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About the talk:

‘What are you?’(translated) is a commonly heard phrase in many Indian languages, that is used to inquire about one’s caste identity during house-hunting, especially when their caste is not identifiable from their last name. The real estate market in many Indian cities appears to be strongly tied to the question of caste, and the existence of caste-homogeneous neighbourhoods is well documented. This study based on fieldwork in Gomtipur-Dani Limda and Chandkheda areas of Ahmedabad, examines how caste operates as one of the principal axes in the formation of new neighbourhoods against the backdrop of city-remaking projects. Using ethnographic methods, it captures the major shifts and continuities in the cultural and political production of two distinct kinds of pre and post-liberalization Dalit neighbourhoods.  How is the role of caste strategically masked and intensified in the formation of neighbourhoods? What are the mechanisms by which inter-caste and intra-caste exclusion get produced in emergent middle-class neighbourhoods? It is argued that greater economic mobility associated with rapid urbanization produces increasingly homogenous and exclusionary spaces in terms of class within caste and vice versa. Middle-class and working-class Dalit identities are articulated, materially and discursively, through a range of socio-cultural dispositions, that can also be embedded in a larger regional political narrative. The emergent politics and spaces draw on and simultaneously reconstitute hegemonic norms of aesthetics, political aspirations and contestations that reveal the complexities of the urban-caste nexus. 

Speaker:

Dyotana Banerjee is Assistant Professor of Politics in the School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences at Krea University, India. She has a Ph.D. from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, and an M.SC. in International Development from The University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include politics of urban spaces, caste, labour, social movements and identity politics in Gujarat. Dyotana has published research articles and commentaries in Contemporary South Asia, South Asian History and Culture, Critical Asian Studies, and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research etc.

This is the one hundred and eighty-sixth (186) in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi, and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on the city’s development issues and address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Rama Devi at ramadevi2487@gmail.com, Champaka Rajagopal at champaka@cprindia.org or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org.