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ID: 155747

Caste and capital in the remaking of Ahmedabad / Banerjee, Dyotana; Mehta, Mona G

Mehta, Mona G	Journal Article
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The city has been eulogized as a liberating space of anonymity where identities of caste and creed dissolve before the might of economic capital. This paper examines how the role of caste is both masked and intensified in the formation of new neighbourhoods in the backdrop of city-remaking projects. Our ethnographic study of Dalit-dominated neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad shows that the emergence of a middle-class neighbourhood in Ahmedabad’s periphery must be seen as a ‘post-liberalization Dalit ghetto’ that is distinct from the pre-liberalization Dalit neighbourhoods in the industrial centre of the city. The new Dalit middle-class neighbourhood of Chandkheda is a result of greater economic mobility among Dalits which continues to be marked by the three exclusionary mechanisms: ‘moving up’ and into segregation; caste vigilantism; and protean forms of intra-Dalit exclusion. The collusion of caste and capital produces unexpected forms of space politics that tend to enhance rather than dissolve distinctions based on micro-caste identities in middle-class residential spaces, all the while hiding new forms of exclusion behind the rhetoric of secularized urban development.

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Caste ; Segregation ; Capital ; Ahmedabad ; Dalit Middle Class

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ID: 154551

From Gandhi to Gurus: the rise of the ‘guru-sphere’ / Mehta, Mona G

Mehta, Mona G	Journal Article
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This article compares the public sphere of gurus (‘guru-sphere’) in contemporary Gujarat and that of Gandhi historically as important sites of political contestation. It argues that despite their common use of religious idioms to convey political ideas, Gandhi and the gurus authorise radically different political projects with divergent conceptions of the Hindu subject and Indian polity. The discursive activities of the guru-sphere have helped forge a dominant consensus that endorses Hindutva politics. Operating within a democratic civil society and borrowing from Gandhian idioms, gurus have actively challenged key constitutional values derived from the Gandhian public sphere. The study reveals the paradoxical tendency of Gujarat's public sphere to produce hegemonic monologues over pluralistic dialogues, not in the absence of, but through the institutional mechanisms of, deliberative democracy.

Key Words

Gujarat ; Hindutva ; Deliberative Democracy ; Public Sphere ; Consensus ; Mohandas K. Gandhi ;
Civil Societ ; Gurus ; Guru-Sphere

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