Communal living

Abstract

India witnesses a proliferation of 'Muslim' and 'Hindu' residential areas, which reflect deepening segregation along religious lines. This article explores the production of such spaces through a case study of Anand in central Gujarat. It uses the lens of 'mobilities' to critically interrogate the 'Muslim ghetto', a notion that has come to figure prominently as a conceptual framework in discussions on residential segregation in contemporary India, and proposes to consider the residential spaces of Muslims instead as 'hubs' of urban and regional connectivity. Avoiding a false dichotomy between segregation-as-seclusion and cohabitation-as-connecting, the article demonstrates how new kinds of environments reflect and facilitate new sets of social relations, and generates a fresh perspective of a Muslim area as a hub of intersecting mobilities within a context of rural and urban transformation.

Book review: Rukmini Barua, In the Shadow of the Mill: Transformation of Workers’ Neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad, 1920s to 2000s

“…Barua's work brings novel insights into the debate on ghettoisation in Indian cities and raises an important question: Does the Disturbed Areas Act impact other ghetto areas and peri-urbanising spaces in different (post-violence) cities of Gujarat the way it does in Ahmedabad? Barua's argument on the Disturbed Areas Act, shifting property relations, and the added layer of vulnerability on tenure by the act misses an important opportunity to engage with an emerging contrasting view on ghettos as 'centers of regional mobility' or 'hubs of urban and regional connectivity' (Verstappen, 2018). This challenges the dominant view of ghettos advocating 'estrangement and closure' (Verstappen, 2022).…”

A Scientometric Review of Residential Segregation Research: A CiteSpace-Based Visualization

“…Compared with North American and Western European countries, RS in China is dominated by sociospatial differentiation and socioeconomic segregation [27], while RS levels vary between cities, with Guangzhou exhibiting the highest RS, followed by Beijing and Shanghai-the three top-tier cities in China [28]. In India, RS is determined primarily by religion and caste system [29,30], as evidenced by the proliferation of Muslim and Hindu residential areas in major cities. In South Africa, RS originated from the colonial government and the apartheid policy [31].…”