Chatting with a well-known author recently, I observed that the green, peaceful part of Delhi in which she lived seemed like quite a contrast to my rambunctious colony.
In our complex, life seems to be marred by fistfights almost every day, conflicts about parking that have resulted in FIRs being filed, shootouts and murders and quarrels between neighbours about balconies being extended.
She burst my bubble by telling me about the constant arguments between two of her neighbours. One squabble ended up with the lady on the first floor urinating on the lady on the ground floor.
In an adjacent colony, an upmarket enclave, it was a fight over stray dogs. One of the residents is an animal rights activist who zealously feeds street dogs. But there are growing cases of dog bites. Residents argued with her and demanded compensation. She filed an FIR accusing them of extortion.
There are umpteen anecdotes in India’s metropolises about neighbourhoods that lack neighbourliness. Such experiences of urban battlefields are often recounted in drawing room conversations about how the atmosphere is so much better in India’s tier two towns, where neighbours are like members of the extended family.
The state and politicians do not merely implement policies in a top-down fashion. They base their political methods on everyday social practices to gain legitimacy.
In this populist-authoritarian era, everyday modes of interaction are influencing frames of governance. The hurly burly of India’s urban battlefields are now being reflected in the uncivility so evident on the political stage.
The failure to understand this results in many struggling to comprehend why such uncivility, seemingly encouraged, by political dispensations is not being rejected by the public.
So far, urban studies has often focused on how planning and architecture have fostered new modes of exclusion by creating ghettos and gated communities defined by the affluence of their residents. But it has rarely reflected on what happens within these havens of civic amenities and modern infrastructure.
Scholars rarely reflect on the manner in which residents of India’s mushrooming gated communities interact with each other and how these enclaves influence political mobilisation.
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt noted that representative government concentrates power in the hands of a tiny elite. To counter this, she suggested establishing a council system featuring town hall meetings. Such councils, Arendt believed, represent a de-centered form of direct democracy. They allow collective participation and make governments more accountable.
However, this does not often account for how collectives based on mutuality get constituted in the first place. Under populist mobilisations, citizens have turned from idealist imaginations to hands-on solutions. They are not asking for what is perfect but for what is possible.
Neighbourhoods can have paradoxical influences on individuals. They are central to socialising residents into the norms of coexistence but could also be cradles of violence.
When riots broke out during Partition, one of the methods Gandhi used in Bengal’s Naokhali to calm tempers was to invite children from both the communities to play ball. He demonstrated that it is in the banality of everyday life, we are all the same.
Neighbourhoods are the building blocks for social trust. That is the bond that is attempted to be broken when violence is engineered: neighbours often complain of rioters coming from the outside.
BR Ambedkar said that fraternity cannot be a constitutional principle: it has to be a lived sentiment.
Many imagine that this quality has long been a part of India’s civilisational ethic. But in reality, ancient India was marked by agraharas – settlements for Brahmins. Spatial enclaves have long been part of Indian life.
Today, apartment complexes that only allow Brahmin residents are appearing in cities such as Bangalore. In most Indian cities, Muslims find it almost impossible to buy or even rent homes. As a consequence, they are pushed to live in ghettos and community-specific enclaves – but are then accused of harbouring an inward-looking, siege mentality.
Are India’s urban battlefields built on this civilisational discomfort with people who are not like us? Is there a phobia about the stranger when it comes to co-habitation?
In a survey on tolerance in India by the US-based Pew institute in 2021, most respondents recognised the need for diversity and asserted that plurality is necessary for democracy.
At the same time, they had strong reservations about living in the same areas as members of other communities. They said that living in exclusive caste and religious colonies was a better way to maintain amicable relations. Pew titled this phenomenon “Living together, separately.”
To transpose the sentiment to India’s gated communities, can there be amicable relations based on civility and trust even in such enclaves? Or is it the idea of exclusivity that is creating new categories of strangers? Does that partly explain India’s modern day urban battlefields?
Ajay Gudavarthy Center for Political Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University.
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