THE Muslim localities or ilaqe in postcolonial North India are portrayed in three different ways.¹ First of all, these pockets are described as cultural spaces where historically evolved Muslim social customs and Islamic practices are performed.² In contrast, these areas are also represented as polluted spaces or ghettos. The congested streets and overcrowded bazaars are not merely identified as obstacles to planning and modernization but also seen as hubs of ‘criminal’ activity and terrorist hideouts.³ There is a third image of Muslim pockets – that of a politically charged public space. These areas are thus seen as political spaces – a ‘miniature Pakistan’ in India – where ‘minority politics’ is nurtured and played out. (Golwalkar 1969, 99).

While these images have been problematized in the debates on communalism and secularism, the specificities of Muslim ilaqe have not been given any special attention in conventional urban studies. Recent scholarly works, however, try to establish a link between ghettoization and relative marginalization of Muslims in urban spaces (Shaban 2012, Jaffrelot and Gayer 2012, Nair 2005, Kumar 2010). Although these studies struggle to bring these pockets out of the vocabulary of ghettoization, there is a need to historicize the process by which urban spaces in Indian cities have been marked along religious lines.

This paper attempts to explore the ways in which cultural and political encounters between colonial administrative techniques – classification, categorization, enumeration and the mapping of space – and Indian social realities – discursively constituted the relationship between communities and space. It also raises two related questions: how were certain geographical pockets categorized as ‘Muslim’, ‘Hindu’ and ‘mixed’? And, how did these cultural zones (in our case, Muslim ilaqe) acquire a ‘contested’ political identity? I try to trace this historical process in the Mughal city of Shahjahanabad, which later came to be known as Old Delhi.⁴

 

Shahjahanabad was built in 1638 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. It was a walled city. Seven main gates connected the city with the surrounding region – Kashmiri Gate, Mori Gate, Lahori Gate, Kabul Gate, Ajmeri Gate, Turkman Gate and Delhi Gate. But it was not limited to the area enclosed by the walls. In fact, the walled area was only the hub of an urban complex that extended several miles into the countryside on the north, south and the west along the opposite bank of the river in the east (Gupta 1982, 2). About half of the population resided in the suburbs, while the ring of gardens, tombs, bazaars and mohallas (small residential units encircled with inner walls and gates called kuchabandi) contained a good deal of economic and social activity of the city (Blake 1991, 57).

Shahjahanabad’s demographic pattern was primarily based upon the conventional caste hierarchies practiced commonly by Hindus and Muslims during the Mughal period. The Red Fort, popularly known as Qila was the centre of power and the marker by which the location of different castes and classes was determined. The complex inside the Red Fort was inhabited by the upper caste Hindu, Jain, Muslim élite class and nobles while the other influential classes of traders and merchants settled on the sides of important markets like Chandni Chowk, Balli Maran and Kucha Chahal Amiran situated relatively near the Qila. The areas near the city wall were populated by the lower caste and lower class communities. The kumhars (potters), qureshies (butchers), rangrez (dyers), chamars (cobblers), telis (oil makers) and other lower caste communities used to live in the areas adjacent to city walls and gates. The Gujjar and Jat communities lived outside the walls (Gupta 1982, 55). This caste and economic status based geographic configuration of the city was very much reflected in the residential patterns, as the mohallas were clearly demarcated predominantly along caste and class lines.⁵

 

Each of these residential units came under the purview of the thana (system of policing and regulation), headed by a thanedar (in charge). There were twelve thanas for various mohallas in the city (Gupta 1982, 3-11). Local discontent was dealt with by the chaudhuries (heads) of caste or biradari panchayats in coordination with the thanedar. Each of these units were surrounded by high walls called kuchabandi. The houses, shops and stalls of food, clothing, and other supplies, including meat, were sold according to the requirements within these walls and in the common bazars (Blake 1991, 85).

 

This residential and commercial pattern, broadly speaking, suggests that the economic status, prestige and caste were the prime markers of space in Shahjahanabad. It does not mean, however, that religion had no role to play in the spatial structure of the city. For example, the settlement of Muslim nobles and Ashraf (upper caste) around important religious structures – Jama Masjid, Akbarabadi Masjid, Fatehpuri Masjid, and Aurangzaibi Masjid – and the concentration of Hindu upper caste trader and merchant communities in important bazars – Chandni Chowk, Balli Maran, Dariba Kalan – is a reflection of this kind of living pattern. Yet, religion was not the defining feature of these residential units precisely because the religious belongingness was deeply intermingled with caste and prestige (Blake 1991, 95).

The British East India Company occupied the city in 1803 and controlled its administration as protector of the Mughal Empire. The Delhi System set up by Charles Metcalf, Company Resident, strengthened the traditional mohalla system and practices of kuchabandi (Spear 1945, 170-171) However, the events of 1857 played a significant role in the spatial redesigning of the city. The British authorities became highly concerned about the security and social conflicts. Consequently, the traditional thana mechanism was replaced by the municipal structure of local administration under the Police Act of 1861 (Spear 1945, 183-185).

Although the caste-class pattern of residential and commercial make-up remained, the main feature of the city, the mohalla as a system with a self-regulatory mechanism, was dismantled. The city, in this sense, was envisaged as an organic whole comprising of sectarian interests and claims. In other words, Shahjahanabad was seen as a ‘battleground of different communities.’ As a result, the boundaries of colonial surveillance and conflict management expanded massively in later years, especially after the extension of the city and the creation of New Delhi in 1911. This process not only transformed Shahjahanabad into Old Delhi but also converted the newly developed surrounding areas – Sadar Bazar, Idgah, Sabzi Mandi, Paharganj and Karol Bagh – into ‘zones of tension’. This spatial restructuring of Delhi, which was officially intended to urbanize the city on modern lines, somehow paved the way for a new segregated discourse. Interestingly, the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ were employed by the colonial administration as prime categories to deal with the collective claims on space. I present three examples to elaborate this point.

 

The selective treatment of communities employed by the colonial administration immediately after recapturing the city in mid-September 1857 is my first example. Although the British Army indiscriminately killed and forcefully evacuated the entire population of the city at the initial stage to avenge the deaths of English and Anglo-Indian officials and their families, the selective rehabilitation, confiscation of properties and capture of religious places, somehow set the future terms of discourse of colonial politics in Delhi (Dalrymple 2006, 393-486). The Muslims were categorized as ‘traitorous’, though loyalty towards the British was a defining principle in official vocabulary.⁶ All the major Muslim places of religious significance (Jama Masjid, Fatehpuri Masjid, Idgah and Madrasa Gahziuddin) were occupied by the troops as these sites were seen as a source of trouble (Percival Spear 1945, 27).

 

A clearance drive was carried out for better control of the city. The Muslim properties – mansions, palaces and even mosques (including the Akbarabadi Mosque) were destroyed during this drive. But, many small temples and a large part of Dariba Kalan, where a number of Hindu and Jain merchants (considered ‘loyalist’) had shops and commercial ventures, were left untouched as a concession. Finally, a selective re-inhabitation policy was employed. Only Hindus were allowed back into the city in January 1858, while the Muslim population was permitted only after an official order was issued in response to a petition in 1860; ‘protection tickets’ or ‘permits’ were used to ensure restricted and registered entry. Moreover, the residential properties of Muslims were confiscated, and after long debates, were auctioned to loyalists – Hindu and Jain traders and some affluent Muslims (Dalrymple 2006, 455).

This ‘selective’ treatment of the population converted the symbols of ‘Muslim’ presence into ‘contested’ sites for the first time. It also changed the spatial character of the city. A large number of upper caste elite Muslims (mainly belonging to Mughal families and other ‘disloyal’ Muslims) resettled in the areas near the city walls, while the upper caste Hindu and Jain communities came to play a dominant role in social, economic and political life of the city in later years.

The political representation of Indian ‘subjects’ in local bodies is the second example. The municipality divided the city of Delhi and its suburbs in fifteen wards in 1863. The twelve intramural and three extramural administrative wards were roughly based on the Mughal thana divisions. Each of these wards came under the control of a non-official member of the municipality (Gupta 1982, 85). The Ripon Municipal Reform of 1880s, which advocated the idea of political representation of Indian communities through local self-government, converted these administrative wards into electoral political units. Restricted franchise, introduced in 1884 in Delhi, gave voting rights to landed and educated (upper caste) classes (Gupta 1982, 119).

 

Although the first election results did not show religious polarization, it created some divisions and bifurcations among the religious communities at the local level. Though a majority of the voters were Hindus, six Muslims were elected as against five Hindu members in 1884. The official reports also suggested that ‘the leading people of the town…have expressed the fear that the elections may have helped to accentuate the differences already brewing between Hindus and Muslims.’ It further noted that voting in twelve intramural wards was on communal lines in comparison to the other three extramural wards (Gupta 1982, 120). The 1909 reforms, which made it mandatory to establish communal representation at different levels of governance, extenuated the debates in the Delhi Municipality. Questions such as who represents whom gradually emerged and eventually transformed into the famous debate on joint versus separate electorates.

After much deliberation, a system of separate electorates was finally extended to the Delhi Municipality in 1924. It was decided that one Hindu and one Muslim candidate should be elected from each double member constituency. The Chief Commissioner pointed out: ‘In each ward Hindus must vote for a Hindu candidate, and Muslims for a Muslim. Otherwise, in some of the wards where Hindus predominate, they would control the election not only of the Hindus but of the Muslims also’ (Gupta 1982, 214).⁷

 

By the mid-1930s separate electorates were established as an official norm at all levels of government. The Delimitation Commission of India (1936) treated the entire territory Delhi as one Chief Commissioner Province and divided it into Federal Assembly and Council of State Constituencies. The assembly constituency had one general and one Mohammedan seat, while for the Council of State there was a provision for only one general constituency.⁸ In this sense, a communal electorate for the Federal Assembly defined the Muslims of Delhi into a singular electoral unit, and at the same time demarcated the space into general and Muslim at all levels – from local to provincial and nation.

These developments had two implications. First, the division and discord over space which had taken place around religious differences, now acquired political overtones. Terms like ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ became the most viable political categories and got established as the only way to express local grievances. In fact, the call for a separate electorate was interpreted as the only way to translate cultural claims into political and territorial rights. Second, the fears of collective marginalization and the discourse of religious differences penetrated deep into the localities of Delhi. That was the reason why the cow occupied a prominent space in electoral campaigns in the post-1925 period.

The codification and legalization of cow slaughter is the third example, which turned out to be probably the most contentious ‘Hindu-Muslim’ question in colonial Delhi. It is important to clarify here that cow sacrifice had always been a point of dispute between meat eating communities and those groups who worshipped cow in pre-British period (Bayly, 1990, 10-15). However, this issue became an administrative concern for British officials. The slaughter of the cow was officially linked to Muslim festivities and meat eating practice and placed in a binary opposition to Hindu belief. In this sense, both the sacrifice as well as worship of the cow was interpreted as established Indian ‘customs and practices’ for evolving legal norms and administrative mechanisms in Delhi (Copland 2005, 60-62).

 

This conflict management had two important aspects: (a) legalization of the practice and (b) delimitation of the community space. The British authorities came up with a set of administrative norms to legalize the practice as they started controlling the Punjab province in 1845. These norms were extended to Delhi well before 1858 since the Delhi territory was a part of the Punjab province. The purpose of these norms was to regulate the slaughter of the cow and of animals to ensure that it was as ‘inoffensive’ to the general public and to Hindu sensibilities as possible. It was ordered that animal slaughter would not be permitted within 300 yards of cities, towns or villages where the Hindu and Muslim population was mixed or living in close proximity. Demarcated spots should be provided for the shambles and butchers’ shops away from any religious places of worship. Moreover, it was ordered that beef should not be exposed for sale in shops within towns (Sharan 2014, 71).

The Delhi Municipality concretized this demarcation of space and conflicting practices with ‘modern’ and ‘rational’ vocabulary. It clubbed the slaughtering and selling of meat under the definition of ‘offensive trades’ and restricted this commercial activity in the city by imposing a fine on slaughterhouses. Furthermore, cow slaughter was strictly prohibited within the walled city (Gupta 1982, 129). The municipal bye-laws, rules and directions issued in 1911 finally set a comprehensive legal framework in this regard. It defined: ‘Any act omission, place, animal, or thing which cause or is likely to cause…annoyance or offence to the sight, smell, or hearing or disturbance…which is or may be dangerous to life or injurious to health’ as a nuisance to the public. While, ‘animal carcasses…putrid or putrefying substances other than sewage’ were classified under ‘offensive matters’.⁹

 

The only legitimate place where this commercial and cultural activity could be performed was either areas occupied by a majority of Muslims or outside the city wall. Consequently, meat shops situated in predominantly Hindu areas were closed and transferred to the meat market outside the walls. The only shops that remained were situated in ‘Muslim’ quarters (Gupta 1982, 129-132). Although the presence of these meat shops did not create any major dispute, the slaughtering, exposing and selling of meat was considered a danger to communal harmony as well as the health of inhabitants. The old slaughterhouse situated in the city was also closed and shifted outside to the area near Idgah (a place for Muslim congregational prayers on festive occasions) in 1915. But this settlement produced a new set of complications since it fell on the route to the Jhandewalan temple (Gupta 1982, 200).

The mapping of zones for better regulation of slaughter and meat was the other important factor which re-established the marking of Muslim areas and more importantly codified the norms of religious festivities. Baqr-Id inevitably became the most sensitive of all festivals.¹⁰ Special preventive measures were taken by authorities because the celebration involved significant movement of people and activity throughout Delhi – a large number of cattle were sold and slaughtered and their meat carried back to individual homes for celebrations that lasted over three days. In order to manage this situation, the municipality created ‘delimited zones’, drafted a design for clear mapping of routes for animals taken for sacrifice and formatted a comprehensive and intensive scheme of surveillance.

 

Following these measures, the parading or slaughter of any horned animal was completely banned in the municipality of Delhi, except in the three ‘delimited zones’. Even within these zones, the use of certain bazars was strictly prohibited. Each zone had a gate of the city through which cattle could be brought, accompanied by not more than seven people. Furthermore, it was made compulsory to display a number and name of the owner on animals. Once the cattle were killed, the flesh had to be carried back through the same gates, while being covered in cloth and not displayed in such a manner as to ‘hurt the feelings of others’ (Legg 2007, 123-25). This marking of space deepened after the creation of a new slaughterhouse. In order to address the unease of the Hindu and Jain communities, the authorities demarcated the routes for cow processions and other animals taken to slaughterhouses. These routes were clearly based on the religious configuration of areas – ‘Hindu dominated’, ‘Muslim dominated’ and ‘combined’. But this marking increased the possibilities of a clash on this festive occasion.

 

Intensive policing was the other way found to maintain peace through confining the practice to certain areas to ensure peaceful celebrations. For instance, the Scheme for Police and Other Dispositions in the event of a Communal Riot in Delhi, called CRS, was revised for policing the city for three continuous days on Baqr-Id in 1934.¹¹ The scheme aimed at a thorough investigation of activities. Its purpose was: ‘To guard places of worship, picket "danger spots" and prevent gang attacks in mohallas, where one community is weak…’ (Legg 2007, 128 and 146). Consequently, every ward falling in the category of ‘sensitive’ packets was policed and every street was patrolled and monitored to look out for ‘disturbances’. In this sense, every gali, mohalla and ilaqa came under the purview of the administrative mechanism describing and categorizing each with its communal character. It shows that the measures used for policing concretized the communal and spatial contestation by codifying the Hindu and Muslim areas as ‘sensitive’ and ‘danger spots’.¹² It classified any act outside the prescribed regions of practice as ‘illegal’ and ‘criminal’ (see map).

It is worth remembering that the colonial techniques of administrative control for conflict management had a much deeper impact on the self-perception of social groups. Every locality dominated by a particular community turned out to be its ‘homeland’ in official and administrative terms, where the communities had a legal and political right to perform their cultural practices in some sense. Yet, this legal-political recognition not only came in conflict with the historically evolved spatial framework of the mohalla in Delhi, but also transformed every gali, mohalla, ilaqa, city and eventually the nation into a contested zone. These collective claims were to assume a violent and organized form and a new expression, ‘direct action’, emerged, especially in communal discourse after 1946.¹⁴

 

A letter written by the President of Anjuamn-i-Islamiya, Islam Nagar, Karol Bagh, to the Police Commissioner serves to demonstrate this changed language of community-space relationship. Referring to a particular incident that took place on the day of Baqr-Id in 1945, the letter says: ‘Hindu and Sikh residents of the locality tried to raise a quarrel with Muslims… (on) ‘Cow killing’ …some bones… were given by (one) Mr. Ansari to sweepress (sic). Those the sweepress threw in the dustbin. From there the dogs spread these over the road. Hindus and Sikhs on seeing the bones… collected on the spot… armed with lathies and other weapons and began to pass offensive… remarks on Muslims… They were heard to say "pour kerosene and set fire to Ansari’s House." They are… likely to harass the Muslim residents who are in a hopeless minority in the locality.’¹⁵

Similarly, a letter from the President of Hindu Bharat Sabha, Anand Nagar, Karol Bagh was written to the Secretary, Home Department on behalf of the residents regarding the ‘Maintenance of Law and Order and Safeguarding the Life and Property of citizens.’¹⁶ It says: ‘The Muslim League "Direct Action Day" …in Calcutta has caused nervousness …we the Hindu residents …are under the grips of …intense danger …(we) request …for taking necessary measures …against any possible onrush, intense and brisk activities ...of the so-called minority community …their steps to organize and equip themselves …especially regarding the outcome of their Juma-Ul-Vida celebrations …(it seems) they are determined to launch an organized mass offensive on a scale bigger than …Calcutta… we request ...for some extra precautions for Friday the 23rd August, 1946 in order to safeguard our lives and property.’¹⁷

These two complaints reveal how the discourse of homeland produced complex meanings of ownership and belongingness. The idea of Pakistan, which tried to harmonize the imagined Muslim nationhood with actual spatial diversity of Muslim communities, further intensified this contestation. In fact, it consolidated the space and community relations and offered a new political language of expressing grievances and articulating spatial claims at the local level.

 

This politicization of space completely ignored the historically evolved spatial arrangements in Delhi. Since people did not migrate from the mixed areas to form exclusively Hindu or Muslim residential units, the small majority homelands were seen as unsecured zones by the community which lived there as a ‘minority’. In other words, the realization of collective religious self, nuances of colonial administrative mechanisms and finally the multifarious dimensions of local politics played an important role in identifying the geographical space in terms of the collective identity of its inhabitants.

The events following the partition of the subcontinent reflected the immediate repercussions of these contradictions in Delhi. The forced and organized evacuation of populations, threats to life and property of Muslims, the creation of Muslim zone and Muslim camps, and the debates on the citizenship status of Muslims could be taken as revealing examples in this regard (Qidwai 2000, 53, 175-181) The secular spirit of the Indian nation state no doubt evaporated religious categories from administrative vocabulary, but these contestations continued to take new shapes in the postcolonial political context.

 

The continuation of colonial meat regulations in Delhi in the 1950s; the identification of the walled city as an urban slum due to its backward, unhygienic and congested character by the Master Plan 1962, and its subsequent division into three zones (three spatial zones: redevelopment, rehabilitation and conservation) by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), envisaged the city (at least officially) in religious neutral terms and tried to address it as a problem of urban density. Yet, the politics of urbanization remained deeply embedded in the historically evolved contestations over space. This is precisely the reason why the three images of Muslim areas – cultural space, polluted space and political space – continued to survive and re-established Muslim ilaqe as a form of urban discontent –a misfit in the secular mainstreamed urban Indian space.

 

Footnotes:

1. The terms like gali, mohalla and ilaqa are used to define the geographical stratification of a space in Hindustani. Gali is a street, mohalla means neighbourhood, while the word ilaqa refers to an area, locality, and region. I use term ilaqe simply to underline the problems of colonial official vocabulary, which employ Muslims/Hindu Ilaqe as a category for policing the city.

2. The writings of R.V. Smith can be mentioned here; See Smith 2005, 73-80.

3. For a discussion on the relationship between urban planning and crime see, Shaban 2010.

4. I will use the word Shahjahanabad, Old Delhi and Delhi interchangeably in order to underline the colonial measures which went beyond the intramural wards and the violence which expanded with the extension of the city. Shahjahanabad was the old capital, but it should not be placed in isolation to the whole Delhi territory.

5. Caste here refers to the craft and occupational associations of different communities, which was an important feature of the system of social stratification of Shahjahanabad. The upper class-upper caste here signifies the economic, social and aristocratic status of communities. For detail see Blake 1991 and Pernau 2013, p. 266.

6. The British policy towards Muslims was quite straightforward. It was suggested that ‘Muslims should not be employed around Delhi except those who remained faithful and these should be treated with special favour’ (Spear 1945, 220).

7. Ibid., p. 214.

8. Indian Delimitation Commission: Proposals for the Delimitation of Constituencies in the Provincial and Central Legislature, Volume II. Government of India Press, Shimla, 1936, p. 227.

9. Delhi Municipality, Bye-Laws, Rules and Directions, pp. 60-61.

10. Baqr-Id is a festival of sacrifice celebrated over three days by Muslims. It involves the slaughter of big and small animals. Interestingly, there is no religious compulsion to sacrifice a cow on Baqr-Id. At the same time the sacred status of cow in ancient Hindu religion was also not emphasized before the 19th century.

11. The CRS was revised again in 1946. Police Orders for Id-Ul-Zuha, 1946. Home/Political, 1946 File No 5/11/46.

12. Press Note published by the Office of the Chief Commissioner, Delhi. Home/Political – 1939, File no. 22/15/39.

13. The outline of different wards is taken from Gupta, 1982 and Ehlers and Kraft, 2003. The division of areas is based on Police Orders for Id-Ul-Zuha, 1946 (Home/Political 1946 File No: 5/11/46).

14. National Archives, Home/Political -1946, File No. 5/6/1946, Intelligence Bureau, C.I.D. Daily Reports dated 15.4.1946, File No. 5/44/1946, File No. 5/2/46 and Dawn newspaper, 15 August 1946.

15. National Archives, Home/Political -1946, File no. 21/11/46

16. National Archives, Home/Political, 1946 File no. 25.4.1946.

17. National Archives, Home/Political, 1946 File No-23.8.1946.

 

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