Muslims in Indian cities : [Book] : Trajectories of marginalisation

With a population of more than 150 million, Muslims are the largest Indian minority. But over the last twenty-five years, they have faced a significant decline in both socio-economic and political terms - while afflicted by periodic waves of communal violence.In India’s cities, these developments find contrasting forms of expression. While Muslims lag behind, local syncretic cultures have proved to be resilient in the South and in the East (Bangalore, Calicut, and Cuttack). In the Hindi belt and in the North, Muslims have met a different fate, especially in riot-prone areas (Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Jaipur, and Aligarh) and in the former capitals of Muslim states (Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Lucknow).These developments have led to the formation of Muslim ghettos and Muslim slums in places like Ahmedabad and Mumbai. But (self-)segregation has also played a role in the making of Muslim enclaves, as in Delhi and Aligarh, where traditional elites and the new Muslim middle class searched for physical as well as cultural protection through their regrouping.This book supplements an ethnographic approach to Muslims in eleven Indian cities with a quantitative methodology in order to give an account of this untold story.This volume offers new insights and provides complex, and often disturbing, accounts of the state of Muslim communities across metropolitan India. .

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