Residential Discrimination of Muslims in Multicultural Mumbai, India

Abstract

The Paper discusses role of ‘identities' in a city. In the classical literature of Social Sciences, City is considered as place of identities with less/no relevance. Mumbai Is one of the largest city in terms of its demography and diversities. The city has different communities and the city is also known as city of contradictions, with the existence of rich and poor and other various diversities. Identity of people are reflected in the space of a city. Spatial reflection of identities are visible from housing practices of various identity groups in a city. Mumbai, a city with diversities are known to its co-existence and communal harmony. At the same time, the city has witnessed communal riots, bomb blast and skirmishes between Hindus and Muslims. The paper tries to place Muslim identity in Mumbai city. Muslim cannot be perceived as homogenous identity considering internal variation among Muslims. Above internal contradiction, Muslims show housing behaviour of being together with other co-believers (Muslims). Parsees and Brahmins are having concentrated housing in Mumbai like Matunga and Dadar Parse colony. Malabar hill and Dhravi is also another example two extreme end of housing behaviour in the city. Muslim identity of the city is spatially arranged, and most of those places can be located at the poor end of city's hierarchical order. The city's multicultural values are largely questioned by its ‘housing realities'. Each riots and bomb blasts have reconfigured identities of the cities as it seen today. The paper largely depended upon primary and secondary data of census, reports and literature review. However, the analysis is made based upon the field experiences of Muslims from Shivaji Nagar, East Jogeswari, Deonar and Dharavi.