The Kababs of Old Delhi
Mashkoor Mp
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
Ajay Gandhi in his study titled "Porous Boundaries: Hindu-Muslim Demarcation and Crossings in Delhi My personal experiences" provides interesting accounts of the constituents of Hindu Muslim relationship in Delhi. He argues that though the community boundaries are strong between two communities, the everyday movements and interactions make these boundaries porous. Here i share my experiences in Old Delhi that shed lights on how the Kabab shops around Jama musjid provides a perfect venue for inter community relations
Related papers
Muslim pasts and presents: Displacement and citymaking in a Delhi neighbourhood
Modern Asian Studies, 2022
Through an engagement with the histories of Muslim pasts, presences, and absences in the locality of Jangpura-Bhogal in the Indian capital city of Delhi, this article examines the constitutive relationship between displacements and city-making. It addresses Jangpura-Bhogal's post-colonial history (1947-present) through instances of the erasure of Muslim property, spaces, and histories, and the reoccupations, replacements, and redefinition of spaces, properties, and memories that they constituted. The article shows how protracted material displacements of Muslim property and spaces have contributed to the erasure of a Muslim historical presence from Jangpura-Bhogal. By tracing the afterlives of these material displacements, it tracks how narrative discourses draw on these Muslim absences and the sense of an abstract 'diverse space' to produce new sets of exclusions and practices of Othering in the present. The discussion focuses on the processual/everyday, 'below the radar', and, at times, invisible displacements, more than sudden eruptions of violence or overt ideological projects aimed at a deliberate Muslim erasure. Thus, Delhi's post-colonial history is not only about the well-rehearsed story of migrations and arrivals but equally about departures and displacements that have produced the neighbourhood and the city as particular kinds of majoritarian places and spaces. Current acts of Muslim displacement, that is, the Delhi 'riots' of February 2020 are enabled not only through visible and violent histories of Muslim marginalization, but also by longer histories of non-overt erasures, displacements, and replacements.
Competing Constructions of “Muslim-ness” in the South Delhi Neighborhood of Zakir Nagar
Abstract This paper connects the historic consolidation of corporate Muslim identities at the national level in India with the narration of local identities in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in South Delhi. The discussion is based on interviews with women and men living in the predominantly Muslim area of Zakir Nagar in Delhi. Residents often spoke about the existence of a “Muslim mahol” (social environment or culture), that existed in their neighborhood. However, the way that this sense of “Muslim-ness” was constructed varied and was differently privileged, depending on the social position of the narrator. For middle-class respondents in particular, the Muslim character of the neighborhood was listed as a priority. As well, the way religious identity was privileged was different for women and men. Therefore, although increasing feelings of marginalization and insecurity amongst Muslims can be connected to the construction of the locality and localized identities, the ways in which religious identity is described and privileged must also be looked at in relation to a host of other identifications including class, gender and regional affiliation.
Constructing 'the other': narrating religious boundaries in Zakir Nagar
Abstract The research for this paper is based in a majority-Muslim neighbourhood in South Delhi, Zakir Nagar. As with most urban localities, the borders around Zakir Nagar are permeable—with residents frequently moving in and out of the neighbourhood and coming into contact with members of other religious groups. Many of the residents of Zakir Nagar have also lived in religiously mixed areas previously. Furthermore, although the neighbourhood is itself identified as 'Muslim', it is by no means homogeneous, so that multiple social boundaries operate even within this locality. This paper looks more closely at the issue of religious identity as it was narrated in relation to various and shifting 'others'. These 'others'—referred to in the context of friendship, neighbours and marriage as well as in terms of discrimination, riots and 'communalism'—were often identified as 'Hindus' or as 'non-Muslims', but were also often referred to members of different class, status or regional groups. Hence, boundaries around 'us' and 'them' shifted according to context and were contingent upon various factors alongside religious identity. Through the narratives of Zakir Nagar residents, religious identity emerged as itself a problematic category whose meaning and salience was continuously shifting.
Ideas of Homeland and Politics of Space A Study of Muslim Localities of Delhi
The thesis investigates community-space relationship in colonial and post-colonial Delhi. Examining the process of identification, demarcation, organization and/or re-organization of space on the basis of religious demographics, the study questions the dominant imagination of 'Muslim space' as an objective, homogenous and permanent category. The research relies on extensive use of archival sources from national and local government, Urdu, Hindi and Englishlanguage newspaper reports and oral history interviews. The thesis particularly focuses on Shahjahanabad, that later became Old Delhi, to trace the story of the gradual transformation of caste/craft based shared community spaces into religion based 'segregated' pockets during the period of 1940-1977. The study argues that the notion of communal space in Delhi is a product of a long historical process. The discourse of homeland and the realities of Partition not only demarcated space on religious lines but also established the notion of 'Muslim dominated areas' as being 'exclusionary' and 'contested' zones. These localities turned out to be those pockets where the I believe that ideas are always collective in whatever form they are structured and a research is never completed without the support of a number of people. Prof. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, my primary supervisor is the first person I would like to thank. His careful and critical reading of my drafts has not only helped in structuring the chapters in a better way but has also contributed in articulating and presenting the ideas more profoundly. My secondary supervisor Giacomo Lichtner has provided much needed encouragement and assistance throughout, especially at the time of revisions.
Book Review: Zarin Ahmad. 2018. Delhi’s Meatscapes: Muslim Butchers in a Transforming Mega-City
Contributions to Indian Sociology, 2020
On the Ambivalence of the Suddenly Old Towards Unexpectedly New Delhi: Reading Bashiruddin Ahmad's Waqi'at e Darulhukumat Dehli
I begin my brief essay with an extended quote from Bashiruddin Ahmed ¶s ³Vaqiat I Darulhukumat Dehli´ (Accounts of Delhi, the Abode of Governance), his massive three volume documentation of Delhi ¶s history and monuments, first published in 1919. This is an account of a palace starkly titled ³Mahal jo khud raha hai (The palace that is being dug up).´ The Mahal that was being dug up would have been in what is now the heart of central New Delhi, near what we now know as Hailey Road, close to the iconic Agrasen ki Baoli, somewhere between Connaught Place and Modern School. To the east of this baoli and masjid near the GIP (Great India Peninsular) railway line there was a very big, wide enclosure inside which was some palace. The palace doesn ¶t exist anymore but some walls of the enclosure are left. Inside there are heaps of stone and earth and labourers are regularly digging and carting off the stone and earth. With these very stones the road is being built and if this speed continues then in a few days the field will be entirely clear. The imagined picture of this palace that can still be seen in the imagination, even that opportunity will go. The width of the enclosure, the height of the walls, the vast stores of stone, the high heaps of earth, the traces of the foundations, all are sufficient proof of the fact that this palace was one of extraordinary size and grandeur. Now if the government doesn ¶t clear such dead and out of use buildings then how will land come for New Delhi and God-like judgement [be passed]. Har ke aamad imarate nau sakhat Everyone who came made a new building Raft manzil badigare pardakhat And left for another destination (to pay up) Why should the friend [of the building] come? The time has changed. Our way of life has changed. Our necessities have changed. In short, the sky has changed, the earth has changed. If these buildings are let remain, of what use are they in this time? So their erasure is the demand of the necessities of the time. Now only those monuments are preserved with which some prime historical happening is linked, or which is the memorial to some glorious king. As for the rest, there is no remedy except servicing them hospitably with pick-axes and shovels. Instead of those tattered and useless buildings now new airy, pleasant houses, mansions and parks will be built in which lights will twinkle with electricity, electric fans will whirr, and the corks of soda lemonade will pop all the time. Now the time is gone where there was some value and necessity for buildings of traditional design. When those who valued these things have not remained then what Delhi (for instance at Kadam Sharif) should be discontinued. 4 A confidential report printed by the Government of India in 1912 enumerated the ³Religious, etc.´ buildings of Delhi into three categories ± List X, Buildings which should be preserved, List Y, building which should not be destroyed unless destruction is imperative, List Z ± List of religious building etc. which need not be preserved 5 . List Z was by far the longest, 168 entries, far longer than the 45 entries in List A, and the 33 entries in List B. Bashiruddin Ahmed ¶s statement, quoted earlier, that only those structures are preserved which are memorials to some glorious king does not seem at all hyperbolic when looking at these categories ± most of what the Government wished to preserve of the religious buildings in Delhi were the tombs of kings and what they understood as religious structures of truly spectacular, trans-local significance. Anything of merely local importance could be dispensed with, become terra nullius to make way for the Imperial city being planned. Many of the structures not thought worthy of preservation included temples and dargahs and venerated mazars with histories of veneration going back seven hundred years or more. Some examples from List Z ± Village Chokri Mubarikabad. Shiwala and Baoli (shiv temple and well). An ordinary temple built along with the garden; nothing important. For local use, south of the road. Village Indarpat ± Mandar Bhaironji. East of Old Fort. Ordinary temple, unimportant, ghair-abad. Village Indarpat ± Dargah Abu Bakar (also known as Matka Pir) ± offering of cash and food on each Thursday. A grave(tomb) on a mound near the old fort. East of road. Some other grave also. Village Raipur Khurd. Makbara or Langre Khan or Langarabad and masjid. Old buildings. Ghair-abad [not settled or regularly 4 File 77/1915/Education, Chief Commissionerǯs Office Records, Delhi State Archives 5 File 47(10)/1914/Revenue and Agriculture/Chief Commissionerǯs Office Records, Delhi State Archives DzList of Religious Buildings to be Preserved in the New Capital Area.dz worshipped in]. Worshipped by Badi nomads. Every year fair of Badis is held. 1,000 persons utmost. It should be remembered that this is the early 20 th century, when the whole population of the Delhi province is well under half a million people, and an annual gathering of a thousand people, and their migration through Delhi province, was in no way an insignificant number. But in the utilitarian logic used to acquire land for the new city, people ¶s sentiments, histories and attachments to land played no role in the ³importance´ of religious buildings, which tells us something about British ideas of what religion was supposed to be, a category which excluded both locality and ³earthly´ sentiment. When the Archaeological Survey brought out its list of Delhi ¶s monuments (the famous Zafar Hasan list) enumerated according to the boundaries of village land, it followed pretty much the same classificatory scheme as the Confidential report. ³I -Monuments which from their present condition or archaeological or historical value ought to be maintained in good repair; II ± Those monuments which it is only now possible or desirable to save from further decay by such minor measures as the eradication of vegetation, the exclusion of water from the walls, and the like; III ± Those monuments which from their advanced stage of decay or comparative unimportance, it is impossible or unnecessary to preserve«´6 The preface goes on to add, ³«because a building is put into class III, it does not follow that there should be any unseemly haste to convert it into road metal.´ Though as the extract I quoted to begin with shows, this 6 The DzZafar Hasan Listdz, a four volume compendium, is called so because it was compiled by Maulvi Zafar Hasan of the Archaeological Department. It has recently been reissued as a set of three books by Aryan Books International. A DzReferencedz acting as a kind of preface to each volume gives us the schema of classification of the monuments. Maulvi Zafar Hasan ,1997. Monuments of Delhi Ȃ Lasting Splendour of the Great Mughals and Others. Delhi: Aryan Books International. caution was mostly retrospective. It is instructive to compare Bashiruddin Ahmad ¶s Waqiat to the Zafar Hasan list, which is also a multi volume compendium of the ancient remains of Delhi, especially as both came out around the same time. All three volumes of Bashiruddin Ahmad ¶s book were published by 1919, whereas the three volumes of Maulvi Zafar Hasan ¶s book were published between 1916 and 1922. Significantly, Bashiruddin Ahmad eschews Zafar Hasan ¶s form of enumeration of buildings according to the administrative divisions, the form of colonial governmentality, and instead follows the 19 th century old model used by both Mirza Sangin Beg and Sayyad Ahmad Khan, of guiding a traveller through the landscape of Delhi with Shahjahanabad imagined as a centre, enumerating things that you would find on the way if you travelled certain routes, say from Shahjahanabad to Nizamuddin or Mehrauli, or circumambulating Shahjahanabad. And there is certainly no classificatory logic to Bashiruddin ¶s selection or description of monuments. He seems to write of everything he comes across, old or not so old, famous and grand or small and insignificant, temples, hospitals, venerated graves, forgotten domes. If he could, it seems, he would have written about the very stones of Delhi ¶s roads ± for isn ¶t that the phrase, in speech and literature, that describes the true lovers of Delhi in all their glorious eccentricity and cussedness ±dilli ke rode, the stones of Delhi ¶s roads? 7
Opening the New Street Almirah: The Properties of Culture in British India
2020
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Related topics
Related papers
Bombay Mystical City: Muslim Shrines and Saints in the Urban Fabric from 1800 to Present
Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes, 2020
Forging Communal Space: Negotiating Streets and Practices in Delhi, 1922–65
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2024
This paper examines space-making in the Jangpura-Bhogal locality of Delhi by documenting communal conflicts in the late 1920s and 1950s. First, it addresses the production of a Hindu religious space by disavowing Muslim ritual practices under a colonial regime seeking to control religious conflict. Second, it unpacks the diverse mechanisms used to produce a Sikh political space during a nascent postcolonial state’s management of linguistic subnationalisms. Grounded in power relations and cohesions around multiple social registers, these variegated spatial claims were made through political and religious processions, petitions and physical violence. These communal geographies highlight the importance of neighbourhood histories.
Adab and Banarsipan: Embodying Community among Muslim Artisans in Varanasi, India
In this article, I consider adab (" cultured respectfulness ") and banarsipan (" Banaras-ness ") as two ways-of-being for working-class Muslims in the Indian city of Varanasi. Each of these identities contain its own ontology and truths about the remembered past, the lived present, and the processes which created them, and thus serves as alternatives to nationalist and communal identities and the histories they present. These ways-of-being are examined using a theoretical orientation that brings together concepts of bodily hexis and social memory, which offers a promising way to consider local or marginal Muslim communities, their emic configurations of meaning, power, status and personhood, and their relationship with dominant or normative Muslim groups and identities. I Rashid and Da'ud are both residents of the city of Varanasi (Banaras), India. They have much in common: they are both members of Banaras's large Muslim minority, and are silk sari weavers by occupation and caste. Both were raised in the same Muslim neighborhood, albeit fifteen or so years and several blocks apart, and both still reside there. They come from the same socioeconomic station: relatively poor, working-class artisans. Both men's fathers died when they were young, and since both Rashid and Da'ud are both eldest sons, each was left the responsibility of earning for his family. They began work early in life, and both had to leave school after only a few years of study. Rashid and Da'ud even attend the same mosque. In spite of these many similarities, however, they live their lives very differently , as reflected not only in their speech, but in the way they move, the way they choose to wear essentially the same clothes, and so much more. Rashid and Da'ud represent two radically different ways-of-being for Banarsi Muslim men: 1 Rashid lives his life according to the rules of adab, " cultured respectful-ness, " while Da'ud lives his according to banārsīpan, " Banaras-ness. " It is my claim in this article that each of these ways-of-being—a term I am using for a cluster of verbal and non-verbal discursive and performative prac-tices—serves as an embodied community and an alternative to " nationalist " and " communal " identities and identifications and the histories they promote. Each
The Capitalist Logic of Spatial Segregation: A Study of Muslims in Delhi
Economic and Political Weekly, 2014
In today's neo-liberal economic milieu, Muslims in Delhi are being rediscovered as a human resource that is positioned as a specific part in the accumulation project which has little use for prejudice per se, but only to the extent that it aides the project. Muslims are grateful for jobs and businesses that take advantage of their skills, time, labour and assets and other supposed integrative advantages that this relationship brings with it. These neighbourhoods in Delhi are integrated in the city economy, and even global economy, but only so far as the balance of accumulation of capital is tipped in favour of spaces elsewhere.
Butchers between archives: community history in early twentieth-century Delhi
South Asian History and Culture, 2021
This article analyses the Risālah-yi Banī Qus_ s _ á, a 1924 Urdu-language history aimed at Muslim butchers in Delhi, alongside archival records produced for the colonial state and municipality in the same period. The Risālah-yi Banī Qus_ s _ á asserted regional and local Islamic pasts for butchers, in an effort to improve their social standing within Delhi’s Muslim communities. On the other hand, when Delhi’s Muslim butchers appeared in the colonial archive, they were portrayed as sources of communal violence and unsanitary urban practices. This article analyses the distance and gaps between these two archives, asking how we should approach vernacular histories and the colonial record when they address the same communities but position them within divergent social contexts. It argues that reading the two archival forms together, and analysing the gaps between them, allows us to ask how urban working-class communities understood their own histories and social positionalities within the colonial city.
Unwanted in my city - The making of a 'muslim slum' in Mumbai
Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds.) Muslims in Indian cities - Trajectories of marginalisation, London: Hurst & Co., 2012
Calcutta Kosher and the Man with Many Hats. Recasting the Baghdadi Jews as a ‘New’ Minority in Contemporary India
This article discusses some of the recent narratives of India’s Baghdadi Jews, looking at the way works of literature have been recasting this community as an Indian minority referred to as ‘Indian Jewish’ or, more specifically, ‘Calcutta Jewish’. Indulging into nostalgic memory building, adopting literature as a strategical practice of history-writing and engaging into an archaeology of cultural performances, two women authors of Baghdadi Jewish descent have retrieved past lives and memories along the «sensory geographies» of India’s most vibrant colonial city: Calcutta. Since 2001 renamed Kolkata, the city has undergone deep changes in postcolonial times and yet remains the perfect canvas where to perform a new hybrid subjectivity, that of the Indian Jew – or ‘Calcutta Jew’ as some would prefer – testifying to the historical ties and special bond to the city that once upon a time they used to call home. Whilst the remaining Jewish communities of India are undergoing a legal battle for the recognition of their civic and political rights and the granting of the status of ‘minority’ – so far bestowed upon them only by the State of Maharashtra (2016) – some writers are con- tributing to highlight the great history of a forgotten community, the Bagh- dadi Jews, who had arrived in India at the end of the eighteenth century as a «diaspora of hope» and are now claiming an Indian Jewish minoritarian identity, so far denied. From the autobiographical novel by Jael Silliman The Man With Many Hats (2013) to the witty theatre play Calcutta Kosher by Shelley Silas (2004), this article retraces some of the stories of the smallest Indian Jewish community, the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta. Navigating the lanes of Calcutta/Kolkata, sensory memoryscapes evocatively reframe the history of this minor transnational community.
Review of M. Raisur Rahman. Locale, Everyday Islam, and Modernity: Qasbah Towns and Muslim Life in Colonial India.
The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2018
Back to the Future Qasbah : Print and the Timescape of an Islamic Town in British India
Duke University Press, 2020
Scholarship on British India has not articulated the significance of the qasbah to studies of the public sphere. To address this gap, this article makes two connected arguments. First, while qasbahs have generally been understood as largely derivative of urban centers in British India, through Madinah (named afer the holy city, Medina) and other newspapers the residents of Bijnor qasbah increasingly asserted an alternative significance: as representatives of a public space that was defined over and against the public of national narratives. This argument proceeds with reference to the way Madinah positioned itself in response to the spatial disruptions of the telegraph and the railway. Statements in Madinah link Bijnor’s physical isolation to a spatial and temporal distance, a spatialtemporal rift that defined a segment of the Urdu public that stood at odds with the Westernized city.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.