Kolkata's Muslim 'ghetto'

Book review of 'Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India'

Margins of Citizenship

Muslim Experiences in Urban India

Anasua Chatterjee

Routledge

192 pages; Rs 695

If you stand at the crossing of Syed Amir Ali Avenue and Congress Exhibition Road at dusk, your nostrils will be greeted by beef kebabs being barbecued at Nafeels, a popular roadside eatery. If you are a Kolkata native, this area, Park Circus, would not be unknown to you; if not, this bustling district in the southern part of the metropolis would prove to be a foodie’s delight. This area is the subject of sociologist Anasua Chatterjee’s book, which combines anthropology, ethnography and urban studies to map the experiences of people, mostly Muslims, who live there. 

Early in the book, which was initially her PhD thesis, Ms Chatterjee explains how Park Circus is strategic to Kolkata’s geography: “Given the peculiar physical layout of Kolkata... Park Circus has all through occupied a central position.” Identified by the eponymous Seven-Point crossing, notorious for traffic snarls, Park Circus is linked to the central business district of the city at Dalhousie, the entertainment and fashionable areas of Park Street, the residential area of Ballygunge to the south, and through a more recent connector and flyover to the newer townships in the east, such as Salt Lake. 

Yet, any visitor to Park Circus is almost immediately aware of that it is different from its neighbouring areas, identifiable by specific markers, such as frequent domes of mosques, madrasas, mazars dedicated to peers, advertisements and political graffiti in Urdu, and women in burkhas and men in skull caps. “Park Circus is also one of the very few neighbourhoods in Kolkata where beef is still available openly,” writes Ms Chatterjee (the other places that immediately come to mind are New Market and Prince Anwar Shah Road, near Tollygunge). She argues that these are important markers, as they transform Park Circus from just another neighbourhood in the city into a Muslim ghetto.

To define a ghetto, Ms Chatterjee uses the definition provided by urban planning expert Peter Marcuse: “A ghetto is an area of spatial concentration used by forces within the dominant society to separate and to limit a particular population group as racial, or ethnic, or foreign, and held to be, and treated as inferior by the dominant society.” In the case of Kolkata, the dominant society is that of Hindus. As Ms Chatterjee writes and any casual pedestrian walking around the lanes and by-lanes of the area will observe, Park Circus, especially its slums, is engaged in a dialogue of power with the rest of the city.

Usually, in this dialogue, the residents of the slums and archipelago of hovels of the area are at a position of disadvantage, seeking to alter their experience of poor civic facilities and exclusion from the mainstream of urban experience. At other times, they might take centre stage in the consciousness of the citizens, as they did during the 2007 anti-Taslima Nasrin riots in the area. At all times, however, the relation of the residents of Park Circus, especially the majority Muslim residents, with the rest of the urban sprawl is an uneasy one.

The ghettoisation of Muslims in urban India has been the subject of a number of academic studies in recent times. Ms Chatterjee writes: “Patterns of Muslim settlements 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 (Hindus). The reason for this is the alarming rise in the frequency of communal riots, especially in north India. As has been observed by a number of scholars, the post-riot period is not only one of normalisation but also of ghettoisation, where members of the community seek the protection of their co-religionists in particular parts of the city.

Ms Chatterjee’s book is neatly divided into six chapters, besides an introduction and conclusion, and helpful maps and sketches. She has spent a considerable amount of time in the houses of Park Circus residents, learning about their hopes and dreams, aspirations and frustrations, all the while remaining conscious of her position as an outsider, as a Hindu and as a woman. (She writes how most of her time was spent with women of the area, in their homes, engaging in the quotidian; her interaction with men was more formal.) This makes her thesis intrinsically authentic, beyond the erudite theoretical framework.

As she clearly points out, neither Park Circus, nor the Muslims who live there are a homogenous entity, as some political interest groups would like to classify them. It houses not only Muslims but a smattering of Hindus, Anglo Indians, Christians, and people from different linguistic and social affiliations. With the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party escalating their efforts to win West Bengal where despite obnoxious flexing of Hindu muscle they remain politically marginalised, such a book captures a slice of life that might soon be consigned to history. My only complaint is that Ms Chattejee’s style is a little too stuffily academic. But this is an important book that needs to be read.