Book Review
Parveen, Nazima
Contested
Homelands: Politics of Space and Identity, New Delhi, Bloomsbury India,
2021, 312 pages, Rs. 1299/- ISBN 978-93-89000-89-4
Social Change: 53(1) 144–157 2023 pg. 152-155
In India, residential segregation on the basis
of caste and religion is not a recent phenomenon and not confined to one
religious community and is widespread across regions, linguistic communities
and religions, but the intensity and the religion-centric politics of the
current times surely desires’ fresh research perspectives and studies. Nazima
Parveen’s first book focuses on the Muslim community and the process of religious
segregation in Old Delhi/Shahjahanabad.
The Pew
Center Report
(2021) published couple of months back validates what we have known and have
been observing for some time now in the present day India. The report through
surveys in various regions of India shows large proportion of Indians prefer to
stay in neighbourhoods of their caste and religion, want to make friends and
marry within their communities (endogamy), hence religious or caste based
segregation is what large majority of Indians want even today in 2021. Often,
their belief centering on the notion of religious ‘tolerance’ does not include
intermixing with other religions’. Religious
segregation is a manifestation of such beliefs and practices.
Two very
important books on the same issue of religious segregation of Muslims in the
recent past have been of Ghazala Jamil’s (OUP,
2017) and edited book by Christophe Jaffrelot and Laurent Gayer,
(HarperCollins, 2012), Nazima Parveen in her book provides
the context and the background for the segregation of Muslim community as a
consequence of historical processes.
The first
chapter starts with tracing the developments in colonial India regarding the
‘communalisation of space’ from 1809 up to 1939. In this chapter, she documents
the colonial administration’s intervention through policy in the form of
various decrees/declarations/ municipal bye laws/ police orders with regard to
local customs and religious practices. She emphasizes that it was the
administrative colonial demarcation that produced three categories of space:
‘Hindu dominated’, ‘Muslim dominated’ and ‘mixed’ areas. Problematization of cow sacrifice under the
British while it had never been an issue before to post 1857 changes in the
Delhi city’s demography and socio-political conditions have been explained in
detail.
Second
chapter takes a
closer look at the pre-Partition politics of 1940s which gave rise to the
discourse around homeland, the idea of Pakistan. There
have been many books and much discussion on the pre-partition violence and the
communalization of this period. She adds interviews with some older residents
of Old Delhi/Shahjahanabad to add more depth to the chapter.
Third chapter focuses on the post-independence
period from 1947 to 1974 which made Muslim dominated areas appear as
problematic ‘mini-Pakistans’ in the popular imagination. Politicization of Indian Muslim identity can
be traced back to this period in terms of belongingness and citizenship. The
institutions of the new Indian nation state were compromised on the lines of
religion, for example, often police acted in a biased manner in several
instances of communal conflict. The meat politics led to communal riot at
Kishanganj in 1974 where Muslims were targeted by RSS, Jan Sangh and a section
of the police force (Vijay Pal Singh enquiry committee) (pg. 183).
Wars with Pakistan created a situation
where Muslim dominated areas started being seen with concerns around internal
security. Fourth chapter deals with the
politics of redevelopment and resettlement in the Emergency era. The
administrative politics of the 1970s transformed the community-space
relationship. Urban development and its
politicization through the two episodes of Jama Masjid Clearance scheme and
Turkman Gate redevelopment scheme have been discussed in detail, how statutory,
metropolitan and municipal authorities formed a collaborative team and zeroed
in on ending Muslim ‘segregation’ through forced clearance and sterilization at
the two Shajahanabad localities.
“Do you
think we are mad to destroy one Pakistan to create another Pakistan?” (pg. 231)
Jagmohan,
then DDA Vice Chairman had given this (in) famous reply to the residents of
Turkman Gate who had approached him for help for suitable settlement relocation
in view of the threat of their homes being demolished by the
administration.
Portrayal
of Muslim community as being anti-development and their resistance as
anti-establishment led to Muslim localities and their image being propagated as
‘culturally segregated and politically separated spaces’ (pg.245).
In the conclusion
chapter, Nazima Parveen discusses the dilemma of Delhi Muslims, largely
reflecting the microcosm of the macrocosm of the larger Muslim question of
identity and citizenship,
“For
Delhi Muslims, homeland was nothing but an evocation of the right to live and
perform their religious and cultural practices in the galies, mohallas and ilaqe where they were the majority…… conflicting
claims and realities of the partition turned every Muslim household, gali,
mohalla and ilaqa of Delhi into contested zones. I argue that these various assertions
of homelands were eventually reduced to the theory of ‘two nation’ or communal
antagonism.” (pg. 267)
Over the years, she observes how the Muslim localities
and their perceptions changed as she sums up the changing trajectory and
politics 1940s onwards,
“…in the 1940s, as Muslim dominated areas that were to
be administered for the sake of communal peace; in the 1950s as ‘Muslim zones’
that needed to be ‘protected’; in the 1960s as ‘isolated’, unhygienic cultural
pockets that were to be cleaned and Indianised; and in the 1970s, as locations
of ‘internal threat’-‘mini Paksitans’ that were to be dismantled and
integrated. This book thus suggests that ‘Muslim localities’ are discursively
constituted political entities which may or may not correspond to the actual
demographic configuration of any administrative urban unit…” (pg. 274)
Through the idea of ‘Contested Homeland’ this book
suggests that the relations between Muslim communities and their living spaces
have evolved out of a long process of politicization and communalization of
space in Delhi. Nazima Parveen’s book has focused on the Muslim community’s
interaction with the colonial to post-independent Indian state and the effects
of state policy in creating segregated spaces for the community, especially the
British government policy of separate
electorates’ to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency era clearance/sterilization fiasco. Her
work is rich with details of history and concludes at the Emergency period to
contextualize the present religious segregation debate.
Although, the multi-layered process of segregation
cannot be seen just from the prism of historical processes and as a result of
state policy. The view from top as opposed to view from the below as the book
focuses and creates its narrative mainly from archival sources, reports’,
written and oral accounts, Shahjahanabad’s complex demography has been
explained briefly through the caste factor (Qureshis’ of Qasabpura, Telis’ of
Turkman Gate) discussed with regard to different incidents but largely the
factors of caste-class segregation of various kin-based neighbourhoods’ of
Shahjahanabad remain largely unexplored. Some more ethnographic details and
interviews from the locals including the Muslim lower castes’ and women living
in caste based mohallas could have been added to give a diverse people’s
perspective.
Since, religious segregation is a complex process and apart
from historical processes and state policy, there are many other factors which need
a deeper analysis. Muslim community at Shahjahanabad (and elsewhere as well)
have also used their active agency or the choice to reside in the Muslim
dominated areas due to various cultural factors ranging from availability of
halal food to presence of mosques which cannot be overlooked.
In the present socio-political scenario, the insecurity
factor again became relevant in the post-liberalization era leading to
religious segregation. The communal politics of BJP-RSS leading to the Ayodhya -Babri
Masjid riots in the 1990s to Gujarat riots of 2002 to Delhi riots in 2020 have
had a deep effect on Muslim psyche and fear of being targeted in non-Muslim
areas by the right wing mobs.
Nazima Parveen’s Contested Homeland: Politics of Space
and Identity is well-researched and relevant book for the present socio-political
debates on Muslim segregation and the larger Muslim question of belongingness.
Reviewed by:
Dr. Uzma Azhar
