Margins of Citizenship

Part of the ‘Religion and Citizenship’ series, this book is an ethnographic

study of marginality of Muslims in urban India. It explores the realities and
consequences of socio-spatial segregation faced by Muslim communities
and the various ways in which they negotiate it in the course of their
everyday lives. By narrating lived experiences of ordinary Muslims, the
author attempts to construct their identities as citizens and subjects. What
emerges is a highly variegated picture of a group (otherwise viewed as
monolithic) that resides in very close quarters, more as a result of compul-
sion than choice, despite wide differences across language, ethnicity, sect,
and social class. The book also looks into the potential outcomes that
socio-spatial segregation spelt on communal lines holds for the future of
the urban landscape in South Asia.
Rich in ethnographic data and accessible in its approach, this book will
be useful for scholars and researchers of sociology, social anthropology,
human geography, political sociology, urban studies, and political science.

Anasua Chatterjee teaches Sociology at Miranda House, University

of Delhi, and completed her PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, India. Her research interests include political
sociology, urban studies and ethnography. Apart from teaching, she is
actively engaged in field research.
Religion and Citizenship
Series Editor: Surinder S. Jodhka
Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Social science research and popular discourse on ‘religion and public life’ have
gradually moved away from the popular binaries of communal–secular, tradition–
modern, or community–individual. It is now widely recognised that religion and
cultural traditions do not simply disappear from public life with economic devel-
opment. In countries like India, this shift has also been reinforced by the emerging
social and political trends where issues relating to citizenship rights along with
those of inclusive and just development are raised through identity movements by
the historically deprived categories of the Dalits and Adivasis and religious minori-
ties such as the Muslims.
This ‘positive’ view of religion parallels changing attitudes in other parts of the
world as well. Enhanced flows of labour accompanying the processes unleashed
by the onset of globalisation have produced hitherto unknown levels of diversities
of cultures and communities almost everywhere in the contemporary world. The
neo-migrant not only is visible and culturally different from the ‘native’ but also
arrives with aspiration for citizenship rights and equal status. Growing religious
diversity is an obvious and important aspect of this process, engaging with which
has become a political and academic imperative.
In countries, in the West as well as in the global South, where the local states and
other development actors find it hard to accommodate such diversities within its
pre-existing ‘secular’ welfare systems, they have invariably turned to the faith-based
organisations, along with other civil society actors, to use their potential role in
enhancing development and service delivery. While these new processes and trends
have renewed interest in the study of religion, rigorous social science research on
‘religion and citizenship’ is still at a nascent stage. This series attempts to fill the gap
by bringing together scholarly writing on this important and rapidly expanding
area of research in the social sciences.

Also in this series

Questioning the ‘Muslim Woman’
Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality
Nida Kirmani

Religion, Community and Development

Changing Contours of Politics and Policy in India
Edited by Gurpreet Mahajan and Surinder S. Jodhka

Justice before Reconciliation

Negotiating a ‘New Normal’ in Post-riot Mumbai and Ahmedabad
Dipankar Gupta
Margins of Citizenship
Muslim Experiences in Urban India

Anasua Chatterjee
First published 2017
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For my Parents
Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 Construction of communal geographies: Kolkata’s

Muslim neighbourhoods 17

2 Park Circus: a profile of a Muslim neighbourhood 36

3 Diversities, differences and social relations 57

4 Local politics and the everyday state 88

5 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 114

6 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement: negotiating

identity in a Muslim neighbourhood 142

Conclusion 164

Maps and Sketches 173

Bibliography 177
Index 189
Acknowledgements

It is indeed difficult to adequately thank all those who contributed to this

book, which is based on my PhD thesis at Jawaharlal Nehru University
(JNU). I perhaps owe my deepest gratitude to the people of Park Circus,
who let me in their lives and homes, sharing with me some of the most
painful details of their existence. Certainly it is not easy to open up to
a stranger, and I have, in the course of the year I spent there, been both
amazed and humbled by their openness and their ready acceptance of my
presence as I went about documenting their lives. The field surely has its
ways of imparting knowledge which no textbook can.
I have been very fortunate to have Surinder S. Jodhka as my PhD
supervisor. I thank him for all the help, guidance and mentoring, which
has, over the years, helped me frame and carry out this study and later
turn it into a book. As a teacher he has indeed been a source of great
inspiration and support. At every stage I have been overwhelmed by his
sincerity and his commitment to research – qualities I can someday only
hope to achieve.
For a student of sociology in India, it is but a dream to be guided
at every stage of ethnographic fieldwork by someone of the stature of
Andre Beteille. For his patience, encouragement and kindness towards my
unformed ideas and amateurish efforts, I am deeply grateful. I also thank
him for always being there, readily agreeing to read and comment on my
chapters whenever I asked for.
I also thank Abhijit Dasgupta for taking a lasting interest in my work
and for always finding time to discuss its nuances with me whenever I
sought his help.
Many undergraduate and post-graduate teachers have influenced my
intellectual orientations. I thank, among others, Sweta Ghosh, Sarbani
Bandyopadhyay, Maitrayee Chaudhuri, V. Sujatha, Avijit Pathak, Dipankar
Gupta, Susan Vishvanathan, and Bimol Akoijam. I also take the opportunity
 Acknowledgements ix
to thank Professor Patricia Uberoi and Professor Kushal Deb for their
comments and reflections on my doctoral dissertation.
I also thank my fellow researchers at JNU, especially Kamalini Mukher-
jee, Divya Padmanabhan, Gayatri Nair, Renny Thomas, Caitlin Stronnel,
Suraj Beri and Sreya Sen for their ready engagement with my work and
for reading and commenting on various drafts of my chapters. I am indeed
fortunate to have such supportive colleagues and, of course, wonderful
friends.
I am thankful to my discussants at conferences in India and abroad for
their very valuable comments and insights on various papers presented
which later formed the basis of various chapters in this book; they opened
me up to both the limitations and the possibilities of my work.
My fieldwork was supported and facilitated by people too numerous
to name, and for whom words can never express my humblest gratitude. I
shall always remain indebted to Mrs Farzana Choudhury, the then coun-
cillor of Ward 64 of the KMC; Ms Gargee Deb; Mr Surajit Mukhopad-
hyay; and Prof. Amzad Hussain for their assistance in helping me gain
an entry into the field and familiarising me with its basic coordinates.
Without them the numerous lanes and bylanes of Park Circus, which later
formed the principal sites of my study, would have remained as distant and
as foreboding as they had once appeared when I had visited the neigh-
bourhood for a brief survey in 2011. I also thank Abdul Matin and Abdul
Qaiyum, both fellow colleagues at JNU and residents of Park Circus, for
being such wonderful guides through the neighbourhood.
My fieldwork was financially supported by the UGC Junior and Senior
Research Fellowship Awards and by generous grants from the ICSSR,
which helped me present my work to an international audience.
I thank the library staff at JNU, Teen Murti Bhavan and the National
Archives at New Delhi and the CSSS and National Library in Kolkata
for helping me with the difficult task of locating material necessary for
my work.
Versions of the argument presented in Chapter 6 have been published
earlier in the Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 52, 26 December 2015)
and in Seminar (Vol. 672, 2015). I am very grateful to the editors and my
anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier versions
of the material.
I am particularly indebted to the editors of the Routledge ‘Religion and
Citizenship’ series for their faith in my ability to turn my thesis into a
book. I thank Dr Shashank Sinha, Prof. Surinder Jodhka and my anony-
mous referee for their detailed and incisive comments on earlier drafts of
my chapters, which ultimately gave shape to their existent form. I also
x Acknowledgements
thank the very supportive team at Routledge for facilitating the smooth
processing of my manuscript.
I am grateful to my very accommodative colleagues at Miranda House,
in particular, Dr Reema Bhatia, without whose cooperation it would have
been impossible to find time and deliver my manuscript on schedule. I
also thank my students Chandrayee, Anvita and Kajal for helping with the
final stages of editorial work for the book.
I also wish to take this opportunity to thank Dr Gautam Khastgir, with-
out whose help all this would have remained a distant dream.
It is hard to thank one’s family within the space of an acknowledge-
ments section. For their constant encouragement and support and their
relentless faith in me, I am indeed grateful. In particular, my father, for
his inspiring patience with my arguments and for going through, for the
umpteenth time, the drafts of my dissertation; my mother for helping me
stay calm and focused when I seemed to drift; my grandmother for just
being there, accepting me as I am; and my late grandfather for whom Park
Circus remained ever so special for reasons of his (and mine) own.
Finally, my husband Sourjya, for bearing with me through the wearisome
days of drafting and redrafting my chapters, helping me stay positive and
focused and reading and commenting on my drafts whenever I asked for.
Indeed without their help, this book would not have been possible.
Introduction

Numbering more than 170 million, India’s Muslims constitute the largest
religious minority in the country. Apart from their sheer numbers, what
makes them stand out from the other religious groups is their troubled
legacy which has made them come under the perpetual question mark
throughout the history of independent India. The enduring memories of
Partition and long-standing and severe prejudice have often made them
targets of violence and, in the least, confined them to the margins of main-
stream Indian society. As recent official reports point out, Muslims in India
continue to remain one of the most socio-politically and economically
deprived communities in the country (SCR 2006).
Especially in India’s urban centres, apart from the usual indices of poor
socio-economic development, Muslim marginalisation has presented
peculiarly spatialised forms Muslim groups across socio-economic and
other ethnic locations are found to be concentrated in specific parts of
the cities’ geography that are carefully set apart from the quarters of the
dominant communities by both metaphorical and physical boundaries.
Often categorised as ‘ghettoes’, such spaces occupied by Muslims gener-
ally carry severe negative assessments, seen, as they are, as receptacles of
a heightened consciousness of identity and self-assertion, which greatly
hamper the life chances of ordinary Muslims who live in them. Apart
from bearing an entrenched spatial stigma, these spaces are also marked
by meagre civic amenities which make life all the more difficult for
those who reside there.
This book is about such a Muslim ‘ghetto’ in the city of Kolkata, the
capital and the only metropolitan area in the state of West Bengal. It
explores the various ways in which, given the specific socio-political con-
text and historicity of the region, Muslims and Muslim-majority areas in
the city have come to be framed the way they are in the contemporary
times and the repercussions this has on the everyday lives of ordinary
Muslims who live in them.
2 Introduction
Most studies of Muslim ‘ghettoes’ that have been carried out so far have
largely focused on the events and processes that have led to the forma-
tion of such fenced neighbourhoods for the community in India’s cities,
stopping nonetheless at the gates of the ‘ghetto’. Very rarely have they
explored the dynamics that unfold in the course of everyday life within
it. Communal riots and a pervading sense of insecurity among Muslims
have largely been identified as the primary causes behind the formation of
such neighbourhoods for urban Muslims. So has been the long-standing
prejudice of dominant Hindu groups who have traditionally felt more
comfortable keeping Muslims at a distance from their own quarters. How-
ever, the negotiations in the quotidian and the everyday that ensure the
enduring resilience of such boundaries often tend to get bypassed in such
studies. By taking up the case of Park Circus, one such Muslim ‘ghetto’
in Kolkata, the book addresses the dynamics that lead to the persistence
of the boundaries of such neighbourhoods, the contrasting constructions of
the neighbourhood and place by the different communities that live within
and outside it and the multiple and often conflicting identities that resi-
dents of such neighbourhoods have to juggle on an everyday basis to carry
out their lives in the city. In the process, it attempts to understand the
enduring social mechanisms that work to keep Muslims at the margins
of society and to prevent them from becoming part of the mainstream.

Social marginalisation of Muslims in India

In 2006, the Sachar Committee, which was instituted under the chairman-
ship of Dr Rajinder Sachar, to look into the economic, social and educa-
tional status of Muslims in the country, came up with a finding that was
quite startling, if not totally unexpected. It demonstrated, through exist-
ing data, the fact that Muslims as members of a religious ‘community’ fell
behind all other socio-religious groups (SRGs) in the country, except per-
haps the Hindu scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs), in almost
every index of human development (SCR 2006). As it put it, the Muslim
community ‘exhibits deficits and deprivation in practically all dimensions
of development’ (SCR 2006: 237). The report was widely welcomed by
academics and policymakers who pointed out that it had very relevantly
focused on the material and economic needs of the community and not
just on its religious and cultural needs (See Jodhka 2007). In the past,
attention had been chiefly focused on the latter, with the more ‘real’ issues
relating to economic development getting largely neglected in the pro-
cess. Through such an exercise, the Sachar Committee Report (SCR 2006)
brought back once again the questions of community, development and
citizenship into India’s liberal democratic discourse in a very major way.
 Introduction 3
While the SCR has done a commendable job in drawing attention
to the issue of Muslim marginality in the country and highlighting the
most pressing concerns of Muslims, it has primarily based its findings on
large-scale statistical aggregates which have very little to say in terms of
specificity of context and actual forms of marginalisation that the various
Muslim groups encounter at the everyday level across locations in the
country. There remained a necessity for empirical work within Muslim
communities in order to locate the concrete socio-temporal contexts they
find themselves in and the implications these contexts have on the experi-
ences of exclusion of diverse Muslim groups in society.
In the recent years a very comprehensive effort to that end has been
undertaken by Christopher Jaffrelot and his team of researchers who in
their collection Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalization have
attempted to plot the experiences of Muslims in 11 different cities across
India. According to their findings, though Muslims generally lag behind
Hindus socio-economically and in terms of political representation, such
realities find contrasting expressions given the context in which they are
located. Thus whereas the presence of resilient inclusive cultures in the
southern and eastern regions of India has instilled a sense of bhaichara
(brotherhood) among Muslims and Hindus in their cities, the frequent
outbreak of communal rioting in the north and west of India has ensured
that the communities here have known less peace. Cities in the latter
region are dotted with numerous Muslim ‘ghettoes’ and slums, which
generally have very visible and patrolled boundaries setting them apart
from the quarters of Hindus. Drawing variously from official sources as
well as first-hand data, the essays in Muslims in Indian Cities explore the
realities of Muslim marginalisation by placing them within the particular
social and regional context in which it occurs. Every essay in the volume
dwells briefly on the specific history of the Muslims in an Indian city and
records the way in which the community has reached its present status,
which is usually that of a ‘fall’ from its erstwhile position. Apart from this,
the volume comes up with several interesting findings, such as the very
vivid physical segregation of Muslim groups across all cities; the occasional
instances of Muslim self-segregation, which is understood to be follow-
ing a somewhat different trajectory than that of forced segregation of the
community (even though insecurity is often cited as a cause of both); the
perceptible rise of a Muslim middle class and its contrasting politics; and
the various understandings of social inclusion and ‘development’ on part
of various sections of Muslims across the country.
While such an empirical approach is useful in its own way, the volume
as such provides very limited scope for holistic research on the condition
of Muslims in a given city or region. Mostly in the form of essays, the
4 Introduction
scholarship sensitises the reader to the contextual nature of the Muslim
predicament without providing any detailed description or analysis of the
latter. In other words, in-depth first-hand knowledge of Muslims and their
experiences is largely missing.
The scholarship on Muslim experiences of social marginalisation in
India so far has followed a few broad trends; the first involves tracing the
life history or experiences of discrete Muslims across social and regional
contexts of the kind attempted by Mukulika Banerjee (Muslim Portraits
2008) where the one unifying factor in bringing the experiences of diverse
individuals across India is the fact that they are all members of a particu-
lar religious community; the second of the sort undertaken by the SCR
(2006) uses secondary material in the form of large-scale data to under-
stand the broad contours of Muslim segregation; and the third concerns
detailed description and analysis of the situation of Muslims in post-riot
contexts such as the ones undertaken by Roma Chatterjee and Deepak
Mehta (2001), Rowena Robinson (2005), and most recently by Dipankar
Gupta (2011) and deals largely with the acute distress of Muslims in the
immediate aftermath of riots and the process of re-normalisation of every-
day life. While all these perspectives are useful in their own ways, they
variously highlight different aspects of the problem without providing a
comprehensive understanding of the realities of ordinary experiences of
Muslims on a day-to-day basis. Neither do they explain the reasons as
to why boundaries between the two communities get created and main-
tained even when relations between the two seem otherwise ‘normal’.
Jaffrelot’s volume, with its emphasis on context, makes a poignant con-
tribution in that regard. A similar and a far more nuanced contribution
has been made by Nida Kirmani, who in her book, Questioning the Muslim
Woman, attempts to understand the predicament of Muslim women by
placing them in the particular context of neighbourhood and urbanity
and the development of communal enclosures in which they increasingly
find themselves in. Located in Southeast Delhi’s Zakir Nagar, the book
tells a story of the multiple identities and roles Muslim women have to
negotiate in the course of their everyday lives in this largely middle-class,
predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in the fringes of New Delhi.
Another particularly useful concept in this regard, one that carries the
potential of factoring in the relevance of social context with regard to
Muslim communities, is that of ‘embeddedness’. Among others, one of its
most emphatic proponents has been Vinod Jairath, who, in his edited vol-
ume Frontiers of Embedded Muslim Communities in India (2011), points out,

Muslims  .  .  .  are deeply embedded – culturally, economically and

politically – at the local, regional and national levels . . . the study
 Introduction 5
of Muslim communities in India requires, first of all, recognition of
diversity and stratification among the Muslims along various axes.
Second, the community under study must be seen as embedded in
an adequately specified spatial-temporal context which takes into
account the role and responses of various significant others.
(2011)

Such an approach, it is hoped, will help in placing Muslims across socio-

economic and cultural categories in their proper social contexts and,
therefore, avoid the essentialising and negative stereotyping of Muslims
that some of the more unidimensional approaches end up doing.
The idea of embeddedness, which harps on recognising the significance
of the particular socio-temporal context of Muslim groups and communi-
ties presented by Jairath and others, provides a new direction to research
where essentialising and stereotyping of the country’s Muslims and their
predicaments as well as the official solutions to these are replaced by a
more nuanced approach which seeks to base itself on the idea of multiple
identities and multiple determinations that render the social life of India’s
Muslims a level of complexity far beyond the biddings of simple mono-
lithism. My study takes as its point of departure a similar methodological
premise and, by dwelling on the realities of persistent and ever-increasing
spatial segregation, attempts to provide a more multifaceted retelling of
the everyday experiences of marginality and exclusion of ordinary Mus-
lims residing in the many ‘ghettoes’ of urban India.
I do so by taking up the case of Kolkata’s Muslims, to whom we will
now turn.

The case of Kolkata’s Muslims

The Muslims of Kolkata are a very large community of diverse ethnic
groups who at present constitute around a fifth of the city’s population.1
However, in spite of their large numbers and vibrant historical presence,2
the Muslims remain one of the most marginalised groups in the city with
obvious indicators pointing to their continued exclusion from the main-
stream. A major manifestation of such exclusion, one which becomes
immediately apparent to a visitor or researcher, is the stark segregation of
Muslim residential spaces in the city from those of its Hindu quarters.3
Kolkata’s Muslims, as one finds, are largely concentrated in a few clearly
definable neighbourhoods across the city with very sharp physical and
metaphorical boundaries setting them apart from the rest. This is interest-
ing primarily because of the fact that originally Muslim settlements in
Kolkata were regionally and occupationally defined and not constituted
6 Introduction
solely on the basis of religion and they owe their present form to the par-
ticular social and political history of Bengal during the late colonial period
and the years immediately following Partition. Another fact that makes
it interesting as well is that Kolkata as a city has recorded relatively
far lower levels of communal violence than other cities of northern
India in the recent decades. These make one wonder why the practice
of socially and spatially segregating a community on the grounds of
religion can so endure and what are the ways in which differences get
structured and reinforced within the urban landscape. This aspect of
‘spatiality’ deserves particular attention since the larger part of Muslim
experiences in the city is mediated through the spatial experiences of
being kept apart and confined in their own communally defined neigh-
bourhoods that, as I will discuss eventually in the course of the later
chapters, carry an entrenched negative characterisation, a stigma which
revolves around their categorisation as communally defined spaces of
difference.
However, in spite of the vivid instances of socio-spatial exclusion,
the case of Kolkata’s Muslims seems to have somehow been bypassed
by the recent spate of literature on India’s urban Muslims (Gupta 2011;
Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012; Kirmani 2013), which, as mentioned ear-
lier, has otherwise very aptly pointed out the ever-increasing tendency
towards the reorganisation of urban space on the lines of community
and the escalating levels of insecurity among resident Muslim groups.
There have, in fact, been very few – mostly sporadic issue–based –
studies on Kolkata’s Muslims which have addressed the problem either
directly or indirectly.4 The experiences of Kolkata’s Muslims needed
to be put into perspective, in order to reach a holistic understanding
of the realities they endure and the exclusion they face on an everyday
basis in the city. But before going into the actual framing of my study,
it is perhaps worthwhile to reconsider briefly the factors that make
Kolkata a compelling ‘field’ to study Muslims in the context of the
present work.
The gap in the existing literature apart, the choice of Kolkata as a case
for exploring the Muslim predicament drew from several considerations.
Being the capital of West Bengal, Kolkata had been the centre of Left
politics for more than three decades until recently when the 34-year-long
(1977–2011) Left regime was thrown out of power by the opposition with
major support from the Muslim groups of the state. Interestingly, the Left
itself had come to power in West Bengal in 1977 following a massive sup-
port from the Muslims, who saw in it a definite prospect of improvement
of their plight from what it had been under the ‘elite Hindu’ Congress
regime immediately preceding it. The Left, as a political ideology, had
 Introduction 7
professed a firm faith in the secular principle and was noted for its particu-
larly soft approach towards the minority issue in the state. However, almost
three-and-a-half decades on, West Bengal presented the most dismal fig-
ures in terms of Muslim socio-economic development and participation
in a nationwide comparison conducted by the Sachar Committee. The
enigma persists as to why a professedly secular political regime could not
manage to secure the basic opportunities and resources for a quarter of
its population belonging to a minority religious community whose con-
cerns were a priority in its agenda at the time it had come to power in the
state (Chatterjee 2011). The location of Kolkata within West Bengal also
bears upon Muslim experience in the city in a very significant way. Apart
from Punjab, Bengal was the only other province divided on the basis of
religion during the time of Partition – an event that dramatically reduced
the Muslims into a minority community in the Indian part of the state.
The repercussions that followed were appalling for the Muslims in every
way. But the most important factor was that after Partition all members
of the community, irrespective of all other differences, got classified as
simply ‘Muslims’ and began to be perceived in totality as a group which
constituted the single most potential threat to the stability and integrity
of the new state (Chatterji 2007: 160–165). It is interesting to study the
processes through which a religious identity got valorised over all other
linguistic and cultural allegiances to define a group of people in the new
state. Being the centre, Kolkata came to form one of the most significant
sites of an evolving dynamics of minoritisation in West Bengal. A look at
the everyday practices of folk ethnography and negotiations of identity
and space on part of the two mutually apprehensive communities, who
had only ‘recently’ undergone some of the most traumatic experiences of
communal rioting and carnage, reveals how a demonisation of the Muslim
as an abstract entity occurred in the city in the years immediately follow-
ing Partition – a tendency that disturbingly coloured the majority Hindu
psyche in its perception of Muslims inhabiting the city during the time
and laid the basis for communal relations in the city in the subsequent
years (Chatterjee n.d.).
The reasons behind an expressed tendency to carve out separate geogra-
phies in the form of communally structured urban neighbourhoods need
to be analysed, especially with regard to the Muslims, in terms of the
twin processes of prejudice of the dominant community and the sense of
insecurity of the Muslims as they have taken root and evolved over the
years following Partition and Independence within the city of Kolkata
(Chatterjee 2015). In the section that follows I will briefly describe how
I conceptualised the research, before giving an outline of the organisation
of the book and the primary issues addressed in it.
8 Introduction
The ‘urban’ and the ‘everyday’ as sites of enquiry
Since the site of my research was a city, it entailed, on my part, an effort to
ground the problem within the broader patterns of social life and interac-
tion as they occur within urban space. This required, first, an understand-
ing of the ‘urban’ as a site of ethnographic enquiry because ethnography
has been the method the study has largely relied on and, second, high-
lighting the specificity of the South Asian context where urban spaces
present unique scenarios, quite different, in form and content, from their
European counterparts.
Even though there are a large number of ethnographic studies on urban
areas,5 the city has, for long, remained somewhat under-theorised in social
anthropology (Low 1996: 383). While efforts to understand the everyday
processes of urban life have been undertaken, there has been little discussion
concerning the character of the ‘urban’ as a ‘field’ of ethnographic work.
In one of the early contributions towards an understanding of the ‘urban’,
Gerald Suttles has pointed out that observations from urban fieldwork
rarely fit into the typologies given by classical sociological theory. Accord-
ing to him, traditional conceptual distinctions in terms of Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft, mechanical and organic, sacred and profane, collapse ‘get(ting)
jumbled up in an improbable mix that does not lend itself to easy clas-
sification’ (Suttles 1976: 3). Social norms and values get continually ‘bend’
and compromised to fit what is seen as the exigencies of circumstance, and
stereotypes disintegrate to form new hybrids which need to be grasped by
modifying existing polarities of the traditional and the modern.6
Given this, it is the ‘situational’ approach,7 premised on the case study
model with intensive first-hand observation using a variety of methods
and sources, that has predominated most of urban ethnography. The ten-
dency to focus on empirical particularities came from another source as
well. Classical sociologists like Tonnies, Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel
had already created a large body of theory about the ‘urban’, of the sort
that an ethnographic observer could hardly aspire.8 Therefore, the most
prominent urban ethnographies have usually been those that have in some
way or the other confronted or confounded existing theory by discover-
ing some aberration to it in existing empirical situations. Deviants, out-
caste and minority groups, were, therefore, the prime concerns of research.
This does not imply that normative, structural studies have been absent in
the field, but rather that situational accounts largely predominate, at vari-
ous levels of generalisation within urban ethnography.
In the case of South Asian cities, the realm of the ‘situational’ and the
‘contingent’ becomes particularly important. Urban spaces in South
Asia, as has been pointed out, are not monolingual spaces of the kind
 Introduction 9
traditionally found in Europe (Hansen 2013). Particularly cities that have
a colonial past have historically been home to numerous cultural and
religious groups who had migrated into them drawn by the promise that
these modernising spaces held. Consequently, these cities traditionally
developed neighbourhoods coded by race and ethnic origin, and in the
case of India by caste and religion. As Hansen writes, ‘Certeau’s notion
of urban space as a vast field of undetermined social relationships and
sites of potential freedom did not really exist in the (post)colonial city’
(Hansen 2013: 26). As a result, even after the end of colonial rule, claims
to urban space in these cities were never really made in terms of ‘right to
the city’ in the sense implied by Lefebvre and Harvey (Harvey 2008), but
were rather premised on political sentiments mediated by ‘shared language
and cultural moorings’. The Shiv Sena’s appropriation of urban space in
Mumbai as a Hinduised space meant for ‘sons of the soil’, as Hansen points
out, provides an illustration of the same in the Indian context. The post-
colonial city, therefore, remained segmented, with different neighbour-
hoods representing entirely different worlds – sites of the known and of
home for those who belonged to it – and conversely as territories of the
‘unknown’ and the ‘unfamiliar’ and to an extent of the ‘undesirable’ and
the ‘inappropriate’ to those who did not (Harvey 2008). This set of fac-
tors, as Hansen writes, has been responsible for the development of ‘tacit
understandings and compromises that, for decades, enabled a routinized
but a deeply apprehensive coexistence (of communities) in urban space
(in South Asian cities)’.
The general features of urban social life and interaction, and the factors
contingent to the Indian experience, force one to locate any study of urban
life in India, deeply within an understanding of the situational, the contin-
gent and, in other words, the ‘everyday’.9 To that extent my work explores
the lived realities of ordinary Muslims in Kolkata and the negotiations they
make and the strategies they undertake to deal with the experiences of
discrimination and prejudice that they face on a day-to-day basis in the
city. Thus the everyday emerges as the site of contestations and adaptations
where identities and boundaries get continuously made and unmade, result-
ing in relations that are ever changing, novel and necessarily contextual.10
The following section summarises in brief the scope and organisation
of this book.

Organisation of the book

Kolkata’s Muslims, as mentioned earlier, are a large community of diverse
Muslim groups who have, in the post-Partition period, increasingly become
concentrated in a few clearly defined spaces of the cityscape which are
10 Introduction
carefully set apart from the dominant Hindu quarters. In their current
ghetto-like states, they are generally held in disdain by the city’s main-
stream and often lack the basic civic amenities otherwise taken for granted
in a modernising urban space. This work attempts to locate the social, cul-
tural and spatial practices that act simultaneously to set apart such spaces,
which then come to be viewed as aberrations within an otherwise familiar
landscape. It also seeks to understand the ways in which Muslims across
social locations, who inhabit these spaces, negotiate a ‘spoilt’ identity and
navigate the multiple modalities of urbanity, community and marginality
in their everyday lives.
In order to contextualise the ‘Kolkata Muslim’, to situate them in their
lived social realities and to put marginality in perspective, I focused on
one such neighbourhood in Kolkata which has, over the years, come to
be designated as a musholman para11 in the city. Fieldwork was carried out
in Park Circus, which occupies a fairly central location in the city and
as compared to other similar Muslim neighbourhoods has a compara-
tively heterogeneous population of both Muslims (who comprise nearly
75 per cent of the neighbourhood and carry various ethnic and regional
affiliation) and non-Muslim groups such as the Bengali- and non-Ben-
gali-speaking Hindus, the Anglo-Indians and the native Christians. The
peculiar history of its transformation from a purely residential enclave for
educated and upper-middle-class Muslims in the fringes of the colonial
White Town, at its inception, during the early decades of the 20th century
into its present status of a mostly dilapidated, overcrowded and congested
inner-city area inhabited primarily by lower-class, slum-dwelling migrant
Muslims parallels, to a large extent, the general fate of Muslims in the
city during the time, especially the period after Independence. Another
important reason for choosing this neighbourhood was that, unlike other
Muslim residential clusters in the city which are spread out over a number
of urban administrative units, the cognitive boundaries of Park Circus as
a neighbourhood more or less matched the boundaries of Ward 64 of the
Kolkata Municipal Corporation, which seemed to provide a fair oppor-
tunity for observing the day-to-day processes of developmental practice
with respect to a social category singled out for affirmative action by the
state, which had been one of the primary points of departure at the initial
stages of framing my study.
An important concern of the study has been to understand the ways
in which inter-communal relations work out over the long term in areas
which have had experiences of communal disturbances in the past. Recent
studies on Muslims in Indian cities have increasingly put emphasis on
the need to study the re-normalisation of social relations over time once
the disruption caused by the breakdown of social ties in the immediate
 Introduction 11
aftermath of communal violence gets settled (Robinson 2005; Gupta
2011). While a very visible repercussion of communal violence in most
cities of northern India has been a clear reorganisation of urban space on
communal lines (see Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012), this study focuses particu-
larly on everyday practice12 through which differences, both spatial and
social, get organised and maintained within the city long after the rupture
caused by communal violence has died down. Kolkata has had a history
of severe communal disturbances up to the mid-1960s, after which there
had been a period of relative calm, only occasionally disturbed by events
such as the post-Babri disturbances of 1992. By taking up the experiences
of Muslims in a Kolkata neighbourhood, the study explores the ways in
which memories of communal violence and fear of potential carnage
(drawing from experiences of Muslims in other urban centres of India)
function to reinforce the already-existing differences between the two
communities in the city.
The book is based largely on qualitative fieldwork, even though it is
perhaps not a complete ethnography in the traditional sense of the term.13
I spent a little over a year in my field, but it was never the same as partici-
pant observation of the Malinowskian kind. It is relatively easy to remain
a stranger in the city. Perhaps the Geertzian notion of ‘deep hanging out’
(Geertz 1998) is a better qualifier for my work, characterising as it does
the way of immersing oneself in the social and cultural life of a group or
collectivity at an informal level. Staying in the field, albeit like stranger,
nevertheless provided me with an opportunity to observe first-hand pro-
cesses that unfolded at different points of time in the day and the year,
which would otherwise have been far more difficult to understand had I
visited the neighbourhood only for a few specified hours of the day for
purposes of a solely issue-based study.
The fact of my own location within the field, of being a non-Muslim
woman – more so, a Bengali-speaking Hindu – had its own bearings
both on the framing of the research and on the findings of my work.
Being an ‘outsider’ to the ‘community’, I had no first-hand knowledge
about the issues that bother them most; my framing of the latter, there-
fore, drew from my own perceptions based on the representations of
the problem within academics and the mainstream media. Nevertheless,
being an unencumbered ‘outsider’ had its own advantages; for one it
made me particularly receptive to issues that emerged from the ‘field’ as
it were, which were often in stark contrast to the predispositions that I
had carried with me when I had first embarked on the work. My work,
therefore, highlights principally those issues that came up most compel-
lingly in the routine of everyday lives of the ordinary Muslims who live
and work in Park Circus.
12 Introduction
Like any study of this nature, my work also carries its own limitations.
As a woman, I found myself primarily interacting with women in the
field. This doesn’t imply that I remained totally shut out from the male
point of view, but rather that given the existing codes of conduct, I had
only limited interaction with men, usually in more formal settings as com-
pared to the longer hours I could spent with women. Thus, the activities
and aspirations of Muslim women were far more open for to observation
outside of the scope of the formal interviews, which, of course, involved
both male and female respondents. Instead of looking at this as a drawback
I would like to see this as an advantage since despite being an ‘outsider’ I
could very easily become privy to the matters of the hearth and home –
details of the everyday lives of my respondents. Being a Hindu, and being
perceived as such by the locals, carried its own consequences. But, on the
whole, apart from an initial question mark as to the purposes of my study,
I was well received by the locals. Variously identified as a student, as a
researcher, as vaguely someone ‘who works in Dilli’, I was both amazed
and humbled by their ready acceptance of my presence and the way they
led me into their own lives, sharing with me some of the most vulnerable
and painful aspects of their existence.
Given the ethnographic intent of the work, I have consciously avoided
theoretical paradigms to the extent possible out of a fear that they might
overshadow the intrinsic contradiction and complexities presented by the
field. The effort has been to let the field speak and to record the voices and
perceptions of ordinary Muslims as they go about their lives in the city. The
themes of prejudice and boundaries, and exclusion and insecurity, have,
therefore, been presented in a manner directly drawn from the field, with-
out always fitting them into categories handed down by existing theory.
The study is presented as a series of interwoven narratives reflecting the
experiences and aspirations of diverse Muslims who reside in the neigh-
bourhood. Most of the data presented are drawn from casual interactions
often over prolonged periods of time with the same set of respondents,
long unstructured interviews and the general observation of life as it
unfolded in the neighbourhood. Given the mixed composition of its resi-
dents, the interviews were carried out in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali, at times
interspersed with English words usually depending on the class location of
my respondents. The narratives presented in the text have been translated
into English, and words that had been originally spoken in English have
been italicised wherever they occur. While carrying out fieldwork, I have
not restricted my interactions only to the Muslims but also incorporated
the voices and sentiments of non-Muslims, primarily the Bengali Hindu
middle classes, in order to understand the ways in which ‘the Muslim’ gets
perceived both within the neighbourhood and in the general context of
 Introduction 13
the city by a group that has traditionally claimed to represent its main-
stream. In the interests of confidentiality, I have attempted to keep my
material anonymous and hence changed names and altered details of sto-
ries, wherever they seemed to give away the location of a respondent, in
order to protect their identity.
Chapters in this book are divided thematically and, after first grounding
the Muslims in their immediate context, document the various dimen-
sions of their marginalisation – social, economic and political – that bear
upon the community’s experience in the city.
Chapter 1 traces the historic development of segregated Muslim neigh-
bourhoods in Kolkata in the 20th century. After briefly foregrounding
Muslims in the broader socio-political context of Bengal, the chapter
describes early experiences of Muslims in Kolkata, when the city’s Mus-
lims could be identified as ‘distinct sub-communal groups’, each with its
distinct locational setting and unique place in the city’s social life. This is
followed by a review of those events and processes which unfolded in the
city in the tumultuous years around Partition and Independence, which
resulted in the eventual transformation of these once-vibrant Muslim
spaces into closed-off and heterogeneous congregations of Muslim groups
which increasingly came to assume the character of a ghetto.
Chapter 2 provides a more detailed description of Park Circus, the
neighbourhood under study, documenting in detail its location, ethnic
composition and existing socio-cultural milieu. The chapter describes and
analyses its internal arrangements in space and the resultant spatial forms
of intermixing and segregation that they have given rise to. It introduces
the reader to the neighbourhood, while highlighting the fact that though
categorised as a homogeneous space within the broader urban landscape,
the neighbourhood, in reality, carries a more layered and often fractured
sense of place and identity within it.
Recognising the intrinsically ‘embedded’ character of Muslim communi-
ties in society and the fact that particular social locations influence the actual
experiences of the marginalisation of Muslims, Chapter 3 attempts to locate
the Muslims of the neighbourhood under study, first, in terms of the intra-
communal differences identifiable among them and, second, in terms  of
the wider social context they find themselves presently in. In the course
of the latter discussion, the chapter also takes into account the role and atti-
tudes of local Hindu groups since they form the principal significant other
whom Muslims encounter at the everyday level in the neighbourhood. Two
other factors considered include, first, the extant cosmopolitan setting of the
neighbourhood and, second, the ghetto-like feature of some of its parts, both
of which are seen to interact and create a peculiar experience of urbanity
and community for the neighbourhood’s Muslim groups.
14 Introduction
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 take up more directly the economic, political and
social dimensions of Muslim marginalisation by documenting their mani-
festations at the level of the neighbourhood under study.
Chapter 4 begins with a brief political profile of Park Circus to pro-
vide the backdrop against which the politics of the everyday gets played
out in the neighbourhood. It describes the major political parties, their
traditional and emerging support bases and the methods of garnering
political support adopted by them. It then takes up the more immediate
concerns of everyday politics in the neighbourhood, describing in par-
ticular the issues, processes and actors involved in its performance. The
chapter describes how political power operates at the local level and the
ways in which ordinary Muslims encounter the state on an everyday basis.
Chapter 5 grounds the Muslims in the neighbourhood in terms of their
economic pursuits and educational preferences. It describes the principal
occupations and types of employment the majority of the Muslims currently
find themselves engaged in and addresses the extent to which religious iden-
tity plays a role in defining economic opportunities for the neighbourhood’s
Muslims. The chapter also describes the emerging aspirations of city-dwelling
Muslims in contemporary India and explores the theme of education, which
emerges as the principal site around which desires for a ‘better life’ get struc-
tured. The issues of modernity and community, of social class, development
and mobility, and the ambitions and hopes around a perceived middle-class
identity are foregrounded by plotting local Muslim aspirations in terms of
employment and education for themselves and for their children.
Chapter 6 reviews the principal categories employed by the Hindu
middle classes for identifying ‘Muslim neighbourhoods’ in the city. It looks
at the ways in which spatial stigma finds expression in the contemporary
times and functions to exclude Muslims from the city’s mainstream. It also
analyses the functions of memory and fear of communal violence among
the locality’s Muslims and the ways in which such perceptions inform
their choice of residence in the city. The chapter also points at the ways in
which continued experiences of socio-spatial marginalisation and insecu-
rity have the potential to engender a reverse assertion of identity on part
of residents of such neighbourhoods who might eventually find it more
feasible to construct an exclusive identity set apart from and in opposition
to that of the city’s mainstream.
Drawing from data presented in the previous chapters, the concluding
chapter attempts to locate the multiple dimensions of Muslim marginal-
ity within the broader discourse of community-based social exclusion in
India in order to understand the repercussions processes of marginalisa-
tion have on the realisation of citizenship and inclusive development for
deprived communities in the country.
 Introduction 15
The experiences of the Muslims of Park Circus are but one instance of
how a certain group of Muslims fare in a specific spatio-temporal context
and thus do not claim to ‘represent’ experiences of urban Muslims in the
country in general. Nevertheless, they can serve as an indicator of the grow-
ing insecurities, hopes and aspirations of marginal Muslim communities
across urban spaces in India and perhaps provide a comparative case from
West Bengal where a few studies of this sort have heretofore been conducted.

Notes
1 According to the 2001 Census, Muslims constitute 20.27 per cent of Kolkata’s
population.
2 Muslims with diverse regional origins had migrated to Kolkata during the period
of its development as the principal city of the British Empire in India in the late
18th and 19th centuries, a process that continued well up to the first two decades
of the 20th century. For a brief note on the composition and settlement patterns
of early Muslim groups in Kolkata, see M.K.A. Siddiqui’s Social Organization of
Muslim Groups in Kolkata (1974).
3 That the Muslim population of Kolkata is largely ghettoised has been pointed out
by a number of scholars working in the area such as N. K. Bose, M.K.A. Siddiqui,
Kenneth McPherson, and most recently Joya Chatterji (see Bose 1968; McPherson
1974; Siddiqui 1974; Chatterji 2007).
4 Some of the earliest works include N. K. Bose’s Calcutta 1964: A Social Survey (1968)
and M. Basu’s Anthropological Profile of the Muslims of Kolkata (1985). Bose’s study was
the first of its kind to point out the segregated nature of Muslim settlements in the
city, whereas Basu’s work borders on physical anthropology and seeks to classify the
various ethnic components of the Muslim population in the city by locating their
different physical attributes. M.K.A. Siddiqui’s Muslims of Calcutta: A Study in Aspects
of Their Social Organization (1974) is a significant work documenting the origin and
development of Muslim society in Kolkata; the various ethnic, regional and sectoral
differences that have evolved among the Muslims in the city; the markers of these
‘differences’; and the inter-relationships between these groups as well as the phe-
nomenon of caste among them. A similar effort is made by Kenneth McPherson in
The Muslim Microcosm: Calcutta 1918 to 1935 (1974) who uses the concept of ‘micro-
cosm’ in urban theory to understand community formation and responses of Mus-
lim groups by exploring Muslim society and politics in Kolkata during the period
specified. While these works describe attributes of Muslim society, and partly the
nature of Muslim group behaviour and politics, they do not focus on the extreme
conditions of deprivation encountered by a large number of Muslims in the city.
Siddiqui’s Life in the Slums of Calcutta (1969) and Marginal Muslim Communities in
India (2004) address this problem to some extent. Even so, a comparative perspec-
tive is not visible in the two works spaced over more than three decades of Muslim
experience in the city. A contemporary intervention in this regard has been Jeremy
Seabrook and I. A. Siddiqui’s People without History: India’s Muslim Ghettoes (2011),
which documents the appalling conditions of life and the acute lack of infrastruc-
tural support in the poorest Muslim concentration areas of Kolkata. Sanam Roohi’s
Unbecoming Citizens: Muslim Women in Kolkata (n.d.) is also an interesting study
which seeks to connect the socio-economic and political conditions of Muslims,
16 Introduction
especially Muslim women, to the larger theoretical concerns of structural inequality
and ideals of differentiated citizenship in diverse societies like India.
5 Also some of the best-known urban ethnographies were written during the time
and include Zorbaugh’s The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929), Shaw’s The Jack Roller
(1930) and Thomas, Znaniecki and Zaretsky’s The Polish Peasant (1918–1920).
6 Erving Goffman has explored the notion of situated activity systems. Using the
dramaturgical metaphors of actors and audience, he points out how under certain
situations individuals are left relatively free to respond to situations outside of the
established norms and values of society (see Goffman 1959).
7 The situational approach ‘emphasizes the conditional nature of urban existence or
the pending necessity of urban dweller to look at much of their culture and social
structure as the conditions for action rather than only the imperatives for action’
(Suttles 1976: 2).
8 Theories produced by these set of scholars – Tonnies’ contrast between Gemein-
scaft and Gesellschaft (Tonnies 1963), Durkheim’s classification of mechanically and
organically solidified societies (Durkheim 1933), Weber’s and Simmel’s works on
modern urban life (Weber 1958; Simmel 1997a, 1997b) – had been of a meta-
theoretical order engaged as they were in making sense of the broader aspects of
the structures and processes of modern society, urban life being one of them.
9 The sociology of everyday life essentially takes on from a number of micro-
sociological perspectives – such as phenomenology, ethnomethodology, drama-
turgy, and, most importantly, the theory of practice which involves the approaches
developed by the likes Simmel, Schutz, Husserl, Garfinkel, Goffman, Bourdieu, De
Certeau, and others (see Goffman 1959; Garfinkel 1967; Bourdieu 1977; De Certeau
1984) – and attempts to capture and recognise the significance of the ordinary, the
mundane and the routine in everyday relations and practice. In doing so it also
highlights that the ordinary is hardly ever straightforward and simple but rather
that it is dynamic and surprising, characterised by ambivalences, contradictions and
possibilities, and gets continually influenced by things, contexts and environments.
10 This does not imply that I totally discount the significance of events but rather that
I look upon them only in terms of the implications they have had in defining the
process or the long term. Such an approach is heavily influenced by the works of
Veena Das et al. (2001) and Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta (2001).
11 It is useful to note that a Muslim neighbourhood or a musholman para in Kolkata
does not simply denote the numerical preponderance of Muslims in a neighbour-
hood but rather implies a complex cultural construct which carries with it an endur-
ing sense of othering of a religious community within a cosmopolitan urban space.
12 The theory of practice, as a way of understanding human action, is found in the
works of Pierre Bourdieu (1977) and Michael De Certeau (1984). Most sig-
nificantly, they point out how ordinary humans act within and yet against the
dominant culture using tactics such as camouflage, ruse and tricks among others
to contend with those structures of power within which they are located.
13 As a practice of data collection, ethnography has traditionally depended on inten-
sive fieldwork and participant observation instituted by Malinowski and Boas in
the heydays of modern social anthropology. Classical ethnography entailed locat-
ing and visiting a ‘field’ where ethnographic fieldwork would be conducted with
the aim of reaching a holistic understanding of ‘other’ cultures selected for study.
Here ‘field’ implied a territorially bound spatiality that was set apart from the
familiar assumptions and experiences of ‘home’ and had to be reached by practices
of physical movement (travel) (Clifford 1990).
1 Construction of communal
geographies
Kolkata’s Muslim neighbourhoods

Patterns of Muslim settlement in India’s urban centres reveal that Muslim

groups mostly live in clusters in defined pockets of urban space that are
usually set apart from the residential quarters of the dominant community
(Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012). Whereas in a few areas distinct tendencies of
self-segregation of Muslim groups are apparent, such as in the Muslim
neighbourhoods of Bangalore (Mohammad-Arif 2012) and Kozhikode
(Kanchana 2012), most cities in northern India which have recorded cases
of communal disturbances in the past few decades reveal stark instances
of ‘ghettoisation’ of Muslim groups in urban space (SCR 2006; Jaffrelot
and Gayer 2012). While a number of historical factors are seen to have
engendered this tendency – such as enduring communal prejudice against
Muslims – deepening insecurity due to threat of actual or potential com-
munal violence is said to be the major factor behind the community’s deci-
sions to remain within ghettoes (SCR 2006: 14).1 Even though Muslims
understandably feel ‘safe’ inside the boundaries of a ‘ghetto’, as compared
to regular ‘public space’ (SCR 2006: 14), ghettoes and ghetto-like spaces
are often seen to suffer from acute overcrowding, lack of adequate civic
amenities and persistent municipal and government neglect, all of which
make a deplorable state of existence within such areas (SCR 2006: 14).
The principal objective of this chapter is to trace the trajectory of the
Muslim experience in Kolkata from a time when the city’s Muslims could
be identified as ‘distinct sub-communal groups’, each of which had its
own locational setting and unique place in the city’s social life (McPher-
son 1974: ii), to the later years when the community’s presence in the
city became largely confined to heterogeneous congregations of Mus-
lim groups in a few closed neighbourhoods, which increasingly came to
assume the character of a ‘ghetto’ (see Bose 1968; McPherson 1974; Sid-
diqui 1974; Chatterji 2007). But to contextualise the discussion, the first
two sections of this chapter briefly foreground Kolkata’s Muslims within
the broader history of Muslim presence in Bengal up to the early decades
18 Construction of communal geographies
of the 20th century when the community still occupied a firm place in the
region’s socio-political life. The third section focuses on Muslim experi-
ences in the city in the years immediately around Partition and Indepen-
dence and attempts a brief spatial mapping of the community during a time
when the boundaries of ‘Muslim areas’ from those of their Hindu neigh-
bours began to get more sharply delineated than ever before. It reviews the
processes that led to the reorganisation of the Muslims in the city into their
new form – ‘into discrete, densely packed clusters or ghettoes’ (Chatterji
2007: 181) – in the years after Partition and the consequences such ‘unmix-
ing’2 of populations had for the inhabitants of these spaces.

The Muslims of Bengal: a historical presence

The story of the Muslims of Bengal can be traced as far back as the AD
13th century when Islam first arrived in the Bengal delta as the religion
of conquerors and rulers from west and central Asia who along with
their followers had come and settled in the western parts of the prov-
ince in waves of successive migrations (Ali 1985: 760–771; also see Eaton
1993). Noblemen and merchants, soldiers and saints came from as far
afield as Turkey, Arabia, Persia, and Abyssinia and settled in these famed
alluvial lands, far removed from the turmoil of central Asia, in search of
peace and political stability (Ali 1985: 760–771; also see Eaton 1990).
The Muslims of Bengal were divided in many attributes such as ethnic
origin, occupation, sect, and status. There were the Sheikhs, the Sayyeds,
the Mughals, and the Pathans as well as numerous other groups of trades-
men and artisans who formed part of the diverse social configuration of
Islam in the region. Richard M. Eaton, an eminent scholar of Islam in
Bengal, has shown that caste-like social stratification had begun to emerge
from the early 13th century itself, when Bengal was under the rule of
the sultans and had flourished particularly between the 13th and 16th
centuries (Eaton 1993: 100). He noted broad social divisions between the
ashraf elites and the non-ashraf masses of Muslim artisans who formed part
of Bengal’s emerging politico-economic order for an elucidation of the
ashraf-ajlaf dichotomy among Muslims in India (Imtiaz Ahmed 1966).
He pointed out that their organisation into separate, endogamous com-
munities with distinctive occupations which paralleled the organisation
of Hindu society in the south-western part of the delta suggested their
origin in that society (Eaton 1993: 100). The fact that a very large number
of Hindus had converted to Islam during this period in search of a more
egalitarian social order is borne out by many studies (Ali 1985: 781–788;
Eaton 1993: 113–118). Interestingly the earliest converts are said to have
come from the urban artisan castes of weavers, tailors, barbers, and others,
 Construction of communal geographies 19
whose function was to cater to the requirements of their city-based patron
classes located in the towns and cities of Bengal who increasingly sought
to get inducted into the emerging socio-political order (Ali 1985: 781–
788; Eaton 1993: 113–118). However, the largest instances of mass con-
version come from the eastern part of the province where Islam reached
in more recent times only when Mughal rule succeeded in penetrating
the remote riverine tracts of the south-eastern delta. Here Islam acquired
a base primarily through the proselytising activities of noblemen (qazis)
who were administrative heads within the Mughal rule and who in their
capacity as governors had played a significant role in pushing back the
forests and bringing vast tracts of land under cultivation. This, along with
their religious preachings which promised a more egalitarian order free
from the economic exploitation and oppressive caste hierarchies of local
Hindu rule, often earned them large followings from among the native
inhabitants of the region. These followers saw them as saviours and insti-
tuted them as pirs (saint men) in their respective localities (Eaton 1990:
8–9). Indeed, the lowest social groups among the Muslims  – similar in
rank to the Hindu outcastes – often trace their descent to the semi-tribal
natives of south-western Bengal who had imbibed the religion of the
Mughal saint men, a fact that continues to account for a very large pres-
ence of backward Muslims in the state.
Interestingly, even long after it had acquired a broader base in the prov-
ince, Islam in Bengal still retained a predominant urban, cosmopolitan
character and remained, in most part, a religion of townsmen (Chatterji
2007: 109). Even into the 20th century, the Muslim aristocracy of Bengal
continued to insist upon their superior foreign ancestry and speak Persian or
Urdu instead of the vernacular of the region they had inhabited for so long.
It was these urban-based, educated elite of ‘ashraf ’ Muslims who occupied
the dominant positions in the community, superior both socially and eco-
nomically to the urban Muslim artisans as well as the ordinary local converts
to Islam in the deltaic areas. These processes of settlement and differentia-
tion instituted hierarchies and divisions that over time made for a highly
diverse and stratified Muslim population in the region, often with marked
caste-like divisions within them (Bhattacharya 1978; Siddiqui 1978).
The Muslim population of western Bengal became even more complex
and diverse in nature, with Calcutta developing as the colonial capital.
Muslims of various occupations and various regions increasingly came to
settle and establish themselves in the city of opportunities. This process
received further impetus from the rapid growth of manufacturing indus-
tries around the city. The early 20th century also saw the growth of an
English-educated class of Muslim professionals, who eventually came to
play a very prominent role in the city’s social life. Mainly of local Bengali
20 Construction of communal geographies
origin, these groups sought to settle in Calcutta where they derived con-
siderable patronage from the colonial administration. These upwardly
mobile Muslim groups preferred to separate themselves from their cruder
co-religionists in the less hospitable areas of Calcutta and its suburbs and
settled in the well-to-do areas of Park Circus and Karaya, at that time
especially favoured by the respectable classes (McPherson 1974: 5–15, also
see Siddiqui 1974; Basu 1985: 4–5).
Even while urban groupings became defined, Muslim presence con-
tinued to grow in the countryside, particularly in the northern parts of
Bengal, a development that owed largely to the in-migration of Muslim
farming communities from North India (notably the Shershabadiyas
[traditionally the followers of Sher Shah Suri] and the Bhatias [those
who specialise in bringing char-lands (sandbar) under cultivation]) who
came in to settle on the rich new alluvial tracts left behind by the ever-
changing course of the Ganga and bring it under the plough. The early
decades of the 20th century also saw the rise of a spate of communal
disturbances in the eastern districts of the province, which initiated
migration of a large number of Muslim families from these districts to
the North, leading to an increased concentration of Muslims groups
in the northern districts of Bengal. Commenting on the demographic
profile of Muslims in Bengal at the eve of Independence, historian Joya
Chatterji writes,

[B]y the middle of the twentieth century Muslims were concen-

trated in two distinct regions of western Bengal. The first zone, more
densely populated, was in the south, in the industrial and urban tracts
around Calcutta, the 24 Parganas and the Howrah Hoogly districts.
The second belt where the Muslims were conspicuously bunched
together was in the north, in the mainly agricultural tracts in Mur-
shidabad and beyond Malda (Chatterji 2007: 162).

Any study on Muslims in any part of West Bengal needs to be located

within this broader context of Muslim migration and settlement in the
region, the demographics of which present very clear patterns up to the
days of Partition and Independence. Unfortunately, there is almost no
study that has recorded the nature of Muslim settlement in the state in
the period after Independence, even though earlier patterns are believed
to have largely persisted. Census data continue to be a major source of
data on Muslims during the period, and they have shown the fluctuations
in and concentration of the Muslim population in various districts of the
state in the subsequent years. Today Muslims constitute around 25.25 per
cent of West Bengal’s population, which is one of the highest in the
 Construction of communal geographies 21
country after Uttar Pradesh (Census 2001), even though the percentage of
urban Muslims in West Bengal is only slightly above the national average
for urban Muslims.

The early Muslim settlements of Kolkata

We now turn our focus to Muslims and their settlement patterns in the
city of Kolkata, which forms the larger backdrop of this study, and where
the neighbourhood of Park Circus – the field of study – is located.
Being the headquarters of colonial rule, Kolkata had always been a con-
glomerate of diverse population groups who settled in it in order to tap
the multiple opportunities the burgeoning city seemed to provide. While
the earliest instance of Muslim presence in the region is said to date back
to the days of the Nawab3 during the latter half of the 17th century, large-
scale Muslim in-migration into Kolkata started only during the late 18th
century and picked up real pace in the early 19th century as the city devel-
oped as a major industrial, commercial and administrative centre in eastern
India under the British East India Company’s rule.4 Calcutta became the
destination of fortune-seekers from all walks of life and from all parts
of the subcontinent. Muslims of every trade and occupation thronged
the city. Professions like cooking, water-carrying, tailoring, masonry, and
haircutting became almost the exclusive domain of migrant Muslims of
the city. Trade in dry and seasonal fruits, horses, skin, and hide brought
Muslims from as far-flung areas as Peshwar, Punjab and Rajasthan into
the city. Similarly, Muslim traders in general merchandise and wholesale
goods from areas such as Kutch and Hallar in Gujarat, commonly referred
to as the Kutchi Memans and Bohras;5 seafaring Muslims from Tamil
Nadu (Maraykars); and milkmen from Uttar Pradesh (Ghosis and Gaddis)
also settled in Calcutta. Apart from the trans-regional migrants, another
group of Muslims who eventually joined the swelling ranks of Muslims in
the city were those from the eastern parts of Bengal who were primarily
engaged in occupations such as petty clerkships, bookkeeping and book-
binding. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, which had resulted in large-scale
persecution of Muslims in northern India, was also another factor that had
played an important role in bringing large numbers of Muslims in the city
(Siddiqui 1974: 21).
Another process, which resulted in the development of extensive Muslim
neighbourhoods in Kolkata, involved the deportation of family members
of the erstwhile Indian princely states and their subsequent resettlement
in the city close to the headquarters of British Rule. The family mem-
bers, retainers and staff of Tipu Sultan and Wajid Ali Shah, the rulers of
Mysore and Awadh, who were defeated and deposed in 1798 and 1856,
22 Construction of communal geographies
respectively, were thus allocated properties in Tollygunge and Metiabruz
in southern parts of the city. Here they set up large establishments com-
plete with institutions of cultural reproduction such as mosques, khan-
quahs, madrasahs, and imambarahs, all of which steadily led to the creation
of vibrant and heterogeneous Muslim settlements around them.
Even though the pattern of Muslim migration and settlement in Kolk-
ata has never really been systematically compiled, except only occasionally
in works such as in Kenneth McPherson’s The Muslim Microcosm: Cal-
cutta 1918–1935 (McPherson 1974) and M.K.A. Siddiqui’s The Muslims
of Calcutta (Siddiqui 1974), existing literature on various aspects of the
Muslim experience in the region suggests that Muslims in Kolkata were,
in the main, a migrant community of settlers who came either for finding
a livelihood or for seeking refuge in the growing city under the British
rule. Nevertheless, in course of time, they developed into an important
community who played a very essential part in the city’s social and eco-
nomic life, infusing it, as they did, with their own cultural artefacts and
occupational expertise. The Gole Kothi at Chitpur, the famous Nakhoda
mosque and the dargah at Moula Ali are all instances of a vibrant Islamic
cultural life in the city during the period. The Madrasah-e-Alia, com-
monly known as the Calcutta Madrasah, was a unique institution built
at the request of the city’s Muslims during the governor-generalship of
Warren Hastings in 1780 and drew Muslim scholars from all over North
India who came to study in it. Kolkata had also, for long, been an impor-
tant centre for the publication and dissemination of Urdu literature, and
some of the earliest Urdu newspapers are said to have been published from
Kolkata since as early as 1822.6
Although, it falls beyond the scope of this work to document the vari-
ous facets of Muslim presence in the city during the early phase of the
community’s settlement, what remains relevant is that far from being a
marginalised and stigmatised entity, the Muslims, with their diverse eth-
nic and occupational backgrounds, figured centrally in Kolkata’s socio-
economic life. But another fact that also remains relevant is that Muslim
experience in Kolkata has always been spatialised to a very great extent.
This is owing to the fact that the community has shown a distinct prefer-
ence to settle in a few specified areas of the city since the very beginning.
Early Muslim settlers in Kolkata are found to have preferred congregating
in groups, and pocket-like Muslim neighbourhoods have existed within
the city’s geography since the earliest years of the community’s presence in
it (Siddiqui 1974). However, two significant features marked such residen-
tial concentrations; first, they were usually regionally constituted, which
meant that migrant Muslim groups from different regions of India settled
in different continuous stretches of the city that eventually developed
 Construction of communal geographies 23
into neighbourhoods; and, second, most such neighbourhoods displayed
an occupational basis specialising in one trade or another meant for urban
consumption. Thus glass-makers from Uttar Pradesh settled in Cossipore,
milkmen from Bihar on the B.T. Road, dealers in skin and hide from Pun-
jab around Colootola, traders in dry fruits and woollen garments from the
North-West Frontier Provinces and Kashmir in Mechuabazar, Rajasthani
artisans near their traditional Hindu Marwari patrons in the areas around
Burrabazar, and so on (Siddiqui 1974: 13–28).
An interesting feature of these settlements was that while housing size-
able numbers of Muslims, they were not ‘communally’ constituted in the
sense one understands it today.7 Even though social groups in Kolkata are
said to have traditionally maintained their socio-cultural differences from
one another since the earliest years of their settlement in the city, such
differences were usually restricted to the private domain of culture and
family life. Also, it has been pointed out that occupational specialisation
of communities led to inter-dependence among them in the more secular
aspects of life (see Siddiqui 1974). Therefore, it was only much later, and
with changing times and socio-political realities, that some of the differ-
ences came to be highlighted and hierarchised within the city’s social life.
Communal differences among the Hindus and the Muslims in Kolkata
and the structuring of the city’s neighbourhoods around such differences
have been an outcome of the social and political processes that unfolded in
Bengal during the early decades of the last century, processes that forever
altered the existing social relations between the two groups in the city.

Communal reorganisation of the urban landscape:

the musholman paras of Kolkata
The communalisation of identities that took place in Bengal around the
time of Partition and Independence has been well documented in the
works of a number of historians such as Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Suranjan
Das, Joya Chatterji, Francis Robinson, and Mushirul Hasan. They have
variously identified the growing hegemonisation of a Hindu identity and
the emergence of Muslim separatism in the state as factors contributing
to the congealing of the communities around a projected religious identity.
It falls beyond the scope of this work to address them in any detail. This
section, nonetheless, attempts to understand some of the forms that this
heightened sense of communal belonging organised around a perception
of opposition between the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ assumed and the reper-
cussions they had on subsequent Hindu-Muslim relations in Kolkata.
Most notably what occurred was a thorough reorganisation of the urban
landscape into closely bounded and heavily patrolled neighbourhoods for
24 Construction of communal geographies
either community, with Muslims specifically being clustered in widely
heterogeneous groupings in a handful of pockets strewn across the city.

The rise of bhadralok communal politics in the early 20th century

and the social alienation of Muslim groups
Of particular relevance to this work is the development, during the early
20th century, of what historian Joya Chatterji has described as a growing
communalisation of bhadralok identity. Bhadralok, as a term, has, in the
context of Bengal, been used to describe the dominant ‘upper crust of Ben-
gali society’ who enjoyed a ‘despotism of caste, tempered by matriculation’
(Johnson 1973). Along with the title ‘babu’, it implied Hindu culture, fre-
quently upper-caste exclusiveness, sound economic status and possession
of education, and Anglicisation (Chatterji 1994).8 Set within a broader
preoccupation with nationhood and claims to the nation, bhadralok com-
munal identity, as Chatterji points out, was organised around a perceived
superiority of culture which led to the assertion that they, and indeed all
Hindus, were the Bengalis par excellence – the rightful bearers of Bengal’s
destiny, an entitlement that could not be shared by the Muslims who were
intrinsically incapable of undertaking the task.
The upper-caste, Westernised and educated Hindu elite of Bengal’s
society, the bhadralok, had, since the later decades of the 19th century,
begun to see themselves as the standard-bearers of Bengal’s culture and
the vanguards of modernity and progress in the state. They were the intel-
lectual inheritors of the Bengal Renaissance and enjoyed the prerogatives
of education and bhadrata (‘cultivatedness’) which set them apart from
the other groups in society, mostly the chotolok (literally small people, see
Bandyopadhyay 1990: 129), a term generically used to refer to the lower
castes among the Hindus and the Muslims, the latter being seen as lustful
and barbaric, diametric opposites of the righteous and refined Hindus.9
Bhadralok influence in Bengal was particularly noticeable in the realms of
‘culture’ and ‘politics’, and their assumed cultural superiority also led them
to claim a final say in matters of the state.
But much of this self-instituted cultural superiority and political pre-
dominance of the bhadralok was shaken during the 1920s when Muslim
politics began to emerge and consolidate itself in the province (Chatterji
1994: 55–102). Given the presence of a large Muslim population which
accounted for nearly half of the state’s electorate, the threat of separat-
ism and subsequent loss of power loomed large. The Communal Award
(1932) and the Poona Pact that followed soon after radically altered the
balance of power in Bengal and provided a strong basis to rising mis-
givings of the bhadralok.10 The bhadralok were also incensed by the
 Construction of communal geographies 25
gradual rise of Muslim representation in the local boards even in the
Hindu-dominated districts of Bengal through the nomination of Mus-
lim members by the existing administration. All this happened during a
period when the incomes from land holdings were declining steadily due
to a worldwide depression. The rapid decline of the power of rentiers
again worked to the advantage of prosperous tenants who were mostly
Muslims. The Government of India Act 1935 granted voting right to the
upper stratum of the peasants, and for the first time they found a voice
in the legislative arena. This was supported by a Muslim intelligentsia
who had rapidly grown in Bengal due to the government’s promotion of
Muslim education and employment and who had their own grievances
against the bhadralok Hindus.
All these factors, according to Chatterji, converged to sharpen an
already-existing but hitherto dormant bhadralok class interest, which
now began to gain primacy over national issues in their political agenda.
‘Muslim rule’ came to be seen as the great and immediate threat which
had to be somehow rebutted if the bhadralok wished to retain their posi-
tion of power in the province. Instead of relying on the usual religious
or sacred symbols that form the basis of most discourses of communal-
ism, bhadralok identity asserted itself around the idiom of ‘culture’ in a
way that, instead of being a prerogative of a particular social class, the
attribute of culture could be reworked as a quality held in common by
all Hindus irrespective of class or social location. For the first time Hindu
peasants and workers were extracted out of the mass of chotolok and
incorporated into an extended Hindu community. The unbridgeable gap
between the educated and the illiterate ‘castes’ was now spanned. ‘Cul-
ture’ was transformed into an ascriptive attribute. Conversely, all Muslims
spanning across the local ashraf-ajlaf frontier were seen as the bearers of
an alien tradition, uncultivated and uncivil, whose essence was opposite of
all that ‘the Hindu’ stood for. The existing binary of bhadralok-chotolok
in Hindu society was temporarily overcome only to be extended across a
new divide, this time religious instead of caste-based, among the Hindus
and Muslims of Bengal. Chatterji points out how ‘communal discourse
[does not] only putatively unify the “community” for which it claims to
speak; it must also render the other, its “opposite” as a single entity, unified
by a set of shared, abhorrent characteristics’ (Chatterji 1994: 174–175).

The Great Calcutta Killings of 1946

The communalisation that came to define Bengal’s social life in the years
leading up to Independence in 1947 perhaps assumed its most terrible and
sinister form during the mass communal violence that engulfed the city
26 Construction of communal geographies
in August 1946, a relentless spate of inter-communal brutality and man-
slaughter, better known as the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946.
Hindu-Muslim violence had not been uncommon in the early decades
of the 20th century in Kolkata. The first recorded instance of inter-
communal violence was in 1918 and then again in 1926–27, but these
had largely been spontaneous outbreaks triggered by lower-class Muslims
against the privileged Hindus of the city. The outbreak of 1946 was of
an entirely different order; it was ‘highly organized, overtly communal,
linked with institutional politics and manifested an explosive fusion of
communal and national consciousness’ (Das 2000: 282–283). The riot
broke out in the context of the then-in-power in Bengal Muslim League’s
rejection of the Cabinet Mission11 proposals of May 1946 and the party’s
proclamation of Direct Action Day12 on 16 August 1946. Even though
the opposition led by the Bengal Congress was against the idea, Chief
Minister H. S. Shurawardy went on to declare a public holiday in the prov-
ince on that day and in the afternoon addressed a particularly agitated rally
on the necessity of a sovereign homeland for the Muslims. On the other
hand, Hindu public opinion was already organised around a call for undi-
vided India, and Hindus were greatly offended by the continued Muslim
agitations for an inevitable partition and formation of a ‘Muslim state’.13
Consequently, widespread communal rioting struck Kolkata between 16
and 19 August, and the clashes that ensued left more than 4,000 dead
and nearly 100,000 injured. The worst-affected areas were the densely
populated central and northern sections of the city. The Calcutta riot of
1946 is particularly remembered for the ferocity of its violence, and stories
of untold atrocities on part of either party spread like wildfire across the
province, triggering further outbreaks of violence elsewhere.
Even though it took Gandhi’s peace mission in 1947 to bring some
semblance of calm to the still communally charged-up region, the riots
of 1946 had altered fundamentally the relations between the Hindus and
the Muslims, not only in Calcutta or Bengal but throughout India, which
eventually resulted in the partition of the province and, indeed, of India,
following the communal logic.

Partition and the Muslims of Bengal

The partition of Bengal as part of the partition of the country into two
nations, India and West and East Pakistan, in 1947 was a defining moment
that shaped the subsequent history of Muslim experience in the country
as well as in the newly formed state of West Bengal. An immediate con-
sequence of Partition was the dramatic reduction of the Muslims into a
minority community in West Bengal. All members of the community,
 Construction of communal geographies 27
irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, sectarian, and socio-economic differ-
ences, were classed as just ‘Muslims’ who invariably constituted a potential
threat to the stability and integrity of the new state. The concerted series
of massacres and killings, intimidation and murder that regularly happened
in Calcutta and elsewhere ensured that Muslims lived in constant fear of
their lives and property in the state (Das 1993, 2000).
Given this state a collective flight to East Bengal seemed to be the
most practical option to most Muslims in the state. However, the final
decision to either migrate or stay back depended on a host of factors
which included what skills and assets they possessed; how easily they could
transfer them had they chosen to move; what contacts, friends or family
they had there; and how far their prospects as refugees would be in the
new land compared to that of staying back and facing the crisis in India.
Thus while a relocation to the land of their co-religionists seemed to be
an obvious response on part of many Muslims, others among them either
were compelled by circumstances or willingly chose to remain in the
Indian side of the state (Chatterji 2007: 165).
The patterns of Muslim emigration from West Bengal nevertheless
revealed a broad trend: it was only the relatively urban wealthy and edu-
cated classes that relocated with ease while large sections among those who
stayed back were primarily the weak and the poor, those who had a few or
no assets or hardly any contacts or skills to establish themselves across the
border. One finds that in the long run this particular trend has resulted in
Muslims in the state being a particularly underprivileged community whose
disadvantage had been somewhat historically ‘created’ through the peculiar
nature of population movements in the state at the time of Partition.

Staying on: the Muslim situation in Bengal in the immediate

aftermath of Partition
In the bitterly anti-Muslim climate that followed in post-Partition Ben-
gal, Muslims who stayed back adopted strategies of survival which varied
according to their circumstances and socio-economic standing (Chatterji
2007: 171–181). On the whole, there was an overwhelming realisation
that in order to live safely in India they would have to constantly proclaim
their allegiance to the Indian state, to its secular ideals and to the goal of
keeping of communal peace and harmony, for the requirement on their
part had been put in rather clear-cut terms: they had to either ‘assimilate’
and accept their subordinate status or ‘leave’ the country (Hasan 1997: 148;
Chatterji 2007: 172).
It turned out that for the ordinary Muslims who stayed back, the deci-
sion involved accepting greater losses and making more sacrifices than
28 Construction of communal geographies
their more influential counterparts. While for the latter the decision to
remain in India had in the main entailed making a few strategic political
choices and giving up a part of their erstwhile political power, for the
former it entailed a number of compromises that had to be negotiated at
the level of everyday social existence. This entailed repercussions that were
visible largely in terms of a significant contraction in their control over
both symbolic (public) and physical spaces. Ordinary Muslims, for example,
were often seen to voluntarily give up their age-old and entrenched rights
over the observance of public rituals like cow sacrifice and distribution of
beef during Bakr-Id, since they were considered to be hurtful to predomi-
nant Hindu sentiments and often entailed violent communal retributions
in their wake (Chatterji 2007: 178–179). But while such symbolic gestures
were undertaken by the Muslims, these were hardly enough to buy secu-
rity for them. Hindus often saw this gesture not as an act of magnanimity
but rather as a strategic gesture on part of the Muslims who now ‘knew
their true place’ in the new social order. Again, double standards of con-
trol over public ritual space prevailed, since Hindus hardly ever conceded
to the Muslims’ demand that silence be observed around the mosques
at the time of Hindu festivals like Durga Puja and Holi, which involved
noisy processions in many parts of the state, especially in Calcutta. In a
trend visible particularly within the urban spaces of Calcutta, the Hindus
also successfully challenged the rights of the Muslims to bury their dead
in the city’s existing graveyards, which prevented them from observing
their rituals of death in these sacred grounds. In these and several other
ways Muslims were gradually coerced to give up their traditional claims
to public spaces within the new order and retreat ever more into isolated
ghettoised structures. Among many others this renegotiation of public
space was a way in which the steady process of minoritisation14 of Muslims
continued in the state, for once the rights were given up they could hardly
ever be expected to be ‘returned’.
Another trend complementing the earlier process was the gradual reor-
dering of physical space, which typically involved a steady reduction of
such spaces available to Muslims in the state (Chatterji 2007: 181–185).
In the towns and cities of southern West Bengal, boundaries of residen-
tial areas became starkly demarcated. As prominent Hindu areas became
progressively ‘cleansed’ of their Muslim inhabitants, the Muslims hud-
dled together in small, densely populated ‘pockets’, increasingly squeezed
into yet more crowded enclaves which came to possess a distinct air of a
ghetto around them (Basu 1985). In another related but contrasting trend,
rural areas dominated by Muslims gradually absorbed more and more of
those Muslims who had been displaced from other parts of the state, even
from the cities and towns where they could not find safe and suitable
 Construction of communal geographies 29
accommodation. Interestingly, as data suggest, in the years following Parti-
tion, a large number of erstwhile Muslim migrants to East Pakistan, in a
‘reverse’ process of migration, came back to West Bengal and, instead of
going back to their original homes, with the assistance of local Muslims,
chose to stay in Muslim-majority areas, which, they felt, offered more
safety and security than elsewhere. The combined impact of all these
processes was that, both across urban and rural areas, there was a process
of ‘unmixing’15 of populations as Muslims and Hindus got ‘sorted out
[into] clear-cut blocks of communities’ (Chatterji 2007: 182) explicitly
marked out, both socially and geographically, from each other. In Kol-
kata, the main areas of Muslim concentration that emerged after Partition
included the central districts of the city including Park Circus, Topsia and
Beniapukur; the south-western districts from Khiddirpore to Metiaburz
extending up to Rajabagan in the Garden Reach municipality; and scat-
tered pockets in the northern parts of the city such as Rajabazar, Belgachia,
Mechuabazar, Colootola, and Canning Street and parts of Chitpur (Bose
1968; Siddiqui 1974) (see Templates 3 and 4).
There has hardly been any systematic documentation of how the Mus-
lims, who stayed behind, fared. But for most of them life was hardly easy
(see Siddiqui 1969, 2004). The ones in the Muslim-dominated areas along
the border fared the worst and were among the poorest of the state’s
Muslims (Van Schendel 2001). Even for those Muslims, who remained
in the cities, the way of life became fundamentally transformed. While
earlier, city-dwelling Muslims could be seen in terms of a few distinct
‘sub-communal groups’ located in localities clearly marked out from each
other, Muslim neighbourhoods now became more and more ethnically
diverse as they absorbed their co-religionists from different sects and
regions into their folds. They got increasingly cramped in ghetto-like
structures where the quality of life was acutely dismal. While there was a
growing concentration of Muslims of all classes and backgrounds in these
pockets, most of them had to give up their traditional trades, and this
increasingly reduced many of them to a life of abject poverty (Basu 1985:
14–15). Bereft of their traditional trades, they were pushed more and more
to the bottom where they joined the swelling ranks of day-labourers and
the unemployed in the cities (Siddiqui 2004).

Communal prejudice and the ‘demonisation’ of Muslims:

the role of East Bengali refugee narratives
Another process that played a significant role in casting Muslims as the
ontological ‘other’ of the Hindus in the city during the years immediately
following Partition concerns that of East Bengali refugee narratives of
30 Construction of communal geographies
communal violence (Chatterjee n.d.). It has been pointed out that the
narratives of East Bengali Hindu refugees, who came to the city fleeing
communal persecution and rioting around Partition, contained ampli-
fied instances of ferocity and aggressiveness of native Muslim groups,
which further rendered the Muslim as an unwelcome presence in the
city (Chatterjee n.d.). Hindu refugees, who were faced with unexpected
lack of public and institutional sympathy in the new country, readily took
recourse to the language of Muslim communal violence against life, prop-
erty and honour of Hindus in eastern Bengal in order to legitimise their
victimhood and gain public sympathy. The narratives evidently displayed
two predominant strands: first, the more elitist, which were in the least
dismissive of Muslims if not openly anti-Muslim16 and, second, the more
aggressive which sought to reveal the utter ‘cruelty, crudeness, lust and
treachery’ of the Muslim and locate the intrinsic difference in the person-
ality structure of the Hindus and the Muslims, which made it impossible
for the former to coexist socially with the latter (Chatterjee n.d.: 21).
The immediate implication of the refugee rhetoric of prejudice and
antipathy was the growing tendency to grab the lands of West Bengali
Muslims in order to create resettlement colonies in and around Kolkata
(see Map). Many refugee settlements were thus established on lands ‘for-
merly inhabited by Muslim labourers and artisans’ who were ‘replaced by
displaced Hindus from East Pakistan’ (Bose 1968: 33). Large numbers of
Muslims were dispossessed of their homes, leading to their ‘ghettoisation’
in a few neighbourhoods in the city which already had large Muslim
populations (Deb 2000: 68). But perhaps the enduring effect of such nar-
ratives was that they etched a description of Muslims, both non-Bengali
and Bengali, such that it seemed impossible to bridge the gap between
what appeared as two culturally distinct communities, intrinsically dif-
ferent from one another, which could not possibly inhabit shared spaces
without giving rise to mutual loathing and contempt. It was, therefore,
advisable to limit one’s activities and residence among members of one’s
own group in order to avoid further resentment and antagonism.

The communal disturbances of 1964 and 1992

This section will perhaps remain incomplete without a brief perusal of
the events of 1964 and 1992 and the effect they had on Hindu-Muslim
relations in the city. Though Kolkata has not experienced communal dis-
turbances that are any way comparable in kind, intensity and frequency,
to those that have troubled the cities in northern and western India, those
two episodes have played a significant role in congealing the already bitter
and mutually antagonistic relations between the Hindus and the Muslims
 Construction of communal geographies 31
of the city. While enduring cultural prejudice towards Muslims and the
spaces they inhabit had led to a steady drawing of boundaries around
them, these subsequent outbreaks of communal disturbances in the city
only increased the apprehension of Muslims and brought them in increas-
ing numbers to the few neighbourhoods which already had large Muslim
populations. Understandably, a preponderance of numbers gave a sem-
blance of assurance to these Muslims who felt it was no longer safe to
continue living in the more mixed areas of the city.
The disturbance of 1964, following the Hazratbal incident, was the first
of its kind to affect the city after Independence. Communal violence had
broken out across northern India once word spread that a relic of the
Prophet Muhammad had suddenly disappeared from the Hazratbal Shrine
in Srinagar, Kashmir, in December 1963 and that this was a deliberate act
of desecration by the Hindus (Saxena 1991: 53). It assumed particularly
grave forms across the border in East Pakistan where the resultant commu-
nal flare-up led to large-scale persecution of the local Hindu population,
particularly in the bordering districts of Jessore and Khulna. This formed
the immediate context of the eruption of a spate of violence in Kolkata
between 10 and 13 January 1964, where Muslim areas were systematically
singled out for action. Even though some Hindu slums were ransacked in
eastern Kolkata, Muslims bore the worst of the violence. Especially Mus-
lim settlements in the central part of the city around Beniapukur, Entally
and Sealdah were targeted, and the worst to suffer were the Muslim slums
along the Sealdah-Ballygunge railway line, which were completely razed
to the ground and whose inhabitants were ousted (Das 2000: 290). Large
numbers of Muslims had to flee the city, where nearly 7,000 people were
arrested for having played a direct role in the riots.17
The 1964 riots rudely disturbed the veneer of inter-communal nor-
malcy that was slowly being forged in the city since the troubled times
of Partition. Though otherwise short-lived in public memory, these riots
managed to strengthen the boundaries between the communities, both
social and spatial, in Kolkata.
The eventual development of secular politics among the East Bengali
refugees, and the spread of the Left movement, managed ever since to
keep communal forces under control in the city, a factor that was largely
responsible for the near absence of communal violence in West Bengal,
in general, and in Kolkata, in particular, in the following decades. This,
however, received a rude shock by the events of 1992, when communal
violence once again disturbed the city.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque in Ayod-
hya, on December 1992 took place in the context of the Ramjanmab-
hoomi movement, which claimed that the mosque was built on the
32 Construction of communal geographies
(mythical) birthplace of Lord Rama, the Hindu god, and hence stood on
land that rightfully belonged to the Hindus. The complete destruction of
the mosque by a group of Hindu kar sevaks triggered one of the biggest
communal upheavals in post-independent India, one that was followed
by several months of rioting across the country. Even though the level
of violence was negligible in West Bengal compared to other states in
India, Kolkata recorded relatively high levels of violence between 7 and
10 December 1992. However, a predominant feature of the 1992 dis-
turbances was that the emphasis was not on physical assaults but rather
on looting, arson and destruction of property. Consequently those who
were killed, the official figure provided is 33, mostly lost their lives to
police firing rather than open clashes between mobs, stabbings and knife
slashes. Again, the worst-affected areas during 1992 also lay outside the
traditional riot zones of the city that bore the maximum brunt of the
violence of 1946 and 1964. Rather, they lay in the south-western and
eastern parts and included the rapidly growing Muslim neighbour-
hoods such as Garden Reach, Metiburz, Tapsia, Tiljala, and Park Circus,
where Muslim slums were systematically targeted for concerted action
by marauding Hindu mobs (Das 2000: 292). Even though the violence
was quickly brought under control by the ruling Left Front government,
it left an indelible mark in the minds of Muslims in the city who once
again became apprehensive about their safety and security. In particular,
it affected a new generation of Muslims in Kolkata, for whom ‘insecu-
rity’ was largely a thing of the past until then. The events of 1992 made
Muslims re-evaluate their status in the city and rekindled, once again,
the tendency to huddle in pockets of their own away from those of their
Hindu counterparts, who, on their part, became increasingly suspicious of
the sword wielding, pillaging ‘Muslims’, and fiercely guarded their own
territories from them.
Thus it was a combined process of redrawing boundaries and con-
structing cognitive maps18 (Suttles 1972: 22) of urban space which now
guided the actions and interactions of the dominant – and with time the
subordinate – groups in Kolkata’s social landscape. It was the boundary
itself, and not the cultural features that it enclosed, that assumed signifi-
cance, with the sense of self and ‘other’ being derived from perceived lines
of difference than from actual social intercourse with the other commu-
nity (Barth 1969: 204). In Kolkata, the pre-conceptualisations and images
of the Muslim that were handed down from the troubled days of Parti-
tion and the population movements thereafter etched in the minds of the
dominant Hindu groups an idea of a community that was perpetually
a suspect and an unwelcome ‘other’ in the city’s social life. It, therefore,
appeared only right that they stay confined within distinctly marked out
 Construction of communal geographies 33
pockets that could be kept apart and avoided by the ordinary Hindu. Mus-
lim neighbourhoods or the musholman para thus came to be cognitively
classified as a negatively constituted space that is better kept at a distance
from the city’s mainstream.

Conclusion
At present the demographic distribution of the Muslims of Kolkata more
or less follows the patterns that had emerged by the 1960s, notably with
concentrations in the north, central and southern parts of the city (see
Map N. K. Bose). The continued instances of communal hounding of
Muslims that have occurred elsewhere, in other cities across the Indian
subcontinent – the worst being the Gujarat riots of 2002, have only made
Muslims more apprehensive and more fearful of residing in ‘mixed’ areas
of the city. Each passing incident has only brought in increasing numbers
of Muslims into the already so defined Muslim neighbourhoods of Kol-
kata. A perceived safety provided by a preponderance of number, a largely
unhindered Islamic cultural milieu and a general feeling of ‘comfort’ seem
to be the primary reasons behind the decision of most of the city’s Mus-
lims to reside in these neighbourhoods. These musholman paras, as they
are colloquially referred to, nonetheless, continue to carry enormous sym-
bolic and social baggage, identified as they are as zones of the ‘other’, and
hence perpetually unknown and, in the least, avoidable for the ordinary
city-dweller of Kolkata.
The in-migration of mostly lower-class, migrant Muslims has signifi-
cantly affected the social composition of these Muslim pockets of the city.
While the more affluent sections among Kolkata’s Muslims had already
left in the years around Partition, whatever small proportion of the middle
classes that remained behind got increasingly swamped by the overwhelm-
ing numbers of lower and lower-middle classes who continued to stream
into these neighbourhoods propelled by kin ties and concerns of the kind
listed earlier. This, along with a pressure on housing facilities and general
inadequacy of civic amenities, worked to give the existing Muslim neigh-
bourhoods the general ambience of a ‘ghetto’. Nonetheless, owing to the
inherent heterogeneity in their social composition – apart from differ-
ing class locations, resident Muslims also display great diversity in their
linguistic, ethnic, caste, and sectarian affiliations – such neighbourhoods
have rarely been able to develop the kind of institutional over-organisation
characteristic of the classical Jewish ghetto (Wacquant 2004). Instead they
remain congested and dilapidated spaces, sites of segregation and spoilt
identities whose inhabitants appear to be homogeneous collectivities from
the outside, an attribute rendered to them by the relentless ascription of
34 Construction of communal geographies
an abstracted and valorised identity – in this case, religious – over all other
possible ones.
In the chapters that follow, I trace the everyday life and experiences of
Muslims in one such neighbourhood of Kolkata, namely Park Circus.

Notes
1 The literature on ghettoes is very wide and varies from the ecological perspective
provided by Louis Wirth (1928) and others of the Chicago School to the more
critical and analytical framework given by Loic Wacquant (2007). For our present
purpose we can following Peter Marcuse define a ghetto as an area of spatial con-
centration used by forces within the dominant society to separate and to limit a
particular population group defined as racial, or ethnic or foreign, and held to be,
and treated as inferior by the dominant society (Marcuse 2005: 17).
2 Aristide Zolberg’s phrase used in his address on the subject of asylum-seekers and
refugees at the British academy in 2005, as quoted in J. Chatterji (2007: 182).
3 The Nawabs of Bengal were subhadars (provincial governors) of the Mughal rule
whose post was established for governing the principality of Bengal. Job Char-
nock, often referred to as the founder of Calcutta, is said to have obtained the
license to build the first factory of the British East Indian Company near the
Hoogly river in 1691 from the then Nawab of Bengal. Charnock’s, successor
Sir John Goldbrough, obtained further concession from Prince Azimusshan (the
grandson of Aurangzeb), and bought the three villages of Kalikata, Gobindopur
and Sutanuti in 1693 which eventually developed into the city of Kolkata.
4 Charnock is said to have played an important role in this regard issuing as he did
a farmaan inviting artisans and traders from all communities to come and settle in
the newly developing centre (Siddiqui 1974: 14).
5 The Gujarati trading Muslim communities, particularly the Katchi Memans, are
credited to have built the chief mosque in Kolkata, namely the Nakhoda Masjid
since 1926.
6 Jam-e-Jahan Numa, the Urdu edition of Samachar Darpan, is said to be one
of the earliest Urdu newspaper in the region. Others included Aina-i-Sikandar
(1833–40) and Mah-i-Alam-Afroz (1833–41) (Siddiqui 1974: 24).
7 Here I refer to Gyanendra Pandey’s usage of the concept in his work The Construc-
tion of Communalism in Colonial North India (Pandey 1990). Pandey sees the sharp-
ening of Hindu and Muslim religious identities with respect to each other during
the last two centuries as an outcome of policies of the colonial age.
8 The Bengali bhadralok as distinct from the Western ‘middle classes’ were not urban
groups of traders, entrepreneurs or salaried professionals, but rather products of
the system of property relations created by the permanent settlement of Bengal.
They were a rentier class whose basis of power lay in intermediary tenural rights
to rents from the land. As new Western education became available from the early
19th century many of the bhadralok took enthusiastically to it since there was an
inherent prestige attached to it which derived not only from the access it offered
to opportunities under the Raj but also from the fact that it was still the preserve
of the privileged. With time Western education became a new way of maintaining
old pre-eminences in Bengali society. As Chatterji, borrowing Bourdieu’s terms,
writes, ‘An aristocracy of wealth had begun to transform itself (at least in its own
eyes) into an aristocracy of culture’ (Chatterji 1994: 12).
 Construction of communal geographies 35
9 Such representations of the Hindu and the Muslim are found in a large number
of literary productions of the times including the works of Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee, Romesh Chandra Dutt, Nabinchandra Sen, and Saratchandra Chatto-
padhyay (for a critical reading of some selected writings, see Joya Chatterji 1994:
155–166).
10 While the Communal Award allotted fewer seats to the Hindus in the State Leg-
islative Assembly than even what their numbers warranted, the Poona Pact put
further constrains on the power of high-caste Hindus in the Assembly. Meanwhile
the inability of the Bengal Congress to form an alliance with the Muslim tenant–
dominated Krishak Praja Party over disagreements on rents led the latter to desert
the Congress and support the League, which further isolated bhadralok politics (see
Chatterji 1994: 15).
11 The Cabinet Mission, set up in 1946, was a constitutional scheme to ensure a
smooth transfer of power from the British government to a united, even though
federated dominion of India. The Plan called for two groups of Muslim-majority
provinces in the north-western and eastern parts of India, along with a Hindu
group occupying southern and central India with a central government located in
Delhi. Since the balance of powers seemed unfavourable to the Muslim League, in
the events that followed, it eventually withdrew its support from the proposals of
the Mission.
12 This was one of the two proposals passed in a meeting of the Muslim league
Working Committee on 29 July 1946 where Jinnah called for a programme
of Direct Action whereby the League, in order to display the withdrawal of its
support of the Cabinet Mission proposals, would stop cooperating with the gov-
ernment and ‘bid goodbye to constitutional methods’ by organizing a ‘universal
Muslim hartal’ on 16 August 1946.
13 It is useful to remember that during this time the demographic composition of
undivided Bengal was particularly complex, with Muslims being in the majority
(56 per cent) and Hindus following close behind (42 per cent). Nevertheless, Mus-
lims were concentrated in the eastern part of the province than the west, where the
city of Calcutta was located (Jalal 1994).
14 For an elaboration of the process of ‘minoritisation’ see Gupta (1999: 2320).
15 Aristide Zolberg’s phrase used in his address on the subject of asylum-seekers and
refugees at the British academy in 2005, as quoted in J. Chatterji (2007: 182).
16 For example Dipesh Chakrabarty’s reading of the essay compilation Chere Asha
Gram and Manas Ray’s autobiographical article Growing Up Refugee cast the remem-
bered homeland as an essentially Hindu one, where the Muslim was not given a
space. The Bengali Muslim, however, found place in terms of kinship, though he
was reduced to the figure of the eternal peasant, hardworking and compliant, exist-
ing at the margins of the household (see Chakrabarty 1995; Ray 2000).
17 There has been very little documentation of the events of 1964; for details one
can refer to Suran Das’s article (Das 2000). A description of the events can
also be found in a number of archival sources such as the papers of Keesings
Contemporary Archives (July 18–25, 1964: 20185) [accessed on 9 Novem-
ber, 2013 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/13/
newsid_4098000/4098363.stm].
18 According to Suttles, cognitive maps provide a set of social categories for differ-
entiating between those people with whom one cannot safely associate and for
defining the concrete groupings within which certain levels of social contact and
social cohesion obtain’ (Suttles 1972: 22).
2 Park Circus
A profile of a Muslim neighbourhood

The neighbourhood of Park Circus, which provides the backdrop for this
study, is a multi-ethnic, predominantly Muslim neighbourhood located
in central Kolkata almost adjacent to the Central Business District of the
city, which lies to its north and west (see Template 1). As an official unit,
the neighbourhood’s boundaries roughly coincide with those of Ward
64 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Thus it lies between
a stretch of Park Street and Suhrawardy Avenue in the north and Beck
Bagan Row and Samsul Huda Road in the south, while a part of AJC
Bose Road and Bright Street (along with Tiljala Lane and Gorachand
Avenue) mark its western and eastern boundaries, respectively. Along with
these roads, which are also some of the busiest thoroughfares of the city,
four other multi-lane roads, namely Theatre Road, Circus Avenue, Syed
Amir Ali Avenue, and New Park Street, form the principal arteries of
the neighbourhood and connect it to other parts of the city, to its north,
south, east, and west. Locationally, Park Circus is recognised in the city
by its famous seven-point crossing, which lies roughly at the centre of its
northern boundary. But the crossing itself belongs to the unmarked urban
span of the city and does not associate with any particular neighbourhood
as such. There is a four-point crossing on Syed Amir Ali Avenue, made
by the Congress Exhibition Row, which cuts through the former at near
about right angles in an east-west stretch. This crossing, popularly referred
to as the Zeeshan More (after a popular Mughlai restaurant), forms the
nodal point with respect to which reference to any place inside the neigh-
bourhood is usually made.
As a neighbourhood, Park Circus holds a very strategic location in
relation to the city. Given the peculiar physical layout of Kolkata, with
its long but constricted north-south stretch, Park Circus has all through
occupied a central position in relation to the major landmarks of the city.
The busy Sealdah Railway station that connects the city to the mofussils
and the immediate suburbs and carries one of the heaviest commuters’
 Park Circus 37
traffic in the city lies a few kilometres to its north, leading up to the
residential areas of Rajabazar, Maniktala and Shyambazar. To its west and
north-west lies the Central Business District of the city covering Espla-
nade and Dalhousie Square, which are well connected with the neigh-
bourhood via Park Street and Theatre Road. Further north-west is the
very busy Howrah railway station, which connects Kolkata to the rest of
the country by long-distance trains. The traditionally fashionable parts
of the city, namely the upper stretches of Park Street, Chowringhee and
the area around New Market, lie within a few kilometres of the place. To
its south, Park Circus has the upmarket, predominantly Hindu residential
localities of Ballygunge, which further lead up to Gariahat and Gol Park,
the haven of urbane middle-class Bengali life in the city. The opening of
the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass (popularly, the EM bypass), a long belt-like
road that stretches along the entire eastern face of the city, nearly a decade
and a half ago, has further raised the locational advantage of the neighbour-
hood. The Park Circus connector is, in fact, one of the most important
roads connecting the central city areas to the newly developed townships,
educational institutions and business districts to the east, via the EM bypass.
The bypass has also eased the neighbourhood’s link to the city’s domestic
and international airport. Alongside these, Park Circus has some of the best
educational institutions of the city, which fall within or very close to the
neighbourhood. Further, a number of respectable medical institutions such
as the Chittaranjan Hospital and the Belle Vue Clinic lie in its close vicinity.
Given all these, the intrinsically ‘Muslim’ identification of the neigh-
bourhood, for which it has been known in the city since the days of its
inception, does not immediately strike a casual visitor. The wide diversity
in the ethnic composition and social class affiliation of its present inhab-
itants further dilutes the image of a closed Islamic space, traditionally
attributed to ‘Muslim neighbourhoods’ in Indian cities. . . . Indeed, as
a neighbourhood, Park Circus presents an eclectic mix of some of the
most expensive enclaves in Kolkata, while housing a number of its poor-
est slums.1 Enclaves as units symbolising voluntary self segregation of
communities as against the enforced exclusion characteristic of ‘ghettos’
are found in more recent sociological literature on urban space (Peach
2005, Varady 2005). Apart from the overwhelming majority of diverse
Muslim groups, who currently comprise around 70 per cent of its popu-
lation,2 the area has a significant number of Hindus and Christians of
various linguistic affinities along with a small number of Chinese and
Anglo-Indians.3 Because of this wide variety in population, the physi-
cal and social space of Park Circus is often seen to be sharply fractured
in terms of class and community, at both macro- and micro-levels. This
particular feature explains why even relatively short distances in physical
38 Park Circus
space often translate into major difference in terms of social space in the
neighbourhood, a phenomenon which I will dwell on in greater detail
later. In the section that follows I will trace the historical transformation
of the neighbourhood over the course of the last century, from an affluent
Muslim residential enclave4 to its present status of an expensive, albeit, in
most part, a dilapidated and deteriorating, inner-city area mostly inhab-
ited by lower-class migrant Muslims.

A brief historical sketch

Historically, Park Circus had come up as an exclusive residential enclave
for the upper-class ashraf Muslims in the city during the early decades of
the 20th century (McPherson 1974: 5). The latter had chosen to move
out of the more overcrowded and congested neighbourhoods in the north,
which had been the traditional centre of Muslim settlement in the city in
search of better environs provided by the newly developing area, close to
the elite European and Hindu quarters in the south such as Ballygunge
and Alipore. The rise of an educated Muslim middle class in Bengal,
which had its roots primarily among the landed gentry, around the same
period, ensured a steady growth of Muslim population in the area, owing
to the continuous in-migration of such families into the neighbourhood
(Chatterji 2007: 161). Primarily Bengali speaking, and with bhadralok-
like ambitions, these families established themselves either in the adminis-
trative outfit of the colonial government or in the modern professions and
maintained feasible social relations with their Urdu-speaking neighbours,
despite linguistic and cultural differences. Many Muslim notables who
played a central role in Bengal’s social and political life during the time
such as the Shurawardy brothers, Fazl-ul-Haque, S. Wazed Ali, Kazi Abdul
Wadud, and Nawab Samsul Huda had, among others, been residents of the
neighbourhood. In its earlier days, Park Circus, along with Muslims, also
had a good number of Anglo-Indians and a few Europeans, who preferred
keeping to themselves in a few select streets of the neighbourhood. But up
to the time of Partition, Park Circus remained an elite Muslim neighbour-
hood, inhabited mostly by the well-to-do, respectable classes of the com-
munity, though other less privileged groups had started trickling in since
the early 1940s in the wake of communal polarisation that had begun
to gather momentum in the city in the preceding years (Bose 1965: 96).
Partition, and the events around it, however, formed the watershed, fol-
lowing which the fortunes of the neighbourhood saw a steady decline. By
the mid-1940s, the neighbourhood had already become a principal Muslim
settlement in the city, one which experienced intermittent outbreaks of
communal violence during the riots of 1946–47 (Das 1993; Chatterji 2007
 Park Circus 39
Also recorded in the Calcutta Disturbance Commission of Enquiry, Record
of Proceedings, Minutes of Evidence Vol. 1&2). The situation remained
tense and with Partition most of the wealthy Muslims who could afford it
left for East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Their places were rapidly filled up
by Hindus coming from the other side of the border and also other parts of
Kolkata. By the end of the 1950s there were only a very few ashraf Muslims
left in the neighbourhood. There remained, however, a considerable sec-
tion of poorer Muslims, mostly small traders and unskilled or semi-skilled
workers who had, during the 1940s, settled on the fringes of Park Circus
owing to the relative security the Muslim-majority neighbourhood seemed
to provide. During this period there was also a steady trickle of Muslims
from other parts of Kolkata who came to seek shelter in the neighbourhood
following the persecution unleashed on Muslims in the city in the years
immediately following Independence (Bandyopadhyay 2009: 51).
However, it was only after the disturbances of 1964 when Muslims
belonging to different socio-economic groups started coming to Park
Circus in substantial numbers. A large number of them came from other
parts of Kolkata, which experienced flare-ups in the aftermath of the
Hazratbal incident, to find shelter among their co-religionists residing in
the area. The years leading up to the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971
also saw the return of a good number of Bengali-speaking Muslims to the
neighbourhood who had realised that their life chances were rather slim in
East Pakistan under the linguistic hounding pursued by the West Pakistani
army. These Muslims were mostly an impoverished lot who sought to get
absorbed into the city’s vast informal economy in order to find a foothold
in the uncertain future that awaited them in the new country. Finally the
1970s and 1980s saw a steady in-migration of labourers from various parts
of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa that further swelled the ranks
of the poor and underprivileged Muslims in the region.
A collective memory of a traditional Muslim presence, which provided a
relative sense of security of number; the presence of a large number of Islamic
religious and cultural institutions; and a generally higher level of mutual
tolerance among communities in the neighbourhood seem to be the main
factors behind the crowding of migrant Muslim groups in Park Circus. The
latter is a movement that continues even today, though possibly at a slower
pace, owing to an almost absolute contraction of available building space and
the consequent difficulties in finding suitable accommodation in the area.
The rapid increase in the number of underprivileged Muslims is cor-
roborated by the growth of slums of all sizes spilling out from every usable
space in the neighbourhood. While, on the one hand, traditional slum
settlements of Darga Road, Tiljala, Dilkhusha, Kasiabagan, and Bright
Street along the eastern stretch of the neighbourhood have experienced a
40 Park Circus
steady growth in size and population density, smaller, more scattered slums
housing fewer households have appeared in the recesses of larger buildings,
hidden by the modern apartment blocks in the western part of the neigh-
bourhood. Over the years, as the number of Muslims, especially poorer,
non-Bengali Muslims, continued to increase, the Hindu Bengali-speaking
middle classes, who had come after Partition to settle in the neighbour-
hood, gradually left in search of ‘better’ environs elsewhere in the city. At
present, except for parts of the area west of Syed Amir Ali Avenue, which
has a visible admixture of wealthy Hindus (mostly the non-Bengali Mar-
waris and Punjabis) and Muslims and a small number of Christians, Hin-
dus mostly live together in continuums along certain well-defined streets
of the neighbourhood (like Talbagan and Orient Row), which are usually
well separated from the Muslim quarters (Template 2).
Park Circus, in contemporary times, has moved far away from its image
of being an ashraf Muslim neighbourhood, becoming instead a haven for
poor and underprivileged Muslims who live in teeming numbers in the
various large and small slums of the neighbourhood. While a section of the
middle classes and elites among the Muslims still reside here, they are usually
the ones who have been forced to stay back either owing to persisting dif-
ficulties in finding accommodation elsewhere in cleaner, more ‘cosmopoli-
tan’ neighbourhoods or because of the otherwise strategic location that the
neighbourhood occupies. Mindful of their standing, these groups maintain
careful social distances from their more unfortunate co-religionists.

Identity and urban space: a ‘Muslim’ neighbourhood?

The predominantly Muslim character of Park Circus as a neighbourhood,
as pointed out earlier, is not immediately apparent to a visitor. Entering
the locality from any of its main roads, which are also some of the busiest
and most important roads of the city, one finds a fairly organised urban
setting, although visibly unlike the newer and planned sections of Kolkata
or of any other metropolis elsewhere in the country. Residential blocks,
public offices, private enterprises, and local businesses line the principal
roads that carry traffic of every description, ranging from taxis, private cars
and buses to auto-rickshaws, motorbikes, cycles, and even cycle rickshaws.
The age-old tram, a feature of Kolkata’s traditional public transport system,
still plies along Park Street and Syed Amir Ali Avenue, while its counter-
part, the hand-pulled rickshaw, has receded to the inner lanes and bylanes
of the locality. Only once in a while can they be seen crossing the prin-
cipal intersections at breakneck speed only to disappear into the narrow
alleys on the other side. Tea stalls, small eateries, fruit sellers, and vendors
of every kind are found along rather ill-maintained pavements at regular
 Park Circus 41
intervals. At this level what strikes an observer are the general features of
a centrally located neighbourhood of any old city where traditional struc-
tures continue to coexist with new and developing modern facilities. The
only signs of a sizeable Muslim population are the regularly noticeable
domes and minarets of mosques, along with the hoardings and advertise-
ments of small and large commercial establishments in Urdu. Muslim
women in burkas and nakabs and men in skullcaps and kurta-pyjamas
going about their daily chores hint at the potential ‘Muslim mahol’ of the
neighbourhood. However, as one ventures inside, off the main roads into
its numerous inner streets, lanes, bylanes, and alleys, one gradually observes
the intrinsic ghetto-like character of the place.
Taking a walk around Park Circus one finds, along with the mosques
that occur at frequent intervals, numerous majars and imambarahs, which
are equally important places of worship for practicing Sunni Muslims.
Most of them are neither big nor ostentatious but that does not lessen
the significance they hold in the religious life of the locals. Of the 17
mosques in the neighbourhood, only a few occupy larger spaces or have
proper buildings. Khanqahs and Madrassas, which are the principal sites
for discussing, deliberating and transmitting Islamic knowledge and
modes of conduct, are also visible in most parts of the neighbourhood
in varying numbers. Like the mosques and majars, not all of these are
conspicuous either. While some of them operate from their own com-
pounds, most occupy parts of mosques or even residential buildings, with
only small boards announcing their existence. There are several state-
sponsored Urdu-medium schools in the area, along with a couple of
Islamic schools meant for imparting religious education to local children.
Most hoardings and advertisements are in Urdu, and shops carry Arabic
and Urdu names printed in English, Arabic and Bengali on the shop
boards. Shops selling Islamic books, items of worship, ittars (perfumes),
kafans (coffins and shroud for the dead), embroidery material, and even
boutiques specialising in burka making are quite common in the locality,
although mostly off the main roads. There is also a hakim’s shop specialis-
ing in yunani medicine which continues to draw a considerable clientele
from the local population.
Park Circus is also one of the very few neighbourhoods in Kolkata
where beef is still available openly. Following an order of the state govern-
ment a few years back, all beef shops in the city were restricted from oper-
ating openly in public spaces, since they were seen as hurting predominant
Hindu sentiments. Consequently, most beef shops were either relocated to
interior spaces away from main roads or necessarily covered with a piece
of tarpaulin in the front to hide them from the public eye. In Park Circus,
while some partially covered beef shops are found along Beck Bagan Row
42 Park Circus
(which leads to the neighbourhood’s principal market), there are numer-
ous open beef shops selling various qualities of meat in every part of the
neighbourhood with a particular preponderance in its southern and south-
eastern parts where relatively unmixed Muslim settlements are found. Eat-
eries specialising in beef items are also abundant, though again necessarily
located in the inner recesses of the neighbourhood. The area as such has
several well-known restaurants specialising in Mughlai and Awadhi cuisines
and run by Muslims, but such places sport conspicuous ‘no-beef ’ signs in
order to retain the large non-Muslim clientele, especially from other parts
of the city. ‘No-beef ’ signs are also a feature of the numerous meat shops
selling mutton and lamb ostensibly for the same purpose.
Certain pockets in the neighbourhood carry names like Chooripara
(glass-bangle-makers), Ayenapara (mirror makers) and Kasai Para (butch-
ers), all of which point to the presence of traditional Muslim trades at
some point of time in the area. Street names like Fazl-ul-haq Sarani, Sam-
sul Huda Road, Meher Ali Lane, Balu Hakkak Lane, Dilkhusha Street,
and Suhrawardy Avenue also signify the potentially Muslim character of
the neighbourhood. The local tank and the two adjoining playgrounds
in Kasiabagan constitute the site of Karbala5 for a large part of the city’s
Muslims, and Muharram taziyas are immersed in them every year by Sun-
nis from all across Kolkata.
The entire neighbourhood is found to acquire a heightened festive spirit
during Eid, Muharram and Milad, all of which are celebrated over days with
great pomp and splendour, which is a rare occurrence in any regular neigh-
bourhood of Kolkata. Fridays assume a visible holiday mood, with men
thronging the mosques for the Friday prayer in white kurta-pyjamas and
skullcaps and loudspeakers announcing the calls to prayer and echoing the
religious sermons of the local maulvi for most part of the afternoon. Friday
lunches are still the most awaited meal of the week (as my respondents told
me, and I could not, for a fact, conduct interviews on Fridays), even though
such practices are increasingly being swamped by the uniform Sunday holi-
days recognised by secular enterprises in India. The smell of biryani and
spices wafting through the air, the simultaneous calls of azaan reverberat-
ing through the neighbourhood five times a day from its many mosques,
men and women in caps and burkas, respectively, going about their everyday
lives – all add up to construct a veritable Muslim space in Park Circus.6

Physical layout, ethnic groups and social distances

Although a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood, Park Circus is far
from being a homogenous Muslim space. Even the Muslims themselves
can be divided on the basis of ethnic, linguistic and sectarian allegiances, a
 Park Circus 43
matrix that is further complicated by differences in socio-economic status
among members of these diverse groups.
A description of the physical distribution of the different Muslim groups
in the broader spatial arrangement of communities in the neighbourhood
is, therefore, useful in understanding their respective locations within the
existing socio-spatial setup. It has often been pointed out that differences
in social standing get reflected in the physical locations of social groups
which get maintained through an intricate system of boundaries, both
physical and social, that keep apart one group from the other at both
inter and intra communal levels (Newman and Paasi 1998; Pratt 1998).
However, owing to the existing prejudices in the city around the figure
of the ‘Muslim’ (see Chapter 6) as well as severe compulsions on available
housing space in most Muslim-majority neighbourhoods, one finds that
even relatively short distances in physical space often translates into major
differences in terms of social space. A detailed mapping of the actual
physical spaces occupied by the different groups of Muslims in Park Circus
not only helps in following the existing understanding of neighbourhood
among them but also helps in locating the diverse forms of marginalisation
that Muslim groups belonging to different socio-economic categories
experience on an everyday basis in the neighbourhood.
Park Circus, as a neighbourhood, is a relatively large one and hence it
is useful to divide it into workable units for the purposes of describing its
settlement patterns and the social groups that reside in them. Even though
I have divided the neighbourhood into four broad segments, none of them
actually reflect the kind of segmentation encountered on the ground.
The first segment covers the relatively large section lying to the north
of New Park Street, covering the area between Suhrawardy Avenue and
New Park Street where they branch out of the seven-point crossing in
the west to Gorachand Avenue and Tiljala Lane in the east. Nearly half
of this section is taken up by the Park Circus Maidan (Congress Park)
and settlements are found only in the south and south-eastern sections
along Talbagan Lane, Orient Row, Tiljala Lane, Gorachand Avenue and
Darga Road. The Chittaranjan Hospital falls within the administrative
jurisdiction of the Ward, lies outside its physical boundary albeit in close
vicinity. This segment houses three of the largest Muslim slums in the
area, namely 100 Dilkhusha, Tiljala (70 D) and Darga Lane. These slums
have an entirely Muslim population, except the northern boundary of Til-
jala which has two rows of Hindu households called Moochipara, moochi
(leatherwork and shoemaking) referring to the traditional caste occupa-
tion of the chamars who live here. Most of the Muslims in these slums are
migrants from various parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who work as wage
workers and casual labourers in various petty businesses in nearby areas.
44 Park Circus
They normally speak in Hindi-Urdu, and most of the newer migrants can
barely follow the Bengali language. The inhabitants of Moochipara are
Bengali speakers. Affluent Hindu households of professionals and busi-
nessmen are confined to the stretches of Talbagan Lane and Orient Row
where apart from Bengali-speaking Hindus, Punjabis and Marwaris also
live. Smaller middle-class Hindu settlements are found to the north of
Darga lane up to the Don Bosco School. There are also a few middle-class
households belonging to both Hindus and Muslims on the eastern side of
Darga Road. This segment also has two of the better-known and expen-
sive schools of the city, Mahadevi Birla for Girls and Don Bosco for Boys,
adjacent to the stretch of the Maidan on Darga Road, but these impressive
facilities remain far out of reach of most of the ordinary residents of the
area. Seen at a glance, the area is mostly residential, though small businesses
line up on its fringes mostly in continuum with the local trades of Topsia
and Tangra which lie to its east on Gorachand Avenue. New Park Street,
Suhrawardy Avenue and Darga Road, however, carry a very cosmopolitan
traffic given their layouts as some of the most strategic roads of the city.
The second segment is perhaps the most populous section of the ward.
Relatively smaller, it lies to the south of New Park Street stretching between
the point where New Park Street and Syed Amir Ali Avenue branch out
from the seven-point crossing to Samsul Huda Road in the south and
Bright Street in the east. This section opens towards the busier and more
cosmopolitan face of the ward via Syed Amir Ali Avenue. The Quest Mall,
said to be one of the largest malls in Eastern India, falls in this segment, in
the southern part of Syed Amir Ali Avenue. The Park Circus Tram Depot
also occupies considerable space in the northern part, behind a line of
local businesses and public offices. There are also a couple of churches on
Syed Amir Ali Avenue. However, the southern and south-eastern parts of
the section is almost completely taken up by the slum continuums of Sam-
sul Huda Road, Kasiabagan and Bright Street stretching up to Dilkhusha
Street in the north, all of which have nearly unmixed Muslim populations.
However, unlike the first segment which is almost entirely comprised of
Hindi-Urdu-speaking migrant Muslims, this section has a considerable
proportion of Bengali Muslims, especially in and around New Kasiaba-
gan Lane, Jhowtala Road and R.G Saha Lane. Affluent and middle-class
Muslim households are found to the north of Dilkhusha Street, along
Congress Exhibition Row and Kimber Street. Most of these belong to
the families of the traditional ashraf elites, though there is a growing pre-
ponderance of Bengali-speaking middle-class households among them.
A linear stretch of middle-class Hindu Bengali households are found on
either side of Dilkhusha Street where it branches off from Fazl-ul-Haq
Sarani up to New Kasiabagan Lane. To the west of Dilkhusha Street, lying
 Park Circus 45
between Syed Amir Ali Avenue and Fazl-ul-Haq Sarani is Sahebpara which
was traditionally home to a number of Christians and Anglo-Indians who
resided in these parts. Though most of them have now left the neighbour-
hood, one still finds a few remaining families, along with new Hindu
and Muslim occupants. Unlike the first segment, facilities are compara-
tively modest and cater to local needs. Several government and municipal
schools, healthcare centres, junior and high madrasahs are found in this
part, along with an Islamic School, a Muslim Women’s Training Centre
and Hostel, and a Haj House for facilitating the yearly haj to Mecca. This
segment is also dotted with numerous mosques belonging mostly to the
Sunni order and several small but important khanquahs. Petty business,
local institutions, administrative units occur along stretches of residences,
which vary in form, ranging from proper houses to slum and semi-slum-
like buildings, with no clear marker of outward separation is visible among
the different utilities in the area. As we shall see, most part of this segment,
along with the slum continuums of the first segment comprise one of
the densest and most dilapidated Muslim settlements in Kolkata and, as
such, remains one of the most stigmatised and consciously avoided parts
of the city.
The third segment lies to the west of Syed Amir Ali Avenue and
stretches up to Circus Avenue in the north. Roughly triangular in shape,
this section lies between Syed Amir Ali Avenue in the east, Circus Avenue
in the west and Beckbagan Row in the south. Unlike the two previous
segments, this segment has smaller and fewer slums, except Ayenapara
and the Lal Masjid Basti which are comparatively bigger concentrations.
Again, all the slums in this section are not Muslim settlements. There is
a relatively large Hindu dhangor (scavenger) slum between Lower Range
and Beckbagan Row which continues along the northern length of Beck-
bagan Row although in much a narrower file. Smaller slums, both Mus-
lim and Hindu, housing a few dozen families are found scattered across
the ward mostly along the inner lanes, sometimes concealed behind large
houses and modern apartment building on prime property sites along
the main roads. Again, except for the few slum settlements that are either
predominantly Muslim or Hindu concentrations, most parts of this seg-
ment have relatively mixed populations both in terms of religious and
linguistic affinities. However, a single building housing several households
or a cluster of a few such buildings along a lane is likely to have either
Muslim or Hindu inhabitants, and there is evidently very little intermixing
at the immediate level. The area along Meher Ali Road has several Anglo-
Indian households and a small Chinese enclave. The Park Circus Market
which lies in the southern part of this segment on Beckbagan Row is a
relatively expensive market compared to the one on Bright Street (in the
46 Park Circus
second segment) and has a much wider range of products catering to a
more cosmopolitan and affluent clientele, drawn mostly from outside the
neighbourhood, from other parts of the city. This section also houses sev-
eral large mosques, the most impressive of them being the Lal Masjid (Red
Mosque) on Beck Bagan Row which also serves as an important landmark
in the area. This segment thus displays a comparatively mixed population
and an equally fractured social space containing residences, businesses and
institutions of diverse descriptions varying across a wide range of alterna-
tives. Abject poverty and marginalisation is seen to exist alongside rela-
tively urban middle-class setups, and Muslims, Hindus and Christians live
in close proximity though typically maintaining sharp social boundaries
at the immediate level.
The fourth segment, also roughly triangular in shape lies between Park
Street in the north and Circus Avenue in the south and is bounded by
a section of the AJC Bose Road in the west. Theatre Road, now known
as Shakespeare Sarani, is a prime thoroughfare that runs between Park
Street and Circus Avenue and divides the segment into two sections.
This segment is the most cosmopolitan and affluent section of the ward,
whose primary residents are Marwari, Punjabi and Sindhi business fami-
lies, along with traditional Urdu-speaking Muslim elites. Very few of the
Hindu Bengali-speaking middle classes live here. The area has several small
but scattered slums, all of which are, without exception, hidden behind
modern apartment blocks or business concerns on the main roads. While
located in close physical proximity, the social distance between the hous-
ings and the slums are perhaps the widest compared to any other place in
the neighbourhood. The stretches around Karaya Road and Lower Range
and between Jannagar Road and Circus Row, which are predominantly
Muslim neighbourhoods, still house few Hindu and Christian families.
Even among the Muslims there are both Urdu- and Bengali-speaking
ones. Lower Range also has few Shia and Bohra Muslim families, who
are generally much better-off in comparison to their Sunni counter-
parts. This section also has a large Christian burial ground just off Park
Street, across the entrance to Chooripara, another small Muslim cluster off
Karaya Road. The face of the AJC Bose Road is the fanciest section of the
ward, housing some of the most expensive boutiques, cafes, patisseries and
brand houses in the city. It also has the regional office of the Alliance de
Française, the Bangladesh High Commission, and a famous heritage villa,
Khalil-Manzeel, regularly used for marriages and social gatherings, on it.
Expectedly, few locals can afford to venture into these spaces.
Taking the four segments together, one finds an eclectic mix of diverse
communities and lifestyles, indeed different worlds, cramped together
within the relatively short expanse of an urban ward. Though unanimously
 Park Circus 47
recognised as a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood, it is easy to delin-
eate the stretches that fall outside such a corporate identification. What
remains of the so-labelled Muslim space is further fragmented by differ-
ences in the ethnic and socio-economic standing of their inhabitants.
Understandably, such great diversity in the social constitution of its resi-
dents gives rise to a very intricate system of social boundaries within the
neighbourhood where relatively short distances in physical space come to
signify very large, often insurmountable, distances in social space.7 Indeed,
a stretch of a street or even a short boundary wall might imply significant
difference in terms of social space, and define social positions of those on
either side of them.

Urbanity and community: social space

in the neighbourhood
One aspect immediately apparent to a visitor who wanders into the neigh-
bourhood and walks around it is the hugely dissimilar character of its
public spaces, especially its streets. Some of the more important among
them, like Syed Amir Ali Avenue, Park Street, Theatre Road, New Park
Street, Circus Row and Darga Road are also some of the busiest roads of
the city, and carry a mixed and cosmopolitan traffic, which has very little
to do with the immediate locality. These spaces, though physically located
in the neighbourhood, belong more to the city than otherwise. But a short
walk into the numerous lanes and bylanes that lead away from them into
the neighbourhood, especially towards its south and south-east and along
stretches of Beck Bagan Row, reveals a completely different picture. Here
local ways of life seem to spill out from every corner to claim the public
spaces as their own.8 Signs of everyday life are unmistakably apparent
along the pavements, around the municipal taps, the neighbourhood gro-
cery store, and the idle street corner where local gossip circulates. Women
going about their daily chores, washing and drying, greeting each other
from across the street, men and children bathing along the roadside taps,
poultry scurrying across the street, and an occasional pot cooking biryani
for a communal feast in the locality conjure up images of a rhythm of
life far removed from the frenzied pace of modern urban living. There is
a certain ease in body language and interactions, a general atmosphere of
familiarity and content which marks the pace of life in such places, and
sets them wide apart from their more urbane middle-class counterparts.9
The attribute of Muslimness, referred to earlier, also acquires a defi-
nite persistence in these parts. Given that most of these areas fall along
dense Muslim slums where the sense of community is especially strong,
styles of dressing, manners and body language come together to create an
48 Park Circus
impression of an extant Muslim mahol; an attribute that other parts of the
neighbourhood assume only at certain points in time of the year, particu-
larly during festivals and other community events.
Another attribute especially visible in the southern and south-eastern
parts of the neighbourhood is the general squalor and filth that abound in
the place. Accumulated waste from the day, dust and refuse gather in heaps
along the streets in every corner and lend a general character of shabbiness
and dilapidation to the place. There are no feasible modes of garbage dis-
posal and local authorities turn away putting the blame on the burgeoning
number of poor, migrant Muslims and citing their habitual inattention
to concerns of hygiene for the failure of municipal efforts. That these
are invariably the slum stretches of unmixed Muslim populations seems
to lend further credibility to the common association local Hindus and
sometimes even upper-class Muslims make between the ordinary Muslims
and a tendency towards ‘uncleanliness’; and aids in channelling religious
and class based prejudice into fictitious concerns for hygiene and civic
consciousness.10
Walking through the neighbourhood, one also comes across pockets of
cosmopolitanism in some of its most unexpected quarters. Leaving aside
the more affluent parts of the west and north-west which face away from
the neighbourhood, one finds places where a diverse group of people
come together and interact, following very different codes of conduct
than those evident in other parts of the ward. There is a readier accep-
tance of the stranger (Simmel 1908) and a more tolerant view of others’
ways of lives. The principal market of the neighbourhood locally referred
to as Dhangor Bazaar after a Hindu caste of scavengers who once resided
there, is a case in point. Compared to the Bright Street market, which is
a temporary street market providing basic everyday requirements usually
to the lower and lower-middle classes among the Muslims, this market
is a much larger enterprise offering a wide variety of goods to a diverse
urban crowd. Along with the customary fresh produce, the market also
carries a good supply of exotic fruits and vegetables for the consumption
of local well-to-do Muslims and also a large external clientele. The Park
Circus market is also perhaps the only local market in Kolkata which has a
large supply of fresh and treated pork along with the more common selec-
tions of mutton, chicken and fish, a factor that draws a number of pork
eaters from different parts of the city to its precincts. While the location
of the neighbourhood as such and the market per se, just around Syed
Amir Avenue along Beck Bagan Row, explains its ability to draw a larger
crowd, availability of products such as pork indicates the general distance
of the market form the immediate neighbourhood, which comprises a
largely Islamic cultural space. It is well known that pork carries enormous
 Park Circus 49
symbolic baggage for both Hindus and Muslims, especially for the latter
who do not customarily eat it because of the presence of strong religious
injunctions. However, the social space of the market allows for coexistence
and toleration of others’ preferences and habits, attributes that undergo
drastic changes just outside of it. Muslims, Hindus and Anglo-Indians,
vegetarians and non-vegetarians, people from different parts of India are
seen to be buying and selling in the market, amicably without any prej-
udice towards their own communally tabooed practices on part of the
other. The fact that this happens only yards away from some of the densest
Muslim settlements in the neighbourhood, where interaction across class
and communal boundaries is largely inhibited by social norms, highlights
the significance of the market as a promising multicultural space within
an otherwise closed neighbourhood.
Similar canopies of cosmopolitanism11 can be found in the Park Cir-
cus Maidan, where a diverse group of people, both young and old, from
adjoining areas in the city can be seen sitting or strolling around, and chil-
dren practicing a variety of sports offered by local coaching centres which
have their offices around the park. The better-known restaurants in the
neighbourhood also present similar features, drawing as they do a citywide
clientele of food enthusiasts belonging to different communities, Muslim
and otherwise, who for the time being forget existing food-related taboos
and engage in an easy acceptance and appreciation of other cultures.
The social space of Park Circus also displays variations across different
points in time of the day.12 Daytimes, especially during the weekdays draw
out a more urban, cosmopolitan crowd, which does not necessarily carry
the usual markers associated with inhabitants of a communally distinct
neighbourhood. People seem to shed their communal lifestyles and get
ready to participate in the everyday cycle of urban life and work. Busy
commuters, both from within and outside the neighbourhood throng the
principal streets, and there is a general attitude of non-attachment and
matter-of-fact-ness on the part of the passers-by. The expected signifiers
of community life withdraws to the background and is visible only in the
occasional man in a skullcap or kurta, or a woman in plain dress covering
her head at the call of azaan at midday.
However, as evening progresses, most parts of the neighbourhood begin
to take on a very different aspect. While the more important thorough-
fares continue to carry a relentless stream of traffic until late hours of the
night, their pavements assume an almost deserted look only a little after
sundown. Except along the stretch of Syed Amir Ali Avenue and the
bustling Zeeshan More, the main market, and some of the better-known
restaurants, the area as such lacks any significant pedestrian traffic on its
main streets. Further any pedestrian presence is noticeably male, and one
50 Park Circus
can only occasionally come across a woman going about errands of her
own, unaccompanied by an escort. However, only a little further inside,
the numerous lanes and bylanes present a very different picture. As the
workday closes, people return to their homes and community life, in all
its various forms begins to take precedence. Men, young and old, are seen
to gather in groups around the local grocery stores and tea stalls, women
accompany their wards to tuitions, children play, young girls in burkas and
nakabs pass by, families go out for strolls; it seems as though everybody has
momentarily taken to the streets.
This evening crowd is, however, a very remarkable one and can be
characterised as such by a number of factors. At one level, it is almost
entirely Muslim, a fact evident in styles of dressing, manner and body
language, all of which are characteristic of an unhindered Muslim space.
Local Hindus, especially the middle classes, I was told, generally keep
away from the streets and maintain their distance from it. At another
level, in spite of the neighbourhood being in the heart of Kolkata with a
sizeable section of relatively well-to-do households, the roads are com-
pletely devoid of what might be called a bhadralok presence. The afflu-
ent and the middle classes among Muslims, very much like their Hindu
counterparts, do not seem to approve of mingling with the ordinary
ranks of Muslims in the area, and take every measure to keep away
from engaging in social interactions with them, wherever possible.13
Therefore, apart from the occasional fancy car whizzing by or a sombre
middle-class lady quickening her pace for the odd errand, the whole area
assumes the look of a slum-like neighbourhood, without any indication
of urbanity whatsoever. Suddenly the whole public space becomes the
community’s own, only to be lost during the day when a more cosmo-
politan, mixed crowd takes over.

Local constructions of neighbourhood

While Park Circus figures as a homogenous entity in the popular urban
imaginary of Kolkata owing to its status as a predominantly Muslim
neighbourhood, any considerable time spent in the area reveals that it
is more of an agglomerate of many small but distinct neighbourhoods,
which exist alongside each other but with very large social distances
among them. Spatial stigma (Goffman 1963), which sets apart Park Circus
as a neighbourhood, also functions in different ways within it to create an
impression of multiple localities, each with its own ways of representing
and evaluating the others (Appadurai 1996). Thus, in spite of being put
together in a shared physical space, inhabitants are found to have instituted
social and spatial practices that clearly demarcate their own social worlds
 Park Circus 51
from those of the others, in the process constructing several ‘little neigh-
bourhoods’ each different in character than the other.14
At the broadest level, one can distinguish between the affluent upper
and upper-middle-class localities and the sharp differences they maintain
with their more modest counterparts in the neighbourhood. Residents of
areas like Talbagan, Orient Row, parts of Circus Avenue, Theatre Road, and
the more expensive enclaves in the western part of the ward have evidently
distanced themselves from their immediate neighbourhood, choosing to
keep their activities and associations mostly outside of it. The fact that
neighbourhood clubs like the Park Institute Club, the local Gymkhana
and similar others have recorded a steadily declining participation of these
sections over the years bear testimony to the growing propensity of such
groups to limit their leisure activities and general socialisation elsewhere,
among the similarly disposed set. Certain areas such as Talbagan and Ori-
ent Row are virtually enclaves in themselves with little or no physical
contact with the rest of the neighbourhood. Lying between the Maidan
Grounds and the New Park Street and enclosed by Darga road to the east,
the area forms an exclusive stretch opening only into the most cosmopoli-
tan thoroughfares of the ward.
Within the sections occupied by the middle and the lower-middle
classes the sense of space is yet more fractured. A few hundred yards
of middle-class residences such as those in Dilkhusha Street can form a
neighbourhood of its own with a visible psychological, if not physical,
distance from its more modest counterparts. Yet, such middle-class locali-
ties usually occur in the outer areas, facing away from the slums, without
really having to share common spaces with them. Slum-dwellers use lanes
in such localities to reach the main roads, but the opposite is rarely the
case, even if a lane or bylane through a slum area happens to be a shortcut
to the main road.15
Both the affluent and middle classes seem to hold the slum clusters in
disdain, primarily holding them responsible for the deterioration of public
amenities and civic sense in the neighbourhood as a whole. Within Park
Circus, streets, lanes and bylanes passing though some of the denser slum
clusters are categorically avoided by the former, who use them only in the
event of extreme contingency. Since an affluent or middle-class individu-
al’s class location is usually evident in such circumstances, such individuals
usually resort to behavioural strategies that help in defining their distance
from the locals. These include practices such as quickening one’s pace,
behaving like a stranger, avoiding eye contact or refraining from the usual
forms of acknowledging the other’s presence in such zones.16
The slums and slum-like areas have their own notions of community
and neighbourhood, and form representations of themselves and of others
52 Park Circus
on the basis of these evaluations. The small slum clusters located in the
western parts of the Park Circus, for example, consider themselves supe-
rior to the shabbier and more congested ones in the east. Even though
the socio-economic constitution of these smaller slums may not be very
different from that of the larger slums, but they evidently regard them-
selves to be more urbane and refined in comparison to the latter.17 There
is a collective effort to maintain a better civic front – streets have less
garbage strewn about; children don’t run around unattended nor do live-
stock abound the lanes; there are fewer instances of young men hanging
around street corners, all of which form regular features of the bigger slum
stretches in the east, and lend them an air of a typical inner-city area in
decay. Inhabitants of the former are found to avoid social relationships and
interactions with those belonging to the latter, usually associating some
kind of a moral degeneration with them. The duality between ‘us’ and
‘them’ occurs rather sharply in this context.
In fact, the overcrowded and decaying slum zones of the east and
south-east, such as those of Samsul Huda Road, Kasiabagan, Bright Street,
and Tiljala carry the greatest spatial stigma from all quarters. While the
upper and middle classes chose to remain oblivious of their existence,
regarding their presence only as a matter of necessity, even semi-slum-
like quarters on their fringes hold them at a distance, blaming them in
most part for the existing social problems in the area. However, certain
continuities are visible between the social world of the slums and those
of the inhabitants in the buildings just at their fringes. In some such
houses which have slum-like tenements on their ground floors, with
the upper floors being occupied by middle classes, social distance can
be observed in terms of vertical distance than otherwise. The residents
of the ground floors are psychologically and socially still part of their
respective slums though their material conditions of life have visibly
altered for the better.
However, the sense of local community or neighbourhood is perhaps
the strongest in these larger slums where every aspect of life, sacred or
quotidian, follows the rhythm of a larger communal life, with spaces for
interaction with the urban. The closely laid out dwellings that allow for a
peek into one another’s private lives, the general sharing of space and utili-
ties, common concerns and struggles, the sense of a collective disadvantage
pave way for a very unique and closed sense of neighbourhood among
these areas. Local associations and leaders emerge to manage everyday
affairs and hardly does a local squabble or dispute travel outside the neigh-
bourhood for mediation. Similarly, strangers are met with the utmost sus-
picion and are treated likewise unless they carry adequate introductions.18
The sense of a heavily ‘guarded’ community is apparent to any visitor who
 Park Circus 53
tries to enter such slums. Locals go outside for work or other business, but
usually limit their everyday social interactions within it.
Religious and linguistic identities of inhabitants also play an impor-
tant role in shaping existing perceptions of neighbourhood. They super-
impose themselves on the aforementioned constructions of locality and
fracture it further.19 Therefore, within upper or middle-class localities
notions of a Hindu para or a Muslim para – para being the Bengali term
that comes closest to the English word neighbourhood – or a Bengali or
non-Bengali para depending upon the religious or linguistic affiliation
of their inhabitants, and on the context in which the reference is being
made.20 There are similar formulations within slums as well. Thus the
predominantly Muslim slum stretch of Kasiabagan constitutes a Ben-
gali neighbourhood, a connotation that invokes among locals, especially
local Muslims, a reference to its Bengali-speaking Muslim inhabitants.
Similarly Moochipara in Tiljala is a Hindu para, which draws attention
to its primarily Hindu population of a caste of leatherworkers who are
mostly Bengali-speaking in this case. However, the identifications of
‘Bengali’ and ‘Hindu’ often tend to get conflated so that on local refer-
ence it becomes difficult to guess either the religious or the linguistic
identity of such localities. This draws from the fact that the majority
of the lower and lower-middle classes among the residents are Urdu- or
Bihari-speaking Muslims and see themselves as distinct from both the
local Hindus and the Bengali Muslims, from whom they have a large
cultural distance. Locals have their own sets of symbols which they use
to identify and set apart one such neighbourhood from another, even
in the absence of visible outward markers. Thus colours and patterns of
houses, name plates, plaques on the doorway, and the general ‘feel’ of the
space sets apart a Hindu locality from a Muslim one, or at times even a
non-Bengali quarter from a Bengali-speaking one. However, distinctions
based on religious affiliations of inhabitants always carry comparatively
stronger markers of difference than linguistic ones at the local level. Thus
predominantly Muslim or predominantly Hindu stretches are the most
conspicuous in terms of outward identification though their own for-
mulations of identity and neighbourhood may vary depending on other
factors like social class and ethnic origin.
The historical transformation of Park Circus – from an elite, upper-
middle-class Muslim residential enclave to an overcrowded pocket of het-
erogeneous, mostly poor or lower-middle-class Muslim groups – traced
in this chapter can be viewed as part of the larger movement towards the
continuing socio-spatial segregation of Muslim groups in Kolkata. While
individual perceptions of locality might vary across the larger neighbour-
hood, in terms of the popular urban imaginary, Park Circus remains a
54 Park Circus
negatively defined space, occupied by the ‘other’, one that should be care-
fully avoided and set at a distance from the mainstream of the city’s social
life. For the average middle-class Hindu of the city, the space denotes
more than anything else a musholman para complete with its usual socio-
historical and cultural baggage and, therefore, lies cognitively beyond the
boundaries of accepted spaces of movement and mobility in the city.
Nevertheless, given the intrinsically fragmented character of the neigh-
bourhood, it is useful for purposes of analysis to take into account the
multiple locations of social groups that reside in it. Experiences of urban-
ity and marginality can be more fruitfully engaged with once the actual
social locations of actors have been clearly mapped within the existing
social contexts. The following chapter addresses the issue by disaggregat-
ing the Muslim population of Park Circus, and by looking into the effects
specificities of social location have on the experiences of particular Mus-
lim groups in the neighbourhood.

Notes
1 While housings in the western parts of the neighbourhood command some of
the highest property rates in the city, the large slum clusters in the east point at
the acute deprivation and poverty experienced by its inhabitants at an everyday
level. A vivid description of the destitution that exists in these parts is available
in Jeremy Seabrook and Imran A. Siddiqui’s People Without History: India’s Muslim
Ghettoes (see Seabrook and Siddiqui 2011). Here I have used ‘slum’ generically to
define marginalised and informal settlements, without using any specific defini-
tion simply because of the sheer diversity of such definitions mirroring equally
diverse realities found in sociological literature. For an elaboration on the problem,
see Henning Nuissl and Dirk Heinrich 2013. For a workable definition of slums
in the Indian context the definitions provided by the National Sample Survey
Organization (NSSO) and the Census Board, respectively, are useful.
2 A major difficulty in providing exact demographic data pertaining to either reli-
gious or linguistic groups at the level of the neighbourhood (here Ward 64) arises
from the fact that the Indian census authorities have discontinued the publication
of such data at the level of the municipal wards since 1961. Existing ward-level
data are again not fully comparable because of the reorganisation of municipal
wards in the city in later years.
In the absence of such data, the proportion of Muslim population has been
drawn from the working estimates from the ward office, and corroborated by
sample studies of the ward’s electoral roll.
3 It is worth mentioning that the oldest Chinese settlement in Kolkata, Tangra,
which dates back to more than two centuries, lies adjacent to Park Circus along its
north eastern fringe. The Anglo-Indian quarters occur along the neighbourhood’s
north and north-western boundary.
4 Within sociological literature an enclave has been defined as a form of spatial
concentration in which members of a particular population group, self-defined
by ethnicity or religion or otherwise, congregates as a means of protecting and
 Park Circus 55
enhancing their economic, social, political, and/or cultural development (Marcuse
1997, 2005: 17).
5 In several Indian cities the terms Karbala, apart from meaning the city of Karbala,
also refers to local grounds where commemorative processions end and where
taziyas are immersed or buried after the Muharram processions (see Fruzzetti 1981:
108–109).
6 Most recently the idea of an Islamic space in the context of Muslim neighbour-
hoods in Indian cities has been explored by Nida Kirmani through the usage of
the term ‘Muslim mahol’ while narrating such spaces (Kirmani 2013: 7).
7 For the relevance of socio-spatial boundaries within so-called homogeneous local-
ities in Indian cities see Nida Kirmani (Kirmani 2013: 62).
8 For an overview of the general patterns of social conduct in public space in urban
ghettos see Conley and Ryvicker’s Race, Class, and Eyes Upon the Street: Public
Space, Social Control, and the Economies of Three Urban Communities (Conley
and Ryvicker 2001).
9 For a perspective on the ways in which spaces and symbolisms are constructed
in urban realities and also the ways in which ethnic communities infuse mod-
ern urban spaces with their own patterns of life and create symbolic spaces see
Guseppe Licari’s article Anthropology of Urban Space: Identities and Places in the
Postmodern City (Licari 2011: 47–57).
10 For a general description of popular sensibilities regarding hygiene in Kolkata see
Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay Filth and the Public Sphere (Kaviraj 1997).
11 Elijah Anderson developed the concept in his article The Cosmopolitan Canopy
which appeared in 2004. Writing in the context of social distance and tension
that arise in racially diverse and multi-ethnic cities, he points out, ‘There remain
numerous heterogeneous and densely populated bounded public spaces within
cities . . . where a diversity of people can feel comfortable enough to relax their
guard and go about their business more casually . . . [These provide] a calm envi-
ronment of equivalent, symmetrical relations – a respite from the streets outside’
(see Anderson 2004: 15).
12 Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities provides a
compelling description of changes in use of public spaces in cities at different
points in time of the day (Jacobs 1961: 97).
13 Very recently there has been a new body of sociological literature that employs
‘social tectonics’ as a grounding concept to understand social interaction in
multi-ethnic and mixed urban neighbourhoods; according to this literature the
differently located ethnic groups and social classes slide past each other without
necessarily acknowledging the other’s presence (Butler and Robson 2001; Jackson
and Butler 2014).
14 Several scholars have attempted critical examinations of space and spatial practices
and their role in the production of social relations (see Foucault 1975; De Certeau
1984; Lefebvre 1991; Jacobs and Fincher 1998). Certain social geographers such
as Pratt and Hanson (1994) have also observed how space and place are not ‘neutral
backdrops or uncomplicated stages for people’s lives’ nor ‘containers within which
social relations develop’. Rather, ‘spaces are constructed through social processes’
(Pratt and Hanson 1994: 25).
15 Kevin Lynch, in his study Image of the City (1960) discusses how the physical form
of the city makes it ‘imageable’ to its residents and puts particular emphasis on paths
and edges as important forms that institute spatial practices of identification among
city-dwellers.
56 Park Circus
16 Approaches towards the study of self-presentation and symbolic gestures in social
interaction have been developed by sociologists such as Erving Goffman (1959)
and Herbert Blumer (1962).
Recent literature on everyday life in mixed neighbourhoods have focused on
the ways in which public and semi-public spaces in such areas act as ‘zones of
encounter’ between differently placed groups and the strategies undertaken by
individual groups to negotiate with the others (Amin 2002; Woods and Landry
2008; Watson 2009). However, such studies are primarily based on interaction pat-
terns in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in western cities, though semblances of the
same can be encountered in spatial practices of mixed neighbourhoods, such as the
one under study.
17 Drawn from field data collected during fieldwork in the neighbourhood, many
of my respondents residing in the smaller slums in the western part of the locality
pointed out the wide differences that existed between them and those residing
in the larger slum stretches in the east usually using negative descriptions such as
‘uncultured’, ‘uneducated’ and ‘troublesome’ in order to qualify the latter.
18 I could only approach some of these areas with my informants, and a letter of
introduction provided by the local councillor. Given the local systems of political
and administrative patronage, a letter/introduction from the councillor immedi-
ately provided me an acceptance from the slum-dwellers.
19 Nida Kirmani, for example, describes the multiple identifications around which
boundaries get drawn within urban neighbourhood, in her case through narration,
in her recent study of a Muslim neighbourhood in New Delhi (Kirmani 2013).
20 It is useful here to invoke Arjun Appadurai’s distinction between a locality and
a neighbourhood and the argument that neighbourhoods ‘are the actually exist-
ing social forms within which locality as a dimension or value realizes itself ’
(Appadurai 1996: 179). The context specific nature of neighbourhoods, therefore,
becomes particularly relevant here.
3 Diversities, differences
and social relations

Contrary to popular representation as a ‘monolithic’ community, Muslims

in India are found to be divided on the basis of a number of factors of
which caste, class, sect, language, region, and social status are the more
significant ones. These factors function both separately and together to
create multiple and complex identities that set apart one Muslim group
from another. They also define the actual locations and experiences of the
different Muslim groups in society.
Apart from intra-communal differences, factors that have further shaped
Muslim realities in India mainly include, the urban/rural divide (Jaffrelot
and Gayer 2012), the nature of interaction with non-Muslim groups living
in close proximity (especially Hindus) (Robinson 2011) and the history of
communal violence in the region (Das and Kleinman 2001; Gupta 2011).
A holistic appraisal becomes, therefore, necessary before any generalisation
about ‘the Muslim experience’ is attempted.
This chapter, first, tries to locate the Muslims of Park Circus in terms of
the intra-communal differences identifiable among them, and then moves on
to describe the ways in which the extant cosmopolitan setting of the neigh-
bourhood and the ghetto-like features of some of its parts work together to
produce a peculiar experience of urbanity and community for the different
sub-groups of local Muslims. Next, it describes the composition and atti-
tude of the Hindu community who form the principal significant ‘other’
the Muslims encounter at the everyday level in the neighbourhood. The
chapter concludes with a note on the nature of social relations and every
day interaction between the two communities in the locality.

Disaggregating a ‘community’: the Muslim

sub-groups of Park Circus
While the Muslim population of the neighbourhood can be divided into
various sub-groups following many axes of difference,1 I will focus pri-
marily on those which are seen to have a more direct relevance on the
58 Diversities, differences and social relations
structuring of everyday social relations among them. It is found that the
specific historicity of the neighbourhood (see Chapter 2: A Brief His-
torical Sketch) has rendered the attributes of language, region, caste, and
class particularly important in this regard. Sect-based differences, while
being an important feature of intra-group difference among local Mus-
lims, appear to remain restricted to matters of religious and ritual concern,
and are, therefore, seen to only obliquely affect the secular dimensions of
everyday life.

The linguistic divide: the Bengali and the non-Bengali Muslims

of Park Circus
At the broadest level, the most significant socio-cultural distinction that
exists among the Park Circus Muslims seems to be in terms of their
linguistic group membership, primarily that which exists between the
Bengali and the non-Bengali Muslims. According to the latter, most of
the Bengali-speaking Muslims are deeply embedded in the traditional cul-
ture of Bengal, which is highly localised, and hence do not intrinsically
follow the ways of life laid down by the ‘great tradition’ of Islam.2 In
their language, ways of address, modes of clothing, food, and habits, they
retain practices indigenous to Bengal and thus stray away from all that is
authentically Islamic and hence, ‘acceptable’ for the more Islamised Mus-
lim groups in the city.
Non-Bengali Muslims, on the other hand, claim to follow the pan-
Islamic tradition which according to them has grown and evolved in the
middle-east, and which continues to be the mode of life of the North
Indian Muslim elite. Consequently, they prefer to keep away from engag-
ing in customs and practices drawn from the local traditions. In their own
characterisation they necessarily carry Arabic or Persian names, wear the
customary Muslim attire kurta-pyjama or salwar-kameez, use the tradi-
tional assalam-aleikum to greet their acquaintances, and have a meat- and
fruit-based diet. Urdu is the preferred language of conversation, and there
is a conscious attempt to adopt what is perceived to be the ‘authentic
Islamic way of life’ at least within the domestic group.
It is, however, important to note that the category of ‘non-Bengali’ Mus-
lims in Park Circus are composed of two very significant groups who have
widely different social statuses and can be distinguished from one another
on the basis of ethnic origin and occupation. They include, first, the tra-
ditional ashraf 3 elites among the Muslims, the Urdu-speaking descendants
of the ruling families of Awadh and Mysore and their accompanying staff
who renewed their fortunes during colonial rule and established them-
selves in the upcoming residential centre at Park Circus in the early 20th
 Diversities, differences and social relations 59
century, and second, the migrant labourers and semi-skilled artisans from
Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh who came in successive waves during the
course of the last century to find work in the city.4 These migrant Mus-
lims who make up most of the slum population of Park Circus (Seabrook
and Siddiqui 2011) are usually held responsible for the denigration of an
otherwise respectable neighbourhood, spoiling it as they do with their
large families, their indiscriminate use of public spaces, their general lack
of civic sense and participation in illicit activities, all of which earn a bad
name for the neighbourhood and marks it out negatively in the common
urban imagination. As such they are generally regarded with disdain by
the other groups in the neighbourhood especially the traditional North
Indian Muslim elite who often invoke the rather derogatory characteri-
sations such as dehati and khotta to refer to their uninformed senses and
evidently rustic ways of life (Banerjee 2009: 232). There is a very visible
social distance between the two groups.
This, however, does not abate the latter’s enthusiasm to consider them-
selves as the ‘true’ Muslims, distinct from the ritualistic, pir-worshipping
Bengali-speaking ones who also reside in the neighbourhood. A very
interesting indication of this trend is that in spite of living for generations
in the city they deliberately refrain from speaking the Bengali language.
Instead, they continue to use their colloquial languages, usually dialects of
Bihari and Hindi with a sprinkling of Urdu terms – often referred to as
‘Gulabi Urdu’ (Siddiqui 1974: 73) – to interact among themselves.
A similar enthusiasm for a claim to authentic Islam is noticeable among
a section of the Bengali-speaking Muslims as well, especially among those
who reside in the slum or semi-slum-like areas and have, over years, taken
to speaking Hindi, Urdu or other dialects of Hindustani. This latter trend
is usually seen as a desperate attempt on their part to assert their identity in
terms of a non-local sense of history, thereby setting themselves apart from
the ranks of the other Bengali-speaking Muslims who had been originally
converted from among the lower-caste Hindus of eastern Bengal during
Islam’s spread in the province from the 13th century onwards (Eaton
1993). In spite of differences among the non-Bengali sections of Mus-
lims, Bengali-speaking Muslims continue to be held at a distance by such
groups. While this difference is generally exemplified in cultural terms
in the present times, certain events and processes in the recent history are
held to have further increased the distance between the two groups.
The sense of community that had been so delicately forged among
the diverse groups of Muslims of Bengal around Independence and Par-
tition5 suffered a major setback during the Bangladesh Liberation War
which valorised, among others, the linguistic identity of a nation over all
other identities, including religious identity. The memories of linguistic
60 Diversities, differences and social relations
persecution that both Bengali and non-Bengali Muslims experienced
during the time have, since then, severely soured the relations between
the two groups (Ahmad 1967; Islam 1981; Huque 1986). This sentiment
is particularly strong among the members of those Urdu-speaking, espe-
cially Bihari, Muslim families which had to relocate to Kolkata after the
creation of Bangladesh, after having left it once at the time of Partition.
Non-Bengali Muslims generally blame the Bengali-speaking groups for
their mindless allegiance to the local culture which has increasingly led
to the weakening of the traditional Islamic ways of life professed by the
North Indian Muslim elite. Many among them feel that Bengali culture –
‘West Bengali culture’ as they term it – is inherently inward-looking and
self-aggrandising, and rarely accommodative of difference and alternative
ideas. They particularly resent the local media, which, they feel, has played
an important role in transmitting and encouraging a hegemonic Bengali
culture among the Muslim youth in the neighbourhood.6
As Mr Akhtar Ali (56), a Muslim from eastern Uttar Pradesh who has
lived in the neighbourhood since his youth and is a full-time political
party worker, explained,

Here the West-Bengali culture has taken over everything. Most Ben-
gali Muslims are educated and have good jobs. They want to become
like the Bengalis.7 You need to put an effort to maintain your own
traditions. How else will your children learn (of them) . . . they see
Bengali television, Bengali media is omnipresent. . . . Islam does not
allow representing the Prophet or the events in the life of the Prophet
(through television or any other media). So children grow up watch-
ing the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and Disney tales. Then they
have Saraswati Puja in school. I don’t have anything against that per
se . . . but then is any of our festivals celebrated that way . . . you see
how children can naturally get inclined into picking up customs so
different from their own.

While many among the non-Bengali Muslims echo Ali’s concerns, sev-
eral among them feel that Park Circus with its mixed population is still
relatively better for them as compared to other parts of the city, especially
the northern stretches, where middle-class Bengaliness rules supreme. As
Sayeda Begum (43), a working mother of two, put it,

Park Circus is traditionally a neighbourhood of khandani (aristocratic)

Muslims. . . . achha mahol hai (there is a good milieu/ambience). The
impact of Bengali culture is less. Most good neighbourhoods in Kol-
kata like Ballygunge or Salt Lake hardly have any Muslims, except few
 Diversities, differences and social relations 61
very rich ones. Places like Rajabazar and Khiddirpore have Muslims
but most of them are poor and uneducated . . . that way Park Circus
is a good place . . . One should try to hold on to this [milieu] as long
as it is there.

The shrinkage of Muslim cultural spaces across the city seems to make
many Muslims, especially the non-Bengali speakers, prefer cities like
Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad as places of residence since they seem
more accommodative of their cultural needs than Kolkata. The presence
of a sizable section of Bengali-speaking Muslims in the area who are
‘almost like the Bengalis’ further pushes back the North Indian tradition
of Islam professed by them. Many of them said that given a chance they
would prefer their children to relocate to the latter cities.8
Bengali speakers, on their part, hold grudges against the non-Bengali
groups for reasons of their own. Their perceived status as previously pros-
elytised groups drawn from the lower segments of Hindu society has tra-
ditionally hindered their smooth assimilation into the Muslim folds. Their
crisis of identity largely stems from the fact that they are easily accepted
neither by the local Bengali-speaking Hindus nor by the Urdu-speaking
elites, both of whom consider them as different either on religious or on
linguistic/cultural grounds.9 As Hameeda Begum (60), the wife of a local
doctor, described,

We dress like Hindus, we speak Bengali but Hindus always maintain

their distance with us. I have seen that on many occasions. When I
come back from New Market (a large market about five kilometers to
the north-west of Park Circus), ladies sitting next to me in the tram
start conversations with me, but the moment they see me covering my
head at the sound of the azaan they readily turn away. Once a Hindu
lady told me, ‘Oh you are a Muslim. I never guessed. I thought you
were Hindu (implying a Hindu widow)’. But even Muslims (non-
Bengali Muslims) do the same. They think they are the real Muslims.
As if we are not of the faith.

However, not all among the Bengali-speaking Muslims seem as resigned to

their fate as Hameeda is. As Abdul M (26), a research scholar and an active
member of the Bengali Muslim community, put it,

we can never call Kolkata our home. Desh bolte aamra ekhono shei
gram-i bujhi [We still consider our ancestral village as home]. Muslims
here celebrate eid and other festivals but all our customs and tradi-
tions, our food; everything gets ignored in the mainstream (Islamic)
62 Diversities, differences and social relations
representation. There is a need for Bengali Muslims to become aware
of their rich heritage. Instead most [Bengali Muslims] try to emulate
the non-Bengali Muslims. This is very sad. People talk about Muslim
backwardness all the time but nobody looks at the social divisions that
exist among Muslims themselves.

While Bengali-speaking Muslims make up only a small minority of Park

Circus’ Muslim population, most of them are better educated and rela-
tively better placed when compared to their non-Bengali counterparts. In
the general perception they are more open-minded and urbane, and har-
bour lesser degrees of conservatism than the latter. For example women
from Bengali-speaking Muslim families are hardly ever seen to wear the
burka or the hijab, they seem to have greater mobility and actively partici-
pate in the public sphere outside their homes. For most Bengali Muslims,
in fact, education becomes the chief metaphor of asserting themselves in
the neighbourhood.10 As Abdul further explained,

Bengali Muslims have such a rich literary heritage. You will find
that Bengali Muslims are much more advanced – ‘shikkhito’ [literate/
learned] and ‘bhadra’ [civil] . . . they are not blindly drawn by religion;
we are religious but we don’t keep a beard or offer namaz five times
a day; we don’t join Ja’mats and go around preaching religion in the
villages . . . this sort of broad-mindedness and tolerance is difficult to
find among other Muslims. Instead, they try to push us back.

While Bengali Muslims rue the fact that the traditional elites among the
Muslims still keep them at a distance, their primary objects of contempt
remain the vast ranks of the uneducated and poor migrant slum-dwelling
Muslims especially from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, whom they, just like
their upper-class non-Bengali Muslim counterparts, hold responsible for
all the evils that have crept into the neighbourhood.
Bengali Muslims of the neighbourhood, in general, choose to describe
their differences with the non-Bengali speakers in general in terms of a
‘great cultural distance’.11 Many among the educated middle classes among
the Bengali Muslims would not, in fact, consider intermarriage with the
Hindi/Urdu-speaking Muslims even if they are educated or have decent
employment. As Mr Sabeer Hussain (54), a Bengali Muslim employed in
the state civil services, almost apologetically put it,

I will not consider marrying off my daughter into an Urdu speaking

family. They might be educated and affluent, their ways are different.
Our children will not be able to adjust in those settings.
 Diversities, differences and social relations 63
Such sentiments usually derive from the fact that many among the afflu-
ent in the neighbourhood in the present times actually have very modest
backgrounds, and have mostly made their money in businesses, something
that is usually looked down upon by the educated Bengali Muslims. Con-
sequently, rich or poor, Urdu speakers, except a small minority of tradi-
tionally elite families, are generally avoided by the former.
Thus one can almost discern a broad hierarchy of Muslim linguistic
groups in the neighbourhood with the ashraf Urdu-speaking elites at the
top, the educated Bengali middle classes at the middle and the migrant
non-Bengali-speaking working classes at the bottom. There are a few
Gujarati and Tamil Muslim families, but they are too few in number to be
part of the broader arrangement.

Caste and social status among the Muslims of Park Circus

While caste or any form of social division based on identities of birth is
said to go against the principle of Islamic egalitarianism, and is, therefore,
inherently unacceptable to Islam; scholars working on Muslim commu-
nities in India have, time and again, pointed out the existence of hierar-
chically arranged status groups identifiable on the bases of a number of
factors such as occupation and ethnic origin among the Muslims of India
(Siddiqui 1974; Ahmed 1978; Bhatti 1996).12 Occupational profiles and
marriage preferences have been repeatedly pointed out to be the most
important modes of asserting caste differences among India’s Muslims
(Shamim and Chakravarti 1981).
Muslims of India have traditionally been classified into three broad
categories, namely the ashrafs, the ajlafs and the arzals (the third being
employed by the recent Sachar Committee Report for purposes of affir-
mative action) (see SCR 2006). The ashrafs are said to draw their lineage
from Muslim groups which had come from central Asia and Arabia, and
by virtue of their foreign blood, claim a higher status than the indigenous
converts to Islam. They are further divided into the Sayyads, Sheikhs,
Mughals, and Pathans, in that order of ranking (Mines 1972). Ashraf sec-
tions also include some of the upper-caste Hindu converts, who because
of their elevated status in the existing caste hierarchy were able to retain
their position even after proselytisation.13 The ajlafs, on the other hand,
are those who had been, at some point of time, converted to Islam and are,
therefore, of indigenous stock. They are said to include the ritually clean
occupational groups and some low ranking converts. Their social status
is said to be similar to that of the other backward classes (OBCs) among
the Hindus. The arzals (literally ‘despicable’) are those who occupy the
lowest rungs of Muslim society and are engaged in the most degraded
64 Diversities, differences and social relations
occupations (Bhatti 1996; SCR 2006).14 Their status is similar to that of
the Dalits in Hindu society. The Halalkhors, the Lal Begis, the Abdals, and
the Bediyas are some examples of arzal Muslim castes (SCR 2006: 193).
Caste-like stratification within the Muslims of Bengal had begun to
emerge as far back as the 13th century under the ruling Sultans (Eaton
1993: 100–101). Along with the ashrafs were the several readily identifiable
occupational groups of local origin engaged in providing services to the
emerging urban centres. Socially distinct from the ashrafs, the latter, the
ajlafs as they were popularly characterised, were a set of endogamous groups
akin in status to the artisan castes in Hindu society (Dasgupta 2009: 92).
The hierarchy had been particularly elaborate at the lower end of the scale
and by the early 20th century several among the latter such as the jolahas
(weavers), chamars (leatherworkers), bhistis (water-carriers), dafalis (drum
makers/players), and hazzams (barbers) had been identified as outcastes
in Bengal’s Muslim society (Risley 1892: 342; also see Hunter 1881; Wise
1884; Ahmed 1988). In a way, these groups could be regarded as belong-
ing to the arzal category of Bengal’s Muslim society. Nonetheless, given
the peculiar history its Islamisation, the primary line of difference among
Bengal’s Muslims remains between the ashrafs (of foreign origin) and the
ajlafs (indigenous converts) (see Ambedkar 1946: 218–219) with the lowest
among the latter occupying the most degraded locations in local society.
The Muslims of Park Circus display a somewhat similar pattern in
terms of caste division, even though the urban context seems to have its
own bearings on the actual workings of caste. Along with the ashraf Sayy-
ads and Sheikhs, who are mostly Urdu-speaking and belong to the middle
and upper classes, are the various ajlaf groups identifiable in terms of their
occupation such as the chamars, jolahas, darzis, hazzam, and jamadars.15 The
latter category primarily includes those who carry the prefix of Muham-
mad or the suffixes Mullah or Maulana with their names. Mostly belong-
ing to the lower-middle or lower classes they form the largest segment
of Muslims in the neighbourhood. The traditionally elite Urdu-speaking
families – the ‘real’ ashrafs as they prefer to call themselves – are usually
conscious of their elevated status and point out with visible disdain the
widespread practice among a large number of local Muslim families from
the lower castes of making a claim of ashraf status. ‘Adding a Khan to your
name doesn’t make you a gentleman’ (Khan being a traditional ashraf sur-
name) is a very common refrain made by many among the group.16 Apart
from the former, a few Bengali Muslims families who trace their origin to
the landed gentry of the rural countryside or have experienced substantial
upward social mobility in terms of education and employment also seem
to fall within the ranks of the acceptable ashraf groups in the area. In local
parlance, they are often referred to as ayemadar families.
 Diversities, differences and social relations 65
Categories such as ashraf or ajlaf rarely figure in everyday conversation
in the neighbourhood. Ashraf drawing from sharif which means well-
bred/well-mannered gentle folks might still be used for referring to the
status of a family, with the phrase sharif log hai/khandani log hain denoting
a very high level of respect. Ajlaf and arzal are seen more as technical cat-
egories employed to classify Muslim groups by the state. As Mr Karim, a
university professor, residing in the neighbourhood, observed,

These are political categories. Now the Sachar Report has used them
for recommending reservation policies. We don’t talk about ashraf or
ajlaf classes, at the most individual families may be referred to as such.
You will not find any sense of community among those who you are
referring to as ajlafs. Yes, on the basis of occupation, some groups may
be looked down upon such as the kasais or the hazzams.

In general, most of my respondents agreed to the existence of caste-like

divisions in Muslim society. But they pointed out that caste in Islam is
not similar to what is found among the Hindus. Many of them emphati-
cally stated that considering a co-religionist lowly to oneself is indeed
‘a sin’ in terms of religion. Whatever be the occupation of a person, no
religiously minded Muslim could ever dream of belittling his brethren
inside a mosque. Nevertheless, as indicated earlier, many among them
accepted the existence of large differences in the social standing among
Muslims depending primarily on the occupational identity of the respec-
tive Muslim groups.
Caste practices, as many local Muslims recounted, had been more rigidly
followed in the villages than they were in the city. This has particularly
been the experience of the Bengali-speaking Muslims, many of whom
still have active connections with their ancestral villages in and around
Kolkata. As Sabina Begum (52), a homemaker from a middle-class Bengali
Muslim family in the neighbourhood, pointed out,

Back in my village [in Murshidabad district in North Bengal] these

things are very important. Just as you have your rules of marriage
based on jati, we have our own rules. A sayyad will never marry an
ansari. A good family will never enter into marriage relations with a
Nashhoseikh (a caste of masons/brick layers) or a Halalkhor family. It
is true everywhere . . . do you think that if a son from our kind of
family remains unemployed they can go and vend vegetables in the
market? That is not possible. . . . But still such rules are less stringent
here. In the city young people often marry whom they like, so these
lose relevance.
66 Diversities, differences and social relations
But certain occupational groups continue to get looked upon with disdain
even in the city. Abdur Sheikh (45), another Bengali Muslim from the
neighbourhood and an employee in a nationalised bank, explained,

You must have seen families in Bandorpara and Jannagar road. They
are mostly kalandhars [who stage street shows with monkeys] or kasais
[butchers]. People generally tend to look down upon them because
of their occupation. Earlier there used to be bangle makers and glass
makers as well. Even today there are a large number of chamars [leather
workers] in the neighbourhood. Obviously educated and respectable
families do not have any connections with them.

One finds that in the absence of any religious or formal backing of caste
regulations, notions of caste among Muslims in the neighbourhood mostly
hinge on differences in occupational prestige. Marriage, by far, remains the
most important area where such differences assume priority in practice.
Since castes are usually understood as occupational groups, many locals
hold that there is a large scope for individual mobility and improvement
(often referred to as ashrafisation) (Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012: 7). Education
and occupation are regarded to be the most important modes of over-
coming ascribed caste identities among Muslims. For instance, the son
of a kasai (butcher) or a chamar (leather worker) might get a good educa-
tion and be absorbed in more secular occupations such as engineering or
administrative services. Caste-related stigma would then not be so readily
applied to him or his immediate family.17 As Mr Abdur put it,

See a chamar will not always remain a chamar, or a kasai a kasai . . . this

has a lot to do with education and occupation. A rich kasai’s son may
get educated and hold a good job. Then nobody will look down upon
him. Why, I have heard that the owner of Nazim* restaurant still sits
in the family’s meat shop. But look at his sons. You will never guess
that they come from that family. So is the case of the Chitpur fam-
ily which owns Amina*. One of the sons has an MA in English and
teaches in a city college.
(* = name changed)

Here it is perhaps important to point at the intersection of caste prac-

tices in everyday life and class status of Muslims in the neighbourhood.
Increasingly, in place of hereditary caste identity, factors such as educa-
tion, occupation, income, and styles of life are becoming more important
indicators of a person’s actual standing in society (Beteille 1969). As.
Mr Karim put it,
 Diversities, differences and social relations 67
You will see that it is this business class that is the wealthiest among
Park Circus’ Muslims. Most of them are either kasais or chamars.
But who cares? Their children go to good schools. They have better
opportunities than what even middle-class families can provide (to
their children). Obviously their children do well in life. Then issues
of caste are not raised. It is not like the Hindus, where whatever you
do your caste remains important.

Like many others, Mr Karimalso contended that,

Caste is not really a good term to refer to differences among Mus-

lims. It has to do more with a person’s status in society. Some of the
Pathan families which had settled in Bengal have undergone so much
intermingling with the native population that nobody will know
they are Pathans unless somebody points it out. Do you think that
they will be considered as ashrafs in society? But then even Bengali
Muslim families like Shurawardy’s  .  .  .  they were zamindars from
Midnapore . . . would be considered as belonging to upper classes.
That is because of their achievements.

This does not, however, mean that existing possibilities of social mobility
renders caste-based locations entirely irrelevant in the course of everyday
life. Most of those who occupy the bottom of the caste hierarchy seem
to struggle to find a hold on the urban scenario that confronts them.
Many of them also get regularly reminded of their lowly status in soci-
ety through the generally limited nature of their social contacts.18 But,
nevertheless, there seems to be a relatively greater degree of openness and
flexibility in the system and within the course of a generation, a family
might climb to at least the middle levels of the status hierarchy through
good education and respectable employment.

Social classes19 among the Muslims of Park Circus

Current social locations of local Muslims, with a few exceptions, seem
largely to be a continuity of traditional standing of Muslim groups within
the social order of the neighbourhood. Thus the upper and upper-middle
classes are primarily composed of the ashraf families, who by virtue of their
existing social capital have been able to participate in the city’s economy
and retain their earlier social statuses to a fair extent. At the other end of
the scale are the vast numbers of the poor and deprived Muslims, espe-
cially the rural migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, and parts of
West Bengal who have come to the city in search of work and sought
68 Diversities, differences and social relations
to establish themselves in it with the very limited skills they have at their
disposal. Mostly derived from the ajlaf occupational groups, they live in
the slums and inhabit widely different social worlds as compared to their
more fortunate co-religionists.
The middle classes constitute only a small – though growing – part of
the Muslim population in the neighbourhood and are a highly diverse
group within themselves.20 At present they are composed mainly of those
among the poor who have experienced some socio-economic mobility
and moved into white-collar occupations, some middle-level businessmen
and professionals, impoverished ashraf families, and sections of the neo-
rich who have moved into the neighbourhood from other parts of the
city in the recent years. These groups are yet to develop a distinct sense of
identity, and in terms of social location, mostly tend to crystallise around
either the ashraf or the ajlaf ends of the social scale, depending on their
respective educational, occupational and income statuses.
Class location is seen to play an important role in structuring interper-
sonal relationships among the different Muslim groups in the neighbour-
hood. Patterns of social acceptance and exchange appear to follow the
lines of class to a very large extent. For instance, invitations to family wed-
dings and other similar occasions are usually restricted to those perceived
to share a similar social standing. While the upper classes have few reasons
to have acquaintances among the poor, those among the latter feel that
their inability to reciprocate social obligations severely limits their social
circle and restricts it within their kindred. Hence, interactions between
the two groups usually do not go beyond occasional charitable gestures
or formal interaction prescribed by the existing religious injunctions. As
Salema Begum (42), a resident of one of the numerous slums on Theatre
Road and who works in the Hundred Days’ Work Scheme, put it,

You might think that because mostly Muslims live here there is a lot
of camaraderie and fellow feeling. But that is not so. The rich live
their lives and hardly care about what poor people do. The thing is
they will not benefit from our friendship. Everything is based on cal-
culations. They think we will not be of any help if they are in trouble.
So they make friends with the big people.

One of her neighbours, Zuleikha Khatoon (39), further elaborated the

difficulties in maintaining friendships with the better-off sections. As she
explained,

How can poor people maintain relationships with the rich? We can-
not organize our daughters’ weddings in places like Khalil Mazil.
 Diversities, differences and social relations 69
Our feasts are not good enough (for them). We ourselves would feel
uncomfortable if they come. . . . Also people like us can hardly afford
kurbaani. We instead give money to families buying (the animal). We
will not be able to distribute meat like the way they do. So difference
will be there even if they live right across the road to us.

Thus, one finds that despite close physical proximity of a number of dis-
crete socio-economic groups, interactions among them are rather limited,
with boundaries getting maintained by the employment of a variety of
spatial practices especially by the upper and upper-middle classes to mark
out their own social spaces from those of the rest (see Chapter 2: Local
Constructions of Neighbourhood). Thus the latter would be keen on
preventing their children from interacting with those from poorer sections
of the neighbourhood, refrain from participating in common neighbour-
hood festivals such as Muharram and Milad celebrations and generally
limit their social activities among those of their own kind, both within and
outside the neighbourhood. Given the general perception of the neigh-
bourhood as a ghetto-like space where ordinary Muslims clutter, there is a
concerted attempt on part of the upper and upper-middle classes to keep a
distance from the others primarily by staying away from its public spaces.

Sect among the neighbourhood’s Muslims

The discussion on diversity would perhaps remain incomplete without a
mention of the sectarian differences that are found among the neighbour-
hood’s Muslims. While sect-based difference is largely a matter of reli-
gious practice and, therefore, falls within a realm not directly addressed in
this work, Kolkata’s Muslims are widely diverse in terms of their sectarian
affiliations and hence it is useful to take note of how these differences bear
upon the Muslims of the neighbourhood under study.21
In terms of sectarian identity, the Muslims of Park Circus mostly belong
to the Sunni community, especially its Barelwi order. There is a small sec-
tion of Shias, along with still smaller sections of Bohras and Ahmediyas, in
the neighbourhood.
The Shias of Park Circus are a generally prosperous group who live
in larger, spacious houses in the western part of the neighbourhood and
are said to maintain very limited social relationships with other Mus-
lims. While individual friendships between Shias and Sunnis maybe com-
mon, these rarely extend to the level of involving their respective primary
groups. There is hardly any instance of intermarriage or participation
in mutual life cycle rituals like those surrounding birth or death. The
Shias have one mosque in the neighbourhood, on Circus Avenue, which
70 Diversities, differences and social relations
is reserved for their exclusive use. In the common perception, they are a
closed and orthodox community which maintains its distance from other
Muslim groups. There are hardly any Shias among the Bengali-speaking
Muslims in the neighbourhood.
The Sunnis, while being the most populous segment in the
neighbourhood – comprising almost all of the Bengali-speaking and the
migrant Bihari and other north Indian Muslim groups – are also neces-
sarily the most deprived of the lot. Unlike the Shias or Bohras, the Sunnis,
apart from their shared religious following, have very little in common
among themselves. Sunnis in the neighbourhood can be differentiated
on the basis of their class, caste, linguistic, and regional affinities, all of
which seems to have prevented the development of any concerted sense
of community among them. Most Sunnis from the slums cite the lack of
involvement of the wealthier sections in the community’s everyday life.
Even those who have experienced some mobility seem to have turned
their backs on the community and show little concern for the well-being
of their less fortunate neighbours. As Rehanna Begum (35), one of my
respondents, put it,

Did you see the decorations and the large stages that have come up
in every street corner [the interview was held during the time of the
Milad celebrations of January 2013]? Rich people give money to the
clubs, and the clubs spend all they can to compete with one another.
But they could have done so much with the money. They could have
helped in arranging communal marriages. Dowry rates are so high.
How can poor people afford that? But no, Sunnis have no commu-
nity feeling. Md. – (a prominent businessman in the neighbourhood)
lives just opposite to us. But he will neither recognize nor help us in
any way. Instead he gives donation to the club. You will never come
across associations such as the ones the Bohras or even the Shias have
(to help the poor).

Sunnis, however, consider themselves more open-minded and progressive

compared to the other groups and talk about how they have managed to
take more readily to the requirements of an extant urban milieu than the
others. As Md Saker (53 [Md stands for Mohammad]), a Sunni Muslim
and a leather worker from Kasiabagan, put it,

Sunnis are more liberal when it comes to religion. Our mosques are
open for everybody. Others would not allow intermarriage outside
their community, but we do not have any such reservations. Yes the
family should be good; that is important. . . . You cannot keep holding
 Diversities, differences and social relations 71
on to the old ways. . . . Islam considers everybody equal. But Muslims
keep talking about ‘us’ and ‘them’ which leads to unnecessary quarrels
and fights all the time. The Bohras are the most orthodox; even more
than the Shias. They have their own system for everything.

Because of the preponderance of the Barelwi Sunnis, festivals like Shab-e-

Barat or the day of the saints where Muslims light lamps for their ances-
tors and Milad, cultural gatherings after Eid-ul-Zoha are celebrated with
particular fervour in the neighbourhood.22 Local Sunnis also celebrate
Muharram – which is originally a Shia ritual – with great festivity and
immerse taziyas every year in the Karbala Tank in Kasiabagan, even though
the event has, over time, acquired an entrenched class attribute, with the
respectable upper and middle classes among the Muslims choosing to stay
away from the carnival. Even then Park Circus remains one of the most
significant spots for the annual Muharram celebrations in Kolkata, noted
for its distinct style as compared to celebrations in other Shia-dominated
parts of the city.
Apart from the Sunnis and the Shias, two other sects in the neighbour-
hood which require a mention are the Bohras and the Ahmediyas.
The Gujarati Bohras who comprise a small part of Muslims of Park
Circus are almost similar in size and exclusiveness as the Shias of the neigh-
bourhood.23 Traditionally wealthy, they mostly run businesses in the city
and maintain very close and strong networks among themselves. Their
faith in the Syedna – the head of the Ismaili Shia sect – sets them apart
from the other Muslims, especially the Sunnis. The Bohras have their
own mosques and related sets of institutions, which are not accessible to
the others;24 and even the dates and nature of festivals do not necessarily
match with the rest. Unlike the practice in common in other sects, Bohra
women visit mosques and have a separate prayer hall allocated for them.
Within the neighbourhood the Bohras are easily distinguishable by their
formal attires, the men in their gold-threaded topis and kurta-pyjamas and
women in their rida or misaq, which stand out from the ordinary Islamic
skullcap and burkas in a very evident manner. The Bohras engage in very
little interaction with other Muslims of the neighbourhood. Relation-
ships of intermarriage with other groups are almost absent and social
relations outside of the community usually remain purely business-like
and contractual. However, unlike the Sunnis, the Bohras are said to be a
very closely knit collectivity and run several community-based initiatives
to support and uplift the less privileged among their ranks.
Park Circus also has a small section of Ahmediyas, popularly called
Quadianis, who are found scattered across the neighbourhood, huddled in
small groups of varying socio-economic statuses. They have two mosques
72 Diversities, differences and social relations
of their own, and in spite of their best efforts find it difficult to develop
close social relationships with those belonging to the other sects.25 Never-
theless, ordinary everyday exchanges, outside ritualistic ones, remain unaf-
fected by this as irrespective of sect membership individuals do participate
in the common urban context.
One, therefore, finds that the Muslims of Park Circus, far from being a
homogeneous community, is a large and diverse conglomerate of discrete
social groups differentiable from one another on the basis of a number of
parameters. The attributes of language, ethnicity, caste, and class interact to
give the local Muslims identities that are multiple, complex and necessarily
contextual in nature (Sen 2006; Kirmani 2013), making it difficult to talk
about a generalised category called the ‘Muslims’ of Park Circus.

Community, diversity and urbanity

The experience of urban life with its classic features of impersonality,
anonymity, instrumentality, and heterogeneity (Wirth 1938) seems to bear
upon the Muslims of Park Circus in a more immediate and direct manner
as compared to other Muslim pockets that occur on the fringes of the city
or in its more gated quarters. The heterogeneity of the Muslim population
of the neighbourhood largely ensures that consciousness of communal
identity at the overall level can manifest only under special situations. But
community at an everyday level seems to persist, albeit in a rather subdued
form in the interstices of the neighbourhood, in its many slum and slum-
like settlements. But even here parochialism seems to be fighting a losing
battle in its everyday clashes with the demands of urban life. Values are
changing gradually. Modes of interaction at both intra-group and inter-
group levels are getting modified with major changes in occupations as
well as attitude towards life and living. Urbanity is encroaching into the
deeper recesses of the lives of the residents slowly but surely. But to these
inroads of the urban, Muslims are not responding homogeneously as a
monolithic community. The responses of the sub-groups have their own
peculiarities, each one’s response remaining tinged, indelibly, with a touch
of the particular concerns of its incumbent members.

Community and urban space

The central location of Park Circus and the particular historicity of its
settlement has rendered the neighbourhood comparatively more open and
cosmopolitan than other peripheral urban settings would normally allow.
Residents of the area have better access to modern infrastructure and civic
amenities and more importantly to the urban way of life, which largely
 Diversities, differences and social relations 73
affect their general outlook towards life and community. Aspirations and
desires tend to get shaped in response to experiences of urban life and
everyday social relations increasingly seem to approximate urban modes
of sociation, at the formal level, even though a subliminal consciousness
of community can often be discerned among a section of the residents of
the neighbourhood.
An interesting indicator of this urbane-ness is that in spite of living in
a Muslim-predominant neighbourhood with a vibrant Islamic cultural
milieu no Muslim resident would mention this in the first instance while
replying to a query about his or her choice of Park Circus as residential
area. They rather point to its strategic location, its good infrastructural
facilities – such as wide roads, health care centres, schools and colleges, and
the general level of development in the area, which far surpass those avail-
able in other Muslim-majority neighbourhoods in the city. The locational
advantage of the place, rather than its Muslimness, figures centrally in local
narratives about the neighbourhood and residents evidently consider this
to be a far more relevant factor than the familiar Islamic milieu or institu-
tions of cultural reproduction that the neighbourhood otherwise affords.
Therefore, while the latter remain significant parts of communal life to
different degrees for different actors, they don’t figure peremptorily in
discussions about life in general in the neighbourhood.
Everyday life in the neighbourhood largely seems to revolve around
perceptions of life in a busy urban metropolis where education, work
and family are the primary concerns and where people do not ‘have time’
for sociability and community, except occasionally. Indeed, I was told on
many instances, when I went about looking for potential respondents in
the neighbourhood during the earlier stages of fieldwork, ‘itna time kisike
paas nahi hai. Dhande ke liye ghoomna parta hai. Abhi yeh sab aapko kaun
batayega . . .  waise bhi hum kaam karte hai, bachhon ko padhate hai, fir ghar
ke mamle bhi rahte hai . . .  bahar ke baat utna nahi jaante’ (People are busy.
They have work or have to go around looking for work. Who has the
time for talking about such issues? Anyways we work, send our children
to schools, and have issues to deal with at home . . . we do not bother
much about the outside world). The average Muslim seems to be primar-
ily concerned with training himself in ways that would afford a suitable
job, and, therefore, help in securing a living in the city. Friendships and
acquaintances, except for a particular section, do not remain restricted
to the primary group or within the immediate neighbourhood but spill
beyond to include a more heterogeneous set, including the workgroup.
A sense of attachment and participation in the communal life of the
neighbourhood are not, therefore, immediately visible among most of
Park Circus’ Muslims, except during certain points of time in the year – such
74 Diversities, differences and social relations
as the annual festivals or the holy month of ramzaan – when the entire
neighbourhood seems to acquire a heightened spirit of community and
belonging.
Such an urban milieu apparently helps in overcoming ‘trivial commu-
nal’ issues which apparently plague residents of the more closed Muslim
communities in the city on an everyday basis. Local Muslims refer to
neighbourhoods such as Rajabazar and Khiddirpore where the hold of
family, community and institutionalised religion are particularly strong
on the individual.
As Sheikh Jamal (46), who works as a mechanic and lives with his fam-
ily in his wife’s ancestral house in Tiljala, put it,

My own house is in Khiddirpore . . . but we chose to live here because

there are better opportunities . . . there are good schools for children,
and you can always find some kind of work. . . . There is also a lot of
interference there. You also have to listen to the local elders in every
matter. My daughter is appearing for her Higher Secondary exams
this year, and my other daughter is in the ninth standard  .  .  .  this
would not have been possible if we continued to live there. They
would have forced me to marry her off.

Nazma (23), who lives in one of the numerous slums along Theatre Road,
put it this way,

Wanha pet toh larai jhagra chalta hi rehta hai [there people quarrel all the
time]. Muslims themselves fight with each other on small matters. I
have never come back from Rajabazar (her married elder sister lives
there) without seeing some squabble (between two ‘areas’). These
things don’t happen here. Yanha pe mahol achha hai. Yeh sab nahi hota
[here the milieu is much better. These things do not happen].

It seems that in the more closed-off Muslim areas such as Rajabazar it

becomes difficult for a person to step outside community and participate
in the urban way of life in matters of education, work and family, the
traditional features of which have often been held responsible for the per-
sistent backwardness and underdevelopment among Muslim communities
in India.
Park Circus also seems to provide a more open environment for the
younger generation, who, because of their relatively unhindered expo-
sure to modernity and urbanity, can go beyond the immediate dictates of
community, and think of establishing themselves in their own capacities
in society.
 Diversities, differences and social relations 75
As Anwar (19), pursuing a bachelor’s degree in commerce, told me,

Here you can dream of doing big things. Otherwise you grow up
thinking that Muslims can never be able to do well in life . . . my
cousins in Rajabazar don’t think of doing anything beyond work-
ing in the meat shop (they are a family of Kasais) or working for the
party (implying a political party). Here you have all the opportunities.
Training centres, coaches, clubs . . . everything.

This does not mean that the youth in the neighbourhood necessarily
abjure all forms of symbolic allegiance to an Islamic identity but that
such choices are a result of far more complex and intricate processes than
a simple reference to religious revivalism might imply. I will discuss the
issue in a later chapter in the context of education and occupation which
form, by far, the most important points of contact with urbanity for a
large section of the neighbourhood’s residents, especially the youth (see
Chapter 5).

Diversity and the urban experience

It is useful to point out here that the experience of urban life is, how-
ever, not the same across the different segments of Muslim society in the
neighbourhood. It varies from one group to another depending upon
a number of factors of which the immediate condition of life is the
most important. Education, occupation, income, and lifestyle remain
important factors which affect a family’s access to the urban way of life.
Whereas, for the affluent and upwardly mobile, urbanity and its associ-
ated institutions hold a lot of promise for a majority of those living in
the congested and squalid slum stretches along the eastern fringe of the
neighbourhood the wider urban world and its ways continue to remain
distant and remote.
In these pockets of urban desolation the prospects of development
and modernisation are, at the most, bleak. Few welfare measures actually
reach the targeted people, most of whom lack the necessary resources
to lay claims on their legitimate share of development benefits. In these
areas – composed as they are of ethnically similar Muslim families who
have sought to establish themselves in the city on the basis of kinship or
region-based occupational networks – the sense of traditional community
is seems to be rather strong. The influence of the primary group, com-
posed of neighbours in the anganbari, and the local community remain
particularly important for them. Further, the shared concerns of every-
day life, such as settlement rights, and demands for basic civic amenities
76 Diversities, differences and social relations
require rallying on collective terms in ways that make the indifference and
impersonality of urban life rather difficult to adopt.
A large section of the neighbourhood’s Muslims, especially those resid-
ing in the slum- or semi-slum-like parts, are found to switch regularly
between the urban and the communal by adopting a variety of strategies
and techniques in order to adjust to the contradictory demands of the
two different value systems. Patterns of behaviour, styles of clothing and
body language change drastically as individuals constantly try to negotiate
their way between the two different worlds. Thus a young woman who
is supposed to be in a burka in the neighbourhood changes into ordinary
clothes for her job as a front desk worker in a local motors showroom
and slips back into her Islamic gear once she is back to the neighbour-
hood. Again a Muslim youth from Tiljala might lend a hand in his fam-
ily’s butchering or leatherwork business but otherwise shed his hereditary
occupational identity in order to work in a call centre outside his immedi-
ate neighbourhood. Behaviour in such areas appears to be marked by two
opposing sets of norms that get situationally invoked, which renders social
life neither distinctly urban nor particularly communal in character.26
Apart from its cosmopolitan setting, the high level of diversity in the
local Muslim population clustered over a relatively short expanse of physi-
cal space also affects social relations within the neighbourhood in inter-
esting ways; ways that often run contrary to perceptions of social life in
Muslim neighbourhoods of most Indian cities.27 Since ethnically diverse
Muslim communities with varying socio-economic statuses are somewhat
forced to live in very close proximity of each other, the resulting tension
often induces each sub-group to look away from the other and develop
associations and organisations within their own kind. Patterns of sociation
vary depending on social location of groups and may range from the local
para (neighbourhood) club – whose members are drawn from a single
slum or even part of a large slum, or a few adjacent streets – to associa-
tions outside the neighbourhood where membership depends largely on
the social status of prospective members rather than a sense of locality and
shared common space.28
Most upper and upper-middle classes of Muslims in the neighbourhood
are becoming growingly resentful of the vitiating effect that the continu-
ous influx of poor, ‘uneducated’ and ‘uncultured’ migrants Muslim have
on the cultural milieu and the public spaces of the locality and they are
increasingly shaking off their social attachments with the neighbourhood
and withdrawing into tiny enclaves of their own each with its unique
pattern of association and sociability. Thus, one hardly comes across par-
ticipatory organisations which draw members from all sections of the
population, so that the idea of a single neighbourhood, so often visualised
 Diversities, differences and social relations 77
in the urban imaginary as a Muslim ghetto, no longer holds.29 Instead of
purely Muslim associations which voice common Muslim concerns, one
comes across issue-based groups (such as sporting clubs, women’s organ-
isations, etc.) and local associations which often have members drawn from
different ethnic and religious groups.
This feature of local patterns of association once again dilutes the over-
arching sense of religious identity among the neighbourhood’s Muslims,
and instead promotes a multilayered and contextually derived notion of
neighbourhood and neighbours among them. Notions of the ‘self ’ and
the ‘other’, or ‘us’ and ‘them’ get constructed on the basis of a complex
understanding of identity and difference, which is ultimately situationally
defined and not necessarily the result of common perception of identity
by a group subscribing to the same religious faith.

Neighbours and strangers: the Hindu-Muslim

relation in Park Circus
With about a fifth of Park Circus’ population, the Hindus constitute the
most significant ‘other’ of the Muslims in the neighbourhood. But the
latter is also as diverse and variegated as its Muslim counterpart. At pres-
ent it is composed of both Bengali and non-Bengali groups which can
be further differentiated in terms of caste, region, class, and styles of life.
Thus, apart from Bengali-speaking Hindus, who are mostly engaged in
white-collar occupations or modern professions, one comes across the
relatively affluent non-Bengalis such as the Punjabis, Marwaris, Gujaratis,
and Sindhis who stay in particular pockets of the neighbourhood and run
businesses in the city. They usually stay in areas such as Talbagan Lane,
Orient Row, Theatre Road, and Circular Avenue and generally maintain
their distances from the rest of the neighbourhood. The Bengali middle
classes are much smaller in number, compared to these groups, and are
largely found in a small stretch along Dilkhusha Street and Jhowtallah
Lane. A few of them can also be found in the relatively mixed areas of the
neighbourhood, where they stay in close quarters with their linguistically
diverse neighbours. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier (see Chapter 2:
Physical Layout, Ethnic Groups and Social Distances), religious intermix-
ing is rarely found to occur at the level of a single apartment house. The
lower classes among the Hindus in the area are primarily composed of the
dhangors (scavengers), the dhopas (washermen) and the chamars (leather-
workers), all of whom are drawn from the ex-untouchable communities
of Hindu society and usually speak dialects of Bengali or Bihari. These
groups have clearly demarcated residential spaces which are situated at
a distance from the other Hindu settlements in the neighbourhood.30
78 Diversities, differences and social relations
The dhangor and chamarbustees in the neighbourhood are usually located
in continuum with similar low status Muslim concentration areas, such
as those around the Park Circus Market and Lower Range and within a
single lane of mutually facing houses in the Tiljala slum. The peculiar
significance that this sort of co-residence has in terms of inter-communal
relations will be discussed shortly.
Most of the small numbers of middle-class Hindu Bengalis who live
in the neighbourhood trace their roots to East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
Their families had come into the neighbourhood in the years following
Independence and settled themselves in spaces left behind by evacuee
Muslim households.31 However, the preponderance of the large Muslim
slums in its fringes and the growing proportion of mostly lower-middle-
class Muslims in the neighbourhood’s population with each passing year,
whose ways of life are vastly different from their own, never allowed these
Hindu groups to consider Park Circus as their permanent home. Those
who could afford have acquired property in other more mainstream urban
localities and moved into them. Those that remained largely did so out
of compulsion, or some other instrumental consideration such as proxim-
ity to place of work, availability of infrastructural facilities or the general
locational advantage afforded by the neighbourhood.
This particular composition of middle-class Bengali Hindus of Park
Circus, who largely represent the cultural majority of the city, bears upon
inter-communal relations and everyday social interactions in the neigh-
bourhood in certain very fundamental ways. The collective memory of
partition and tribulations faced as refugees have remained alive in family
histories and while somewhat mitigated among younger generations, still
find expression in common sentiments of such families in the neigh-
bourhood. Therefore, there is a persistent tendency towards ‘demonising’
the abstract category of the ‘Muslim’ in the everyday narratives of such
families. At present such notions usually centre on cultural metaphors of
differences in food and family life, of aggression and of intrinsic self-asser-
tion, all of which combine to create a somewhat distorted notion of the
Muslim personality in the average Hindu middle-class psyche, who then
structure their behaviour in accordance with these peremptorily handed
down frameworks of reference. (For a detailed description see Chapter 6.)
However, due to the declining status of most of these families, and the
perception of a steady loss of control over the neighbourhood’s destiny,
there is a growing sense of insecurity and unease which mark their every-
day lives. This insecurity manifests itself, as we shall eventually see, both in
the form of maintaining a distance from local Muslims and in the tactical
moves undertaken to keep trouble at bay by being silent about matters that
would otherwise incite them to retort. The sense of the neighbourhood
 Diversities, differences and social relations 79
being communally constituted neighbourhood – and a ‘Muslim’ one at
that – is deeply entrenched among the Hindus of Park Circus, a fact that
defines their interactions and engagement with the community in the
area. This does not mean that personal friendships and acquaintance are
totally absent but that they are not very common. Usually they do not
extend beyond neighbours or those with whom the former have everyday
social relations of contract or exchange.

Inter-community relations and everyday interaction

Even though the primary line of difference in the neighbourhood appears
to be those between the Muslims and the Hindus, the necessarily frag-
mented character of either ‘community’ gives rise to a complex social
scenario where relations of neighbourliness, of dispute and of indifference
cannot solely be discussed in terms of the religious community member-
ship of the residents.32 Sub-sections of either community inhabit their
own space, which is usually both physically and socially defined and set
apart from one another. Thus affluent Hindus live in Orient Row, Hindu
middle classes live around Dilkhusha Street and poorer Hindus live in
Moochipara (adjacent to Tiljala, a large Muslim slum) and the slums on
Circular Row. Muslims have similarly fragmented quarters as well, but
because of the enormous pressure on Muslim housing in the neighbour-
hood, it is difficult to find as clearly defined physical spaces for the differ-
ent segments of Muslim society as are found among the Hindus.
Given the situation, social distances are sought to be maintained by tak-
ing recourse to a variety of tactics and strategies, of which assuming an
indifferent tolerance towards the other and creatively defining the other
seem to be the more common ones. I would attempt to provide a more
general description of everyday social relations among the various social
groups before taking up the more obvious aspect of Hindu-Muslim rela-
tions in the neighbourhood.
In the first place, the generally mixed composition of the neighbour-
hood along with its palpably cosmopolitan milieu seems to promote a
degree of ‘tolerance’ among its residents. A common perception seems to
be that different groups behave differently according to their own values
and codes of conduct so that one can expect little similarity of those with
one’s own modes of practice. ‘Woh unke tarah karte hai. Sab toh hamare jaise
nahi hai’ (literally, they do things their own way; everybody is not the
same/like us) was an explanation many of my respondents gave in order
to explain others’ activities, and the dissimilarity of those with their own,
on several occasions. However, it needs to be noted that this ‘tolerance’
does not necessarily stem from a positive appreciation of others’ ways
80 Diversities, differences and social relations
of life. Rather, as I will discuss in a later chapter (see Chapter 6) it often
derives from a passive non-interference, an ‘antagonistic tolerance’ so to
say (Hayden 2002: 205–219) where no attempt is made at erasing or over-
coming differences between oneself and the other. Mutual boundaries are
maintained, and those on the other side are expected to think and act dif-
ferently, and peace is maintained so long as the border is not transgressed.
Again, the sense of identity and, hence, of the ‘other’ in relation to one-
self is often drawn contextually so that notions of the other varies depend-
ing on which aspect of identity is valorised by an individual/family in a
given context over other possible ones. A middle-class Bengali-speaking
Muslim living on Jhowtallah Lane, a Muslim-predominant locality in the
fringes of the Kasiabagan slum, would, for instance, define Muslims of
Kasiabagan and Tiljala primarily as poor and ignorant Biharis, easily gull-
ible and deeply steeped into communal prejudice, than as Muslims and,
therefore, part of his or her own community. On the other hand, the same
family might have regular social interactions with a middle-class Hindu
family, Bengali or non-Bengali, but then the point of identification would
be either the shared middle-class values of the two families or their lin-
guistic similarity. Religious identity, would only rarely assume significance
in such instances.
In the case of slums, where feelings of community seem stronger, the
picture is not very different. Muslims of Tiljala would consider their
Hindu neighbours of Moochipara as neighbours per se than as Hindus in
the first place. Stories abound as to how Muslims arranged for daily sup-
plies for the Hindu families of Moochipara during the troubled days of
the 1992 communal disturbances (which followed across Indian cities in
the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition) even though they were practi-
cally on warlike terms with similar Hindu families of Darapara – a slum
of Hindu leatherworkers – just across the street.
That said, it is not always very useful to employ such isolated instances
of cross-religious bonding to account for the everyday social relations
between the two major religious communities in the neighbourhood.
One often comes across considerable ambiguities in such sentiments. A
Muslim in the neighbourhood might be on very good terms with a cer-
tain Hindu family, or a few Hindu families but that does not necessarily
reflect in his or her attitudes towards ‘the Hindu’ as a religious category.
The reaction of one of my respondents’ fairly sums up the attitude.
While talking about ordinary Muslims’ relations with Hindus in the
neighbourhood, Ismat (36), a resident of the Tiljala slum, told me,

They are neighbours (padose hain) we go to their houses, they come to

ours (aana jaana chalta hi rehta) . . . we don’t think in terms of Hindu
 Diversities, differences and social relations 81
or Muslim . . .  also all Hindus are not like that. Guptaji (the local
grocer) is so good that unless you know you will never guess that he
is a Hindu.

Obviously, Ismat’s emphatic statement about her grocer’s identity of not

being a Hindu derives from her perceptions of Hinduness which casts the
abstract other in a completely different and largely negative light. In the
course of later interaction I found that Ismat had very vivid memories
of the disturbances of 1992, having experienced it first-hand when her
house, like many others in her slum, was attacked by Hindu mobs. The
lathi and sword wielding Hindu mobs from neighbouring slums whom
she had encountered as a teenager have remained etched in her memory
as the prototype of ‘the Hindu’ forever. The image of the well-meaning
grocer could do little to debunk that image. As Rowena Robinson argues
in her essay Naata, Nyaya (Robinson 2011), the realm of the everyday,
in spite of aberrations, can never be entirely free from the ideological
and political constructions of monolithic entities ‘the Muslim’ and ‘the
Hindu’ (Robinson 2011: 243). Therefore, while there can be instances of
distinct or individual Muslims (or Hindus) for either community, ideo-
logically there remains but one Muslim (or one Hindu) (Robinson 2011:
249). Indeed, it is a strange dialectic between the particular and the general
where any number of concrete individual instances of neighbourliness
and goodwill are looked upon only as exceptions and never pass on to
constitute the general in society.
Similar sentiments of neighbourliness and goodwill are voiced by some
of the Hindu families as well, whose experience of immediate Muslim
neighbours often run contrary to images of the Muslim handed down
in family narratives. Among such neighbours one usually comes across
close social relationships such as interpersonal friendships, family visits,
exchange of food, and invitations to mutual family events, all of which run
contrary to the tendencies of avoidance that are generally invoked with
regard to the Muslim in the city.
Apart from occasional neighbourly relations, most families from either
community have rather limited social contacts with members of the other
community. A general unfamiliarity with the other’s way of life and the
absence of occasions to develop friendships and acquaintances are most
common explanations given to account for the dearth of social interac-
tions between the two. That instances of residential intermixing of Hindu
and Muslim families are usually sparse within the neighbourhood also
reinforces the distance that exists between the two groups.
The extent of social intermixing among the neighbourhood’s Mus-
lims and Hindus is also seen to vary with the social location of families
82 Diversities, differences and social relations
of both communities, since that often defines the nature of social net-
works a family will eventually develop. For example a poor Muslim fam-
ily, whose hereditary occupation is weaving (jolaha), is unlikely to have
friends among non-weavers and immediate Muslim neighbours, nor does
its children have much of an opportunity to intermix with those from
Hindu families since schooling and other socialisation options remain
quite restricted for them, usually being confined to the local government
school and the para playground in the immediate vicinity of the slum.
Again, in most festivals and rituals, serving mutton instead of beef is the
norm among the neighbourhood’s Muslims since the former is accept-
able to both the upper classes among the Muslims (ashraf Muslims usually
refrain from eating beef for a variety of reasons even though they sacrifice
cows and distribute beef ) and the Hindus. A poor Muslim family would
rarely have the means to serve mutton which is nearly twice as expensive
as beef, which would greatly limit its chances of developing a wide social
network, especially among the Hindus.
Nevertheless, in assessing inter-communal relations within the neigh-
bourhood, the general impression is that both communities while not
overtly welcoming each other’s presence take great care to avoid confron-
tation with the other and maintain a tactical silence on issues that could
lead to potential flare-ups.33 Thus, Hindus rarely ever speak out against
cow slaughter and the open sale of beef in the neighbourhood or pro-
test the temporary blocking of thoroughfares for the Friday prayer, and
Muslims similarly refrain from engaging in activities that might outrage
Hindu sentiments.
An interesting incident which comes to my mind in this regard hap-
pened on a night in the October 2012, just a few days before Kurbaani.
Around 10:30 at night, a sudden squabble in the street below brought me
to the window of the first floor apartment on Dilkhusha Street which I
occupied during the time I spent in the neighbourhood. Apparently a
group of Muslims, who were taking about half a dozen cows to be sold
in the Tiljala-Bright Street area had tied the cows to the balcony of the
opposite house which belonged to a Hindu Bengali family. While occu-
pants of the house watched quietly from the balconies above, without
interfering, a group of local Muslims came out and demanded that the
cows be tied elsewhere. They claimed that such behaviour might hurt
local Hindu sentiments since the cows were meant for sacrifice and as such
(as one of them told me the next morning) one should be careful about
‘such small matters’.
That religious borders are still tightly drawn emerge from attitudes of
either community, especially the Hindus who, because of their declining
number and status in the neighbourhood, feel particularly wary about the
 Diversities, differences and social relations 83
proximity of such large Muslim settlements. Many of them seem to view
the growing preponderance of Muslims in the neighbourhood in terms of
an obvious assertion of Islamic identity whereby Muslims are seen to be
steadily asserting their claim over local public space, leading to their own
withdrawal and marginalisation from it. As Mr Mitra (67), a lawyer and
an old resident of the neighbourhood, put it,

When was Eid ever celebrated for three days? Did you see the lighting
during Eid and Muharram . . . all this is borrowed from Durga Puja.
They try to imitate the Hindus in every way. . . . Nowadays so much
gets done around Shab-e-barat. But real Muslims do not celebrate [it].
They take the concept from Diwali.

He continued,

The Court passed an order (in 1996) stating that religious music
should not exceed 65 decibels. But they never pay any heed. Diney
pochish bar azaan deye (literally, the azaan sounds twenty-five times a
day). In Howrah (which is a primarily Hindu middle-class neigh-
bourhood and where his married daughter lives) they are very strict
about these things. No one would dare to cross the sound limit. But
nobody can tell them so here. This is their neighbourhood.

As Mrs Sen (72), a retired school teacher and one of the older Hindu resi-
dents of the neighbourhood, explained,

Even the girls whom I saw growing up without the burka now make
their own daughters wear one. . . . Do you see the mosques. They
almost look like fortresses preparing armies. Earlier they used to be
smaller, ordinary . . . nowadays when you look at their buildings and
decorations you wonder where all the money comes from.

The growing ostentation of Muslim public celebrations, the loud calls of

the azaan, the increasing adoption of the burka and the hijab by Muslim
women – which had apparently not been as popular even a generation
ago – , the open and unhindered sale of beef all seem to indicate their
own alienation from the locality, rendering it in their imagination as an
overtly Muslim space.
While such sentiments on part of local Hindus are largely personal
and not brought out in the open very often, prejudices both cultural and
otherwise seem to exist on both sides even though locals hardly ever talk
about it.34 Since such preconceptions do not apply in most face-to-face
84 Diversities, differences and social relations
relationships between Hindus and Muslims, everyday processes of other-
ing remain confined to strangers from other communities, those whom
they do not personally know. The potentiality of communal animosity,
therefore, remains only at the fringes of the larger neighbourhood, since
within it Muslims and Hindus inhabit different and clearly separate spaces,
which are usually not transgressed, and wherever residential intermix-
ing occurs relationships are usually amicable or, at the least, accommoda-
tive on either side. The highly fragmented nature of either community
which prevents a concerted articulation of the ‘self ’ on their part, and the
extant cosmopolitan culture which the neighbourhood owes to its loca-
tion within the city, seems to be further responsible for the maintenance
of a seemingly stable though often inwardly troubled relations between
the Hindus and Muslims of Park Circus.
Thus, it is difficult to comment on the nature of inter-communal rela-
tions in the neighbourhood in any simplistic or straightforward manner.
There seems to be, as Jairath writes, neither any ‘permanent fault-line(s)
between the Muslims and Hindus nor an eternal composite culture of
peace and harmony’ (Jairath 2011: 10). Instead a ‘working normal’ ‘replete
with discontinuities and discord’ (Gupta 2011: 4) is found to be in prac-
tice whereby either community is seen to be making carefully calculated
moves so that peaceable relations can be maintained at the everyday level.
Such action seems to have its roots in an acute sensitivity of the actors
to the specific historicity of inter-communal relations in the immediate
neighbourhood as well as in the larger framework of Hindu-Muslim rela-
tions in the city.

Notes
1 For an overview of intra-communal differences among the Muslims of Kolkata
see M.K.A. Siddiqui’s book The Social Organization of Muslims in Kolkata (Siddiqui
1974).
2 Talal Asad’s formulation of ‘discursive tradition’ is useful in understanding the
differences in belief and practices of Islam. As Asad points out, ‘[T]here is consid-
erable diversity in the beliefs and practices of Muslims. . . . For anthropologists,
neither form of Islam [either the Great of Little Tradition] has a claim to being
regarded as more ‘real’ than the other. They are what they are, formed in different
ways in different conditions’ (Asad 1986: 5–6).
3 The ashrafs form the upper echelons of Muslim society in India and are said to be
the descendants of Muslim peoples from the Middle-East, central Asia, Persia, and
so on. They also include some of the upper-caste converts from Hinduism (see
Mines 1972: 335)
4 For out-migration patterns of labourers and artisans from Bihar to the industrial
areas of Kolkata see Arjan De Haan’s Migration and Livelihood in Historical Perspective:
A Case Study of Bihar (De Haan 2002). For the distressed nature of labour migration
 Diversities, differences and social relations 85
to Kolkata see G. Iyer (ed.) Distressed Migrant Labour in India (Iyer 2004). Also see
P. Deshingkar’s The Role of Migration and Remittances in promoting Livelihoods
in Bihar (Deshingkar et al. 2006).
5 Discussions on the forging of a unified Muslim identity in Bengal prior to Parti-
tion are found, among others, in the works of F.C.R. Robinson (1974), Anil Seal
and Ayesha Jalal (1981), and Joya Chatterji (1995).
6 The Gramscian concept of hegemony is invoked here. For a note on the concept of
cultural hegemony see T. J. Jackson Lears The Concept of Cultural Hegemony:
Problems and Possibilities (Lears 1985). The role of media in disseminating culture
has been studied from a variety of perspectives in the field of media studies (For an
overview see Stevenson 2002; also see Hesmondhalgh 2006).
7 It is useful to note that non-Bengali Muslims across social locations used the terms
‘Bengali’ and ‘Hindu’ interchangeably to refer to the locality’s Bengali-speaking
Hindus.
8 This desire seems to spring more from a perception of the stagnant economy of
the city since, paradoxically, the same respondents have over the course of my
interactions with them pointed out that Kolkata was still a much safer place for
Muslims to live in as compared to most other cities in India, including the two
aforementioned ones.
9 For an overview of the eternal Bengali Muslim dilemma of beings Bengali or
Muslim see Joya Chatterji’s essay The Bengali Muslim: A Contradiction in Terms? An
Overview of the Debate on Bengali Muslim Identity (Chatterji 1998).
10 For a historical overview of the role played by Bengali Muslims in the city’s educa-
tion scenario see Sipra Mukherjee’s essay The City of Colleges: The Bengali Muslim
in Colonial Calcutta (Mukherjee 2009). Also see John Eade essay Modernization and
Islamization among Members of Calcutta’s Educated Bengali Muslim Middle Class (Eade
1983).
11 It has been pointed out that educated Bengali middle-class Muslims with roots in
the Bengal countryside entered a middle class (in Kolkata) that had already been
deeply influenced by bhadralok norms of civility, taste and conduct. Therefore, a
preoccupation with culture could be discernible among this group from early on
(Eade 1983: 63). This trend is especially noticeable among those Bengali-speaking
Muslims across classes who have not undergone thorough Islamisation like their
counterparts.
12 For a summary of the debates around the validity of using caste to understand the
patterns of social organisation among Indian Muslims see Syed Ali’s Collective and
Elective Ethnicity: Caste among Urban Muslims in India (Ali 2002).
13 The Gujarati Bohras and the Kutchi Memons are examples of such ashraf groups
among Indian Muslim (see Siddiqui 1974).
14 For a general note on the arzals or the Dalit Muslims see Yoginder Sikand’s Islam,
Caste and Dalit-Muslim relations in India (Sikand 2004).
15 For a note on caste among Kolkata’s Muslims see Siddiqui’s essay ‘The System of
Caste and the Muslims of Calcutta’ (Siddiqui 1974: 112–120).
16 For a summary of the historical evolution of this trend among the Muslims of
Bengal, especially during the earlier Censuses see Rafiuddin Ahmed’s The Bengal
Muslims: A Quest for Identity (Ahmed 1988).
17 This has been ascribed to the generally more open nature of Muslim society as
compared to the Hindus; in the absence of ‘a scripturally reinforced criterion of
purity and pollution’ differences between the ashrafs and ajlafs never became as
acute and insurmountable as between the Hindu castes (Saberwal 2008: 71).
86 Diversities, differences and social relations
18 For a note on occupation related stigma, especially with respect to Kasais see
Kanungo’s essay on the Muslims of Cuttack (Kanungo 2012: 258).
19 Class here is not used in its traditional Marxian usage of the location of a group in
relation to the means of production but rather in a Weberian sense to refer to the
lifestyle and consumption patterns of the various groups concerned (see Weber
1944).
20 For widely diverse character of the Indian middle class, see Andre Beteille’s essay
The Indian Middle Class (Beteille 2001).
21 For a general description of Muslim sects in Kolkata, see M.K.A. Siddiqui’s Social
Organization of Muslims in Calcutta (Siddiqui 1974: 54–65).
22 The main division within the Sunni sect in Kolkata is between the Deobandi and
the Barelwi. The Deobandis are a reformist group seeking to purge the Sunni faith
from all aspects of the folk tradition that have over time crept into it and introduce
logic in the interpretation of the Shariat and its accompanying rituals (Siddiqui
1974: 56).
23 For a general appraisal of the Bohra Muslims of Kolkata see Sarvani Gooptu’s essay
A Journey into My Neighbourhood: The Bohra Community of Kolkata (Gooptu 2009).
24 The Bohra community has one mosque in Park Circus which is kept exclusively
for its own use. Located on New Park Street, this is only the second Bohra mosque
in the city after the one in Pollock Street and was completed in 2011.
25 The position of the Ahmedyias vis-à-vis the other sects in Islam is strained since
their leader Mirza Ghulam Ahmed proclaimed himself as the prophet. Avoidance
of intermarriage and commensal relations with the Ahmediyas has been the usual
practice among the Muslims in general, which indicates their exclusion from the
folds of Muslim society. For an elaboration on the Ahmediyas of Kolkata and their
social location see Siddiqui’s Social Organization of Muslims of Calcutta (Siddiqui
1974: 59–60).
26 For the inherently situational nature of urban behaviour see Gerald Suttles’ essay
Urban Ethnography: Situational and Normative Accounts (Suttles 1976: 1–18).
27 I refer to cities in northern and western India where such Muslim concentration
areas have come up in recent years particularly in response to communal riots
and where the resultant communities are largely understood in terms of a single
unifying identity which is seen to govern their responses (see Jaffrelot and Gayer
2012).
28 The Karaya Sports Club on Karaya Road, Friends Club on Dilkhusha Street, Kas-
iabagan Youth Club etc. are examples of para clubs whereas the Wari Club, Lake
Club and Calcutta Club form examples of the latter kind where memberships
depend on social statuses of individuals and families.
29 For the associational features of the classic Jewish ghetto see Wacquant (2004).
30 For a general discussion on caste-based differentiation and spatial segregation in
Indian cities see Veronique Dupont (2004) and Vithayathil and Singh (2012).
31 The large number of exchange houses – the term locally used to refer to those
houses which came to the possession of their present Hindu occupants by way of
property exchange between Hindus of eastern Bengal and Muslims of Kolkata in
the years preceding Partition – still found in the neighbourhood bear testimony to
this.
32 Gottschalk, for example, while exploring Hindu-Muslim relations in a village in
Bihar, argues that it is only by decentring the overarching theme of religion that
one can study how religious identities actually operate in context (Gottschalk
2001).
 Diversities, differences and social relations 87
33 For an analysis of similar pragmatic relations of apparent tolerance based on calcu-
lations of nooqsan and faida (disadvantage and benefit), see Aminah Mohammad-
Arif ’s essay on the Bangalore Muslims (Mohammad-Arif 2012: 3008). Jackie
Assayag’s work on Hindu-Muslim relations in Karnataka also demonstrates the
inherent complexities of working with objective religious identities and puts
emphasis on relationships of competition and cooperation, antagonism and syn-
cretism in the historical evolution of religious identities in the area (Assayag 2004).
34 Since local Hindus knew my religious status, they generally seemed to be at ease
discussing such matters with me.
4 Local politics and the
everyday state

Since Independence, Muslim politics in India has mostly been framed

using the language of identity; though occasional commentaries on the
ongoing tendencies towards secularisation and mainstreaming are not hard
to come by. While a new kind of politics emerging at the grassroots and
articulating issues of development and democratic participation began to
gain ground among India’s Muslims during the 80s – especially among
those belonging to the marginalised sections – it was largely with the pub-
lication of the report of the Sachar Committee in 2006 that the large-scale
political marginalisation of Muslims in the country and the broad shifts
that had taken place in Muslim political demands began to get noticed in
the academia (Ahmed 2009; Hasan 2009a, 2009b).
Meanwhile, new studies in the anthropology of the state have increas-
ingly focused on the blurred and permeable nature of boundaries between
the state and society; which in the context of post-colonial societies
become particularly evident in the mechanisms of delivering ‘develop-
ment’ to citizens (Mitchell 1991). According to this body of literature,
local networks and systems of patronage emerge as important channels of
distributing the benefits of development initiatives in these societies and
often lead to an intertwining of the administration with political interests,
especially, at the lower levels (Brass 1965). Everyday political concerns of
a large section of those living in such societies, therefore, revolve around
garnering the ability to work through the existing politico-administrative
setup in order to benefit from the development initiatives undertaken
by the welfare state (Fuller and Benei 2001). Being on the right side of
power (i.e. the local administration) and ensuring access to important and
necessary information become the principal issues of day-to-day concern
for these groups. While institutional (party-based) politics and issues of
representation remain relevant, they largely form part of the larger canvas
of politics, with their immediate significance being restricted to the hold
political parties have in the local administrative processes of the state.
 Local politics and the everyday state 89
Participation in local politics or the decision to stay away from it – the
strategies adopted to ensure ‘gains’ (Bailey 1969) – are seen to have largely
to do with what happens at the local level of administration and the politi-
cal processes around it rather than with party politics in general or matters
of political representation as such.
Since this study was primarily concerned with the lives of ordinary
Muslims in an urban neighbourhood it seemed useful to focus attention
on the political processes that unfolded at the level of the ‘local’ and the
‘everyday’ than on the larger trends in politics.1 Broader political issues
and local responses to them have been explored only to the extent that
they seemed to impact the quotidian political concerns of the residents.
The first section of the chapter provides a brief political profile of the
neighbourhood, which formed the backdrop of the politics of clientelism2
that got played out during the time I spent there. It describes the major
political parties, their traditional and emerging support bases and the
methods of garnering political support adopted by them. It also describes
the prevailing political preferences of local Muslims especially in the light
of the large shift in political allegiance that had taken place during the
past few years in the state.3 The second section takes up the more imme-
diate concerns of everyday politics in the neighbourhood describing, in
particular, the issues, processes and actors involved in its performance. It
also tries to understand how political power operates at the local level, and
the ways in which ordinary Muslims encounter the state on an everyday
basis. The chapter concludes with a note on the nature of local mobilisa-
tion in order to locate the shifts in the patterns of articulating common
concerns that has taken place among marginalised Muslim groups in the
recent years.

Park Circus: a political profile

Park Circus falls under the Ballygunge Assembly Constituency of Kol-
kata. In the local political arrangement there were, at that point, two
major coalitions, that between the Communist Party of India (CPI) and
the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) on the one hand and
between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC)4 on the other.
There was a small presence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) among the
Marwaris and the Bengali Hindu washermen castes in the neighbourhood
but otherwise the party seemed to be almost unanimously disliked by the
locals for its alleged ‘divisive right wing politics’. There was no major
Islamic political formation in the neighbourhood either, although Sunni
Jama’ats was apparently gaining in popularity among a section of people
for effectively voicing identity-related issues.
90 Local politics and the everyday state
Of the two coalitions, the one between the CPI-CPM appeared to be
solid and stable with a tacit acceptance that the CPM was the senior part-
ner. Till 2009, by virtue of its much stronger numerical presence in this
part of the city, the CPM regularly contested and won the Parliamentary
and the Assembly seats under which the neighbourhood falls, while the
CPI with an apparently greater support base in the locality was awarded
the ward councillor’s post. The Congress – TMC coalition was formed
some months before the 2009 parliamentary elections to fight against
the Left forces jointly, but it always looked fragile and uncertain, with
the functionaries of the two parties regularly engaging in bickering and
one-up-man ship. With the massive shift of allegiance of traditional left
supporters in the neighbourhood, and the coalition working smoothly at
the upper level, the Parliamentary and the Assembly seats eventually went
to the TMC-Congress coalition. But bickering among the small time local
leaders ensured that the same does not happen at the ward level.5
All the major political parties had clearly discernible support bases,
especially among the slum continuums and other homogeneous stretches
of the neighbourhood. In these socially similar areas political support was
usually extended to either one party or the other and variety in political
preference was barely visible at the immediate level. Thus while the Left
coalition had almost exclusive support in Tiljala (70 D), Samsul Huda
Road, Ayenapara, Lal Masjid bustee, and so on, the localities of 100 Dilkhu-
sha, Kasiabagan, Bright Street, R. G. Saha Lane, and Jannagar Road almost
entirely supported the TMC-Congress coalition. In the more heteroge-
neous stretches, however, political preferences tended to get diluted. Thus,
the mixed localities of Darga Lane, Shahebpara, Meher Ali Road, Balu
Hakkak Lane, and Lower Range harboured visibly varied political sym-
pathies, with support being divided between the TMC, the Congress and
the Left, respectively.
In keeping with the overall trend in the state, Muslim support for the
Left parties had seriously waned in Park Circus during the time, with
most of the major Muslim concentrations switching over to the TMC.
The Left’s inability to secure basic infrastructural facilities for the slum
settlements, its persisting negligence of Muslim educational and employ-
ment concerns and its general indifference towards the plight of Muslims
were cited as the major factors behind their growing disenchantment
with the party. In addition to these general factors, the Left Front’s total
non-cooperation with the neighbourhood’s auto-driver’s union (in 2008);
its drive to evict some 2,000 hawkers from the Park Circus Market, most
of whom belonged to local Muslim groups; and the utter insensitivity it
displayed in the case of Rizwanur Rehman,6 who incidentally was a local
youth from the Tiljala slum, were seen as the critical factors that had
 Local politics and the everyday state 91
prompted slum-dwelling Muslims to distance themselves from the party
en masse during the 2011 elections. The TMC had, at that point, provided
a suitable alternative, promising to take care of the issues so far neglected
by the Left, mostly the issues that affected Muslims by virtue of their being
a minority in the state.7 During the period of my stay in the neighbour-
hood, only a few pockets could be found to display support for the Left
Front and that too because of some extraordinary personal initiatives of a
few local Left leaders in addressing the immediate concerns of some slums
and their dwellers. In such cases, as we shall eventually see, personal loyalty
towards the leader often played an important role in garnering support
rather than the political party’s agenda as such.
In terms of political representation, Muslims in the neighbourhood
largely seemed to prefer the mainstream political parties. This was once
again in keeping with the general trend of Muslim politics in the state,
where irrespective of their particular social location, Muslim groups have
traditionally opted for mainstream political formations.8 While I have
occasionally come across signboards and posters of identity-based politi-
cal formations such as the Indian National League or the Popular Front
of India in and around Park Circus, these formations did not amount
to much beyond mere signboards. Even during the Kolkata Municipal
Corporation elections their candidates apparently forfeited their deposits.
Muslims in Park Circus have traditionally maintained a distance from
organisations claiming to represent minority interests whenever they have
attempted to make a foray into active politics. This had been the case
when Md Sidiqullah Chowdhury, a state-level Muslim leader who had
assumed prominence with his pro-minority campaigns during the events
of 2006–7, subsequently sought to convert his non-political association
for Muslims into the People’s Democratic Conference of India (PDCI)
(now merged with the All India United Democratic Front [AIUDF]) but
failed to draw any substantial support from the Muslims of Park Circus.
Again there have been many instances of Muslim leaders from the Left
Front losing out to non-Muslim leaders from the TMC in the locality
which indicated that the religious identity of the candidate was not a seri-
ous matter of concern for the locals.
Given the existing diversity in its population and their settlement pat-
terns, it was rather difficult to identify trends in political support and
voting behaviour in the neighbourhood. Nonetheless, within the slums,
political choices largely seemed to follow familial preferences or were
bent by local coercive practices. A married woman, for example, could
vote on the lines of her natal family or of her husband’s family. But in
either case, as noted before, preferences would largely hinge on party lines
rather than personal qualities of the leaders or their religious membership.
92 Local politics and the everyday state
Again the techniques of bribery, enticement, rumour, threat, coercion, and
even direct monetary promises seemed to be freely used by political par-
ties to garner support in the slums. Distribution of money among the
slum households just before elections, organisation of revelries with free
drinks for the local youth, giving donations to clubs appear to be the
practiced methods of enticing voters from such pockets. An interesting
feature that went against the popular stereotype of Muslim en masse vot-
ing (for a critique, see Alam 2009) was that many Muslim families in the
neighbourhood, especially in the slums, have members with apparently
differing political allegiances. While this could be read as indicator of
independent individual choice, for most slum-dwelling families this was a
strategy that served the very practical purpose of keeping the family as a
whole on the favourable side of the extant power equation through one
member or another. The immediate significance of such a decision can
be appreciated once one considers the relevance that power and access
to the local administrative machinery holds in the everyday lives of most
slum-dwellers in the neighbourhood, a theme I will explore in detail in
the following section. Among the upper-middle and middle classes, a large
number of factors, both internal and external – such as the mass media and
the performance of leaders in office – seemed to shape voting behaviour.
Despite being a predominantly Muslim locality, religious affiliation of
leaders did not seem to play a paramount role in electoral choices of
people across socio-religious boundaries. However, there was a sizeable
Muslim representation at the level of leadership of all political parties
although the topmost offices did not necessarily always belong to them.
One interesting aspect of Park Circus that will strike any observer is
the high level of regimentation of political life in the area, in spite of
its otherwise cosmopolitan character. Almost every sub-locality in the
neighbourhood is meticulously mapped in terms of political allegiances
of its residents. During my interactions with people at the local ward
office – through which I had my primary entry in the field – the recurrent
fact that struck me was the way in which they could point out the exact
house numbers of those who supported their own party or the opposition
party, or switched from one to the other in recent times. Individual houses
and slum settlements are carefully sorted by each party into categories
which involve a party’s own supporters, the opposition’s supporters and
the uncertain group whose loyalties could be garnered by persuasion.
Political campaign during the elections is primarily focused on this lat-
ter group. This notion of ‘us’ and ‘them’ on the basis of differing political
allegiance is so entrenched among local party workers that in the process
of familiarising myself with the ward boundaries my informers would
point at certain streets or stretches of houses, which were undisputedly
 Local politics and the everyday state 93
parts of the ward, saying that they did not belong to ‘us’. I later realised
that by this they meant that those streets or houses were not part of their
political camp.
In the neighbourhood, there is also a remarkable absence of institutions
and associations devoid of political allegiances. Clubs, educational societ-
ies, women’s welfare associations, and the like are usually connected to
local party outfits, directly or indirectly through the involvement of local
politicians. The local Mahila Samiti, mostly comprising slum-dwelling
Muslim women, was attached to the CPI whereas clubs like the Kasiaba-
gan Youth Club and the Karaka Sporting Club were mainly allied to the
Congress Party. Local youth clubs had in the past few years increasingly
come to enjoy the patronage of the TMC which along with provid-
ing funds for building club houses and purchasing sports equipment also
played an active role in sponsoring cultural events in the area.
From this general outline of political life in Park Circus one under-
stands that it is almost impossible to draw any substantive conclusions
on Muslim political behaviour on the basis of what is encountered at
the level of a segmented urban space, be it a neighbourhood or even an
administrative unit of urban governance. Local politics, of course, remain
inextricably tied to the larger political issues that engage Muslims at
the regional and national levels, which impinge upon its performance
to a very great extent (Attwood 1979). But the persona of the politi-
cal representative, both at the level of the state and the centre happens
to remain quite remote in the everyday life of residents and his or her
existence is borne out only by the activities of the local functionaries of
his party. As such, such figures assume immediate prominence only dur-
ing the elections. Given this, everyday politics primarily revolves around
the mechanisms of the political parties in the neighbourhood, as well as
the site of local administration represented by the ward councillor, who,
while reflecting the ideology of a given political party (on whose ticket
he or she has won the chair), also performs the very significant task of
delivering the benefits of the developmental state to a large section of the
local population. In the section that follows I would primarily concern
myself with these two latter issues.

The everyday state

The need for an anthropological perspective of the state has been particu-
larly felt in the context of most of the post-colonial, developing societies
where parallel structures of authority are generally found to exist alongside
the formal framework of democracy; structures which, by their very exis-
tence, obscure efforts to understand the state system and its functions if one
94 Local politics and the everyday state
worked with a purely systems theory of political institutions. The ways in
which the traditional structures of privilege afforded by ethnicity, caste and
other communal affinities transmute into modern ones can be comprehen-
sively grasped only if one looked into and described the ways in which the
state actually works in these contexts. Such a perspective contests the view-
point that the extant structures of authority in such societies are intrinsically
opposed to democratic procedures,9 rather it contends that bureaucratic pro-
cesses are increasingly becoming familiar and that members of such societies
usually ‘negotiate’ with the developmental state to access its benefits which
they perceive as indispensable to their very survival. The business of the
state, therefore, generally revolves around the workings of the lower levels of
administration and the local population with a very significant role played by
a group of political entrepreneurs who act as go-betweens between the two.
Therefore, a study of the ‘everyday’ state, the ways in which the state presents
itself on a day-to-day basis in the lives of ordinary men and women, becomes
particularly relevant in such contexts (Fuller and Benei 2001).
In this section I limit my understanding of local politics in Park Circus
to this idea of the state and attempt to outline the key actors, mechanisms
and processes that figure in it. I also particularly focus on the ways in
which the underprivileged slum-dwelling Muslim groups perceive of the
state, and in turn engage with it in their everyday lives.

The ward councillor, party workers and social workers

of Park Circus
Local politics in the neighbourhood revolves around the ward office
where the councillor transacts the day-to-day business of administration,
and the offices of the different political parties where local-level leaders
and party workers gather on a daily basis to discuss work at hand. The CPI
party office on Fazl-ul-Haq Sarani, which served as the local ward office
during the time, was the busiest of all and on an ordinary day one would
find the councillor in her chair surrounded by a number of party workers,
self-claimed social workers, individuals seeking odd jobs or favours, and
locals who had gathered for the purposes of securing proofs of residence,
attestations, identity certificates and the like.
The administrative unit of the Ward was neatly divided into a number
of smaller units by each of the major political parties which had instituted
a local committee headed by a secretary to look after each of these sub
parts. The local committee secretary, along with a group of party work-
ers, was generally available for consultation in all local matters. While
the principal role of party workers is to maintain and expand the local
support base by channelising aspirations/grievances of supporters to the
 Local politics and the everyday state 95
upper echelon of the party leadership, they also played an important role
in emitting relevant and classified information to their respective party
supporters, managing disputes between households within ‘their areas’ of
jurisdiction and so on. They also organised campaigns to educate ordinary
people regarding the activities of the party at the upper levels in order to
sway support towards them, acting, thereby, as intermediaries between the
people and the political party (Brass 1994: 110).
Factionalism also appears to be central to the entire party worker sys-
tem. This is particularly so because there are usually strong personal ties
between the party worker and the local factional leader. While the party
worker pledges unwavering support to the leader, the latter in turn is
expected to take care of the security and material interests of the party
worker, in the absence of which a party worker might shift to another
party. A phrase I have often come across from party workers belonging
to various political outfits in the area runs, ‘didi/dada [terms from “elder
sister” and “elder brother” in Bengali, respectively] does things for us, we
do things for them as well. It is mutual’. As one Lal Babu put it,

It is a relationship that develops over the years. Just because the other
party may pay me more salary does not mean that I will shift to it.

It is surprising how, in spite of an enduring Left legacy, only a few of the

local party workers pay any heed to any overarching political ideology.
Personal allegiances and loyalties evidently play a more important role in
maintaining the party structure than otherwise.
Party workers are evidently held in awe by most locals, a sentiment that
emerges from the former’s proximity to ‘powerful people’; nonetheless, the
locals do not necessarily harbour a very benevolent attitude towards them;
As Zubeida Begum (54), a resident of the Tiljala slums and an active
member of the local women’s organisation, put it,

They [party workers] come only before the elections. Nobody cares
what happens to us during the years in between. But they always turn
up and give us a series of false promises about what they will do in
the next term and ask for our vote . . . but you will never see them
anywhere around in between.

As her neighbour, Mr Aslam Khan (61), who owns a small leather wallet
workshop in the next lane, put it,

Then they are always there for collecting donations whenever there
is an ‘event’. And you have to pay up whether you can afford it or
96 Local politics and the everyday state
not since not paying is not an option. Also we are sacred. They are
linked to powerful people, so you never know. And they are never
there when we need them.

Whereas party workers are almost unanimously seen to be acting in the

interests of the political party in question, there is also another group
of intermediaries who act as brokers between the people and the local
administration (Brass 1994: 110). Popularly known as ‘social workers’,
a term of self-description used by them, they play an important role in
facilitating locals’ access to the developmental state. Variously identified
in existing anthropological literature as ‘brokers’, dalals, pyraveekars, naya
netas, ‘political entrepreneurs’, and so on (Reddy and Haragopal 1985;
Bailey 2001; Jodhka 2010; Krishna 2013), it is this latter group which
plays a far more important role in the everyday political life of the
neighbourhood.10
‘Social workers’ in Park Circus are largely composed of local Muslim
men (even though women are reported to be taking up the vocation since
the past few years) drawn from across slum clusters in the neighbourhood,
and invariably belong to the younger generation aged between 25 and 40.
A social worker may or may not officially belong to any political party.
He or she may be a trainee of a political party who is not yet paid a salary
from the party treasury, or someone who regularly works in administrative
projects such as social awareness campaigns, women’s educational drives
and the like; and along with the party workers play an important role in
disseminating important information to the locals. In the process they
either nurture a political career of their own in the future or aim to secure
pragmatic ends through patronage and access to classified information
(Jodhka 2010).
However, in order to perform their job and benefit from it social work-
ers need certain skills. They have to be literate and dynamic, and possess
good communicative abilities (Krishna 2013). They also need to have a
basic knowledge of the existing political landscape and political personali-
ties in order to be able to strategise and improvise situationally (Gudavar-
thy 2013: 160). Apart from this, they need to be committed and ready to
spare a certain amount of their time and energy for people.
Since my entry into the field was facilitated by the local ward office,
and most of my key informants fell within this group of ‘social workers’,
I was routinely reminded of the abilities a person must possess or strive to
possess if he or she was to become a successful social worker.
As Ismat (43), a mother of two children, who had been an apprentice
in a political party for the past five years and was herself a very popular
‘social worker’, told me,
 Local politics and the everyday state 97
Not everyone can become social worker. You need to step outside and
interact with people. You cannot only think of yourself and your fam-
ily. I have two teenage daughters but I don’t stay at home for them. It
does not mean that I don’t care, but if you want something you have
to give something back too. Why do you think didi (the councilor)
does so much for us . . . because we have always been there when she
has needed our help . . . it is never easy to face the outside world. But
you need to learn how to manage situations.

As her co-worker, Yasin Khan (27), another of my informants, elaborated,

You need to know English. That is very important. Otherwise you

will never be able to do the paperwork and get your due. We help
poor people to become more aware of the benefits that are there for
them . . . they cannot get hold of [these things] because they don’t
know how to read and write.

Even though Ismat and Yasin belong to nearly two different generations
there are certain similarities between them which are key elements in their
vocation as ‘social workers’. First, both of them have skills of ‘managing’
situations, Ismat in her readiness to face the world, and Yasin in his stra-
tegic knowledge of English; second, both of them also display a readiness
to help people, even though they might be looking for immediate or
long-term personal gains, and third, an aspect that was initially pointed
out by the councillor, that both, while coming from lower-middle-class
families, were still not as desperate and mercenary as several others who
had joined the fold. It is also useful to point out that the credibility of
a social worker also depends, to a great extent, on their ability ‘to get
work done’, somehow or the other, through their contacts in the Ward
office or their connections with local politicians (Corbridge et al. 2005:
192–199). Someone who routinely mismanages and bungles up on the
job can hardly be expected to make any progress in the line.
The significance of the ‘social worker’ in everyday life of the locals can
be better understood once one looks at the ways in which the business
of everyday administration gets transacted at the local level. For most
slum-dwellers in the neighbourhood the developmental state and its
activities remain a distant reality which they can neither fully know nor
comprehend. They see the state and its institutions only episodically in
their dealings with key figures in the local administration, the hospital,
the police station, and educational institutions. In addition to overcoming
bureaucratic high handedness, most of these involve tasks that are innately
complex and require extensive paperwork which many of them can barely
98 Local politics and the everyday state
accomplish on their own. They need the assistance of middlemen who
have the necessary knowledge and political backing required for carry-
ing them out. Thus getting the police to note down an FIR, admitting a
patient in the local hospital for treatment, procuring scholarship forms to
be filled in by eligible candidates, and getting work done at the municipal
office or the bank all require the services of the social worker.
Even though being a social worker carries its own costs, it remains a
lucrative enterprise for those who manage to perform on the job. A social
worker, committed to his or her work, might be granted a local leadership
position (such as in a women’s self-help group) and aid in the manner of
scholarships and ameliorative schemes might reach his or her family mem-
bers much earlier compared to those of others. Social workers also stand to
gain in other less obvious ways; they might get preference in receiving ten-
ders for constructions, land dealings, small businesses, and other forms of
brokerage, all of which are virtually impossible in the absence of access to
the necessary information, contacts and connections and sound political
backing at the upper levels. The role of patronage in local politics assumes
particular relevance here. For most political leaders social workers and
casual party workers are potential candidates who could, with the neces-
sary mentoring and support, be converted into full-time party members/
workers. Even otherwise, they could be counted upon as reliable links
necessary for the execution of local political initiatives and the implemen-
tation of administrative decisions. Therefore, their services were more or
less indispensable to the latter, who always found ways of compensating
them by providing incentives.11

Perceptions of state, social class and political participation

among the Muslims of Park Circus
For the ordinary slum-dwelling Muslims of Park Circus, the primary con-
cerns of everyday life involve issues such as access to basic civic amenities
(proper housing, sewerage facilities, clean drinking water), the ability to
ensure a good education for their children, to lead their lives in a secure
and stable environment and make certain a regular income in order to
survive in a rapidly developing metropolis. In order to ensure these, par-
ticipating in the day-to-day processes of local politics is something they
can hardly afford to avoid. Proximity to power and its bearers, therefore,
often has direct repercussions on the quality of life of these groups of
people. This section primarily looks into the experiences of these ordi-
nary slum-dwelling Muslims of Park Circus as political actors and the
mechanisms they have devised to cope with the local administration, the
political parties and their functionaries at the everyday level. The section
 Local politics and the everyday state 99
further explores the ways in which Muslim responses to the state and the
larger political scenario tend to vary in terms of actual social location of
Muslim groups in the neighbourhood. It concludes with a brief note on
the role of the ulema or the religious leaders of the Muslims in local politi-
cal processes and the relevance, if any, it has on the everyday politics of
incumbent Muslim groups.
For the lower and lower-middle class, slum-dwelling Muslims of Park
Circus, being part of a political party, at least nominally, paying the party
subscription on a regular basis, maintaining active connections with local
party workers and other actors means in the first instance, information
about available state and other supports which is so central to their sur-
vival. Thus employment in the form of recruitment to local self-help
groups, hundred days’ work schemes, aid in the form of loans, scholarships,
allowances (such as old age pension, maternal care grants, vocational train-
ing stipends), and subsidies mostly reach those families whose members are
active supporters of political parties. The smooth availability of benefits
through valid identity cards such as below poverty line (BPL) and Aad-
har cards also hinge on regular political participation. The Muslim other
backward classes (OBC) cards,12 whose circulation has been in process in
the state over the last three years, have also apparently reached only those
families which have better political connections at the local level. This
is so because only a few among the slum-dwelling Muslims have any
prior possibility of knowing schemes announced by the state in relation to
issues of minority development unless informed through channels of the
administrative machinery and, therefore, have to depend upon the extent
to which they can forge viable relationships with local political actors in
order to ensure their enlistment.13
As one of my respondents, Md Quasim (52), a resident of the 100
Dilkhusha and a worker at a local garage, put it,

Hum garib log hai. Pade likhe nahi hai. Yeh sab kaha se pata lagega (we
are poor people; we don’t know how to read and write. How will we
know about all this? [On being asked if his son gets a scholarship at
school and if he has availed of the government insurance for garage
workers]) Unless we maintain relations with these people, pay up
when they ask, how can we get anything done?

His neighbour, Ishrat (44), who was visiting the family, during the inter-
view further explained,

Having connections with party people is important. They are the

ones who inform you about things. Also having connections means
100 Local politics and the everyday state
others will not mess with you. It is like having a shield . . . if you are
the one without connections you will be left behind and everybody
else will progress. My sister-in-law’s family is like that (without con-
nections). No wonder they are in such trouble. But for getting these
services you also have to put in an effort.

For most of the ordinary Muslims, everyday politics also involves displaying
considerable tact and discretion, which might run contrary to the values
they otherwise hold. Given the unsettling political competition that existed
at the local level – owing to the fact that posts of political relevance were
occupied by members of opposing parties14 – people often seemed to make
choices which ensured the benefits of the various state and local-level ini-
tiatives without their ever having to be on the wrong side of the power
equation. This was evident in the everyday practices they engaged in which
often ran contrary to expected modes of political behaviour. Thus, as men-
tioned earlier, different members of the same family might support different
political parties and a supporter of one political party might develop a close
personal relationship with the local councillor or other important political
figures in the locality, irrespective of his or her party membership, in order
to achieve the said ends. I remember coming across one CPM party worker
who often attended meetings and rallies organised by the Congress, and
even openly came out in support of the local Congress leader on a couple
of occasions, even though there is considerable bad blood between the Left
parties and the Congress in the ward. She explained her behaviour in terms
of an enduring personal gratitude towards the leader in question for a past
undisclosed favour, which had survived despite the fact that she harboured
no great sympathy for the Congress party. While strategies as these are not
always the most coveted decisions, locals opt for such choices since these
appear to be the most pragmatic ones for the moment.
Nearness to power also had another direct relevance for ordinary Mus-
lims in the locality. It usually meant a reassuring sense of security for most
slum-dwellers. In a reality where physical prowess often assumed great
significance in everyday lives of people, being part of a political party
conveyed the presence of a larger collective prepared to defend the well-
being of the individual or the family. More than actual defence, the latter
appeared to act as a deterrent to any kind of violation of personal security
by other rival groups as well as the enforcers of law.
As Md Imran Quader (37), a mechanic and a resident of the 100
Dilkhusha slum, explained,

If you have to raise a floor, or rebuild a part of the house you have
to pay a very large sum to the ‘party people’. If you fail, they imme-
 Local politics and the everyday state 101
diately report to the police and you have to stop it then and there
[since they ask for documents of ownership which most locals do not
possess]. Now if I have party backing I can still negotiate the sum, or
pay in installments and nobody will bother me. But that is impossible
if you stay away from politics.

As an afterthought he added,

This is how the situation is. If you find yourself in it this is how you
have to act. Now I am trying to raise a concrete staircase in place of
the rotten wooden one we have. It becomes dangerous after the rains.
Normally I would have to pay thirty thousand upward. But because
of this [his connections] I can pay eight thousand and another five
thousand later. What would you have done?

Again, everyday issues in the slum settlements such as squabbles among

neighbours in an anganbadi, family disputes, uncalled for interference of
local strongmen (goondas) and the like are generally settled by interven-
tions of local party outfits. An individual would, therefore, only stand to
lose if he or she does not ensure an active party backing. Thus, one finds
that a disinterest in local political life at this level entails a great price, as
experienced by most slum-dwellers who do not participate in it.
Patterns of political participation and everyday political concerns of the
middle and the upper-middle classes among Park Circus’ Muslims15 appear
quite different as compared to those of their slum-dwelling counterparts.
They do not usually have the need or the urgency to participate in local
politics in the way most slum-dwellers are required to do. While they might
occasionally need to get work done from the ward office, or through local
political figures, these interactions are only peripheral in their everyday life.
Their sense of politics, therefore, seems to draw largely from a perception of
issues at a much broader level which usually places the local in a continuum
with the regional, the national and ultimately the global. The mass media,
the clubs and associations of similar social groups, the workplace all play an
important role in opinion formation among these groups.
Political concerns of middle-class Muslims in Park Circus seemed to
encompass a variety of issues and included those which affected them as
Muslims as well as those which affected them by virtue of their being
members of the educated middle classes in a developing state. Thus,
among others, they spoke of issues such as corruption among politicians,
rising costs of living, violence against women, communal violence, terror-
ism, the persistent stereotyping of Muslims as disloyal and suspect citizens,
and the routine persecution of Muslim youth.
102 Local politics and the everyday state
As Mr Karim (54), a professor, explained,

Party politics and political factionalism is one thing. It has always been
there. Political parties talk of the Muslim vote-bank and try to entice
Muslims with all kinds of promises. But you need to look into issues
of community development. Look at the condition of education. Par-
ties promise to open madrasas and Urdu medium schools. But what
about opening good English medium schools? It is just this sort of an
attitude that pushes Muslim youth to the background. How can they
compete with the others if they do not open up to the world?

He continued,

And then there is the gap in government sector employment. After

Sachar Committee there has been a lot of talk about increasing the
Diversity Index and inducting more Muslims into government sec-
tor jobs. There was also talk about reservation for Muslims. But the
state government has a half-hearted approach. In West Bengal, after
the OBC list expansion, a large number of Muslims came under the
OBC category. But the new state list has not yet been incorporated
to the central list.16 Many eligible Muslim youth are losing out on
employment opportunities because of this delay. These are the issues
one should actually take up.

Mr Shaqueel Ahmed (61), a lawyer at the Calcutta High Court, observed

in a similar vein,

Muslims as a community have been discriminated against in India

since Partition. They have lagged behind in every sphere. This has
encouraged them to withdraw into themselves which has been
exploited by the ulemas. On the other hand secular parties have played
the communal card and used them as vote banks. Muslims need to
understand that they first need to enjoy equal status as citizens before
they can have any real say in the matter of politics . . . education is
the most important thing. Each successive government displays this
pressed need to open madrasas. But how many school-going Muslim
students actually attend them? The proportion is miniscule. In West
Bengal, apart from the fact of cultural inheritance, which I understand
is important, is there any relevance of Urdu education? Can anyone
get by without knowledge of either Bengali or English? . . . And the
anti-Muslim prejudice is apparent to anybody who looks at the fig-
ures in state sector employment for Muslims.
 Local politics and the everyday state 103
Middle-class Muslims also point to other kinds of discrimination mem-
bers of the community face in the state and elsewhere in the country.
One major issue is the relentless stereotyping of Muslims which leads to
a common perception that Muslims are inherently disloyal citizens. This,
as I will discuss in a later chapter, results in a number of social handicaps
for Muslims such as the creation of closed neighbourhoods for urban
Muslims, growing insecurity, difficulties in securing accommodation in
desirable urban neighbourhoods, and frequent persecution of Muslim
youth on charges of suspected terrorist activities (see Chapter 6). As one
of my respondents, who preferred to remain anonymous, pointed out,
it was as if members of the community were ‘second-class citizens’ in
the nation and could, therefore, be treated in any way considered apt for
them. As he put it,

It is sad but true. . . . Muslims live in fear in this country. As long as

you take what you get, things are stable. You need to know your place
in the scheme of things. Trouble starts whenever you try to transgress
those boundaries and lay your claims.

Even though one can identify a sense of despondency among a section

of the middle classes, most among them seem to be welcoming the new
measures for minority development instituted by the state and central gov-
ernments, respectively. Such measures, will, according to them, allow Mus-
lims, particularly the backward groups, to ‘catch up’ with the rest. Thus
most of the locality’s middle-class Muslims consider the recent drive of
Muslim OBC enlistment undertaken by the state government as a positive
indicator of the state’s intentions regarding its Muslim minorities. Many
among them feel that such steps should not necessarily be equated with
models of ‘minority appeasement’. Rather, a more measured approach has
to be adopted whereby reservation is seen as a mechanism of delivering
development to the most backward sections of the community.
As Mrs Ira Khannum (46), a college lecturer, put it,

This is the problem of any pro-minority initiative. Not just the

people, but also the government looks upon this as a way to entice
minorities, to secure their support in the next election. When TMC
pitched the idea of a Muslim hospital, we were alarmed. While on
paper such an initiative seems well intended, you can easily guess what
will happen in practice. Muslims will find it difficult to get admitted
in regular hospitals. Similarly, there is hardly any gain in coming up
with minority based educational institutions  .  .  .  surely [building]
madrasas is not the solution here.
104 Local politics and the everyday state
Similar discretion is usually exercised whenever an issue lies in the bor-
derline of identity and development based concerns. For example, the
TMC government’s plan to pay monthly allowances for imams and muez-
zins from the state treasury has drawn rather ambivalent responses from
the Muslim middle classes. Most of them believe that this is an unhealthy
aberration of state policy, and while none of them would actually protest
against such a step, they might not be fully convinced about its justifica-
tion either.
Middle-class Muslims also ponder over internal efforts required on
part of Muslims themselves in order to fall in line with the main-
stream. Apart from issues such as high dropout rates among Muslim
boys, early age of marriage and high rates of dowry, a factor that was
often pointed out by respondents concerned the use of Wakf property.
Many among them raised the question as to why Wakf property worth
millions of rupees were not being put to use profitably for financing
the education and business enterprises of disadvantaged Muslims in the
form of scholarships and loans, respectively. They also pointed out that
income from Wakf property could be utilised to establish more hostels
in Kolkata and other district towns to facilitate the higher education of
Muslim students, particularly girls, or for that matter setting up free of
cost clinics to attend to health concerns of disprivileged Muslims. As
Mr Ahmed put it,

If you have any idea about the worth of these properties you cannot
help wondering as to its use. Here Muslims have an inbuilt system
of helping themselves. It is just disappointing that no one takes an
effort, or even provides clean accounts of what is done with the
property.

While popular estimates for West Bengal place the value up to many
million rupees, which might not be much of an overestimation, the com-
munal asset remains mostly untapped and accusations of a major acts of
neglect of responsibility on the part of the leaders of the community as
well as the state government may not be totally unfounded.17
Given that Park Circus is a Muslim-predominant neighbourhood,
with an abundance of institutions of cultural reproduction for Muslims,
it is perhaps worth considering the role played by the local ulema as a
potential political actor in the neighbourhood. As pointed out before,
the neighbourhood did not have any political party of relevance which
dwelt exclusively on Muslim interests; neither did religious leaders appear
to have any direct say in day-to-day matters of administration. However,
events of communal persecution of Muslims in the country in the past
 Local politics and the everyday state 105
two decades seemed to have resulted in a growing preoccupation with
the issue of identity among a section of local Muslims. The local ulema
had apparently been instrumental in giving shape and voice to such
feelings – through their speeches and interactions in jamai’ts after the
Friday prayers, during Eid and Milad, and other occasions where large
congregations occurred. There were also instances of a growing number
of initiatives on part of local religious leaders to rally Muslims around
issues of deprivation and unfair discrimination perpetrated against the
community by the state and the society. Given the extant unsavoury
feelings of socio-economic marginalisation and insecurity among a vast
section of the neighbourhood’s Muslims, such ideas held the potential to
catch up, if properly channelised by the right authorities. It is interest-
ing to note that most protests and rallies around issues of identity in the
neighbourhood had taken place on Fridays after the weekly namaz. As
locals pointed out, it was on Fridays that the maulavi had an opportunity
to raise such issues as there is a readily available large gathering in the
mosque in an obvious state of heightened community feeling resulting
from the spell cast by the warmth of camaraderie that the act of pray-
ing together produced. They cited, as an instance among many others,
the role that the imam of a local mosque played in organising Muslims
against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin in 2007, protests over which
incidentally also took place on a Friday.18
However, it would be grossly incorrect to conclude on the basis of
such precedence that the local ulema are, without exception, concerned
with issues of identity. Several among them also seemed to be concerned
equally with the rights and duties of Muslims as citizens of the state.
During the post Eid prayers of 2013 October, the imam of the Dilkhusha
Masjid had reportedly asked Muslims to shed outward symbols of com-
munal identity and endeavour through ‘education’, ‘good breeding’ and
‘civic consciousness’ to participate as regular members of the state. State
benefits could only be useful when the community, on its part, tried to
reach out and utilise them.
In somewhat general terms this section has outlined the major political
concerns of Muslims across social classes in Park Circus. The next section
will focus more specifically on the kind of ‘politics’ ordinary Muslims
increasingly seem to be engaging in. As examples, I take up some of the
issues which drew large-scale participation from local Muslims during the
time I spent in the neighbourhood and, in the process, attempt to outline
what appears to be an emerging space of Muslim politics which draws
directly from the ‘lived world’ (Ortner 1995: 188) of Muslims outside of
the direct influence of either party-based politics or, for that matter, issues
of religious or cultural identity and activism.19
106 Local politics and the everyday state
Muslim response: local assertions and mobilisation
As described earlier, everyday life in Park Circus largely revolves around
the activities of the poor and the lower-middle-class Muslims who live in
and around the neighbourhood slums. Unlike their upper and middle-
class counterparts who have a greater access to the unmarked cosmopoli-
tan world of the city, these Muslims live and organise their lives within the
short radius of their immediate vicinity. Therefore, anything that posed a
threat to the ordinary rhythm of life of the locality would inevitably rouse
their concern and lead them to organise collective action as and when
warranted by the situation. Here I will briefly outline the trajectories of
events relating to some of these local matters of concern before comment-
ing on what they tell us about the new kind of activism that can be found
among ordinary, urban Muslims in India today.
The first of these was related to the problems posed by a newly opened
meat processing factory abutting the 100 Dilkhusha slum.20 While the
putrescent refuse from the factory further compromised the already abject
hygienic conditions of the slum, the factory in question also drew heavily
from the common infrastructural facilities of the slum, such as water and
electric supply, raising their costs for the locals. Residents might still have
put up with these issues, had the factory hired local labour and provided a
feasible employment opportunity in the locality. But this again it did not
do apparently to avoid possible labour trouble which might go beyond
control as the labourers could draw upon the support of the larger com-
munity of fellow slum-dwellers and force a decision in their favour.21
Given that there had already been precedents of similar such factories in
the locality where the owners had suddenly packed up business and left,
leaving it upon the local slum-dwellers to clear their dues, the latter were
totally against the factory’s operations in the area. Since the local admin-
istration was not ready to interfere and take a stand, the affected people
themselves rallied around the issue while roping in the organisational skills
of a few local social workers and within the space of a year succeeded in
forcing the factory to vacate its premises in the neighbourhood.
The second and the third had to do with the alleged indifference of
the local administration in taking action against the culprits/perpetrators
involved in child lifting22 and harassing slum women23 and the complete
helplessness of the locals in preventing the acts. In both cases the politi-
cal parties and the police had acted in unison towards what had appeared
to the locals as deliberate mechanisms to shield the wrong doers. When
caught in the act by the residents, the culprits had been apparently ‘res-
cued’ by arranging for their removal to the police station and thereby ‘pre-
venting them from being exposed to spontaneous public fury’. No report
 Local politics and the everyday state 107
of any serious police action against them was heard of by the aggrieved
thereafter for months. Once again, the locals mobilised themselves and
worked towards redressing their grievances following a long and patient
campaign that involved methods such as gheraoing the police station,
writing letters to the concerned authorities and roping in important mem-
bers of the local Muslim community. After months of spirited protest they
were finally successful in securing ‘justice’ – instances of child lifting prac-
tically stopped, and those involved in harassing women had been either
arrested or removed from the neighbourhood.
Another, a fourth, concerned the opening of a mammoth shopping
mall – the Quest – on Syed Amir Ali Avenue which posed an immediate
menace to the lower and lower-middle-class Muslim stretches of Jhow-
tolla, R. G. Saha Lane and Kasiabagan which lay just behind it, towards the
east. The building of the large rear gate in order to shift in merchandise
into the mall’s showrooms meant a great constraint on local movements
since it involved carrier trucks being parked in the otherwise narrow lane,
creating large traffic snarls in all points of time during the day. Prospec-
tive presence of large numbers of strangers in the area also raised issues of
security, especially of women and children in the otherwise fully residen-
tial stretch. The construction of the gate also meant the demolition of an
existing Muslim youth club which stood had on the site for years and was
known for having played a significant role in the social and cultural lives of
the locals. The Mall and its gate had no direct value for ordinary Muslims
in the locality. Not only was the facility way beyond their reach, but they
could neither expect to gain by way of employment since such enter-
prises, as described earlier, rigidly refrain from employing local labour.
When initial protests failed to bring about any favourable response from
the mall authorities, local-level leaders, including social workers, worked
towards bringing in the electronic and print media to arbitrate the issue
between the two parties. It was finally with the latter’s intervention that
a settlement was reached and the club was allocated space elsewhere for
building its premises though the issues of congestion and security largely
remained unaddressed.
The fifth was an ongoing case, where any settlement had not yet been
reached. It involved the Wakf Board registering a case against the resi-
dents of the 100 Dilkhusha slum on grounds of illegal occupation of
Wakf property. Contesting the case the residents of the said slum claimed
that their families had bought the land from a local land owner during
the 1950s and that they were in possession of the supporting documents.
The Wakf Board, on the other hand, was insistent that those were merely
fabricated papers, and even if the families had bought the land, the land-
owner in question was not authorised to sell it in the first place. Locals
108 Local politics and the everyday state
cited that during its time, the Left Front government had reviewed the
land ownership status of residents and had for practical purposes divided
the area in question into a pitch covered and a cemented zone. While
the pitch covered zone ran the possibility of being taken over for state-
sponsored infrastructure, which it eventually had been, the cemented area
would always remain with the slum-dwellers. Since this agreement was
compromised by the case lodged by the Wakf Board, the affected locals
rallied together to fight it out by organising themselves into a residents’
group. Their collective fight to prove that they have a rightful claim on
the area carried on apparently without support and sympathy of either
political parties or religious leaders.
Apart from hinting at the nature of concerns that ordinarily draw local
response, mobilisations such as these also reveal certain interesting fea-
tures of political life in the neighbourhood. They are invariably struggles
of poor and marginalised Muslims, and have very little to do with their
middle- and upper-class counterparts. Unlike the latter, these groups are
faced with the formidable reality of having to organise their lives in a
stigmatised neighbourhood, which is also part of a declining inner-city
area, overrun with congested slum and slum-like tenements that come
along with their associated risks. While they understand the importance
of access and proximity to the local structures of and the buffer it provides
against the various ups and downs in their everyday life; they have also
increasingly realised that they need to be self-dependent and proactive in
order to defend their interests, especially those that do not carry the politi-
cal hooks bearing an appeal for mainstream politics. Their own initiative,
resourcefulness, diverse talents and strength of numbers are among the
principal qualities that they employ variously to meet their ends. Thus
from roping in the media and appealing to the largesse of experienced
non-partisan professionals to relentless rallying and running around, all
become effective means of laying claims to a space which has largely
pushed them to the margins, but access to which is, on the other hand,
indispensable to their survival.24
Though not entirely unfamiliar with the discourse linking their fate
to the broader trajectory of marginality of Muslims in the country, such
associations were made only rarely in their everyday lives. Thus while the
case of Rizwanur struck a chord with many of them, given the proximity
of the incident (as well as the very evident nature of institutional discrimi-
nation practiced against the Muslim youth), cases of communal persecu-
tion relevant at the national level such as the Babri issue and the Gujarat
carnage remained distant, a far cry from the everyday concerns of their
lives in Park Circus. There seemed to be a clear recognition, on their part,
that they were poor and powerless people who needed to be, in the least,
 Local politics and the everyday state 109
enterprising if they desired to move up in society. Hence ‘politics’ for them
largely meant negotiating the local structures of power in a way which
ensured their basic demands of security and a ‘better life’ (see Chapter 5).
To that extent they were ready to lay their hopes neither in the efforts of
an educated and enlightened middle class nor in religious leaders and their
calls for internal purification, of which there have been a few instances
in the area. Instead they preferred to depend on their own resources and
enterprise to stand up against odds that on the face of it seemed distant
and formidable.
An aspect of Muslim political concern in the neighbourhood that per-
haps deserves a mention before I conclude involves issues that are directly
related to questions of Muslim communal identity. What stood out was
that in spite of the potentialities of communal assertion around identity in
the neighbourhood, issues pertaining to identity only rarely appeared to be
matters of concern for local Muslims. During the period of my stay two
issues elicited countrywide response both from Muslim groups and sec-
tions of the Indian intelligentsia. These concerned the execution of Ajmal
Kasab and, later that of, Afzal Guru on charges that they had conspired or
executed terrorist attacks which threatened the security and the integrity
of the Indian nation-state. Since both the accused were Muslims, there
remained the apprehension that the branding of ‘traitors’ and ‘conspirators’
could easily extend to all members of the Islamic faith. Interestingly, most
ordinary Muslims, across the neighbourhood, did not choose to read too
much into the situation. For a majority of the slum-dwelling Muslims
these were rather remote issues which did not directly affect their quotid-
ian concerns in any way. It might have been a different scenario had the
local youth been subject to regular police harassment of the same sort as
had been the experiences of Muslim-predominant localities in cities such
as New Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmadabad, but since that has not been so in
the case of Park Circus, locals did not immediately define such incidents
as instances of communal persecution of Muslims. Neither did they elicit
any concerted response on their part. Even among the middle classes
who had more informed and ready access to the developments, a novel
approach was evident. Rather than immediately linking the incidents to
the long trajectory of Muslim deprivation and exclusion by the State,
most of them attempted to define the implications such events – and the
popular responses they drew – had for Muslim politics in the country.
As Mr Shahnawaz Chowdhury (46), a local doctor, commenting on the
execution of Ajmal Kasab, said,

It’s a different matter . . . (whether this happened because Kasab was a

Muslim). In the case of Afzal Guru I agree it was heinous of the state
110 Local politics and the everyday state
to not inform his family beforehand. But these cannot be the only
issues in Muslim politics . . . this is how people lose sight of the real
issues. These are only episodes, but millions of Muslims in India live
in abject poverty, without basic education, housing or employment
across the country. These are more important issues.

Even though the middle classes did raise identity-related issues that both-
ered Muslims – such as the routine stereotyping of Muslims and anti-
Muslim prejudice in the country, the tag of terrorism and the persecution
and detention of Muslim men – they seemed to adopt a more nuanced
approach towards it. There was a prevalent notion that Muslims as a group
were discriminated against in all spheres of public life and that members of
the dominant community corner every opportunity because of their higher
educational status and overall clout in administration. But, at the same time,
there was a simultaneous recognition that large sections of the community
were uneducated and lack the basic educational requirements for decent
employment. Consequently better and wider educational and training
facilities for Muslim children and youth seemed to have become one of
utmost concern along with those of employment and basic infrastructure.25
This leads us to the fact that even though the method of articulation of
aspirations or grievances might at times appear ‘communal’ – in the sense
that they are put across using the language of community – the actual
demands that are made, far from being inward-looking and traditional, are
modern and secular.26 They concern, above all, those aspects of everyday
life that are considered necessary for individuals to realise themselves as full
participants of society. In the context of ordinary Muslims of Park Circus,
one is reminded of the ‘plebian’ politics of Muslim groups identified by T.
B. Hansen in Mumbai where ajlaf Muslims were increasingly found to be
aiming for self-reliance by investing in strong kinship networks of social
support and clientelism in the immediate aftermath of the 1992 riots,
while at the same time seeking to engage with the developmental state
in order to secure education, housing, security and social mobility (Hansen
2000: 265, 268. Also see Hansen 2001). While a form of issue-based net-
working is found to exist among Park Circus’ Muslims, the communal
angle of it remains to be more thoroughly explored. One might say that
in the everyday concern of politics among the larger section of the neigh-
bourhood’s Muslims identity is not immediately relevant; this does not
imply that issues of identity have become totally immaterial. Indeed, they
appear from corners most unexpected but equally quotidian; aspects of
which are explored in the following two chapters. But everyday political
transactions lie largely outside their grip, revolving as they do around the
activities of the poor and ordinary Muslims of Park Circus.
 Local politics and the everyday state 111
Notes
1 The need for ethnographic enquiry to understand politics and protest in society
has been stressed upon by Sherry Ortner (1995).
2 Here the phrase has been used to imply patron-client networks extant at the level
of the local administration. It does not refer solely to the role of corruption involv-
ing local elites, which has been its popular usage in works of political economy. For
an elucidation see Jeffery (2002). In the context of local politics in West Bengal
see Bardhan et al. (2009).
3 Muslims in West Bengal have since the late 1960s displayed an unflinching sup-
port to the Left parties, and had been a major force behind the Left’s coming to
power in the state in the elections of 1977. But the 2011 elections to the State
Assembly saw a drastic shift in Muslim allegiance in the state from the CPM led
Left Front towards the Trinamool Congress (TMC) – Congress alliance which
assumed office after receiving massive support from the state’s Muslim groups,
especially from the Muslim predominant constituencies.
4 The coalition between the Congress and the TMC has since broken down both
locally and at the state level.
5 In the 2010 elections to the KMC, instead of sticking to the existing coalition, the
TMC and the Congress each fielded its own candidate for the ward councillor’s
post against the CPI-CPM which resulted in the division of the anti-Left vote and
paved the way for the CPI’s Farzana Chowdhury’s most unexpected win.
6 In 2007 Rizwanur Rehaman, a lower-middle-class Muslim youth from Tiljala had
met and married a girl named Priyanka Todi, daughter of business magnate and
noted CPM sympathiser Ashok Todi. The marriage was completely unacceptable
to the wealthy Marwari family since, from its point of view, Rizwanur was no
match for the girl as he was a Muslim besides being from a modest economic
background. Even though Priyanka went and lived in Rizwanur’s slum residence
for a couple of days, she was brought back to her father’s house under pretext of an
eventual social wedding. In the days that followed Rizwanur faced endless persecu-
tion and threats from the girl’s family and local goons, which eventually led him to
commit suicide within three weeks of his marriage. Evidence suggests that he had
received no police protection whatsoever, in spite of his repeated appeals for it. As
it appeared the entire upper echelon of the government and police administration
worked in sync with what has since been seen as a case of ‘institutional discrimina-
tion’ against a lower-middle-class minority citizen in the Left ruled state.
7 The TMC’s election manifesto for the 2011 Assembly elections is a useful indica-
tion of the party’s intentions in this regard. For an online format of the mani-
festo see http://www.pdflibrary.info/download/ebook/ALL%20INDIA%20
TRINAMOOL%20CONGRESS/aHR0cDovL2FpdG1jLm9yZy9tYW5pZm
VzdG9fZW5nbGlzaF8yMDExLnBkZg
8 West Bengal’s Muslims had after Independence first sided with the Bengal Con-
gress, and then with the Left Front before finally shifting preference towards the
TMC. For a commentary on the tendencies towards political mainstreaming of
Muslims in the state, see Dasgupta (2009).
9 In the context of India such a view point has been articulated by the scholars such
as Ashis Nandy, Sudipta Kaviraj, Satish Saberwal, and Partha Chatterjee.
10 Writing about urban politics in Kolkata after liberalisation Nandini Gooptu points
out that working class youth have increasingly turned away from political activism,
condemning democratic politics as unrepresentative and limited their engagements
112 Local politics and the everyday state
with institutional politics merely to extract patronage benefits. Working class
youth, according to her, try to maintain their agency within the urban locality in
various ways ranging from extortion and coercion to local community oriented
social work (Gooptu 2007: 1927)
11 F. G. Bailey, commenting on the issue, points out that the existence of intermediar-
ies and local systems of patronage is one of the major flaws in the administrative
system of a developmental democracy like India since a large part of funds and
support geared towards distribution among the deserving gets absorbed within the
local politico-administrative setup before reaching its actual beneficiaries (Bailey
2001. Also see Ram Reddy and Haragopal 1985; Brass 1994).
12 Following the Ranganath Misra Commission reports in 2009 several state govern-
ments made an effort to expand their respective OBC lists to include backward
classes among minority groups especially Muslims. The renewed efforts of the
West Bengal State Government with regard to enlisting Muslim OBC’s in 2010 –
a task in which they had miserably failed in earlier instances (Moinuddin 2003,
Dasgupta 2009) – were part of this project.
13 For the tendency of the urban poor in India to ‘tackle their collective social prob-
lems’ by looking up to their local-level political representatives – ‘big men’, see
Harriss (2005).
14 As pointed out earlier, while the posts of the local MP and MLA belonged to the
TMC-Congress combine that of the ward councillor belonged to the CPI.
15 The affluent sections among the locality’s Muslims, usually composed of the rich
business families, seem to be primarily concerned with their commercial interests
in the city and are known to align themselves with political parties supposedly
most suited to the same. They comprise a very small group in the neighbourhood,
and as I have not studied them per se, I cannot comment on their political prefer-
ences in any substantive manner.
16 The question of OBC reservation has irked Muslims in West Bengal for a long
time since the recommendations of the Mandal Commission. The then in power
left Front government’s insensitivity towards the issue, which led to the framing of
a very casual and utterly incomplete state list for Muslim OBCs after the Commis-
sion’s recommendations remained a major point of contention which soured the
relationship between the community and the state to a considerable degree. (For
details see Dasgupta 2009).
17 Wakf is permanent dedication of movable or immovable properties made by Mus-
lim philanthropists for religious, pious or charitable purposes. In India at present
the value of the property runs up to millions of rupees. But till date there is neither
any systematic assessment of the value of this mammoth asset nor any systematic
documentation and recording of titles. Reports of fraudulent transactions, mis-
appropriation and swindling are rampant. Only recently the Wakf boards have
started systematizing the data.
18 City-wide agitation by Muslim groups had also broken out in November 2007 for
the revocation of visa of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin. Sections of Nasrin’s
book Dwikhandito had apparently outraged Muslim sentiments and the Imam of
the Tipu Sultan mosque in Kolkata had issued a death threat against her unless she
left the country immediately. The West Bengal government immediately made
arrangements for removing Ms Nasrin from Kolkata.
19 For a note on the change in Muslim political demands in recent years in India
see Hilal Ahmed’s essay Muslims as a Political Community. In the essay Ahmed
points out, ‘[T]he conventional Muslim concerns, which primarily revolve around
the protection of the Muslim identity – Aligarh, Urdu, personal laws and Babri
 Local politics and the everyday state 113
Masjid – are gradually being replaced by the emerging issues of greater participa-
tion in public life, development and internal democratization’ (Ahmed 2009: 54).
20 Kerala and West Bengal – the only two states in India where cow slaughter has not
yet been officially banned – has witnessed a rapid growth in the number of both
legal and semi-legal slaughter houses and meat processing factories in the recent
years.
21 It appears to be quite regular among employers in the locality not to recruit local
labour for the same reason (see Chapter 5 for details)
22 Kidnapping of slum children from Park Circus started in early December 2012
and continued for weeks during which more than half dozen children were lifted
from the area. Finally when an alleged child lifter was caught in the act by the
locals and questioned, matters pointed to the existence of a larger network behind
such kidnappings. This led to enormous panic in the neighbourhood slums, and
even schools took the precaution of not sending children home without their
guardians
23 Incidents included the sexual harassment of a minor, mentally challenged girl in a
Karaya Road slum by a police informer who claimed to be a police inspector and
thus intimidated the locals, and of a young girl living with her widowed mother
in Kasiabagan by their tenant who supposedly carried a good amount of political
backing.
24 In the recent years a large body of literature has emerged on the politics of the
poor in urban centres across the world. Variously referred to as the politics of
the informal people (Bayet 1997), the politics of the grassroots (Castells 1983),
assertions in political society (Chatterjee 2004) to name a few, they point out
principally, the collective efforts and ingenuous methods adopted by the weaker
members of society – more often than not lying outside of the realm of civil-
society and its practices – in order to lay their claim on the city and on society.
25 Scholars documenting Muslim aspirations elsewhere in the country have noted
the emergence of similar trends among Muslim groups, where Muslim demands
increasingly centre on issues of development and wider democratic participation; a
sort of ‘citizen politics’ as it has been labelled (Robinson 2005; Alam 2008; Ahmed
2009; Gupta 2011).
26 Within the larger theoretical literature on community such responses signal the
new modes of communities’ engagement with the state where secular demands
are increasingly being made using the vocabulary of community. This, as Partha
Chatterjee writes is the ‘ineluctable modernity of this political experience’ whose
most significant feature is the ‘way in which the imaginative power of a traditional
structure of community, including its fuzziness and its capacity to invent relations
of kinship, has been wedded to the modern emancipatory rhetoric of autonomy
and equal rights’ (Chatterjee 1998: 282).
5 Economic life, aspirations
and social mobility

When the Sachar Committee submitted its report in 2006, it was found
that the Muslims of India lagged behind every other SRG in the country
in terms of economic participation and educational achievement except
perhaps the Hindu SCs and the STs (SCR 2006). It was also found that
urban Muslims were particularly poor and underprivileged as compared
to their rural counterparts,1 a peculiar trend quite contrary to the situation
existing among most other communities in the country.2 The socio-
economic backwardness of Muslims in India has been variously attributed
to the failure of the community to recover fully from the aftershocks of
partition, the internal hierarchies in the community and the lack of initia-
tive of its leaders, as well as to the persistent, though usually veiled, tenden-
cies of institutionalised discrimination and neglect of Muslims practiced
by the Indian state (Hasan 1988; Sikand 2004; Khalidi 2006).
Despite this, there are very little systematic data on the employment
and educational profile of Muslims either by region or by the rural-urban
divide since it has, for long, been tacitly accepted that cross-tabulating
such data by religion can only heighten religious sensitivity and spark off
communal tensions in society (Khalidi 2006: 3). Scholars working in the
area, on the other hand, are becoming increasingly convinced of the idea
that the actual experiences of marginalised communities can only partly
be gauged by taking recourse to ‘mere statistical aggregates’ regarding their
employment and educational status (Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012: 11); and that
the indicators of marginality needed to be put into their proper perspec-
tive. As a result, qualitative studies came to be seen as a prospective way
of doing this (Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012: 12). Ethnographic studies are,
in particular, being looked upon as viable modes of contextualising and
understanding the actual experiences of marginal Muslim communities
across India’s cities.3
Drawing on information collected in the course of fieldwork in Park
Circus, the present chapter attempts to build up such a contextualised
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 115
description of the economic and educational status of Muslims of the
neighbourhood. The first section presents a brief profile of their eco-
nomic life and describes the principal occupations and types of employ-
ment the majority of them currently find themselves in. In the process, it
tries to provide a broad income description of the neighbourhood’s Mus-
lims, in order to assess the kind of access they have to the various urban
utilities around them. The section also addresses the extent to which reli-
gious identity plays a role in defining economic opportunities for them,
especially, the ways in which residing in a negatively defined space affects
their worth in the urban labour market.
The second section dwells on the emerging aspirations of city-dwelling
Muslims in contemporary India, and explores the theme of education,
which emerges as the principal site around which desires for a ‘better
life’ get structured. Muslim preferences with regard to educating their
children seem to be a pointer to the kind of life Muslims want for them-
selves in urban India. The issues of modernity and community, of social
class, development and mobility, and the ambitions and hopes around a
perceived middle-class identity are sought to be foregrounded by plotting
local Muslim aspirations in terms of employment and education for them-
selves and for their children. In the process, the chapter once again raises
the conflicts posed by the intrinsic dualities of communal belonging and
the demands of cosmopolitan life and looks at the ways in which they get
resolved in a modern urban setting.

Muslims in the local economy: occupation, income

and exclusion
Even though Park Circus lies in the fringes of the Central Business Dis-
trict of Kolkata, and is itself a favoured location for many small and large
enterprises which seek to tap the strategic setting of the place, the urban
economy and its benefits seem to lie largely outside the reach of ordinary
Muslims who live in the neighbourhood. While there are no officially
aggregated data on the occupational profile or income structure of the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood, data collected in the course of field-
work indicate that most of the local Muslims are engaged in the informal
economy with only a handful holding regular employment in the organ-
ised sector, private or public. Several Muslims are also found to run small
and medium proprietorships and businesses across the neighbourhood and
elsewhere in the city. There are only a few exceptionally wealthy Muslim
families in the western part of Park Circus but they largely remain outside
the social world of the closed ‘Muslim area’ represented by the eastern and
southern stretches of the neighbourhood. Similar is the story of some of
116 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
the large commercial enterprises which are only physically located in the
vicinity, but once again, share no organic connection with the neighbour-
hood or its inhabitants. This section focuses primarily on the economic
life of ordinary Muslims in the neighbourhood and attempts to provide a
sketch of the ways in which they negotiate the multiple aspects of urban-
ity, community and marginality in the course of their everyday life within
a stigmatised urban space.
Unlike most other Muslim pockets in the city Park Circus does not
have any specific trade that local Muslims subscribe to. Whereas, some
other Muslim-predominant neighbourhoods such as those of Rajabazar,
Metiaburz and Khiddirpore can still largely be identified in terms of the
occupational constitution of their population (book-binding in Rajabazar,
tailoring in Metiaburz, dock-labour and zari work in Khiddirpore), Park
Circus represents more of a conglomerate of occupational groups engaged
in diverse trades within or outside the immediate neighbourhood. The
peculiar history of its inception as an upper-class Muslim neighbourhood
meant that Park Circus largely remained an exclusive residential area for
the affluent and the upwardly mobile of the city’s Muslims in the earlier
years before communal dynamics in the city started pushing increasingly
large numbers of poorer Muslims into the locality. While there were iso-
lated instances of small trade-based Muslim groups in certain pockets of
the neighbourhood – such as the glass-makers of ayenapara, the bangle-
makers of chooripara, or the kasais and chamars of Kasiabagan and Bright
Street, respectively – they could not claim to define the larger character of
the neighbourhood which continued to belong to the affluent sections of
the literati and the professional groups of both Bengali and non-Bengali-
speaking Muslims. However, the situation changed dramatically with
the continuing instances of communal disturbance in the city between
1926 and 19514 which led to a steady influx of low-skilled, often migrant
labourers engaged in petty enterprises, into the neighbourhood. Without
any stable income or social security to depend upon they flocked into the
neighbourhoods of their more fortunate co-religionists in the hope of
safety that numbers and political clout could provide. These, and the suc-
cessive waves of Muslim in-migration in the years after Partition, irrevo-
cably altered the social and economic composition of the neighbourhood
and by the end of 1960s the neighbourhood virtually lost its character as
an upper-class Muslim enclave, turning into a catchment area of poor and
underprivileged Muslims struggling to make ends meet in the city (Chat-
terji 2007: 161–194).
Even though the constitution of the neighbourhood in terms of social
class membership continued to get altered over the years the fact remained
that Park Circus by itself could not extend any economic prospects to its
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 117
Muslims. Whereas isolated instances of traditional family trade can still be
found in the area, such as those of the butchers’ and the leatherworkers’,
many other such trade as glass work and bangle-making have, to all pur-
poses, died down.5 As one of my respondents, Seikh Haseen, a 35-year-old
mechanic from Ayenapara, put it,

My father, uncles and grandfather were all into glass-work. I and my

brothers learnt it from them. But then there are no opportunities
here. You will not get a loan. Banks do not give credit without secu-
rity and the local money lenders charge very high interest rates. What
can poor people do? Unlike the kasai-s (butchers) we do not have
associations to look after our interests.6 So it is just easier to work as
mechanics or electricians. Even working as drivers is a good option.
You find it easy to get jobs if you have these skills. There is no point
in continuing with the trades of our forefathers.

In fact, many among the local Muslim youth do not seem enthusiastic
about working in family trades which they find to have little prospect.
Working as shop hands or amateur accountants in the Marwari enter-
prises in the central part of the city are rather perceived as providing
steadier incomes than individual entrepreneurships would. As several of
my respondents pointed out, the problem lay in the scale of work personal
proprietorships entailed.7
As Md Anees (26), the son of a local butcher who ran a small shop in a
lane in Kasiabagan, explained,

A shop like my father’s does not fetch a good income. Yes the shop
has been with our family and even my grandfather and his father were
butchers but how can we stay in business alongside the large enter-
prises such as Kohinoor and Hafiz (two well-known meat shops in the
neighbourhood which have a city-wide clientele)? Obviously we will
lose out. This is why my father always wanted me and my brothers to
study and get into more mainstream professions.

Anees is a commerce graduate and worked as an accountant in an elec-

trical gadgets showroom in nearby Gariahat. He helped his father in the
meat shop in the evenings and went with him to the livestock market in
central Kolkata to fetch animals on some mornings when the prospects of
trade were particularly high.
While many among the older generations of local Muslims realise
the limitations of carrying on with their traditional occupations, several
among them, in fact, feel that this tendency of the youth to work in more
118 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
‘modern’ occupations is also contributing to the rapid decline of the tra-
ditional Muslim trades.
As Md Ali (55), a local tailor whose shop lay among the cluster of tailor-
ing shops towards the eastern fringe of Dilkhusha Street, put it,

Learning embroidery and zari work and mastering cuts [of cloth]
involves long periods of apprenticeship.8 The youth today do not
have that kind of patience. Also there are these other opportunities
for them to earn easy money. Who will learn tailoring? These days
we mostly have to outsource work to the villages. They come, pick
up the work, complete it from home, and come back to return it.
They get paid on a piece basis. Obviously, since I can’t supervise
their work personally, the quality goes down. Instead the bigger
boutiques on Park Street and A.J.C Bose Road are taking over all
the local orders.

Such observations notwithstanding, the fact remains that only a small sec-
tion of the local Muslims find it gainful to carry on with their traditional
trades. They usually comprise middle-level businessmen who, without the
backing of any substantial capital, have nevertheless managed to hold on to
their trades by means of adapting to the rapidly changing urban economy.
The Muslim family which owns one of the most famous meat shops
in  the neighbourhood known for the quality of its mutton across the
city, has, for example, lately ventured into catering and internet providing
business in the area. One comes across similar stories of enterprise and
adaptability, even though they are small in number when compared to the
general occupational profile of the neighbourhood.
For the rest, rather than running individual proprietorships, it seems
increasingly convenient to opt for paid work either directly as wage
labourers in larger enterprises specialising in the same trade or as job con-
tractors under them. Large numbers of traditional leatherworkers from
Kasiabagan and Tiljala, for example, now take in contracts from the big
leather factories in adjacent Topsia and work from home. On an average
day, walking through any of the numerous convoluted lanes of Kasiabagan,
one finds Muslim men of various ages working on shoes, wallets and tote
bags meant for supply to the factories that has employed them. Many
local Muslim men also travel large distances to work in leather factories
elsewhere in the city.
The narrative of Shoaib Khan (33), who works in a leather factory
in Chitpur (in the northern fringes of the city), explains how market
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 119
uncertainties along with lack of resources have driven out family based
enterprises and thrown members into the clutches of big business,

Everyone in my family is into leatherwork. Earlier we used to make

wallets and supply them to a trader in Lal Bazar. But then there were
problems with payments, he would not keep the contract . . . then
he said there was enough supply, he did not need any more for the
next two months . . . Also every trader has a supplier; so it is hard
to find new traders who will pay you well . . . this is why we have
given up the production business and now work in different leather
factories. That way you at least have some assured income at the end
of the month.

Interestingly, enterprises within the neighbourhood which have some

employment generating capacities refrain from employing labour from
within the immediate neighbourhood. This is true for both the larger
commercial enterprises and individual businesses in the area. The labour
policies of the shopping mall, Quest, which came up in 2013 on Syed
Amir Ali Avenue and is said to be one of the largest malls in the coun-
try, are a case in point. While real estate values of shop floors are way
beyond the capacities of the local small and petty merchants (and hence
rather than benefiting the local economy actually cuts into the clientele
of such merchants), the mall also usually refrains from inducting local
labour apprehending ‘unmanageable labour troubles and unwarranted
disruptions of work’ since in the event of any labour dispute, the latter
will be in a position to ‘mobilize their kith and kin to create trouble’.
The same remains true in case of individual businessmen in the area who
employ labour.
As Khaled (37), a member of the family owning the aforementioned
famous mutton shop, explained,

It is not wise (to employ labourers from within the neighbour-

hood) . . . they ask for loans, they will not turn up in time, and there
is nothing you can do. If you sack a labour the whole bustee comes
out to quarrel. People say ‘they are of your own community, how can
you do so?’ . . . but see, in business you cannot afford to be lenient.
We [local businessmen] usually prefer employing labour from outside
the area . . . from places where we generally recruit labour since it is
far easier to control them . . . we are used to them and they are also
aware of our policies.9
120 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
While locally generated employment is virtually absent, it is almost an
established fact that Muslims scarcely find employment in the govern-
ment sector. Since employment data by religion are not aggregated at the
level of districts by the Census of India, it is difficult to put in exact terms
the proportion of Muslims in Kolkata at each level of employment with
the state government. Nevertheless, the figures presented by the Sachar
Report show that Muslim representation in government-sector jobs in
West Bengal is abysmally low. In spite of the high proportion of Muslim
population (25.25 per cent) in the state, only 4.7 per cent of higher-level
and 1.8 per cent of lower-level state government posts are occupied by
them (SCR 2006: 170–171).10 One can only assume that even in Kolkata
only a miniscule proportion of Muslims are engaged in regular govern-
ment employment.
In Park Circus, one can virtually count by hand the number of Mus-
lims engaged as officers, police personnel, doctors, professors, engineers, or
clerks in the state or central government services. Stories of disillusion-
ment and cynicism abound, and several of my respondents pointed at the
systematic prejudice and bias against Muslim candidates, displayed by the
selection committee members, as the main reason behind their failure to
get government jobs.
As Md Imam (63), a full-time party worker, put it,

I had cleared the written tests of my WBSC entrance examinations.

But during the interview I could feel from the moment I entered
the room that they were not going to select me. One of them in fact
asked, and this was way back in the 70’s ‘you know you have to actu-
ally work for India if you get selected?’ . . . Muslims will never get
jobs under this system. The worst thing is even the Muslim officials
on the board shy away from supporting Muslims. They think that
falling in line with the others will earn them greater acceptance in
the headquarters.

While one may try to dismiss Md Imam’s case as the result of an unduly
prolonged hang over of Partition, the situation seems to have undergone
no substantial change even after the turn of the millennium. Mr Nazmul
Karim (56), a professor in a university, put it this way,

The interesting part, if you observe, is that, it is not always a question

of merit. A large number of Muslims clear the written examina-
tions for clerical and police posts. But only a few manage to qualify
in the interview round. I know many such cases myself; the preju-
dice is particularly strong in the lower rungs. If you consider the
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 121
Group C and D jobs you will find only about 2 per cent Muslims.
And selection for these jobs is done primarily through personal
interview; it shows deliberate discrimination and malpractice.

While discrimination is generally regarded to be a major factor behind the

gap in Muslim representation in government-sector employment, large
numbers, especially among the poorer sections, have increasingly begun to
resign themselves to the fact that mainstream employment would always
lie beyond the reach of the ordinary Muslims. ‘Mussalman ko naukri kabhi
nahi milega’ (A Muslim will never find employment) was an oft repeated
phrase which I heard on many instances during my fieldwork in the neigh-
bourhood. A tendency, which seems to be an offshoot of this realisation,
seems to be that a large number among the less privileged sections of the
Muslims opt to engage their children, especially their sons in apprentice-
ships of different types in order to secure prospective gainful employment
in future.11
As Shaheen (43), who works as an ayah in a nearby nursing home, put it,

Muslims do not get government jobs. So you need to train your chil-
dren in ways so that they are able to find work. My son works with
his father in the carpentry business . . . knowing English is important
and he has studied in the English medium till the eight standard.
But there is no benefit in continuing with the ‘general line’. . . . My
sister’s son learnt zari work and he is now in Bombay, and he is able
to send money home. Her other son learnt leather work and now
works in Topsia.

One finds that even though there is not any obvious affinity of local
Muslims towards traditional trades which their families professed, there is
a tendency towards ‘trainings’ and apprenticeships since these seem to be
more pragmatic options than general education.
Given the state of things, there is little option for the ordinary Muslim
but to fall back on the burgeoning informal economy12 of the city where
despite the ready availability of employment, work is temporary and, in
general, ill-paid. At the local level, the informal economy comprises of a
number of small and medium-scale commercial enterprises, which line
the stretches of Samsul Huda Road, Bright Street, Tiljala, and Beck Bagan
Row. These usually deal in hardware, pipes, paints, and construction mate-
rial. Apart from these there are also a number of small and petty local eat-
eries; rows of tailoring units, meat shops of various scales, bakeries, garages,
shops selling bric-a-brac, and others. Petty traders dealing in small electri-
cal equipments, toys, fruits, and so on in hand pushed carts (thellawallahs)
122 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
are found in almost every corner of the neighbourhood. Small businesses
operating out of individual homes or clusters of anganbaris in the slum set-
tlements are also common. These range from traders dealing in garments
meant for supply in the city, to more unorganised enterprises such as ones
taken up by local women to provide lunch box services to the numerous
office workers who throng the neighbourhood in the afternoon. Never-
theless the segmentary and uncertain nature of such enterprises is hard to
miss. One of my respondents, Md Saker Khan’s story could well illustrate
the point. Mr Khan (51) lives in Tiljala and sells telebhaja (a fried snack)
from a cart from his spot under the lampshade to the regular flâneurs on
Tiljala Road every evening. Every morning he wakes up at four o’clock
and travels to Sealdah (about five kilometres to the north-west of Park
Circus) to buy vegetables at the wholesale rate. After returning, the whole
family, including his wife, son and two unmarried daughters peel, chop
and prepare the vegetables for the evening, when it is finally taken out in
the cart for sale. Mr Khan also gets small orders to supply telebhaja to local
political party meetings and youth clubs on occasions and during Eid and
Milad sets up a stall at the local maiden. Mr Khan says that while being
otherwise modest, the business, on an average day, is good enough to help
the family get by. But then, he finds it difficult to save for his daughters’
weddings, both of whom, according to him, have long crossed the age of
marriage; or even, for that matter, to brace himself for financial emergen-
cies if and when they arise.
Given the limited scope of the local economy it is perhaps best to
understand the neighbourhood as a net supplier of relatively cheap and
unskilled/semi-skilled labour vis-à-vis the city. One very evident indica-
tor of this is that a large section of local slum-dwellers and residents of
the semi-slum-like stretches are, in fact, either first- or second-generation
migrants to the neighbourhood who have come in search of work to the
city.13 Without specialising in any particular trade, they work as daily-
wage labourers by acquiring basic on-the-job skills and transfer remit-
tances home to their families.14 They usually use kin or village networks
to find accommodation and establish themselves in the city,15 which is
often represented by their tendency to cluster in Muslim-predominant
neighbourhoods, especially in the large slum stretches.16 Migration pat-
terns tend to be long term, periodic or cyclical depending on the point
of origin and nature of work the labourer manages to find in the city (De
Haan 2002; Deshingkar et al. 2006). In the many slums of Park Circus,
migrant Muslims from various districts of Bihar, Jharkhand and east-
ern Uttar Pradesh are found to have settled in more or less continuous
stretches along with their village or kin groups. While some of them have
lived for two or three generations in the city, and are old tenants, many
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 123
of the more recent migrants are men living in shared rooms and still have
their families staying in villages that they visit annually. Given the general
disintegration of caste, and, even to an extent, region-based occupation,
it is difficult to find specific occupational groups in such clusters. At the
most, one finds labourers employed in similar trades staying together in
such settlements. Thus, a group of zari workers from a village in Uttar
Pradesh might be found in one corner of Tiljala, a group of construction
workers and cart pushers (thelladars) from Bihar in another, and so on. But,
given the limited scope of the informal economy, only a fortunate few
manage to find substantially gainful employment in the city.
As Sh. Hilal (31), one of my respondents, who is a zari worker from
Uttar Pradesh, described,

The wages we get are not enough to maintain a family in the city.
But if I stay by myself I can save money and send it home. And it
is good to have somebody there to look after the field . . . me and
three of my brothers’ work in the city while my other two brothers
stay in the village and look after the kheti (agricultural land). When I
make more money I will perhaps think about bringing my wife and
children permanently to the city.

Apart from interstate migrants, Park Circus also has a number of native
Bengali Muslim migrants who come from adjacent districts and work in
the many commercial establishments in the central part of the city. They
usually stay in rented holdings in the local slums during the week and go
back to their homes for the weekends.
Another way by which the neighbourhood provides cheap labour to
the city is the innumerable abysmally low-paid piecemeal jobs that a large
section of slum-dwelling families, especially their women folk, engage in
to supplement their desperately low family income. Such work includes a
range of commissions such as the comparatively less-skilled tasks of fixing
bulb holdings, sticking soles or finger bands into shoes, cutting leather for
making purses, packing tobacco leaf, and cutting bindis to the more dif-
ficult and time-consuming exercises of embroidery, knitting, tailoring and
zari work. Contracts are usually put out by entrepreneurs from other parts
of the city who transfer the raw materials to the slums or get them col-
lected by the slum-dwellers, who then complete the assignment from their
own homes in return of money. But given the long chain of middlemen
involved, the pay is very meagre despite the long hours that get devoted
to the tasks. For example, for a crochet skullcap which requires almost an
hour to knit, the worker gets about Rs 3–4 apiece, for an embroidered
blouse requiring the same amount of time, Rs 5, and for seven kilograms
124 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
of cut tobacco leaves which takes about a whole working day a paltry
Rs 18. Given the lack of information or any awareness of minimum wages
there is little a worker can do in terms of bargaining with the contractor.
The fact that the greater part of this work force is composed of unedu-
cated and disprivileged women further tilts the scale in favour of the
entrepreneurs.17
As Sultana (43), who lives in the 100 Dilkhusha slum and does zari and
bead work on saris, explained,

For a whole sari or suit piece18 which takes nearly four to five days
or even more in some cases, I get only 60 to 80 rupees depending on
the work. But the same sari sells for thousands of rupees in the mar-
ket . . . we are poor people, and we do not have capital . . . so we have
to depend on these agents. Can you imagine the margin they keep?
But they will stop giving us orders if we ask for an increase. They say
there are always people willing to work for less.

The level of economic insecurity among this vast section of contract work-
ers is particularly high. There is no minimum wage or work day guarantee
and the entire system seemingly hinges on the decision of the contractor.
The women workers appear to be the worst victims of the system. With
restricted mobility outside home, they have only limited opportunities
of alternative employment in the city’s open labour market where wages,
though not at all reasonable, are not as ridiculously low.
Even in the cases where locals work as shop hands, accountants or assis-
tants for medium-level businesses, the pay is meagre; there is no guarantee
of long-term employment; and payments are usually made by cash on a
weekly or fortnightly basis. Given the rising prices and steep inflation the
situation has become particularly difficult for these sections since wage
rates in the informal sector have not seen an associated increase.
As Hameeda Begum (37), who runs a small lunch box service to sup-
plement her family income, put it,

Earlier you could get by with three or four thousand rupees. Nowa-
days it seems impossible. There is the house rent, the electricity bill,
and children’s tuition fees. And then you need to feed yourselves.
Look at the price of even the most ordinary vegetables. Mutton is
totally beyond our reach. . . . My husband gets work only on some
days (he is a driver who waits at the local matador depot every day
for being commissioned) . . . nowadays I have started this business.
But it doesn’t bring in much. It is very difficult for people like us to
survive here.
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 125
Few Muslims belonging to this segment of the local population have bank
accounts, or are able to get loans from banks.19 Several pockets of the
neighbourhood are, in fact, said to fall within the ‘blacklisted’ categories of
banks, because of repeated ‘non-recovery’ of loans, and as such bank credit
lies beyond the reach of most ordinary Muslims.
As Md Yusuf (29), a garage worker who plans to buy an auto rickshaw,
described,

The moment they hear I am from Tiljala they will find some fault
in the papers and not pass my application. Also where do you think
people like us can get papers from? We cannot provide the kind of
guarantees they want . . . neither does the government undertake any
measures . . . there is no one to help if we want to start a business.

On being asked from where locals source money in case of need, he said,

There are two or three private organizations, Sanjeevani, Nayedin

who lend money. They send their agents to local houses and enquire
if people need loans. But their system of guarantee is very exacting.
For loans between five and fifty thousand rupees you need at least
ten guarantors who have to sign on your behalf and pay the loan if
you forfeit. They are extremely particular about collections . . . and
the rate of interest is so high, around ten per cent per month. We
only take such loans if there is an emergency. Otherwise it is not a
good idea.

Yusuf says there are a few small-scale moneylenders in the various slums,
who lend small amounts of money often without guarantee but that their
interest rates are even higher and methods of recovery harsher. Locals also
speak of borrowing money from relatives, since it is easier and informal.
But it has been found that such financial exchanges have often soured
relations in the extended family, so this is something locals usually refrain
from given an alternative.
Even though there are certain schemes of financial assistance for Mus-
lims according to the West Bengal Minorities Commission website, aimed
particularly for the upliftment of the youth, a few in the locality seem to
be aware of their existence.20 There is, for example, a system for extending
Rs 200,000 as assistance if the person buys a taxi, or Rs 100,000, if he or she
starts a business, but the actual instances of such assistance are rather few and
far between.21 There is also a new scheme for extending social security to
garage workers in the form of life insurance if they pay a specified amount
towards it every year, but once again it is rather sparsely implemented.
126 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
Perhaps two state initiatives that seem to have actually had an impact
on generating employment and economic security of some kind are the
Hundred Days’ Work Scheme and the Self-help initiatives for women
in the slums. While the former guarantees at least 100 days of work per
year and a consolidated monthly salary of Rs 3,000 for a number of men
and women, most of whom are Muslims, the latter has brought a large
number of women (more than 100) from the local slums under its aegis,
who now work from their own temporary premises on contracts making
school uniforms, knitting sweaters, hosting vocational training classes for
local women, and so on. Both the schemes have been particularly use-
ful in garnering the participation of local Muslim women, by bringing
them outside of their homes for work. Nevertheless, as I have discussed in
Chapter 4, access to such schemes remain greatly tied to an individual’s or
his or her family’s political connections at the level of the neighbourhood,
and hence is not readily available to the more ordinary and less politically
active among them; or perhaps, the immense competition for a hopelessly
inadequate number of openings necessarily leads to a situation where only
the more competent and enterprising are able to tap whatever opportuni-
ties are present at hand.
It is evident from the occupational profile that it is mostly the lower
and lower-middle classes who depend on the limited local economy that
the immediate neighbourhood presents. But even for those who venture
outside the neighbourhood, elsewhere in the city, the realities are not very
pleasant. It is perhaps here that the issue of identity assumes more promi-
nence in public life than any of the other factors such as those of poverty
or lack of specialised skills. Studies on the Indian labour market, especially
on the informal sector, show how segmentary it is, and how difficult it
remains for workers to find employment without contacts (Harris-White
2003). Being ‘Muslim’ only further complicates the situation and makes it
far more challenging to find work in the city. Several of my respondents
recounted occasions when they had to use fake Hindu names, suppress
other obvious pointers to religious identity or even their addresses in order
to secure work in the Hindu operated businesses in the city.
As Yasin Khan (26), from Kasiabagan who works as an accountant in an
establishment in Burrabazar in central Kolkata, explained,

Hindus distrust Muslims . . . they think Muslims will inevitably cause

trouble. My present employer would never have given me the job if
he knew I was a Muslim from Park Circus . . . and this has increased
in the recent years with all this talk on terrorism. So we have to fake
our names, addresses. Well, it is not something we like [to do] but
there is no option, really.
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 127
Asmaan Khatoon’s story further bears out the dilemma. Mrs Khatoon
(53) is a believing Muslim who works as a domestic help in a Marwari
(a Hindu community traditionally composed of businessmen from Raj-
asthan) household off Theatre Road. Every morning she sheds her tabeez
and instead puts on sindoor (vermilion) and sankha (conch shell bangles) –
the usual marks of Hindu Bengali married women – before going out
for work. In order to completely camouflage her identity she takes on
the popular Bengali moniker Karuna by which she is addressed in her
employer’s home. As Mrs Khatoon put it,

You see it is just the way they feel. I have been working for more
than thirty years now as a domestic help in various buildings in the
Theatre Road area, and raised my children single-handedly on my
earnings, but none of my employers have discovered my true identity.
They like me and do not have any complains over my work. So in all
it is good . . . but it pains me to hear the way they discuss Muslims in
their homes. Certainly they do not have problems as long as they do
not know that someone is a Muslim. Only the minute you mention
religion they become suspicious.

Another way in which symbols of religious identity affect Muslims at

the work place, usually in the more middle-level jobs, is through the
enduring association of tradition with the Islamic way of dressing and
self-presentation.
As Razia (24), who works as a typist and front desk executive in a
motors showroom on nearby A.J.C. Bose Road, described,

During the interview they pointed out that I was wearing the heads-
carf . . . my skills somehow came under the question mark because
of my attire. They wanted to know if I was that religious how could
I work . . . it is as if wearing a burka or nakab makes you inefficient.
But of course I stuck to it. But it is difficult. Your family wants you to
keep a burka, your workplace doesn’t. You need to find ways to work
around the situation. My friend Nargis, who works in a call centre
where they have a uniform changes back into the burka at the foot
of the bypass connector bridge (which leads into the neighbourhood)
after getting dropped from work.

Similar experiences are recounted by several Muslim men in the neigh-

bourhood who are routinely met with disapproval and distrust when
they wear their skullcaps or the traditional kurta-pyjama to their places of
work. It is as if religion becomes the sole defining identity for these men
128 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
and women against which every other attribute required of a modern
employee gets assessed.
It is perhaps worthwhile to conclude this section by referring to a pecu-
liar aspect of local economy that can be said to have been brought about
by the juxtaposition of the existing communal dynamic of the city and
the general strategic location that the neighbourhood, as part of the urban
landscape, stands to provide. Even though held in contempt by the city’s
dominant community, Park Circus has, over the years, become a preferred
choice of residence for a vast cross section of the city’s Muslims who
desire to live a secured and unencumbered life, without having to face the
day-to-day instances of disapproval and exclusion that Muslims living in
more mixed areas of the city routinely encounter. The tremendous pres-
sure on available residential space that this has given rise to – along with
the general locational advantage of the place – has resulted in the growth
of a booming real estate business which seeks to tap the growing demand
for residential space by providing low priced residences that are made
available by the construction of illegal or semi-legal buildings, especially
in the eastern and south-eastern parts of the neighbourhood. Understand-
ably, such schemes usually involve intricate and secretive arrangements
between a nexus of ‘promoters’,22 the political party in power and the
police at the local level. Promoters usually find a group of anganbaris
which they develop as sites for a high rise. The earlier occupants are then
allotted an equivalent square foot area in the lower floors; and flats in the
upper floors are sold to comparatively better-off Muslim families, such
as salaried professionals, usually from outside the locality. Flats are not
really ‘sold’ in the true sense of the term. The ground floor belongs to the
former anganbari inhabitants, and the residents of the upper floors – the
‘tenants’ – enjoy ‘permanent’ occupancy right by paying regularly a small
amount of money as token rent to these families; off course, along with a
large initial payment, known as the ‘salaami’ made to the promoters. Such
arrangements prevent legal hassles for families occupying the upper floors
of these buildings while at the same time providing them with affordable
residence in a presumably ‘safe’ neighbourhood.23
The local real estate business has opened up income opportunities for
a large number of people, especially the youth, in the neighbourhood.
Apart from creating demand for construction labour, it has given rise to a
large number of petty promoters who employ local youth to perform the
most essential tasks of identification of potential slum stretches, ‘convinc-
ing’ the existing dwellers to give their land for development,24 supervision
of construction and ‘sale’ of such housings on behalf of the big real estate
developers. Local unemployed youth are obvious targets as recruits for
promotership and a section of them have succumbed to the lure of easy
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 129
money though the job required of them often transgresses the bounds of
legality. Business is usually good, and margins ‘high’ even after payments at
various levels of the process. As one developer who refused to be named
explained,

It is a win-win situation for everyone. Locals get work, they can earn
a little money, and Muslims can find good homes. You know the situ-
ation outside. . . . Maybe there is a space crunch but at least they can
live respectably. It works for either party.

While this has increasingly brought in more and more Muslims from
different parts of the city and even outside Kolkata to reside in the neigh-
bourhood, the resultant pressure on basic amenities have escalated beyond
control, leading to obvious signs of overcrowding and degeneration in the
interior parts, where such buildings are abundant, leading to their current
appearance as clustered ghetto-like pockets.
Thus, even a cursory look into the economic life and activities of ordi-
nary Muslims residing in Park Circus reveals some disturbing facts. Given
the virtual absence of traditional family trades and the slim chances of
induction into the organised sector, Muslims of the neighbourhood find
no other alternative than to join the swelling ranks of the informal labour
market in the city; where wages are quite low and employment is irregu-
lar and uncertain. Even within the informal sector there are areas, mostly
populated by women, where labour sells at inhumanly low prices. For
the Muslims of the neighbourhood, entry into the city’s informal labour
market is not smooth either. Communal prejudices against them and the
spatial stigma attached to the neighbourhood, restrict their entry to a large
extent. Many have to suffer the ignominy of adopting assumed Hindu
identity to get jobs in Hindu households and commercial establishments.
Disadvantages intrinsic to the informal-sector employment and the grow-
ing disillusionment with institutional support have led a section of local
Muslims to look for opportunities of self-employment; although, dearth of
resources and unavailability of credit remain the major hindrances to such
efforts. All these factors together have pushed many Muslim youths of the
neighbourhood to take up jobs which often require treading beyond the
margins of law.

Aspirations, education and social mobility

In the foregoing chapter we have seen the ways in which traditional Mus-
lim political demands revolving around the issues of identity have increas-
ingly given way to more secular concerns such as greater participation in
130 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
public life, development and internal democratisation and the like.
Outside the domain of formal politics, Muslim concerns, in the recent
years, have crystallised largely around the issues such as education, bet-
ter housing, respectable employment and individual freedom. India’s
Muslims, want better jobs, they want good schools for their children
and the ability to live ‘normal’ lives in safe and healthy neighbour-
hoods (Gupta 2011). In all, it appears that Muslims as a group are keen
to shed the minority tag, to get over the ‘politics of grievance’ that
has marked the community since Independence, and join the national/
global mainstream.
In India’s urban centres, Muslims, just like their other religious counter-
parts, are exposed to a rapidly changing socio-economic milieu complete
with the promises of modern cosmopolitan life. With large-scale entry of
multinational companies and the simultaneous growth of a transnational
media and consumption culture in the country, ‘new economies of desire’
have developed.25 Boundaries between ‘traditional India’ and the ‘modern
West’ have broken down and a new self-image as a modern global player
has emerged among urban Indians. The modern Indian self, as has been
pointed out, is educated, aware, confident, and articulate (Strulik 2014).
It has also acquired a new and ‘Westernised’ taste (Savaala 2010) and is
remarkably knowledgeable about opportunities of self-development and
advancement (Beteille 2013). It is within this fast evolving new India that
the aspirations of Muslims, especially the city-dwellers among them, need
to be understood.
From the narratives of the residents of the neighbourhood under study,
it appears that a perceived notion of comfortable middle-class-ness is the
reference point against which the present circumstances of life get evalu-
ated and assessed and dreams of a ‘better’ future get framed. The general
feeling, specially, among the poor and disprivileged, is that socio-economic
marginality is a reality that has to be ‘somehow’ overcome rather than be
sat over and begrudged about. Responses range from an active involve-
ment with the state and its processes – guided by the belief that the state
has a genuine interest in their welfare and that strategic negotiations with
it will yield positive results – to an ingrained belief that Muslims are,
anyway, marginalised and hence it is better to go about one’s life in a way
where one has little to do with either the dominant community or the
state. But one view that seems more or less common across classes and
ideological divides seems to be that education is essential and, in a way,
indispensible, for the individual and the community for development and
a ‘better life’. In fact, preferences with regard to educating their children
seem to be the clearest pointer to the kind of life Muslims want for them-
selves in urban India.
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 131
This section attempts to review the attitudes of the Muslims of Park
Circus towards education, and their perceptions of it as a means of facili-
tating social mobility. In the process, it also tries to underline the more
immediate issues regarding education that bother them and place Muslim
engagements with the same within the larger discourse on community
and education that marks popular studies on education among Muslims in
Indian society. It concludes with a note on the ways in which the associ-
ated aspects of modern urban living in terms of modern occupations and
education interact with the demands of communal life and the everyday
negotiations made thereof by the neighbourhood’s Muslims.

Educational preferences and the Muslims of Park Circus

The issue of Muslim education in India has, traditionally, remained con-
fined to the questions of Islamic education based on madrasas and debates
regarding the acceptance of Urdu as the preferred medium of instruction
for Muslim students. Scholars working in the area have pointed to various
facets of madrasa education such as the role of madrasas in supporting and
maintaining the tradition of Islamic learning and keeping alive the Urdu
language, the interest displayed by state governments in promoting and
modernising madrasa education and the implications thereof (Aleaz 2005;
Sikand 2005), the new changes in the madrasa curriculum, and, recently,
the role played by madrasas in enhancing the social capital of under-
privileged Muslim students (Alam 2011). Education, has, therefore, largely
been placed within the discourse of identity, till it was recently pointed
out, among other indicators, that only a very small percentage of Muslim
students of the school-going age actually attend madrasas (SCR 2006: 17).26
This brings one to question the relevance of a solely madrasa centred
approach towards Muslim education and look for the actual trends in
education identifiable among Muslims in the country. Here is an attempt
to provide a description of the problems and preferences of ordinary Mus-
lims with regard to education and the ways in which educational choices
of Muslims of Park Circus stand to reflect larger socio-political attitudes
of the community in contemporary India, specially, its urban centres.
In Park Circus, the children belonging to the upper and upper-mid-
dle-class Muslim households usually go to the good English-medium
schools27 in the city such as La Martinere, Gokhale, Delhi Public School,
and the Cambridge International School. A few among the more con-
servative Muslims prefer to send their daughters to Saifee Hall, which is
a well-known school for Muslim girls in the city. There appears to be a
general trend among Muslims, who can afford it, to send their children to
the private schools in the city where the medium of instruction is English
132 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
and the initiatives of providing a ‘proper religious education’ usually
remain restricted to the confines of the home, were a maulvi is employed
to instruct children in Arabic. Arabic education, even though not con-
sidered to be compulsory for an ‘appropriate upbringing’ among a large
section of this group, is sought to be provided so that children develop a
basic notion of culture and are able to read religious texts if they so desire.
As Mr Khurshid Chowdhury (56), an advocate who resides in the
neighbourhood, explained,

My son and daughters have all been to La Martiniere. There they

naturally pick up modern sensibilities. They even speak in English
with each other at home. In a family like ours (they are a traditional
Urdu speaking family from Lucknow and Mr. Chowdhury’s father
had been an advocate as well) children should at least be aware of the
proper modes of conduct . . . that is why introducing them to the
basic Arabic texts is a necessity. Whether they follow up with it later
in their lives is a matter of their individual choice.

In such cases, modern English education and lessons in basic theology in

Arabic are not necessarily perceived as a duality. Each has its own relevance
in its respective sphere; while the former is a necessity to participate in the
social mainstream in contemporary times; the latter is a medium of ensur-
ing that the social and cultural ways of life of a group gets maintained.
As Mrs Nikhat Ahmed (42), a bank employee, whose daughter goes to
Mahadevi Birla Girls High School, a well-known private English-medium
school in the neighbourhood, put it,

My daughter is in the sixth standard. She is a really smart girl. She is

good at extempore speech, in quizzing . . . these things are important
in today’s times. They build confidence. But the girl also needs to
know her Quran; she needs to know her culture. She learns Arabic
from maulavi sahib who comes to teach her at home four days a
week. . . . It is about getting a complete education.

While the upper and upper-middle classes naturally seem to prefer qual-
ity English education for their children, it is interesting to note that even
among the lower-middle classes and sections of the slum-dwelling poor,
there is an increasing tendency to secure English education for their
children.28 Contrary to the general enthusiasm of state policy towards
providing Urdu-medium schools for Muslims and Muslim-predominant
areas, most Muslims, as a matter of fact, consider Urdu education a major
impediment in acquiring gainful employment in modern occupations.
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 133
Local Muslims, especially those who find it difficult to afford English
education for their wards, point out that in West Bengal the relevance of
Urdu education is indeed very little since all official paperwork is either in
Bengali or in English. Given this, there is little gain in pursuing schooling
in an Urdu-medium school, other than learning Arabic, which can any-
way be picked up by going to the madrasa in the morning or to one of the
many local maulvis who provides ‘private tuitions’ in the neighbourhood.
As Md Mansoor (43), who lives in Bright Street and has a tailoring
shop, explained,

See we are poor people. We somehow make ends meet. You know
how the expenses have risen in the past few years. How can I send
my children [he has three children] to English medium schools? Even
Modern Day School [a medium range English medium school in the
vicinity] charges 800 rupees per month up to the eighth standard.
And the fees go up further once you are in the tenth and twelfth
standards. And there are several other allied expenses . . . examina-
tion charges, ‘tuition’ (private coaching centres/individuals who offer
guidance in return of a stipulated fee) fees and so on. But the govern-
ment only talks of establishing Urdu medium schools. They should
open good English medium schools, with good teachers . . . so that
even our children can get a good education. Learning Urdu will not
help you get a job.

Arif Khan (39), a carpenter who lives in the area, had similar views. As
he explained,

These days even education in Bengali is not enough. You need to

know English and computer for everything now. Then you can work
as an accountant, a sales executive . . . or even in a call centre. All of
them require fluency in English.

What surprises one is the amount of uncertainty and struggle many simi-
lar families on the edge are ready to undertake just to provide a good edu-
cation for their children.29 The story of Arifa Khatoon is a case in point.
Mrs Khatoon (37) is part of the local women’s self-help group and stitches
school uniforms for a living. Her husband Md Yunis (41) is a contract
driver by profession and waits in the local matador stop every day in the
hope of finding work. Even though the wages are good, he finds work
only three or four days a week. The couple who live in a two-roomed
house in the Tiljala slum have three children, two daughters, aged 18 and
16, and a 9-year-old son. Mrs Khatoon had herself completed primary
134 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
schooling while her husband has studied up to the ninth standard in the
Urdu Medium. They send their three children to various local and nearby
English-medium schools where the monthly fees add up to a total of
Rs 2,900. Apart from this there are other extra expenditures such as those
on transport, lunch and private tuition, all of which have to be provided
for. Arifa and her husband, like many other similarly placed families in the
locality, have quite a different objective behind such a desperate decision
than usual common sense would suggest. As Arifa explained,

Such an education is almost impossible for us to provide. But we are try-

ing our best because of a reason. We cannot afford to give our children
a college education, maybe, if they want to study commerce it’s okay.
But if we could support them this way through to their twelfth standard
they will at least find some decent job. . . . They can work in call centres,
be front desk managers, all of which get a good income, they can even
save and support their further education. Then they will not have to go
through what we have to, they can have a respectable living.

While Arifa and her husband have somehow managed to pull through
the strains so far, several others continue to find it extremely difficult to
afford such education for their children. Therefore, for many of them
hope lies either with responsive state initiatives or with possible NGO
funding (which are still very sparse in the neighbourhood) in order to
secure education for their children.
Even for those who can somehow afford, the twin facts of being Mus-
lim and poor affect whatever small chances their children have of getting
admission in respectable English-medium schools in the city.30 Many of
my respondents pointed out that most of such private schools function
around ‘contacts’, donations and other kinds of assistance, both monetary
and non-monetary, because of which the social standing and connections
of the student’s family become important when considering him or her
for admission.
As Rehanna (34), who has managed to get her son admitted to one such
school after a lot of hassles, put it,

It is anyways so expensive  .  .  .  but you should see the number of

people who make a queue for it. And with Muslims it becomes all
the more difficult. They prefer Bengalis and Christians. They never
come out with a clear list. Arrangements always happen over the back
door. If we go and enquire someone will come out and ask for the
names of our wards and then come back and say their name is not on
the list. What can one say?
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 135
Even the few missionary schools which are around and which have Eng-
lish as the medium of instruction often require the students to be Chris-
tians to be eligible for financial aid. This is another factor that prevents
underprivileged Muslim students from joining such schools.
Given the existing shortage of accessible educational facilities, many
among the lower and lower-middle-class Muslim families often find it more
feasible to put their children, especially their sons, into apprenticeships and
vocational training courses in the hope that they find work once they grow
up. As mentioned in an earlier section of this chapter, this is seen as more
viable avenue of assuring a stable income than the so called ‘general line’.
Thus, learning carpentry, zari work and tailoring from an early age, learning
to drive, to use computers and developing spoken English skills appear to be
more pragmatic options for an average slum-dwelling Muslim than spend-
ing money on general education of the kind imparted in schools. Never-
theless, such an approach does not necessarily mean they would not want
their children to get a formal education, but rather that they do not have the
means or the opportunities for letting their children pursue it.
During the course of my interactions with the lower-middle classes, espe-
cially the slum-dwellers, the principal points of concern regarding education
ranged from the non-availability of good schools and government support for
underprivileged children, to the dearth of well trained and committed teach-
ers which resulted in students’ increasing dependence on private tuitions, and
the rising fee and associated expenditure of private schools which fell way
beyond the means of the average Muslim in the neighbourhood.
As Md Salim (42), who runs a van that ferries children to school,
explained,

My daughter is in the seventh standard at the Girls’ School (referring

to the local government school for girls). But she keeps complaining
that the teachers don’t turn up regularly. Someday it is the mathematics
teacher, other days it is the science teacher. We cannot go to the Princi-
pal and ask. They do not entertain such questions . . . whenever anyone
goes and enquires we hear that they have gone for this or that meeting.
And these days fees for private tuitions are so high (the general rate
being fifteen hundred rupees for science, maths and English up to the
eighth standard after which there are separate rates for individual sub-
jects) . . . we cannot afford to provide so many tuitions for one child.

He further elaborated,

The government says they have scholarships for minorities. But look
at the amount. You get only twelve hundred rupees a year and then
136 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
you always need to have five hundred rupees in the account.31 What
is the point [of having such a scholarship]? Also you get scholarship
only when you study in government schools. There are no scholar-
ships in English Medium Schools (meaning private schools).32

Also, as many among the local Muslims pointed out, the details regarding
scholarship schemes, availability of financial assistance, eligibility criteria,
and procedures for applying are beyond the knowhow of the ordinary
Muslim. For this, they have to depend largely on the goodwill of the party
workers and the social workers who might keep them informed if they are
on good terms with the latter (see Chapter 4).
As Rubina (39), one of my respondents and a resident of Bright Street,
put it,

If you go and ask the councilor, she says ‘Don’t worry. You will be
informed as soon as there is any news on that front.’ But then you
can’t keep enquiring without any lead. . . . Imran [her neighbour’s son
who works in a call centre] says they are all on the computer [refer-
ring to the website] but how are we supposed to know about those?

Even though the West Bengal State government has recently announced
some schemes for disbursement of easy loans for higher education in
the professional courses such as engineering, medicine and management
and for extending scholarships for providing vocational training to youth,
especially women, it still seems a long while before they are actually
implemented at the grassroots level. At present, in the ward, only a very
limited number of people actually avail of any of these schemes and given
the existing nonchalance of the local administration, it is difficult to pre-
dict the extent to which policy initiatives will translate into practice at the
local level. As the councillor herself told me,

You are a researcher. You go to a university. Of course, you will be

aware of such things . . . but on the ground, realities are very differ-
ent. Do you know the amount or the kind of work we have to do?
It is impossible for us to look up what is available where and follow
them up. Of course if there is a circular or if they discuss these things
at the meetings [referring to the mayoral meetings] we will take them
up, but otherwise it is simply not possible.

The picture that emerges from Muslim experiences with regard to educa-
tion in Park Circus is that most Muslims, across boundaries of social class,
appear to prefer mainstream education in the English language for their
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 137
children, since the latter is almost uniformly perceived to be the most
viable avenue for securing ‘good’ employment and a ‘better’ future. Arabic
education is, for the larger section, an important component of educa-
tion, but not something that has to be necessarily incorporated within
the structure of formal schooling. Because such an education still remains
outside the reach of the ordinary Muslim, a large number of them have no
option but to send their children to state-aided schools in the vernacular
mediums where the quality of education is perceived to be poor, or take
them out of formal schooling altogether and engage them instead, in the
more monetarily promising, apprenticeships or on-job trainings. In either
case, ordinary Muslims of Park Circus desire a more proactive role of the
state to ensure better educational facilities for them.
A recent trend that is noticeable in the field of education, and which
appears to stem, to a great extent, from the state’s failure to secure qual-
ity education for Muslims, is the coming up of so called ‘Model English
Medium Schools’ in the neighbourhood that claim to impart mainstream
education in the English medium along with theology to the Muslim
students. Several such enterprises, such as the Jibreel International School
and the Imperial Islamic School, have come up in the vicinity in recent
years, mostly aided by Islamic Trusts. These institutions, while following
the curriculum of the CISCE board (a premier non-governmental board
of education in India), also provide compulsory religious education to its
students as part of the school curriculum. While many Muslims would
not want to send their children to madrasas or to Urdu-medium schools
per se, they are necessarily not averse to the idea of religious education
when imparted alongside conventional education within the framework
of formal schooling. This perhaps explains the growing clientele of such
schools, especially from the more upwardly mobile sections of local Mus-
lim society, as well as the aspiration of lower classes of Muslims to send
their children to similar schools.

Community, urbanity and ‘better life’

The discussions of this and the earlier chapter (Chapter 4) have pointed
at the ways in which ordinary Muslims of Park Circus organise their
aspirations around a perceived notion of ‘better life’, where a comfortable
middle-class belonging with an access to the regular amenities of modern
urban living is found, usually, to coexist with the demands of a familiar and
desirable culture space. Such an attribute is seen to engender new tactics
and strategies that allow for a workable compromise between the eco-
nomic compulsions of urban life and demands of community. This leads
to, at times, a total severance of the former and the latter, while, at others,
138 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
a novel interweaving of the two. The instance of Muslim pork sellers in
dhangor bazaar, popularly, the Park Circus Market (see Chapter 2), high-
lights an arrangement of the first kind. The market has a sizeable cluster
of shops huddled together at its centre that sells fresh and treated pork.
While Muslims in general have religious taboos against the handling and
consumption of pork (Diener and Robkin 1978), sale of the item in the
wider market, which caters to a large clientele from central Kolkata, is not
considered to be an issue among those Muslims who sell it. For them, sell-
ing pork is only ‘good business’, which has nothing to do with their private
lives or their status as practicing Muslims. Neither does this create much of
a stir among the fellow Muslims of the neighbourhood. On the other hand,
the new Model Islamic schools that have come up in and around the neigh-
bourhood in the past few years are an instance of the later. While these
schools are usually run by faith-based organisations as part profit initiatives
and structure themselves around providing modern and quality education,
they also do it within a veritable Islamic milieu which reproduces a sense of
communal belonging among the students who attend them. Indeed, their
appeal lies in their ability to bring together the requirements of urbanity
and community and the aspirations of ‘better living’ within the bounds of
a single institution and link them into a realisable goal.
In two separate yet related sections, the chapter has attempted to trace
the economic activities, educational preferences, notions of social mobil-
ity, and ‘better life’ among the Muslims of Park Circus. In the process it
has shown the ways in which the demands of urban life and economy
intersect with the requirements of community, and also the strategies and
tactics adopted by the neighbourhood’s Muslims in order to balance the
two in their everyday life. While the logic of urban life and economy
often puts community in the backseat, the later makes its presence felt,
on occasions, in the various choices made by the latter. Nevertheless, an
urbane middle-class identity, centred on a good education, preferably in
the English medium, and a decent, non-stigmatised job, emerges as the
yardstick against which aspirations are seen to be organised. A commu-
nally based sense of self is only perceivable in varying proportions among
the different sections of the neighbourhood’s Muslims, and is not usually
presented as a prime marker of identity.

Notes
1 According to the NSS 1999–2000 data, the share of urban Muslims living below
the poverty line (36.92 per cent) was more than 15 percentage points higher than
the share of urban Hindus living below the poverty line (21.66 per cent) and
almost 10 percentage points higher than that of rural Muslims living under the
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 139
poverty line (27.22 per cent) (cited in the Report of the National Commission for
Religious and Linguistic Minorities, p. 25).
2 The Sikhs are the only other community with a similar profile because of the
spectacular economic achievements of agriculturalist in Punjab, a state where Sikhs
are the most numerous (see Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012: 11). Evidently, nothing like
that can be said about the rural Muslims of India.
3 Loic Wacquant, for instance, in his essay Ghetto, Balieue and Favela: Tools for Rethink-
ing Urban Marginality writes that ethnographic observation is ‘an indispensible tool’
for ‘pierc(ing) the screen of discourses whirling around these territories of urban
perdition’ and for capturing ‘the lived relations and meanings that are constitutive
of the everyday reality of the marginal city dweller’ (Wacquant 2007: 9).
4 For a brief note on the various communal disturbances in Bengal during the
period see Das (2000).
5 For a description of the disintegration of traditional Muslim trade in Kolkata after
Partition, see Joya Chatterji’s essay ‘Staying On’ in her book Spoils of Partition
(Chatterji 2007).
6 Locally the kasais (butchers) are known to be a very close knit community in
Kolkata. Such fellow-feeling can be attributed to a number of factors such as the
peculiar nature of the job, the social prohibitions and stigma attributed to it, and
the caste-like characterisation of the occupational group even among the Muslims.
For an insight into the life and experiences of Muslim kasais in modern Indian
cities see Ahmed (2013).
7 An insightful discussion of the actual working of such enterprises in India, drawn
from fieldwork, can be found in Harris-White (2003).
8 Apprenticeships, long periods of unpaid work, undertaken to master skills of the
trade, in Bourdieu’s terms build up social and cultural capital in terms of skill,
reputation, networks, and contacts, have been a principal feature in ensuring the
continuity of caste-based trades in India (Harris-White 2003: 109).
9 As literature in the area points out, personal ties and relations are very important
factors in recruiting labour in urban centres in India (Hanson and Pratt 1992).
Drawing from a study on the motor vehicle repairing sector in Kolkata, Shaw and
Pandit (2001) write that informal labour markets often work on small geographic
scales and are centred on ‘place-based’ interactions of employers and workers.
10 Interestingly in West Bengal the proportion of Muslim in high-level employment
is relatively higher than those in middle and lower-level employment, a trend that
is somewhat different from the national scenario (see SCR 2006: 170).
11 This tendency to put youth, especially young men, through apprenticeships,
instead of modern education has been noted by Barbara Harris-White (2003:
109). The primary reasons pointed out are, first, apprenticeships are a major chan-
nel for ensuring the continuity of caste-based occupations in the country; and
second, apprenticeships are better investments in terms of returns, since modern
college education is not seen to be immediately translating into incomes.
12 For a definition or description of informal economy in India, see Harris-White
(2003: 4–7). Specific focus on occupations that constitute the informal economy
in urban centres of India such as street vending, sweeping, garbage collection, and
waste disposal can be found in Bhowmik and More (2001), Bhowmik (2005),
Shinoda (2005), and Gill (2009), among others.
13 That Kolkata as a city developed as a country of ‘lone’, ‘upcountry’ men has been
recorded by scholars such as Nirmal Bose and Suranjan Das (see Bose 1965;
Das 1993). Even as early as 1931, Kolkata’s residents from other states of India
140 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility
constituted 31.70 per cent of the city’s population, while those from other districts
of West Bengal, nearly 30 per cent (Ghosh 1974).
An appraisal of recent trends in migration in Kolkata can be found in UNICEF’s
report on the Children of Migrant Poor: A Human Development Perspective
(2014).
14 For the scale of remittances sent back home by migrant labour in Kolkata and the
impact it has on the city’s economy see N. K. Bose’s essay Calcutta: A Premature
Metropolis (Bose 1965).
15 For kinship-based clustering of migrant occupational groups in Indian cities see Vidal
and Cadene (1997), Nadvi (1999), Harris-White (2003), and Damodaran (2008).
16 As Gupta and Channa (1996) have pointed out, drawing from their study of zard-
ozi workers in Delhi, ‘biradari’ or ‘localized community provides economic and
social security to an otherwise disadvantaged group’.
Commenting on the tendency of underprivileged groups to cluster in specific
areas of the city, Loic Wacquant writes that such populations identify with and feel
at home in socially filtered locales. These spaces, according to Wacquant, are more
humanised and culturally familiar and provide a sense of security to groups that
reside in them (Wacquant 2007: 241)
17 The deeply asymmetrical and gendered character of the informal sector of the
Indian economy has been described by scholars such as Jan Breman (1996), Ash-
wini Deshpande (2013) and Meena Gopal (1999).
18 ‘Suit’ is an English term used colloquially to refer to the salwar-kameez, a pop-
ular Indian garment. A ‘suit-piece’ would mean an unstitched material for a
salwar-kameez.
19 This is particularly interesting when viewed in the context of data presented by
the Sachar Report, which says that as high as 29 per cent of bank accounts in West
Bengal are held by Muslims (which is around 4 per cent more than their share in
the state’s population). Nevertheless fieldwork data corroborate the fact that Mus-
lim share of amount outstanding is very low (an abysmal 9.2 per cent according to
the SCR) (SCR 2006: 127).
20 A list of proposed minority development schemes by the government of West
Bengal can be found at http://www.wbmdfc.org/activity/scheme-overview.html
21 According to the West Bengal Minorities Development and Finance Corporation
the total amount of loans disbursed for the district of Kolkata during 2011–12 was
Rs. 39.913 million. Data sourced from http://www.wbmdfc.org/report/district-
wise-disbursement-of-loans-for-the-year-2011–12.html accessed on 1 April 2014.
22 The English term ‘promoter’ is locally widely used to refer to a class of urban
property developers who undertake the necessary steps required to build modern
apartment blocks in cities. Promoter-ship, especially in areas with questionable legal
statuses, is a greatly profitable enterprise, and individuals engaged in it often enter
into intricate negotiations with the power-that-be, for the successful completion
of their projects. For a note on the relationship between such real estate interests
and communally sensitive areas in Kolkata, especially in the context of riots, see I.
Mukhopadhyay’s eaasy Urban Informal Sector and Communal Violence (1994).
23 Locally certain indicators serve as signs that allow for differentiating between legal
buildings and illegal/semi-legal ones. Those of the latter kind are usually built away
from the main roads, do not carry any outward ‘design’ in the form of elaborate
window trimmings and balconies, and as a rule cannot have a plastered exterior
(except the very first batch of such housings on Dargah Road which are said to
have come up in the 1990s when such legislation was not particularly enforced).
 Economic life, aspirations and social mobility 141
24 The act of convincing does not necessarily always remain within the bounds of
verbal explanation of cost-benefit to the concerned slum-dwellers and may often
assume the demonstration of power in different forms.
25 For economic transformations in urban India in the post-liberalisation period see
Shaw (2007), Mahadevia (2008), Banerjee-Guha (2009), Desai and Sanyal (2012),
and Dupont (2011).
26 Along with this, the Sachar Committee also pointed out that a lot of Muslim chil-
dren who attend madrasas do not always do so out of choice, but rather because
of a lack of available options with regard to schooling such as non-availability,
inaccessibility and a near absence of schools providing education in the mother
tongue.
27 Here I use the colloquial reference ‘English-medium school’ to refer to private
schools in the city where the medium of instruction is English. The fees of such
schools are very high as compared to government-sponsored or government-
aided schools (colloquially ‘Government School’) which provide free education.
The latter, in West Bengal, provides instruction in several languages, of which
Bengali, Urdu and English are the most popular. Nonetheless, the general percep-
tion is that though cost-effective, the quality of teaching is poorer in the latter,
with few exceptions. Therefore, the preference is usually for private schools, even
though for many, their fee structures are a major inhibiting factor in making such
a choice (for the public-private interface in education at the school level in West
Bengal, see Rana et al., 2005).
28 One needs to take note that in the language politics in education in West Bengal,
the competition is generally between Bengali and English, with Urdu figuring in
only to meet the perceived requirements of a perceptibly large minority. For an
elaboration of the evolution of the issue in the state, especially under Left rule see
Acharya (1982).
29 The keen awareness of Muslim parents of the potential capacity of mainstream
education to improve their children’s lives in terms of acquiring skills, training and
manners and hence better job opportunities vis-à-vis madrasa education or even
education in the Urdu medium has previously been explored by the Jefferys in the
context of Muslims in Bijnor, rural Uttar Pradesh (Jeffery et al. 2007).
30 Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the educational system in industrialised societies as
legitimizing class inequalities (and in the case of India, identity-based inequalities)
becomes relevant here. As Bourdieu pointed out, access to higher levels of cultural
capital and to higher-class habitus defines pupils’ attainment of educational success.
Cultural capital, in this case, refers to the familiarity with the dominant culture of
a society, and the ability to understand and use ‘educated’ language which lower-
class pupils (as well as those from other disprivileged groups in society) greatly
lack, but which the educational system presupposes (Bourdieu 1974).
31 Details of the minority educational assistance scheme can be found at the web-
site of the West Bengal Minorities Development Commission. See http://www.
wbmdfc.org/activity/scheme-overview.html
32 Since there are no government-aided English-medium schools in the neighbour-
hood, except a primary school started by the present councillor in the premises of
the Municipal Ward Office, locals often do not make a distinction between private
schools and English-medium schools in the everyday usage of the term.
6 Exclusion, insecurity and
confinement
Negotiating identity in a Muslim
neighbourhood1

A major outcome of communal riots in cities in northern India in the

last two or three decades has been the sharp reorganisation of urban space
along the lines of community which has resulted in the creation of closed
and restricted neighbourhoods for the cities’ Muslims (Varshney 2002; Jaf-
frelot and Gayer 2012). These neighbourhoods are clearly set apart from
the cities’ Hindu quarters by various physical and metaphorical boundar-
ies, lack comparable civic and social amenities and are usually congested
and squalid owing to an overcrowding of Muslim groups who have gath-
ered there in search of safety that preponderance of numbers supposedly
provide. Scholars working in some of these settings have also pointed to
the processes of social recovery and rehabilitation of the victims and the
‘new normal’ they strive to achieve in everyday life once the immediate
fallout of communal rioting is brought under control (Das and Kleinman
2001; Chatterji and Mehta 2007; Gupta 2011). The reality of communal
violence and the mechanisms of coping with it in the long term are the
primary concern of these studies. What they most importantly point out
is that the experience of violence lives on through memory and practice
and has consequences for the perceptions and actions of victims in the
present and the future.
Kolkata is generally regarded to have been a far safer place for Muslims
as compared to most cities in northern and western India, especially during
the period after Independence. Leftist inclination in the city’s political life is
believed to have played an important role in keeping religion and commu-
nity outside of public discourse for a very long time. However, as pointed
out in an earlier chapter, Kolkata’s Muslim population was already ‘largely
ghettoised’ as far back as the 1950s and 1960s of the last century (Bose
1965), a fact that is mainly attributed to the large-scale population upheav-
als that followed the ethnic carnage of 1946, and the subsequent refugee
resettlement in the city during the 1950s. The large Muslim clusters that
emerged in the process could be located as clearly identifiable stretches
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 143
scattered across the city’s geography, spaces in which the memories of Par-
tition and the deadly communal riots that preceded it remained firmly
etched out in the minds of resident Muslims. These memories eventually
got passed onto the collective memory of Muslims as a whole, and the
generations that followed have since developed, to a great extent, a sense
of history and identity centred on the experience of a past violence that
had once hounded the community. The two decades that followed the
Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 were a period of relative calm on the
communal front in Kolkata which was once again shattered by the events
of 1992. The violent communal outbreaks that followed in the aftermath
of the Babri Masjid demolition – and the Gujarat pogrom a decade later –
rekindled once again the distrust and resentment of Muslims and further
alienated the community from the city’s social fabric. The incidents led to
a further consolidation of existing spatial/communal boundaries and made
them more real and more heavily patrolled than ever before.
Another factor which seems to have played an equally important role
in restricting urban Muslims within communally segregated spaces has
been the enduring anti-Muslim cultural prejudice of the Hindu middle
classes. As pointed out in an earlier chapter, scholars working in the area
have aptly described the various ways in which the Hindu bhadralok had
attempted to frame Kolkata’s Muslims in a pervasive language of ‘other-
ness’ since the time of Partition and Independence in an effort to keep
them away from the city’s cultural and political mainstream. While the
presence of a Left government had, for long, managed to push such senti-
ments behind the screens, at least at the level of official discourse, their
implications have remained relevant and visible in the arena of everyday
practice. The stigmatisation of Muslim-predominant neighbourhoods in
the city, the popular cultural constructs around them and the negative
description and practiced avoidance of those who live in them can be seen
as an extension of the cultural prejudice of the Hindu bhadralok which
has continued to this day and which has, in its own way, increasingly
pushed Muslims to the margins of the city’s social life.
The chapter begins with a brief review of the principal categories
employed by the Hindu middle classes for identifying ‘Muslim neighbour-
hoods’ in the city. In the process it tries to understand the ways in which
spatial stigma2 finds expression in the contemporary times and functions
to exclude3 Muslims from the city’s mainstream. Then it moves on to a
description of the memories and fear of communal violence among the
locality’s Muslims and studies the ways in which such perceptions inform
their choice of residence in the city. It is found that the fear of communal
persecution continues to be a rather potent one, especially in light of the
recent experiences of the community in other cities of India, and induces
144 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
Muslims to restrict themselves within their own discrete neighbourhoods
withdrawn from the rest of the city. Living with spatial stigma is, there-
fore, seen as an unfortunate consequence of bhadralok cultural prejudice
and social insecurity that most Muslims face on an everyday basis in the
city. The chapter concludes with a note on the ways in which continued
experiences of socio-spatial marginalisation and insecurity could poten-
tially lead to a reverse assertion of identity on part of residents of such
neighbourhoods who might eventually find it rather feasible to construct
an exclusive identity set apart from and in opposition to that of the city’s
mainstream.

Aliens in their city

Park Circus, to this day, is promptly recognised in the city as a musholman
para (Muslim neighbourhood) about which very little is known except
that in spite of its locational relevance it is a place better avoided because
of the troubles one might court if one ventured far inside it. In common
perception, Park Circus, or for that matter any other Muslim neighbour-
hood, usually figures as a culturally alien social space where patterns of life
are greatly different from those found in the more conventional neigh-
bourhoods of the city.4
Popular urban rhetoric seems to function by building upon perceived
differences in the ways of life in these neighbourhoods in a manner that
makes such places strange, unfamiliar and, to an extent, unacceptable to
the average middle-class Hindu psyche. Within this rhetoric, Muslims,
being the quintessential ‘other’, are seen to have constructed neighbour-
hoods that are ‘mini Pakistans’5 where people are innately aggressive, asser-
tive, unpleasant, and lacking in the commonly expected civic sensibilities
that are so central to modern cosmopolitan life. Such neighbourhoods are
furthermore congested, loud and full of filth, all of which result from the
not-so-developed civic sense of their resident ethnic groups. ‘The azaan
“blares” from the mosques’, ‘the place reeks of garlic’, ‘there is beef every-
where’, ‘the men and women appear as though from a different world’ –
are the usual characterisations employed by the Hindu middle classes to
describe a culturally alien space fundamentally incompatible with the
known culture spaces of their own.
As Amit Biswas (42), whose family had lived in the neighbourhood up
to the early 1990s before shifting out to a ‘better’ neighbourhood in the
city’s eastern fringe, put it,

Muslims have this [attribute]  .  .  .  they are very dogmatic when it

comes to religion. They think the neighbourhood belongs to them
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 145
and they can do whatever they like . . . it is difficult for Hindus to stay
there . . . I grew up there, I even had Muslim friends, but somewhere
we (Hindus) knew that we don’t belong here. Like many others we
moved out at the first opportunity.

Many among the Hindus who continue to live in the neighbourhood do

not seem very convinced about being neighbours with Muslims either.
Mrs Mridula Sen (72), who had been a school teacher and a resident of the
neighbourhood since her marriage in the mid-1960s, told me,

The thing about Muslims is, however educated or wealthy they might
be, they lack ‘culture’. Perhaps actual ashraf Muslims are different, but
how many of them do we really have here . . . see how all of them,
irrespective of ‘class’ can live together . . . That is because their sense
of community feeling is so strong.

Mrs Arati Sensharma (43), her neighbour, further elaborated,

Muslims might get educated, go to good schools and have fancy jobs,
but once they are inside their territory they go back to their old ways.
They don’t know how to keep pace with the changing times. Even a
child who goes to La Martiniere (a premier English medium school
in the city) will have a maulavi teaching her Arabic religious texts at
home.

In all these characterisations it is the heightened sense of religious identity

of Muslims, their strong cultural moorings and their apparently outmoded
perceptions of community and communal living that get stressed upon by
the local Hindus. This creates an image of the community as one that is
essentially unsuited to urban living, especially alongside the average Hindu
bhadralok who, as the popular representations go, are a more liberal, less
religiously inclined and a generally progressive collectivity, more readily
taken to the requirements of modern cosmopolitan life.
Some of the most common idioms used to signify the vast cultural dis-
tance of the Muslims from the former include those of the ‘opposite’ (ulto),
of ‘uncleanliness’ and of ‘aggressive self-assertion’, all of which seemingly
emerge from the non-local and non – ‘cultured’ ways of life Muslims in
general are seen to subscribe to. Attributes levelled to Muslims also very
naturally get extended to mark Muslim neighbourhoods, since these are
the spaces which are seen as containing such tendencies.
The language of the ‘opposite’, though seemingly benign, is perhaps the
most forceful and persuasive way of describing the essential dissimilarity
146 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
between the ways of life of the Hindus and the Muslims in the city. ‘Oder
toh shob kichui ulto’ which roughly translates as ‘they (the Muslims) do
everything in a manner contrary (to that of the Hindus)’ is a common
Hindu Bengali phrase used to characterise activities of Muslims. The for-
mulation is seen to derive its validity from Muslim cultural practices that
are evidently ‘opposite’ to those of the Hindus; for instance, while Hindus
using the Devanagari script (or derivatives of it) write from left to right
Muslims using Arabic write from right to left; again, while Hindus, espe-
cially those from Northern and Eastern parts of India, have taboos against
marriage among parallel and cross cousins Muslims allow such marriages.
However, in the everyday discourse of ‘opposites’ apparently benign differ-
ences in cultural practice, such as the ones mentioned earlier, get regularly
invoked and amplified in order to signify a way of life that is vastly differ-
ent from that of the Hindus; a way of life that does not follow the usual
norms of conduct and hence is responsible for the moral dissimilarity and
often degeneration of the Muslim mind. Many of the local middle-class
Hindu Bengalis, for example, routinely cited marriage practices among
Muslims to make the point. For them Muslims could ‘marry whoever
they like’, ‘keep four wives’ and ‘divorce one and take another without
much of an issue’. Their social rules were very conducive to such wayward
choices. The possibility of ‘difference’ in cultural practice is not readily
accepted; and a perceptible insensitivity to things contrary to the known
and expected is evident.
The idiom of ‘uncleanliness’ also routinely cropped up in discussions
on the cultural dissimilarity of Muslims. Muslim neighbourhoods were
generally seen as squalid, filthy, unclean, and unhygienic and hence aber-
rations in a landscape that has increasingly come to carry a more civic
sense of the public (Kaviraj 1997). As Mrs Swapna Mukherjee (54), who,
like Mr Biswas, had grown up in the neighbourhood and still visits the
place occasionally to meet old friends and family acquaintances, explained,

Earlier, when there were fewer Muslims at least the Hindu streets
were cleaner, they were better maintained. But now Muslims have
taken over everywhere. You must have seen how dirty it is . . . which
bhadralok, given a choice, would want to live there? Contrast (it) with
any proper para and you will see the difference.

Hindu purity and Muslim virility

Hindu notions of ritual uncleanliness and taboo against the slaughter and
consumption of beef also play an important role here. Given that Mus-
lims consume beef seems to make all food, and by extension the entire
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 147
neighbourhood ritually polluted in the common urban characterisation,
one which should be necessarily avoided since it could contaminate by
touch (Sennett 1994: 212–249; also see Douglas 1966). For most of the
Hindu middle classes who live in the neighbourhood, especially in its
densely crowded southern and eastern fringes, the ubiquitous presence
of beef shops, leather factories and similarly engaged enterprises makes
the place repugnant, one which they would generally stay away from had
they the option to do so (Appadurai 1986; Steiner [1956] 2004). This, to
a large extent, explains the metaphorical if not physical boundaries that
separate their residences form those of the Muslims within the neighbour-
hood. However, as one finds, such concerns are mostly garbed in secular
reasoning and many among the former will usually cite the health risks
involved in the consumption of beef, or of living in close proximity to
large leather treatment factories rather than pointing to anxieties with
ritual pollution as such.
As Mr Guha (67), a lawyer and one of my neighbours during my stay
in the field, said as a well-intended advice,

You should always cover your face when you move around the neigh-
bourhood. It is unhealthy; there are these beef shops everywhere.
They don’t bother to follow regulations which need them to operate
from covered premises. Here you will find them even on the main
road . . . they don’t dispose leftovers properly, and they rot and smell
and nobody cares . . . [that is] because they are used to living in this.

A generalised notion of ritual pollution along with the fact of congestion

and spilling over of domestic life into public space in overcrowded Muslim
neighbourhoods across the city seems to lend credibility to the belief that
Muslims are, in general, indifferent to concerns of cleanliness and hygiene.
That many of them are compelled to live in such spaces, given their cir-
cumstances, is a fact that gets conveniently overlooked in these discussions.
Ingrained self-assertion and aggression are the other principal qualities
routinely attributed to Muslims and Muslim neighbourhoods in the city.
Park Circus is generally viewed by both the neighbourhood’s as well at the
wider city’s Hindu middle classes as a space in which Muslims have created
their own cultural world far removed from those of their own. In popular
perceptions the neighbourhood figures as an island of ‘Pakistan’ within
India replete as it is with its mosques, its karbala (an open space where
the local Muharram festivities take place) and its Pakistan Bazaar (a local
bazaar), all of which invoke images of a space culturally detached from its
immediate geographical surroundings and, therefore, an aberration to it.
‘It seems as if you are in Lahore-Karachi’ is a very common phrase used by
148 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
many among the city’s Hindu middle classes to describe the interiors of
the neighbourhood. As Mr Biswas told me,

There is always an attempt to mark out their own territory. I remem-

ber they used to fly Pakistan’s flag in Kasiabagan during festivals. They
seem to forget that they live in India. There is always this tendency
to impose themselves.

Furthermore, the existing stereotyping of the Muslim male personality as

one that is essentially virulent, hostile, aggressive, and rigid tends to make
such spaces receptacles of unforeseen hazards and, therefore, dangerous
and unsafe for those who are not ‘insiders’ to them (Chatterji 1994). Nar-
ratives of rampant crime and immorality and a subliminal suspicion of
Muslims in general give further grain to such presumptions. While the
perceived dangers are usually unspecified, their immediacy is apparent
from the fact that an average Hindu would never venture into the neigh-
bourhood beyond certain hours of the day or beyond some of its more
accessible landmarks.6
All of these together work to create an image of the ‘other’ – and by
extension of the space inhabited by the ‘other’ – that is spoilt, damaged and
to that extent a ‘problem’ in the wider urban landscape. It is unfamiliar,
strange and distorted, and as such very difficult to make sense of from the
outside. It is, therefore, best contained within its own boundaries, so that
it does not run the risk of contaminating the mainstream.
The average Hindu bhadralok, therefore, hardly has a problem so long
as the Muslim remains in his or her own quarters. Such prejudice, none-
theless, becomes evident whenever a possibility of intermixing emerges
with the latter especially at the everyday level. This perhaps explains why
Muslims, however educated and affluent, would find it difficult to secure
accommodation in any decent but primarily Hindu-predominant neigh-
bourhood in the city. It also explains why Muslims from the lower classes
find it difficult to secure employment in the households of upper and
middle-class Hindus in the city.
Thus, one finds that irrespective of the reality of communal violence
Muslims in Kolkata have another strong compulsion to live together in
isolated pockets of their own in the city. The silent but relentless processes
of social exclusion founded on cultural prejudice, which operate with
unfailing tenacity in the course of everyday life, seems to ensure that Mus-
lims are never able to come out of their allotted spaces and freely inter-
mingle with the city’s mainstream. The memories and apprehensions of
communal violence only increase their necessity to live discretely in their
own quarters in the hope of security that a predominance of numbers
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 149
might provide. This only helps to further reinforce the already-existing
cultural prejudices of the dominant community who now find a fresh
legitimacy to their exclusionary practices.

Insecurity and unease: Muslim perceptions of a ‘safe’

neighbourhood
This section attempts to understand the ways in which memories and
apprehensions of communal disturbance work to create entrenched ‘geog-
raphies of fear’ among Muslims which then shape their residential prefer-
ences in the city.
Since its inception in the early decades of the last century, Park Circus as
a neighbourhood – in spite of its predominant Muslim population – had
remained relatively free from instances of ethnic violence for a long time.
Owing to its status as an upper-middle-class Muslim residential enclave,
the neighbourhood had, by and large, remained outside the traditional riot
zones of Kolkata7 which were heavily affected in the communal carnage
of 1946. It had, in the main, acted as a safe haven for Muslims fleeing
communal persecution elsewhere in the city during the time. There had
been episodes of ethnic violence during 1964 and 1971 also, but these
were largely unplanned and sporadic and quickly brought under control
by the local administration. As such, apart from bringing in more and
more Muslims into the area from riot stricken parts of the city in search
of refuge among their co-religionists, such outbreaks did not alter the
general perception of Muslims regarding their security or the everyday
inter-communal relations in the neighbourhood to any substantial extent.
This, however, were to suffer a major shock in the violence that erupted
in the city in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992. It has
been said that Park Circus perhaps experienced its worst spate of ethnic
violence during the disturbances of 1992, which largely broke out in the
‘non-traditional’ riot districts of the city (Das 2000). Parts of Mehr Ali
Lane, Tiljala, Bright Street, and adjacent Topsia were some of the worst-
hit areas where ‘meticulously planned’ and synchronised attacks were
carried out on the overcrowded Muslim settlements mostly by Hindu
mobs from outside the neighbourhood (Das 2000: 294). Local Muslims
suffered substantial losses in terms of housing and property before the
situation was brought under control by the administration. Most of my
respondents, especially those between age 40 and 60 told me that 1992
was the decisive point in recent history defining future Hindu-Muslim
relations in the neighbourhood. For the first time, since Partition, the
city’s Muslims were forced to reconsider the extent of their acceptability
and safety in the city.
150 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
For many of the older residents of the neighbourhood, however, the
plight of Muslims and their pervading sense of unease of living in a city
where they were generally viewed with distrust and suspicion had, in fact,
begun with the partition of India.8 They resent the large losses they had
suffered, the way their families were torn asunder, the manner they came
down in the world, and the process in which Muslims as a whole became a
reviled and mistrusted community in the city, losing much of their former
status and prominence.
Mr Samsher Ali’s story is a case in point. Mr Ali (68), an elderly Bengali
Muslim who owns a modest electrical shop in the neighbourhood and
whose family had been an influential landowning one from the southern
fringes of the city before they were evicted by East Bengali Hindu refu-
gees around the time of Partition, put it,

Park Circus was relatively trouble free in those days. My father brought
us to Park Circus. We don’t know what became of my father’s broth-
ers or their families. Times were difficult. I started training to become
an electrician . . . my brother began to work in the leather industry
in Topsia. . . . Our grandfather was a very prominent man; he had
built a large majar in Golfgreen. . . . Now look what we have come to.

Ali also begrudges the fact that his family has not, in spite of many attempts,
been able to secure any compensation. He had, in fact, brought along all
the papers documenting the lengthy legal hassle he had been through in
the hope that I might remotely be of help. He said,

Muslims can never expect any justice in this country . . . it is not that
I have not tried, but there is always discrimination. Hindu refugee
colonies have been given ownership of premises. But Muslims (on
whose lands these colonies were established) did not receive any com-
pensation from the government.

While there is a sense of resignation and resentment evident in Ali’s nar-

rative, there is bitterness and anger in Mr Ahmed’s, another of my respon-
dents. As Ahmed (65), a Bihari Muslim whose family had seen better
days in the past and whose circumstances, like Ali’s, had been substantially
reduced by Partition, put it,

This is what Partition and riots did to us. People no longer consider
us one of their own. No Muslim can find a home in any decent
neighbourhood in Kolkata. I don’t know why you people (referring
to my Hindu status) despise us so much. . . . Park Circus has been a
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 151
good shelter for Muslims. Here at least we can live as we like. But look
at the squalor around. I can afford a better place than this (pointing
at the state of disrepair of his apartment). But then where can I find
[a home] . . .?

Narratives such as these seem to play an important role in keeping alive the
sense of loss, betrayal and angst that Partition entailed for a large section of
the city’s Muslims. In Park Circus, surprisingly, Muslims – both old and
young – seem to plot them along with the more recent events of Muslim
persecution into a single enduring narrative of Muslim marginalisation
and insecurity in the country.
As Mr Ahmed continued,

True, there hasn’t been any riot here, but Muslims don’t feel either
good or safe living in mixed areas anymore. 1992 made that very
clear. Look what happened in Tiljala (the slum settlement in the east-
ern fringe of the neighbourhood, close to where Mr. Ahmed lives,
which recorded instances of violence during the 1992 disturbances).
But, at least, we had other Muslims to protect us.

Ismat, a 43-year-old party worker who had a more direct experience of

the violence of 1992–93, hailing as she does from Tiljala, echoed this
sentiment. She explained,

We have fear in our minds. It is true that Park Circus is safer com-
pared to other places.  .  .  .  But Muslims must live together. Who
will defend us if a riot breaks out? I remember what happened in
1992. I was fifteen years old. Hindus from Darapara (a nearby Hindu
slum) came and attacked us with swords and lathis; they tried to burn
down our houses. The police never come when you need them.
Because our people were prepared they could stand up to it. Even
women knew that they should heat up oil and keep it ready to throw
at the enemy. Together we could prevent them from entering our
slum. . . . When Muslims live together people are forced to think
twice before attacking them.

While the events of 1992 are almost universally held to have worsened
the Muslim situation in the city, some local Muslims, especially those
belonging to the middle classes, point out that Muslims were only begin-
ning to put 1992 behind them when Gujarat happened. For a long time
the Muslim middle classes had felt that ‘riots’ threatened more directly the
poorer sections of the community, those who usually took to the streets or
152 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
in general remained in the vulnerability of their unguarded slum homes.
But this perception received a major jolt with the events of 2002.
As Mr Nazmul Karim, a university professor residing in the neighbour-
hood, explained,

Muslims to a large extent slowly overcame the fear of 1992 before

Gujarat happened. The latter has really shaken the Muslims. Look at
what happened in Gulbarg Society (Ahmedabad) where the Congress
MP Ehsan Jafri and others were killed9 . . . it was said to be in a cos-
mopolitan area and home to affluent Muslims. Now, it makes us think
many times before purchasing a house/flat outside a Muslim area.

The entrenched nature of these anxieties of middle-class Muslims is

also evident from the fact that even localities which are almost adja-
cent to Park Circus, such as Bose Pukur and Picnic Garden, but have
large Hindu populations are not considered safe enough by them. As
Mr Sakhawat Hussian, a school teacher and an erstwhile neighbour of
Mr Karim, said,

I bought a flat in Bose Pukur about for years back since real estate
prices are moderate there compared to here (as compared to Park Cir-
cus). But we don’t feel very comfortable living there. Things change
when a riot breaks out. Your own neighbour will turn against you.
We have to continuously tell ourselves that nothing of that sort will
happen here.

The element of fear is palpable even among the Muslim youth. As 21-year-
old Ayesha, a college-goer from Bright Street, said,

I have heard stories of the 1992 riots. News of persecution of Muslims

keeps coming in. We grew up hearing about Gujarat. Who knows
what might happen when . . . your life is more important than a clean
environment.

Ayesha, like many others of her age in Park Circus, has herself never
witnessed any communal violence. Her fear of potential violence is, as
Kirmani writes, ‘part of a sense of collective memory, built upon the
knowledge of past violence that had been passed on to them to be con-
tinually reconstructed through narratives’ (Kirmani 2008: 58).
It might be of interest to mention here that Qutubuddin Ansari, the
Muslim tailor who became the face of victimhood during the Gujarat
carnage of 2002 was eventually given shelter in one of the houses on
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 153
Tiljala Road.10 Though Ansari had famously said that he was confident
that whatever happened to him in Gujarat would never happen here, the
very fact of his presence even though only for a few months made the
reality of the Gujarat experience much more immediate and close at hand
for a large section of the locality’s Muslims, especially those residing in the
slum and semi-slum-like settlements along Tiljala Road.11
The ways in which ethnic violence creates new boundaries and carves
out fresh communal geographies has been well documented in recent
literature on the subject (Chatterji and Mehta 2007; Gupta 2011). A deep-
seated apprehension of the other’s intentions and purposes persists and gets
reflected in everyday action and interaction which follow clear rules of
avoidance and maintenance of distance from the other. Communal spaces
become clearly marked, and a community feels most comfortable when
inside their own designated space.
The idea of a safe neighbourhood, in the context of Indian Muslims in
urban areas, has been explored extensively with regard to two localities
of the larger Jamia Nagar agglomerate in New Delhi, namely Abul Fazl
Enclave and Zakir Nagar, by Laurent Gayer and Nida Kirmani, respec-
tively (see Kirmani 2008, 2013; Gayer 2012). Safety here does not imply
that such spaces are completely immune of communal tensions but rather
that they are spaces where Muslims can feel most secure at a given point
of time. As Mr Karim put it,

The fear of potential riots is always there, even here in Park Circus.
But still something very major has to take place for trouble to actu-
ally happen here.

Mr Karim, like many others among the local middle-class Muslims, in fact,
considers the presence of the large Muslim slum settlements as potential
buffer zones in the event of communal riots.12 As he explained,

Both rich and gentle-mannered middle-class Muslims know that they

need these desperate slum-dwellers to protect them during commu-
nal riots. Middle class people are not capable of defending themselves;
and they will not take to the streets when a riot breaks out.

This, for him, is also another reason why the local Muslim middle classes
live peacefully alongside slums, without being too affected by their other-
wise uncalled for proximity.
Local Muslims, in fact, consider Park Circus to be a far safer place to
stay in when compared to other Muslim-majority neighbourhoods in the
city such as Metiabruz or Rajabazar or Chitpur. For most of them, the
154 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
neighbourhood is relatively free of anxieties which trouble those localities.
As Mr Ahmed put it,

Areas like Khiddirpore and Metiabruz have predominantly lumpen

elements. They are mostly labours who work in the docks and nearby
factories. They have no education, no certain source of income. They
naturally engage in anti-social activities. It is they who bring Mus-
lims a bad name. It is not safe for anyone to live with their family
there. . . . Here there might be clique around the real estate market,
but they don’t trouble ordinary people.

As Mrs Saira Banu (46), a widow who lives with her two sons in Kasiaba-
gan and runs her late husband’s local transport business, shared her views.
As she put it,

Park Circus is one of the safest areas in the city. I can walk back
home after twelve at night but no one will harm me. Muslims respect
women a lot. You might hear about crimes against women in a Hindu
area, but never among Muslims . . . there is a sense of fellow-feeling
here, how else could I, coming from a village (she is a Bengali Muslim
from a village in Nadia in northern Bengal), have managed to live and
work and raise my sons all by myself in a city.

During the period of my stay in the field there had been quite a few cases
of rape and gender abuse in the neighbourhood (two of which has been
documented in an earlier chapter). But locals prefer to view them as aber-
rations rather than the rule.
As Ismat, now a mother of two teenage daughters put it,

Now (after those incidents) I have to accompany my daughters to and

fro from tuitions every day . . . such things never happened when we
were young. The neighbourhood was much safer.

But as an afterthought she added,

Whatever you say. . . . Park Circus is still a far better place to live in

than Khiddirpore or Rajabazar. There things are worse.

Perhaps Mrs Banu, living as she does in a more gentle section of the neigh-
bourhood, is still immune from the everyday hazards of a declining law
and order situation that those living along the slums increasingly have to
face on a day-to-day basis.
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 155
Tribulations of confinement
Notwithstanding the ‘safety’ that Park Circus seems to provide to its Mus-
lim residents the fact remains that the neighbourhood carries a much
maligned name in the larger urban psyche. Viewed as the territory of the
‘other’, it is a place that is better avoided as much as its residents. While
this works upon a set of stereotypes around Muslims and their ways of life,
it also ensures that Muslims who live in the neighbourhood are somehow
restricted in their interactions and activities within the boundaries of the
space allotted to them. This section examines the implications that con-
finement in a negatively defined space entails for the locality’s Muslims.
Given the exiting formulations of Muslim neighbourhoods current in
the city, Muslims residing in Park Circus are immediately identified as
possessing a heightened consciousness of communal/religious identity
that has led them to choose a ‘Muslim area’ as their place of residence.
The fact that Muslims in the city routinely face difficulties finding accom-
modation in the more conventional neighbourhoods of the city, or that
they might prefer leading lives in a cultural space more desirable to them
are issues that get easily ignored in such formulations.
One of my respondents, Shahid, a 26-year-old software engineer from
Bihar who has recently found employment in one of the upcoming techni-
cal hubs of the city residing in the Kasiabagan area of Park Circus, told me,

I had initially wanted to find a place to stay nearby my place of work,

but it is generally expensive, and on two occasions after much dilly
dally the landlord refused to rent out the place to me because I was
a Muslim . . . but the worst part is, after I found a suitable flat in
Kasiabagan, a colleague at workplace said, ‘So you too opted to stay in
a ghetto? What is the use of education if you cannot get out of ghet-
toes? Muslims are always so rigid in religious matters’.

Such narratives strengthen the preconception that Muslims, unlike Hin-

dus, have a special affinity to their religion and culture and generally lack
the open-mindedness required to move out of familiar settings and inter-
mingle with other groups who live in the city. As such, the fact of residing
in Park Circus immediately lends the Muslims an attribute of being rigid
and dogmatic and hence unsuited to cosmopolitan urban life.
As Sabir Ahmed (38), a doctor who comes from an influential ashrafite
family of Park Circus, put it,

Why does the religious character of the neighbourhood immediately

have to crop up (whenever the question of a Muslim neighbourhood
156 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
is raised). . . . Even Ballygunge (a posh Hindu neighbourhood towards
the south of the Park Circus) has temples on every other street. But
people don’t immediately say ‘Hindus are religious’. But Muslims
always get branded this way.

Further, cultural preconceptions about Muslim neighbourhoods, such as

the ones described in an earlier section, naturally get extended to those
who reside there. As Mr Ahmed’s wife Mrs Sayeeda Begum told me,

Hindus think Muslims like to live in filth. That is not true . . . it is the
lower class Bihari Muslims who have no sense of cleanliness. Because
so many of them are here, the neighbourhood looks filthy . . . but
then they are illiterate, poor, and don’t have jobs. Obviously they don’t
have any culture . . . but it is not true of Muslims in general.

While Sayeeda put emphasis on the difference in social status between

Muslim groups and pointed to the fact that the clustering of a large num-
ber of slum-dwelling Muslims in the neighbourhood actually contributed
to the negative labelling of all Muslims who lived there, Mr Akhtar Ahmed
(63) assigned it to the wider Hindu prejudice and the clever manipulation
of such prejudice by the local real estate agents. As he explained,

Hindus don’t like living with Muslims. Here Bengalis always push
Muslims away from them . . . this gives rise to the tendency among
Muslims to consolidate and live in groups. . . . Businessmen and pro-
moters are utilizing all these sentiments to their own benefits. They
lure the Hindus into moving away and we get a bad name. See, if
they can sell a flat (belonging to a Hindu) worth six lakh for twenty,
which Hindu will not take the bait? On the other hand they rope
in rich Muslims, who like the comfort of living among their com-
munity members, to buy property in the area and themselves make
huge profits in the bargain. This is why you won’t find many Hindus
here . . . the problem is not essentially ‘communal’; local business has
a very significant role to play and so has Hindu prejudice.

While Muslims themselves might have their own explanations for making
sense of the current negative description of the space they find themselves
in, which usually has little to do with their own agency, there is little
escape from the fact they actually live in a ‘Muslim mohalla’ in the city.
Forced to live in closely bounded spaces with meagre civic amenities,
most of them lead lives in settings they would hardly aspire to be in.
This is particularly true in the case of the middle and lower classes which
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 157
have a more embedded sense of locality than their wealthier counterparts
who can afford to look away from their immediate surroundings and
participate in the cosmopolitan life of the city.
As Akbar Hussain (53), who currently runs a small but prospering
leather business from his tin-roofed two-room house in Bright Street and
has two grown-up sons who work in call centres in the city, explained,

Do you see the condition I live in? My sons feel ashamed to invite
their friends home. We can afford to live in a much better place, but
Hindus don’t somehow like to live with us. We have searched for
homes in many decent neighbourhoods, but they either ask exorbi-
tant rates or say they cannot rent out their homes to Muslims.

The predicament of the upwardly mobile middle-class Muslim is particu-

larly evident.
Professor Karim, who lives on Jhowtalla Lane adjacent to the large
Kasiabagan slum, expresses his anxieties about his son growing up in the
neighbourhood. As he put it,

My son studies in St. Lawrence, (a prestigious boys’ school in the city).

But the para he is growing up in is not good. The streets are full of
lumpen elements . . . only slum children play in the streets. We cannot
allow our son to mingle with them . . . he will pick up bad things
(from them) and go astray.

Mr Karim has instead put his son in various extracurricular activities to

keep him engaged during his hours off school.
Abdul, a 26-year-old research fellow at a reputed university in New
Delhi and an erstwhile resident of Park Circus, recounts similar fears on
part of his own parents when he was growing up in the neighbourhood
in the 1990s:

We were never allowed to play with the Kasiabagan boys. I and my

brother were allowed to play cricket in the maidan only on Sunday
mornings when there was a coach, but never in the evenings after
school with the local children. Our parents would be very strict about
that. We also had to come back home by six in the evening. . . . We
grew up watching TV instead.

The restrictive effects of social confinement become relevant here. In

spite of equivalent occupations or income, the Muslim middle classes are
hardly able to lead the life that a Hindu bhadralok in a similar situation
158 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
usually can. Differences in capabilities become immediately evident. A
typical middle-class Muslim from Park Circus, holding a respectable gov-
ernment position might, in terms of income and taste, be at par with any
Hindu bhadralok in the city. However, in several aspects of everyday life
such as choice of residence, avenues of socialisation and entertainments,
the person would not be able to enjoy the comforts and possibilities his or
her Hindu counterpart can. There is little one can do to overcome these;
therefore, the middle classes and the slum-dwellers of Park Circus seem to
lead separate lives, within an enclosure which has for the larger part been
forced upon them; an attribute which reflects in the sharply fractured
social space of the neighbourhood discussed earlier (see Chapter 2).
The lower-middle classes and the slum-dwellers, on the other hand,
have their own share of vulnerabilities to deal with. Being socially and
economically marginalised from the mainstream and shunned by the more
fortunate of their own community this group is all the more susceptible to
the tribulations that living in a stigmatised neighbourhood entails.
In the recent times, some of the large slum stretches in the eastern
fringes of the neighbourhood have, in addition to criminality, been iden-
tified as important centres for sheltering terrorists in the city. Conse-
quently slum-dwellers routinely come under the police scanner, which
often causes unnecessary complication and harassment in everyday life.
Slum homes are often subject to police raids and local Muslim youth taken
to custody at the slightest sign of trouble.
As Mr Haroun, a local committee secretary of a prominent political
party in Tiljala, told me,

See this is a Muslim bustee. If there is any trouble, even a small fight
(within the slum or with the neighbouring Hindu slum) Muslim youth
are the first to get picked up. It is as if it is only Muslims who create
trouble . . . that is why I always tell the lads to settle matters quietly.

Ever since a house on Dilkhusha Street was found to have sheltered terror-
ists, matters have worsened for the locals. But local Muslims are very con-
scious about what they perceive as the difference between terrorism and
reaction to issues that overtly hurt religious sentiments. As Mr Haroun
explained,

Nobody likes terrorists. They are a threat to everyone . . . but defend-

ing yourself when someone is hurting your religious sentiment or
insulting the Prophet is different. That is why there were demon-
strations against Tasleema Nasrin or after the death of the boy from
Pakistan Bazaar (referring to Rizwanur Rehman), or last year after
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 159
those pictures in the newspaper (referring to the Poonam Pandey
fiasco). But that doesn’t mean that Muslims are always eager to fight
and cause trouble . . . one should keep the context in mind.

Nevertheless, the anxieties that the neighbourhood’s association with crim-

inality and terrorism bring about get reflected in more everyday matters.
As Dawood (23), who found work in a Hindu commercial enterprise
in the southern part of the city anonymously through a placement agency,
told me,

Outsiders consider those from Tiljala to be intrinsically engaged in

crime and other anti-social activities. . . . They don’t think that they
can trust us. Nowadays (referring to the arrest of a Muslim terrorist
from the area a few years back) they think terrorists live here. I would
never have got this job if they knew I was from Tiljala.

The lower and lower-middle classes face other everyday difficulties as

well. Given the social profile of the neighbourhood, most banks and finan-
cial institutions have put parts of it on the black list which makes it dif-
ficult for locals to get credit in times of need. Instead they have to depend
on private agencies who issue loans which require heavy guarantees and
exorbitant interest rates.

Again being located in a space which falls within the prime com-
mercial area of the city and is composed primarily of the affluent and
upper-middle classes, the poor find themselves more of an aberration
in an otherwise sanitized urban space. For instance, local facilities
such as markets, schools, transport, healthcare, entertainment fall way
beyond the means of the average Muslim.

Rents in the area are usually sky-high. Apart from those who are old
tenants or live in government requisition flats, ordinary Muslims who
come in from rural areas or other regions of the country find it extremely
difficult to find affordable accommodation. Even a tiny one-room shanty
house with a common bathroom shared by four/five families costs about
Rs 2,000–3,000, depending on its location, which is way beyond the
means of a lower-class Muslim.
Thus, while there is a sense of comfort in residing in a known cultural
space, for a large section of Muslims the decision to stay in the neighbour-
hood is more a result of compulsion than deliberate choice.
The twin facts of social exclusion and fear of communal violence
appear to play an important role here. While the latter induces Muslims
160 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
in increasing numbers to opt for housing in the neighbourhood in spite of
the financial difficulties the decision entails, the former ensures that such
Muslims find it difficult to find housing in the more viable localities such
as those on the fringes of the city where the cost of living is lower and
which are principally occupied by the Hindu lower classes. Life is indeed
depressing for large numbers of this section of the locality’s Muslims who
increasingly find even the most mundane things slipping through their
grip as they try to come to terms with a rapidly changing urban economy.

Space and identity in a Muslim neighbourhood

Even though the larger section of Muslims residing in Park Circus aim for
a mainstream urban living, as is apparent in their narratives about life in
the neighbourhood and in the city in general, one finds that, over the years,
Muslims in Kolkata have largely come to be framed within an idiom of
identity that casts members of the community as the quintessential other in
the city’s social life. Thus, irrespective of the many identifications13 that a
Muslim in the city might take on contextually, he or she gets immediately
categorised as a ‘Muslim’ first, before anything else. Such an approach not
only overlooks the fact that identities are ‘robustly plural’ (Sen 2006: 19)
and that ‘the importance of one identity need not obliterate the importance
of others’ (Sen 2006: 19) but also takes away from those so labelled any
agency or choice they might have had in prioritising one of their many
identities over the other. It also glosses over the fact that identities are shift-
ing categories that are situationally invoked, often in response to the other
at any given point in time (see Butler 1993: 105). This often results in the
valorisation of one aspect of identity, in this case religious identity, over all
other competing ones as the defining feature of an individual’s personal-
ity. Innate Muslimness becomes the underlining factor which is used to
explain behavioural patterns and choices of all Muslims in the city.
One important aspect of such imposition of identity that appears to be
particularly relevant here is the way in which continued spatial confine-
ment and isolation from the city’s mainstream works to impress a pre-
given identity on the neighbourhood’s Muslims which more often than
not seems to be in conflict with the perceptions and images that they
carry regarding themselves. Thus, whereas 26-year-old Shahid prefers to
view himself as a modern youth in urban India, being as he is a software
engineer the fact that he lives in Park Circus – which has more to do with
the larger issue of Muslims not finding accommodation in more desirable
neighbourhoods in the city than his personal preferences as such – imme-
diately renders him a religious, and to an extent, traditional Muslim who
prefers the comfort of a communal space than the inherent anonymity
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 161
provided by a cosmopolitan cityscape. Again, while Mr Karim would
prefer a liberal and open milieu for his children to grow up in, he is in a
way forced to stay back in a largely Islamic social space where demands of
the community have, to an extent, to be abided with. Thus, irrespective of
his intentions, his children grow up in a Muslim mahol which once again
holds the potential to perpetuate among their peers the reality of their
Muslimness more than anything else.
While the middle and upper-middle classes among the Muslims can still
escape the debilitating effects of spatial confinement to a certain degree
given their generally higher level of social capital, the situation is particu-
larly deplorable for the lower classes, especially the slum-dwellers, who have
to deal with the repercussions of a stigmatised social and spatial identity in
almost every aspect of their everyday lives. Thus a Muslim youth in Tiljala
does not only have to deal with the attribution of a dogmatic personality;
he also finds it difficult to find suitable employment given the prevailing
negative attribution of the neighbourhood he comes from; furthermore, he
would be more susceptible to indifference and even harassment from the
authorities (as the case of Rizwanur Rehman illustrates) than someone who
is not a Muslim and is from a more reputable neighbourhood than Tiljala is.
Even though the connection between social class and ill-effects of reli-
gious identity can hardly be missed, it is evident that the imposition of
an overarching religious identity as the prime marker of personal identity
and the reification of it through spatial exclusion sustains and widens the
already-existing differences between various socio-religious communities
in the city. It runs the risk of potentially obliterating all other kinds of
identities that are equally relevant and central to an individual’s personality,
in the process creating categories that are primarily defined, more than
anything else, in opposition to one another.14
During the time that I spent in the field, it was often pointed out to me
by Hindus and Muslims alike that there has been an increasing tendency
towards the adoption of the Islamic way of life across social classes among
Muslims in Park Circus. More and more Muslims are seen to be taking up
the Islamic outfit, namely the skullcap and the burka; sending their children
to Islamic schools or at least to schools primarily preferred by Muslims; and
so on. A large part of the younger generation among Muslims has appar-
ently become more diligent in observing the ritual namaaz and the Islamic
modes of salutation and address (such as assalam-aleikum) than their own
parents had ever been. Muslim festivals such as Eid, Muharram and Shab-e-
barat are also said to be celebrated with increased vigour and ostentation in
the neighbourhood unlike the earlier times when these had been very brief
affairs, at least in public. There had also been an increase in the number of
Sunni Jama’ts in the neighbourhood in the past decade and two schools
162 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement
imparting Islamic education along with the more conventional courses had
come up. Whereas local Hindus prefer to view it as a blatant assertion of
communal space on part of the Muslims, this also leads one to the rather
disturbing realisation that continued experiences of marginalisation can
in turn induce excluded groups into a reverse assertion of identity from
within themselves drawing on their own symbols which then results in the
congealing of boundaries, this time from within the community in ques-
tion. On the processual aspects of identity formation, Stuart Hall writes,

Cultural identity . . . is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’. . . . It

is not something which already exists, transcending space, time, history,
and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories.
But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transfor-
mation . . . they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture,
and power . . . identities are the names we give to the different ways we
are positioned by, and position ourselves within the narratives of the past.
(Hall 1990: 225).

Whether the Muslims of Kolkata can become part of the mainstream or

are destined to live separately in excluded spaces of their own depends on
the extent to which the Hindu middle classes in the city, the majority as it
gets termed, are able to accept them and facilitate their smooth transition
to the mainstream of the city’s social life.

Notes
1 Versions of the argument presented in this chapter (Chapter 6) have been pub-
lished earlier in the Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 52, 26 December 2015)
under the heading Narratives of Exclusion: Space, Insecurity and Identity in a
Muslim Neighbourhood in Kolkata and in the Seminar (Vol. 672, August 2015)
under the title Muslim Middle Classes and the Ghetto.
2 The term spatial stigma is used as an extension of Goffman’s (1963) work on stigma
into the study of spatial units which carry a stained identity. For similar usage see
Deborah Warr (2005).
3 Exclusion here is used in the sense of ‘social exclusion’ as found in mainstream
social science literature. Social exclusion is usually defined as the ‘the process
through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full
participation in the society within which they live’ (see Sen 2000).
4 An interesting description of types of neighbourhoods in Kolkata can be found
in Manas Ray’s essay, Growing up Refugee: On Memory and Locality (Ray 2001). Also
see Henriike Donner’s essay The Politics of Gender, Class and Community in a
Central Calcutta Neighbourhood (Donner 2006).
5 For the prevalence of this coinage across Indian cities see Kirmani (2013: ix).
6 When I first began my fieldwork in the area, I was repeatedly told by the local
Hindus that it was not a ‘good’ place; that I should always be accompanied and
leave the neighbourhood before dark, at least some of its more dubious parts.
 Exclusion, insecurity and confinement 163
7 The ‘traditional’ riot zone of Kolkata includes areas in the north-central and south-
western parts of the city such as Rajabazar, Khiddirpore, Kalabagan, Zacharia
Street, Keshab Chandra Sen Street, Chitpur, and Moulali (Das 2000: 292).
8 That, for many who had survived it, Partition was not a closed chapter but an
experience that continued to haunt the present has been described by Urvashi
Butalia through the phrase ‘brutality political geography’ (Butalia 1997: 16). The
Muslim plight in India since the days of Partition has been documented by a num-
ber of academics such as Gyanendra Pandey and Mushirul Hasan (see Hasan 1997;
Pandey 1999).
9 Eshan Jafri was an ex-parliamentarian who was hacked and burnt to death in his
own home in Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society by a group of anti-Muslim rioters in
2002. The Gulbarg Society massacre, as it has been termed in popular media, was
one of the most horrendous episodes of the Gujarat riots of 2002 during which a
large anti-Muslim mob entered the predominantly Muslim housing society and set
it on fire which resulted in the death of nearly 70 Muslims. See Timeline of Gulberg
Society Massacre Case, Hindustan Times, Ahmedabad, 12 September 2011. Also see
Safehouse of Horrors, Tehelka, 3 November 2007.
10 The face of Qutubuddin Ansari became an icon of the Gujarat riots where the
Muslim youth was shown begging for his life with folded hands in the balcony
of his house in Ahmedabad. See Hounded by an Image by Dionne Bunsha at dion-
nebunsha.com/hounded-by-an-image-qutubuddin-ansari/.
11 See Hope and Home for Face of Riot Fright, The Telegraph, Kolkata, August 10, 2003.
12 Andre Beteille’s description of the people who took to the streets during the Cal-
cutta Riots of 1946 in his Raja Dinendra Street locality, just adjacent to Rajabazar,
corroborates the fact that it is actually the slum-dwellers who are depended upon
by either community for defence and that the educated middle classes usually
choose to stay behind closed doors when a riot breaks out (Beteille 2012).
13 According to Brubaker and Cooper ‘identification’ is a more apt term than ‘iden-
tity’ since it connotes a process rather than a fixed essence. An individual is con-
stantly called upon to identify – ‘to characterize oneself, to locate oneself vis-à-vis
known others, to situate oneself in a narrative, to place oneself in a category’ in
various contexts (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 14).
14 Interestingly, such a development has been identified by historian Joya Chatterji
in Kolkata’s Muslim neighbourhoods during the 1950s. As she writes,
[T]hese little Muslim pockets soon developed a high degree of integration
and organization. Inside them the Muslims began to recreate the patterns of
social and cultural life they felt they were in danger of losing. They began to
form local organizations to preserve customs and regulate community affairs
inside the rapidly changing society of the enclaves (Chatterji 2007: 197–198).
Eventually, these local bodies sought to forge connections with like-minded bod-
ies with similar goals as their own and by 1955, there were as many as 11 different
citywide Muslim organisations, the largest among them being the Talibagh Jamait,
whose primary aim was ‘to preach the superiority of Islam and to safeguard the
general interests of the Muslims in India’ (Chatterji 2007: 197–198).
It’s a different matter that a rapidly growing Left politics in the city helped to
dilute this trend at the time (Das 2000: 287), but, nonetheless given a comparable
context, a reversal into identity-based assertion of a similar kind will not be totally
surprising.
Conclusion

Over the past one century, Park Circus has transformed from an exclusive
residential enclave meant for educated, upwardly mobile, Bengali-speaking
Muslims to its present status of an overcrowded, socially heterogeneous
inner-city area primarily inhabited by lower-class migrant Muslims. The
history of the neighbourhood’s evolution can be said to have paralleled
the trajectory of the general fate of Muslims in the country who have suf-
fered an overall decline in their circumstances since the days of Partition
(Hasan 1988). In the course of my study, it was hardly possible to ignore
the looming character of this trajectory. In the responses and the narratives
of many of my respondents, a yearning for the ‘aura’ of a grand past was
juxtaposed time and again with the predicament of the present, as was the
desire to create a space of comfort, a proper mahol as they called it. What
stood out particularly in this image of a ‘good’ neighbourhood was the
desire for a clean and civic urban space where the common utilities of
urban living were to be available along with the assurance of a ‘safe’ and
‘secure’ life. Aspirations for an ‘Islamic’ identity, though not unimport-
ant, figured only after these and were, to a great extent, affected by the
residents’ class locations. It was primarily the middle-class Muslims who
would describe the neighbourhood in the language of identity and sym-
bolic space, for most of their less fortunate co-religionists, who made up
nearly three-quarters of the Muslim population in the neighbourhood, the
demands of identity usually figured quite distantly after those of access to
employment, education, housing, healthcare, and other civic amenities.
The understanding of Muslim marginalisation in India’s urban spaces
as presented in the various chapters has largely emerged from the field
itself and is drawn from my experiences during fieldwork in Park Circus.
I started from two discursive premises, first, that Muslim communities are
deeply ‘embedded’ in the social contexts they find themselves in and, to
that extent, the immediately relevant ‘other’ as well as the internal divisions
within Muslim groups needed to be taken into account (Jairath 2011);
 Conclusion 165
and, second, that the ‘Muslims’ of Kolkata were already spatially segregated
even without any immediately apparent cause of such sharp segregation
(Bose 1965, 1968). All through my study I was forced to accommodate
the apparently incongruent facts of a pre-given monolithic identity of a
‘Muslim’ neighbourhood attached to this space and the easily discern-
ible, though equally compelling, internal differences among the Muslim
groups residing there. My understanding of space in the neighbourhood,
of Hindu-Muslim relations, of Muslim experiences of marginalisation and
ultimately of urbanity and community, is therefore drawn, on the one
hand, from a recognition of the continuing interface among the mul-
tiple and heterogeneous social locations and the social tension produced
thereof internally within the neighbourhood, and, on the other, from the
externally imposed ‘homogenous’ identity that Muslims in the neighbour-
hood have to contend with on a day-to-day basis in the city.
In order to understand this interface, and the negotiations that get made
around it, I focused on the everyday as the primary site of enquiry. For, it
was in the ordinary, the mundane and the routine that the most resilient
forms of prejudice and ways of navigating them remained etched. In my
study, therefore, the everyday has been the site where I have attempted to
tap the dynamics of boundary creation and maintenance, of social exclu-
sion and segregation and of the evolving perceptions of community and
identity among the Muslims of Park Circus
The various chapters in this book have attempted to locate and describe
the different forms of marginalisation that Muslims in Kolkata face. They
have also attempted to understand the ways in which its peculiarly spatial
aspect bears upon and further compounds the experience of marginalisation
for most of the city’s Muslims. Even though the chapters are thematically
divided, I have tried to maintain a conceptual and narrative unity as far as
possible, trying my best to avoid overburdening the discussion with socio-
logical categories. To that extent this book remains primarily a descriptive
account of Muslim experiences in the neighbourhood under study.
The most striking feature of Park Circus is its immense social hetero-
geneity in spite of its representation as a homogeneous neighbourhood
in the popular urban imaginary. Pockets of acute destitution jostle with
relatively better-off middle-class localities as well as with some of the most
expensive residential enclaves of the city. Apart from the obvious repercus-
sions that such heterogeneity has on the ordering of physical and social
space within relatively short distances, such an attribute has resulted in a
reality where personal identities and notions of the self and the other are
largely contextually drawn and are in a state of constant flux. Therefore,
posing questions regarding the ‘Muslim problem/predicament’ did not per
se carry any relevance to most residents of the neighbourhood. Given this,
166 Conclusion
I usually avoided raising the issue of Muslim marginality directly, bringing
it up only within more general discussions of urban life and social exclu-
sion. The narratives of marginality which I have presented in the chapters,
therefore, reflect both the perceptions as well as the actual experiences of
marginalisation of my respondents.
For the neighbourhood’s affluent and middle classes the current plight
of Muslims is easily locatable in the larger trajectory of prejudice and
discrimination against the community that has persisted since the days
of Partition and Independence. For them, the experience of living in a
segregated city space, with its accompanied tribulations, is something that
has been forced upon them by the enduring exclusionary practices of the
city’s dominant community, and the overt or covert institutional backing
that it continues to receive from some official quarters. But evidently
this residential confinement as such does not otherwise constrict their
participation in the mainstream of the city’s social life to any great extent.
It appears that they can more or less successfully shake off the stigma
attached to the residents of excluded neighbourhoods largely by virtue of
their class position. That of course does not mean that they are immune
to such ascriptions; only that these have a far lesser impact on them as
compared to their lower and lower-middle-class counterparts.
For the latter, however, being Muslim and having to stay in a negatively
attributed urban space necessarily entail a lot more difficulties. Given their
circumstances, they are far more rigidly attached to the space of the neigh-
bourhood, both physically and symbolically, than their more fortunate
counterparts. This entails, on their part, not merely a daily struggle with
all kinds of odds associated with life in a fast changing urban landscape,
but also a series of everyday negotiations with a ‘spoilt’ identity extended
by the peculiar feature of the physical and social space they find them-
selves in.
Even though all Muslims in the neighbourhood, across class and ethnic
affiliation, seem to bear the grudge of being discriminated against in the
course of their everyday life in the city, the degree of difficulty encoun-
tered appear to correspond to the actual social location of each Muslim
group. While social class membership, as described earlier, definitely plays
a very important role here, such experiences also get compounded with
the further qualifiers by which local Muslim society is graded. Thus, a
middle-class Bengali-speaking Muslim would feel more uncomfortable
and out of place even within the neighbourhood itself as compared to
a similarly located non-Bengali Urdu-speaking Muslim with a North
Indian ancestry. The latter would be more easily accepted in the locality
by virtue of their being ‘real’ Muslims as compared to their indigenous
counterparts who still remain deeply imbued with the local culture of
 Conclusion 167
the region without assimilating the more ‘universal’ features of Islam. The
Bengali-speaking Muslims, on the other hand, are more readily accepted
in the wider life of the city by virtue of their common linguistic affilia-
tion. Similarly, for lower-caste Muslims, who by virtue of their low social
position would not generally be able to aspire a similar social standing that
their upper-caste ashrafite co-religionist usually enjoyed.
One finds that, on the whole, the Muslims of Kolkata, in spite of their
corporate categorisation and spatial confinement in a few identifiable
neighbourhoods of the city can hardly be labelled as ‘community’ in
the traditional sociological sense of the term.1 Further, perceptions of
Muslimness are also seen to vary with class position, linguistic affiliation,
ethnicity, gender, age group, education, and access to the urban ways of
life among those belonging to the Islamic faith. Therefore, it becomes
difficult to identify the average Kolkata Muslim solely by his or her
outward markers of identity, and apply the label as such. Irrespective of
religious affiliation, the plurality of identity is as true of a person from
Park Circus as of elsewhere. He or she is at the same time ‘a parent, a
sibling, a worker, a member of a particular social class and of a religious
community’ – each one of which is situationally invoked and, more
often than not, equally relevant in terms of an understanding of the
individual’s sense of self. The extraction and valorisation of one arbitrary
aspect (in this case his or her Muslimness) of the multiple identities car-
ried by an individual seems, therefore, to be a fabrication traceable to
the existing dynamic of power in the specific socio-temporal context
the individual is located in.
In the case of Kolkata, the construction of the category of the ‘Muslim’
seems to have its roots in the communal polarisation that occurred in
the city in the years leading up to Partition and the enduring prejudice
of the bhadralok which resulted in communal boundaries being strictly
drawn and regularly reinforced in the period that followed. This implied
that while not only did Muslims come to be classified as the other of
the city’s mainstream, a number of practices both social and spatial were
instituted to set them apart systematically from the rest, in a way, ‘to put
them in their place’ (Chatterji 2007). At the least, for the average Hindu
bhadralok, Muslims as a collectivity came to be perceived of as ‘different’,
with ‘difference’ being couched largely in terms of a negatively defined
otherness. Perceptions of difference and everyday practices that emanated
therefrom worked to keep the city’s Muslims socially, and more impor-
tantly, physically set apart from the Hindus. The Muslim neighbourhoods
of Kolkata that survive to this day, such as Metiaburz, Rajabazaar, Chitpur,
and Park Circus, can, in fact, be viewed as the spatial organisation of
social exclusion based on religious community membership, executed in
168 Conclusion
a manner that is instrumental in preventing them from participating fully
in the urban mainstream.
In the context of a ‘Muslim’ neighbourhood, the internal dynamics,
which a pre-given identity imposed from outside produces, becomes par-
ticularly interesting. Acute social heterogeneity often produces anxieties
that are hard to miss. While one manifestation of this anxiety is apparent
in the very sharp fragmentation of physical space in the neighbourhood,
others, more subtle ones, include the institution of a number of rules of
social interaction that set up resilient social boundaries that make even
adjacent Muslim residential spaces in the neighbourhood appear as though
they belonged to very different, and visibly disparate social worlds.
Given this, the concepts of neighbours and strangers, and specifically, of
‘us’ and ‘them’, become particularly confusing and laden categories which
assume meanings only in specific contexts. Being Muslim and Hindu
as such does not imply a major difference at the immediate level of the
neighbourhood any more than simply being middle-class and poor does.
This often leads to a rather vague and contextually derived notion of the
‘other’ that does not always follow the strictly defined categories handed
down by social practice. By this, I do not imply that social categories
become totally irrelevant but rather that, in spaces such as these, they
remain contextual and multilayered, complex and contested sites where
negotiations of various kinds get made.

State, citizenship and community in India

The modern nation-state, since its inception, has shunned the idea of
‘community’, except perhaps its one manifestation, namely the ‘politi-
cal community’. Political community has as its basis a collectivity, who
is taken to share a common fate by virtue of their being citizens of the
nation-state they belong to. This idea of citizenship has been a great prin-
ciple of equality, at least by law, if not in practice since it has the potential
to mitigate all other existing differences among a collectivity by putting
each member on an equal pedestal by virtue of their collective member-
ship to the nation-state. In Marshallian terms, therefore, citizenship is a
‘tendency towards equality’ (Marshall [1949] 1999).
When the newly formed liberal democracies in Asia adopted the prin-
ciple of citizenship, extant bonds of community were expected to wither
away in the course of time. Even India, when she began her career as a
nation-state, desired to eventually recognise the individual unhyphenated
citizen as the primary unit of democratic discourse. But given her specific
history, it was not deemed wise by the founding fathers of the constitution
to reject outright the demands of community. Some groups, especially
 Conclusion 169
certain most backward castes and tribes, had been historically marginalised
and some special privileges had to be provided for to extend them a level
playing field with the rest. It was in this sense that community was accom-
modated in the official political discourse of the Indian state. However,
certain very important premises continued to exist. First, not all kinds of
community were regarded to be qualifying for special privileges; religion
for one was one such kind of community (Mahajan 1999, 2010a, 2010b;
Bajpai 2000, 2010). Second, privileges in the form of affirmative action
undertaken by the Indian state were only seen to be temporary measures,
which were expected to be withdrawn gradually over time.
Nevertheless, democratic practice in India has, over the years, opened up
wide gaps via which ‘community’ once again entered the political arena
in a very major way. The grassroots movements that gathered momentum
especially during the 1980s brought back once more the question of rights
and equitable access to resources. But what was particularly noticeable in
these assertions was that though the demands were principally premised
on the issue of ‘right’, the framework evoked was that of community.
Community-based disadvantages were once again highlighted as a rele-
vant feature of Indian society, among which the predicaments of the back-
ward classes, tribal and forest based communities and religious minorities
figured most prominently. Muslims and Muslim assertions in India in the
recent times need to be grounded within this renewed engagement with
community within the political discourse of India.
State responses to community-based assertions have ranged from offi-
cial enquiries into the socio-economic conditions of such groups to the
extension of policies of positive discrimination to bring back marginalised
groups into the mainstream. In the case of Muslims, this has entailed the
institution of a number of enquiry commissions to look into their socio-
economic conditions as well as a redefinition of the principle of secularism
to accommodate the perceived spiralling ‘grievances of the community’ at
the level of both state ideology and state policy. But this latter action seems
to have worked to further congeal the existing boundaries that had origi-
nally set Muslims apart from the mainstream of Indian society. Further, by
dwelling too much on community as against the individual, it has largely
produced an over generalised account of it which often fails to notice the
existing internal differences among the variously located Muslim groups
in the country.
It is in this context of an overwhelming engagement with statistics and
large-scale data that the plight of the ordinary Muslim in India and the
causes of its persistence tend to remain largely unrecognised and, more
often than not, ignored. By describing the lived realities of Muslims in a
small neighbourhood in an Indian city, this book has attempted to provide
170 Conclusion
a sketch of their experiences of marginalisation and document their pri-
vations and aspirations as they live and negotiate these in their everyday
life. It is hard, on the face of it, to pin down the problems faced by a large
section of the urban poor to the ‘Muslim’ question. But what one cannot
ignore is that while being poor accounts for a large part of their prob-
lems, being Muslim and remaining confined to hyphenated pockets in the
urban landscape amplify their predicament manifold. The limited nature
of their access to civic amenities and urban utilities derive from both
their class status and their religious community membership. The chapters
in this book, apart from highlighting the internally segregated nature of
Muslim society, have constantly attempted to locate the multiple sites of
disadvantage encountered by the city’s Muslims and the everyday struggles
they engage in to overcome them. Thus the concealment of one’s identity
by providing fake names and addresses to find employment, the novel
forms of aligning with the local power structure in order to reap benefits
of the developmental state, the easy switching between ‘urban’ and ‘com-
munal’ identities – all spell efforts to access ‘rights’ otherwise perceived as
available to individuals as citizens of the state.
However, what is interesting and perhaps disappointing as well is that
such actions are increasingly driven by an evidently identifiable feeling of
being discriminated against by virtue of their membership to a particu-
lar religious community. While the policies of the Indian state and the
attitudes of successive governments and the mainstream political parties
have not been able to dispel such anxieties so far, the prevalent prejudice
towards Muslims in the wider society has not helped things either. In small
yet steady steps they have reinforced and strengthened the boundaries that
the realities of communal polarisation and Partition had set up among
the Hindus and the Muslims of India many decades ago. A repercussion
of this that needs to be noted is that in spite of a visible shift of Muslim
concerns away from the issues of identity; they continue to get voiced in
the language of community. Such a trend, in more ways than one, carries
the potential of further fragmenting Indian society, rendering it into one
where ‘community’ based on the valorisation of a single extracted aspect
of identity becomes the principal site through which most if not all inter-
actions get structured in society.
It is perhaps here that it becomes necessary, once again, to reconsider
the crucial significance of the Marshallian principle of citizenship which
carries in itself the potential to equalise individuals, through the guaran-
tee of rights of citizens, to enjoy an equal status in the eyes of the state
in spite of the differences they might otherwise have in terms of wealth,
power, status, and achievement. As Dipankar Gupta, extending the concept
to the Indian context, points out, recognition of this inexorable levelling
 Conclusion 171
principle becomes absolutely necessary in the working of a modern dem-
ocratic state since it is only through the institution of a universal status
that is equally bestowed on every individual who is a member of society,
that the limitations imposed by the differences and hierarchies of tradi-
tional ties can be effectively overcome (Gupta 1999). Citizenship makes
all individuals and communities theoretically equal, wherein rests the core
spirit of democracy. It is time the Indian state translates this principle into
practice because it might be one thing to extend certain privileges to
a particular community or section of a community in order to provide
them with a level playing field with the rest of the society, in the short
run; but quite another to see this as a permanent arrangement and open
up avenues to further divisive and sectarian interests within the state. The
focus of democratic discourse on communities as plausible sites of politi-
cal engagement may be desirable to the extent that it helps in assessing,
understanding and hence targeting inequalities in endowment of socio-
economic goods and development achievements that exists among the
different groups at present, but only so far; beyond that a larger perspective
of universal citizenship seems indispensible if genuine egalitarian develop-
ment has to be ensured.
Muslim society, as the case of the Muslims of Park Circus suggests, is
far from being the monolithic, homogeneous entity that most of contem-
porary socio-political discourse would want one to believe. The dynam-
ics of formation of Muslim neighbourhoods, especially in urban centres,
seems to display two conflicting trends that at once both dilutes and makes
complex the issue of identity among the Muslims of India. While on the
one hand, prejudice of dominant groups and increasing social insecurity
work to segregate and set Muslims apart from the mainstream by rais-
ing boundaries both metaphorical and physical, on the other hand, there
remains immense social tension within the neighbourhood owing to the
fact that Muslims belonging to diverse ethnicities and largely dissimilar
social classes are forced to carry on with their lives together in the rela-
tively constricted space of the ‘ghetto’. Whereas the former attributes a
corporate identity on the inhabitants of the neighbourhood – one that
is more readily recognised and worked upon within popular discourse;
the latter remains equally relevant and deserves particular attention since
it points to the tension that is generated by the actual lived realities and
the multiple identities that derives there from for the ordinary Muslim in
the city. The perception of being disprivileged and being discriminated
against is a relative one and varies significantly among Muslims from vari-
ous social locations of which, as the study suggest, class membership seems
to be perhaps the most important one. Framing marginalisation, there-
fore, in an overarching language of community runs the risk of proving
172 Conclusion
counterproductive, since it overlooks the fact of ‘embeddedness’ and diver-
sity within communities. Moreover, such narratives also feed into and fur-
ther strengthen existing discourse against these communities, which then
denounces them as non-participatory and inward-looking. Continued
experiences of marginalisation can, in its turn, induce excluded groups
into a reverse assertion of identity drawing on their own symbol which
then results in congealing the existing boundaries, this time from within
the community itself.
This study, through an account of everyday experiences and aspirations
of the Muslims in the neighbourhood of Park Circus, has attempted to
point out and bring to notice, first, the immensely multilayered nature
of Muslim communities and identities and second, the ways in which
such ‘located’ realities bear upon Muslim experience of marginalisation
in urban centres of India in the contemporary times. One hopes that this
and similar comparative studies drawn from other parts of the country will
engender policies that are able to address the issue of Muslim marginalisa-
tion more comprehensively, going beyond statistical aggregates as well as
the very notional idea of a monolithic ‘Muslim’ community.

Note
1 A summary of the classical usage of the concept of community, as explicated
by Tonnies, Durkheim and Weber can be found in Nisbet’s Sociological Traditions
(1967). Also see MacIver1970.
Maps and Sketches

Template 1 Kolkata ward map showing location of Park Circus (Ward 64)
Template 2 Slum areas in Park Circus
Source: Map prepared by author (Not to scale).
Template 3 Distribution of Muslims in Kolkata: class And linguistic affiliation
Source: N. K. Bose 1965.
Template 4 Concentration of Muslim population in Kolkata before and after partition
Source: N. K. Bose 1965.
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Index
Ahmediyas 69, 71
A.J.C Bose Road 36, 46, 118, 127
ajlafs 63–5, 68, 110
anganbaris 75, 122, 128
arzals 63–5
ashraf elites 18
ashraf Muslims 38–9, 44, 63–5, 68,
82, 145
assalam-aleikum (Islamic greeting)
58, 161
ayenapara (settlement of mirror makers)
42, 45, 90, 116–17
azaan (call to prayer) 42, 49, 61, 144
Babri Masjid demolition 31, 80, 143, 149
Bakr-Id 28
Ballygunge Assembly Constituency
(Kolkata) 89
Balu Hakkak Lane 42, 90
Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar 23
Banerjee, Mukulika 4
Bangladesh High Commission 46
Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) 39,
59, 143
Beck Bagan Row 36, 41, 45–8, 121
Bengali Muslims 44, 53, 60–2, 64,
66, 154
Bengal Muslim League 26
Bengal Renaissance 24
Bengali-speaking Muslims 39, 53, 58–9,
61–2, 65, 70, 164, 167; middle-class
80, 166
bhadralok communal politics 24–5
bhadrata (‘cultivatedness’) 24
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 89
Bhatias 20
Bohras 21, 46, 69–71
Bright Street 36, 39, 44–5, 48, 52, 90,
121, 133, 136, 157
British East India Company 21
Central Business District 36–7, 115
Chatterji, Joya 20, 23–5
Chooripara (settlement of glass-bangle-
makers) 42, 46, 116
chotolok (lowly people) 24–5
Chowdhury, Mohammad Sidiqullah 91
citizenship 2, 14, 168, 170–1
city-dwelling Muslims 14, 29, 115
The Communal Award (1932) 24
The communal disturbances of 1964
and 1992 30–3
communal geographies 17–34
communal persecution 30, 104, 108–9,
143, 149
communal reorganization 23–33
communal riots 2
communal space 153, 160, 162
communal violence 6, 11, 14, 17, 25–6,
30–1, 38, 57, 101, 142–3, 148, 152, 159
Communist Party of India (CPI)
89–90, 93
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
(CPI-M) 89–90
community, political 168
confinement 142–62
cosmopolitanism 13, 19, 40, 44, 46–51,
57, 72, 76, 79, 84, 92, 106, 115, 130,
144–5, 152, 155, 157, 161
CPI see Communist Party of India
190 Index
Darga Lane 43–4, 90
Darga Road 39, 43–4, 47, 51
Das, Suranjan 23
dhangor Bazaar 48, 138
Dilkhusha Masjid 105
Dilkhusha Street 42, 44, 51, 77, 79, 82,
90, 118, 158
Direct Action Day (1946) 26
East Bengali refugee 31
Eastern Metropolitan Bypass (EM bypass)
37
Eaton, Richard M. 18
economy, informal 39, 115, 121, 123
education 14, 24, 62, 64, 66, 73–5, 102,
104–5, 110, 115, 129–31, 133–7,
154–5, 164, 167
Eid 42, 105, 122, 161
Eid-ul-Zoha 71
elections 91–3, 95, 103
English Medium Schools 102, 131,
133–4, 136–7, 145
ethnic violence 149, 153
factionalism 95, 102
Fazl-ul-Haq sarani (road) 42, 44–5, 94
Friday prayer 42, 82, 105
Frontiers of Embedded Muslim Communities
in India (Jairath) 4
ghettoes 1, 2
Gorachand Avenue 36, 43–4
Government of India Act (1935) 25
The Great Calcutta Killings (1946) 25–6
‘Gulabi Urdu’ 59
Hansen, T.B. 9, 110
Harvey, D. 9
Hasan, Mushirul 23
Hastings, Warren 22
Hazratbal incident 31, 39
Hindu bhadralok 143, 145, 148,
157–8, 167
Hindu-Muslim relations 30, 77, 79, 84,
149, 165; everyday interaction 79–84;
inter-community relations 79–84
Hindu prejudice 156
Hindu purity 146–9
Howrah railway station 37
Hundred Days’ Work Scheme 68, 99, 126
imams 104–5
Imperial Islamic School 137
Indian National League/Popular Front
of India 91
insecurity and confinement 142–62
Islamic education 25, 90, 131, 162
Jaffrelot, Christopher 3–4
Jairath, V. 4–5, 84
Jannagar Road 46, 66, 90
Jhowtallah Lane 77, 80
Jibreel International School 137
Kasai Para (butchers) 42
Kasiabagan 39, 42, 44, 52–3, 80, 90, 107,
117–18, 126, 155, 157
Kasiabagan Youth Club 93
Khiddirpore 29, 61, 74, 116, 154
KMC see Kolkata Municipal
Corporation
Kolkata: early Muslim settlements of
21–3; the musholman paras of 23–33
Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC)
10, 36, 91
Kurbaani 69, 82
Lal Masjid Basti (squatter settlement/
slum) 45–6, 90
Lefebvre, H. 9
Left Front government 32, 108, 143
local politics 88–110
Lord Rama (Hindu God) 32
McPherson, Kenneth 22
madrasa 102–3, 131, 133, 137
Madrasah-e-Alia (Calcutta Madrasah) 22
Mahadevi Birla School 44
Marwaris 23, 40, 44, 46, 77, 89, 117, 127
mass media 92, 101
Meher Ali Road 42, 45, 90
Metiaburz 29, 116, 154, 167
middle-class Muslims 101, 103–4, 152,
158, 164
Milad 42, 69–71, 105, 122
minoritisation 7, 28
Model English Medium School 137
‘monolithic’ community 57
Moochipara 43–4, 53, 79–80
More, Zeeshan 36, 49
Muhammad (prophet) 31

Muharram 42, 69, 71, 161
musholman para 10, 23–33, 54, 144
Muslim backward classes (OBC) 63, 99,
102–3
Muslim communities 2–5, 63, 74,
164, 172
Muslim education 25, 131
Muslim groups: communal prejudice
29–30; community 137–8; cultural
reproduction 22; ‘demonisation’
29–30; ‘distinct sub-communal
groups’ 17; diverse 3, 9, 37;
ghettoization 17, 33; in the local
economy 115–29; migration 18, 20–2,
27, 29, 33; occupation, income and
exclusion 115–29; partition of Bengal
26–9; relationship with Hindus 3, 25,
29, 31–2, 44, 49, 81, 84, 146–9, 161;
social alienation of 24–5; trading 21,
23; urbanity 137–8; in West Bengal
20–1
‘Muslim mahol’ 41, 48, 161
Muslim-majority neighbourhoods 39,
43, 73, 153
Muslim marginalisation 1, 3, 13–14,
164, 172
The Muslim Microcosm: Calcutta
(1918–1935) 22
Muslim neighbourhood 47, 143–4;
ethnic groups 42–7; identity
40–2; Kolkata’s 17–35; local
constructions 50–4; negotiating
identity 142–63; physical layout 42–7;
profile of 36–56; safe perceptions
149–54; social distances 42–7; space
and identity 160–2; tribulations of
confinement 155–60; urbanity and
community 47–50; urban space
40–2
Muslimness 47, 73, 161, 167
Muslim politics 24, 88, 91, 105, 109–10
Muslim population 19–20, 24, 30–1, 38,
41, 43–4, 48, 54, 57, 62, 68, 72, 76,
120, 142, 149, 164
Muslim-predominant neighbourhoods
73, 104, 116, 122, 143
Muslims, ordinary 1, 9, 11–12, 27–8,
100, 105, 107, 109–10, 115–16, 121,
129, 131, 136–7, 169, 171
Muslim settlements 5, 17, 20, 31, 38, 45
Index 191
Muslims in Kolkata 5–6, 9, 17, 22–3, 32,
33, 69, 120, 160, 165
Muslim slums 31–2
The Muslims of Bengal 18, 25–6, 64;
history 18–21
The Muslims of Calcutta (1974) 22
Muslims of Park Circus 15, 58, 63–4,
67, 69, 71–2, 91, 98, 131, 138, 161,
165, 171
Muslim virility 146–9
Muslim Women 4, 12, 41, 83
muezzin 104
nakabs 41, 50, 127
namaz (Muslim prayer) 62, 161
Nasrin, Taslima 105, 158
neighbourhood’s Muslims 14, 69, 76–7,
81–2, 105, 115, 131, 138, 160
New Park Street 36, 43–4, 47, 51
non-ashraf elites 18
non-Bengali Muslims 40, 58, 60–2
OBCs see other backward classes
occupational groups 66, 68, 116, 123
Orient Row 43–4, 51, 77, 79
other backward classes (OBCs) 63, 99
Park Circus 36–56; the Bengali and
the non-Bengali Muslims of 58–63;
community and urban space 72–5;
diversity and the urban experience
75–7; educational preferences 131–7;
Hindu-Muslim relations 77–84;
history 38–40; Muslim Caste and
social status of 63–7; Muslim response,
local assertions and mobilisation
106–10; Muslim sub-groups of
57–72; Muslims of 131–7; party
workers 94–8; political participation
of Muslims 98–105; a political profile
89–93; sectarian differences 69–72;
social classes in Muslims 67–9; social
workers 94–8
Park Circus market 45, 48, 78, 90, 138
Park Circus Tram Depot 44
Park Institute Club 51
Park Street 36–7, 40, 46–7
party workers 94–8
People’s Democratic Conference of
India (PDCI) 91
192 Index
political allegiances 89, 92–3
political community 168
The Poona Pact 24
Questioning the Muslim Woman
(Kirmani) 4
Rajabazar 29, 37, 61, 74–5, 116, 153–4
Ramjanmabhoomi movement 31
ramzaan 74
Rehman, Rizwanur 90, 108, 158, 161
religious community 7, 80, 167
residential spaces 5, 128, 168
R.G Saha Lane 44, 90, 107
Robinson, Francis 23
Robinson, Rowena 81
Sachar, Rajinder 2
Sachar Committee Report 1–4, 17,
63–5, 88, 102, 114, 120, 131
Samsul Huda Road 36, 42, 44, 52, 90, 121
scholarships 4, 98–9, 104, 135–6
SCR see Sachar Committee Report
Sealdah-Ballygunge railway line 31
Sealdah Railway station 36
Sepoy Mutiny (1857) 21
Shab-e-Barat 71, 161
Shah, Wajid Ali 21
Shias 46, 69–71
Siddiqui, M.K.A. 22
slum-dwelling Muslims 99, 109, 156
social marginalisation 2–5
social mobility 67, 110, 114–38
social space 37, 43, 47, 49, 69, 144,
165–6
social workers 94, 96–8, 107, 136
spatial stigma 50, 52, 129, 143–4
stranger (Simmel 1908) 48
sub-communal groups 17, 29
Suhrawardy, H.S. 26
Suhrawardy Avenue 36, 42–4
Sunni community 41–2, 45–6, 69–71,
89, 161
Sunnis 42, 46, 69–71
Syed Amir Ali Avenue 36, 40, 44–5, 47,
49, 107, 119
Talbagan Lane 43–4, 51, 77
terrorism 101, 103, 109–10, 126, 158–9
Theatre Road 36–7, 46–7, 51, 77, 127
Tiljala 36, 39, 43, 52–3, 78, 80, 90, 118,
121, 159
Tipu Sultan 21
Trinamool Congress (TMC) 89–91
ulema 99, 102, 104–5
urban Muslims 2, 6, 15, 21, 103, 106, 114
violence 1, 26, 31–2, 101, 142–3, 149,
151–2; ethnic 149, 153
Wakf property 104, 107–8
ward councillor 94–8
West Bengal Minorities Commission 125