India's Cities and Ghettoisation

"Our cities were always quite unequal because of wealth, and divisions on the lines of caste and ethnicity. Now, caste and religion are even bigger markers, ghettoisation has increased and the segmentation looks set to get worse," said Anasua Chatterjee, a researcher at the Delhi University "The city government is complicit in the reorganisation of urban space along the lines of religion, resulting in closed and restricted neighbourhoods for Muslims," said Chatterjee, who has written a book on Muslim neighbourhoods in Kolkata city. The ghettoisation exacerbates their poverty and alienation, with even job applications and requests for bank loans often rejected because of where they live, Chatterjee said. "Even those who have the means to move from these neighbourhoods usually find it hard to get a place because of their religion," she said. "Whether the confinement is imposed directly or indirectly, it deepens the divide between Muslims and Hindus," she said. Sensitive urban planning could be a way to reduce the impact of segregation, but powerful real estate developers often lobby against integrating neighbourhoods, said Chatterjee.

"They do not just segregate themselves: cities are hubs of capital accumulation and profit making, so the poor are discriminated against. Muslims are among the poorest," said Ghazala Jamil, an assistant professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. "There is no intervention by the state to end the segregation, as it is a mode of governance, a way to manage inequality," said Jamil, citing data from her recent book on Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi. "Urban neighbourhoods are a manifestation of labour markets, so it is a sort of economic exploitation and containment of the poorest communities including Muslims," said Jamil. "They are often limited to the dirtiest, lowest paid jobs, and don't have much bargaining power or the ability to move elsewhere," she said.

About a third of India's population of 1.25 billion lives in cities, with tens of thousands leaving their villages every year in search of better economic opportunities, largely as construction workers, domestic helpers and security guards. In Mumbai, India's financial hub, more than half the population lives in slums and informal settlements. Most residents are Muslims and lower-caste Hindus. Muslims, who make up 13 percent of India's population, face bias when buying or renting properties, analysts say. The deep-rooted biases are eroding the multi-cultural nature of India's booming cities, creating neighbourhoods which perpetuate the communal divide. Some states like Gujarat, which witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country in 2002, even have laws that restrict Muslims and Hindus from selling property to each other. In Mumbai, the divide in the city grew after bloody Hindu-Muslim riots in 1992-93. But it is also true of smaller cities such as Meerut, where Hindu residents recently forced a Muslim family to give up a house they had bought in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood, according to local news reports.

In time, the dominant communities begin to stereotype and turn the culture of minority communities into a commodity, with these neighbourhoods even marketed as tourist attractions for their distinct cuisine or type of architecture, said Jamil. "Going to eat or shop in the Walled City in Delhi or the Old City in Hyderabad may seem cool, but it is perpetuating the division," she said. "As long as cities continue to be centres of capital accumulation, we will see dispossession of the poor and the powerless, who will continue to be pushed to the margin."