Saturday, November 21, 2015

SPATIAL BIOGRAPHIES OF SELF: MAPS, HOMES AND BORDERS


BY 
APARAJITA DE

PART 5 
(UN) CONVENTIONAL MAPPINGS


Maps to me were always about precision and accuracy. They were remarkable primarily because it gave one the ability to locate and place oneself ‘exactly’ without a doubt or a question. So it came as surprise to me, while doing my PhD fieldwork in the Kot - the walled city of Ahmedabad - that families living in the localities of Raikhad[1] thought themselves as not part of Raikhad but that of Khadia (see the locational map of Ahmedabad). The latter being a locality on the other end of the Kot. It was even more astounding given the fact that many of the families have been living in those localities for more than half a century and given the context of the kot itself. 




Fig.1: Locational map of Ahmedabad

The kot is a highly divided and b/ordered place where Hindus and Muslims, and within which different sects, castes and jamats, have been living separately and in almost total segregation in the pols[2] since the city was built by Sultan Ahmed Shah I in early fifteenth century. It was these inaccuracies in locating oneself on the map that pushed me into enquiring how people actually mapped themselves - maps that had meanings and exactness of a different kind. 



Fig.2: Community living inside pols

In the backdrop of the 2002 Godhra riots, I set about exploring how residents of the Kot were actually mapping themselves spatially, especially in the light of the public discussions of ‘marginalizing’ and ‘ghettoizing’ the Muslim other. I immediately went back to Khadia, thought of as the single largest Hindu locality within the walled city. Once again I found myself knocking on Naresh kaka’s[3] door, someone I had interviewed during my PhD days, seeking an insight to my questions and with usual enthusiasm Kaka held his door wide open. He recounts:

The story of the kot … well one thing is very clear that the entire kot was Hindu ages ago but not now. Almost everywhere Hindus have out migrated because of them. Take for example in Kalupur and Shahpur Jains have totally moved out to the para vistar, particularly to Paldi and Jivraj Park. I can go on and on where pol after pol has been vacated by the Hindus. And most of them left from areas where they (Hindus and Muslims) used to live side by side… Give me that map of yours. I’ll show you the laxman rekha or what  you  youngsters call as the LoC (Line of Control, refers to the line of military control between India and Pakistan in the northern most state of Jammu and Kashmir).

Taking my pens; Kaka eagerly draws an intriguing visual narrative of the kot (see the map) and continues:

Here see this is Khadia, the single largest Hindu area within the kot. It extends from Astodia–Raipur Darwaza to ST stand (State transport bus stop near Sarangpur Darwaza) with Panch Kua Darwaza on one side and Sankhadi Sheri on the other. All other areas are ardho Hindu and ardho Muslim areas. Towards our right is Kalupur and on the left is the real dangerwala area, that is, Jamalpur. Beyond it is Raikhad which is another dangerous area.. Shahpur and Dariapur are okay but I am not much in touch with those areas. And straight ahead here in front  is Khanpur-Mirzapur which is entirely Muslim.


Fig.3: Locating Self and Otherness: Naresh Kaka's Visual Narrative of the Kot
(Based on Fieldwork conducted by the Author)
(Map is not to scale)

The dominating presence of Khadia, Kaka’s place, his home and his Brahminical ‘self’, is clearly visible not only in its highly exaggerated geographical spread[4] but also in its portrayal as the last remaining bastion of Hindu self, mostly of upper caste Hindus. Only three smaller patches of highly isolated and fragmented Hindu areas are demarcated by him. One in Shahpur on the main road between Shahpur Darwaza and Delhi Darwaza where Jains, etle (meaning) upper caste Hindu live’ and others in Dariapur - Wadigam and Dabgarwad where Patels live. The other Hindu areas, though well defined, are embedded in larger mixed areas along with Muslim pockets. The overwhelming presence of Kaka’s Khadia, appears to me as a material expression of his conceptual control and ordering of the entire kot where Kaka through the marking of borders he allocates places and positions to Hindu selves and Muslim others. At the same time the borders and the allocated places are used to mark out the distances, both social and spatial, between self and the others.      

Kaka maps the Muslim areas, particularly the dangerous ones of Jamalpur and Kalupur, on either side of Khadia as part of a larger mixed area clubbed with Hindu areas. My dilemma was why would Kaka place the most dangerous Muslim areas, according to his own admission, on his sides and that too with Hindu areas? It would have been natural to place ‘their areas’ either at a great distance from himself and his home or behind him. At least that was what I had presumed. However, both the Muslim and Hindu areas are well delineated and represented as separate spatial realms. Kaka then adds ‘most of these Muslim areas are behind the Hindu areas. For example, in Kalupur the Muslim area is at the backside of Swami Narayan temple, Shantinanth ni pol and Ghana Suthar ni pol, which are Hindu areas. Similarly, behind the Hindu Dhal ni pol, Navo Vas, Fire Brigade and Municipal Kotho area is the Muslim area of Jamalpur’. 

On one hand, by not mapping a separate Muslim presence outside the larger mixed areas, with the exception of Khanpur-Mirzapur, Naresh kaka is perhaps symbolically denying and reducing their place[5] and thereby their power. Nonetheless, the mapping of Muslim areas itself is an acceptance of Muslims as the dominant other, particularly in the post-Godhra context.  On the other, by placing ‘their’ areas behind the Hindu areas he creates a buffer zone of other Hindu selves’ as a kind of border within a border that distances ‘his place’, his home and his ‘Brahminical self’ from the Muslim other.

Interestingly, Kaka places the only stand alone Muslim area, confined to the relatively smaller patch of Khanpur-Mirzapur, ‘straight ahead’ facing him but at a distance from Khadia. His stance is confident, forward-looking and perhaps confrontational. It was as if he was telling - look here you don’t really affect me I have the strength to face you. Strangely, Kaka not even once refers to ‘Khanpur-Mirzapur, which is entirely Muslim’ as dangerous. Strange because it is commonly believed that the isolated spatial domains of Hindus and Muslims indicates the non acceptance and intolerance of each other, and ultimately the cause and effect of communal violence. Thus, such contexts are only to be viewed as dangerous and pathological. To some, the ongoing socio-spatial separation today is a tell-tale evidence of the success of non-secular forces in helping to construct Hindu and Muslims identities that are primarily in opposition to one another. On the contrary, Naresh kaka is discomfited not by the ‘total’, highly isolated and so called Muslim ghettoes rather his anxieties seemed to emerge from his memories and everyday encounters with the ‘ardho Hindu ardho Muslim’ mixed neighbourhoods, where Hindus and Muslims lived side by side. And unable to live together Hindus have largely left such neighbourhoods to move ‘out’ to the para vistar

Moving beyond the apparent otherness of the Muslims, Kaka’s visual narrative of the kot also highlights the many selves ingrained within his worldview. Firstly, the Hindu self that he largely associates with - the Brahmims, Jains and Patels, the upper caste Hindus represented through their isolated spatial domains in Shahpur and Dariapur. Secondly, the Hindus living in well defined spatial pockets in the mixed neighbourhoods of Jamalpur and Kalupur, and whose caste identity he curiously refrains from commenting. Finally, the Hindus of Raikhad, cohabitating with the Muslims in a spatially undifferentiated manner. Kaka remarks:

the Hindus here are mainly Bhoi and Bhisti …. all B.C. (backward caste) class, all chicken and muttonwala (meat eaters). They are Hindus but……they are what we call halki vasti (lightweights). They have relations with Muslims you know… they live together after all. They work together… have family relations… go to each others’ homes. Here not even a Muslim plumber or electrician will enter our homes. There it is not like this. And my nephew was telling me that there is a dargah there whose caretaker is a Hindu.

Interestingly, the spatial biography of Naresh kaka reflects an anxiety of areas that are ‘mixed’, areas where Hindus and Muslims live together. It seems at least in the case of Kaka feelings of anxiety, fear are evoked when the borders are neither well defined nor distinct. When borders are blurred they are unable to easily distinguish the differences between the self and the other. Hence, they believe that they are incapable of negotiating and locating or defining self and its borders and it is this inability that makes them feel uneasy.






[1] The residential locality was just behind the Bhadra temple as you move towards the Gaekwad Haveli. Families here mostly refer themselves as Marathas, of Maharashtrian origin and claim to have come with the Gaekwads.

[2] Pols are gated micro-residential neighborhoods. Most of them are demarcated by a wall with a single darwaza or gate at its entrance. The pols are compact housing clusters with dead-end main streets, and streets branching from it that are too narrow for modern wheeled traffic and are almost physically insulated from the outside world and outsiders. Typically the families living within the pol not only knows each other well but considers themselves as part of a larger family.

  [3] Naresh Kaka is a Shrimali Brahmin (priest) who started his life as a sales boy at his uncle’s shop in Manek Chowk but later worked as a real estate agent. Though his wife passed away a couple of years back yet he chooses to live on his own in the pol, where his family has been living for the past three generations. Both his son and daughter now live nadi paar (across Sabarmati), in the outer suburbs.

[4] The reason for describing the Khadia outlined by Nareshkaka as highly exaggerated is because it not only includes most of the administrative wards of Khadia but also that of neighbouring Kalupur.

  [5] See Bourdieu’s (1990, p. 123-39) argument that acts of representation involve the showing up and showing off, of certain realities. For example, a group may demonstrate its number, strength, cohesion so as to make it exist in a more obvious manner as well as change the categories of perception and systems of classification in order to impose ones own legitimate principle of vision and division.


Author's Bio- Note: 

Aparajita De is an Assistant Professor at Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. She is currently working on Mediaspace, Bollywood and Popular Culture.

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