and glass towers rising above the working class districts is a common sight in the city. This process also unfolds in necessarily violent ways. Illegal demolitions and evictions and appropriation of public land by force or deceit are some of the common strategies with which the poor of the city are being dispossessed of their basic rights and entitlements. Read more
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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 Read more
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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. With the waning of progressive social movements, especially after the unsuccessful textile mill workers strike a decade before, there was no effective bulwark against the renascent chauvinistic politics in the late 80s and 90s Read more
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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. Read more
Exploring Themes
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