Cities in South Asia (Routledge New Horizons in South Asian Studies)

Globalisation has long historical roots in South Asia, but economic liberalisation has led to uniquely rapid urban growth in South Asia during the past decade. This book brings together a multidisciplinary collection of chapters on contemporary and historical themes explaining this recent explosive growth and transformations on-going in the cities of this region. The essays in this volume attempt to shed light on the historical roots of these cities and the traditions that are increasingly placed under strain by modernity, as well as exploring the lived experience of a new generation of city dwellers and their indelible impact on those who live at the city's margins. The book discusses that previously, cities such as Mumbai grew by accumulating a vast hinterland of slum-dwellers who depressed wages and supplied cheap labour to the city's industrial economy. However, it goes on to show that the new growth of cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Madras in south India, or Delhi and Calcutta in the north of India, is more capital-intensive, export-driven, and oriented towards the information technology and service sectors. The book explains that these cities have attracted a new elite of young, educated workers, with money to spend and an outlook on life that is often a complex mix of modern ideas and conservative tradition. It goes on to cover topics such as the politics of town planning, consumer culture, and the struggles among multiple identities in the city. By tracing the genealogies of cities, it gives a useful insight into the historical conditioning that determines how cities negotiate new changes and influences. There will soon be more mega cities in South Asia than anywhere else in the world, and this book provides an in-depth analysis of this growth. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian History, Politics and Anthropology, as well as those working in the fields of urbanisation and globalisation. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of figures 9 List of tables 10 Notes on contributors 11 Acknowledgements 16 1 Introduction: the city in South Asia 18 Part I Ideologies of city making: the formation of the Indian city 32 2 Cities in India: an archaeological perspective 34 3 Who built ‘the city of victory’? Representation of a ‘Hindu’ capital in an ‘Islamicate’ world 44 Part II Politics of town planning: colonial and postcolonial 62 4 Patrick Geddes and the metropolis 64 5 Islam and development in urban space: planning ‘official’ Karachi in the 1950s 81 6 Slums and the global city: housing plans in Dharavi, Mumbai 101 7 Cities within and beyond the plan 115 Part III The city as an arena for struggles among multiple identities 140 8 The city as nation: Delhi as the Indian nation in Bengali bhadralok travelogues 1866–1910 142 9 The multilingual city of Bombay and the formation of linguistic states, 1947–60 160 10 Durga Puja and neighbourhood in a displaced persons’ colony in New Delhi 176 11 Urban thresholds: crevices, crossroads and magic remainders 197 Part IV Lived cities: views of cities from the ground 212 12 ‘Fight the Filth’: civic sense and middle- class activism in Mumbai 214 13 Community of retrospect: spirit cults and locality in an old city of Rajasthan 227 14 Solving family problems: the role of religious practices for the Indian middle class 245 Part V Subaltern practices and discourses in urban situations 260 15 News, gossip and humour: street perspectives from colonial Calcutta 262 16 The postcolonial street: patterns, modes and forms 282 17 Life stories of the urban poor in Chittagong, Bangladesh 304 Part VI Consumer culture in contemporary South Asian cities 324 18 Tourism, consumption and the transformation of Thamel, Kathmandu 326 19 ‘Time gentlemen’: Bangalore and its drinking cultures 343 Index 360