Claims on the city. Situated narratives of the urban. 9781666941609, 9781666941616

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Claims on the City

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Claims on the City Situated Narratives of the Urban

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Edited by C. Yamini Krishna, Amy Mei Yen Phua, and Nisha Mathew

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

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Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE

Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN: 978-1-66694-160-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-66694-161-6 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

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Figuresvii Introduction 1 PART I: CHOREOGRAPHING THE CITY

1 Occupying Bangkok: Performing Rights Across the City in a Series of Unpredictable Flash Mobs in Neoliberal Thailand Rubkwan Thammaboosadee 2 From Confederate Monuments to Black Lives Matter Protests: The Role of Material Culture in Shaping and Reshaping Richmond’s Racialized Landscape Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra and Lee Ann Timreck 3 Yale: RESPECT New Haven: (New Artwork to Protest an Old University) Laura A. Macaluso 4 Allegory or Algorithm: The Smart City as Monument Richard Simpson PART II: CULTURESCAPES OF RAPID URBANIZATION 5 Memory, Nostalgia, and Asakusa in Contemporary Japanese Cinema and Television Mina Qiao 6 Filming the City: Embodying Interruption Dikshya Karki v

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7 Claiming History, Claiming Present: Muslim Diaspora and Hyderabad City C. Yamini Krishna 8 The Soul of the City: Mindfulness Practice in Hong Kong Marin Nycklemoe 9 Languages of Care: Exploring Articulations of Neglect and Backwardness among Laboring Migrants in Bengaluru Swathi Shivanand 10 Hiking Is Caring: “Kong Wu” and “Hang Shan” as Concepts to Understand the Changing Sense of Belonging in Hong Kong’s Rural Landscape Lok Hang Hui

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PART III: MICROHISTORIES OF PLACEMAKING

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11 Popular Experiences and City Making in Brazilian Amazonia: Manaus, 1890–1900 Thaís R. S. de Sant’Ana

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12 Sufi Shrines in Hyderabad and Its Community’s Claims within the Urban Amy Mei Yen Phua

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13 Theatrical Landscapes: Exploring Single-Screen Theaters in Ernakulam as Urban Icons and Indicators Rajarajeshwari Ashok

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14 Caste of Our Neighbors: Understanding “Middle-class” Attitudes toward Caste through Urban Property in Kolkata Sreya Sen

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15 War on Slums: Slum-Free City Programs and People’s Struggles to Stay Put in Visakhapatnam Indivar Jonnalagadda

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16 Tribal Aspirations and the City Elvin Xing Yifu

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Index 261 About the Editors and Contributors

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Figures

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Figure 1.1 Around 5:00 p.m., Protesters Filled Up the Street at the Meeting Point before Marching to the German Embassy 18 Figure 1.2 Protesters Gathering at the Ratchaprasong Intersection 21 on October 15, 2020 Figure 1.3 Protesters Showing a Three-Finger Salute as a Sign against the Authoritarian Regime at the Ratchaprasong Intersection 22 Figure 2.1 Rumors of War Sculpture by Kehinde Wiley, 2019 28 Figure 2.2 Lee Monument, Monument Avenue & Allen Avenue, Richmond, Independent City, VA 29 Figure 2.3 Block Monument Avenue, Richmond, Independent City, VA 31 38 Figure 2.4 Grassroots Memorials to G. Floyd and M.-D. Peters 39 Figure 2.5 Creation and Shutdown of Marcus-David Peters Circle Figure 3.1 Public Square or Green, in New Haven, Connecticut, John Warner Barber, 1825 51 Figure 3.2 Stained-Glass Windows without Images in What Was Then Calhoun College, Part of Yale University 55 Figure 3.3 May Day Rally, New Haven Green, 1970 58 Figure 3.4 Elihu Yale with Members of His Family, and an Enslaved Child 61 Figure 6.1 The Crew of Gopi (2019) in Front of a Veterinary Shop in Balaju, Kathmandu, in Preparation for Filming 97 Figure 6.2 Actor Bipin Karki Arriving in His Motorcycle as Part of a Scene 98 Figure 6.3 The Filming Moves Inside the Veterinary Clinic and a Crowd Gathers Outside to Watch 98

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Figure 6.4 Pedestrians Are Requested to Walk Away from the Footpath by a Crew Member of Gopi (2019) and They Comply 99 Figure 12.1 A Dargah with Outer Courtyard Leading to Inner Sanctuary 184 Figure 13.1 Map Showing the Location of Single-Screen Theaters in Ernakulam 202 Figure 13.2 A. J. Hall, Which Used to Be Seena Theater 204 Figure 13.3 Mymoon Lulu Theater, Which Was Closed Down Years Ago 205 Figure 15.1 Chanting Outside the Municipal Zonal Commissioner’s Office 238 Figure 16.1 Breakdown of Intake of Students in Universities in Hyderabad (Listed in Text) for 2022–2023 254 Figure 16.2 Breakdown of Seats for Master’s Program at the University of Hyderabad 254

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Introduction

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The idea for the book first began from a panel proposal for the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) conference in 2021. The world was in the middle of the global Covid-19 pandemic and we were witnesses to the sea of changes that were taking place in our immediate surroundings and in the world at large. Cities were at the center of crises, as many countries around the world enacted state of emergency laws that brought invisible lines of inequalities to the surface. In India, the pandemic led to a huge exodus of migrant labor out of the cities. The migrant workers walked hundreds of kilometers to reach their homes, and some lost their lives in the process. In China and many other countries, the state imposed draconian restrictions on the movement of the people, in the name of containing the pandemic. In Brazil, there was a complete failure of the state mechanisms to address the needs of the people in the middle of a global catastrophe. The United States saw a million deaths due to the virus. Despite the social, political, cultural, and economic differences, people around the world were experiencing and responding to similar challenges at the same time. Everywhere, there was strife between the state imposing harsh pandemic policies and the people negotiating for their rights and freedom. It was possible to think about cities across the Global North and South divide in terms of the state, the questions of accessibility, and the power relationships (caste, class, gender, and race) which framed the material experiences. The conference became a way we could cope with the pandemic, and new solidarities and friendships were formed during the online conference. The discussions during the conference were valuable not just academically but also for ideas we were ideologically committed to. From there, the book took a long and arduous journey of more than two years, where our ideas strengthened, cross-pollinated, and took on new directions. In this edited 1

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volume we think about cities across the Global North and South divides through situated narratives. Covid-19 was just one among the several recurrent crises in the life world of cities. The repeated failures of the capitalist order, ruptures in structures that upend the social orders in societies, force us to rethink our understanding of the cities. Most importantly these crises are experienced differently depending on the power positions. Therefore, these global crises lead to public resentment of states, the power elite, and their policies, resulting in mass movements of citizens, students, artists, farmers, and workers repeatedly flooding streets, blocking highways, and staging huge demonstrations. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and Thailand, the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) rallies and farmers’ protests in India, and the protests for women’s freedom in Iran are the latest in a series of significant movements that have upended the social and political order of cities in pursuit of justice, opportunity, and dignity for those left behind in the neoliberal path to urban progress. States responding to these movements and labeling them as riots and insurrections have deployed newer and more effective strategies for crushing them, including through the acquisition of digital surveillance technologies and the use of excessive force. The struggles for justice have often been dismissed as “culture wars” and portrayed by state media as being led by angry mobs who do not respect authorities. The term “culture wars” usually presents a worldview of two cultures at war with each other, placing both “cultures” on the same footing (Zimmerman, 2022). This frame masks the historical power equations, making both oppressive and oppressed cultures simply as worldviews. For instance, the changing of textbooks based on religion or politics of ruling power such as a tirade against critical race theory in America or critical caste theory in India is a classic example of culture wars. However, it needs to be examined not just as battle of cultures but as efforts of the oppressive groups to hold on to their hegemonic positions. However, the reasons for these struggles are often embedded within a discursive context. The questions of identity, belonging, and heritage are intertwined with historical inequalities and material resources. The politics of culture are not outside of issues of displacement, infrastructure, technology, and material progress. In fact, the cultural inequalities bolster material inequality. These conflicts play out in the sites of monuments, institutions, and histories, which are important sites of contention. In this book, we thus focus on localized identity movements which are otherwise silenced against the larger and louder narratives of globalizing and nationalizing forces. We see these urban developments, crises, and uprisings unfolding across the world as key turning points in history rife with new economic, social, and political possibilities. This book is about solidarities, situated narratives, and

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microhistories. We capture on-ground social movements and solidarities of people against the mechanisms of state and global capitalism through situated narratives and microhistories of resistance. Using situated narratives, this book captures the events, protests, and movements that disrupt a city’s existing rhythms, disaggregate space, and time and periodically choreograph the pieces into new formations, not unlike in theatrical productions and performances. By using an interdisciplinary approach to detail, the on-the-ground events, and subsequent transformation of different embattled cities, we also create a new epistemology for understanding the cities. The geographical imagination of this book crosses the boundary of Global North and South. Drawing from Eric Sheppard, Helga Leitner, and Anant Maringanti’s (2013) definition of southern urbanism as “everywhere, whose livelihoods have been made precarious by the geohistorical processes of colonialism and globalizing capitalism” in this book we curate narratives of solidarity from across Asia and the Americas. Examined as situated narratives, the on-ground movements of BLM from New Haven and Richmond speak to the pro-democracy movement of Bangkok and anti-CAA protests in Hyderabad. Michael Storper and Allen J. Scott (2016) suggest to abandon the Global North-South distinction, to conceptualize the city as one of a “tangible phenomenon, distinct from but contained within society as a whole, and with specific genetic roots and unique internal organizational dynamics.” In this book, we look at features, such as the dynamics of organizing protests, arrangement of architecture and monuments, and differing temporalities, to highlight the differing components of groups, organizations, and histories that form the tapestry of the urban. It thus highlights dynamic ways of social investigation in contemporary urban studies and avoids viewing societies in a monolithic Global North-South manner. The book makes two significant interventions: the first one is methodological. Urban studies volumes (Choudhary, Singh, and Das 2020) often focus on planning, policy, and governance, examining its effectiveness or ineffectiveness, exclusions, and inclusions. Thus, the urban plan becomes a dominant frame to understand the cities. In this volume, we step away from planning and discuss the small, local negotiations and how they shape cities and lived experiences. We foreground the lens of understanding cities from methods grounded in humanities, focusing on the humane, subjective, and emotive aspects of the cities. We strongly believe that the field of the urban demands an interdisciplinary dialogue and a tapestry of diverse methodologies, which the essays and their case studies exemplify. Thus, this volume brings perspectives from the disciplinary locations of performance studies, film studies, architecture, cultural studies, heritage studies, history, and religious studies—an unusual bunch in studying the urban. The chapters in the book are intimate portrayals of the city, breaking away from the distance which is

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often implicit in the policy perspectives. It presents another dimension to the otherwise dominant grand theory perspective of cities in global colonialism and capitalism (Bracken 2016). The second intervention is ideological and thematic. By focusing on cultural and identity aspects the book challenges the false binary of reading the issues of materiality as significant and questions of identity as sectarian and unproductive. The chapters in the book expose a strong interconnection between the material and the ideological and hence challenge the notion of “culture wars.” We privilege the voices and narratives glossed over and written out of dominant histories but preserved in the cultural memories and everyday material practices of communities. In being so, it is an effort toward a decolonial, feminist understanding of the urban. While the term “decolonial” is commonly used in non-Western contexts, we argue in this book that it simultaneously applies to any context that was formerly occupied or colonialized by another culture, and this includes domination along race and class lines, for example, the European Americans vis-à-vis Black Americans in the United States. It becomes an archive of the on-ground struggles in various parts of the world. By making their positionality visible and sometimes locating themselves within the context they are discussing, scholars in the book exemplify an embodied practice of research. Embodied research has been discussed widely by feminist scholarship (Fox 2015), and many of the contributors to this volume are themselves a part of the movements they theorize about and hence the book bridges the gap between theorization and activism. The scholarship in this book is deeply connected to the places it discusses and is committed toward imagining better cities. The book is divided into three parts: part I—“Choreographing the City”; part II—“Culturescapes of Rapid Urbanization”; and part III— “Microhistories of Placemaking.” In “Choreographing the City,” we analyze people’s movements, art movements, and flash mob strategies of contemporary protests using the concept of “choreography,” or more precisely, the art of “designing” performances. Choreography allows artists taking the stage to communicate an idea or experience, to create a spectacle, to re-imagine space and the diverse possibilities it offers, and to generate visual, tactile, and cognitive configurations for the audience’s interpretation. On the streets, public demonstrations and protests disrupt the existing spatial patterns and temporal rhythms of urban life, break the hegemony of the state exercised in such rhythms and patterns, and seek to re-order the urban along more inclusive lines. Choreography as a concept draws from performance studies and has been significantly used to understand social movements. Susan Leigh Foster (2003) places the body at the center of understanding physical protests bringing a corporeal understanding of collective action. Parviainen (2010) employs the phenomenological method to

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discuss choreographies of resistance, and Parviainen notes that the political ideas are translated through the gestures, actions, and kinesthetics of the body. Lepecki (2013) employs the dual concepts of Choreopolice and Choreopolitics to discuss the political. They term the control and ordering of public space done by the police as Choreopolice and Choreopolitics in contrast, requires a redistribution and reinvention of bodies, affects and senses through which one may learn how to move politically, how to invent, activate, seek, or experiment with a movement whose only sense (meaning and direction) is the experimental exercise of freedom. (20)

Drawing from these ideas we study urban space through a juxtaposition of bodies and monuments, bodies as monuments in this section. Rubkwan Thammaboosadee’s chapter brings to life the flash mob protests in Bangkok through autoethnography as a deliberative mode of citizenship practice in claiming the urban. It discusses how the flash mobs and protests reembody the individualized neoliberal bodies and their competitive rhythms and create a collective rhythm of cooperation and collaboration. Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra and Lee Ann Timreck take the idea of collaboration and cooperation to discuss how the BLM protests shaped new material culture practices across Richmond, Virginia. Through this, they examine how the marginalized Black community employed alternative practices of belonging, sharing, sociability, and solidarity to change the city’s racialized landscape. They examine the Monument Avenue of Richmond to discuss its reinscription by multiple movements. Laura A. Macaluso adds a perspective on monumentality and city space from New Haven and examines the relationship between the town and the elite Yale University. Macaluso questions who the city belongs to, through a series of public art murals occupying New Haven. Macaluso’s chapter adds the missing piece of protest art to New Haven’s rich history of protests and civil movements. While Thammaboosadee, Inserra, Timreck, and Macaluso present specific cases of on-ground movements, Richard Simpson takes a step back from specific cases to conceptually discuss allegory and algorithm as two practices in global urbanization which implement geography as pedagogy. Simpson uses Antonio Gramsci’s work on the Ford factory to discuss the educative aspects of urban space. Simpson’s chapter connects the company town to the American campus and smart city and gives theoretical tools to understand the genealogy of built space as pedagogical. Over the past few decades, cities around the world have seen rapid urbanization, most often forced by global forces of capitalism and local national forces. The fruits of this urbanization have been more destructive for communities than constructive. This is particularly true for communities which are marginalized. In the second part “Culturescapes of Rapid Urbanization,” we examine cultural responses to rapid urbanization. Communities and people

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form alternative imaginaries of their cities in order to cope with the urbanizing forces. These imaginaries are expressions of loss, nostalgia, or sometimes even practices of caring for the self as resistance to rapid urbanization. Here we see the action of global and national forces and local coping mechanisms through cultural imaginaries. Like the protests which are also resistance against powerful marginalizing forces, culturescapes are also resistances in a different register. The word “culturescape” has been used by Alexander D. King (2002) to connect culture and landscape in the sense of understanding landscapes not as entities but as processes and activities. King notes that culturescape for him is the opposite of ethnoscape of Appadurai (1990); it is not deterritorialized but rooted people’s understandings of a place in daily life (King 2002, 65). Here, we understand culture as a way of life, as suggested by Raymond Williams (2011). Culturescapes capture the changes in ways of life due to rapid urbanization in the domain of social life and cultural expressions. Mina Qiao in her chapter discusses Asakusa in Tokyo as a portal in the complex sociocultural past of the city. Qiao uses the imaginary of Asakusa from Japanese films to argue that the sense of loss and nostalgia takes on the shape of the supernatural in cinema. While Qiao taps into the cinematic city, Dikshya Karki explores the lived city behind the cinematic city. Karki, studying Kathmandu and on-location shooting, points to the ruptures and interruptions in the seamless imaginary of South Asian City and notes that interruptions are a way of inhabiting the city. Working further with the concepts of nostalgia and historical loss discussed by Qiao, C. Yamini Krishna discusses how the Hyderabadi diaspora lays claim on the contemporary city by becoming custodians of the past. The imaginary of the Hyderabadi diaspora created online becomes an archive of the social history of the city, the imaginary also comes to life momentarily, in the practices of the diaspora. The chapter begins the discussion on how cities are constituted by migrants, both in and out of the city. Swathi Shivanand zooms into migrants and their articulations and practices of care, in the context of alienation of the city and the severing of the caregiving networks of home. The conceptual framework of care helps understand multiple negotiations with the urban. Lok Hang Hui discusses walking as a practice of care. Hui draws from Chinese concepts of kong wu and hang shan to understand walking as an urban identity practice in the context of the highly commercialized landscape of Hong Kong. Marin Nycklemoe presents an alternative lens of spirituality and mindfulness practices to understand the urban alienation of Hong Kong. The third part “Microhistories of Placemaking” examines local, neglected, on-ground efforts of placemaking as opposed to the grand narratives of capitalism, global forces, and networks. By placemaking, we mean practices of creating places, that is, how movement, activities, efforts, and engagement of people shape places. While placemaking is usually used in the planning

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context, here we discuss on-ground practices and not the planned development. Thaís R. S. de Sant’Ana complicates the understanding of the urbanization of Manaus in Amazonia by bringing in the narratives of migrants and locals. Sant’Ana’s work challenges the dominant understanding of Amazonia being shaped by global capitalism and rubber trade; she adds the dimension of on-ground practices to the narrative of global capitalism. Amy Mei Yen Phua also discusses another form of history and how it plays out in the contemporary. Phua places dargah at the intersection of spirituality and contemporary politics and discusses how it constitutes enclaves of difference in the city. Exploring everyday practices of life as placemaking practices, Rajarajeshwari Ashok focuses on film-viewing practices as constitutive of urban landscape in Ernakulam city, Kerala. Films form an important social phenomenon in South Asia and are a way to understand the social history. From the entertainment practices, Sreya Sen takes us to living and housing practices in Kolkata. Sen’s work challenges the dominant narrative of castelessness in Bengal society and gives us a peek into the multiplicity of ways in which caste operates in urban housing. Indivar Jonnalagadda also discusses caste in the urban through the narratives and stories of Dalit and Adivasi women in Vishakhapatnam. These narratives, replete with metaphors of anger, war, and insurgency, are outcomes and responses of state violence and the absence of state-subject dialogue. Elvin Xing Yifu studies the Adivasi youth and maps out their emotional geography of aspirations and belonging. Xing argues that cities are constituted by tribal communities. This book is not meant to be an accurate representation of cities of all geographies. It does not include discussions from Europe, Africa, and Australia and is not inclusive of all current events within the urban such as issues on climate change and the intersection of art, culture, and climate change. However, the spirit of including interdisciplinary frameworks and finding similarities across different societies according to its localized discursive histories and organizational networks would still apply even in these continents. It is perhaps reflective of the academic lineages of the editors that our call for papers spoke to specific geographies. Nonetheless, the book is one of the first in its attempt to pull in multiple disciplines cutting across arts, humanities, spirituality, and social sciences to present a framing of the urban based on new perspectives of space, art, architecture, and temporalities. It raises questions about the urban condition as we navigate into a world that is increasingly urbanizing. Former perspectives are becoming obsolete as continents around the world are increasingly interconnected with the internet, and ideas and references are being interchanged at vast speeds. With this, new perspectives and frameworks are needed to socially investigate the contemporary urban condition. The editors would like to express their gratitude to people who helped in various ways and capacities to allow this book to come to fruition. First, we

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would like to thank the accompanying authors who stayed with us, believed in the ideas of this book, and persevered to contribute chapters despite their personal and work schedules. Without them, this book would have never come to fruition. They have not just stayed with us throughout this long journey but also have encouraged us through our personal and professional challenges. The friendships we built during the making of this volume are very valuable to us. We would like to thank Anant Maringanti for his suggestions on the book. Maringanti’s suggestions helped us weave the book coherently.

REFERENCES Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2–3: 295–310. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​ /026327690007002017 Bracken, Gregory, ed. 2016. Asian Cities: Colonial to Global. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Choudhary, Bikramaditya K., Arun K. Singh, and Diganta Das (eds). 2020. City, Space and Politics in the Global South. New York: Routledge. Foster, Susan Leigh. 2003. “Choreographies of Protest.” Theatre Journal (2003): 395–412. Fox, Madeline. “Embodied Methodologies, Participation, and the Art of Research.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 9, no. 7 (2015): 321–332. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1111​/spc3​.12182 King, Alexander D. 2002. “Reindeer herders’ Culturescapes in the Koryak Autonomous Okrug.” In People and the Land: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia: 63–80. Lepecki, André. 2013. “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: or, the Task of the Dancer.” TDR/The Drama Review 57, no. 4: 13–27. https://doi​.org​/10​.1162​/ DRAM​_a​_00300 Parviainen, Jaana. 2010. “Choreographing Resistances: Spatial–kinaesthetic Intelligence and Bodily Knowledge as Political Tools in Activist Work.” Mobilities 5, no. 3: 311–329. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/17450101​.2010​.494838 Sheppard, Eric, Helga Leitner, and Anant Maringanti. 2013. “Provincializing Global Urbanism: A Manifesto.” Urban Geography 34, no. 7: 893–900. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1080​/02723638​.2013​.807977 Storper, Michael, and Allen J. Scott. 2016. “Current Debates in Urban Theory: A Critical Assessment.” Urban Studies, 53(6): 1114–1136. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​ /0042098016634002 Williams, Raymond. 2011. “Culture is Ordinary (1958).” In Cultural Theory: An Anthology 5359. Zimmerman, Jonathan. 2022. Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Part I

CHOREOGRAPHING THE CITY

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Chapter 1

Occupying Bangkok Performing Rights Across the City in a Series of Unpredictable Flash Mobs in Neoliberal Thailand Rubkwan Thammaboosadee

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In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the socioeconomic inequality and class struggles of global societies against the backdrop of the neoliberal economics of the twenty-first century. In Thailand, in tandem with the challenges of the pandemic, young pro-democracy protesters stirred political tensions by challenging the status quo in the country. A military government had been in power since 2014, with an attempt to rebrand itself during the general election of 2019. This chapter discusses the phenomenon of organic and unpredicted protests across the city of Bangkok during the second half of October 2020, which I call the “Occupying Bangkok” phenomenon. From the perspective of performance studies, I locate a city’s sphere not only as a physical site but also as a mode of social performance enabling performed bodies, ideologies, and emotions to navigate and interrogate sociopolitical issues in a neoliberal regime. I elaborate on how performativity draws on relations between three dominant areas, body, political movement, and city, and how it has been used as a form of resistance in Bangkok. The movement involves various domains, from sociopolitical structures to embodied feelings and emotions, including hopes, dreams, and fears. Autoethnographic methods are an essential tool for discovering the idea of “city-as-action” through walks and embodied sensations. Performing Cities, edited by Nicolas Whybrow (2014), suggests various approaches to comprehending living bodies in urban space as playing an equal role in choreographing and defining the city as the constructed environment. In Marking Time, Mike Pearson (2013) uses a city stroll to collect scattered cultural and historical evidence at various areas that have been cultivated over time 11

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Rubkwan Thammaboosadee

and through sociocultural processes. Diana Taylor (2011, 67–76) portrays lived history through a walking tour of Villa Grimaldi, where walking is an embodied practice that reconnects our bodies and memories to a place. In the Occupying Bangkok movement, moving bodies of neoliberal subjects across the city of Bangkok were rechoreographed, from rushing to go home from work to movements of resistance. Instead of viewing the street protests as theater, displayed to audiences and captured by the media, I position my agency as part of the social performance, and I do not isolate myself from the pro-democracy movement. I trace my own walk to revisit, archive, and deliver the ways walking crucially infused the phenomenon. My walk at each rally of Occupying Bangkok was more than a research method that allowed me to collect fieldwork data. The presence of my body and movement acts as a bodily vessel storing history, culture, and social conflict from within. My embodied experiences, feelings, and reflections about the place cannot be separated. First- and second-hand experiences—including the fear when we ran away from water cannon, conversations with other protesters, and stories shared by my students who joined the protest—are used deliberately to incubate and form the discussion in this chapter.

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This section focuses on the background of the student-led pro-democracy movement that emerged in 2020. The student-led pro-democracy movement in Thailand that emerged in 2020 was rooted in the country’s political history. In 2014, a military coup led by General Prayut Chan-o-Cha overthrew the government, resulting in five years of dictatorship and human rights abuses. The regime attempted to legitimize its rule by calling for a general election in May 2019, forming the political party Palang Pracharat. In spite of that, the 2017 amendment to the constitution allowed 250 senators appointed by the regime to vote for the prime minister, leading to controversial election results. The youth mostly voted for the liberal Future Forward Party, which secured the third-largest number of seats in the parliament but were later forced to disband in February 2020, sparking outrage among the youth who felt their votes had been undermined. Several flash mobs were organized in universities and hotspots across Bangkok, criticizing the unjust sociopolitical system under the dictatorial regime and advocating for an overhaul of the system. The first wave of Covid-19 struck Thailand in March 2020, temporarily suspending the protests. However, the pandemic exposed the financial hardship of many, particularly university students, who called for tuition fee reimbursements and reductions as classes moved online, paving the way for a collective demand

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for change against the expensive and privatized university system. Although not directly linked to any anti-government activities, the pandemic brought young people together to raise their grievances. Amid intensifying political and economic tensions in June 2020, the disappearance of pro-democracy activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit—exiled to Cambodia for a charge under the restrictive Lèse-Majesté Law, which punishes any criticism of the king and royal family by 3–15 years in prison—spurred the youth movement Free Youth into action. Despite its seemingly stable position under the Lèse-Majesté Law and intensive propaganda through culture and education in the previous decades, the disappearance of Wanchalearm served as a catalyst for young people to challenge the legitimacy of the monarchy. In cultural performance, scripts have the ability to reinforce existing power structures or challenge and subvert them (Taylor, 1995). These students utilized the powerful platform of social media to communicate their frustrations with decades of oppressive cultural scripts that included dictatorial military coups, the abusive Lèse-Majesté Law, oppressive school rules, high tuition fees, and economic struggles driven by dictatorial governments and neoliberal rationalities. The protest began to challenge the entire political structure of both the monarchy and government, which culminated in student activist Panassaya Sitchirawatanakul demanding the reform of the monarchy in August 2020 (BBC Thai 2020). The student movement had a seismic impact on Thailand’s political landscape, creating waves across academic, social, and cultural spheres. Nevertheless, many activists faced harsh consequences, such as arrests, disappearances, and exile. Thousands of people joined protests in Bangkok, and flash mobs were held in the city center nearly every week for several months, significantly raising the political temperature.

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Despite a peaceful protest on October 15, 2020, the government enacted an emergency decree, including a ban on gatherings of five or more people. However, the following day, on October 16, thousands of anti-government protesters gathered on the streets at Siam Square, the most bustling shopping center in downtown Bangkok, determined to voice their dissent. The authorities responded with force, as riot police fired chemical-laced water cannons at the protesters, while protest leaders were swiftly arrested. The regime had declared war on its own people, seeking to maintain control and dominance through the use of weapons and power, which was captured and presented across social media platforms. The violent incident of October 16, 2020, exacerbated tensions and emotions among the protesters, leading to the Occupying Bangkok phenomenon

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wherein a series of flash mobs erupted unpredictably across the city in the latter half of October, the main period discussed in this chapter. Unlike other flash mobs prior to the clampdown, which featured student leaders on stages, there were no protest leaders identified during Occupying Bangkok. The movement adopted a tactic of “Be Water” from Hong Kong’s protests in 2019–2020 that emphasized mobility, flexibility, and fluidity to evade police repression and to spread the movement to different locations (Kloiber 2020). Thousands of protesters in Bangkok silently gathered at intersections, sky-train stations, shopping centers, and residential areas with raincoats and helmets for protection. They held colorful umbrellas and made the three-finger salute, inspired by The Hunger Games, to demonstrate their unity against the military-backed government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. This marked the start of the mass protests performing rights across the city.

R&L CITY-AS-ACTION

During the second half of October 2020, the political situation in Bangkok escalated into a state of ongoing unrest and action. Rather than a physical protest stage, the city was moved by flash mobs and decentralized protests. According to Silvija Jestrovic (2013, 19), the concept of city-as-action pertains to the act of making and unmaking the city through active participation, representing a continuous and fluid process of self-construction. It emphasizes the notion of place as a layered surface that discloses the city’s simultaneous and historical connections. To highlight the idea of city-as-action, the use of theatricality and performativity is crucial. She suggests: Performativity emerges as an element of counter-spectacle that can never be fully premeditated, “rehearsed” and repeated. It forges its own intertextual or, rather, interperformative links, not so much through the dramaturgy of radical political performances, but through the social, historical, and cultural specificity of the site where it takes place. (20)

Bangkok is a bustling city that is home to millions of people, and like many other global cities, it is a crowded place where people go to work and conduct economic activity. However, during the height of the pro-democracy protests in Bangkok, the city was transformed by the protesters in a way that was both organic and unpredictable. The movement was characterized by its fluidity, with protesters mobilizing and adapting to the situation on the ground in real time. In contrast, the regime attempted to use the streets as a stage to exercise its authority and suppress dissent.

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After the government’s crackdown on October 16, 2020, the protesters in Bangkok transformed the city into a site of resistance. They used the urban landscape as a tool for protest, taking over public spaces and transforming them into sites of collective action. By doing so, they challenged the regime’s attempts to control the city and demonstrated that ordinary people could reclaim the streets and assert their rights as democratic citizens. According to Bogad (2017, 3), tactical performance in social movements is a complex and dynamic process that is not as straightforward similar to a game of chess. Activists and protesters often have limited resources to record and learn from the authorities’ moves, leading to repeated mistakes and predictable actions. To overcome this, social movements require collective action that includes sociohistorical and constitutional memory, unlike a game of chess, where individual memory is sufficient. In Occupying Bangkok, the protesters’ chess game began after the state’s violent act of suppressing the mob. They invented a new move that did not exist in the state’s memory, demonstrating the fluidity of flash mobs. For instance, on October 17, 2020, the police prepared to occupy the Ratchaprasong intersection, but the protesters communicated via social media to change the protest spot. They gathered at various points, including metro stations, and occupied the Ha Yak Ladprao intersection, disrupting the police’s plans. This event highlights how social movements can adapt and invent new tactics, just like in a game of chess, to outsmart their opponents by taking into account the context of the struggle, the opponent’s moves, and the historical and cultural forces that shape it. On October 18, the police, learning from their previous attempts to contain the protesters, attempted to barricade and occupy all central metro stations in order to prevent further demonstrations. In response, the protesters used social media to organize a gathering at Victory Monument, a major transportation hub in the city. Blocking the hub made it more difficult for police to obstruct all forms of transport in the heart of Bangkok. Additionally, the flash mobs took place at multiple locations simultaneously, including the Asoke intersection, a major business hub. The police were unable to predict where the protests would take place. Sombat Boon-Ngamanong, a senior activist, described the flash mobs as “Tom-and-Jerry tactics” used by the younger protesters to evade the police and avoid violence (The Active Thai PBS 2020). Nonetheless, I argue that this phenomenon was far more than a mere means of avoiding conflict with authorities. It provided a creative way to extend the movement across the city with a dynamic flow, allowing residents and workers in different areas to join the flash mobs. It stimulated people’s sense of collective solidarity. In essence, the more the police tried to block the movement at one spot, the more it dispersed to other localities. The number of protesters gradually increased, not only in Bangkok but across the whole country.

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FROM DENIZENS TO CITIZENS Upon revisiting the events, I realize that each rally occurred organically and rapidly. As a protester, I did not perceive the occupation as being predetermined. I would argue that the cultural script of desires for liberation from the oppressed rules that had long preoccupied the movement played a critical role in the city’s occupation. The objectification of democratic politics within the neoliberal project has a parallel in the deceptively neutral and apolitical appearance of urban space under neoliberalism (Lefebvre, 164). However, the movement successfully co-opted the intensively neoliberal character of the city, turning it into a site of political confrontation rather than a space for passive consumption and circulation. The presence of food stalls, motorbike drivers, and packed workers in the city, as had always existed on a regular workday, allowed for the occupation of streets in various locations without the need for a designated protest site in the city center, demonstrating that the protest movement had effectively disrupted and subverted the dominant neoliberal urban rules. I remember asking my friend, “Is there any flash mob near your place today?” This kind of casual conversation became normal and should not be overlooked because it suggests how the movement engaged intimately with people’s daily lives and routines. On an ordinary day of neoliberal work in the city of Bangkok, people’s voices are just noise. The sound of honking cars and bustling crowds can be heard, but the desires and struggles of the people are often overlooked. We see a living troop of breathing machines having flesh and blood and working themselves to the bone, but we never see their faces. They are reduced to nothing more than their professions—teachers, drivers, and sellers—valued only for what they can contribute to the bottom line. To use Guy Standing’s (2014, 4) term, Bangkok workers are generally treated as “denizens,” rather than “citizens.” Nevertheless, the flash mobs of October 2020 rechoreographed how the city is experienced—from a containing space to a confronting and resisting space. Also, they reembodied the neoliberal workers’ bodies in the city. The demonstrations provided a platform for the people to be seen and heard, and as they stood united, their demands for change echoed throughout the city. In essence, the protests demonstrated that the people of Bangkok were not just workers but human beings with aspirations and desires that needed to be addressed. On October 20, 2020, around 6:00 p.m., protesters gathered in front of Central Pinklao, a shopping mall in an outskirt area of Bangkok that was previously seen as a site of consumerism. The protesters transformed this space into a site of collective action, demonstrating that even spaces dedicated to neoliberal consumption could be repurposed into sites of resistance. Growing up in that area, it was my first time witnessing a residential and commercial

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district turn into a protest site. Central Pinklao is a gigantic, monopolized local shopping mall that hosts various consumer businesses, including groceries, chain restaurants, beauty parlors, and private tutoring schools, catering to the needs of neoliberal human capital in areas of self-investment and privatized education. This exemplified how the neoliberal city can be redefined by ordinary people turning their daily routines into sites of protest. Similar scenes played out in various suburban areas, such as Bang Yai and Salaya, where local citizens took to the streets to assert their democratic rights. In the Occupying Bangkok movement, the detached bodies of neoliberal workers in Bangkok were reunited and recollected in an archived cultural memory. Diana Taylor (2003, 82) suggests that our body is a place which stores true social memory as a witness and transmits experience and knowledge to the community. Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro (2017, 7) similarly argue that our bodies have utopian potential, as they enable us to perform and embody knowledge that strengthens our communal bonds. The Occupying Bangkok movement embodied experiences of bodily solidarity and connection, even if only temporarily. And as Philip Hager (2013) reflected on his own journeys through the protests in Syntagma Square in Greece, “Although the occupation is long gone, its legacy continues to draft a blueprint for a democratic city that resists the barbarity of capitalism’s newest incarnation” (264). Despite not achieving their ultimate goal and facing escalating violence and a pandemic, the Occupying Bangkok movement gave people a powerful tool with which to assert their rights over the city: their own physical bodies. On October 28, 2020, tensions escalated, and the protesters changed tactics. I joined a flash mob gathering on Rama IV Road in the city center (see figure 1.1). The rally aimed to march 2 kilometers from the meeting point to the German Embassy, where student activists planned to hand a letter to the ambassador of Germany asking the country to consider the potentially illegitimate status of the Thai king residing in Germany. The sun went down. Bangkok nightlights occupied the sky. During my walk, the space was packed not only with protesters but also with regular workers in the area. Shop owners stood in their doorways. Many showed the three-finger sign when the march passed, manifesting their supportive stance. A troop of taxi, Tuk-Tuk, and motorbike drivers passing on the road constantly honked to welcome, greet, and encourage the rally. Street cleaners and garbage pickers on duty applauded the crowd to show their backing for the rally. The movement revealed unseen faces, not usually on the news or captured by the media but who were always part of neoliberal urban life. The rally through the city highlighted a united moment for various groups of workers, not just middle-class students and office workers. The Occupying Bangkok phenomenon demolished the walls between generations and

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Figure 1.1  Around 5:00 p.m., Protesters Filled Up the Street at the Meeting Point before Marching to the German Embassy. Source: Author’s photo.

reunited the neoliberal subjects in the city through an attempt to redeem democracy demonstrating the class of the oppressed. The 2-kilometer street was lined with thousands of people, packed on the road, despite no radical speech provoking the protesters. This phenomenon happened because of the rehearsal of the earlier organized protests and the consequence of being oppressed by both authoritarian and neoliberal states for years. The protesters were there to perform with their bodies and agency to liberate themselves from cultural, sociopolitical, and economic oppression.

A SPECTACLE OF SOLIDARITY The drama of the protests in Occupying Bangkok cannot be viewed in isolation from the complex global dynamics of everyday life. To truly comprehend the significance of the images and events that unfolded during the protests, it is imperative to consider not only the historical and sociopolitical context of the region but also the broader international forces at play. As Kershaw (1999, 91) points out, when unpacking the meaning behind images captured or shown in protests, it is essential to take into account the historical and sociopolitical context as well as international forces. The position of Bangkok is not only one of a physical stage; rather, it is connected to other

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global communities due to the fact that space politics is multiple, non-static, and globally interrelated (Massey, 1993). Using the standpoint of performance studies, we can explore the effects of neoliberalism and dictatorial practices on the everyday lives of people in global cities, as performance can reveal the abstract forces of globalism on individual urban citizens (Solga and Hopkins 2013, 9). The occupation of Bangkok streets reflects the oppression faced by many global communities, such as economic disparity, labor exploitation, human rights abuse, and dictatorial oppression. This was made evident through the emergence of the Milk-Tea Alliance, a cooperation between several Asian nations including Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Myanmar. Through social media, the alliance shared their experiences in confronting authority. Its reach has broadened beyond the anti-China protests initiated by students in Hong Kong to include other explicitly antiauthoritarian movements (TIME 2020). Not only did protesters share common experiences of oppression, but they also collaborated to form protest tactics. Young activists in Hong Kong have shared several tactics with young Thai activists, such as leaderless movements, hand gestures, and borderless support. This collective movement transcended national boundaries, transforming what might have been a local struggle into an international phenomenon. The resulting spectacle of solidarity across borders was a powerful symbol of the shared struggle against the pervasive forces of neoliberal rationality and authoritarian power that are increasingly defining the twenty-first century. Beyond the scope of the international images, it is also crucial to revisit the local dynamics that allowed protesters in Occupying Bangkok to come together as a unified collective and to consider what performative elements contributed to the thriving mobilization in the city, apart from the aforementioned preexisting sociopolitical oppression. This discussion is linked to the idea that “the street is the stage,” coined by Richard Schechner (1993) to describe how theater relates to a street protest. Schechner uses performative strategies in the realm of carnival-like agitprop imagery and aesthetics as a lens through which to describe street protest. In his view, “it is most theatrical at the cusp where the street show meets the media, where events are staged for the camera” (51). Whether it was the critical event in Tiananmen Square in 1989 when a lone man confronted a military tank and the scene was widely captured by the media, or when a Guy Fawkes mask was used as a prop by the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, it is manifest that theatricality often plays an essential role in dramatizing activism. Costumes and masks are often involved in spotlighting a protest. Schechner points out that protesters wear masks and costumes to disguise and embellish their ordinary selves and because it is dangerous to perform

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forbidden themes (46). Similarly, Bogad (2016) unpacks the performative strategies used in protests, including fictional characters, costumes, and masks. He puts: Masks are not only important for encouraging stronger gestures and voices. Masks are also intrinsically expressive as works of art, creating an archetypal persona on which an audience member can project empathy precisely because they are not purely realistic, but are symbolic totems of class, gender, mythic identity, and symbolic persona. (162)

Theatricality and visual presentation facilitate protests by calling media attention, as well as protecting protesters’ identities. Many previous flash mobs organized by Thai students included props such as white ribbons and performed oppression in symbolic forms of performance art or a playful, cartoonish style of protest. Nevertheless, what is distinct about the Occupying Bangkok phenomenon is its ordinary and simple spectacle display without any attractive props and costumes. Ron Eyerman (2006) suggests that nonstrategic actions cannot be underestimated. Tactics and strategic action are central to all forms of collective political action, but social movements move because they contain emotions and values. “Movements must contain, therefore, non-strategic performances which motivate, move, actors because they believe in what they are doing, that what they are doing is the right (moral) thing to do” (208). Among the thousands of protesters rallying on random streets in Bangkok, the costumes were nothing special but regular workwear or student uniforms. I remember a day when I wanted to join a flash mob. I just came back from my workplace, took a metro, and mingled with the crowd. To draw on my firsthand experience of a demonstration on October 15, 2020, at the Ratchaprasong intersection, I gathered with the other protesters at 5:00 p.m. (see figure 1.2). Thousands of protesters filled the streets at the most vibrant business and shopping center in Bangkok. I saw lines of police everywhere around the crowd. Many food vendors were waiting to sell street food and drinks to the protesters. I was sitting on the street with other strangers. We were mostly silent and focused, waiting to hear what the people at the head of the row would ask for to protect themselves from the cannon water. There were no prominent speakers or high-end audio systems. People already knew why they were there. The only performative presentation was our bodies, our presence. Staging our voices as a collective was all we had (see figure 1.3). During my walk to the German Embassy on October 28, 2020, with thousands of protesters, the street was not just an empty stage for performative presentations or mise-en-scène, but a platform for action, mobilizing the city and its people. There were no extravagant displays, and the walk was mainly

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R&L Figure 1.2  Protesters Gathering at the Ratchaprasong Intersection on October 15, 2020. Source: Author’s photo.

in silence and in the dark. I did not know if or when the walk would be stopped. I did not know what was waiting at the end. There could have been tear gas or rubber bullets from the police. I did not know how it would end. It took place mainly in silence and in the dark. I waited for the hand signals from the front line to communicate with the people behind me. We were forwarding water bottles, helmets, and umbrellas to the front line to protect others from water cannons or rubber bullets. Our bodies were performative vehicles, loaded with hope, anger, and probably fear that created connections

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Figure 1.3  Protesters Showing a Three-Finger Salute as a Sign against the Authoritarian Regime at the Ratchaprasong Intersection. Source: Author’s photo.

to strangers—moving the city collectively. We felt the heat of other bodies, smelled each other’s sweat, and handled fear and anger together. We believed in and supported the strangers who were there with us. The protesters were like a swarm of ants, following each other as much as we could protect each other. My walk stopped almost 1 kilometer from the embassy because the people at the front line had already reached it. I talked to a friend who had to stop almost at the starting point. The people at the back line of the rally did not have to reach the destination, but their bodies were part of staging people’s rights across the buzzing streets of Bangkok. Even though I was scared, I felt that I was, at least, not alone. The Occupying Bangkok movement demonstrated that the people of the city could unite and act in solidarity to bring about change. It is evident that reclaiming and occupying the streets as a tactical performance goes beyond symbolic or visual actions, as these alone may not be sufficient. Given the rise of extreme individualism promoted by the neoliberal lifestyle and the necessity for people to work tirelessly to survive, it is essential that we focus on the art of activism and tactical performance, exploring how protesters can produce the most with the least. Occupying Bangkok was practical in that it worked within the confines of most Bangkok workers and dwellers’ conditions, taking into account their limited time, space, and resources. The movement manifested how the collective body was embodied,

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redefining the body of the individualistic neoliberal worker and turning human capital into human beings. “Social power” in cultural performance and social movement is societal parameters dictating who can and cannot participate in a movement. “The distribution of power in society—the nature of its political, economic, and status hierarchies, and the relations among its elites—profoundly affects the performance process” (Giesen, Alexander, and Jason 2006, 36). When the protest was confined to the central point of Bangkok, one of my students who lived in the vicinity told me that he could not afford to join the protest because the transport would cost too much. Hence, it was essential to think about the protesters’ abilities to participate. Did they have enough time to dress up? Could they afford to travel to the protest point? Occupying Bangkok organically tackled these problems. The walks and flash mobs that were part of the Occupying Bangkok movement allowed for a stark contrast between the individualistic neoliberal subjects that typically fill the city’s streets and the collective bodies that emerged during the protest. The movement enabled people to participate on their own terms and on their own schedule, whether it was on their doorstep, at work, on public transportation, or on their way home. Unlike the competitive rhythms of neoliberal life that prioritize individual success, the protest created a collective rhythm that embraced collaboration and cooperation. Without the need for masks to conceal identities, the collective bodies within the rally could protect and blur individual identities, transforming the thousands of protesters into a unified, powerful force that collectively believed in confronting the regime.

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I have demonstrated through my analysis that the act of occupying a city or reclaiming a public space for protest requires a multilayered approach. A protest location is not just a physical space but is intricately linked to the social and cultural scripts ingrained in society over time. The sheer number of people involved in a protest plays a critical role in determining its success. The collective bodies that emerge on the streets during a protest have the power to transcend geographic boundaries and bring about change beyond the usual high streets or downtown areas. Therefore, the fluidity and unpredictability of occupying public spaces can be a powerful tool in effecting change in society. The phenomenon of flash mobs signaled people’s agency which a series of socioeconomic burdens and struggles had long suppressed. They reclaimed the space as a site of action, breaking the neoliberal routines that contained them in place and time.

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The 2020 protests in Bangkok had a significant impact on Thai society, extending beyond the immediate political sphere. A cultural shift took place, characterized by a mass culture that spread throughout society. This phenomenon involved collective bodies, from the embodied experiences of the protests to the dissemination of culture through social media and other channels. As an educator, I have observed a marked change in students’ attitudes toward politics and criticism of the government since the protests. Prior to the demonstrations, students showed little interest in political matters, and fear and ignorance often stifled any criticism of the military government. Yet, the mass protests served as a catalyst for political discourse and raised class consciousness, with students even encouraging each other to participate in the demonstrations as part of their project presentations on dramatic literature. Overall, the protests embodied a cultural awakening that prioritizes critical thinking and active engagement with social and political issues, no longer restricted to academic circles but open to everyone. However, it is important to note that while flash mobs may be useful in rehearsing protests against the regime, they are not enough to negotiate with an authority that holds all the weapons and laws. The government’s violent response to the protests is a testament to their unwillingness to compromise. Many student protesters have been unjustly imprisoned for months without any signs of justice. What should be a concern is that the more the regime focused on abusing human rights, the more the economic struggles of the pandemic increased, and the more people were left behind in economic inequality. When the city of Bangkok became a stage for reclaiming the rights of people during Occupying Bangkok amid the rising tension of the pandemic, it was also a place where hopeless people committed public suicide, jumping from bridges into the river. Homelessness ramped up rapidly in the city streets. When Bangkok turned into a space of confrontation during Occupying Bangkok, it was also a place where unemployed workers desperately queued up for cash benefits from the state. It was a place where a worker poisoned herself in front of the Ministry of Finance building to draw the attention of the state to the cash benefits needed to survive the economic crisis of 2021. The next question that must be asked is not only about the feasibility of the movement in fostering class consciousness during these challenging times but also about how we can inspire and motivate one another to record, store, remember, restore, and perform the memories of empowerment alongside the pain and trauma we experience in the lived city. How can we, as individuals forced to survive on our own, collectively care for each other through the struggles we face every day? So that every citizen can live in the city with the dignity they deserve, without having to sacrifice their life or body to claim their basic rights.

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REFERENCES BBC Thai. 2020. “รุ้ง ปนัสยา : แกนนำ�นักศึกษาผู้ยืนกรานปฏิรูปสถาบันฯ.” BBC. https://www​.bbc​.com​ /thai​/thailand​-54173930. Bogad, L. M. 2016. Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play. Oxford: Routledge. Bowditch, Rachel, and Pegge Vissicaro, eds. 2017. Performing Utopia. Calcutta: Seagull Books. Eyerman, Ron. 2006. “Performing Opposition or, How Social Movements Move.” In Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, edited by Bernhard Giesen, Jeffrey C. Alexander, and Jason L. Mast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giesen, Bernhard, Jeffrey C. Alexander, and Jason L. Mast, eds. 2006. Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jestrovic, Silvija. 2013. Performance, Space, Utopia: Cities of War, Cities of Exile. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kershaw, Baz. 1999. The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. London: Routledge. Kloiber, Julia. 2020. “Be Water – Insights into the Hong Kong Citizen Protest Movement.” Goethe-Institut. https://www​.goethe​.de​/prj​/zei​/en​/pdk​/22072105​.html. Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The Urban Revolution. Translated by Robert Bonano. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, Doreen. 1993. “Power-geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place.” In Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, edited by Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, and Jon Bird, 149–58. London: Routledge. Pearson, Mike. 2013. Marking Time: Performance, Archaeology and the City. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Schechner, Richard. 1993. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge. Solga, Kim, and D.J. Hopkins, eds. 2013. Performance and the Global City. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Standing, Guy. 2014. A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press. Taylor, Diana. 2011. “Memory, Trauma, Performance.” Revista de Estudos de Literatura 21, no. 1 (April): 67–76. The Active Thai PBS. 2020. “ไม่มีทางอื่นนอกจากการเจรจา | บก.ลายจุด แนะผู้ชุมนุมปรับแนวทางเคลื่อนไหว ยึดสันติวิธีกดดันต่อเนื่อง เลี่ยงรุนแรง.” The Active. https://theactive​.net​/news​/20201017​-2/. TLHR. 2020. “4 Things You Should Know in “Wanchalerm” Case Before Sitanan’s Meeting with the Investigating Judge in Phnom Penh | THAI LAWYERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS.” ศูนย์ทนายความเพื่อสิทธิมนุษยชน. https://tlhr2014​.com​/en​/archives​ /23711

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Chapter 2

From Confederate Monuments to Black Lives Matter Protests The Role of Material Culture in Shaping and Reshaping Richmond’s Racialized Landscape Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra and Lee Ann Timreck

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In 1779, Richmond became the state capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and in 1861, the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Throughout the nineteenth century, the city’s access to river transportation made it not only a major Southern commerce center but a major marketplace for the sale and shipment of 300,000–350,000 people of African descent (Edwards and Whylato 2015). After the defeat of the South in 1865, Richmond was a burned shell of a city occupied by federal troops, its economy in shambles, and inundated with a growing population of free Blacks. However, as law and order were restored, and Southern white leadership supplanted federal oversight, Richmond began rebuilding the city based on a white supremacist ideology. By the early twentieth century, Virginia’s discriminatory laws targeting Black Richmonders—such as housing covenants, political gerrymandering, and race-based restrictions of the city’s commemorative public space—effectively created two Richmonds: one Black, one white. Over time, these two Richmonds have evolved into what local Pulitzer journalist Michael Paul Williams describes as “Twin Cities—one ascendant, the other mired in violence and decay” (Williams 2017). For over a century, the most visual markers of Richmond’s racialized landscape were the massive Confederate monuments that marched down the city’s most elegant residential enclave of white exclusivity, known as Monument Avenue.1 The first crack in Richmond’s memorial landscape occurred in 2019, with the unveiling of a 27-foot-high sculpture Rumors of War by African American artist Kehinde Wiley in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) building (figure 2.1).​ 27

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R&L Figure 2.1  Rumors of War Sculpture by Kehinde Wiley, 2019. Source: Author’s photo.

In a city defined by Civil War memorials dedicated to white Confederate heroes, the statue of a muscular, empowered Black man on horseback, wearing jeans, a hoodie, and Nike sneakers, issued a thunderclap of change. But a mere three blocks away, the memorial to General Robert E. Lee continued to cast the long shadow of white supremacy over the Monument Avenue landscape, reflecting the deep feelings many white Southerners still held for Lee (see figure 2.2).​ Our goal in this chapter is to explore the evolution of Richmond’s material culture practices through the historical lens of racial injustice and exclusion and ways that a marginalized Black community employed alternative practices

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R&L Figure 2.2  Lee Monument, Monument Avenue & Allen Avenue, Richmond, Independent City, VA. Richmond Virginia Independent City, 1933. Source: Historic American Buildings Survey, C. & Mercie, J. A. (1933) Lee Monument, Monument Avenue & Allen Avenue, Richmond, Independent City, VA. Richmond Virginia Independent City, 1933. Schwanmitter & Price, V. B., transs Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www​.loc​.gov​/item​/va1626/.

of belonging, sharing, sociability, and solidarity to ultimately transform Richmond’s racialized landscape.2 The first half of this chapter focuses on how Richmond’s early material culture practices successfully instilled a revisionist

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Lost Cause narrative into the public memory, and as a result, created a unique, racialized urban landscape. Material artifacts across the city included the massive Confederate monuments, memorial statues and plaques, white-only cemeteries, physical institutions, and street names. The second half explores how the 2020 Black Live Matters (BLM) protests converted Richmond’s most exclusive memorial space on Monument Avenue into a “theater for freedom, a community space for prayer, conversation and a call for change” (quoted in Dickerson and Smithers 2020). New forms of material culture—from posters to memorial displays, art installations, and historical markers—demanded that the counternarrative of Black inclusivity and community be heard. In turn, this material culture production helped transform Monument Avenue into a place of Black healing and celebration and a community space that belonged to all Richmonders. FROM THE ASHES OF THE CIVIL WAR, A REIMAGINED WHITE RICHMOND

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Despite the horrific loss of life throughout the Civil War and his ultimate surrender to the North, Robert E. Lee was revered by his troops and beloved by white Southerners; 150,000 Richmonders celebrated the 1890 unveiling of the 60-feet-tall monument to the leader of the Confederate Army. The positioning of the statue on Monument Avenue was key to Virginia Governor Fitzhugh Lee’s vision of building a “new, white-only” enclave in Richmond that reaffirmed the rule of Southern white supremacy (Savage 1997). Ultimately, the Lee monument would anchor a Lost Cause memorial landscape that ran the length of Monument Avenue, flanked on either side by the city’s finest white residences (see figure 2.3).3​ But for Black Richmonders, already suffering from the effects of racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, the Lee Memorial was just one more bitter pill to swallow. John Mitchell, the Black editor of Richmond’s only black newspaper, observed that “The South may revere the memory of its chieftains . . . [but] it serves to retard progress in the country and forges heavier chains with which to be bound” (1890). Richmond’s material culture —most notably the Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue—then, was used not only to reshape the public memory of the Civil War but also to segregate and marginalize its Black citizens. RACIALIZING RICHMOND’S URBAN SPACE The rise of Black political power after the Civil War, along with the influx of Blacks into the city, threatened the social order of Richmonders living in white-only areas. To ensure the segregation of the city’s neighborhoods and

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Figure 2.3  Block Monument Avenue, Richmond, Independent City, VA. Richmond Virginia Independent City, 1933. Source: Historic American Buildings Survey, C. (1933) Block Monument Avenue, Richmond, Independent City, VA. Richmond Virginia Independent City, 1933. Schwanmitter & Price, V. B., transs Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www​.loc​.gov​/item​/va1631/.

public space, Richmond passed a series of residential ordinances that reestablished boundaries and “rigorously maintained [them] through spatial distinctions” (Edwards and Howard 1997, 105). The result of these ordinances was that by 1920, nearly 50,000 Black Richmonders were restricted to living and conducting business primarily within the designated neighborhoods of Jackson Ward, Jefferson Ward, and Marshall Ward. In a 1955 letter to the Governor of Virginia, Black Richmonder Robert Bacon reported firsthand that he could not “go on Monument Avenue and visit a white girl for fear of being ‘lynched’ or beaten up or arrested or electrocuted” (Levin 2021). For white Richmonders, Monument Avenue and its Confederate statues served as “Richmond’s primary theater of public ritual” for all manner of public celebrations, such as Fourth of July parades, Civil War commemorations, and Sunday promenades (Edwards and Howard 1997, 99–100). Black Richmonders created their own urban memorial landscape within the Black neighborhoods, holding parades and speeches filled with banners, uniformed marchers, and schoolchildren, “to articulate their own stories of Emancipation, freedom, progress, and success” (Brown and Kimball 1995, 337). These public performances not only challenged the dominant white narrative on Richmond’s history, politics, and social order but also presented a

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counternarrative that “claimed the city as a whole, pronounced their rights to civic space, and also seized the power to define public memory” (309). URBAN RENEWAL AS A WEAPON Despite the success of Richmond’s Black middle class between 1890 and 1930, Richmond’s institutionalized racism began to erode their economic growth (Bowen 2003, 260–78). The discriminatory practice of redlining prohibited African Americans from moving to white neighborhoods and consistently devalued Black-owned property. In the 1950s, white urban renewal projects, at the expense of Black urban communities, ultimately “destroyed or invaded every major black neighborhood in the city” (Campbell 2012, 153). The most egregious example of urban discrimination was the 1956 construction of an interstate highway cutting through the heart of the historic Jackson Ward neighborhood. The project not only displaced 7,000 people, 10% of the city’s Black population (Howard and Williamson 2015), but also “created a ditch through a once-homogeneous whole, leaving the northern section to wither and die, and spelled the end for Jackson Ward as a region of cultural excellence.” This systematic destruction of Black neighborhoods and the de facto segregation of many Black residents into public housing only increased the growing economic and educational disparity between Black and white residents. This resulting cauldron of political and social inequalities would come to a boiling point over the desecration of Richmond’s Black historical sites.

R&L DESTRUCTION OF RICHMOND’S BLACK MEMORIAL LANDSCAPE

Over the century that Robert E. Lee stood at his post on Monument Avenue, the city erupted with new statues, buildings, plaques, and cemeteries dedicated to the Lost Cause narrative. This perpetuation of Richmond’s racialized landscape came at the expense of the city’s Black community, who watched many of the physical markers of their history and culture disappear in the name of urban renewal. Notably, the desecration of Richmond’s Black cemeteries deeply angered and stoked the fires of resentment. The African American Burial Ground (1799–1816), located in an area called Devil’s Half Acre, is one of Richmond’s oldest Black burial sites. Despite the sacred nature of this cemetery and its importance to the Black community, by the mid-1970s it was entombed beneath an asphalt parking lot. A similar fate occurred to the Shockoe Hill African American Burial Ground (1816–1879). This final resting place for over 22,000 enslaved and free African Americans (one of the

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largest in the United States) was completely obliterated by the early 1950s. Today, an abandoned gas station and a set of billboards, sitting on one acre of bare land, is all that remains. Additionally, throughout the twentieth century, Richmond’s three largest Black cemeteries—Evergreen, West End, and Woodland—have been subjected to the destruction of grave markers, overgrowth, and the dumping of trash. This legacy of “cultural injustice” reflected “practices of domination, nonrecognition, and disrespect” for the African American memorial landscape (Zitcer and Almanzar 2020, 1002). No Black Richmonder was exempt from this funereal disrespect; when international tennis star, author, and activist Arthur Ashe passed away in 1993, the Daily Press reported that “he was buried next to his mother at Woodland, which is weed-infested and often used as a garbage dump by neighbors” (Holtzclaw 1993).

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THE RISE OF THE BLACK COUNTERNARRATIVE By 1970, census data confirmed that African Americans had achieved majority status in the city, and in 1977, Richmond’s first majority African American City Council was elected (Barbee 2007). The increase in Black representation and power came after the reversal of many of the city’s discriminatory laws, such as gerrymandering of voting districts, coupled with white flight to new suburbs built outside of the city’s boundaries. Richmond’s remaining whites now feared that an emboldened Black Majority City Council would quickly remove the Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. But Richmond’s newly elected council leadership—faced with a damaged economy, shrinking tax base, neighborhood blight, and a disproportionate number of impoverished Black citizens—professed to be more worried about the “living racists rather than memorials” (56). Demand continued to grow for a new, democratized memorial landscape that publicly recognized Richmond’s Black history. Community organizations, such as Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, began efforts to reclaim and preserve Richmond’s historic Black sites. In 1994, Governor Douglas Wilder made the controversial recommendation to honor Richmond-born Arthur Ashe with a monument on Monument Avenue.4 The proposed integration of an African American sports icon into Richmond’s white memorial terrain created heated debates about who controls the landscape, and what Richmond’s public art should say about its history (The American Civil War Museum 2017, The Valentine Museum 2019, Monument Lab 2023). Richmond ultimately approved the inclusion of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue in 1996, but “as an isolated statue that adopts the materials and format of the monuments it was meant to oppose, it ultimately

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undermine[d] its own counter-narrative” (Baltes 2018, 44). Much more was needed to be done to transform Richmond’s memorial landscape. THE FIRES OF ICONOCLASM ARE LIT With the unprovoked murder of seventeen-year-old Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, Confederate monuments nationwide “became a key site of protest against violent oppression of African Americans [.  .  .] prompting the most important season of American iconoclasm since the destruction of the equestrian statue of George III in 1776” (Brown 2019, 283). Two tragic events further deteriorated Richmond’s relationship with their Confederate monuments: the 2015 murder of nine African Americans at a Charleston Church bible study by a self-proclaimed Confederate sympathizer and the 2017 murder of a protester by a white supremacist who drove into a peaceful rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But even as cities such as New Orleans, Memphis, Durham, and St. Louis began removing their Confederate symbols, Richmond’s public officials remained resolute in keeping theirs intact. Nonetheless, the winds of change were coming to Richmond. In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests against racial injustice and police use of force.5 Richmond’s Lost Cause statues on Monument Avenue, long vilified for their white supremacy ideology, became ground zero for a national protest movement. By August 2020, all of Richmond’s Confederate statues were gone—except Lee’s statue, whose removal was delayed by a resident’s lawsuit until September 2021. The following section describes the immediate transfiguration of Richmond’s Monument Avenue from a protest landscape to a new, inclusive community space dedicated to social justice as well as the longer-term efforts of local scholars, artists, public officials, and citizens to design an inclusive memorial space for all Richmonders.

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“RUMORS OF WAR WASN’T A RUMOR”: BRINGING THE MONUMENTS DOWN The summer of 2020 protests, a local response to the national movement spurred by the death of George Floyd on May 25, both disrupted and catalyzed the reshaping of Richmond’s urban landscape. Damages to public and private buildings, occupations of public spaces, and barricades occurred at the same time that monuments to Confederate heroes and prominent historical figures were covered with graffiti, toppled, or thrown into a lake.6 Local

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artist, educator, and activist BlackLiq well illustrates the complexity of this moment: Tonight, I saw robberies, arson, blood, pepper spray, love, hate, fear, aggression, graffiti, tear gas, guns, youth, traffic, police, desperation, cloud chasing, lust, cell phones, fire trucks, ambulances, confusion, glass, joy, rage, sadness, profanity, drugs, romance, people hanging out of sunroofs, tire smoke. [.  .  .] What I didn’t hear was communication, just instigation. What I didn’t feel was unity, just tension. (476)

This was also the first night, May 29, in which I joined the protesters, as they gathered in Monroe Park, on the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) campus, and marched toward downtown Richmond. In the following weeks, protesters reached the city’s main arteries and institutional sites, and concentrated along Monument Avenue, comprising the white residential neighborhoods of the Fan and Museum Districts (Radio IQ News Staff 2020). Amid the chaos and tension of these events, the Confederate memorial landscape transformed into a protest landscape (Trottier 2020). These changes ultimately favored the emergence of not only new material culture forms but also more inclusive memorial practices that reflected “peoplepowered placemaking” (Gordon 2020). Over a year later on September 8, 2021, protesters and citizens witnessed the Lee statue come down after the Supreme Court of Virginia dismissed the lawsuit. Standing in the crowd, I observed this massive symbol of the white Richmond lifted midair, a diverse crowd of Richmonders cheered enthusiastically, and local and national media documented the moment. Then, a Black worker operating the crane spurred the crowd below to loudly chant in unison the refrain from the famous 1969 pop song “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” commonly employed in sports matches and political rallies. One could not but think of the many Black workers who put the monument up over a century before, or of John Mitchell’s words in his 1890 editorial, “[the Negro] put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, will be there to take it down. He’s black, and sometimes greasy, but who could do without the Negro” (153).

R&L AN OCCUPIED MONUMENT

Because of its iconic role within the Confederate memorial landscape, the Lee monument became ground zero for the BLM protests, and the focus of tension between protesters and police (Schneider and Vozzella 2020). The massive dimensions of the Lee statue, along with legal restrictions, prevented its immediate removal; therefore, protesters started tagging instead. Only two

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months later, its appearance completely altered, the statue came to represent a local and global symbol of BLM activism (La Force, Thessaly, Zoë Lescaze, Nancy Hass, and M. H. Miller 2020). Documentation of these graffiti reveals both the protesters’ state of mind, and the emergence of a countermonument that both reframed and amplified Richmond’s public memory. Graffiti messages included national and global BLM slogans and reflected a mix of fear, despair, rage, and social commitment—similar to emerging national and global street art trends (Smithsonian Magazine 2020). One could also observe a recurring use of antiestablishment language unfamiliar to the general public (Poulter 2020), such as the acronym “ACAB” (“All Cops Are Bastards”) and the slogan “Fuck 12” (“Fuck the Police”), already circulating during the BLM protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 (Glawe 2014). The “unsanctioned and provocative” nature of this language confirms how “each act of counter monumentality draws power from its illicit nature” (Baltes 2018, 46). Moreover, as they spoke up about a national emergency, protesters condemned what they saw as the white supremacist vision informing the local landscape; the tagging of the term “Amerikkka,” for example, represented a popular reference to Ku Klux Klan ideology. Altogether, these messages illustrate the role of graffiti as a “transformational practice in which those generally marginalized by memorial culture aim to edit the ‘legitimate’ narrative inscribed on the cityscape through its monuments” (Baltes 2018, 46). By the end of the summer, layers of individual graffiti had turned the Lee statue into a storied object carrying a collective BLM narrative of racial injustice (Liu and Sunstein 2016). The stories inscribed onto the statue were in turn amplified by protest signage and photos, as protesters and visitors posed in front of the statue holding their signs. One viral photo shows local artist and activist Cliff Chambliss standing on the statue’s pedestal with the sign “Rumors of War Wasn’t a Rumor,” which put the protest graffiti in conversation with Kehinde Wiley’s statue Rumors of War, located only a few blocks away. For Chambliss, the sign represented “a thread within [Wiley’s] larger artwork” (Quoted in Baldwin 2020) in its visual capture of Wiley’s critical juxtaposition of white Confederate and modern African American men. This piece of material culture was later acquired by the VMFA and “archived as an artifact from this summer of social unrest” (Baldwin 2020). By extension, the entire monument site turned into a space of “art-making [.  .  .] and political engagement” (Evans and Lees 2021, 969); as a cultural hub and an art-centered college town, Richmond provided a fertile ground. For example, protesters were seen holding hand-painted cardboard cutouts of hate-crime victims or the BLM fist, along with paper-mâchéd puppets carrying protest messages. These artifacts were made and distributed by the All the Saints Theater group and soon became an integral component of the protest

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landscape. The Lee statue itself resembled a composite art piece featuring multilayered and colorful writing, peace symbols, and a large yellow smiley emoji, so much so that The New York Times Magazine declared it the first of “25 most influential works of American protest art since World War II” (La Force, Lescaze, Hass and Miller 2020). Posing in front of it, local African American rap artist Radio B confirmed: “For some people it looks like destruction; to me it looks like art” (McCammon 2020). But not everyone felt that way. When Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced the removal of Confederate monuments from Monument Avenue on July 1, 2020, as a way to prevent further damage to the site, a group of residents filed a lawsuit to overturn the decision. The group argued that the removal violated the 1890 deed clause recommending to “faithfully guard [the monument] and affectionately protect it” and resulted in the “degradation of the internationally recognized avenue,” but also shared their concern over potentially losing “favorable tax treatment and reduction in property values” (Quoted in Romine and Simko-Bednarski 2020). This reaction confirms that “the myth of Lee’s invincibility ha[d] been broken” (Schneider 2020), and the exceptional status of the entire neighborhood was at stake. Thus, by “challeng[ing] the [Confederate] memorials’ claims to represent the voice of the community” (Brown 2019, 23), while also providing a space for subaltern voices, protesters, and artists helped fully visualize Richmond’s “urban palimpsest” (Huyssen 2003), with its multiple and conflicting histories and perspectives.

R&L A COUNTER-MEMORIAL VISION

Within this protest landscape, grassroots displays were built organically throughout the summer to memorialize victims of police brutality (see figure 2.4).​ While conveying a collective BLM statement of remembrance, the displays also implicitly spoke to the ongoing erosion of Black memorials in the city. Moreover, by honoring Black citizens in the same physical space as the white Confederate general, they promoted an alternative vision of public memorial, based on community dialogue and inclusion. Likewise, their simple and ephemeral design countered the grand vision of the Confederate memorial project, as did the use of hand-written notes, printed photos of the victims, flowers, and other memorabilia placed “as a form of social action, in [this] public spac[e]” (Margry and Sánchez-Carretero 2011, 1–2). Yet, even as they silently voiced their contestation, their “[m]ourning for black lives harnessed the primal impetus of monuments in recognition of death, a crucial purpose in the initial emergence of Civil War memorials,” ultimately “reanimat[ing]”

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Figure 2.4  Grassroots Memorials to G. Floyd and M.-D. Peters. Source: Author’s Photo.

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this “dormant Confederate monumen[t]” (Brown 2019, 23), rather than simply destroying it. Viewed in this light, the displays offered both a potential for historical continuity and a memorial vision that spoke to all Richmonders. The protest art project Reclaiming the Monument contributed to these counter-memorial efforts through a series of projections installed over the graffiti-covered Lee statue by local artist Dustin Klein and VCU graduate and artist Alex Criqui. Throughout the summer, the projections were there to “support the community that was holding that space, visually” (quoted in McNeill 2020). They accomplished this goal by highlighting the protest graffiti and juxtaposing them with portraits of police brutality victims and of civil rights champions—from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr., and Harriet Tubman—as well as protest slogans. Furthermore, projected messages such as “Monument Avenue Was Originally a Segregated Neighborhood,” and “Housing Is a Human Right,” helped contextualize the summer 2020 events within Richmond’s racial and social divide. By “utilizing the peaceful and nondestructive medium of light,” then, the project succeeded in “amplify[ing] the voices of the movement around them” (Reclaiming the Monument 2020). The projections became such an integral component of the protest landscape that National Geographic featured the projected portrait of George Floyd on the tagged statue in its “2020: The Year in Pictures” issue (Goldberg 2020). They also paved the way for the George Floyd Hologram Memorial Project, unveiled onsite on July 28, 2020, and circulating throughout the Southern United States (Carrington 2020). Yet another example of counter-memorial was offered by the communitybased project Illuminating History, which aimed at “reapproaching” Richmond’s history (History Is Illuminating 2020, 8) by designing and setting

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up alternative historical markers along Monument Avenue and circulating their content widely through e-zines and social media. The markers helped integrate the history of African American public figures and events into the memorial landscape as well as highlight problematic traits of celebrated Confederate heroes, thus helping unveil previously silenced perspectives. Whereas the Lee monument “depict[ed] an idealized ‘truth’ designed to convey a single version of history to make the South proud” (Buffington and Waldner 2012, 10), these grassroots and community-based projects helped “democratize the process of memory formation and transmission” while also “reflect[ing] the importance of collective action and dialogue [.  .  .] in the construction of communal memory-making” (Logan 2021, 1175). AN INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY SPACE

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On June 3, 2020, as protesters flooded the Lee monument site, an impromptu “Welcome to Marcus-David Peters Circle” (MDPC) sign marked the birth of a Black liberation space named after a “local example of the systemic police brutality which also killed Floyd” (Schiffres 2021).7 A bigger sign was added later and cemented into the ground to prevent police retaliation (see figure 2.5).​

Figure 2.5  Creation and Shutdown of Marcus-David Peters Circle. Source: Author’s photo.

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After two weeks of occupation, on June 17 government officials encircled the Lee statue with cement barriers; yet, the barriers were soon covered with protest graffiti and used as benches by protesters and visitors. By then, the MDPC had fully transformed into a community space showcasing African American culture, art, and music (Sczerzenie 2020), a backdrop for local artists’ performance and music album release (McCammon, 2020), and the perfect stage for the newly established Juneteenth celebrations. While celebrating Black art and culture, the MDPC welcomed African American residents to practice their rights as citizens; the summer 2020 photo documentation shows friends and families organizing picnics, playing basketball, checking out the free Radical Library and craft booths, posing for graduation photos, or admiring the activist-sponsored community garden. Initiated by Bedrock Bee, known as Bee the gardener, the community garden grew throughout the summer 2020 also thanks to the support of the other activists occupying the MDPC site. Volunteers started off with decorative plants, as an extension of the grassroots memorial displays, but soon enough they expanded their effort to a full-on vegetable garden. For Bee, the healing power of the garden had been palpable since the start: “You could just feel it as soon as you stepped on the dirt [. . .] After that one day just being here— feeling it, seeing it—I came the next day, the next week and the next month” (Quoted in Suarez 2021). At the same time, given local African Americans’ struggles with food insecurity (VSU Official Channel 2015), the growth of a Black-owned community garden suggested the need to move beyond the protests and focus instead on building a more socially just future for the entire community. As a matter of fact, the MDPC became a “community resource center for not only Black liberation protesters, but the wider Richmond community as well” (Sciffres 2021), for example, through a food distribution program and clothes drives; as activist Rashawn Dawkins puts it, “We created a space for people that the city didn’t create a space for” (Quoted in Schiffres 2021). For Marcus-David Peters’ sister and activist Princess Blanding, this became a “very inclusive space, the opposite of what Robert E. Lee stood for and what Monument Avenue stood for” (Quoted in Schiffres 2021). For many others, these initiatives ultimately helped “invigorate” this previously deserted space (Riltzer 2020). Undoubtedly, the MDPC was the place to be in the summer of 2020, as both residents and visitors (myself included) paid homage to the memorials and enjoyed spending time in the community. Unlike the “depoliticized” square, or “plaza,” promoted by New Urbanism, this was a community-based site “of ceremony, celebration, public oration, and political protest” (Evans and Lees 2021, 966). Encouraging alternative modes of sociability and solidarity to the

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ones embedded in capitalist-driven urban planning also meant enabling both self-affirmation and community dialogue. For activist Matthew Barbour “[t] he standing in front of it, the dancing [. . .] symbolize[d] a level of freedom that black people have never had before” (Quoted in McCammon 2020). This newly found sense of belonging in turn allowed Black people “to connect with [their] counterparts, white people” in more constructive ways (quoted in McCammon 2020), even as radical white groups continued to threaten this dialogue throughout the summer. In January 2021, the City Council secured the area within an 8-foot-tall fence, leaving the Lee monument alone once again on Monument Avenue. Although the stated purpose of the fencing was to “to prepare for the removal” of the statue, this decision ultimately resulted in “shut[ting] Bee [and many others] out of a space Black and brown people had reclaimed for healing” (Suarez 2021). Thus, when the Lee statue came down a year later, protesters “commemorat[ed] the taking down of a symbol of white supremacy,” but also “mourn[ed] the removal of several prominent symbols of their movement for Black liberation that once stood in the Circle” (Schiffres 2021). As I write in the spring of 2023, the site remains inaccessible to the community, and plans are underway to reopen the site to the public by the end of the year. At any rate, all evidence of the MDPC is gone, while Bee “can only watch as the garden he helped plant at the epicenter of Richmond’s racial justice movement [. . .] fades” (Suarez 2021). In other words, even if protesters succeeded in “de-fencing” the Lee monument (Buffington and Waldner 2012), both physically and symbolically, the social and cultural potential of this reclaimed public space are now lost. At the same time, the MDPC prepared the ground for the Unity Garden that Bee started only a block away on the premises of the Community Church of God in Christ. Meanwhile, the material culture legacy of the protests includes the 2020 Mending Walls mural project, the 2021 Emancipation and Freedom monument, new historic markers at the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground (Yinger 2022, Sacred Ground Reclamation Project 2004), and the museum exhibits Monument Avenue: Origins and Reverberations Augmented Reality Walking Tour (The Valentine Museum 2022) and Unsay Their Names (Kannemeyer 2021).

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Richmond’s 2020 summer of protest provided local scholars, artists, and public officials with a case study in contemporary iconoclasm, while also

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informing the larger debate over monuments and memorials, both nationally and internationally (Awen Films 2022). The reshaping of Richmond’s white memorial landscape into a shared, community-based space for celebration and remembrance ultimately suggests that [c]ounter-narratives become visible when the history constructed by statue monuments is publicly challenged, when the community changes its mind about who should be honored or what should be valued, or when political and social power shift to include formerly marginalized voices. (Baltes 2018, 34)

Within a year of the protests the Confederate monuments were gone and Richmond’s Monument Avenue irrevocably changed; however, a final plan for Richmond’s memorial landscape remains unclear. Whatever the ultimate solution, Richmond must ensure not only that the process is public and inclusive but also that it goes beyond Monument Avenue. More importantly, the coming down of monuments must go hand in hand with larger political efforts that counter centuries of racial divide, and with social and economic initiatives that help improve the quality of life of African American citizens in Richmond. As Black Liq reminds us, “[a] statue is just a statue. They may represent and exist as an extension of the institutions we have problems with, but the problem remains with the people who are that institution” (480). As Richmond’s communities struggle to define a racially and socially just future, community-based efforts to memorialize and celebrate all citizens and the emergence of a publicly engaged art movement and new material culture production are helping move Richmond’s landscape one step closer to a democratized one.

R&L NOTES

1. The terms “monument” and “memorial” are often used interchangeably; here we follow Buffington and Waldner’s definition (2012) of monuments as “significant permanent public sculpture[s] created to commemorate and glorify an event, a person, or even a concept” and memorials as “public art objects that are not so much intended to glorify as to cause us to remember or recall something, often related to the loss of life” (3). 2. The development of material culture studies dates back to 1970s and 1980s historians and reflects a larger intellectual shift toward lowbrow or popular culture. Today, the growing interdisciplinary field of material culture studies includes work in art and architectural history, museum studies, archaeology, design and decorative arts, as well as cultural studies, folklore, and anthropology. Richardson, Hamling, and Gaimster (2016) underline the contribution of these studies to disrupting the notion of

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history as a cohesive whole, while also decentering textual evidence as a main source (6–8). 3. The Lost Cause refers to the revised version of Civil War and antebellum history that recast the conflict as the “War Between the States,” rather than a war over slavery. 4. Arthur Ashe (1943–1993) won three Grand Slam titles and was also the only African American male to ever win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon single tennis titles. 5. Forty-six-year-old African American George Floyd was arrested in the U.S. city of Minneapolis for carrying a counterfeit $20 bill; he died on the spot, as white police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on him and pressed his neck for several minutes. A witness video reports Floyd’s last words as “I can’t breathe,” later used as a protest slogan both locally and globally (Vera and Wolfe 2021). 6. These events are vividly illustrated in two local film documentaries (VPM 2021, PBS 2020). 7. Marcus-David Peters, a local African American teacher, was fatally shot by a police officer on May 24, 2018 during a mental health crisis.

R&L REFERENCES

Awen Films. 2022. Stonebreakers. https://awenfilms​.net​/Stonebreakers Baldwin, Brent. 2020. “Artifacts of Change. The Story of One of the Most Visible Signs from this Summer’s Social Unrest, Recently Acquired by VMFA.” Style Weekly, August 4, 2020. https://m​.styleweekly​.com​/richmond​/artifacts​-of​-change​/Content​?oid​=16374992 Baltes, Elizabeth P. 2018. “Challenging Narratives: Arthur Ashe and the Practice of Counter-Monumentality on Richmond’s Monument Avenue.” de arte, 53 (2–3): 31–50. https://www​.tandfonline​.com​/doi​/abs​/10​.1080​/00043389​.2018​.1481911 Barbee, Matthew. 2007. “Memory, Race, and Communal Belonging in Narrative and Art: Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue, 1948–1996.” PhD diss., Bowling Green State University. BlackLiq. 2021. “Hindsight Beyond 2020.” African American Expressive Culture and Protest, Imagination, and Dreams of Blackness. A special issue of the Journal of American Folklore 134 (534): 475–481. Bowen, Dawn S. 2003. “The Transformation of Richmond’s Historic African American Commercial Corridor.” Southeastern Geographer 43, no. 2 (April): 260–278. https://www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/44371176 Brown, E. B., and Gregg D. Kimball. 1995. “Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond.” Journal of Urban History 21 (3): 296–395. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​ /009614429502100302. Brown, Thomas J. 2019. “Epilogue: Toward a New Iconoclasm.” Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 283–96.

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Buffington, Melanie L., and Erin E. Waldner. 2012. “Defending and De-Fencing: Approaches for Understanding the Social Functions of Public Monuments and Memorials.” The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education 32: 1–13. Campbell, Benjamin. 2011. Richmond’s Unhealed History. Richmond: Brandylane Publisher. Carrington, Ronald. E. 2020. “George Floyd’s Hologram Memorial Brings New Light, Tribute to Monument Avenue.” Richmond Free Press, July 30, 2020. https://richmondfreepress​.com​/news​/2020​/jul​/30​/george​-floyd​-hologram​-memorial​ -brings​-new​-light​-tr/. Dickerson, Michael, and Gregory Smithers. 2020. “The Power of Empty Pedestals.” The Bitter Southerner. https://bittersoutherner​.com​/2020​/the​-power​-of​-empty​ -pedestals. DHR, Virginia Department of Historic Resources. 2020. “127-7231 Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District.” September 9, 2020. https://www​.dhr​.virginia​ .gov​/historic​-registers​/127​-7231/ Edwards, Anna, and Phil Wylato. 2015. “The Significance of Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom: Why it’s the Wrong Place for a Baseball Stadium.” African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter 15, no.1 (Spring): 4–17. https://scholarworks​.umass​.edu​/ cgi​/viewcontent​.cgi​?article​=2236​&context​=adan. Edwards, Kathy, and Esmé Howard. 1997. “Monument Avenue: The Architecture of Consensus in the New South, 1890–1930.” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 6: 92–110. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/3514365. Evans, Jocelyn J., and William B. Lee. 2021. “Introduction to the Special Issue on Reframing Confederate Monuments: Memory, Power, and Identity.” Social Science Quarterly 102, no. 3: 959–78. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/ssqu​.12960. Glawe, Justin. 2014. “A St. Louis Suburb Is America’s Latest Racial Hotspot.” Vice, August 13, 2014. https://www​.vice​.com​/en​/article​/mv559q​/michael​-brown​-st​-louis​ -suburb​-ferguson​-missouri​-amer icas-latest-racial-hotspot-812 Goldberg, Susan. 2020. “Special issue, 2020: The Year in Pictures.” National Geographic, December 8, 2020. https://www​.nationalgeographic​.com​/magazine​/graphics​/2020​-the​-year​-in​-pictures​ -feature Gordon, Wyatt. 2020. “A New Kind of Placemaking has Transformed Richmond’s Monument Avenue.” Greater Greater Washington, August 24, 2020. https://ggwash​.org​ /view​ /78788 ​/a​ -new ​ -kind​-of ​-people​ - powered​ - placemaking​- is​ -transforming​-rich monds​-monu​ment-​avenu​e?fbc​lid=I​wAR1V​nobod​J93lc​8w3. Holtzclaw, Mike. 1993. “Rest in Peace? Ashe’s Grave Sparks Controversy.” The Daily Press, June 13, 1993. https://www​.dailypress​.com​/news​/dp​-xpm​-19930613​ -1993​-06​-13​-9306130080​-story​.html Howard, Amy L., and Williamson, Thad. 2016. “Reframing Public Housing in Richmond, Virginia: Segregation, resident resistance, and the future of redevelopment.” Cities 57: 33–39. Huyssen, Andreas. 2003. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Kannemeyer, Derek. 2021. “Unsay Their Names.” Gallery & Studio, June 15, 2021. https://www​.galleryand​.studio​/2021​/06​/15​/unsay​-their​-names/ La Force, Thessaly, Zoë Lescaze, Nancy Hass, and M.H. Miller. 2020. “The 25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Art Since World War II.” The New York Times Style Magazine, October 15, 2020. https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2020​/10​/15​/t​ -magazine​/most​-influential​-protest​-art​.html The Library of Virginia. “Mapping Inequality.” Virginiamemory​.co​m. https://www​ .virginiamemory​.com​/online​-exhibitions​/exhibits​/show​/mapping​-inequality Logan, Katie. 2021. “‘History Is Illuminating’: Public Memory Crises and Collectives in Richmond, Virginia.” Memory Studies 14, no. 6: 1173–84. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1177​/17506980211054291 Liu, Rossina Z., and Bonnie S. Sunstein. 2016. “Writing as Alchemy: Turning Objects into Stories, Stories into Objects.” Journal of Folklore and Education 3:60–76. Margry, Peter J. and Cristina Sánchez-Carretero. 2011. “Rethinking Memorialization. The Concept of Grassroots Memorials.” In Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death,1–48. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. McCammon, Sarah. 2020. “In Richmond, Va., Protesters Transform a Confederate Monument.” NPR, June 12, 2020. https://www​.npr​.org​/2020​/06​/12​/876124924​/in​-richmond​-va​-protestors​-transform​-a​ -confederate​-statue McNeill, Brian. 2020. “Alum’s Art Projections Transform the Lee monument - and Land the Cover of National Geographic.” VCU News, December 14, 2020. https://news​.vcu​ .edu​/article​/Alums​_art​_projections​_transform​_the​_Lee​_monument_​_and​_land​_the Mending Walls RVA. 2020. Mending Walls. https://www​.mendingwallsrva​.com/ Mitchell, J. 1890. “What it Means.” The Richmond Planet, May 31, 1890. https://virginiachronicle​.com/​?a​=d​&d​=RP18900531​.1​.1​&e​=31​-05​-1890-​-05​-1890-​ -en​-20-​-1-​-txt​-txIN​-john​+mitchell------​-Richmond​%2c​+VA Monument Lab. 2023. “National Monument Audit.” https://monumentlab​.com​/ audit PBS. 2020. “Why This Moment?” VPM Documentaries, November 17, 2020. https:// www​.pbs​.org​/video​/why​-this​-moment​-dcwecv/#:~​:text​=Filmmakers​%20Domico​ %20Phillips​%20and​%20Met ta,th​e%20p​erspe​ctive​%20of​%20th​e%20a​ctivi​sts Poulter, James. 2020. “How ‘ACAB’ Became the Universal Anti-Police Slogan.” Vice, June 8, 2020. https://www​.vice​.com​/en​/article​/akzv48​/acab​-all​-cops​-are​-bastards​-origin​-story​-protest. Radio IQ News Staff. 2020. “A Timeline of a Month of Protests in Richmond.” Radio IQ, July 1, 2020. https://www​.wvtf​.org​/news​/2020​-07​-01​/a​-timeline​-of​-a​-month​-of​ -protests​-in​-richmond Richardson, Catherine, Tara Hamling, and David Gaimster. 2016. “Introduction.” The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe. Routledge. Reclaiming the Monument. Recontextualizing Historic Spaces with Technology. 2020. https://www​.rec​laim​ingt​hemo​nument​.com​/copy​-of​-about​-us Riltzer, Rebecca J. “In Richmond, Black Dance Claims a Space Near Robert E. Lee.” New York Times, October 28, 2020.

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https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2020​/08​/06​/arts​/dance​/richmond​-virginia​-lee​-monument​ .html. Romine, Taylor, and Evan Simko-Bednarski. 2020. “Six Virginia Residents Sue to keep the Robert E. Lee statue aloft.” CNN, June 18, 2020. https://www​.cnn​.com​/2020​/06​/18​/us​/richmond​-suit​-robert​-lee​-statue​-trnd​/index​ .html. Sacred Ground Reclamation Project. 2004. “Home.” https://www​.sacredgroundproject​.net/ Savage, Kirk. 1997. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton University Press. Schiffres, Meg. 2021. “Activists’ Black liberation symbols removal makes Lee statue take down bittersweet.” VPM, September 23, 2021. https://vpm​.org​/news​/articles​/25718​/activists​-black​-liberation​-symbols​-removal​ -makes​-lee​-statue -take-down. Schneider, Gregory S. 2020. “No Longer Untouchable, Lee Statue Becomes Focus of Civic Outpouring.” The Washington Post, June 15, 2020. https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/local​/no​-longer​-untouchable​-statue​-of​-lee​-becomes​-focus​-of​-civic​ -outpouring​-in​-richmond​/2020​/06​/15​/acf6e16e​-af11​-11ea​-856d​-5054296735e5​ _story​.html Schneider, Gregory S., and Laura Vozzella. 2020. “Richmond Mayor Ousts Police Chief after Days of Protests, Clashes; Confederate Statue Toppled on VCU Cam.washingtonpost​ .com​ / pus.” The Washington Post, June 16, 2020. https://www​ local​/virginia​-politics​/richmond​-police​-chief​-removed​/2020​/06​/16​/ef268796​-b011​ -11ea​-8f56​-63f38c990077​_story​.html Sczerzenie, Anya. 2020. “‘Creative Protests’ at Marcus-David Peter’s Circle Combine Music, Art, and Resistance.” RVA Magazine, September 3, 2020. ttps:​// rva​​mag​.c​​om​/po​​litic​​s​/loc​​al​-po​​litic​​s​/cre​​ative​​-prot​​ests-​​at​-ma​​rcus-​​david​​-pet​e​​rs​-ci​​rcle-​​ combi​n e​-music​-art​-and​-resistance​​.html. Smithsonian Magazine. 2020. “How the Death of George Floyd Sparked a Street Art Movement.” Smithsonian Magazine, September 3, 2020. https://www​.smithsonianmag​.com​/smithsonian​-institution​/how​-death​-george​-floyd​-sparked​-street​-art​ -movement​-180975711/​?fbclid​=IwAR05cNWku83kFV​-mZlA​_5zX​ChQ0​TnOA​ Mwyi​ADFS​cGi7​LSoY​yImH​OPst6KE0 Studio Two Three. 2020. History is Illuminating: A Collaborative Public History Project. https://www​.studiotwothree​.org​/community​-advocacy​/0km​ogfr​yn1h​99zv​ hkal​bixx​k1895lc Suarez, Chris. 2021. “With Lee Monument Case Tied Up in Court, People Who Transformed ‘MDP Circle’ Are Asking: What’s the Fence Really For?” Richmond Times Dispatch, February 8, 2021. https://richmond​.com​/news​/local​/with​-lee​ -monument​-case​-tied​-up​-in​-court​-people​-who​-transfor med-m​dp-ci​rcle-​are-a​sking​ /arti​​cle​_8​​227ea​​9e​-e3​​30​-54​​d6​-b1​​73​-99​​93c2​a​​7c227​​.html​ The American Civil War Museum. 2017. “On Monument Avenue.” https://onmonumentave​.com/

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The Valentine Museum. 2019. “Monument Avenue: General Demotion, General Devotion.” February 14–December 31, 2019. https://thevalentine​.org​/exhibition​/ gdgd/. The Valentine Museum. 2022. “Monument Avenue: Origins and Reverberations Augmented Reality Walking Tour.” May 1, 2022. https://thevalentine​.org​/event​/monument​-avenue​-origins​-and​-reverberations​-augmented​-reality​-walking​-tour/ Trottier, Sam. 2020. “Marcus-David Peters Circle: Monument Ave’s Evolution. The History and Redefinition of Richmond’s Monument Avenue.” Arcgis, December 21, 2020. https://storymaps​.arcgis​.com​/stories​/255​5a0e​2df6​d46f​4beb​ a185​c0f1459f3 Vera, Amir, and Daniel Wolfe. 2021. “Seeking Justice: A timeline since the death of George Floyd.” CNN, March 2021. https://www​.cnn​.com​/interactive​/2021​/03​/us​/ george​-floyd​-case​-timeline/. VPM. 2021. How the Monuments Came Down. PBS, September 8, 2021. https:// www​.pbs​.org​/video​/how​-the​-monuments​-came​-down​-widbkc/ VSU Official Channel. 2015. “Living in a Food Desert.” Youtube, March 4, 2015. https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=jicYbi​-8ZNU Williams, Michael. 2017. “Williams: We Remain two Richmonds- RVA Blossomed While Richmond is being Left Further and Further Behind.” The Richmond Times Dispatch, July 24, 2017. https://richmond​.com​/news​/local​/williams​-we​-remain​ -two​-richmonds--​-rva​-blossomed​-while​-richmond​-is​-being​-left​-further​/article​ _2c9d466f​-c300​-55fd​-9ddb​-7ba85bef339b​.html Yinger, Emily. 2022. “Historic Highway Marker Unveiled for Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground.” NBC12​.co​m, June 13, 2022. https://www​.nbc12​.com​/2022​/06​ /12​/historic​-highway​-marker​-unveiled​-shockoe​-hill​-african​-burying​-ground/. Zitcer, Andrew, and Salina M. Almanzar, S. 2020. “Public Art, Cultural Representation and the Just City.” Journal of Urban Affairs 42, no. 7: 998–1013. https://www​ .tandfonline​.com​/doi​/abs​/10​.1080​/07352166​.2019​.1601019​?journalCode​=ujua20

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Chapter 3

Yale: RESPECT New Haven (New Artwork to Protest an Old University) Laura A. Macaluso

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Mid-size New England cities on the northern Atlantic coast often do not receive critical, scholarly, or public attention in the same way that a modern metropolis does. Readers might know something of New York, Montreal, Singapore, London, Sydney, Beijing, Rome, or Johannesburg, but lesser known are smaller historic coastal cities such as New Bedford, Massachusetts; or Providence, Rhode Island; or New Haven, Connecticut, which exist under the radar for most. Two centuries ago, these cities were at the nexus of education, transportation, and trade—and that trade was in agricultural and manufactured goods as well as in human in bondage. In the intervening years, much has changed. In the twenty-first century, these mid-size historic New England cities continue to lose populations for greater perceived economic opportunity, and weather, to the South and West (Karega 2022). This chapter explores the relationship between a particular town-gown mid-sized city in New England, called New Haven in Connecticut, which is one of Connecticut state’s poorest cities, but houses an affluent and oversized educational institution known as Yale University. The city is known to have a contentious town-gown relationship historically, the most violent one in 1919, where a violent clash between “townies” (City of New Haven or New Haven County residents) and “gownies” (Yale University students) took place over insults exchanged between elite students from the university and local veterans who had just arrived home from World War I in France. The chapter explores the ways in which art interventions and installations play a large role in public participation, perception, and identity-building, often shifting conversations and decision-making away from the power of political or educational leaders, and into the hands of the people. I argue in this chapter that New Haven has a long history of using art for this protest 49

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work, often in the form of unexpected art interventions in the public realm. I discuss the Yale: RESPECT New Haven street painting, 2021, Street Scene: CETA Murals, New Haven, and the Late 1970s, a digital archive of murals of New Haven, and “art vandalism” by Corey Menafee to point out the historical relationship of art activism with New Haven. This chapter places art activism in the rich history of activism in New Haven, which includes a famous incident involving the Black Panther Party. New Haven and Yale must be seen in relationship with each other; when protest happens on Yale University property versus City of New Haven property (or vice versa), although legal lines are drawn on maps, the university and the city exist together as one place: a sidewalk may “belong” to the City of New Haven, and the building abutting it may “belong” to Yale University, but there is a mixture of people—students, staff, faculty, city residents, workers, and even birds and trees—who cross these boundary lines, in and out, every day, 365 days a year for the past 307 years. The centerpiece of this geographic relationship is the New Haven Green, the historic center of the city’s core urban plan, laid out during the winter of 1638–1639 when English Puritan colonists bought land from the indigenous population, the Quinnipiac, and began plotting out a town plan in the formation of nine equal squares located on a flood plain between two low red rock ridges. The center square—the marketplace, the religious center, and the political center—remains so today, with municipal government (city hall and city library), judicial (court) buildings, businesses, and Yale University facing this green.​ The Three Churches on the Green (figure 3.1), with Center Church at the core, remind everyone of the city’s Christian origins, at the expense of the Quinnipiac, who were placed on “reserved land” on the East Shore—predating the formal reservation system established by the U.S. government. Today, seventeen neighborhoods on all sides of the New Haven Green extend outwards North, East, and West. Long Island Sound and its Atlantic waters is to the South. As in most American cities, a history of redlining (race-based practices around housing), immigration, urban renewal, and redevelopment, with economic prosperity for some and generational poverty for others, has created a city of great inequity. Fast forward from May 1919—the “last of the great town-gown battles” (Osterweis 1953, 408)—to May Day 2021, when labor organizers and members, students, and activists, with paint brushes and stencils, took to the corner of Prospect and Grove Streets in New Haven, painting the streets together to send a public message to one of the most powerful universities in the United States, if not the world. Yale University, intertwined with New Haven physically as well as historically, was given the message it should RESPECT the city in which it has resided since 1716, and the way to show this, according to

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Figure 3.1  Public Square or Green, in New Haven, Connecticut, John Warner Barber, 1825. Gift of the Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes, B. A. 1896, M.A. (Hon.) 1900, LL.D. 1921. Yale University Library.

the protesters, was to address severe economic inequalities modeled by Yale for three centuries (Sonnenfeld 2021). Painting two lines down the street, the organizers chose to deliver this message by painting a 670-foot-long blue line to represent the university’s 30 billion dollar endowment (blue is the official color of the university). A second line, much shorter in red, represented the university’s 13 million dollar annual “voluntary contribution” to the historic small city located on Long Island Sound, halfway between New York City and Boston. Why Yale University provides a “voluntary contribution,” or annual stipend, to the city is explained below. While people around the world might already see very clearly the inequity in this uneven relationship, Americans might have a greater sensitivity to this, due to the way in which for-profit corporations—on municipal tax rolls—help pay for infrastructure and other investments for city residents across the country. At the same time, not-for-profit organizations are exempted from this form of tax burden, which includes educational organizations, churches of all denominations, and social service entities around health and wellness. Because these types of organizations expand

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upon or replace the work that local governments cannot do, American cities are often filled with them, which often means a severe imbalance between annual expenditures and income. In other words, income from property tax is not available, a major loss of income for already economically depressed cities. Well known in both the public sphere and studied in academia, the loss of wealthy Americans to the suburbs (who were, and remain, outside of city tax rolls), combined with businesses moving overseas and leaving urban workers without steady employment, created a fiscal vacuum that most municipal administrators have struggled with since the 1970s (Rae 2005). In New Haven, as in many communities such as Providence, Rhode Island; or York, Pennsylvania, urban renewal also exacted a toll (CT Explored 2020). In the City of New Haven, this means that nearly 60% of all properties on the municipality’s tax rolls, including its largest by far, Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital, do not pay property taxes, leaving city government, squeezed to the point of starvation decade upon decade (Yale University and its teaching hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital are private, not-for-profit educational entities). It is a common occurrence every year when the city budget goes to vote that there are public recriminations against various political parties, threats of closure to public services, such as local branches of the public library system, and the real result that multiple municipal positions, including teaching and educational support positions in public schools, go unfilled due to the lack of funds (Gellman 2021). So, while Yale strategically grew its endowment over the decades, becoming famous in higher education for the approach employed by Chief Investment Officer David Swenson called the “Endowment Model” or the “Yale Model,” which favored a diversified portfolio of asset building, the City of New Haven grew poorer, continually ranking as one of the top three poorest cities in the state of Connecticut (Fabrikant 2021). May Day, in fact, is the annual worker’s day commemoration in the United States and for much of the past 40 years, labor contract disputes and health and educational inequities have defined the relationship between town and gown.1 The activist stance of “Yale: RESPECT New Haven” on May Day in 2021 is only the latest in a series of public art interventions taking place in and around the university and city in which ideological, economic, race, and social-cultural struggles play themselves out in the public sphere. Prospect Street, where Yale: RESPECT New Haven painted the visual representation of an economic line, is indicative of the intertwining of New Haven and Yale University history: the downtown street is historically New Haven—Grove Street Cemetery is located here—but also equally Yale, as the street is lined with university buildings, leading into a wealthy residential area.2 The name of the street itself is worth considering, in terms of identifying place. The word “prospect” in fact, has multiple meanings: it is a view from a hill, often

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painted by artists presenting views, most often rural but also of townscapes. It is a word that also carries economic connotation: What are your prospects if you are born into poverty in New Haven? What are your prospects if you are a Yale graduate? The words “Yale: RESPECT New Haven” were chanted at the May Day rally and were also projected onto Yale’s storied historic architecture, in addition to being painted on the street. Most of Yale’s architecture has been sealed off to New Haveners and the public since the 1930s, so the use of such surface in the downtown area was an intentional claim on the city by the event organizers. The university sealed off itself from the city by installing traditional—and beautifully crafted—wrought iron gates during a building expansion (Scully et  al. 2004, 249). Today, to enter many Yale spaces, a key card is required. In 2021, the university’s tax break equaled almost 160 million dollars a year and in the resurgence of political, social, and environmental activism that has come to shape the second and third decades of the new millennium, calls for equity were getting stronger and judging from the “Yale: RESPECT New Haven” campaign, more organized, more visible, and more aggressive. Their efforts were not in vain. After months of negotiations, a rare moment came to life when the Mayor of the City of New Haven, Justin Elicker, and the President of Yale Corporation (responsible for the management of Yale University and its many schools) Peter Salovey met—two people in the same city of 135,000 who live different lives—and announced that Yale would be enlarging its annual “gift” to the city to 23 million dollars annually, an increase of 10 million dollars a year for the next five years (Basler 2021). More than a century earlier, in 1908, New Havener, civic planner, and arts enthusiast George Dudley Seymour had argued for better town-gown relations through the sharing of resources between Yale and the city. Though Seymour was not a Yale graduate, he was deeply invested in Connecticut history—and Yale was part of that. He convinced the Yale University Art Gallery, the oldest college art museum in the country, to extend their open hours making it more conducive for the city’s workers who labored in industry, to be able to visit the museum at night or on weekends (a reading of the industrial history of New Haven and its laboring classes can be found in Maynard and Noyes 2004). Although Seymour was a white man of means who upheld traditional high culture narratives which did not recognize the contributions of women or people of color, he was an early voice for breaking down barriers between town and gown. The announcement regarding Yale’s doubling of its voluntary contribution was done at Biagio di Lieto (New Haven) City Hall, on the second-floor landing where the mayor’s office is located. Inside this Victorian façade building, where portraits of the city’s previous mayors hang, looking down from on high, the Yale: RESPECT New Haven group—and the many people before

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them, like George Dudley Seymour—called upon a long history of activism to change the city. In the twenty-first century, energized by the growing calls for equity, reparations, and accountability connecting the past to the present, Yale: RESPECT New Haven used a tradition of collective action, public art intervention, and social media/digital technology to support messaging and communication, helping to make substantial change for the City of New Haven. The collective continues to do so today because the work is not done.3

PUBLIC ART OF THE 1970S As noted, Yale: RESPECT New Haven was not the first public art-style intervention in New Haven. One of the first examples of the ways in which art was utilized as a tool for creating identity outside of City Hall and Yale University was the CETA mural program, which happened in the second half of the 1970s. This earlier claim on the city is documented in “Street Scene: CETA Murals, New Haven, and the Late 1970s” a new digital exhibit created with Lori Goldstein and Alison Verplaeste of the Public Art Archive (https://publicartarchive​.org/) using materials digitized and curated from a previously understudied personal archival collection.4 While my research had rediscovered this forgotten mural program, the collaboration with the Public Art Archive, a digital platform for documenting public art across the country, enabled this freely accessible archive of materials.​ Crossing disciplinary boundaries between public art and public history, the exhibit showcases the local application of a national program called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA, legislated by Congress in 1973. With CETA federal funds, municipalities across the country were directed to offer a jobs-to-work program, but how each community pursued that goal was open-ended. Similar to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of 40 years before, the arts—including visual, musical, theatrical, culinary arts, and more—were welcomed within the CETA framework and many communities, from Los Angeles to Minneapolis to New Haven, put the funds to use by hiring emerging artists. These artists were commissioned to lead community making, most often on the street. The Street Scene exhibit on the digital archive demonstrates the remarkable results of CETA funding in New Haven, Connecticut. The last remaining CETA murals were still visible until the 2010s when redevelopment of buildings destroyed the ghostly imprints of the original brightly colored murals. In this exhibit, seventeen murals were resurrected using digitization and mapping. The opportunity to revisit the forgotten mural program was possible because one of the original CETA artists, Ruth Resnick Johnson, had kept hold of her personal archive of photographic images and archival materials

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Figure 3.2  Stained-Glass Windows without Images in What Was Then Calhoun College, Part of Yale University. The stained-glass window featuring an image of John C. Calhoun was third from the right. Another window in the dining hall featured a scene of enslaved people picking cotton, which was the window broken by Corey Menafee. The broken pieces of that window are in Archives & Manuscripts, Sterling Memorial Library. Once the name of the college was changed to Grace Hopper College, a new art commission was given to Faith Ringgold, completed in 2022. Source: Author’s photo.

for more than 30 years. Using a digital platform to create this exhibit enabled a more holistic view of the workings of the program and its impact, beyond what previous print-based scholarship could offer. Mapping allowed us, for the first time, to “see” where CETA murals were located and to assess their number and placement against New Haven’s other examples of public art. This is possible because the city has utilized the Public Art Archive since 2010, making available hundreds of examples of public art throughout the city through the freely accessible website. Discerning CETA’s unique place in New Haven’s long history of public art-making was part of the Street Scene project. These CETA murals were made by and for communities who had previously been left out of the visual culture of the City of New Haven, including Blacks, Latinos, and the elderly. The CETA murals were purposefully located away from the elite power structure of City Hall and Yale University, entities physically located downtown around the New Haven Green. Instead, neighborhoods that had previously seen little public art up and close and personal

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became art-making and identity-making sites of significance. The art thus decentered the city by making space for other voices. Two murals of note are the Spirit of ‘76 mural, painted on the brick sidewall of a hardware store in the Hill neighborhood with the guidance of the Puerto Rican Youth Services program, and Path of the World, painted on the exterior wall of the Richard C. Lee High School Gymnasium with students from the school. Both of the murals—–done by youthful participants—feature swirls of color, imaginative scenery reflecting both city life and the psychedelic musical culture of the era. A guitar is painted on one wall, and inside Lee High School, the CETA program muralists gave a whole wall over to Stevie Wonder, a Black musician whose music was the soundtrack to the era. Today, New Haven is well known for its community-centered public artmaking, but the CETA murals were the first. In a larger context, the CETA arts legacy project funded by Franklin & Marshall College, led by Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia, documents CETA across the country (http:// ceta​-arts​.com​/Legacy​.html). CETA murals may be gone in a physical sense from the public spaces of New Haven, but they had an important role to play in the 1970s, a decade of economic stagnation, decaying cities, and continuing racial strife and struggle. In New Haven, CETA murals were a claim on the city, functioning as a meaningful avenue through which the visual arts became a tool for supporting a collective sense of place and an embrace of more diverse visual representation in the public sphere.

R&L BREAKING GLASS AND PAVING THE WAY FOR CHANGE

While the CETA murals impacted specific New Haven neighborhoods in the 1970s, away from Yale University and downtown, another art-centered intervention in the twenty-first century set off a chain of events leading to change within the university itself. In this case, the intersection of the question of what constitutes art vandalism—a problem throughout history, as seen in the broken noses of ancient statuary and the bombing of massive sculptures by those claiming to be iconoclasts—against what is justified art activism came to New Haven in the form of a broken, historic stained-glass window. Many of Yale’s stained-glass windows were created in the same time period during the same building initiative in which wrought iron gates were installed to keep Yale safely in and New Haveners safely out. The event was at first painted as an art crime by an employee. Later, under pressure from students, the public, and activists, the art vandalism became art activism, when the university recanted its position and changed course. Corey Menafee, the

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protagonist of the event, personified the ways in which New Haven and Yale are thoroughly intertwined. The sound of breaking glass in what was then called Calhoun College at Yale University on June 13, 2016, signaled the death knell for that college’s name and highlighted the university’s reticence in addressing school history and its problematic relationship to the city in which it resides. New Haven provides the university with much of its service staff, who work across campus—a campus already noted as being intertwined with downtown—employees in positions such as janitorial, food, and administrative services. The sound of breaking glass at Calhoun was caused by a member of this working class, at the time a 38-year-old New Havener named Corey Menafee, a dishwasher. He took a broom handle to one of the painted stained-glass window panels in the dining hall of Calhoun College and pushed the rectangular glass out of its leaded frame, which then fell to the sidewalk below on Elm Street, where it smashed into pieces. The stained-glass window Menafee chose to destroy pictured two enslaved people—a man and a woman—walking through a cotton field with baskets of picked cotton bolls on their heads (figure 3.2). The window was a part of a larger installation in the dining room at Calhoun College, named for the Yale graduate and senator from South Carolina who was a vocal defender of slavery. Afterward, faced with misdemeanor and felony charges from his employer, Menafee stated, “It’s 2016, I shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that.” “I just said, ‘That thing’s coming down today. I’m tired of it,’” he added. “I put myself in a position to do it, and did it” (Phippen 2016). Of course, in a 385-year-old city with a 322-year-old university at its core (Yale was formed in 1701 but moved to New Haven from Saybrook, Connecticut, in 1716), it is no surprise to learn that Menafee’s breaking glass at Yale was not a single event of social justice activism, or, as others have called it, an act of vandalism or even an art crime, standing alone without context. The city and university both have been working, mostly separately, to understand, manage, and create meaning out of the history of enslavement and the struggles for economic and social justice, from the very beginning of both entities until today. Most of this work is precipitated not by city employees or college administrators, but by the people. Corey Menafee was not the first New Havener to protest through action, and he will not be the last. Although Menafee was living in a city in the northeast of the United States, he was also a 2001 graduate of Virginia Union University, an HBCU (Historically Black College and University) in Richmond, Virginia—the capital of the Confederacy—so he may have been especially attuned to the slavery images around him at Yale, since in fact, it is much easier to visibly “see” plantations, or as they are sometimes called, “enslaved labor camps” in Virginia at historic

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landscapes from one end of the state to the other, than it is in New England towns. New Haven has always been, and remains, a place where people protest, and very often, in addition to New Haven residents and those from the surrounding towns of New Haven County and the State of Connecticut who come to the city to protest, the protesters include Yale students. The most well-known protest crossing town-gown lines occurred on the New Haven Green on May Day 1970 (figure 3.3), around the trial of the “New Haven Nine” regarding the murder of Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley.5​ The protest consisted of a mix of people from across the city, state, and beyond who were there to call out the police state and the unfair treatment of Black Panther Party members, several of whom, such as Bobby Seale, had national profiles. Since that time, protests of this size and national attention are less frequent, but social, political, and environmental protests are seen weekly in New Haven, whether on church steps, in city parks or streets, or at the Amistad Memorial near the entrance to City Hall. The proximity of municipal, educational, religious, and judicial buildings around the historic town green contributes to this long-shared history of protest which often crosses Yale and City lines on the New Haven Green. Both Menafee, a Black man, and some of the Yale student body made visual their feelings toward the name of John C. Calhoun, eventually forcing

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Figure 3.3  May Day Rally, New Haven Green, 1970. Source: Unknown photographer. Archives & Manuscripts, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

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the university to shed that name and its connotations in favor of, finally, a college named for a woman, Grace Murray Hopper, the renaming of which was announced in February 2017, after Yale University president Peter Salovey and the Yale Corporation had previously announced the year before that the university was not going to change the name. In Salovey’s earlier words, Changing history because we don’t like it, because it’s painful, because it offends us, as opposed to teaching it, confronting it, and using it as a guide to thinking about present issues having to do with racism and a better future, strongly outweigh changing a name. (Jones 2016)

Salovey was publicly slammed by students, but, as one newspaper reported, Salovey and Yale finally “stumbled to the right decision”—but only after student protests and Corey Menafee’s breaking glass (Yale News, 2016). The name change was a huge step for Yale and its alumni, as generations of students graduated with diplomas that state their college name of Calhoun, not the university’s name, since Yale was organized from the 1930s onward on the English higher educational model, where undergraduate students are admitted to specific colleges, not the university. Therefore, the name of a college, in practice for 100 years, meaning generations of alumni, was not a small consideration. The fundraising implications for the school in its eventual decision to rename the college are one of the many considerations. And, in fact, as seen on a series of metal plaques inside the college, the Calhoun name is not completely gone: donors are still identified there, and likewise in the interior courtyard, Calhoun’s bust in stone still peers out from over an entryway. The contemporary background for the changes at Yale includes, most egregiously, events such as the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and earlier, the mass murder of nine Black prayer study members in Charleston, South Carolina, at Emanuel AME Church in 2015. Since those rage- and racist-filled violent events, much attention has been given to understanding the contested meanings of Confederate monuments, particularly in the south. But, it’s clear from viewing the painted stained-glass panel that Menafee broke with intent that racist images common to the early twentieth century do not reside in the American South alone, were not created for the American South alone, and were not held in high cultural esteem by the American South alone. New Haven, Connecticut, is known today for progressive politics and its status as a Sanctuary City (it was, in fact, one of the first cities to create immigrantfriendly resident IDs, which help people open bank accounts and rent apartments) (Puglisi 2020). But the city played its part for a very long time in the greater American project after Reconstruction using words and images to create and reinforce attitudes and laws that Black men and Black women were

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not valuable to society or that their value was always tied to the history of enslavement—as though whites, especially in the north, didn’t have anything to do with that history. A historian finds evidence for this in documents, but an art historian finds evidence for this in works of art. And the 1930s, whether viewed through the lens of Yale University, the City of New Haven, or the greater American landscape, is a long decade of imagery that today gives us great pause—sometimes enough to cover it over, rename it, remove it to the museum, or break it into pieces. After the college name change from John C. Calhoun to Grace Hopper, Yale leadership recognized the need to replace all of the historic stainedglass imagery, which in one area of the college was a mini-biography of John C. Calhoun, leaving significant sized empty spaces. With Calhoun’s biography in glass removal came the opportunity to insert a new story into the window frames: that of the story of Grace Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist and rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. She earned her PhD in mathematics from Yale in 1934—the same decade Yale was rebuilding its campus in a Gothic Revival style and filling it with English-inspired stained glass and the same decade cities like New Haven were commissioning and creating thousands of new works of public art through the WPA program (Scully et al. 2004). Hopper College commissioned renowned artist Faith Ringgold to undertake the new project in 2019 and a commission for a second series of windows for the college’s dining hall was given to Barbara Earl Thomas in early 2020. The projects were completed and debuted in 2022, one with the inscription “Broken is Mended” embedded in the glass. In an article put out by YaleNews, Corey Menafee is mentioned not by name, rather as an “employee working in the college” (Cummings 2022). Despite this, Menafee’s action and the protests supporting him against the university demonstrate that even Yale listens when pushed hard enough.

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DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE PAST TO GO FORWARD Yale was named after Elihu Yale, an Englishman who presented the college with a stack of books and some money in 1701 to establish an institution to train clergy—it is the third oldest college in the country, predating the foundation of the United States itself, by 75 years. In the traditional historicalbiographical painting now retitled Elihu Yale, His Family, and an Enslaved Child, held by the Yale Center for British Art, viewers can easily see the enslaved young male in the painting with Yale and his sons (figure 3.4).6​ Some areas of Yale are easier to acknowledge that the university was, from the beginning, invested in the slave trade and in enslavement both in its

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Figure 3.4  Elihu Yale with Members of His Family, and an Enslaved Child. Source: John Verelst, Yale Center for British Art, ca. 1719.

founding and in its construction—as in, for example, the oldest building still standing on Yale’s Old Campus, called Connecticut Hall. This is a National Historic Landmark, the highest recognition or designation a building can receive in the United States, due to its age and history, but also because such celebrated male persons lived and studied in its dormitory rooms, including Nathan Hale, Eli Whitney, and Noah Webster, names once held at the pinnacle of New England and therefore American identity. Nowhere on the plaques marking historic designation has Yale provided the fact that Connecticut Hall was built with enslaved labor. Yale’s reticence in acknowledging the fullness of its own history and its impact on its surrounding urban community will become ever more problematic, now that the conversation regarding reparations—specifically monies directed toward descendants of slavery—have begun in earnest. For example, Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, which made use of enslavement, announced a 1.7 million dollar endowment fund, in September of 2019, and made its first payments in February 2021 (Wright 2021). Although white Americans are slow to enter the reparations conversation, Yale entered this dialogue through the creation of a Yale and Slavery Working Group, which used the university’s recent doubling of its voluntary contribution as evidence that the school is serious about doing better toward

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the city it lives in (Dennehy and Gonzalez 2021). Renaming a building is not the same thing as reparations, but it is a beginning. Yale University is intertwined with its home in New Haven, a city full of hopes and dreams for its people, a city demanding a more equitable partnership. The extraordinary actions of individuals, committees, and organizations of every size and shape demonstrate the power art interventions have always had, and continue to have, in New Haven.

NOTES 1. See, for example, a historic reading of town-gown relationships in “Highs and Lows of Town and Gown,” Yale Alumni Magazine, March 2001. For a more contemporary perspective, see Paul Bass, “Town Gown Revisited.” New Haven Independent, 2019. 2. The wealthy area of Prospect Street in New Haven is called “Prospect Hill,” for an architectural reading of the neighborhood, see the New Haven Preservation Trust description, http://nhpt​.org​/prospect​-hill. 3. See the website of Yale: RESPECT New Haven, https://www​.yalerespectnewhaven​.org/. 4. See “Street Scene: CETA Murals, New Haven, and the Late 1970s,” https:// explore​.publicartarchive​.org​/new​-haven​-ceta​-murals/. 5. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, shortened to the Black Panther Party (BPP), was a Black activist organization founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. Local chapters spread across the country, including in New Haven. While the BPP was political and aggressive in their dress and messaging, the BPP was also community-oriented, providing food and clothing to inner city residents. See Yale University Online Exhibitions, “Bulldog and Panther: The 1970 May Day Rally and Yale,” https://onlineexhibits​.library​.yale​.edu​/s​/black​-panther​-may​-day​/page​/home. 6. See the Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team, “New Light on the Group Portrait of Elihu Yale, His Family, and an Enslaved Child,” Yale Center for British Art, https:// britishart​.yale​.edu​/new​-light​-group​-portrait​-elihu​-yale​-his​-family​-and​-enslaved​-child.

R&L REFERENCES

Basler, Cassandra. 2021. “Yale Announces ‘Historic’ $135 Million Payment to New Haven,” Connecticut Public Radio, November 17, 2021. https://www​.ctpublic​.org​/ education​-news​/2021​-11​-17​/yale​-announces​-historic​-135​-million​-payment​-to​-new​ -haven. Bass, Paul. 2019. “Town Gown Revisited.” The New Haven Independent, June 21, 2019. https://www​.newhavenindependent​.org​/article​/caroline​_book. Chen, Xiangming and Nick Bacon, eds. 2013. Confronting Urban Legacy, Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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CT Explored. 2020. “Richard C. Lee’s Urban Renewal in New Haven.” CT Explored, July 28, 2020. https://connecticuthistory​.org​/richard​-lees​-urban​-renewal​-in​-new​-haven/. Cummings, Mike. 2022. “New Hopper College Windows Acknowledge Past, Celebrate Present,” Yale News, August 5, 2022. https://gracehopper​.yalecollege​.yale​ .edu​/news​/new​-hopper​-college​-windows​-acknowledge​-past​-celebrate​-present. Dennehy, Kevin and Susan Gonzalez. November 1, 2021. “Yale Publicly Confronts Historical Involvement in Slavery,” Yale News. https://news​.yale​.edu​/2021​/11​/01​/ yale​-publicly​-confronts​-historical​-involvement​-slavery. Fabrikant, Geraldine. 2021. “David Swenson, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing, Dies at 67.” New York Times, May 6, 2021. https://www​.nytimes​.com​ /2021​/05​/06​/business​/david​-swensen​-dead​.html Gellman, Lucy. 2021. “You Don’t Shut Down a Library, New Haven Independent, March 3, 2021. https://www​.newhavenarts​.org​/arts​-paper​/articles​/you​-dont​-shut​ -down​-a​-library Jones, Harriet. 2016. “Yale Will Not Change Calhoun Name,” Connecticut Public Radio, April 28, 2016. https://www​.ctpublic​.org​/politics​/2016​-04​-28​/yale​-will​-not​ -change​-calhoun​-college​-name. Maynard, Preston and Marjorie B. Noyes, eds. 2004. Carriages and Clocks, Corsets and Locks. Hanover: University Press of New England. Karega, Daisy. “What Has Caused the Connecticut Population to Stagnate? Addressing the Need for the State’s Equitable Housing Needs for Different Population Groups, Partnership for Strong Communities.” n.d.  https://www​.pschousing​.org​ /blog​/what​-has​-caused​-connecticut​-population​-stagnate​-addressing​-need​-states​ -equitable​-housing​-needs Osterweis, Rollin G. 1953. Three Centuries of New Haven, 1638–1938. New Haven: Yale University Press. Phippen, J. Weston. 2016. “A Shattering Act of Civil Disobedience.” The Atlantic, July 14, 2016. https://www​.theatlantic​.com​/news​/archive​/2016​/07​/yale​-smashed​ -window​/490925/. Puglisi, David. 2020. “New Haven Affirms and Strengthens Sanctuary City Status.” FOX61, July 23, 2020. https://www​.fox61​.com​/article​/news​/local​/new​-haven​ -reaffirms​-and​-strengthens​-sanctuary​-city​-status​/520​-65e106d0​-d32e​-4758​-bf23​ -ca3c35c685cc Rae, Douglas W. 2005. CITY: Urbanism and Its End. New Haven: The Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University Press. Scully, Vincent et al., 2004. Yale in New Haven, Architecture & Urbanism. New Haven: Yale University. Seymour, George Dudley. 1942. New Haven, New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor. Sonnenfeld, Sophie. 2021. “Labor Paints Prospect Street with ‘Respect’ Message.” New Haven Independent, May 1, 2021. https://www​.newhavenindependent​.org​/ article​/yale​_respect​_new​_haven​_paints_. Wright, Will. 2021. “Seminary Built on Slavery and Jim Crow Labor Has Begun Paying Reparations.” New York Times, May 31, 2021. https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2021​ /05​/31​/us​/reparations​-virginia​-theological​-seminary​.html.

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Yale Alumni Magazine. 2021. “Highs and Lows of Town and Gown,” Yale Alumni Magazine, March 2021. http://archives​.yalealumnimagazine​.com​/issues​/01​_03​ /town​_gown​.html#:~​:text​=Since​%20even​%20before​%20Yale​%20found​,increasingly​%2C​%20a​%20recognition​%20of​%20interdependence Yale News. 2016. “Salovey Listens to Student Disappointment Over Naming Decisions,” Yale News, April 29, 2016. https://news​.yale​.edu​/2016​/04​/29​/salovey​-listens​-student​-disappointment​-over​-naming​-decisions

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Chapter 4

Allegory or Algorithm The Smart City as Monument Richard Simpson

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Allegory and algorithm seemingly share etymological roots. Allegory derives from the Greek αλληγορία, a combination of άλλος meaning “other,” + oμιλία, “speaking,” to indicate “speaking otherwise than one seems to speak,” often produced during periods of crisis. Algorithm emerges from the Medieval Latin algorismus, a transliteration of the surname of the ninth-century Persian geographer and mathematician Abu Ja’far Muhammad bin Musa al Khwarizmi. Algorismi is the Latin phonetization of al Khwarizmi, a native of Khwarazm (Khiva), whose books were translated in the twelfth century, introducing algebra and complex mathematics to the West. Prefixal affinity among allegory and algorithm overshadows contact zones at work within their geopolitical origins. In this chapter, I contribute to the latter to show that the contemporary meanings of allegory and algorithm have much in common given how each term designates an operation whereby a layering of meaning yields a spatial procedure that maps a problem or function. Indeed, I argue that the increasing necessity of these two practices within global urbanization permits the disclosure and reunion of aggregate experimental landscapes uniquely designed to implement geography as pedagogy. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s regional study of the cultural, physical, and psychic processes at work within advanced industrialization, this chapter provides a preliminary mapping of educative landscapes and posits the historical operation and expansion of an enclave theory of urban pedagogical practice as a force of production.

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ALLEGORY Following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter (BLM) mobilized thousands of people around the world in the midst of a global pandemic with the direct aim of physically transforming urban space through the removal of statutes and monuments (Diaz 2020). Monument’s power lies in the ability to render ideological messaging into concrete and material form. This legibility’s effect functions in the way it appears to create consensus in the strongest sense of that term—by claiming to not only express collective will and collective thought but rendering that will and thought into concrete, stone, or metal. Monuments thus constitute contradictory spaces that at once embody a material form and at the same time transcend that materiality, or rather, we may say that transcendence embeds itself as an irreducible foundation of monument. This atemporal quality subsumes monumental space and, in doing so, becomes a strategic technology by which to stabilize power over both history and contemporary social relations (Lefebvre 2003, 21–22). Monuments therefore reinforce a fatalistic perception of place, of history, and of people precisely in the act of “taking place” within a fixed atemporality. As such, they are best approached not as symbols but as allegories in that they do not have one singular, stable signified, so much as a shifting hierarchy of meanings in which now one, now another comes to the fore due to a particular action or historic event. In distinguishing allegory, Fredric Jameson writes that

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unlike other rhetorical figures, allegory is a mode uniquely frustrated of abstraction, and one in which, in the absence of a concept, various narratives—some quite different from each other, some mere versions of the same story—are called upon to comment on each other, in a circular process in which each level nonetheless enriches the previous one. (2000, 96)

The meaning of a monument, even as it narrates its own historical purpose, equally so takes on value from surrounding social and historical events occurring at multiple geographic scales. Following the killing of George Floyd, confederate statues “take hold” of the physical space of the city as an extension of the brutality against Black bodies in the United States. The call for the removal of statues throughout the American South has become a primary terrain of political struggle and a focal point for increasingly violent confrontations regarding visions of early twenty-first-century American identity. When asked what to do with the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Charlottesville resident Katrina Turner conveys monument’s psychological hold upon the body: “melt them down. Get rid of them where nobody else

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has to look at what has stood for so long to keep us in our place” (Schneider 2021). Since 2020, in the American South, over 230 confederate monuments and memorials have been either dismantled, hauled away, vandalized, or renamed (Burch 2022). Some were methodically unearthed, piece by piece, by government workers, and some were removed by protesters in moments of fury. This movement is not limited to the United States. Statues have been targeted by protesters throughout the world. A statue of a slave trader standing in Bristol for the past 125 years was uprooted by a crowd in June 2020 during BLM protests (Langfitt 2020; Slave Trader Statue 2020). Video of the protest shows not only the palpable urgency to remove the statue’s racist messaging from the city—equally tangible is the way in which the toppling documents a collective’s retrieval of a space of exaltation from within a space of oppression. The past and the possible become momentarily intertwined. This reinscription of landscape reveals the lived experience of Henri Lefebvre’s theorization of urbanism as a productive force capable of modifying relations of production, “without being sufficient to transform them” (15). The intent to reinvent urbanization to access human freedom, expressed by the drowning of the statue in River Avon, becomes cause and reason to identify and describe urban practices in the process of formation, whose science is emerging, yet whose forms, functions, and structures still coincide with the abolition of the city.

R&L ALGORITHM

Living in an age of global urban crisis evidenced not only by racial violence that necessitates the BLM movement but also by the international breakdown of public welfare and affordable housing, the onset of government corruption, toxic water and smog, flooding coastal cities, and extreme inequalities in health care, nutrition, and employment sets the stage by which the “smart city” becomes heralded for narrating innovative solutions to urban futurity. Indeed, such contemporary crises in fact position local and regional governments to tackle issues of fiscal austerity by hoping to attract foreign investment and highly skilled workers that precisely define the smart city imaginary (White 2016). The latter is initiated by new partnerships between the state and corporate sector which foreground critical attention to infrastructure as the basis for addressing cultural, political, and environmental crises. The idea of the smart city references not so much a particular space as a method of governance allowing state and corporate entities to compose infrastructure technology to achieve real-time monitoring,

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automate decision-making, and allocate resources in ways that are impervious to interrogation and explanation. Antoine Picon defines the smart city as one in which mechanisms of learning, understanding, and reasoning are internalized within space itself, “instead of residing in the minds of the humans who live in it,” signaling “an unprecedented association between humankind, machines, and algorithms” (2015, 29). This mechanism’s concretized reasoning thus evokes the city as extending the defining features of the monument identified above. The smart city signals the broadening scale by which new urban ecologies shift to strategically connect our bodies, identities, and environments, not through ideological statues, but rather through networking data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence and, in doing so, now claim to utilize concrete, stone, and metal to design urban infrastructure as an expression of collective will. For example, Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), a subsidiary of Alphabet, identifies the algorithm as finally realizing the desire for a holistic approach to urban design. SIP poetically describes its work as the implantation of a “digital layer” into urban space which ties together the way physical infrastructure interacts with people and city services (Bliss 2018). SIP argues that its compositions finally establish a means to enable a city to make informed decisions about its future. This promise is provided through measuring, calculating, and monitoring the “predictability of routine” as the pinnacle of urban design. The smart city then is not simply an integration of technology into space, but a transformative process by which an environment may be understood to create, enable, and facilitate everyday life. Here, the socializing capacity shifts from the monument’s once stabilizing transcendent ideological weight bearing upon the park square to algorithmic data connecting “street layouts, block orientations, real estate economics, weather patterns, building height, and more” interwoven into the design of an urban plan (Whitney and Ho 2022). Given that data analytics reveal patterns previously unknown or unquantified, the monopolization by private vendors leads to issues of opacity, public disempowerment, and loss of accountability as the design of the algorithm itself may already include direct or indirect policy decisions. According to Francisca Bria, digital chief of Barcelona, a leading city adopting smart city technology, this business model creates dependence on very few providers, and the locking-in of governments into proprietary systems that can “end up with a black-box operating system where the city itself loses control of critical information and data” (Meyer 2017). Private entities become central to urban processes, while democratically accountable officials are moved to the periphery (Richter and Taylor 2018, 180). The explosion of BLM’s removal of monuments from city centers occurs against the backdrop of the smart city’s monumentalization of infrastructure on a global scale.

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PEDAGOGIC GEOGRAPHIES BLM and the smart city define the social construction of global urban space in the early decades of the twenty-first century. They are vastly different movements. BLM is a decentralized grassroots organization aimed at ending state-sanctioned violence against Black people around the world through reconciliation and the abolition of police, prisons, and racial injustice. Where BLM elevates abolition as a means to a liberating future, the smart city envisions futurity through corporate placemaking. Despite their political and methodological differences, both gestures embrace the educative capacity of urban space to envision a different future. We may therefore align these contemporary urban movements in their shared insistence that urbanism explicitly functions, allegorically or algorithmically, as a decisive pedagogic practice. This perception of urbanism is significant in that, historically, the educative quality of space has been reserved for the category of nature, a concept that has been defined in Western cultures in direct opposition to the city since the nineteenth century (Williams 1980). Certainly, nature remains the greatest teacher today. We are familiar with ubiquitous depictions of getaway vacations to remote, exotic landscapes, countercultural practices of self-care and rites of passage, that include losing oneself in order to find oneself through hiking, camping, or meditation excursions into the wilderness, and the rise of corporate brands such as REI and Patagonia signaling the growth of a global “outdoor industry.” The primary concepts of environmental justice—sustainability, protection, and conservation—are also premised upon conceptions of the natural environment as something inherently influential, educational, transformative, or enlightening (Cronon 1995). Yet in the era of globalization, I want to propose that pedagogy now functions as a dominant property of the urban and that critical pedagogy must differentiate how the material and discursive production of educative practices instantiate social relationships that have implications for the state’s formation, or disintegration, in regard to processes of globalization and neoliberalism. To historicize this process I want to outline some of the preceding urban formations demonstrating how the idea of pedagogical geographies1 is not a new phenomenon so much as an intensification of a necessary relationship forged between educative processes, modes of production, built space, and political subjectivities.

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“THE TEXT-BOOK IS THE FORD PLANT”2 This relationship guided Antonio Gramsci’s extensive study of Henry Ford’s motor vehicle factory in Dearborn during the 1920s. “Americanism and

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Fordism” finds Gramsci (1988, 290) observing the displacement of educative components of labor following the advanced efficiency inherent within industrial production, resulting in the dismantling of artisanal and guild labor, or the “psycho-physical nexus of qualified professional work, which demands a certain active participation of intelligence, fantasy and initiative on the part of the worker.” The austere initiatives of American industrialists expunge the “productive creation” innate to artisan practice where the “worker’s personality was reflected whole in the object created and when the link between art and labor was still very strong” (290). In addition to how Taylor’s assembly line orchestrated an “ensemble of organisms” rationalizing the movement of labor with optimal efficiency, Gramsci examines labor history, the impact of increased wages, the role of unions and factory organization, literacy, divorce rates, sexual habits, and consumption practices of workers to examine how historical, social, and material givens benefited Ford’s enterprise and enabled a techno-economic program of accumulation, mode of regulation, and entire way of life. This meticulous rationalization of production requires not just new forms of scientific management, but preceding and current cultural conditions are also necessary for Fordism to take root. Such “Americanisms” are not supplemental to the production process, but decisive features, as Gramsci emphasizes that Fordism’s diffusion into Europe was initially hindered precisely because those countries lacked the necessary cultural logics and historical conditions required for their workers to willingly live within this totalizing social environment and operation (277–80). And so while Taylorist production diminishes the individual worker’s imprint upon its products, Gramsci remains focused on this subjective factor and the way in which cultural logics continues to stem from the factory floor as human, intellectual, and artistic content within industrialized labor is in no way eliminated, but now expanded outward on a much broader and socially decisive terrain of struggle. Gramsci observes that the alienating processes of production necessitate socialization, and new cultural and educational formations emerge within the factory. The automated movements of the worker do not result in domination so much as a psycho-physical alteration, new forms of hegemony arising alongside new social relations. Once the body’s absorption of automation is complete, “the brain of the worker, far from being mummified, reaches a state of complete freedom” (295). The mechanization of labor does not signal the “spiritual death of man” but rather new demands for intellectual activities for newly unencumbered workers. This necessity is not lost on industrialists, and Gramsci asserts how it is quite the opposite of the “trained gorilla” that emerges from Ford’s mechanized operations, but rather workers with increased potential for radical thought, thereby necessitating education programs born of rationalized labor’s “new kind of worker and new kind of man” (290). Gramsci finds that labor relations are inseparable from modes

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of living and of thinking and feeling life, and the Fordist “psycho-physical nexus,” in suspending the artistic or educative component of craft labor, must therefore replace and relocate these enriching human practices elsewhere: one can walk without having to think about all the movements needed in order to move, in perfect synchronization, all the parts of the body, in the specific way that is necessary for walking. The same thing happens and will go on happening in industry with the basic gestures of trade. One walks automatically and at the same time thinks about whatever one chooses. American industrialists have understood all too well this dialectic inherent in the new industrial methods. They have understood that “trained gorilla” is just a phrase, that “unfortunately” the worker remains a man and even that during his work he thinks more, or at least has greater opportunities for thinking, once he has overcome the crisis of adaptation without being eliminated: and not only does the worker think and realizes that he gets no immediate satisfaction from his work, he realizes that they are trying to reduce him to a trained gorilla, which can lead him into a train of thought that is far from conformist. That the industrialists are concerned about such things is made clear from a whole series of cautionary measures and “educative” initiatives which are well brought out in Ford’s books and the work of Philip. (295–96)

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Gramsci describes how forms of education and human social development remain sutured to the production process, and indeed, Henry Ford’s reframing of the factory itself as an educative space is not a philanthropic measure, but a necessary means by which to identify new pedagogical practices that are unavailable in current university or trade school curriculums (1922, 212). In this historic context, Gramsci redefines the meaning of intellectual as those who conduct a particular practice, one that has nothing to do with the quality or content of their thoughts, but rather your thought’s function within the social relations of production (307–8). Gramsci’s sensitivity to the way the conflation of education and class struggle is at one with the realization of capital as a totalizing system necessitates not only broadening production processes to include new conceptions of the term “intellectual” but also the imperative to create corresponding educative spaces, practices, language, and theories of culture. This catalyzing overlap between the modern “intellectual” and advanced industrialization in the early twentieth century becomes the focus of Christopher Newfield’s Ivy and Industry. Newfield shows that just as large-scale automation begins to upheave American traditions of craft labor, the process of modernizing academia involves forging scientific principles of analysis with the autonomous and self-managing labor systems of this residual artisan class: “Like the tradesman or craftsman, the [academic] professional was to define their own work and not the other way around” (Newfield 2004, 61–62). The “active participation of intelligence, fantasy and initiative on the part of

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the worker” that Gramsci observes being purged by Taylorist automation is displaced and extended into social relationships housed within the American university through the rhetoric of liberal humanism. Liberal humanism represents a legacy of self-development through conservative and supremacist social models in which an enlightened group— typically white, Christian, heterosexual men of the middle and upper class—defines elite education against an image of provincial masses, including all non-Western social and cultural formations (48). This inherent contradiction within the concept—enlargement of human capacity based upon the repression of human captives—allows for great variations in its practice, and Newfield traces its multiple, often oppositional, political valences from its Greek origins to its aesthetic iterations in the romanticism of German philosophy and Wilhelm von Humboldt’s German national university culture, to American transcendentalists and free labor theory of the nineteenth century, to its more recent vacillations as the battleground of the culture wars in contemporary university systems (48–51). Newfield argues that the American scientific-humanist university installed liberal humanism by prolonging a number of nineteenth-century free labor principles to characterize modern academic labor: the practice of experiential knowledge, the value of self-development, support for autonomous individual agency, labor practices free from commerce, and work as a process involving enjoyment. By espousing labor based upon autonomy and aesthetic practices—self-directed work evaluated by affiliated practitioners and premised upon training and cultivating younger colleagues in collaborative settings—university professors instituted working conditions that assimilated anti-managerial theories of free labor.3 These early visions of the American university offered late nineteenth-century society a legitimate form of individual autonomy, a capitalist narrative of upward mobility based on craftwork principles geared toward self-development and identifying teaching, research, and administration as inseparable institutional practices. Newfield’s analysis reveals that at its earliest articulation, the university’s setting in place of liberal humanism offered a theory of how principles of agency, freedom, self-development, experience, and enjoyment could inhabit the realm of work and the entire self in all its activities (Newfield 2004, 59). The American university’s ascendence, itself necessitated by demands emerging from the exponential momentum of capitalist production, momentarily articulates a humanist form of labor organization—the modernization of craft labor—to define human social development as a mode of production itself and liberal humanism as an organizing principle for wide-scale economic structures. This marginal yet crucial experiment differentiated the modern university from the older colleges and, therefore, we may pair the spatial practice of the company town analyzed by Gramsci to the nascent ascendance of a second

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no less significant pedagogical landscape. Here the distinctly American campus emerges to substantiate a professional academic subjectivity that is neither completely corporate nor completely artisanal but rather a place and identity mediating these two dichotomized and competing modes of social organization. The spatial conventions of the campus in this era include the demiurgic construction of a totalizing urban form harmonizing architecture and urban planning placed outside the city center or metropole. Significantly, the replication of the idea of the campus relies upon the spatial syntax of the quadrangle, or “main quad,” whose spatial precursor and primary historical influence is Robert Owen’s parallelogram: a spatial logic designed to articulate principles of the cooperative.

EXPERIMENTAL GARDENS

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Owen’s parallelograms were never constructed; however, the broadening of production to include pedagogical geographies—spaces differentiated as bodies that teach—indeed returns us to post-revolutionary America in which the onset of machinery contributes to a vision of national stability through envelopment within sedentary, intensive, market-oriented agricultural labor as the basis of economic independence and republican virtue (Sweet 2002, 99). In the aftermath of the War of 1812, “native manufacturing” became a leading narrative to fortify republican virtues and conceptualize a national economy that would avoid replicating the European aristocracies the Revolutionary War had been fought to oppose. If poverty, despair, and class antagonism besetting Manchester, London, and Liverpool were not caused by factories, but rather by British management, overpopulation, and economic inflexibility, then the societal threat of manufacturing was not machinery so much as its algorithm, or operating system, the spatial conditions, and organizational structure by which industrialization occurred (Clark 1987, 443). The latter would be the focal concern of the manufacturing system devised at Waltham, Massachusetts, after the war, where national self-sufficiency and state welfare became signature features of the first and only site of comprehensive mechanized production in America. Given the era’s economic isolationism, this factory’s vast accumulation of wealth enabled quick expansion to a larger industrial operation in Lowell in 1821. Within the decade, the necessity to address the social disintegration surrounding the factory was channeled into the creation of an experimental geography built six miles away. With a programmed sequence of visual and spatial experiences intending to evoke emotions that would counsel, instruct, and morally uplift visitors, Mount Auburn Cemetery articulated the first comprehensively planned urban form to express a pedagogically motivated

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rationale enacted through the design of a choreographed landscape. The Boston elite members of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (MHS) designed a site plan in which visitors walk a programmed sequence of spaces meant to invoke lessons through “meditative wanderings” (Linden-Ward 1989, 301). With the creation of what they referred to as an “experimental garden,” the MHS invested in the educative potential of winding pathways through rolling farmland adapted to the local topography of creaks, hills, and wooded areas punctuated by consecrated burial plots marked with marble sculptures, Greek urns, and tombstones (Dearborn 1831). Under the direction of a Harvard botanist, the garden provided educational material through its collection and classification of plant specimens from around the world. Yet a second pedagogical vocation is implemented through the sensory experiences of the space over and beyond the botanical content found at the site. The layout of the garden was designed to improve the morality of an emerging elite class of merchants. In an essay for the North American Review, the president of MHS asserts that the didactic scheme of Mount Auburn is to teach “those who have wealth and leisure, how they may make themselves happy not only without injuring others, but with direct benefit to their fellow men” (405). Mount Auburn seeks to implement an environment to engender an upper class capable of happiness-without-harming-others. As visitors walk the grounds, the pedagogical influence of this space derives from the objectified totality of human life embedded into the infrastructure of the landscape. Educative valorization emerges from the mass of bodies suspended and physically held together with the agential purpose of organizing a palliative form. By focusing on this landscape’s pedagogical mode of production, Mount Auburn may be understood as a methodological counterpart and extension of the innovative coordinated system at work within the Lowell factory. Just as this new manufacturing process interlocked independent trades into one mechanized formation, the “experimental garden” transfers the individual lives and bodies of the deceased into a new collective intelligence, taking sensuous objective form as a body that teaches. While we may note that MHS’ noble intent to educate the wealthy to be less injurious miserably failed, this structured form will catalyze a national rural cemetery movement, the first cultural revolution in American urban space, in which all major cities replicate its site plan and construct their own experimental garden on the edge of their own towns (French 1974). Experimentation with pedagogical landscapes will expand throughout the nineteenth century.4 In addition to the rural cemetery’s early attempt at upperclass reform, Frederick Law Olmsted’s design philosophy for the land-grant college sought to overcome the division of labor by establishing cultural respectability to the agrarian class through providing equal access to the amenities, practices, and resources found in urban centers; the company town,

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most exemplary at Pullman, Illinois utilized aesthetic features in its ground plan to propagate middle-class values to working class men and women in an effort to improve factory efficiency as well as prevent laborers from striking or working elsewhere; the unique spatial formation of what will retroactively be named the campus lies in response to international class warfare of the 1880s and aimed to initiate an urban form that could enact a stronghold for a national economy premised upon worker cooperatives and develop a social class free of political, economic, and state influence; and the industrial park which recast the aesthetics of higher education to once again advance an industrialized urban fabric capable of negating the blight of working class and manual labor associated with factories and tenements typifying Detroit and Pittsburgh. The expansion of the industrial park on the San Francisco peninsula culminates into a transnational urban formation decisively unique to the era of neoliberalism named Silicon Valley (Harvey 1989; O’Mara 2007). Composed entirely of ubiquitous corporate campuses, this urban imaginary provides a geo-economic urban model from Bangalore to Dublin to Skolkovo, setting the groundwork for the smart city as campuses are no longer separate from “the city” nor beholden to identify with any specific place, region, or nation once paramount to the identities and operations at Lowell and Dearborn. Now and from here on pedagogical landscapes function as a means to inculcate global geographies and subjectivities.

R&L THE URBAN AS MONUMENT

In “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology” Fredric Jameson suggests that Gramsci’s theory of counter-hegemony, being a set of ideas, countervalues, and cultural styles that are anticipatory in that they correspond to a material base that has not yet “in reality” been secured, may also be spatially conceived on the basis of Marx’s organic composition, with its own anticipatory claim that “new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured within the womb of the old society” (1989, 49). Thus, Jameson proposes a neo-Gramscian enclave theory of social transition that might be characterized by “strategic pockets or beachheads” in which new and still nascent social relations announce a mode of production which will ultimately displace and subsume the as-yet still dominant one, extending its influence gradually, fanning out from its initial implantations and colonizing what persists around it (50). The cursory map above, charting American pedagogic space from the rural cemetery to the global smart city, reveals an expanding operation of social and spatial infrastructure built with the intention to teach that dialectically corresponds to the ongoing history of the intensification of production

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processes diagnosed by Gramsci. Jameson’s proposal may therefore be utilized to substantiate not necessarily a theory of counter-hegemony so much as an enclave theory of pedagogical landscapes as a force of capitalist production. A second implication of this spatial history and the shifting of valences of education from laborer to intellectual in Gramsci and Newfield’s work is that our identification of the way educative practices now shape the rhetoric of corporate hegemony, economic stability, and global subjectivity offers an unprecedented opportunity for this once marginal modern experiment—the potential of a critical humanist social organization on a global scale—to begin its argument anew. Such a proposal no doubt involves the uncomfortable position of identifying models of political agency within spaces the radical Left needs to condemn, spaces that have become antithetical to the anti- or extra-capitalist values to which the modern university, by space and subjectivity, emerged to coordinate. However, the history and theory of pedagogical landscapes reveal education and the modern university’s complete and ongoing debt to labor, marking such discomfort as the contour of its own kind of class position. The smart city’s monumentalization of urban space is nothing new. Algorithmically informed infrastructure only intensifies what has been felt and known since before the technology of the city grid. Yet the ascension of allegory and algorithm requires strengthening our understanding of the function of socialization within the history of capitalism and identifying the implications regarding the relationship between human subjectivity, educative practice, and modes of production. Each global instance in which a crowd removes a statue designates a collective global action that makes explicit and intolerable the way in which urban space teaches. What international coalitions emerge if we engage this pedagogical force as functioning, not solely through racist monuments, but in the layout, infrastructure, and organization of the world? The current impulse for abolition and placemaking signals the presence of structures of feeling of just such an urban future already tussling with the present. In approaching urban form as bodies that teach, functioning as active forces of production, we may begin to differentiate how buildings, streets, apartments, and highways already feel like monuments precariously holding in place legacies of oppression no less tangible than a statue of Stonewall Jackson.

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1. I define pedagogical geographies as spaces articulating the means of value creation or knowledge production as imagined or realized in their social spatial practice.

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2. “The text-book is the Ford plant,” writes Ford, as “it offers more resources for practical education than most universities” (1922, 212). 3. These traditions date back to the post-revolutionary workingmen’s parties who called for universalizing the right to ownership over production (Gourevitch 2014). 4. Outside America the first environment created by an architect conscious of space’s formative role in influencing productivity and industry is Claude-Nicholas Ledoux’s design for the 1773 Royal Saltworks of Chaux (Vidler 2021).

REFERENCES Bliss, Laura. “When a Tech Giant Plays Waterfront Developer,” Bloomberg CityLab. January 9, 2018. Burch, Audra D.S. “How a National Movement Toppled Hundreds of Confederate Symbols.” New York Times, February 28th, 2022. Clark, Jennifer. 1987. “The American Image of Technology from the Revolution to 1840” American Quarterly 39, no. 3 (Autumn). Cronon, William. 1995. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Dearborn, Henry. 1831. “Mount Auburn Cemetery,” North American Review 33, no. 73 (October): 397–406. Diaz, Johnny, et  al. “How Statues Are Falling Around the World.” The New York Times, June 24, 2020. Ford, Henry. 1922. My Life and Work. New York: Garden City Publishing. French, Stanley. 1974. “The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement.” American Quarterly 26, no. 1 (March): 37–59. Gourevitch, Alex. 2014. From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gramsci, Antonio. 1988. “Americanism and Fordism.” The Antonio Gramsci Reader. Ed. David Forgacs. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Jameson, Fredric. 2000. Brecht and Method. London: Verso. Jameson, Fredric. 1989. “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology” The Ideologies of Theory, Volume 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Linden-Ward, Blanche. 1989. Silent City on a Hill: Landscapes of Memory and Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Langfitt, Frank. “The Protests Heard ‘Round the World,” NPR News. September 16, 2020. Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The Urban Revolution. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. MacFarquhar, Neil. “Jury Finds Rally Organizers Responsible for Charlottesville Violence.” New York Times, November 21, 2021.

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O’Mara, Margaret Pugh. 2005. Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Meyer, David. “How One European Smart City Is Giving Power Back to Its Citizens,” Alphr. July 7, 2017. Newfield, Christopher. 2004. Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880–1980. Durham: Duke University Press. Picon, Antoine. 2015. Smart Cities: A Spatialized Intelligence. London: Wiley. Schneider, Gregory S. “Charlottesville city council votes to remove Confederate statues that were the focus of violent 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally.” Washington Post. June 8 2021. Richter, Christine and Linnet Taylor. 2015. “Big Data and Urban Governance” in Geographies of Urban Governance: Advanced Theories, Methods, and Practices. Eds. Joyeeta Gupta, Karin Pfeffer, Hebe Verrest, Mirjam Ros-Tonen. Cham: Springer. “Slave Trader Statue Torn Down in Bristol Anti-Racism Protest.” BBC News, June 7, 2020. https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/av​/uk​-52954994. Sweet, Timothy. 2002. American Georgics: Economy and Environment in Early American Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Vidler, Anthony. 2021. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Utopia in the Era of the French Revolution. Basel: Birkhäuser. White, James Merricks. 2016. “Anticipatory Logics of the Smart City’s Global Imaginary.” Urban Geography 37, no. 4 (March): 572–589. Whitney, Violet and Brian Ho. “A First Step Toward the Future of Neighborhood Design,” Sidewalk Labs. June 3, 2022. Williams, Raymond. 1980. “Ideas of Nature.” Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso.

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Part II

CULTURESCAPES OF RAPID URBANIZATION

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Chapter 5

Memory, Nostalgia, and Asakusa in Contemporary Japanese Cinema and Television Mina Qiao

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Tokyo is a “maze of spatial memory archives” a confusing network of passages connected through times overlapped with experiences of the past and ongoing changes, which has withstood the great earthquake, war, and dramatic rebuild (Thornbury and Schulz 2018, vii). Traces of the historical transformation of Tokyo can be found in the urban landscape of Asakusa, which is a pathway to access the city’s memories. Due to its urban history, Asakusa serves as an enchanted space which embodies a sociocultural past, adding a magical flair to the narratives it involves. This chapter examines Asakusa in popular cultural representations and discusses the narrative functions of its space in films. Most know Asakusa because it is the most vibrant tourist spot in today’s Tokyo. Asakusa is located in the northeast to central Tokyo, on the banks of Sumida River, at the heart of shitamachi—the “low city,” which traditionally refers to the topographic lowlands where town folks reside below the Edo Castle, as opposed to yamanote the “high city” of the rulers and samurai aristocracy of the fifteenth century. As a sakariba (public space of entertainment and pleasure) and the manifestation of an erstwhile modern civilization, Asakusa is the metonym of Tokyo’s cultural past. While today’s Tokyo is constantly under construction and trying to keep up in economic and social terms (Thornbury and Schulz 2018, x), the Asakusa framed in contemporary visual narratives often resembles an idealized “good old time,” offering a warm and welcoming home to wandering souls in the labyrinthlike and ever-changing city. I examine the films Ijintachi to no natsu (1988; The Discarnates) directed by Ōbayashi Nobuhiko, Seiten no hekireki (2014; A Bolt from the Blue), directed by Gekidan Hitori, and the TV drama Ribāsu ejji ōkawabata tanteisha (2014; Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency), 81

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which are set in Asakusa and represent the place through various narrative strategies. I will analyze these works as visual texts from a narrative-based approach and place the visual Asakusa of these films in the urban history of the lived Asakusa. The Asakusa represented in these narratives, an emblem of memories and nostalgia, subverts the linear progress of time for remembrance, reunion, and reconciliation. A place that has fallen behind rapid development, Asakusa in popular cultural narratives signifies unfading warmth and sincerity in a transient world.

ASAKUSA AS TOKYO’S CULTURAL PAST Asakusa has a long and rich history of celebrated glories and traumatic memories. The earliest textual record of Asakusa dates back to the historical chronicle Azuma Kagami (Mirror of the East), edited by the Kamakura government, which documents events from 1180 to 1266. It had been a nondescript town until it received nationwide recognition because of the patronage of the founding warlord of Tokugawa Shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542– 1616) for the Sensōji in 1590 (Hur 2000, 2). Asakusa’s prosperity has been associated with Sensōji’s religious functions of providing divine protection. Such areas which were developed surrounding the shrines or temples were known as monzenmachi. During the Edo period (1603–1868), the area grew into a downtown entertainment district for commoners, due to its proximity to Yoshiwara, the pleasure quarter. Major Kabuki theaters moved to the area in 1841 (Hur 2000, 2) and the regular Kannon viewing activities also drew large crowds in Asakusa (Zhao and Li 2019, 26). In 1873, the Meiji government announced their plan to build an urban park in the Asakusa area, which later became known as the Asakusa Park. The construction plan divided the area into seven districts, which included the sixth district, Rokku, the most well-known and bustling district among all seven, and the stage of The Discarnates, the novel, which was later adapted into a film. Beginning with the opening of Tokizawa theater in 1887, Rokku flourished with sites for stage performance, opera, and film and established its status as the cultural center of Asakusa. The year 1890 saw the highlight of Asakusa in urban history when the high-rise building Ryōunkaku (cloud-surpassing tower) was completed. It was located inside Asakusa Park, and hence, it was also commonly known as “Asakusa jūnikai,” which literally means Asakusa twelve-stories. With being dubbed as Japan’s own Eiffel Tower, Ryōunkaku immediately became a tourist attraction. Nevertheless, this short-lived building was severely destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and had to be demolished. Ryōunkaku was the epitome of Asakusa’s most renowned days, and its falling, a tragic

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event, echoes with the area’s decline. Hiraishi Noriko comments that Ryōunkaku’s existence, however fleeting it was, marks Japanese modernity at the turn of the nineteenth century. It symbolizes civilization and enlightenment; showcases culture, science, and technology of the time; and lives on as a metaphor of modernization in literary imaginations (Hiraishi 2013, 95–96). Calamity continued to haunt Asakusa during World War II, as the area was largely destroyed by the 1945 Tokyo air raid. The area regained its vitality in the postwar period with the emergence of multiple entertainment facilities such as theaters of movie and stage performances in the area. However, the popularization of color television since the early 1960s soon sank the business of cinemas and theaters (Yomota 2019, 127–29), leading to their closure, thereby changing the scene of Asakusa streets rapidly. With the fame of “eigakan no machi” (the streets of cinema), Asakusa Rokku, the most popular district suffers the most drastic transformation. This was the inevitable fate of Asakusa and all Tokyo shitamachis. As Edward Seidensticker notes in Low City, High City (1983), “The High City [yamanote] gets higher and higher. The Low City [shitamachi] is still the warmer and more approachable of the two, but days of its cultural eminence are gone” (Seidensticker 1983, 251). Yamanote symbolizes a space of socioeconomic privilege, whereas shitamachi offers “‘old Tokyo’ authenticity” in its fading glories (Thornbury and Schulz 2018, xiii). Asakusa, with its distinctive cultural and sociological implications, not only denotes nostalgia but also symbolizes the past and the legacy in the collective memories of Tokyoites and Japanese. Asakusa as a sightseeing location preserves the essence of Edo in its temples and streetscape that imitates the past. It is special not only because the temples survive the air raids (1944–1945), but because the temples as well as secular culture developed around the site stand as a momentous venue in Japan’s history of religion, urbanization, and modernization. The transformation of this area, therefore, elicits profound sentiments, evoking a sense of loss in representations.

R&L THE SUPERNATURAL ASAKUSA: GHOSTS AND TIME-TRAVELLING

The award-winning film The Discarnates is a prominent example of Asakusa being a magical margin. It is adapted from the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize-winning novel Ijintachi to no natsu (1987; Strangers, 2003) by Yamada Taichi (b. 1934), and directed by Ōbayashi Nobuhiko (1938–2020).1 Ichikawa Shinichi (1941–2011) rewrote the text into a screenplay, keeping the main plots unchanged while slipping in scenes that spotlight sentiments of urban nostalgia. The author Yamada himself was born in Asakusa Ward, which is now the

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Asakusa area of Taitō Ward.2 His parents ran a cafeteria in Asakusa Rokku. During Yamada’s childhood, the area was a major entertainment attraction for its plenitude of cinemas and theaters. The author’s nostalgia for Asakusa is transferred to the protagonist, Harada Hideo (played by Kazama Morio), a middle-aged divorcee and a television screenwriter, magically reunited with his deceased parents on a fateful visit to his birthplace Asakusa. His parents looked just as how he remembered them, in their thirties, even younger than Harada. He then frequents them in their old home in Asakusa, where the urbanscape also supernaturally adopts its past form. His heart warms up and he begins to date a woman named Kei. Nevertheless, his health deteriorates as this unearthly connection has been draining his energy. Harada’s parents bid their farewell to him, and Harada discovers that his lover Kei is also a ghost. The film ends with Kei also vanishing and Harada going back to the old apartment building in Asakusa burning incense and praying for his parents. The apartment now appears in its real form, as an empty plot. A strong sense of loss and nostalgia amid the rapid economic development pervades this story. Set in Asakusa, Gekidan Hitori (b. 1977)’s A Bolt from the Blue has a very similar framework to The Discarnates of reunion and reconciliation. A Bolt from the Blue is a film adaptation of the director Gekidan’s own 2010 novel of the same title. With no family or career, Todoroki Haruo (played by Ōizumi Yō) is a third-rate magician/bartender at a magician-themed bar in Asakusa, struggling to make ends meet. Haruo is hit by a bolt of lightning and is transferred from the present back to Asakusa in the year 1973. While performing at Kaminarimon Hall theater, he befriends his parents from that year. After discovering secrets about his parents, Haruo returns to the present and reconciles with his long-estranged father. In the same year as A Bolt from the Blue’s release, TV Tokyo produced a late-night TV drama called Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency, which accounts for stories of tracing memories in Asakusa. The production is adapted from the comics of the same title by Karibu Marei (1947–2018) and Tanaka Akio (b. 1956) serialized in the magazine Shūkan manga goraku. On TV Tokyo’s official webpage, the show is described as “strange tales from a tiny detective agency on the bank of Sumida River at Asakusa Kannon’ura.”3 The area of Asakusa Kannon’ura is known to the locals as “ura-asakusa,” which means the undiscovered side of Asakusa away from the bustling areas. The main characters, the investigator Muraki (played by Odagiri Jō), the nameless Shōchō (director-general), and the reception girl Megumi, work at a detective agency. In each episode, they would take on a case, tracking down persons or items for their clients, which are often deeply connected with the clients’ past. The supernatural element continues in Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency in the form of Muraki’s prophetic dreams. Every episode opens with a dream of Muraki that predicts the case they are about to take.

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Varying in stories and styles, all three narratives deploy Asakusa as a supernatural location that bridges the present with the past. Both The Discarnates and Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency depict the protagonists seeking ethereal and phantom-like characters. Lying at the center of these pursuits are the changes of Asakusa in postwar urban development. Stories become a chronicle of ghostly history. Ghosts are employed as metaphors of Asakusa’s historical past, because history itself is ghostly. As Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle note, Ghosts, in a sense, are history. They do not, after all, come from nowhere, even if they may appear to do just that. They are always inscribed in a context: they at once belong to and haunt the idea of a place (hence “spirit of place” or genius loci), and of a time (what we could call a “spirit of time” or rather differently what is called the “spirit of the age” or Zeitgeist). In other words, it is possible to trace a history of ghosts, as well as to think about history itself as ghostly, as what can in some form or other always come back. (Bennett and Royle 2004, 133–34, italics in the original)

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Harada’s supernatural reunion with his parents’ ghosts intertwines with the urban history of Asakusa. As a crucial plot, Harada’s access to the other world is through an abandoned subway terminal. When visiting a closed station with the production team conducting field research for his script, Harada becomes separated from the others and runs alone in the dark, helpless and terrified. The tunnel is an imagery for birth canal, implying a rebirth and a chance at redemption. Eventually, he finds an exit and comes out to a parking lot, completing this symbolic rebirth. In the following scene, Harada is in a phone booth calling workplace and then he walks toward the nearby station, which is the Shinbashi station of the Ginza Line. The camera shows the Ginza subway line and the signs for both directions and captures the protagonist’s delight the moment he has decided to visit Asakusa. This interlude of Harada’s visit to the abandoned station is a significant transition from reality to the other world. It hints at the supernatural happenings and echoes with the theme of loss and nostalgia during urban development. Both the location of Shinbashi area and the information that “it has been closed for only eight months” from the railway company employee hint at the abandoned station being the Shoidome Freight Terminal of the Japanese National Railways in reality. Shoidome Freight Terminal served as the Tokyo terminal for Japan’s first railway between Tokyo and Yokohama from 1872 under the name “Shinbashi.” It was converted to a freight terminal and named “Shiodome” in 1914, and was closed on November 1, 1986. This abandoned station saw rapid urban growth in 1980s Japan. Like countless other abandoned stations and buildings, it undergoes inevitable changes. What is left of it becomes a

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historical legacy as well as a residue of urban development, resonating with the backstory of Asakusa. The phantom station offers a linkage to the past through the ruins, giving out a mystical and uncanny aura. The underground terminal resembles the underworld of the dead and is therefore perfect as the starting point of such an enchanted journey. The darkness down there renders it an obscure and chaotic space which symbolizes “the past,” not any specific time in the terminal’s history over a hundred years, but the very idea of a sealed and unattainable past as opposed to “the present” that grants access and allows action. The protagonist is the only one who wanders into “the past,” which indicates his encounters with the dead. The protagonist Harada’s reunion with the ghosts of his parents in the story is thus him, and us as the audience, reviewing the history of Asakusa. In the same means, the fourth episode “Idol-Momonoki Marin” of Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency internalizes history in a ghostly character. A middle-aged man comes to the agency with a gramophone record in research for a female idol named Momonoki Marin, who made her debut about 30 years ago, right around the time when Matsuda Seiko, Nakamori Akina, and Koizumu Kyōko were popularly known as the golden age of idols (aidoru zenseiki). But she had disappeared before making it. The man, now, laid off in his company’s downsizing has lost all purpose of life and wants to meet Marin in order for him to start his life afresh. The second half of the episode has a twist, Marin, whose real name is Mizuno Hiromi, turns out to be a man. The teenage Mizuno was scouted by a jimusho (idol production/management firm) for his feminine “bishōnen (beautiful young boy)” looks. The jimusho coached him to adopt the persona of Momonoki Marin and packaged him to intimate Matsuda Seiko and even gave him a Seiko signature bob haircut. The music record “Hitomi ni A-kyū hozon (A-class preservation in your eyes)” which the client bought was Mizuno’s debut single (as Marin) and his only song. Six months after the debut, Mizuno began to grow mustache and larynx and was sacked by the jimusho. Mizuno declares that “the girl called Momonoki Marin never existed.” The nostalgia and sense of loss are articulated through the story of Marin, situated in the transformation of the Japanese idol industry in the Shōwa period (1926–1989). It is the talent show “Sutā tanjō! (A star is born!)” produced by Nippon Television that popularized the industry of “aidoru (idol).” Running from 1971 to 1983, this show promoted many talents including superstars such as Yamaguchi Momoe, Nakamori Akina, and Koizumu Kyōko, who were the very faces of the Shōwa mass cultural life. In the golden era, the industry saw between 40 and 50 new idols every year (Galbraith and Karlin 2012, 5). Innumerous ambitious youths tried their luck in this business and most vanished after just one debut single similar to the fictional

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character Momonoki Marin. In the story Mizuno’s experience as an idol, though with dramatic exaggeration, reflects the cut-throat reality of this field. In the golden era of idols, everyone wanted a share of the flourishing market. However, only very few, with both good fortune and talent, could become household names. The dissolution of the idol group Onyanko kurabu in 1987 ushered the ice age of the idol industry, known as “aidoru fuyu no jidai (the wintertime of idols).” “[M]arket saturation, scandal, and competition from other types of music” ended the prosperity of the idol industry (Galbraith 2012, 192). Although the fervor for idols was revived with the music albums Morning Musume, SAMP, and AKB 48 shortly in the 1990s and 2000s, the national vehemence for the idol in an epoch of constructing Japan’s own pop music, fashion, media, and entertainment during postwar economic growth cannot be recreated. Literally a ghost of history, Momonoki Marin, the phantom idol who never existed, symbolizes everything abandoned and left behind the times, including Mizuno and the client who is dismissed in the economic downturn by the company he has served for 30 years. This is another story in Asakusa, of individuals being crushed by the forward-march of history. As the climax of the song by Momonoki Marin goes, “Forget me not, forget me not, please forget me not. Always keep in A-class preservation, never erase me,” Asakusa is underlined as a site of history and memories.

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Following the protagonists’ steps, we are flaneurs tracing the city’s past. Harada’s in The Discarnates is a hunt of the past in the present, and he is a diachronic flaneur, literally a walker through time. In a very thorough portrayal of the lonesome protagonist against bleak Asakusa Rokku, names of locations and buildings appear frequently in the original novel, and the film version documents urbanscape following Harada’s movements. Harada takes the Kaminarimon Gate exit out of the subway and strolls along with stalls on his way to Sensōji Temple. The original text in particular broaches the gone landmark—what is shown in the film through its nonexistence. Being reluctant to go near places associated with his childhood such as “the International Theater, or the streets around Honganji Temple or Tawara-machi Station,” Harada remarks, This being Tokyo, I knew that no matter how far removed they might be from the center of Asakusa, those neighborhoods could not possibly look much like they had more than 30 years ago, and yet I remained fearful of venturing into them. (Yamada 2005, 33)

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As Harada notes, the International Theater was torn down making way for a high-rise hotel. In reality, the International Theater was closed in 1982 and the Asakusa View Hotel opened on its ground in 1985. Harada’s discovery of a new building here makes him more depressed as he foresees a complete change of this area in the near future. “To me, this bright, sanitized building was a greater scar upon the townscape than the closed and boarded-up theaters or the bare lots that remained where buildings had been torn down” (Yamada 2005, 35). After looping back from the street in front of the ward office and stopping for dinner at an eel restaurant, Harada sets foot in the theater district only to find it “nearly deserted” with a “forlorn air” and “the atmosphere of an old forgotten byway” (Yamada 2005, 34–35). Asakusa is a town of despair and Harada doubts if the old buildings will survive Tokyo’s fast pace. Soon everything he is familiar with would be gone, leaving only unhealed scars, just like his parents’ sudden death in an accident. The ephemerality of Tokyo’s spatial making mirrors Harada’s parents’ death, both being unpreventable vicissitudes that traumatize Harada. The first episode “The Last Supper” of Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency also touches on loss embedded in the changing landscape. In a mission to find a restaurant called Chūraku 喋楽 for a yakuza head, Megumi runs an internet search for degeneration (chūraku) 凋落, having confused it with the restaurant name. She reads out loud what she finds: “It is about since Shōwa forties, Asakusa began to approach its degeneration. Although the Skytree effect did spike the number of tourists, it was not enough to stop the degeneration of Asakusa.” The Tokyo Skytree is currently the highest tower worldwide, a Tokyo landmark located in close proximity to the Asakusa area. It combines multiple facilities for broadcasting, restaurant, and observation and has been opened to the public since 2012. The “Skytree effect” refers to how Skytree attracts a large number of tourists and promotes tourism of the otherwise less-visited Asakusa, now that one can easily visit two sites at one time (Hill 2016, 79). Tokyo Skytree is “both an emblem of the digital age” and “a kind of latter-day Ryōunkaku” (Thornbury 2020, 61). But (just as Megumi has found out on the internet) even Skytree cannot prevent Asakusa from becoming an outdated cultural underdog in the postmodern days (Hill 2016, 79). For all its resemblance with Ryōunkaku, Tokyo Skytree cannot overhaul Asakusa’s glory in the days of Ryōunkaku, which, understandably, is a mission that is impossible in the era of technologies. In the story, this Chinese restaurant at the outskirts of Asakusa was demolished during the redevelopment of the bubble period. As the plot unfolds, Muraki tracks down the chef and has him cook for the yakuza head. Shōchō tells Muraki that “Takashirogumi [the yakuza organization] is on the verge of deconstruction. Their territory is taken by a large organization from Kansai. Almost all the organizations from the old time are annexed [by the new

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ones]. Almost every one of Takashirogumi has gone. The only one left is that guy named Yabe.” Muraki realizes that this is “the last supper” for the head and Yabe before they welcome their death battling with the organization from Kansai. Through the figures of the chef and the yakuza head, gray and decrepit, we see the yesterday of Asakusa that is fading. The disappearance of the restaurant Chūraku, the redevelopment and commodification of shitamachi, the reference to Japan’s asset bubble (1986–1991) and the subsequent economic recession,4 the intended pun on the degeneration of Asakusa and of the old-timers, and the foreseeable demise of the yakuza head, all intensify the sense of loss. In the case of the 1980s Asakusa, the replacements reflect the alternation of different forms of entertainment and lifestyles due to technological advances. Amid the economic growth, Asakusa which used to thrive on mass entertainment and outdated activities (e.g., theater, rakugo (traditional art of comic storytelling), misemonogoya (freak show)) is now left out of the prosperity.

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SWEET HOME ASAKUSA: A SPIRITUAL HOME Furthermore, Asakusa is represented as the spiritual home of the characters in these works. Relationships and yearning for a “home” are shared themes of all three works. Rediscovering the capability to love is the protagonist’s hidden task in The Discarnates, and Asakusa is the home that facilitates his character development. The scene in which Harada’s parents bid their goodbye also portrays the characters’ movements along the streets in detail, as the scene which leads to the characters’ reunion. We should note that all the actions and intentions of the characters—paying prayer at the temple, walking toward Kaminarimon Gate and across International Avenue, buying street snacks, having a meal at a famous local restaurant—are linked with the spatial traits of Asakusa. In other words, the location is central to the scene. In the departing scene, what evokes a great sense of loss is not only the vanishing of the loved ones but also the disappearance of the familiar townscape. The final shots display a veiled image of the road before Hoganji Temple and the landscape vaporizing like a fading watercolor painting, and then the business streets and the Rokku cinema street vanishing one after another. The last frame of the film nicely culminates the story in nostalgia by showing a riverboat flowing down the stream of the Sumida River and disappearing into the distance soon, with the voice-over of young Harada and his parents’ cheerful daily conversation in the background which fades out together with the image of the landscape. Edo city (Tokyo in the Edo period) was considered the Oriental Venice as the city was dependent on rivers and waterways for transportation and commercial activities. The waterways were

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critical to the city’s formation and development (Schulz 2011, 160). Sumida River is a symbol of heritage, tradition, and essence of Edo-Tokyo. A symbol that mourns the past, the Sumida River is the best-concluding remark of The Discarnates. Harada’s magical encounter both starts and ends in Asakusa, his birthplace and the site of his warming childhood memories. While his parents birthed Harada, Asakusa nourished him. In their reunion, Asakusa comes to embody the parents’ love for Harada. Familial bonds and the space of Asakusa complement each other in Harada’s rediscovery of affection and also his own capability to love others; the representation of one would have been inadequate without the other. Different from The Discarnates which is a horror drama, A Bolt from the Blue is in the genre of fantasy comedy. Nostalgia in this film serves as a comical element rather than a reminder of loss, but both narratives represent Asakusa as the eternal spiritual home. The director Gekidan teases out the optimistic side of nostalgia in this production. As sociologists, Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley suggest,

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[n]ostalgia may also be seen as seeking a viable alternative to the acceleration of historical time, one that attempts a form of dialogue with the past and recognizes the value of continuities in counterpart to what is fleeting, transitory and contingent. (Pickering and Keightley 2000, 923)

During Haruo’s transition to 1973 Asakusa, he has rediscovered familial love and recognized the sacrifices of his parents. This nostalgia does not reject the present but aids comprehension and acceptance of it. The past is therefore represented as less sentimental and more upbeat. For example, the film encapsulates the year 1973 in Tokyo Giants’ ninth consecutive victories in professional baseball. Even the popularization of color television which led to the decline of Asakusa, as discussed earlier, is used as a punchline (seeing a panda in color television) by rakugo performers at the theater. In A Bolt from the Blue, Asakusa is the sweet home for escapade and comfort. Despite sharing the same theme and structure, The Discarnates and A Bolt from the Blue present two distinctive nostalgias as in the taxonomy studied by Barbara Stern (1992)—personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia. The Discarnates is marked by personal nostalgia, Harada’s idealization of his “personally remembered past” and his pursuit of “sentimentalized ‘home’ of [his] childhood,” that is furusato (the notion for an idealized hometown) in the 1940s Asakusa (Stern 1992, 16). Haruo in A Bolt from the Blue experiences a historical nostalgia, an escape fantasy that views the distant past before his birth as superior, similar to the nostalgia in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011) (Stern 1992, 13). In The Discarnates produced at the height of the economic bubble the sense of personal loss is stronger. A Bolt from the Blue is born out of economic stagnation. At that time, Japan’s economy had yet to

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recover from the bubble burst and took another blow from the 2008 global financial crisis. An imaginary return to 1973, the year when Japan’s economy entered the phase of stable growth, is thus plausible. The affinity for an escape from the problem-laden present is more intense in A Bolt from the Blue. Rather than romanticizing or glorifying shitamachi Asakusa, Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency celebrates it in all its dilapidation. In Episode One, Yabe follows Muraki, when the latter buys information from an old man in the neighborhood with cash. Yabe is disillusioned and grunts that he’d thought the old forks in shitamachi would be more of “ninjō-mi” (a sense of sentiments and human touch). Muraki replies that “shitamachi has no such thing as ninjō. [Shitamachi] is like a theme park, taking money from tourists and playing the part of shitamachi.” Muraki’s remark aligns with Paul Waley’s (2002) view of shitamachi being a cultural imagination for consumption. Waley writes, With the material prosperity of contemporary Japan, the Shitamachi that was marginalized can now be celebrated. It can be celebrated for its associations with the Tokugawa capital of Edo, a link that is easily translated into patterns and styles commodified and sold in the marketplace of national and international tourism. [. . .] Shitamachi life can be seen as simpler and happier, a more feminine space of community as against the masculine world of corporate life. It is a part of the memory, a place absorbed into the mind and applied anywhere one wants it to be or nowhere at all. It is a space of the imagination. (Waley 2002, 1548)

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However, in this TV show, the commodification of shitamachi in contemporary tourism does not mean that there is no authenticity here. Yabe’s own loyalty and devotion to the head during a difficult time testifies to the warmth of shitamachi. In other episodes, the show has also portrayed touching family bonds, romantic love, and friendship, upholding a shitamachi of community spirit, in spite of Muraki’s cynical comment. “Forget me not, forget me not, please forget me not. Always keep in A-class preservation, never erase me,” the song at the end of Episode Four “Idol-Momonoki Marin,” the client is riding with Mizuno in his trunk, learning how to run this business as a second career, and the two singing along to the last bit of the song, “Even though we don’t have it figured out yet, Que sera sera. Let it run its own course. There’ll be a tomorrow, Que sera sera.” A story of loss, nostalgia, and futile ends hopefully. After everything it has been through, Asakusa today still keeps a spirit of resilience and radiates warmth to those who seek a spiritual home. CONCLUSION Asakusa is not the only neighborhood that becomes deserted and forgotten in Tokyo’s encroachment as a global city but merely an instance among

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the majority of shitamachi areas in the constant spatial remaking. Produced decades apart, The Discarnates as well as A Bolt from the Blue and Rivers Edge Ōkawabata Detective Agency employ Asakusa as the ideal furusato, the home and native place for one’s heart and spirit, for its historical and cultural eminences. The image of Asakusa interacts with the characters and facilitates their local experiences. Asakusa’s history serves as a part of the narratives, and its urbanscape is an emotional outlet for characters dwelling in nostalgia. These works manifest the filmic Asakusa as a spatial metaphor, employing its unique quality to tell tales of fantasies and memories. In socioeconomic conditions great or bad, Asakusa stands unwavered as a lighthouse for those who long for emotional stability in the era of rapid development, mass consumption, and materialism. As suggested by Jinnai Hidenobu historical legacy can prevail over the passing of time and the destruction of buildings (Jinnai 1995, 21). Multilayered Tokyo is always shifting, but the past, though invisible to the eyes, remains hidden underneath, just as the spirits of the beloved ones.

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1. With successful television dramas such as Sannin kazoku (1968–1969 TBS; Family of three) and Kishibe no arubamu (1977 TBS; Album by the water), Yamada’s reputation as a screenwriter precedes that as a novelist. 2. In 1947, Shitaya Ward and Asakusa Ward were merged and transformed into the Taitō Ward that we have come to know now. 3. https://www​.tv​-tokyo​.co​.jp​/ookawabata/ 4. In the period from 1986 to 1991, Japan’s asset prices were greatly inflated, and this is known as baburu keiki. After the economic bubble burst in 1991, the Japanese economy went into stagnation. The following economic downturn is referred to as “ushinawareta 20-nen (the lost twenty years).”

REFERENCES Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. 2004. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Third Edition. Harlow: Pearson. Galbraith, Patrick W. 2012. “Idols: The Image of Desire in Japanese Consumer Capitalism,” In Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture, edited by Patrick W. Galbraith and Jason G. Karlin, 185–208. London: Palgrave. Galbraith, Patrick W. and Jason G. Karlin. 2012. “Introduction: The Mirror of Idols and Celebrity,” In Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture, edited by Patrick W. Galbraith and Jason G. Karlin, 1–34. London: Palgrave. Hill, Megan Elizabeth. 2016. “Asakusa Ondo: Soundscape, Agency, Montage, and Place in a Dynamic Tokyo Neighborhood.” PhD diss., University of Michigan. https://deepblue​.lib​.umich​.edu​/handle​/2027​.42​/120769

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Hiraishi, Noriko. 2013. “A Fallen Landmark and the Literary Imagination: The Ryounkaku in Modern Japanese Literature.” Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 6, no. 2 (June): 93–104. Hur, Nam-Lin. 2000. Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan: Asakusa Sensōji and Edo Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center. Jinnai, Hidenobu. 1995. Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology. Translated by. Kimiko Nishimura Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Pickering, Michael and Emily Keightley. 2000. “The Modalities of Nostalgia.” Current Sociology 54, no. 6: 919–941. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0011392106068458 Schulz, Evelyn. 2011. “Nagai Kafū’s Reflections on Urban Beauty in Hiyorigeta: Reappraising Tokyo’s Back Alleys and Waterways.” Review of Asian and Pacific Studies 36: 139–164. Seidensticker, Edward. 1983. Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: How the Shogun’s Ancient Capital Became a Great Modern City, 1867– 1923. New York: Knopf. Stern, Barbara B. 1992. “Historical and Personal Nostalgia in Advertising Text: The Fin de siècle Effect,” Journal of Advertising 21, no. 4: 11–22. http://www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/4188854. Thornbury, Barbara E. 2020. Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film. Cham: Palgrave, 2020. Thornbury, Barbara E. and Evelyn Schulz. 2018. “Introduction,” In Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City, edited by Barbara E. Thornbury and Evelyn Schulz, viixxii. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington. Waley, Paul. 2002. “Moving the Margins of Tokyo.” Urban Studies 39, no. 9: 1533–1550. Yamada, Taichi. 2005. Stranger. Translated by Wayne P. Lammers. London: Faber. Yomota, Inuhiko. 2019. What is Japanese Cinema? A History. Translated by Philip Kaffen. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhao, Val and Roger Li. 2019. “Asakusa Spectacle: Ritual, Commerce and Entertainment.” In Asakusa: Gateway to the Floating World, edited by Connor Gewritz and Anna Campbell, 23–30. Rhode Island: Rhode Island School of Design.

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Chapter 6

Filming the City Embodying Interruption Dikshya Karki

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Interruptions are part of the daily routine of urban conditions, unpredictable, and spontaneous but often routinely coordinated. They disrupt the flow of urban spaces, initiate new forms of civic engagement and foster innovation, creativity, and contribute to the vitality of cities in unexpected ways. In this chapter, I focus on the filmic landscape of Kathmandu and use interruption as a critical lens to articulate alternate understandings of film locations shaped by urban development. I propose filmic interruptions as coordinated but fluid undertakings that are part of location filming in cities from the Global South that transform everyday spaces and rupture urban mobilities. I discuss observations from my doctoral fieldwork on Nepal’s film industry where public and private spaces were altered into film sets in different areas of Kathmandu. By presenting three descriptive excerpts from my field notes and documenting each shooting schedule and location, I offer insights into the structure of location filming and the nature of urban interruption in Kathmandu. The coordinated interruptions from film crews disrupted the public lives of individuals and the physical and social dynamics of urban spaces. The sets of Doctor Strange (2016) were a massive undertaking in the palace core of Patan, while two other filming schedules were small-scale operations in lesser-known enclaves of Kathmandu, specifically Balaju and Baneshwor. I will begin by presenting my field notes; discuss the urban histories of Kathmandu, its attraction as a touristic center, and filming location; and investigate the sites of Patan, Baneshwor, and Balaju.

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LOCATION FIELD NOTES First, in November 2015, the Marvel film Doctor Strange (2016) had a shooting schedule at Patan Durbar Square. I, like many passersby in the area, was unaware of it. The Patan Museum and surrounding temples were blocked and the international and local crew, distinct in their black T-shirts, were directing visitors and residents to take a different route. We stood behind the restricted area confused, trying to catch a glimpse of actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Chiwetel Ejiofor who were rumored to be filming inside. Besides being a major tourist attraction, the palace square is a thriving public space used by locals and visitors to rest, socialize, walk around, and visit deities housed in different surrounding temples. An old woman, a local, who lived on the other side of the Bhimsen temple joined our crowd. She was asked by one of the crew members to use another way. She appeared puzzled, refused to listen to the crewmember, poked the tape with her umbrella, bent under it, and walked to the other side. A film shooting on the premises of the palace square could not interrupt the daily rhythm of her walk. The rest of the younger crowd, more self-conscious, continued to obey instructions from the crew and watched the shooting from across the line as smoke filled the premises and actors in priest costumes surrounded the square to create an exotic ambiance for the film. Second, in September 2018, I visited the sets of Gopi (2019), being directed by former journalist and film critic Dipendra Lama. He had informed me that the shooting was taking place in the Balaju intersection. There was heavy traffic and dust due to diversions that were created as a result of ongoing constructions in the area. I walked around the crossroad a few times looking for signs of a film set and was finally able to locate a small film crew gathered outside a veterinary shop (figure 6.1). The pavement and the road in front of the shop were filled with crewmembers. The film director, cinematographer, assistant directors, light men, and supporting crew appeared to be waiting for someone. I inquired with one of the assistants about what was happening. He told me that actor Bipin Karki was arriving and entering the shop. We waited for him to park his motorbike in front of the pavement on the road and enter the shop. Some other bikers on the road stopped by to see what was happening and the crew members asked them to ride away as they would be part of the frame. Soon the actor arrived (figure 6.2). He parked his motorbike on the road and entered the shop. The first time he was unable to open his helmet and asked for a retake. The director approved the second take. After this, the shooting moved inside the shop. The crew and passersby including me who were standing outside to see what was happening were blocking the pavement outside the shop (figure 6.3).

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Figure 6.1  The Crew of Gopi (2019) in Front of a Veterinary Shop in Balaju, Kathmandu, in Preparation for Filming. Source: Author’s photo.

At the same time, there was a school break in a nearby primary school in the neighborhood. Parents who had come to pick up their children from school were taking the same route home. They stopped at the blocked pavement as the crew requested them to use the road instead. Some children bent below the pavement railing to get outside the pavement to the road (figure 6.4). They agreed and took a diversion even if it was uncomfortable.​​​​ Third, I met filmmaker Aryam Nakarmi during a shooting schedule of the Newari language comedy series Dad and Son at his friend’s private house in Thapa Gaun, Baneshwor, in December 2018. The small crew consisting of the director, cinematographer, makeup artist, and two actors seemed well acquainted with the house. A few scenes were filmed outside the house as construction noises from new buildings in the neighborhood continued. The crew then moved inside and in a well-coordinated manner, avoided large décors or photographs which belonged to the house owners, using the open space in the living area and stairs. They packed up after a few hours and left the venue for tea in a nearby cafe. I joined them. After about 20 minutes, Nakarmi received a call from the house owner that the remote control from the television in the living room was missing. He requested his friend to recheck but since he did not find it, he went to buy a new one.

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Figure 6.2  Actor Bipin Karki Arriving in His Motorcycle as Part of a Scene. Source: Author’s photo.

Figure 6.3  The Filming Moves Inside the Veterinary Clinic and a Crowd Gathers Outside to Watch. Source: Author’s photo.

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Figure 6.4  Pedestrians Are Requested to Walk Away from the Footpath by a Crew Member of Gopi (2019) and They Comply. Source: Author’s photo.

FRAMING INTERRUPTION

These three excerpts from my fieldwork offer glimpses into the nature of location filming in Kathmandu Valley,1 Nepal, against the backdrop of ongoing infrastructural development. Each film location visit marked by interruption reflects on the urban histories of the city. Urban scholars Shirley Jordan and Christoph Lindner (2016) suggest that interruptions in global cities are defined by spatial and temporal interventions and call attention to the effects of urban development by generating a critique of different forms of urban speed and mobilities. They propose that artistic practices such as street art, installations, photography, and performances transform everyday spaces into sites of interruptions. I want to add filmmaking to such practices. While their study only includes global, financial centers such as New York, Paris, London, and Amsterdam I want to bring focus to other cities from the Global South, in particular Kathmandu, the national capital of Nepal. “Ordinary cities” such as Kathmandu, despite being an important religious, cultural, and economic trade route in South Asia with cosmopolitan connections to the rest of the world, face exclusion due to developmentalist divisions. The categories of global, world, advanced cities set against other ordinary, third-world, Asian, and backward cities undermine the cultural conditions and heritage of

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cities evaluated exclusively based on economic power (Robinson 2011). Cities must comply with a model of social, economic, and urban infrastructures from North America and Europe that allows them to be considered global. Geographer Colin Mc Farlane (2010) suggests that the study of the relationship between infrastructure and interruption in cities from the Global South is characterized by inequality, breakdown, and failure which fails to address the agency of everyday experiences of its citizens. The analysis of location filming in this chapter addresses such concerns; expands on the instrumentality of places in “far off” cities like Kathmandu shaped by state policies, infrastructural plans, and road networks; and highlights both routine and uncoordinated lived encounters in the city.

LOCATION KATHMANDU

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Kathmandu was declared the capital of Nepal in 1768 by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who annexed the three kingdoms of Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, and Kathmandu, ruled by the Mallas, to the Gorkha kingdom (Slusser 1982). The city was the center of political administration, while the country transitioned from a Hindu monarchy, multiparty democracy to a secular republic state from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Owing to the rich architectural and cultural heritage of the Kathmandu Valley, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) declared seven monuments as World Heritage Sites in 1979. These sites included the palace squares of Patan, Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, Swayambhu, Boudha Pashupati, and Changunarayan temple complexes which are major tourist attractions. Popular destination surveys by travel websites regularly feature Kathmandu in its “ten best places to travel in the world” category and tourism, is an essential contributor to Nepal’s economy (Trip Advisor 2023). The UNESCO World Heritage Sites are a huge draw for tourists including the arts and architecture from the Malla and earlier Lichhavi periods, which include thousands of monuments, temples, monastic buildings, squares, shrines, sculptures, and built structures, that have survived through centuries. Along with a regular arrival of tourists, the Kathmandu Valley has experienced exponential population growth since the 1990s due to internal migration caused by the Maoist rebellion which began in 1997 and ended with a peace agreement in 2006 (Brøgger and Agergaard 2019). Due to road expansions and an increase in residential buildings and commercial activities, Kathmandu is one of South Asia’s rapidly urbanizing cities and the most populated place in Nepal (Thapa and Murayama 2009). The building of Ring Road, an 8-lane, 27-kilometer road, in the 1970s encircled and improved the connectivity of Kathmandu and Lalitpur to adjacent rural

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areas promoting urban development. Patan, Balaju, and Baneshwor, the three film locations, discussed in this chapter are connected by Ring Road and representative of urbanization and social change in the Kathmandu Valley. Patan Durbar Square, one of the three palace squares in the Kathmandu Valley, is widely photographed and recognizable for its pagoda-style or tierroofed architecture and suffered major damages during the 2015 earthquake. Balaju in northern Kathmandu has been an integral part of the Ring Road extension project and Baneshwor was one of the first localities in the valley with incremental housing. All three places were used as shooting locations by filmmakers working to create fictional worlds using the natural, architectural, and cultural landscape of the Kathmandu Valley. During filming in the city, they had to navigate and situate their work within continued improvements and repair of urban infrastructures which included expansion, demolition to rebuilding. The Ring Road area has witnessed major changes in the past 10 years. Owing to heavy traffic and congestion the Ring Road widening project began in 2013 with aid from the Chinese government. However, the first phase of the project, a 10.5-kilometer road section from Koteshwar to Kalanki which was completed in 2018, was outlined by urban planners, members of the civil society, and environmental activists as being pedestrian-unfriendly and accident-prone with no zebra crossings, traffic and street lights, and designated parking areas (Himalayan News Service 2020; Ojha 2019). The planned second phase extension of the 8.2-kilometer stretch from Kalanki to Maharajgunj is yet to begin as there have been pressing concerns from the public about its faulty design, safety, and accessibility (Ojha 2023). There are also further government plans to construct the proposed 71.93-kilometer Outer Ring Road, which will encircle most of the urban areas in the Kathmandu Valley.

R&L ON LOCATION

Against the backdrop of road expansions, reconstruction, and renovation as infrastructural interruptions, the three excerpts elaborate on the use of the cityscape of Kathmandu as a filming location. A considerable number of international and national film productions have used the city’s heritage sites, festivals, markets, and streets to portray historical, contemporary, and fantasy narratives. Since there are no infrastructural landmarks, large studios, or film cities that allow for architectural identification of Nepal’s film industry, filming is done in privately run studios in different locations in and around the valley. Historians Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann (2007) suggest that cities are rendered in film as real by filming on location or reconstructed by filming

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in the studio, which contributes to their image branding. The mechanism used to portray cities on screen through multiple fictional and nonfictional narratives shapes our understanding of urban space. Although all shooting events in the three excerpts use different places in Kathmandu to locate and capture the “real” city, they do so in distinctive ways. Each filming event varied in size, scale, and scope depending on the budget. All events were composed of outdoor and indoor shooting, focused independently on different elements of the cityscape, its architecture, shops, businesses, and private homes. As part of a Hollywood production, the film shooting in Patan Durbar Square was a huge setup with local crew members who managed the alleys and squares of the venue. As a designated world heritage site with a massive tourist inflow, the film shooting was capitalizing on heritage tourism in the Kathmandu Valley. Six months before the filming, Nepal had been struck by an earthquake of 7.9 magnitude taking the lives of more than 8,000 civilians and damaging thousands of temples, monuments, and houses. According to the Hollywood crew, they wanted to support the tourism industry in Nepal and show solidarity with post-earthquake reconstruction efforts (Goundy 2016). To create Kamar-Taj,2 a fictional place in the Marvel universe for the film Doctor Strange (2016), Patan Durbar Square was used as a background to film some key scenes. As described in the first excerpt, the palace square was sanitized, locals and visitors were cleared from the premise, actors in “ethnic” attire covered the background, and fire extinguishers were used to make fog. The effort was to reinforce a “tourist gaze” based on the anticipation and fantasy of Kathmandu as a land of mystics and spirituality. Although the earthquake had flattened the Jagannarayan and Harishankar temples and Manimandap in the Patan Durbar Square, structures such as the Patan Museum were partially damaged and used by the film crew. While Balaju in the film Gopi (2019) was a generic location with a veterinary shop. The filming schedule was positioned amid continuing road expansion and diversion in the area which could not leave the shoot unaffected. Balaju is an important nodal point in the Ring Road extension project in the Kathmandu Valley and is well known as an industrial area that was developed in the 1960s with assistance from the U.S. government which includes both private and government industries. There have been ongoing protests against the government’s plans to develop the Kalanki-Balaju-Maharajgunj section of Ring Road similar in design to the Koteshwar-Kalanki section (Post Report 2021). Civil society members, activists, and planners have been protesting against the design of the road work, which mirrors that of the SatdobatoKoteshwar section built by the Chinese government. At the same time, locals in Balaju are also protesting and negotiating for compensation for their land

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and houses acquired by the government for the road extension project (Post Report 2021). In the case of Baneshwor, where a private house was used as a location in Dad and Son (2016), urban planners and scholars recognize the area as a notable example of the onset of unplanned housing development in the Kathmandu Valley. This gave rise to the term “Baneshworization,” referring to undesired urban sprawl and incremental housing based on the sites-thenservice model (Nelson 2017). The liberalization of Nepal’s economy after democratic uprisings in the 1990s facilitated peripheral urban growth outside of the three palace squares of the Kathmandu Valley which was joined by the Ring Road to border Kathmandu and Lalitpur. At present Baneshwor, which is divided into old and new Baneshwor, has developed as a highly commercial area with educational and financial institutions along with residential buildings and includes one of the busiest traffic intersections in Kathmandu. The Parliament of Nepal, which is housed at the International Convention Centre, and several commercial banks, colleges, schools, and educational consultancies are located in the area. The use of Kathmandu as a location for a Hollywood production and two other Nepali ones exhibits distinct differences. In Doctor Strange (2016) Kathmandu is home to Kamar-Taj, a picturesque fantasy land surrounded by hills and mountains adorned with ancient palaces, temples, courtyards, and ornate woodwork. Patan’s architectural heritage is used to add authenticity to the Marvel universe of American superheroes similar to its use in other international productions set in Kathmandu. Films such as To the North of Kathmandu (1986), Little Buddha (1992), Baraka (1992), and A mirror in the Sky (2012) portray Kathmandu as an exotic location, highlighting its cultural heritage and architectural landmarks unaware of the socioeconomic fabric of the city. Nepali productions, as discussed in the excerpts, operate on smaller budgets which influences their scale and scope of filming locations. They rely on existing infrastructure; utilize modest sets; and reflect the challenges, aspirations, and everyday struggles of living in Kathmandu.

R&L INTERRUPTING MOBILITIES

While using all three places as film locations, the filming crew created an event that interrupted the mobilities of Kathmandu’s citizens. In these small and big interruptions, the inhabitants of the city participated in the filmmaking process and became part of it by adjusting to the norms and demands of the shooting schedule even if it meant discomfort or a rupture in their daily life. Architects Felipe Vera and Rahul Mehrotra (2015) write about the

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ephemeral qualities of cities in the Global South and how they can be understood through reversibility. They observe that social and religious festivals such as the Kumbha Mela in Allahabad, India, utilize low-cost materials which are used to build a temporary city on a river bed that is completely disintegrated once the festival is over. An event is created based on an organizational structure of impermanence similar to these shooting episodes in different places in Kathmandu which reverses back to its original structure. Film crews directed the flow of human movement, generated activity, and disassembled the materials used to create a film set. They administered the shooting schedule based on the temporalities of physical structures and materialized a reversible world that could transition between its filmic portrayal and as a dynamic urban space. Mehrotra (2008) further explains the ephemeral qualities of cities in India, representative of other South Asian cities, through his descriptions of the kinetic and the static city. Both are components of the same physical space, one being formal and built from permanent materials like concrete and another informal using low-cost materials, an outcome of incremental development. He explains that the “static city” is defined by permanence that is reflected in the architecture and structural planning in city maps, while the temporary “kinetic city” must constantly modify to sustain itself. Architecture lies in the background and “spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined uses in dense urban conditions” (Mehrotra 2008, 206). Location filming in cities like Kathmandu builds on the kinetic properties of cities, modifying, structuring, and imagining the visuality of places in active use. They are transformed into film sets shaped under urban conditions of infrastructural disruptions and fragmented mobilities. Public and private worlds are organized, used, and reversed to their original uses. Civilians, pedestrians, devotees, riders, house owners, shopkeepers, homemakers, professionals, and school children imbricate in the filmmaking process as exemplified in the three excerpts. Bodies in public need to comply with the spatiotemporal demands of location filming. They must move, adjust, and adapt to the demands of filmic interruptions in their neighborhoods, lanes, squares, and chowks. A resident performing her daily chores was interrupted by a film set in her neighborhood and she refused to adjust to the demands placed on her in the first excerpt. The film set marked a huge physical presence with its crew, equipment, lights, and props in Patan Durbar Square. This was her neighborhood, a shared space for collective religious, social, and cultural activities, and a film shooting schedule was a hindrance to her daily routine. She defied the demands of the interruption, while pedestrians, travelers, and inhabitants of the neighborhood in Balaju supported the filming event. The film set was smaller in scale and did not require a large security boundary but was aimed to blend in with the traffic and movement

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in the shops and streets. The speed of the riders on the street and the gait of the pedestrians on the sidewalk slowed down to view the shooting centered in front of a veterinary shop. There was a pause in the daily lives of the neighborhood residents who chose to interact with the crew, watch the filmmaking process unfold, and walk around the area as directed. School children embraced the discomfort created by the interruption and slid between the railing of the sidewalk since their height permitted it and they were guided by their parents. The television series crew using a private home as their film set in Baneshwor were aware of the limitations of the hired property. They were interrupting the routine of the household and cautiously maintained the placement of objects in the property and aimed to showcase it as a generic location, moving around discreetly. Even though the film set was transformed back to its usual setting, an integral household object was moved, removed, and reported to be lost from its place. The planned seamless interruption by the crew was marked by an unanticipated financial compensation. Each of the three filmic interruptions was experienced differently by the film crew and public whose social response to the shooting event depended on the regulations fixed on the place and the temporality of its usage. The movement and circulation of bodies in these public and private spaces such as squares, streets, sidewalks, rooms, and alleys were creatively managed to avoid disturbing the diegetic world of the films but initiated interactions regulated by interruptions. New rhythms of relationality manifested in unexpected encounters between crewmembers and the public and among the public themselves who shared their surprise and learned innovative methods to negotiate diversion. There was resistance, acceptance, and adjustment to these pockets of filmic interruptions in Kathmandu. Therefore, location filming as filmic interruptions in cities from the Global South are based on the design of flexible, nonpermanent structures and space occupation that induces new forms of imagination in urban planning. The flexibility involved in the reconfiguration of urban space by film crews allows for the generation of dynamic ways to utilize physical infrastructures and adjust to rebuilding, expansion, and repair. Daily experiences of navigating the city are pivotal in understanding sociospatial tensions created by interruptions in “far off” cities such as Kathmandu which foster unique insights into the multiplicity, vitality, and ephemerality of urban spaces.

R&L CONCLUSION

This chapter began by detailing three excerpts from my field notes on location filming in the Kathmandu Valley by noting how urban interruption was central to the events. The occupation and use of public spaces for filming transformed

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the physical fabric of architecture and expanded its spatial limits. There was a break in the constant motion of bodies on the street, squares, alleys, and homes to create a temporary geography of small and large territorial scales. The life cycle of these temporary interruptions was dependent on the resources available and assigned to them as film production budgets. While architecture and infrastructures of road networks and housing defined Patan, Balaju, and Baneshwor in Kathmandu, they were reimagined and used as filming locations to create a new spectacle. Public and private spaces were rearranged and reversed back to their usual positions. The impermanent activities involved in location filming added a new layer to the organizational structure and temporal conditions of mobilities in Kathmandu. Flexibility and reversibility emerged as the main attributes of filmic interruptions. The continuing repair and breakdown of infrastructures such as roads, monuments, and buildings connected the three filming locations and generated questions about inequality and access to urban resources such as public transportation, and open spaces like squares and parks, and housing. A collective experience of encounter and adjustment materialized to reconfigure the inaccessibility to large studio setups as public spaces were used for their visual aesthetics and convenience in filmmaking. By discussing location filming as an interruption or specifically as filmic interruption, this research highlighted the urban complexity of cities in the Global South via Kathmandu. There is a need to diversify, enrich, and extend discussions on urban interruptions in the Global South by addressing the lack of research on individual and communal experiences of such events. The coordinated and fluid forms of spatial and temporal interruptions in urban environments offer a flexible model of planning, construction, and designing film sets that adapt to the material, social, and cultural landscape of cities.

R&L NOTES

1. The Kathmandu Valley includes the three cities of Kathmandu, Patan (Lalitpur), and Bhaktapur. 2. A fictional location in Marvel comics and movies, home to sorcerers and mystics. For more view https://marvel​.fandom​.com​/wiki​/Kamar​-Taj

REFERENCES Brøgger, Ditte Rasmussen, and Jytte Agergaard. 2019. “The Migration–Urbanisation Nexus in Nepal’s Exceptional Urban Transformation.” Population, Space and Place 25 (8). https://doi​.org​/10​.1002​/psp​.2264.

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Goundy, Nick. 2016. “Marvel Filmed Doctor Strange in the UK and Nepal.” Kemps Film Tv Video, October 26, 2016. https://www​.kftv​.com​/news​/2016​/10​/26​/marvel​ -filmed​-doctor​-strange​-in​-the​-uk​-and​-nepal. Himalayan News Service. 2020. “New Lane Rules to Be Enforced along KoteshworKalanki Stretch.” The Himalayan Times, March 11, 2020, sec. Kathmandu. https:// thehimalayantimes​.com​/kathmandu​/new​-lane​-rules​-to​-be​-enforced​-along​-koteshwor​-kalanki​-stretch. Jordan, Shirley Ann, and Christoph Lindner. 2016. Cities Interrupted: Visual Culture and Urban Space. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Marcus, Alan R., and Dietrich Neumann, eds. 2007. Visualizing the City. The Architext Series. London; New York: Routledge. McFarlane, Colin. 2010. “Infrastructure, Interruption, and Inequality: Urban Life in the Global South.” In Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails edited by Stephen Graham, 131–144. New York: Routledge. Mehrotra, Rahul. 2008. “Negotiating the Static and Kinetic Cities: The Emergent Urbanism of Mumbai.” In Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age, edited by Andreas Huyssen. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Nelson, Andrew. 2017. “Prestigious Houses or Provisional Homes? The Ghar as a Symbol of Kathmandu Valley Peri-Urbanism.” HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 37 (1). https://digitalcommons​ .macalester​.edu​/himalaya​/vol37​/iss1​/11. Ojha, Anup. 2019. “Kalanki-Koteshwor Becomes ‘Killer Road,’ Recording 658 Accidents in 10 Months.” The Kathmandu Post, June 5, 2019, sec. Valley. https:// kathmandupost​.com​/valley​/2019​/06​/05​/kalanki​-koteshwor​-becomes​-killer​-road​ -recording​-658​-accidents​-in​-10​-months. ———. 2023. “Second Phase of Ring Road Widening Project Makes Headway.” The Kathmandu Post, February 26, 2023, sec. Valley. https://kathmandupost​.com​ /valley​/2023​/02​/26​/second​-phase​-of​-ring​-road​-widening​-project​-makes​-headway. Post Report. 2021. “Civil Society, Road Expansion Victims Protest in Front of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Office.” The Kathmandu Post, February 28, 2021. https:// tkpo​.st​/3kzPoXt. Robinson, Jennifer. 2011. “Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35: 1–23. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1111​/j​.1468​-2427​.2010​.00982​.x. Slusser, Mary Shepherd. 1982. Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu Valley. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Thapa, Rajesh, and Yuji Murayama. 2009. “Examining Spatiotemporal Urbanization Patterns in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal: Remote Sensing and Spatial Metrics Approaches.” Remote Sensing 38 (1): 534–56. https://doi​.org​/10​.3390​/rs1030534. Trip Advisor. 2023. “Tripadvisor Reveals Top Travel Destinations for 2023 According to Global Travel Community.” January 18, 2023. https://tripadvisor​.mediaroom​ .com​/Travellers​-Choice​-Best​-of​-the​-Best​-Destinations​-2023. Vera, Felipe, and Rahul Mehrotra. 2015. “Temporary Flows & Ephemeral Cities.” Room One Thousand, no. 3. https://escholarship​.org​/uc​/item​/18f9p6np

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Chapter 7

Claiming History, Claiming Present Muslim Diaspora and Hyderabad City C. Yamini Krishna

Excerpt I

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Excerpt from the Charminar Connection newsletter number 765, Saturday, September 12, 2020 On the afternoon of September 16, (1948) we were on board the last NSR train (Nizam State Railways) for Hyderabad. When it started pulling out of the station, an Indian Air Force’s propeller plane (perhaps a Hawker Tempest), with its engine switched off, stealthily swooped on it and dropped a bomb that missed our train and fell on a fully loaded bus, killing and wounding dozens. One should ask, wasn’t that attack on a passenger train a war crime, or Police Action crime, if you will?

Excerpt II Excerpt from a post in the Hyderabad Pearls Facebook group, dated September 12, 2020. One Mr. Abdul Haq1 posted several photographs of the funeral procession of the VII Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur with the description “Remembering Aala Hazrat’s funeral. I had watched it from Abids circle.” One of the comments on the post said “A few days later this funeral was shown in the newsreel, which preceded the start of the main movie, those days. This information was carried in all local newspapers and the theaters witnessed a sudden rush in the movie halls which went on until the newsreel was taken off, which used to happen every Friday.”

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Excerpt III Excerpt from a post in the Paigahs2 of the Deccan Facebook group, dated April 15, 2023. One Afzal Khan posted the photograph of Dr. Sajida who was a leading gynecologist surgeon in the 1940s in Hyderabad, she had graduated from the University of Manchester. Along with the photographs, Mr. Khan also noted that Sajida was called Dr. Amma, an endearment, and often did free consultations for the needy. One Asifa wrote thus “Aaahhh my dearest mother. 24 years ago on the 17th of Ramadan she left us. Every moment I miss her, the values, culture, religion, she taught me and my children are unforgettable. We survive on those memories and try to live life like she did. She was very pious and used to read the Quran and duas while in the car, that some shopkeepers remarked ‘dekho dekho Dr Amma jaa rahey hain’ (Dr. Amma is going). Charities given by her were not known to many. But those who received her timely help, did tell me about it after her death. The babies she brought into this world must be all over the world. Please pray a fateha for her soul.” Further there were several comments from her relatives, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and others who were recipients of her generosity.

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The three excerpts above concern the modern social history (twentieth century) of the city of Hyderabad, and they are glimpses of ongoing discussions in the digital platforms. Charminar Connection is a newsletter dedicated to the Hyderabadi diaspora community around the world, and it has been running since 2002; the Hyderabad Pearls has been operational on Facebook since 2015 and has a membership of over 46,000 people; the Paigahs of the Deccan has been operational on Facebook for 13 years and has a membership of over 24,000 people. Both the Facebook groups also are dedicated toward news and discussions on Hyderabad city and its associated region. On an average, posts such as excerpt III are engaged by more than 300 people. In this chapter, I study the newsletter and the Facebook groups dedicated to Hyderabad and argue that an emotional imaginary of Hyderabad is being created online, by the Hyderabadi Muslim diaspora community in response to the material and emotional losses experienced by the community. This imaginary acts as a custodian of the community’s past. Furthermore, the emotional city momentarily materializes for the community during their “pilgrimages” to the homeland. I use nonparticipant observation of the Facebook groups, historical reading of the newsletter archive, and interviews with some members of the diaspora for this purpose. I first discuss the Hyderabadi diaspora and their engagement with the above-stated media and then historicize the engagement to build the argument.

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HYDERABADI DIASPORA AND HOMELAND Home has a multiplicity of meanings for communities. Home as a house, home as lived experiences and emotions, home as belonging and identity (Parutis 2006), and home as a place where personal and social meaning is grounded (Al Ali & Koser 2002). Brah (2005) notes that the word diaspora has a home and the idea of journey embedded in it. Home for the diaspora could mean both specific geography and historical conditions. Nostalgia, an associated concept, has both spatial and temporal connotations to it. Who exactly constitutes a diaspora does not have a settled answer; however, it has the idea of homeland, real or imaginary associated with it. The idea of diaspora needs to be embedded in the multiaxial understanding of power, that is, accounting for the reasons of migration and the power relationships of the community at home and at the place of settlement (Brah 2005, 186). By Hyderabadi diaspora I mean people who identify with Hyderabad city and its associated region as their homeland. By associated region I mean erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, of which Hyderabad was the capital city until 2014, and Telangana state, of which it is currently the capital. Hyderabad being the capital city of these states had intimate connections with them. Historically, pre-1948, Hyderabad state had parts of Karnataka and Maharashtra also in it; I count the migrants from these areas also as Hyderabadi diaspora, based on their self-identification. Karen Leonard (2007), in her landmark work, has studied Hyderabadi migrants in Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the United States, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. This chapter draws from Leonard’s work and goes beyond it to discuss the construction of Hyderabad’s emotional imaginary and the diasporic claims on the city. The Hyderabadi community is very diverse in terms of caste and religion. Historically the city and the region have had many waves of migration in the twentieth century3, as explained below:

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a) Following Police Action: Hyderabad city was the capital of the eponymous princely state ruled by the Asaf Jahi dynasty until 1948; the state was violently annexed into the Indian union through military action which is known as Police Action. After the Police Action there was a wave of migration of Muslims from the region to Pakistan and the West (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia) (Waheed 2022). Several of these Muslims were part of the administrative setup of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, elite, educated, and part of the cosmopolitan Persianate culture of the state. b) Migration to the Persian Gulf: Working-class and lower-caste Muslim community migrated to the Persian Gulf in search of livelihood and

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opportunities starting in the 1970s (Waheed 2022). The Gulf countries also see a huge in-migration of lower-caste Telugu-speaking (Hindus)4 from the region for labor jobs (construction). The later waves of migration also included professionals (doctors, engineers, architects, accountants, and managers). There is also a section of migrants who do domestic work. (Goud, T. C., & Sahoo, A. K. 2019, 275–294). c) Technology migrants after 1990: There was another significant wave of migrants from Hyderabad and associated region after liberalization and reimagination of Hyderabad city as an information technology hub. In this period several students from the region migrated to the West for pursuing information technology education and jobs. These are highly skilled dominant caste Telugu migrants (Roohi 2017). With this background of emigration out of Hyderabad, I now discuss the emotional imaginary of the city produced by the Muslim community.

R&L EMOTIONAL IMAGINARY OF HYDERABAD ON DIGITAL SPHERE

Charminar Connection announces its aims at the beginning of each newsletter as “Bringing Hyderabadis together from all over the world for better appreciation of our tahzeeb and tamaddun.”5 It is a bi-weekly newsletter which is being curated by Pervaiz Baig, from the United States. The newsletter had initially begun as a Yahoo group and then moved on to the current format. It emerged out of the need to read about Hyderabad among the diaspora, when news of the city was difficult to obtain in America. Baig mentions that he had begun curating news specific to Hyderabad from various sources on the internet for the diaspora community. This newsletter became a new transnational avenue to read about homeland and other Hyderabadi diaspora spread out across the world. This was beyond the physical meetings of the Hyderabadi diaspora discussed in detail by Karen Leonard (2007). As the digital news sphere developed and Hyderabadis could read about home in professional news websites, the newsletter took on other roles, it became an avenue to share experiences and memoirs. It regularly carries personal essays written by the members of the Hyderabadi diaspora. There is also regular discussion and response on the articles through the response section, where other members post their views on the essays. Baig notes that Charminar Connection is a personal intimate way of keeping in touch with the homeland and fellow Hyderabadis. For A. Khan, who emigrated from Hyderabad at a very young age, Charminar Connection was one of the ways to stay connected to the city, with which

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he was not willing to be separated from. The newsletter can be seen as one of the practices of identity (Hall 2015), where you become a Hyderabadi by talking, reminiscing, and sharing details about the homeland. Through these discussions the Hyderabadi diaspora documents and makes sense of their own changing identities. For example, one Tanvir wrote about the experience of learning to celebrate Christmas as a Muslim, for his kids who were secondgeneration Canadians. The newsletter with such personal experiences, historical accounts, and discussions constitutes a living archive of homeland for the diaspora and an archive of the diaspora for others. The newsletter also becomes a site for the negotiation of contested and painful pasts of the community. I will discuss this in greater detail in the next section. The Facebook group Hyderabad Pearls declares its aims as This group is for anything and everything to do with Hyderabad Deccan, also known as the City of Pearls. From nostalgic memories, historical facts, academic thought pieces, city tips, language, poetry and culture, photos, fashion, food and jewellery—feel free to share “all things Hyd”!

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It further qualifies that one does not have to be a Hyderabadi to join the group. This group was started by Zeba Salman, who studied South Asian Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, who was searching for an avenue to educate her teenage daughter about Hyderabad. In my interview with her, she mentioned that her father always spoke of Hyderabad, and not of India; she wanted to know more about the world of her father and wanted to introduce it to her daughter. Salman found that there was no avenue to hear more about the social life of Hyderabad and Hyderabadis and in search of this, she started Hyderabad Pearls. Within a very limited time, the membership of the group grew several thousand times organically and people started pouring out their memories onto the group. The group thus took on pedagogical functions of educating the younger generation in community history, another practice of identity. Excerpts II and III are typical examples of posts from the Facebook groups. Members often post historical documents and personal artifacts to bring attention to some aspects of the social history of Hyderabad. Personal artifacts such as photographs, clothes, identity cards, and educational certificates from historical institutions become entry points to discussing history. Margaret Gibson (2008) notes that the objects orient the time and space of often disorienting experiences. Talking about grief and bereavement, Gibson argues objects signify the loss and also act as transitional in offering comfort and identity formation. This role of objects in mediating the loss and fostering identity formation can also be seen in diasporic communities. Anchal Malhotra (2019) uses objects to discuss partition. A similar sense of loss and nostalgia is seen in the posts on the Hyderabad-oriented Facebook groups.

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These posts often attract comments from other members who have inhabited the same space and time as seen in excerpt III. I posit that a post in these groups is like being transported to a historical time and taking a stroll in the historical space; one often gets embedded into the historical networks, though momentarily. Individuals meet acquaintances, friends, neighbors, and others now separated by space; the sole connection being history. The third aspect of the Facebook groups and the newsletter is that the members of it act as custodians of community history. They closely guard and stake claim on the way Hyderabad’s history is narrated. For instance, one Mr. Chaoosh was highly distressed when a particular narrative of history was favored by the newsletter and took to the Facebook group to openly express his displeasure. He even wrote to newsletter recipients saying his love for the city will be there until his last breath and he would continue to challenge the distortion of facts. Non-Hyderabadis often approach the Facebook group for perspectives on history. One well-known film director had posted a question on the social setting and sartorial customs of the city in the 1930s and the responses of the group members were taken as authoritative accounts with historical accuracy, as materials for cultural production. While there are discussions and debates on the interpretation of history, the group collectively often passes judgment on what is the acceptable version of history, any alternative interpretation of history of the city is often derided as faulty. The newsletter and the groups, I posit, constitute an emotional imaginary of the city. The term “imaginary” has many diverse theoretical lineages; for Cornelius Costoriadis imaginary is the imaginative capacity (Strauss 2006); however, it is unitary; for Lacan imaginary is fantasy; for Benedict Anderson and Charles Taylor imaginary is a cultural model, the way we imagine society. Marilyn Ivy uses the term “imaginary” to understand the representations of culture (Strauss 2006). I use the term “imaginary” to describe the emotional landscape of Hyderabad created online. Due to the presence of nostalgia of the diaspora community, a particular narrative of the past and an imagination of the society are embedded in these narratives. I use the term “emotional” instead of affective, drawing from Deborah Thien (2005), who argues that the recent scholarship on affect has been a distancing and technocratic perspective and hence emphasizes on understanding landscapes as emotional, relational, and intersubjective. For me the word emotional underlines the subjective experience of the members of the group. The emotional imaginary of the city is the momentary recreation of historical space and time. Like the “real” space it allows for chance encounters, like the lived city, one can be a flaneur (Shaw 2015) and take a stroll on the digital space. This imaginary is mediated by the objects of emotional significance. The emotional imaginary is also momentarily physically realized when the diasporic community visits the homeland. Zeba Salman had posted

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about her visit to Hyderabad on the Facebook group and several group members whom she had only met online showed interest to meet her; one of them arranged for a venue and another arranged even for a Qawwali performance. The digital imaginary and the nostalgic ties which the group engages with were momentarily alive in the contemporary city. One Zehan, a member of Charminar Connection, a second-generation immigrant in the United States, made a journey with three other friends to Hyderabad and got a tour of the city accompanied by a local historian. That for him was a fulfilling experience, almost like a pilgrimage. The history he had engaged with on the newsletter frames the way he perceives the city; it created a certain experience of “sacredness” based on his imagination of Hyderabad. Zehan had distributed stickers of Charminar as souvenirs in his wedding. Both the newsletter and the Facebook groups are quite unique in being dedicated to discussing the culture (Tahzeeb) and civilization/way of living (Tamaddun) of Hyderabad. In comparison, Facebook groups in Delhi are very goal-oriented groups such as heritage walks, which give information on upcoming heritage events and interest groups such as pet lovers, trekkers, and flat mates. One does not find any group dedicated toward the cultural and social history of the city, nor does one see comparable engagement and custodianship of the past. However, studies on networks of Tamil Eelam online (Enteen 2006) present a similar picture to that of Hyderabad. After the decimation of the Liberation of Tigers Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and the migration due to civil war and persecution of Tamils, the Tamil diaspora connects online on the idea of sharing history and information and with the hope for national sovereignty. Maya Ranganathan (2019) terms it as long-distance nationalism. Ranganathan notes that the imagination of the homeland by the diaspora is influenced by the painful memories they carry. A close observation of the Facebook groups and the newsletter indicates that the vast majority of the Hyderabadi diaspora engaging with the newsletter and the Facebook groups are educated, urban Muslims, who can be broadly termed as elite. This is also true with respect to the large number of Hyderabadi associations which exist in the United States and the United Kingdom. Both the newsletter and the Facebook groups also have citizens currently living in the Hyderabad city and hence are not exclusive diasporic spaces. These Hyderabadi groups are different from the linguistic groups. While there are a huge number of Telugu-speaking migrants from Hyderabad, living in various countries abroad their primary axis of identity is not that of Hyderabadi, they identify as Telugu and engage actively in the Telugu associations abroad. A. Khan notes that while there are a small number of Telugu-speaking Muslims in these organizations, they feel marginalized as the Telugu organizations lean explicitly toward Hindu identity. The Hyderabadi newsletter and the groups

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engage in English and Urdu. This association of Hyderabadi identity with Urdu is rooted in the cosmopolitanism of Urdu in Asaf Jahi state (Datla 2013). What about Hyderabad, unlike other Indian cities, allows to foster this sort of belonging and identity? What allows Hyderabad to stake a claim for a Hyderabadi identity, separate from the religious and nationalist articulations? EXPRESSIONS OF LOSS, VIOLENCE, AND NOSTALGIA I locate this imaginary of the city in the twofold loss experienced by the Muslim community: (a) Police Action and (b) global city. Police Action of 1948 When the Indian independence was apparent and the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan was on the cards, the British gave the Indian princes (ruling over princely states) a choice to join the Indian union or Pakistan or remain independent. The Hyderabad state, ruled by the Asaf Jahi dynasty Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, wanted to remain independent. While initially India had a standstill agreement with the Nizam state, in 1948 citing multiple reasons the Indian union conducted a military operation annexing the Hyderabad state. The events of the annexation of Hyderabad are contentious to this day. Hyderabad is often discussed in the context of communal relations, as the Nizam was a Muslim ruler, ruling over a large majority of Hindu population. A private militia called the Razakars were operational in the Nizam state toward the latter half of the 1940s and they were said to be oppressive toward the Hindus, and this was cited as one of the reasons for conducting the military action against Hyderabad by the Indian union. The Razakars, however, were not solely Muslim, and historical research (Purushotham 2015, Noorani 2013) now increasingly states that the reports of their violence were exaggerated. During the military action of the Indian union, there was widespread violence against the Muslims conducted by the Hindus from the region and the Indian army. Pandit Sundarlal Committee was commissioned by Jawaharlal Nehru to investigate the violence during the annexation. While the report discusses the mass violence, it was not made public, and hence the violence remained unspoken and unacknowledged for several decades. The report became public only in 2012. The report estimated the loss of life of Hyderabadi Muslims between “27,000 and 40,000,” “a very conservative estimate” by their own admission. Hyderabad remains hidden from the “historiography of partition” (Waheed 2022) in the “Indian nationalist narratives across the political spectrum” (Waheed 2022).

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The fall of the Asaf Jahi state completely overhauled the city of Hyderabad. The Muslim community which until then had experienced relative prosperity became the subjects of violence. The loss was experienced differently across the Muslim community based on their caste, where they were geographically located (urban Hyderabad or the rural areas, Telangana, Marathwada, or Hyderabad-Karnataka), and what networks they could mobilize to negotiate the turmoil. The Muslims were reduced to second-class citizens in the region. The identity of the Hyderabad state was disbanded and it was incorporated as a region in the newly formed state of Andhra Pradesh, formed based on Telugu linguistic identity in 1956. Despite so many losses, there was no memorialization or even collective mourning for the violence against Muslims beyond the community sphere. Unlike the partition of North India or Bengal where there was a cultural allowance to mourn, the mourning in Hyderabad had to be done in silence. There are hundreds of books, several films, novels, and songs on partition and its cultural remanence; in contrast accounts of the Hyderabad violence are very few. The community and families had to deal with the loss individually. The Police Action had a far-reaching influence on the Muslim community (Waheed 2022). The Police Action violence was the start of many waves of migration in the Muslim community. The Nizam’s stance to remain independent is often seen as anti-Hindu whose baggage is accrued to the Muslims until this day (Krishna 2021). Furthermore, the formation of Andhra Pradesh state also led to the inscription of Hyderabad which until then was marked by multilingualism and Urdu cosmopolitan culture (Beverley 2015) as a Telugu capital city. The existing Persianate and Muslim networks (Beverley 2015) of the city were severed and the ties based on linguistic identity received precedence. Excerpt I is from the first part of three-part account Police Action, published under the title “A very interesting firsthand account. Police Action: India’s Police Action of Hyderabad—The Trauma of a 12 year[s] old.” It presented heartrending details of violence in the Muslim community. The next edition of Charminar Connection had several responses from other members of the diasporic community to the essay, and some said they had been trying very hard to forget the trauma and personal loss of Police Action and were greatly pained to read the essay. They did not want to be reminded of the event. A few other younger members wrote that the account was highly illuminating for them. Some said they did not want to read political articles in the newsletter and others lauded the courage of the writer in recounting the horrors of the event. Police Action thus remains an unattended sore for the Muslim community of the region. The newsletter and the Facebook groups become archives of personal memories of this loss and community space to negotiate with it. This expression is not that of the entire Muslim community, nor is it the only expression of it, for example, the digital imaginary might not represent voices from rural districts

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of Hyderabad state or from the Marathwada region; however, these expressions do fill in for the complete silence on the historical events. Beyond the nostalgia for people, places, practices, and historical aspects, the Muslim diasporic networks in the newsletter and Facebook groups also engage in the cultural aspects such as food, clothing, and collective practices which are rooted in the Asaf Jahi era past. These practices are invoked as secular remnants of Asaf Jahi past; Asaf Jahi state always emphasized on giving equal importance to Hindus and Muslims, through donations, programs of social welfare, and so on (Waheed 2022). It is this modern state imagination of early twentieth-century Hyderabad that evokes this distinct kind of belonging with the city, not comparable to other contemporary cities like Delhi and Mumbai. The other loss that evokes the above-discussed belonging is the marginalization of the Muslim community in the Hyderabad city, in its global city avatar.

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Viswanagaram (Global City)/Cyberabad

While the concept of the global city, as a city primarily linked to the global capitalism and disconnected from the local networks, has its theoretical limitations, it remains one of the prominent understandings of the urban in governmental and media imagination of cities in India, specifically Hyderabad. Successive governments since the 1990s irrespective of their political leanings have imagined Hyderabad as a “global city” or Viswanagaram as it is termed in Telugu. This vision of the global city has been in circulation since the 1990s, widely attributed to N. Chandrababu Naidu (Kamat 2011), chief minister of the United Andhra Pradesh from 1995 to 2014.6 However, this imagination is a part of the larger transformation in Indian cities from the 1990s. History of Hyderabad in the twentieth century can be divided into three sociopolitical periods based on the logic of urban development, the princely city Hyderabad, that is, the capital city of the eponymous Asaf Jahi state until 1948. Eric Beverley (2022) terms the urbanism in this period as Princely Urbanism, characterized by state-directed planning, transnational urbanist networks based on the values of “benevolent reciprocity between the state and the subjects” and multiple overlapping property regimes. The second period post-annexation of Hyderabad into the Indian union (in 1948), and the formation of Andhra Pradesh (in 1956), is marked by the establishment of large industries for employment and development (Deb 1989). The linguistic state was the dominant driving force in this period. The third period after the 1990s is marked by the liberalization, privatization, and globalization of the Indian economy. In this period, we see the infrastructure being created and

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mobilized in service of the global capital. The second and the third phases are not separate but need to be seen in continuum. There are multiple connotations to the global city imagination. In media and the government parlance, it means the city is comparable to the Western metropolis such as London, New York, Tokyo, and so on in terms of the infrastructure, facilities, and experiences provided by the city. Any infrastructural development in the city is always compared to European and American cities. For instance, while laying the foundation for the Airport metro Telangana Chief Minister said that due to power grid linking there could be power outages in London, Paris, and New York but not in Hyderabad (Telanganatoday 2022), thereby pitching that in this aspect Hyderabad is better than the above-mentioned cities. The second connotation is that of being networked with the global capitalism; Hyderabad houses the India offices of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple and has an Ikea store, and so on. Time and again the bureaucratic and governmental success in helping these international conglomerates set shop in the city is marked as one step closer to the global city dream (Qz 2019). Amazon has plans to establish its largest campus outside of the United States in the city (Business Today 2015). The third connotation is that of hosting international events, that is, receiving global guests (The Hindu 2022). It was reported that Hyderabad was chosen by the World Economic Forum as India’s hub for Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution in health care and life sciences. The Muslim diaspora identifies this technology-centric city as Cyberabad.7 This global city Hyderabad displaces some of the earlier imagined and lived realities of the city. It dislodges the existing spatiotemporal coordinates. Colin MacFarlane’s (2010) notes that the new imaginaries of cities in the Global South are based on the elite expectations of the modern, circulatory city with uninterrupted infrastructure, where the roads, electricity, infrastructure, and air conditioning are all continually functional and reliable. These uninterrupted enclaves are few and are limited to the power elite; for the vast majority, the global city is still marred by disruptions. It is in fact the presence of disruptions which keep the global city as a viable political promise. The city thus needs to be understood as several coexisting enclaves with different spatiotemporal experiences. The global city imagination in both the governmental and international capital networks leaves the Muslim community in Hyderabad out of it. While the ruling dominant caste Telugu (Hindu) community experiences the uninterrupted city, the Muslim community is itself seen as an interruption, a baggage to this imagination. After 1948, the Muslim community in the city is ghettoized in specific locations. Spatially the areas where they live are termed as the old city, also to mean the backward city, while the areas of new

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economic activity are seen as new or HITEC city. The old city is also the space of historical monuments, a space of the past (Kamat 2011). I locate the role of custodianship of history, played by the Muslim community in the newsletter and the Facebook groups, in this loss of space, economic opportunity, and social standing in the contemporary city. It is the community’s attempt to control the way in which their history is narrated. As their position in the contemporary city is marginalized, they see history as the only space (and time) they can hold on to. Cyberabad remains to be aspirational for the diaspora and they take pride in their city being compared to Western metropolis; however, they and their families back home remain spectators and mostly outsiders to these developments. An article from Charminar Connection, Newsletter 937, December 7, 2021, asks the question, “who built the modern Hyderabad city?” and argues that while for the new generation the answer might be N. Chandrababu Naidu, the Nizams were “the real architects of modern Hyderabad” and built many institutions. It points out how the Nizam’s work is forgotten and asks, “who should be given credit to the development of modern Hyderabad?” Hemangini Gupta and Kaveri Medappa (2020) note that nostalgia becomes a way to negotiate the disenchantment and loss due to rapid urbanization in the world city8 Bangalore. In the case of Hyderabad, rapid urbanization is coupled with historical reasons to evoke a complex set of emotions, nostalgia, disenchantment, and loss. Through laying claim on the city’s history, the Muslim community lays claim on the contemporary city. Increasingly, the Hindu right has been rewriting the history of India and writing the Muslim community out of it, for instance, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks which are used in schools across the country, were recently edited to omit details of Mughals (The Wire 2023). This is a part of the larger project of painting Muslims as outsiders and invaders and hence not a part of the “Indian” history defined as Hindu history. In this context, the custodianship of history as seen in the newsletter and the Facebook groups must be understood as their claim on the contemporary city.

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Through examining the diasporic newsletter and Facebook groups, the chapter discussed how an emotional imaginary of Hyderabad city is created by the Muslim community on the digital space. This emotional imaginary is an expression of the historical loss of the Hyderabadi Muslim community in specific and the marginalization of Muslims in the post-independent India in general. By laying claim on the history of the city and by playing a role of

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custodians of history, the Muslim community lays claim on the contemporary city of Hyderabad. Nostalgia and history thus become productive to craft a position for the Muslims in the contemporary Hyderabadi society. The emotional imaginary of the city acts as an archive of social history of the city and a community space for negotiating complex pasts. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is thankful to Zeba Salman, Parvaiz Baig, and other interlocutors for their insights and Mohammed Ayub Ali Khan for his suggestions on the chapter. NOTES

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1. All the names in the chapter except Pervaiz Baig, the editor of Charminar Connection, and Zeba Salman, administrator of Facebook group Hyderabad Pearls, are anonymized. 2. Paigah is the term used to refer the nobility in the Asaf Jahi dynasty which ruled Hyderabad until 1948. The Nizams (rulers) had marital relationships with the Paigahs. Here in the group, it is used to point to connection with Hyderabad city. 3. Hyderabad has been widely connected with Persian Gulf and Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This chapter does not discuss the migration associated with that period. 4. While there are Telugu-speaking Muslims, often the dominant Telugu linguistic identity is associated with the Hindus. I discuss the absence of Muslims in Telugu cinema in Krishna (2022). 5. Tehzeeb roughly translates to culture and Tamaddun refers to civilization. Together they are referring to the Hyderabadi culture fostered by the Nizam state. 6. Hyderabad was the capital of United Andhra Pradesh until 2014 when it became the capital of newly formed Telangana state. 7. This is also the name of the police station area of the new areas in Hyderabad. But the diaspora uses it to identify new economic areas such as HITEC city. 8. Another term used by the authors to refer to cities in global capital network.

REFERENCES Al-Ali, N., and Koser, K. 2002. New Approaches to Migration. London and New York: Routledge. Beverley, E.L., 2022. Beyond Colonial Urbanism: State Power, Global Connections and Fragmented Land Regimes in Twentieth-century Hyderabad City. Urban History, pp. 1–21.

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Beverley, Eric Lewis. 2015. Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sovereignty, c. 1850–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brah, Avtar. 2005. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London and New York: Routledge. Chandra, Pradeep K. 2019. “This is how Hyderabad, not Mumbai or Bengaluru, Became IKEA’s First India Destination.” qz​.co​m, 22 August, 2019. https://qz​.com​/ india​/1692282​/why​-ikea​-india​-picked​-hyderabad​-over​-mumbai​-bengaluru​-delhi​-ncr Enteen, Jillana. 2006. “Spatial Conceptions of URLs: Tamil Eelam Networks on the World Wide Web.” New Media & Society 8, no. 2: 229–249. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1461444806061944 Gibson, Margaret. 2008. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing. Goud, Trilok Chandan, and Ajaya Kumar Sahoo. 2019. “Telugu Emigrants in the Gulf.” In India’s Low-Skilled Migration to the Middle East: Policies, Politics and Challenges edited by S. Irudaya Rajan and Prem Saxena, 275–294. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Gupta, Hemangini, and Kaveri Medappa. “Nostalgia as Affective Landscape: Negotiating Displacement in the ‘World City.’” Antipode 52, no. 6 (2020): 1688–1709. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/anti​.12674 Hall, Stuart. 2015. “ Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory edited by Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, 392–403. London & New York: Routledge. Kamat, Sangeeta. 2011. “Neoliberalism, Urbanism and the Education Economy: Producing Hyderabad as a ‘Global City.’” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 32, no. 2: 187–202. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/01596306​.2011​.565639 Krishna, C. Yamini. 2021. “Language and Cinema: Schisms in the Representation of Hyderabad.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 44, no. 6: 1027–1040. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/00856401​.2021​.1975209 Kushal Deb. 1989. “Sociological Implications of the Pattern of Growth of Hyderabad City.” Unpublished Dissertation, University of Hyderabad. Leonard, Karen Isaksen. 2007. Locating Home: India’s Hyderabadis Abroad. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Malhotra, Aanchal. 2019. Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. McFarlane, Colin. 2010. “Infrastructure, Interruption, and Inequality: Urban Life in the Global South.” In Disrupted cities: When Infrastructure Fails, edited by Stephen Graham, 131–144. New York: Routledge. Noorani, A.G. 2013. Destruction of Hyderabad. London: Hurst Publishers. Parutis, Violetta. 2006. “‘At Home’ in Migration: Construction of Home by Polish and Lithuanian Migrants in the UK.” Oikos: lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos 2: 9–29. Purushotham, Sunil. 2015. “Internal Violence: The “Police Action” in Hyderabad.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 2: 435–466.

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https:\\doi​.o​rg\10.1017/S0010417515000092 Ranganathan, Maya. 2009. “Understanding Eelam through the Diaspora’s Online Engagement.” Continuum 23, no. 5: 709–721. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/10304310903156797 Roohi, S. 2017. “Caste, Kinship and the Realisation of ‘American Dream’: Highskilled Telugu Migrants in the USA.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(16): 2756–2770. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/1369183X​.2017​.1314598 Shaw, Debra Benita. 2015. “Streets for Cyborgs: The Electronic Flâneur and the Posthuman City.” Space and Culture 18, no. 3: 230–242. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1206331214560105 Strauss, Claudia. 2006. “The Imaginary.” Anthropological theory 6, no. 3: 322–344. Telangana Today, 2021. “Hyderabad, True Global City.” Telangana Today, 16 March, 2021. https://telanganatoday​.com​/hyderabad​-a​-true​-global​-city The Hindu, 2023. “Hyderabad Selected to Host WEF Center for Fourth Industrial Revolution.” The Hindu, 16 January, 2023. https://www​.thehindu​.com​/news​/ national​/telangana​/hyderabad​-selected​-to​-host​-wef​-center​-for​-the​-fourth​-industrial​ -revolution​/article66383875​.ece Thien, Deborah. 2005. “After or Beyond Feeling? A Consideration of Affect and Emotion in Geography.” Area 37, no. 4: 450–454. https://www​.jstor​.org​/stable​ /20004485 Waheed, Sarah. 2022. “After Hyderabad’s 1948 Annexation: Muslim Belonging and Histories of the Long Partition.” Asian Affairs 53, no. 2: 373–394. https://doi​.org​ /10​.1080​/03068374​.2022​.2076488

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Chapter 8

The Soul of the City Mindfulness Practice in Hong Kong Marin Nycklemoe

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As of November 2022, the world population officially reached 8 billion people (United Nations 2023). Cities like Guangzhou and Beijing in China, Sao Paolo in Brazil, New Delhi in India, or Tokyo in Japan have expanded to house and settle millions of different individuals, even from other parts of the world, and earned the title of “megacity.” These megacities are characterized by a high concentration of industry and consumerism along with a large population. I argue in this chapter that the interest in mindfulness is a coping mechanism to negotiate with the fast-paced, capitalist urban environment that brings about the sense of alienation and conflict. In this chapter, I will first introduce Hong Kong as a center of globalization and urbanization, and the effects of its aggressive nature of urbanization that led to a sense of alienation. I will then discuss the influence of Buddhism and mindfulness practices, particularly mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) within Hong Kong. First, l present the narratives of citizens of Hong Kong who feel alienated as a result of capitalistic living and hence yearn for deeper spiritual connectivity and understanding. DEVELOPMENT OF HONG KONG I first give a brief history of the cultural and economic development of Hong Kong. The foundations of Hong Kong lie in Chinese history, with an emphasis on the presence and foundational influence to this day of Cantonese culture. Hong Kong, or 香港 (hoeng1  gong2), means “Fragrant Harbor” in Chinese (Carroll 2007, 1). It is a part of the Canton region of China and is in fact the most populated region. The city of Hong Kong acted as a harbor for the British after it was seceded to the Empire by the Qing dynasty in 1842 125

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(Carroll 2007, 1). From here, Hong Kong found itself developing under British colonial rule and culture. The Cantonese and Chinese roots and cultures coexisted with the continued rapid development as a prominent international port of trade. However, there was a clear divide between the Western colonial development and the native Cantonese culture and peoples. Due to the complex relationship of Hong Kong, particularly in the New Territories which acted as a buffer zone or zone of tension between the British and China, this region was largely self-governed by the Chinese people themselves, hence retaining a large part of Chinese customs and infrastructure (Caroll 2007, 70). This divide between the native city and the colonial city is reflected in Hong Kong films. For instance, Hong Kong star Bruce Lee’s film Fists of Fury (1972) shows a sign board, “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed.” Bruce Lee proceeds to kick the sign off the wall and smashes it to pieces. The fruits of economic development, wealth, and progress were reserved for certain citizens of Hong Kong, specifically those of British descent (Carroll 2007, 2). Nevertheless, despite self-governance among the Chinese in the inlands of the New Territories, where there was much movement and exchange of religious and cultural ideas between Hong Kong and China (particularly more so after the Chinese Cultural Revolution where Hong Kong became a hub for the preservation of Chinese religious customs as will be discussed below), the British largely controlled the trade and economy of Hong Kong, which led it to become an influential and powerful international trade hub and bastion of capitalism and “one of the world’s freest and most competitive economies” (Carroll 2007, 229). The strong economic infrastructure that the British had established allowed Hong Kong to still remain a vibrant and neoliberal economic even after the Handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and became gradually subsumed under the sovereignty of China and the Chinese Communist Party. While the reaction to this is mixed, there were actually very little changes in the city, especially where the British had established their administrative infrastructure.

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Many senior government officials have remained in place, in spite of the change in sovereignty from Britain to China. English continues to be the language of success in business and government, even though Hong Kong’s expatriate community only comprises of 2–3 percent of Hong Kong’s population. Most Western expatriates never needed to learn Chinese to survive in the central business district parts of Hong Kong. (Carroll 2007, 218).

Today, Hong Kong has roughly 7.5 million citizens with 100% population living in an urban environment. The population to land ratio is 7134.87 per square kilometer, making it the fourth densest city or territory in the world (World Population Review 2023). While just shy of qualifying to be labeled

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a “megacity,” the density and 100% urban environment create a bustling and busy environment for those living in Hong Kong (Yeung 2023). Hong Kong still acts as a preliminary trade hub and mediator between the Western and Eastern economies, specifically China and its currency RMB with respect to the rest of the world. It is behind only Singapore in Asia for Foreign Exchange Markets, and fourth after the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore (Yeung 2023). In fact, almost 94% of Hong Kong’s GDP is service industry based, with banking and investment playing a predominant role in the jobs economy (Yeung 2023). Although this paints Hong Kong a rosy picture in terms of its economic advancement in Asia, this hypercapitalism built on colonial structure leads to a kind of mentality of intense work ethic and output, combined with a complete lack of awareness and negligence in physical and mental health. “The sad thing .  .  . is that this lack of compassion perpetuated by colonial policy as such has rubbed off on the British-educated local elite even into the post-colonial era” (Hsuing 2000, 318). According to the State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report, Hongkongers are notorious for long working hours with an average working week of 50.1 hours long. Furthermore, along with the unfriendly work conditions, Hong Kong also does not have labor guarantees such as pensions and insurance, further increasing the stress. It is through these issues that I place my inquiry into the mental health practices at this intersection of the preservation of Chinese-Buddhist religious customs in native Hong Kong and global capitalism.

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BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANISTIC BUDDHISM AND MINDFULNESS IN HONG KONG Buddhism has long historical roots in South Asia and South East Asia. Similar to the history of Buddhism in China, there is no definitive idea of when or how Buddhism arrived to Hong Kong, with vague records of Buddhism arriving that date as far back as the fifth century CE (Barca and Basilio 2009, 12). However, the development of Buddhism in Hong Kong is intrinsically linked with the movement in Guangdong, China, since they are from the same region. There are many different monasteries and temples all across the city, but they each act almost as their own branch of Buddhism. Each monastery or temple, even if they identify with similar branches or vehicles within Buddhist dharma, has its own practices and teachings. A lack of a central overarching authority, the influence and rule of the British over Hong Kong, and the heavy presence of Christianity were some of the main reasons behind the stunted development of Buddhism in Hong Kong. While Buddhism as a practice, philosophy, or faith continued to exist, there was more

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of an emphasis and interest in Christianity in the years prior to the twentieth century due to the colonial domination and implementation of Judeo-Western institutions like schools and the court. Even with limited practitioners, Christianity had a huge influence on the development of Hong Kong culture, from schools to institutions to politics (Seong 2006, 5). In the 20th century, migration of Chinese mainlanders into Hong Kong especially monks during the Cultural Revolution that Buddhism began to have a significant presence in Hong Kong culture (Venerable Master Jin Ying, 2019). There was a marked increase in refugee monks in the early 1950s, leading to a sort of renaissance of Buddhist practice in Hong Kong (Barca and Basilio 2009, 18). After this influx of Buddhist monks, there was a steady increase in the development of new monasteries and restoration of those that had fallen into disrepair. Following the growth of different bodies of sangha (communities of Buddhist monks and nuns) there was a simultaneous growth in interest, practice, and awareness of Buddhism in Hong Kong culture.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANISTIC BUDDHISM Along with this movement, there was also a kind of restructuring within Buddhism in China in the form of Humanistic Buddhism or “Buddhism for the Human Life” (人生佛教) (Travagnin 2016, 216). This reform was to bring about a way to further make Buddhism something more accessible for the laity. Taixu, the individual behind Humanistic Buddhism said, Until now, we must adept the true teachings of the Buddha to the time and the capacity of humankind, also we must select the essence of the various Buddha’s teachings from various ages and regions, further compiling and arranging them. (Daoru 2010, 181)

Humanistic Buddhism is a merging of Buddhist and Humanistic philosophies and practices. It sought to teach the foundational teachings of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths are as follows: dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactory) is an innate characteristic of existence in samsara (the world/existence), dukkha exists due to cravings or attachments, there is a way to end dukkha, and the path leading to the end of dukkha is the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is practicing Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Along with these Buddhist tenets, the philosophy of Humanism was also implemented (Maha-parinibbana Sutta, Part 2, trans 1998). Humanism originated during the renaissance and continued to expand during the Age of Enlightenment. It is the philosophy that centers focus around humanity, working on making the

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enjoyment and development of material, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the world available to every person (Lamont 1997, 4). Combining Buddhism and Humanism then created a philosophy and practice that worked to bring the teachings and practices of Buddhism to all people. This means a focus on caring for the living instead of the dead, working to help others, becoming more compassionate, and encouraging more altruism for all people of all creeds and backgrounds. The Humanistic Buddhism trying to appeal to all sections of the society is what led to the intertwining of Buddhism in Hong Kong life and culture. The building, completion, and inauguration of the Tiantan (天壇大佛) Buddha created a significant physical monument and center for Buddhism in Hong Kong (Pong 2006, 2). Humanistic Buddhism is hence also compatible with the commercialized Chinese society and the way Chinese business’ function (Lu 2023). It is found suitable for the contemporary Chinese society, especially among the Chinese community who are adept in the business sector. Quoting from Master Hsing Yun, he says:

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Humanistic Buddhism should re-evaluate the value of wealth. If it is in line with the right karma and right livelihood, the more the better; as long as it can benefit the country's people's livelihood, the general public, economic interests, and a happy life. Buddhists should engage in profitable businesses, such as farms, factories, companies, banks, and so on. (Master Hsing Yun 2001, in Lu 2023, 266)

This is also a factor as to why Humanistic Buddhism finds popularity and relevance within Hong Kong society, which, since the 1970s, has risen to become one of the four East Asian Tigers of economic development within East Asia. But, unlike ancient Buddhism, Humanistic Buddhism has begun to develop more of an interest in mindfulness and mediation as ways to connect with others around them. Humanistic Buddhism has also helped lay better foundations for the study and practice of Buddhism in Hong Kong and even around the world. It combines Humanism and Buddhism, one a Western philosophy and the other an Eastern practice. Similar to MBSR and other modern developed practices of mindfulness, Humanistic Buddhism presents a new way to engage with and discuss different practices of mindfulness and philosophies in Buddhism. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MINDFULNESS Similar to the modern Buddhist practices in Hong Kong, the presence of mindfulness is also fairly new in its developments and practices. The definition of mindfulness ranges from many different traditions and individuals.

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Jon Kabat-Zinn, the creator of MBSR program, defines it as “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally .  .  . sometimes add(ing), in the service of self-understanding and wisdom” (Mindful 2007). In the Theravada tradition, mindfulness is described through the attention to the breath and the act of meditation. In terms of the idea of “mindfulness” it was more of the action that led to the focus and grounding the body that could lead to awareness and attention. There are many different forms and practices of mindfulness within Hong Kong, including within different meditative practices in various branches of Buddhism; yogic practices such as vinyasa, Ashtanga, Anahata, and Kundalini; and more secular-based ones such as MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Therapy, and Loving-Kindness Meditation. Specifically, within Hong Kong there is a steadily increasing presence of more secular and health-based mindfulness practices. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, as mentioned earlier, is the developer of the MBSR program. This is a program he developed to aid in addressing and alleviating the pain and stress caused by it, utilizing the practices taught within Buddhism (University of Massachusetts Memorial Health 2023). From there, the practice developed into a full program and began to include other practices such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Loving-Kindness Meditation. While this continued to expand and grow across the United States, it was not until the early twenty-first century that MBSR was brought to Hong Kong. Since its initial introduction, MBSR has been implemented in many different studios, programs, and institutions. In Hong Kong, an individual can find many different forms of mindfulness practice in the secular sphere. In fact, there are a plethora of programs and studies being implemented even within schools and monasteries, acting as conduits between more Buddhist practices and these secular programs. It is a fairly recent implementation, as the various mindfulness-based programs, studies, and practices are still being developed.

R&L PROCESS OF MINDFULNESS-BASED STRESS REDUCTION (MBSR)

For this research, I have gone through the eight-week MBSR program and used my participant observation, discussions with the fellow participants, and interviews to think about mindfulness in Hong Kong. Within the MBSR program, there is a great focus on the breath, the body, and the self. Throughout the eight-week course, the practitioners learn how to recenter their attention and language, along with learning to reengage with their body. It is not just about the mind. An example would be the role and importance of body scans.

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As a practice, body scans seem simple. Listening to a recording, a practitioner can choose to sit or lay down as they are walked through a general “scan” or “check in” of their body. The scan moves through each limb and section of the body, leaving no part unaddressed. The practitioner is asked to focus on and relax whatever part of their body they are focusing on, finishing with a whole-body check. It is very soothing and grounding in terms of practice, along with the emphasis and reminder to focus on your breath and breathing as the scan is conducted. Of those who were in the MBSR course and those who shared their experience and interest of mindfulness for this project, there was one marked similarity: a kind of searching for “something.” For some it was tied to stress in their work, others physical health concerns, and then some even said they weren’t sure what brought them to mindfulness; just that they were missing that “something.” The interviewees expressed a belief that they have found a way to discover that “something” through mindfulness, whether they have recently begun practicing or have practiced for years. There are also revelations, expressions, and interest in more spiritual and Buddhist ideology and tradition. Even if the individuals who shared their experiences are not religious, there is an expressed interest in the experience of a spiritual shift in themselves, along with a growing interest then in Buddhism. MBSR as a practice also works to address the isolating, individual aspects of the Hong Kong urban condition. Similar to attending a monastery, meeting up for an MBSR session brings people together in a very vulnerable way. While attending the session, there is a precedence set that a level of anonymity is expected and that once you enter the room and begin the session, you leave the outside world behind. While attending one of the courses during the eight weeks, everyone in the room works to share vulnerability and connect with one another, regardless of who they are or where they have come from. While it is not a religious movement, there are still deep spiritual roots and practices present. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR, even speaks of the influences Buddhism has on his development of MBSR (Booth 2017). At the core of MBSR is a practice that is developed from ancient spiritual and religious practices as a modern way to connect with oneself to better connect with others. It is a way to further develop community and connectivity to others while living in a hypercapitalistic and individualistic urban society. The fact that MBSR has roots in Buddhism but with modern health-based implementations helps to increase its potential in Hong Kong. As a city with a culture and economy tied to two different “worlds,” the roots of Buddhism combined with more modern implementations. MBSR and other more modern mindfulness practices can help to connect with many different kinds of peoples from many different backgrounds, especially in Hong Kong’s urban condition where it is modern-Western but yet also has its strong roots

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in Chinese religious culture coming from the New Territories. It helps to address the alienation and isolation that can occur in more urban and capitalistic societies by developing a connection to oneself in such a fast-paced environment and then encouraging the potential to reach out to and connect with those around them.

EXPERIENCES OF MINDFULNESS IN HONG KONG The individuals interviewed were specifically practitioners of MBSR. Woo (2020) was born and raised in Hong Kong; she was a well-established psychologist in the city with many years of experience and a thriving practice. Woo had taken to mindfulness as a way to address her own struggles, after spending a life in a profession working to address various mental and emotional stressors; “eventually medication just reaches a limit,” she said. She did not seek mindfulness as a solution but a coping mechanism. Woo noted that there was a lot of pressure for a more logical approach to life in Hong Kong society and in her opinion a lot of individuals sought out either mindfulness or Buddhist practices in response to this. “It is a human phenomenon,” she said. By this, she meant it was the fatigue experienced by an extended emphasis on rationality, a universal experience which was leading to this interest in mindfulness. In her day-to-day life, despite it being on the surface quite fulfilling with her career and family, she still felt a sense of exhaustion, burnout, and a growing feeling of isolation. It is this that helped encourage her interest and development of her mindfulness practice. Woo pointed out that since Buddhism has a foundational presence in Hong Kong, preliminary knowledge of mindfulness and meditation already many who grew up in Hong Kong. She initially felt unsure about seeking out “alternative” methods to address her own stress and struggle, she was surprisingly encouraged due to the already heavy presence of Buddhist practice and mindfulness teachings in Hong Kong, specifically, the practices of MBSR and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. From there, Woo’s practice grew and evolved to the point that they utilize it in her daily life and work life. Woo even works to encourage others to develop and utilize their own types of mindfulness-based practices for emotional, spiritual, mental, and even physical health. Jay (2020) is an immigrant to Hong Kong from Malaysia. While he has been living in Hong Kong for a few years, he mentioned that what led him to mindfulness practice was the exhaustion he felt in everyday life, along with an anxiety gained from the fast-paced nature of life in Hong Kong. There was also, as Jay said, a struggle for personal identity due to their own personal history and religion, combined with feeling stressed, uncertain, and detached

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from the new home he was making for himself. Unlike Woo, who had been practicing mindfulness for years, Jay had just started a few months before the interview. He had been in Hong Kong for a couple of years but had only recently begun to truly feel the mental, emotional, and physical strain of living in a fast-paced, high-stress work and urban environment. As Jay said, “I was looking for something that would assist me to address various issues that I was having, especially since moving to Hong Kong. They were work stress related issues . . . but also personal identity issues.” Jay spoke of growing up in a village in Malaysia, where there was a much more relaxed environment and settled feeling. However, due to the nature of his job, he ended up needing to relocate to Hong Kong. Jay’s background, unlike Woo’s laxer secular upbringing, was in Christianity, which he still found great comfort in and practiced faithfully. While prayers helped in his faith, he felt that it was not what he was looking for to address the anxieties faced. There was a desire to seek out a more tangible form of spiritual practice and it was the combination of Buddhist influence in Hong Kong, combined with the more scientific and psychological backing of mindfulness practices that drew Jay to the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. While it had only been a few months of instruction and practice, Jay expressed great interest in continuing and was quite excited about the notable changes they had already observed. When asked to expand on that, Jay said,

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There was this session we did about when the awareness arises in you? About how to identify or spot stress, or things that bring you stress. I found that so helpful because when I am confronted with something and I see in my awareness, the alarm bells ring so I say, ok this is possibly going to cause me stress. So I need to deal with it in a very particular way.

The awareness, body connectivity, and mindful eating were the main practices that Jay highlighted as being most helpful. He, similarly to Woo, also spoke about working to continue their practice while utilizing it in a way that would help others around him. One predominant similarity that both Woo and Jay shared as a result of their practices was an emerging desire to share and express their experiences with others. Woo had begun to share her experiences with other friends and family members, along with seeking out others who practiced MBSR and mindfulness. Jay as well had begun to express his interest in reaching out to and sharing his practice to colleagues who he saw as struggling with their own issues. Jay related a story about a colleague who was quite nervous and high strung and suffering in her anxiety. He begun speaking with her about using this practice to manage her emotions, and subsequently, as Jay is a teacher in a school, he also started to think about bringing the practice to his school,

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because he found that it was very helpful for students and teachers alike to angle themselves from the perspective of compassion and understanding. Overall, there was a marked expression of an interest and increase in compassionate thought and awareness in their day to day. Woo spoke about utilizing her practice when engaging with her own son, speaking of times when he acted out and instead of acting in frustration, she took time to calm herself down and worked to understand where his outburst was stemming from. Jay spoke of a colleague of his who he could see was falling into deep anxiety and despair, even before the social movement in the summer of 2019. He expressed how he had begun to reach out to her regularly to check in and worked to also not be too reactive whenever she would start to cause his own anxiety levels to spike. Both individuals had their own experiences with religion—specifically Christianity. However, they found that mainstream Christianity in Hong Kong lacked specific methods to bring focus on alleviating the emotions. Instead, they found a deeper desire to seek out ways to mitigate the constant anxiety, stress, and, surprisingly, loneliness they feel while living their lives inside Hong Kong through MBSR practice. Along with these similarities, there was a highlighted interest in not only continuing the practice but also working to pass it on to and assist those around them, in the spirit of compassion, a key practice of the MBSR. It was not only for those that they knew or cared about but even for strangers they encountered on the street. Both individuals developed a strong desire to learn how to share what they had experienced with others. While unaware of it, both had expressed tendencies and ideologies in line with Humanistic Buddhism. Within Hong Kong, especially economically, there is an intense and fast-paced environment that often can recommend either sacrificing your own health or even the well-being of others. Jay and Woo, just as preliminary examples, are individuals who sought to break out from this productivity-based environment and find ways to address their ailments and concerns. From here, instead of only further focusing on their own well-being, they both were considering and seeking out ways to connect with and help those they encountered. Marx’s theories on alienation within the capitalistic conditions adequately account for the sense of isolation and alienation that Jay and Woo face. Karl Marx wrote of four types of alienation within urban settings: alienation of the worker from the product, of worker from the act of production, from one’s own human nature, and alienation from others (Marx, 1932, 30). For both Jay and Woo, MBSR and mindfulness practices helped to alleviate the feelings of isolation from others, along with alienation from themselves. For Marx, he proposes that “man’s species-nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature” (Marx 1932, 32). This “estrangement” from each other

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leads to people no longer viewing each other as another person or someone that they are connected to and turns people toward more alienated and isolated lives. This is seen in Jay’s case, where in Malaysia, in a less capitalistic environment, particularly in a village, people are much more communal and connected to each other than in Hong Kong where despite the large density of people, he felt disconnected. The people around them, their fellow human beings, no longer are seen as people, as living beings. Other people become something separate from their sense of humanity, especially as shown in Woo’s relation of the extended practice of pragmatism and rationality she encounters in Hong Kong. In some situations, they become “things” to be used or manipulated to further an individual’s wealth, capital, or sense of importance. But, as Marx continues on to say, this alienation from other people also applies within one’s self; “every relationship in which man (stands) to himself, is realized and expressed only in the relationship in which a man stands to other men” (Marx 1932, 32). For Marx, the analysis is focused on the more capitalistic means of predication and relation of worker to labor and product. But it is through how we produce and work that we see the mentality and spirit of man. Both Woo and Jay were feeling burnt out and isolated in their lives, in ways that began to manifest even physically. Jay spoke of having developed dangerously high blood pressure, while Woo spoke of having increased issues with exhaustion and fatigue. After beginning his practice of mindfulness, Jay even claimed he went to visit a doctor and his blood pressure had already begun to decrease. Woo said that she felt more connected to herself and felt a growing sense of zen in her life—a sense that she then worked to implement with her family. Through mindfulness, the alienation and isolation that both Woo and Jay felt in both their mind and body began to subside and encouraged a more proactive interest in connecting and empathizing with those around them.

R&L CONCLUSION

Today, Hong Kong is irrevocably changed. It is a different city than what it was before the summer of 2019. After the social movement of 2019 that was stifled by the sudden threat and emergence of the Covid-19 epidemic in early 2020, there is a somber and frightened attitude in Hong Kong. However, even during the greatest moments of fear and chaos, those who practiced mindfulness found a sense of community and connection despite all that was occurring around them. Initially, both Woo and Jay sought out mindfulness as a way to address and alleviate their emotional and physical ailments. Even before the protesting started, both felt a change in their sense of self and awareness of others and the world around them. Even Jay, who

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had only been practicing for a short while, felt a sense of change occurring within himself. It is a rather serendipitous thing that they both had begun and/or furthered their mindfulness practice before the summer of 2019. Even after the beginnings and height of the social movement, Jay, Woo, and even myself were able to almost automatically address the fear, stress, and danger that we felt, experienced, or witnessed while living in Hong Kong during the social revolution of 2019. Woo, Jay, and myself all well expressed an acknowledgment of those feelings of fear and stress but had laid the groundwork to speak to and move from those initial primal reactions. Along with this preliminary reaction, there was also an awareness of and compassion for those around us. The practice of mindfulness has the potential to lay very deep, neurological groundwork that encourages and stimulates neuroplasticity. Psychologically, it addresses the modern afflictions of isolation, loneliness, and conditions such as anxiety, depression, or stress. Spiritually, it addresses the deeper desire for connection and sense of understanding of the self, others, and the world and universe around and within us. In the setting of Hong Kong, a city that bridges cultures and economies, people are living in a state of competition, isolation, unrest, and uncertainty. What mindfulness can provide is not a solution or cure-all for these conditions or personal ailments, but it can provide tools and processes to address them. More than that, it helps people to connect with and understand themselves, in order to better understand and connect with others around them.

R&L REFERENCES

Barca, Ankurand M.A. Basilio. 2009. Buddhism in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Buddhist Door. Booth, Robert. 2017. “Master of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn: ‘People are Losing their Minds. That is what we need to wake up to.’” The Guardian, October 22, 2017. Carroll, John M. 2007. A Concise History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. Conze, Edward. 1957. Buddhist Meditation. London: Irwin Books. Daoru, Wei. 2010. “Buddhism in China and Modern Society: An Introduction Centering Around the Teachings of Taixu and Yinshun.” Journal of Oriental Studies, 20: 171–182. Hsiung, James C. 2000. “The Hong Kong SAR: Prisoner of Legacy or History’s Bell-wether?” In Hong Kong the Super Paradox, edited by James Hsiung. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Jay. Personal Interview Conducted by Marin Nycklemoe, June 3, 2020. Lamont, Corliss. 1997. The Philosophy of Humanism. Amherst: Humanist Press.

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Lu Lung-Tan. 2023. “Contemporary Humanistic Buddhism and Chinese Commercial Spirit.” International Journal of Management Studies and Social Science Research. 5(1): 258–267. Marx, Karl. 1932. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mindful Staff 2017. “Jon Kabat-Zinn: Defining Mindfulness,” Mindful​.org​, January 11, 2017. https://www​.mindful​.org​/jon​-kabat​-zinn​-defining​-mindfulness/. Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History; It’s Origins, It’s Transformations, and It’s Prospects. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. Pong, Seong Theresa. 2006. Modernizing Hong Kong Buddhism: The Case of the Chi Lin Nunnery. Unpublished Dissertation. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Teller, Beverly. 2019 “The True Power of Connection and Belonging: Achieving Human Natures Most Primitive Needs and Desires” Beverly Teller​.com​, December 20, 2019, https://www​.beverlyteller​.com​/post​/the​-true​-power​-of​-connection​ -belonging​-achieving​-human​-nature​-s​-most​-primitive​-needs​-and​-desires. Thanissaro Bhikkhu. 2008. “Mindfulness Defined,” Access to Insight​ .or​g, 2008, https://www​.accesstoinsight​.org​/lib​/authors​/thanissaro​/mindfulnessdefined​.html. Thanissaro Bhikkhu. 2008. “Indriya-Vibhanga Sutta: Analysis of the Mental Faculties” trans from Samyutta Nikaya 48.10, Access to Insight​.or​g, 2008, https://www​ .accesstoinsight​.org​/tipitaka​/sn​/sn48​/sn48​.010​.than​.html. Travagnin, Stefania. 2016. “Geneaology and Taxonomy of the ‘Twentieth Century Renjian Fojiao’: Mapping a famen from Mainland China and Taiwan to Europe,” paper delivered at Symposium on Humanistic Buddhism at Fo Guang Shan Monastery, Taiwan Dec 17, 2016. Venerable Master Jing Yin. Notes from Lecture conducted January 18, 2019. Woo. Personal Interview. Conducted by Marin Nycklemoe, May 21, 2020. World Population Review. 2023. “Hong Kong Population 2023 (Live),” Wor​ldpo​pula​ tion​review​​.com, Last Accessed April 3, 2023, https://wor​ldpo​pula​tion​review​.com​/ countries​/hong​-kong​-population. State of the Global Workplace Report. 2023. Gallup​.co​m. Gallup. www​.gallup​.com​/ workplace​/349484​/state​-of​-the​-global​-workplace​-2022​-report​.aspx. University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Center for Mindfulness. 2023. Umnhealth​ .or​ g. Last Accessed May 13, 2023, https://www​ .ummhealth​ .org​ /center​ -mindfulness. Yeung, Cherry.2023. “Economic and Trade Information on Hong Kong,” HKTDC​.co​ m, March 29, 2023, https://research​.hktdc​.com​/en​/article​/MzIwNjkzNTY5. Zurcher, E. 2007. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Leiden: Brill.

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Chapter 9

Languages of Care Exploring Articulations of Neglect and Backwardness among Laboring Migrants in Bengaluru Swathi Shivanand

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In their oft-cited article, Tronto and Fisher define care as “a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we live in it as well as possible. That ‘world’ includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Tronto and Fisher 1990, 40). Drawing from this framework, I show that migration to the city from neglected rural areas is a “species activity” of care undertaken by households to sustain themselves and “to maintain, continue and repair” their life worlds in the face of state neglect. This marks a shift in viewing migration as decisions undertaken by individuals or groups of individuals or as an economically logical response to “push” and “pull” factors, a view that much of migration scholarship, and policy and activism is still enmeshed in. Further, building on insights generated by feminist scholarship that care ethics foreground “social relations and emotions for understanding our world” and draws our attention to the “social and how it is constructed through unequal power relationships” (Lawson 2007), I undertake a dual exploration: of the self and the social. I will examine how migrant subjectivities are shaped by intimate expectations of care and how spatial histories and structural processes such as of regional disparities and gendered inequalities operate in the experience of migration. This chapter is based on interviews conducted with construction workers, originally from Hyderabad-Karnataka, who are residing in two different housing settlements in Bengaluru. The Hyderabad-Karnataka region is located in the northwest of contemporary Karnataka state and remains one 139

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of the most neglected regions in independent India.1 Lower-caste households from the region began to move to Bengaluru as labor migrants in the 1990s when the construction sector had just begun to emerge as one of the major employers in the urban.2 What started as a slow trickle soon turned into a large-scale migration from parts of the region to Bengaluru in the early 2000s (Shivakumar, Sheng, and Weber 1991). Migrants from Hyderabad-Karnataka form one of the largest groups of construction workers in Bengaluru. These are some of the broader empirical contexts that inform my interlocutors’ migrant experiences. Here, I explore the different languages and sites of care that my interlocutors—migrants across different ages—articulate. From gods to state to families, laboring migrants articulate different languages of care: as necessarily needing to be caste-just, as a duty of the state, as their right from the state, and as those worthy and unworthy of care under a patriarchal system. These languages are articulated from lifeworlds that take place within the spatial contexts of the city and the village. Importantly, even as we explore care as a “species activity” that we partake in, it cannot be studied without reference to the possibilities of care afforded and curtailed by migration, gender, caste, and class, as this chapter will show.

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GODS WHO CARE AND GODS WHO DON’T My chief interlocutor at my field site at LB Nagar was Amba, a first-generation woman migrant from Yadgir district, over 60 years old, who likely came to the city in the early 2000s. Once when chatting with her at her home in the settlement a couple of days after Ganesha habba (the festival of the Elephant God), I asked her if she had celebrated the festival. “Ganesha isn’t good for poor people like us. We celebrate Jokarama who we make out of mud,” she said. Intrigued, I asked her to tell me more. Amba then narrated the mythical story around the Jokarama festival: During the Ganesha festival, the god comes and eats sugarcane and payasa, burps heartily, and leaves. When Jokarama comes, he roams around for nine days and finds nothing to eat in the region. He sees there is no rain, there are no jowar crops, and that people are dying. He leaves to find the rain god and apprise him of the situation. “Only then does the rain god come,” Amba said. When I told her that I did not know such a festival existed and if they still celebrated Jokarama, she nodded and raising her voice. She elaborated: If anyone says Ganesha, it makes me angry. Tell me how Ganesha has been useful to us. He has only ever helped the Banajigas (dominant caste and landed Lingayats), the ones who wear the Linga. He has only made the rich more prosperous. Jokarama on the other hand gets none of the luxuries that Ganesha gets.

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But he sees what it’s really like. When we immerse him in the lake, he immediately goes to the rain god and tells him that the children are dying, the trees are dying, there is no water to drink, the sparrows and the crows don’t have water to drink. Jokarama is only useful. Ganesha is not. (Amba 2017)

Amba, from the lower-ranked Bestru caste, upturns some of the conventional understandings of Ganesha as a ubiquitous god of prosperity, presenting him as one who affords the possibility of accumulation only to the higher-ranked castes. Her narration of the myth revealed starkly the reality of rural, caste-class hierarchies in her region where Lingayats are the primary landowning caste, wielding dominance in both politics and bureaucracy. In such a caste-determined economy, the Gods also differ; Ganesha is rendered upper caste and insensitive, while Jokarama is the “useful” God: moved by the plight of the lower castes, the helpless birds and trees, he advocates on their behalf for rains. This is a god that also sees the differential impact of drought and lack of rain on the caste-class communities dependent on agriculture in Hyderabad-Karnataka; this particular act of seeing the caste-oppressed humans and the weary, dry world makes him a god that cares, who enables life to sustain. This shared myth of the Jokarama draws our attention to one possible way in which hardship is framed: as one determined by caste hierarchy but also which could be somewhat mitigated by a good spell of rain that allows sustenance. In a mythical world where the lives of gods and humans are deeply connected, a caring god could make all the difference for the latter.

R&L BACKWARDNESS AS CONTINGENT

This understanding of underdevelopment or backwardness as contingent, not historical, psychological, or permanent, is an important aspect to pay attention to given that Hyderabad-Karnataka’s “backwardness” is often attributed to historical factors that have left permanent psychological scars on its peoples. It is not uncommon to find in regional scholarship the notion that “historical factors” such as the Nizam’s regime lack of “urge to do any welfare work for their people or economic development of their territories” (Rajneesh, Degaonkar, and Kattimani 2011), or the feudal nature of this erstwhile state, had killed the “enterprising spirit” of the people of HyderabadKarnataka (Thimmaiah 1996). Such assertions are expressed even by activists of progressive inclinations. Housing rights activists Chandramma and Arul Selva, separately, narrated the same instance of docility they encountered among migrants from the region living as slum residents in Bangalore. Both said that on one of their

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surveys, they had come across a large settlement of migrants from the region squatting on private land, with permission from the owner. After introducing themselves as reporters, they spoke with residents to assess the history of the settlement. When they returned a few days later, they found the entire settlement had vanished without a trace. Apparently, the owner of the land had panicked after their visit and had asked the residents to vacate immediately. The squatters had left without protest, said Selva, and reasoned that the system of oppressive caste and land relations in the region had meant that migrants from the region were unaware of rights, entitlements, or even standing their ground against arbitrary injunctions. Chandramma also echoed the same views linking underdevelopment, feudalism, and its creation of subjugated subjects. This they placed in contrast to other migrants/slum residents who apparently are able to assert their rights in the city in the face of authoritarian force of landed interests or the state. While this relationship between feudalism and docility is often made about peoples of Hyderabad-Karnataka and their low productivity, this claim by activists posits a different argument about the implications of modernity. Modern subjects here are those who recognize and assert their rights-bearing selves rather than accept subjugation; as the laboring poor, they are the exploited subjects of development and it is on this ground that they ought to make claims of the state. When they do not assert their claims, for progressive activists, the people of HyderabadKarnataka seem untouched by this idiom of modernity. My interlocutors were likely unaware of many of these specific characterizations of them by both scholars and activists. My conversations with them revealed a more complex picture in which discourses of backwardness are accepted, appropriated, and challenged. Teleological notions of progress were accepted as a general characterization of their condition, that is, by being poor, they have not been able to, for instance, access education and better employment opportunities. But they rejected the embodied implications of poverty, that is, passivity, lack of civility, and inferiority of speech that circulate about the poor and/or those from the region. My interlocutors accepted the material realities of poverty as a determining condition in their lives but not the ensuing implications of poverty on their being. For instance, Hyderabad-Karnataka’s dialect is popularly understood to be an inferior dialect, not quite properly Kannada. This came up in conversations: Uma explained it as a matter of refinement: “Ours is a coarse dialect. There are fissures in our words, in the way we speak. But your dialect is refined” and added that every region has its own kind of dialect (Uma 2017). In saying so, Uma rejects the value-laden implications associated with dialects and renders them merely a product of spaces. At VB Colony, in a conversation about dialects, Gowri, challenging the notion that civility is the preserve of the literate or is reflected in speech sounds said,

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People here think that we speak roughly. Sometimes they get angry and ask us why we are being confrontational. But our language is more respectful, and we address everyone as Amma, Akka, Anna, unlike in Bangalore where people address us in the singular. (Gowri 2017)

Such articulations of self-respect were often enunciated countering the negativity surrounding the poor, the migrant, or those from backward regions. SCHOOLING AS CAREGIVING Yet this same Gowri whose four children all go to school, also said in another conversation: Right from when we were very young, our parents used to take us to the fields and then soon enough we began working there as well. That’s how we became dullards. It’s because we are dullards that we send our children to school. . . . Those who know to read and write are different, we are different. (Gowri 2017)

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In an increasingly literate world, illiteracy gnaws at the young, laboring workforce who as first-generation child migrants had no opportunity to go to school. When migrants started to pour into Bangalore from the region, they did so in response to distress faced in the region. The city promised not prosperity but basic survival. First-generation migrants spoke of the minimal wages they worked for when they first began work in the city; in the absence of care policies and services by the state, many young laborers have spent their childhood at construction sites, first as toddlers and then as helpers. Even those as young as 20 years in both settlements have never stepped into school. In one conversation with Anjaneya when we were talking about if labor in the city helps in upward mobility, his young daughter walked in. He pointed to her and said, “We send them to school so that they don’t become like us. They should be more equipped to deal with the world than us. We don’t even know how to write our own name.” Then he chuckled and said, “We have to nod our head whatever they read. If we knew to read, we could correct it. But we don’t know. . . . So, these kids take advantage of us and do what they want” (Anjaneya 2017). For young parents in my two field settlements, schooling their children is then an aspiration of a life different from theirs; this is indeed a widespread aspiration among those laboring in exploitative sectors such as the construction industry. This act of sacrificing one’s body in the service of a better future for their children is articulated in a context where there is widespread state neglect of people from regions deemed “backward.” Ensuring their children go to school and become literate needs to be seen as an act of caregiving;

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this care is to ensure that their children are better equipped to deal with the world than they ever were. The burden of such caregiving rests on the household and yet the heaviness, perhaps even futility, of such caregiving is felt by some in poignant ways. In my interview with Rudra, he confided in me about the difficulties of his life: his father’s alcoholism and death, his older brothers’ alcoholism, his mother’s and his struggle to provide for his and his brothers’ wives and children, and his work as a helper on construction sites as a child. I know now that my life is always going to be difficult. But if children even now must undergo the same difficulties as me, then what is the point? If you put such children in school, how will they learn? How will anything enter their head when they have to confront so many difficulties daily? It just won’t happen, he said. (Rudra 2017)

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The city may hold out the promise of more than survival now; Rudra’s musings, however, question whether this modest prosperity can translate to any intergenerational advantage for their children and if the caregiving provided by poor households, in the form of education, is adequate. A RIGHT TO BE CARED FOR

I met Rudra through a young activist Raghavendra working with Janasahyog, a slum rights organization. It was clear that this friendship between the two had provided Rudra with the language to lay claims on the state as part of a backward community. Yet his articulation of claims came from the lived experience of neglect not necessarily from a strictly rights-based language. For instance, while talking of children in the settlement living uncared-for lives especially when parents are out for work, he said, I see children playing outside when their parents are at work. They (the children) have no supervision and no one to feed them during the day so they end up putting whatever they find in their mouths. . . . Then I feel is this how we should be living? Why should we have the Government then? It should be helping those of us from backward sections, isn’t it? (ibid)

In Rudra’s articulations, the experience of backwardness is intimate but also outside and can be alleviated through the intervention of the state, whose moral duty it is to provide care for those whose only asset is their ability to labor. Is this a language of rights or is this a language of care? Is it even fruitful to draw this distinction in the context of how the laboring poor articulate their relationship with the state? If Amba spoke of the “usefulness” of Jokarama who cared for the poor and interceded on their behalf with the

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gods, Rudra calls on something similar for the state to do. Given the inability of the laboring households in the city to offer substantive caregiving that can generate intergenerational mobility, Rudra asks whether the state should not consider its primary duty to be that of a caregiver? Articulating it as a duty of the state to care and a right of the laboring poor to receive care is a necessarily different articulation from the language of claims-asserting, modern citizens. The state may not be God, but it can be “useful” like Jokarama if only it can see them and care about their aspirations for mobility. Emerging scholarship on thinking of care in urban theory has called on the latter to recognize care as a transformative ethic that can guide our thinking on what constitutes the just city, on how care draws our attention to “grounded particularities,” and on how it allows for “situated engagement” with ways in which people are operating in the urban to repair our world (Williams 2016). Given that care work falls disproportionately on women, it becomes important to think of what care means in the city, how its absence structures migrant experience and pay attention to the gendered nature of these “grounded particularities.” To illustrate this, I offer another vignette from my fieldwork. On one visit to LB Nagar, a young woman came to sit in on the conversation I was having with one of the older women of the settlement. Thinking that I may be able to help her, she told me how there is no Anganwadi nearby and that if they have to access one, they have to travel really far. She said that having an Anganwadi could go a long way in helping young women to go to work, especially if they did not have help from the extended family in the city. In the absence of such care services, women withdraw from work or leave their children in the village with mothers and mothers-in-law. The city then remains a space for laboring alone, while the village continues its work of offering care that helps sustain labor reproduction for the city. In the lifeworlds of the poor, the village occupies a central place of desire, offering a sense of belonging not only because of precarity of labor and residence in the city that renders them “permanently temporary” (Shivanand 2019) but also because of its capacity to provide care for those not yet ready for the labor force (like children), those who have retired from it, and those who have been wounded by the hazards of construction work.

R&L RECOLLECTIONS OF DROUGHT, CARE, AND NEGLECT

However, state neglect pervades multiple aspects of the lives of migrant workers, whether it be in the city or the village. In drylands such as Hyderabad-Karnataka, scanty rainfall leading to periods of extreme drought has been documented throughout history. Given this, drought prevention through increasing resilience should have been high on priority. But it had not been.

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My interlocutors often explained that unreliable rains and lack of irrigation had rendered agricultural yields unreliable; they had thus decided to migrate to the city. For older women migrants, recollections of drought are central to their ideas of care and neglect. This was illustrated in a conversation with Amba and her sister-in-law Thaiamma at their house where the latter recollected the great distress (thippla, she called it) she had seen during her childhood during the drought of 1972 that hit parts of Hyderabad-Karnataka and Marathwada regions. Work was scarce, and her parents struggled to find enough food for the family of seven and worked hard for wages as low as one rupee a day. Talking of her mother’s commitment to her children, Thaiamma said that one time, her mother had refused to eat at a temple where she was offered food after work, preferring instead to take the food to her children. “They told her not to worry and that they would give her food to take home to us and only then did she also eat,” Thaiamma said. The family survived this period of penury, thanks partly, Thaiamma says, to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s initiatives of providing them with food grains as well as work during the drought. Bringing up Gandhi’s name stirred memories for Amba who began to sing songs composed decades ago by women working in agricultural fields after Gandhi was assassinated in 1984:

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Bara bantha, Bara bantha, Nammavva thai, Indira Gandhi Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Baragalada badathana antha godi kalsyale, Godi kalsyalavva thai, Badavaragi naava jeeva kalasidiye, badavaragi naava jeevana kalasidiye Nammavva thai Indira Gandhi, neenindale nava badikidivi amma thai

Gandhi in this song is referred to as a mother who saves the poor with the relief programs she undertook. Her provision of food and work saved us from the dire poverty that drought had brought in and it is because of her that we are alive, the song says. At a later point in the song, the singer asks Indira Gandhi why she closed her eyes to the poor and recollects how the wages she ensured helped the singer sustain her family of nine children. This song recollects the difficult time of the drought and the state’s intervention that helped mitigate some of this hardship. The song embodies this intervention in the figure of Gandhi and presents her as a savior. What is striking is also the similarities between the myth of Jokarama, the caring god, who interceded with the rain god on their behalf and how Gandhi is presented in this song—not as a god—but as a mother who aided other mothers to care

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for their children during the bleakness of drought. If the terrible conditions of drought placed existence itself at risk, her act of sending wheat was not merely an ameliorative measure but acquired a far more intimate tenor—of giving them life itself. This is a language of care entirely different from one that claims care from the state as the latter’s duty. This is one that invokes the care of the mother for her children: in Thaiamma’s recollection of her own mother, who stood between hunger and her children; in Amba’s recollection of Indira Gandhi as a mother who enabled other mothers to care for their families. MEMORIES OF DROUGHT IN A PLACE OF “PROSPERITY” What function though does this recollection of the drought serve to understand the present of these migrant women in the city? Memories of drought and the attendant hardships were a recurring feature in Amba’s recollections. She constantly referred to this drought that she had lived through in her childhood, how they ate goat fodder in the absence of food, the single rupee they received for a whole day’s work, and the ditches they dug as drought relief work, when she spoke of her difficult life. Even though the 1972 drought was not the immediate factor for her migration to Bangalore, it is a period of adversity in Amba’s life that she kept returning to, especially given her present difficult relationship with her sons and daughters-in-law continually. Her two sons, she had said then, had refused to look after her because she had no property to leave behind for them. Her constant tiffs with her daughter-in-law were over household matters such as wasting food and not caring for and providing her meals:

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We have done so much for so little food. During the drought we could not even get a little rice back then, we used to cook some seeds and feed our children. Sometimes we would dig ditches for days and get only ten rupees for it. We have cleaned people’s houses, if they asked us to paint, we would paint. But this generation wastes so much food. (Amba 2017)

Amba’s recollections characterize the present as one marked by neglect even if she now lives in relative prosperity, compared to the years of drought. Absent in these narratives is the possibility of the city as being anything more than a site of accumulation; in fact, the city and its prosperity breaks down social relations, according to some older women migrants. Uma, one of the first women I spoke to, said that over the years, the sense of community had withered away with people not “caring” for those around them anymore. “Then none of us had money so we looked after each other. But now with

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more money coming in, people only care for their immediate family,” she said (Uma 2017). If care is a species activity, it is during times of drought that this becomes most recognized at the level of the household and of the state. Women’s narratives here of care during drought and neglect during prosperity have the effect of creating an imagined place in the past where they were cared for. Care exists elsewhere in these recollections—in the past, with natal families, as young girls. Many of the first-generation women migrants I spoke to in both colonies recollected fondly how they were well taken care of by their parents before marriage. Marriage severed these ties of care and propelled them to becoming primary caregivers.

WHO IS WORTHY OF CARE?

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They also shared similar stories of why they migrated to the city: alcoholic husbands who gambled away their share of property and insufficient land and labor resources in the village to sustain the family. The refusal to draw on resources from the natal family since it violated tradition was also a strongly held belief: what happens after marriage was their fate and that parents and brothers could not be drawn upon for everyday sustenance. This left women with no other resources except husbands and sons.3 If these individuals decide to withdraw care, women are left bereft, a story I heard from many firstgeneration women migrants. Saba, for instance, narrated how her husband, a man of many vices, frittered away nearly 10 acres of irrigated land, claiming that it was his property and he could do what he liked with it. They migrated to Bangalore where she bore eight of her ten children and continues to work as a helper, even after her husband passed away. Such stories were common: because men held property singly in the village, their wives had little control when the men decided to gamble it away. If patriarchal control of land meant that women had little to no say in property transactions, aging women faced another kind of devaluation within their families when their bodies, earnings, and caregiving capacities depleted over time. For Thaiamma’s mother who survived the drought and its attendant hardships, the neglect that she faced at the hands of her sons and their wives in the later years finally felled her. She died after consuming poison. Thaiamma said: “My mother used to recollect those times and say how they worked so hard for so little. But now, there’s enough to eat but no one cares for me. I can see prosperity but I can’t taste it, she used to say.” For Amba who almost single-handedly brought up her children, after her alcoholic husband gambled away his lands; her son’s refusal to care for her cuts deep. It also points to the structural-intimate abandonment of

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poor women by familial and state structures. Practices of patrilineality and patrilocality not only ensure that women remain propertyless but also render relationships with natal families tenuous. Their migration post-marriage to husbands’ villages also ensured that they remained physically distant from any property claims they make. Based on her decades-long engagement with research in Haryana, Prem Chowdhry has argued that the practice of village exogamy, widespread in northern India, expels women from her natal village and has been a long-standing spatial strategy to divest women from claims to natal property (Chowdhry 2015). Everyone, including women, participates in the patriarchal expulsion of women from natal property, believing this to be correct and the proper way of things. Gowri, one of my interlocutors told me that, perhaps, people from Bengaluru may ask for a share in property, but her people are content with the share they receive from their husband’s family. While the law might guarantee a share in property, she said, “Our peace of mind will not allow it. . . . we let it go thinking we want our brothers and fathers to be prosperous” (Gowri 2017). These patriarchal operations of property transfer as well as the fact that women earn less on construction sites means then that some members within the household—older women and young daughters—are deemed unfit or unworthy of care even as others—men and young boys—receive care from women at the expense of the latter’s self. Once in a conversation with Gowri, intrigued by how often I was asked if I had brothers, I asked why sons are preferred over daughters. Matter-of-factly, she replied that having sons means getting higher and more sustainable wages. A man earns up to Rs. 700–800 per day once he starts doing coolie work, while a woman can only earn about Rs. 300 per day. “How can any family run on women’s wages alone?” she asked (Gowri 2017). Preference for sons is also rooted in material practices of patrilineality and for women who get married and bear sons, it is through these men that the benefits of property are enjoyed. It persuades them then to participate in this son preference, which is based also on a devaluation of themselves, their work, and their daughters. Saba, in our conversation, told me of how she gave birth to 12 children, and only one of them was a boy. The boy died young and now Saba rues that she does not have the good fortune of having a daughter-in-law and grandchildren—this despite the fact that two of her married daughters have had children (Saba 2017). Gowri reasoned with me about the disparity in wages between women and men in the construction sector thus: “We can’t do as much work as them. . . . We can’t carry the kind of heavy load men carry, that is why mestris pay women less than men” (Gowri 2017). This gendered division of labor and the more acute exploitation of women’s labor in the construction industry is possible also because of the workings of such intimate patriarchies—even though

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higher wages for men come at the cost of a devaluation of women’s work, it is acceptable because these men are their fathers, husbands, and sons, they belong to them. These ideological presuppositions dovetail easily with construction capital’s requirements for cheap labor; it uses and consolidates these hierarchies, leaving women migrants, older and younger, less worthy of care. In this chapter, I have presented the different languages of care that my interlocutors used to explain their lifeworlds to me. This is a lifeworld marked by unequal power relations of caste, class, region, and gender; these power relations determine the limits of care extended by the state and the household. By foregrounding care through language, I may have moved away from policy-related scholarship on care—paid and unpaid. But in doing so, I have tried to demonstrate how the laboring poor view their relationship with the state not in the language of individual-centric liberalism but far more intimately, experientially, as deserving subjects of care. Finally, the household may be accepted more readily as the site of caregiving and receiving but its formation as a patriarchal unit has meant that those cast aside by it experience it as an expulsion. Could a “just city,” a “caring state,” assuage this trauma? If yes, what languages and practices must this caring take?

R&L ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks her interlocutors for opening up about their lives, Janasahyog for facilitating introductions in these settlements, and Rakesh Mehar for his careful, constructive, and engaged feedback on this chapter.

NOTES 1. The region has been considered variously to be “underdeveloped,” “backward,” and “feudal” and the causes attributed to its being part of the erstwhile state of Hyderabad-Deccan, ruled by the Asaf Jahi dynasty, for over two centuries till 1948. I have contested this association elsewhere, arguing that the region has been neglected by post-colonial and linguistic states (Shivanand 2020). 2. The construction industry has been integral to urbanization in the contemporary moment. Apart from creating the built environments that real estate profits are derived from, it encourages migration by providing continuous employment opportunities to workers. In 2008, about 40 million migrants were employed in construction work across the country and this labor-intensive industry was the second largest employer in the country, after agriculture. The construction industry also employed an equal proportion of migrant male and female workers—of its total workforce, 36% and 35% of men and women, respectively, were migrant workers.

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3. This intimate, physical expulsion of the woman from her natal family, and from property itself, performed and accepted as “correct” by all involved, needs to be recognized as an important factor for migration of women to the urban. Marriage may facilitate the migration of women, that is, women may follow husbands to the city, but because marriage is an expulsion from property, it forces women to migrate since they are customarily prohibited from inheriting from natal families.

REFERENCES Amba. 2017. Personal Communication with author. Chowdhry, Prem. 2015. “A Matter of Two Shares: A Daughter’s Claim to Patrilineal Property in Rural North India.” In Political Economy of Production and Reproduction: Caste, Custom, and Community in North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Datla, Kavita. 2013. The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Gowri. 2017. Personal Communication with author. Lawson, Victoria. 2007. “Presidential Address: Geographies of Care and Responsibility.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97 (1): 1–11. Pavithra. 2017. Personal Communication with author. Rajneesh, Shalini, Chaya Degaonkar, and Sangeetha Kattimani. 2011. Inclusive Growth- Article 371 for Development of Hyderabad Karnataka Region. Gulbarga: Prasaranga, Gulbarga University. Rudra. 2017. Personal Communication with author. Saba. 2017. Personal Communication with author. Shivakumar, M.S., Yap Kioe Sheng, and Karl E Weber. 1991. “Recruitment and Employment Practices in Construction Industry: A Case Study of Bangalore.” Economic and Political Weekly, February, M27–40. Shivanand, Swathi. 2019. “‘Feet in Both Places’: Affective Spaces of Circular Migration.” Urbanisation 4 (2): 94–108. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/2455747119892346. ———. 2020. “A Region in Time: The Underdevelopment of Hyderabad-Karnataka.” Thesis, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University. Thimmaiah, G. 1996. “Regional Development: Some Issues.” In Regional Development: Problems and Policy Measures, edited by Abdul Aziz and Sudhir Krishna, 25–34. Bangalore: Institute for Social and Economic Change. Tronto, Joan C., and Berenice Fisher. 1990. “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring.” In Circles of Care, edited by E. Abel and M. Nelson, 36–54. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Uma. 2017. Personal Communication with author.

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Chapter 10

Hiking Is Caring “Kong Wu” and “Hang Shan” as Concepts to Understand the Changing Sense of Belonging in Hong Kong’s Rural Landscape Lok Hang Hui

R&L IDENTIFYING SENSE OF BELONGING IN THE RURAL LANDSCAPE

In contrast to the rural landscape, many parts of Hong Kong’s built environment are characterized by their dividing and alienating quality. In this global metropolis of extreme consumerism, personal worth is by and large determined by one’s wealth and material possessions which are reflected in where they live and work. Every Hongkonger learns to read the subtle evaluation hidden in the seemingly neutral question: “where is your workplace?” Other than the district they work in, those who already work in Central, Hong Kong’s top commercial and business district, would compare with each other their office buildings and sometimes even the floors where their offices are located. In a neoliberal economy that is closely geared to property development, spatial configuration in Hong Kong’s cityscape fosters cultural segregation. For example, the entire Central district would transform into a Little Manila when a large crowd of Filipino domestic workers turn up and take over every street and sidewalk for social gatherings during weekends and public holidays. Not so far away on the northern coast of Hong Kong Island, immigrants of Hokkien origin took root in North Point whereas Sheung Wan remains a stronghold for the Teochew merchants. On the opposite side of the harbor, there is a vibrant Thai community in Kowloon City and many Nepalese families have settled down in Jordan. They are the descendants of retired soldiers of the Gurkha regiment sent by the British government to guard the colony’s border with mainland China after the 1967 riots (Bosco 2005, 511). 153

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The best-known example of Hong Kong’s urban multiculturalism is perhaps found in the world-famous Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui where a diverse international community of backpackers, traders, and asylum seekers seeks temporary abode in one of the many low-cost guesthouses inside the multi-story building. This chapter illustrates how hiking in the countryside can be seen as a practice of care which helps convey a sense of belonging for many Hongkongers. With so many high-rise buildings clustered tightly in this so-called “concrete jungle,” it may be a surprise to some foreign visitors that about three-quarters of Hong Kong’s land is categorized as countryside. Home to over 7 million residents, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Nevertheless, the city has as many as 24 country parks within its hilly territory, covering up to 40% of its total land area (GovHK 2022). In examining the impact of globalization, Appadurai (1996, 182) suggests seeing the production of locality as “a phenomenological property of social life, a structure of feeling that is produced by particular forms of intentional activity . . .” Indeed, placemaking exercise, which is about attaching specific meaning, memory, and value to a certain space, is closely linked to the practices of building up local knowledge and creating common experiences in relation to that particular place. Such practices form an important part of our everyday attentiveness to the material environment that we exist in and are thus fundamental to our personal and collective identity. We interact with our physical surroundings using our senses and bodily dynamics on a daily basis. It is in this sense that landscape can be seen as a medium permeating our everyday lives and exerting agency over our social experience (Tilley 1994). For example, Gooch (2008) told us that being a Van Gujjar nomad is very much about mastering the proper movements and bodily actions required for walking their herd in the Himalayas. On a dark and dangerous mountain trail, it is not humans but the old buffaloes that “know” the way. As such, for the Van Gujjars, their buffaloes are “agents and companions in the walk, not objects to be moved.” As we shall see, this chapter suggests that the rural landscape of Hong Kong plays a similar role as these sagacious animals in India in the way that it acts as a social and emotional agent that shapes different senses of belonging among local villagers and the city dwellers whose interest in hiking grew rapidly in the post-war era. Perhaps due to Hong Kong’s worldwide reputation of being a “gourmet paradise,” cultural identities in Hong Kong are often expressed with food in many anthropological discussions (Cheung 2022, Chan 2010 and 2019, Cheng 1997). Indeed, many Hongkongers living overseas do miss their favorite local dishes—dim sum steamed in a bamboo steamer, a hot bowl of wonton noodles and a toasted pineapple bun with a slice of cold butter, just to name a few. Unlike eating, in which the emphasis is usually the nostalgic

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feeling for an imagined past, hiking is an embodied practice of care which helps convey a sense of belonging to the hiker through a close sensual encounter with the place. Few have written about such empathetic experience but Huebner (2014), an American physical therapist who came to teach in Hong Kong, has given us a vivid account on her attempt to relate herself to Hong Kong culture via a body-oriented approach. She has recorded some simple everyday behaviors of the local people. For example, she noticed that the pedestrians on the street always seemed to know when to rotate their bodies in order to let a faster person from behind to pass. This demeanor is a huge contrast to her trip over the border to Shenzhen, where she found the crowds “less predictable” and had been trapped in “large crown-pushing waves” of people several times on the subway. Huebner took up a Tai Chi lesson during her time in Hong Kong. Through learning how to move their bodies together, Huebner was able to build social connections with other members of her exercise group even though she did not speak the local language. By the end of her one-year stay, Huebner developed a strong emotional attachment to Hong Kong by adapting to the rhythm of the local life. To quote her own words, she “felt transported by the movement into the culture.” As we shall soon see, walking in the landscape also brings about a special connection between the hiker and the wider environment and this chapter will trace the social history of such interactions. In the ensuing paragraphs, I will examine two different senses of belonging arising through the bodily contact with Hong Kong’s rural environment and analyze their historical and cultural context. Current research has different views on when a unique sense of cultural identity first emerged in Hong Kong. Mainly using Lantau Island as an example, the chapter focuses on the placemaking process in Hong Kong’s rural landscape since the end of World War II. It highlights the changing senses of belonging created by this placemaking process. Born and raised in Hong Kong, I have drawn upon my personal experience of hiking with family, classmates, friends and colleagues. Fieldworks on Lantau Island were conducted as part of a research project I had worked on for The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2021. Data on hiking was subsequently collected in 2023 through questionnaires and interviews.

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HIKING AND THE CHINESE CULTURAL CONCEPTS ON NATURE In Cantonese, the Chinese dialect spoken by the vast majority of the local population in Hong Kong, hang shan (行山), or to hike, literally means to “walk the mountain.” Quite a few informants were amused when I asked

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them how hiking connects them to the nature. “hang shan is just being inside nature!” one replied, “Why do you have to ask?” “Because mountain is nature!” another reasoned. An interrelated perception taken for granted by almost all respondents is the potential restorative effect of nature to our physical and mental health. One said, “Seeing the beauty of nature makes me feel good.” Another suggested that the scenic view of the mountain helps erase the stress of work. Regular hikers usually state that they see hang shan as a form of exercise (行山當做運動) and walking the mountain can “strengthen their bodies and improve physical fitness” (強身健體). However, what I want to stress here is that these perceived health benefits become not so self-evident when we examine the actual hiking experience from the perspective of the local understanding about wellbeing. For example, a respondent mentioned a walk which took 13 hours to finish. “I walked from midday until after dark!” he said. Another hiker recalled a hang shan trip to Lantau Peak to see the sunrise. She started ascending the mountain at 3:00 a.m. in the morning and said, “It was windy and freezing up there because it was raining.” In conventional Chinese health concepts, a body exposed to the elements is prone to catch a cold. Walking for long hours is also health-damaging given the stress on harmony and balance in traditional Chinese medical concepts. In fact, many respondents did acknowledge the risks involved in hiking and its possible environmental hazards. Except a handful of experienced hikers, few respondents hike alone. While hang shan in Hong Kong is a perfectly safe activity, minor accidents do happen and once in a while the news may report a lone hiker gone missing in some remote locations in the countryside. Most of the time these incidents end up in minor injuries, but fatal cases are also not unheard of. The Pat Sin Leng wildfire which took the lives of 5 hikers in 1996 still remains in the memory of many Hongkongers aged over 30. Like the Scottish hikers Vergunst (2008, 108) interviewed, my respondents like to talk about the small mishaps that happened on their hike. One person said, “At one time, the fog in the mountain was so heavy that I almost fell off the cliff!” Another who tripped and fell blamed himself for being careless, “But I was not even climbing a slope! It’s just walking on a flat pavement!” he exclaimed. To fully contemplate these seemingly contradictive views on hang shan and their connection with the nature, I will first discuss shan lam (山林) and kong wu (江湖), two important concepts that have profound impacts on Chinese cultural imagination about the rural landscape. According to Chen Pingyuan (1992, 130) and Wang Xuetai (2014, 225), two eminent literary historians specializing in modern and classic Chinese literature respectively, shan lam and kong wu were plain geographical terms when they first appeared in pre-Han Chinese text. Both terms are compound words which were used to refer to a physical locale in the natural landscape with specific geophysical features. Shan lam comes from the words mountain

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(shan) and woods (lam) whereas kong wu combines the words river (Kong) and lake (wu). These terms were soon given different meanings by Chinese literati and philosophers. For example, Confucius has associated them with humanized ethical and moral qualities by claiming that “the wise find joy in water; the benevolent find joy in mountains (知者樂水，仁者樂山).” Over time, shan lam and kong wu have evolved into a cultural motif and their rich cultural connotations have inspired many subsequent artistic and literary creations. Compared to kong wu, shan lam, is more attributed to a scholarly temperament. In ancient China, disillusioned scholar-officials often retreat to shan lam (歸隱山林) in order to distance themselves from political chaos. Isolated from worldly troubles, shan lam is an ideal place for men of high learning to cultivate their moral virtue because such self-cultivation is thought to be enhanced by contact with the nature. According to Taoist belief, returning to shan lam can also result in spiritual purification and longevity. Many immortal beings in Chinese folklore live as hermits in the high mountain and deep forest. Due to a rise of Taoist influence and a prolonged period of social upheavals, these attitudes have developed into a reclusive culture in the Wei and Jin dynasties (222–589). Many Hongkongers are familiar with the cultural image of these cultivated elites who have withdrawn from mainstream society for a quiet life with the nature. For example, pastoral poetry written by Tao Yuanming (陶淵明 365–427) is still widely read by all Chinesespeaking communities around the world. Away from the secular world, shan lam is also a space outside officialdom and the normative social order. It is a hideout for bandits and robbers. In classic Chinese novels, to “gather round shan lam” (嘯聚山林) essentially means to rise up against the ruling authority. If a rebel falls, the characters may have no choice but to “turn to the woods” (投林) and join an outlaw gang. Starting from the Tang dynasty (618–907), most of the stories about the Chinese knight errant (俠客) in popular literature are set in kong wu instead of shan lam (Chen 1992, 132). One of the most iconic examples of this literary genre is the fourteenth-century novel Water Margin (水滸傳) in which a group of 108 noble outlaws rose up against a corruptive Song Empire. Unlike shan lam, kong wu represented an alternative world where all kinds of martial arts heroes and villains dwell and adventurous stories happen. It is a chaotic realm where the rules of mainstream society do not apply. In some everyday usage, the term kong wu has a strong correlation to the criminal world and secret society. For example, “kong wu person” (江湖人士) is a euphemism for gangster and triad member. The layered cultural image of shan lam and kong wu influences many Hongkongers’ views on the natural environment. Certainly, none of the hikers I know look forward to a hermitic lifestyle in the wilderness. My respondents

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come from all walks of life and some of them work in the highly competitive banking industry. Many regular hikers seem to be health conscious, but they do not go so far as searching for immortality in the shan lam. Nevertheless, many do see walking the mountain as a temporary break from their daily urban life. Many hiking trails in Hong Kong are within walking distance of the urban area. For instance, the entrance to Mount Parker Green Trail is just on the opposite side of the road from where I used to work in Quarry Bay. However, when one steps on the trail, trees on the side create a sufficient visual barrier between the usual city view and the hiker. One informant described hiking as, “just seeing plants, seeing mountains and waterways and getting away from the city for a while.” This may sound simple, but the actual hiking experience can feel like a sensual rupture to the usual rhythm of daily life for some hikers. One respondent described this experience, “when the wind blows up the scent of the grass, it’s so awakening! I feel completely comfortable and relaxed!” There are other encounters in the rural landscape that evoke a sense of otherness. For example, some informants reported that their impression about South Lantau is that there are “many stray cows.” Different from the urbanites, some villages in the New Territories practice second burial in which the bones of the deceased are exhumed and stored temporarily in a funerary urn before they are buried again in a spot with good geomancy. One often comes across these urn burial grounds and horseshoeshaped ancestral graves in the countryside. Any typical hiker could tell a story about weird things that happened to some disrespectful hikers who offended the local spirits by disturbing their tombs. One of the important insights Wang (2014) puts forward in his work is that kong wu does not need to be a mythic world that exists only in our imagination. He suggests that kong wu can be any place where the vagabonds (遊民) live. By vagabond, Wang refers to the drifters who have dropped out of the traditional social and family network in ancient China. For these loners, kong wu is a place where they fight for survival. A vagabond has no one to rely on except himself. He needs to be streetwise and opportunistic. Wang observed that since the Song dynasty (960–1279), many popular stories set in kong wu are about how the protagonist vagrant “becoming successful and rich” (發跡變泰). He proposes that this artistic image and its associated vagabond mentality has a widespread cultural influence on the Chinese public through the literary publication and theatrical performance flourishing in subsequent eras. Few Hongkongers will see themselves making a living in kong wu (行走江湖). But many of them do think of themselves being part of it or at least implicated to its immensity. In some social contexts, the term kong wu is used as a metaphor to refer to the wider social world. The catchphrase in Hong Kong to ask for urgent help is to claim that an emergency has happened in kong wu (江湖救急). By extension, kong wu can mean any place that is

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separated from family and home. As hinted in the introduction, Hong Kong has always been a migrant society. Before World War II, Hong Kong’s Chinese population mainly consisted of refugees fleeing the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s (Tsang 2003, 224). Until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the border closed in the subsequent year, many of these immigrants intended to return to mainland after they had made enough money in Hong Kong. For them, Hong Kong is probably a kong wu, a place to earn a living because they did not see it as their permanent home. More importantly, kong wu follows a set of righteous codes called yi hei (義氣) which is different from the conventional moral standards in the mainstream society. It comprises a complicated web of obligations and responsibilities toward others based on loyalty and affective bonds. Chuang Tzu (莊子 369–286 BC), an ancient Taoist philosopher, has a short parable depicting an attitude toward these righteous obligations that many Hongkongers will find relevant. When the springs dry out, the fish are found stranded on the earth. They keep each other damp with their own moisture, and wet each other with their slime. But it would be better if they could just forget about each other in rivers and lakes. The fish on the earth is comparable to our existence in the wider social world. We make compromises as we are duty-bound to look after those who we are obliged to. The dying wish of the fish, to forget each other in kong wu, depicts the unconsummated desire to break free from such social responsibilities. An idiom widely used in Hong Kong to illustrate the frustration of being trapped in this web of obligations is 人在江湖，身不由己 which can be translated as “once inside kong wu, it is not up to yourself to control your own body.” Similarly, as we are forced to make concessions in different situations, living in the wider social world can be an estranging experience that feels like we have lost control of our bodies and senses. From a phenomenological point of view, walking the mountain can be seen as a means for the hikers to re-establish a connection with their own body and hiking becomes a practice for the hikers to take care of the bodies. Experiencing the nature with all their senses, they take each step carefully so that they do not trip or slip. It is intriguing to me that many respondents rarely check the hiking route themselves but let their friends lead the way. This can be another metaphorical contrast to kong wu—in the wider social world, one seeks but always loses control whereas on a hike, one has the choice to let go of control. Some recent studies (Poteko and Doupona 2022, 869 and Chen 2021, 20) pointed out that walking in the city can be seen as a collective act by individuals subversive to hegemonic neoliberal social order and top-down urban planning system. In Hong Kong, it is not unusual for people to purchase luxury goods and services so as to keep up with their neighbors and friends of similar

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social status. This behavior can be seen as an example of people losing control of their bodies and senses in kong wu, or the wider social world. Walking in the countryside is metaphorically opposed to kong wu because it involves little conspicuous consumption. One informant thinks that hang shan is quite different from other recreational activities, he explains, “it’s low-cost and I spend little money on it. I’m not a professional hiker so I’ve invested little on equipment.” Besides being close at hand, many hiking trails in Hong Kong have paved sections. Many holiday hikers simply go with their usual trainers. As Hongkongers rarely hike alone, hang shan is a social activity. Some respondents said they only hike with close friends because one has to spend a long period of time chatting with your hiking company. This is different from other leisure activities popular in Hong Kong, such as shopping and eating, which one can do it alone or with new acquaintances. In this sense, hang shan can be a practice of self-care as it helps deepen meaningful relationships.

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CULTIVATING RURAL LANDSCAPE AND THE IMPACT ON TRADITIONAL VILLAGE LIFE Using placemaking exercises on Lantau Island as an example, the coming section will illustrate a different sense of belonging based on traditional village life and highlight its contrast to the hikers’ sense of belonging described above. Lantau Island, located in southwest of Hong Kong, is part of the New Territories let to Britain in 1898 on a lease for 99 years. All four indigenous ethnic groups of Hong Kong, namely, Punti (本地圍頭), Punti Hakka (客家圍村), Tanka (蜑家) and Hoklo (鶴佬), have settled along the southern coast of Lantau Island for centuries (Watson 1983). Tanka and Hokklo, whose origin can possibly be traced back to the native ethnic minorities of southern China, used to live on boats moored at various spots near the coast. These “boat people” as the land-dwelling villagers usually called them, gradually moved ashore, and assimilated into Han culture during the early Qing Dynasty (1636–1911) (da Silva 1972, 33). The Punti and Hakka are generally believed to be descendants of Han Chinese from central China but their ancestors arrived in Hong Kong at different times and they have distinctive languages and customs. By the time when the Hakkas moved into South Lantau, the Punti communities had already occupied locations with better farmland such as the Shek Pik Valley on the island. As such, the Hakkas set up their villages in locations with less arable land such as Cheung Sha. Cheung Sha is located at the center of the South Lantau coast. Today, it is a popular local holiday destination because of Cheung Sha Beach, which stretches over 3 kilometers and is the longest beach in Hong Kong. There

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are two villages in Cheung Sha, namely, Sheung Tsuen (上村), the upper village, and Ha Tsuen (下村), the lower village. The date of their establishment is controversial, but Ha Tsuen was established later than Sheung Tsuen (Strickland 2010, 94). Despite their geographical proximity and their common Hakka origin, the two villages did not get along well at least until the 1950s because the villagers’ sense of belonging was much more associated with their own village. By then in the 1950s, there was a large influx of illegal mainland immigrants coming to Hong Kong. A Sheung Tsuen villager who was born in 1961 told me that his grandfather had sold the land on the beachfront to these new settlers as they had nowhere else to stay. Typhoons strike Cheung Sha every year from May to October. Therefore, Sheung Tsuen’s villagers did not oppose selling these “dangerous terrains” to the newcomers. The two villages also disputed over grass-cutting rights in the mountain. Newspaper reports show that acts of violence had taken place consecutively in 1953–1955. The Cheung Sha villager’s sense of belonging is different from an urban visitor. The villagers possess a wealth of knowledge about native plants and animals. For them, placemaking exercise often involves learning how to make use of these natural resources. In 1956, a local newspaper featured an article on a “natural beach was discovered in Cheung Sha, Lantau Island” (Wah Kiu Yat Po 1956). The native people have always made use of the seaside in their everyday life. For example, the South China Morning Post reported in 1961 that villagers dried peanuts and pineapples on the beach. Reporters from the same newspaper (South China Morning Post 1973) witnessed Hakka women carrying the sand away in their baskets as late as 1973. The news article did not tell its readers how the sand was used but a long-time South Lantau resident suggested that villagers used it to sieve ground glutinous rice to make puffed rice cakes because “the sand on the beach was silky and smooth.” On one site visit, a villager showed me some parallel square holes drilled on rocks on the coast away from the popular beach. He suggested that these are relics of a local fishing method called “au yue” (拗魚) which are not in use anymore. Compared with historical reports (Hayes 1986), these holes are probably the remains of stakenet fishing in which a net is attached to wooden poles and is worked by a winch stationed in a hut on the shore. When the fishermen manning the hut detected any catch, they would raise the net by turning the winch. Many spots in Cheung Sha are only known to the villagers. Naming these places and inflicting them with stories and histories is another important feature in placemaking exercises for the villagers. For example, there is a place known as “snake cave” near the shore of Ha Tsuen. According to local tales, a giant snake lives inside the cave and a villager told me that the cave is the place where the “boat people” used to place the body of their stillborn baby,

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and the giant snake lived by feeding on these corpses. Another story told by a Sheung Tsuen villager seems to emphasize the perceived danger near the coast. It is about a tiger which lived on Lantau Island a long time ago. The story says the tiger used to swim to Cheung Sha and dry its hide by rubbing its body against the wall of the thatched huts in Ha Tsuen. The rub made a hissing noise and the people inside the huts could do nothing but shake in fear. While my informant who told me these stories did not say it explicitly, he was obviously glad and proud that his home village was associated with so many special tales. For a long time, villagers in South Lantau were fishermen and farmers and their primary crop was rice. However, village life changed drastically when the government decided to build a reservoir in Shek Pik in 1956. The project involved evacuating all the villagers in Shek Pik Village and most of them were relocated outside the island to Tsuen Wan in the Kowloon Peninsula. The construction of the reservoir was completed in 1963 and Shek Pik Village was submerged underwater since then. The catchwater drains diverted some irrigation water supply away from villages to the reservoir and the connecting tunnels of the reservoir also altered the underground water table, making cultivation difficult in some places (Hayes 2006, 133). Many South Lantau villagers gave up farming and their cattle in the ensuing decades and this is why “stray cows” roam in South Lantau today as pointed out by some hikers. The reservoir brought to South Lantau a group of Western residents who worked as engineers in the water scheme project. South Lantau Road built in 1955 for the project is the first and only road on the South Lantau coast that passes through all major villages. The new road and bus services started in the 1960s invited more tourists to come to South Lantau. Their visit prompted the opening of new shops, restaurants and many other beachside holiday facilities that we see today. Another major change is the development of the country park program which can be regarded as an extended part of the colonial administration’s effort to respond to the local people’s needs in the 1960s. Hong Kong’s sense of belonging is strengthened at several crucial historical junctures in this decade. Children of the refugees who left China before the border closure in 1950, the first post-war baby-boomer generation grew up in around the 1960s. They see Hong Kong as their home and many of them are critical to the social issues in the city. In 1967, there was a series of widespread civil disturbances in Hong Kong. At the same time, the local people also faced other critical problems such as a severe water shortage caused by droughts and an increasingly urban population. These prompted the government to initiate a number of public reforms and rural developments which also have the effect of transforming Hong Kong’s traditional village lifestyle.

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It was exactly these rural development projects that facilitated the growth of interest in hiking among the general public. Some of Hong Kong’s earliest hiking guides date back to the 1930s. For example, Graham Heywood’s Rambles in Hong Kong was first published in 1938. Their Chinese counterparts appeared later in the market in the 1950s (Chan 2020, 57). Long before any written guideline became available to them, local Chinese hikers had already walked in Hong Kong’s rural landscape. This is evident in the establishment of Yung Sheh (庸社), the first hiking club in Hong Kong, founded by Ng Ba Ling (吳灞陵), an editor of a local newspaper in 1932. These early hikers, Westerners and Chinese alike, must have tramped on narrow mountain paths worn by the feet of the local villagers. The Country Parks Ordinance was enacted in 1976 and the number of country parks surged within the following few years—21 out of the total 24 country parks were gazetted from 1976 to 1979 (Hayes 2006, 80). Walking in the rural landscape generates a new sense of belonging that arose among the city dwellers after the establishment of these country parks. This new sense of belonging is different from the more restricted rural identity derived from placemaking exercises in traditional village lifestyle. Many informants who have hiked South Lantau said they focused on observing and appreciating the natural beauty. Hiking raises our awareness of the identity of a broader community as the trail links up different mountains and locations that may have divergent historical and cultural backgrounds. In comparison, South Lantau villagers’ rural identity is based on their daily experience of living in the local environment. From this perspective, perhaps we can consider hiking as a care of self as it helps Hongkongers to resolve their anomie faced in kong wu the wider urban and social worlds where many of them have to live in.

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This chapter has discussed how Hongkongers form an affective bond with the rural landscape through hiking and contrasted this experience to the spatial connections that South Lantau villagers used to have with their natural environment. The nature of collective sense of belonging changed drastically in Hong Kong when the rural landscape was turned into reservoirs and country parks in order to cope with the needs of the growing urban population since the 1960s. When the rural way of life vanished, the specific village sense of belonging gradually integrated into the more general Hong Kong sense of belonging nurtured by hiking. The sense of belonging based on an affective bond with the rural landscape is at once unifying and dividing. Hongkongers’ love for nature is

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demonstrated in a public engagement exercise, which is usually known to many as the “great debate on land supply” (土地大辯論), launched by a government task force in 2018. In the public opinion research (Development Bureau 2018, 94), the option “Developing Areas on the Periphery of Country Parks” received low support. On the individual level, each hiker may experience the same hiking trail in diverse ways. Their sense of belonging to Hong Kong is based more on their personal experience with the rural landscape. Existing research often thinks of Hong Kong’s cultural identity as an expression of cultural uniqueness or a cultural boundary between us and others. This chapter shows that Hong Kong’s sense of belonging can be represented by the mutual care between the self and the physical environment. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I am grateful for the comments given by Professor Sidney Cheung and Dr Adam Drazin on an earlier draft of this chapter. Fieldwork data on South Lantau is drawn from a research project titled “Consultancy Project on Cultural and Historical Studies for Pui O, Shui Hau and Neighbouring Areas at Lantau.” which is funded by Sustainable Lantau Office (SLO), Civil Engineering and Development Department, Hong Kong Government, 2020–2022. REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bosco, Joseph. 2005. “Hong Kong.” In Encyclopaedia of Diaspora: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, edited by Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember and Ian Skoggard, 506–514. Boston: Springer. Chan, Pedith Pui. 2020. “香江入畫—香港名勝與實景山水畫” (Picturing Hong Kong: Scenic Attractions and Site-Specific Landscape Paintings). National Palace Museum Monthly 449(1): 54–67. Chan, Selina Ching. 2010. “Food, Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong Identities.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 17 (2–3): 204–227. ———. 2019. “Tea cafés and the Hong Kong identity: Food culture and hybridity China Information.” China Information 33(3): 311–328. Chen, Pingyuan (陈平原). 1992. 千古文人侠客梦:武侠小说类型研究 (The Literati's Chivalric Dreams: Narrative models of Chinese Knight-Errant Literature). Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House. Chen, Susan. 2021. “Walking as citizen-led placemaking in the neoliberal city: a case study of the Cooks River to Iron Cove Green Way.” MRes diss., Western Sydney University.

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Cheng, Sea Ling. 1997. “Back To The Future: Herbal Tea Shops in Hong Kong.” In Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, edited by Grant Evans and Maria Tam Siu-Mi, 51–73. Richmond: Curzon. Cheung, Sidney Chin Hung. 2022. Hong Kong Foodways. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. da Silva, Armando. 1972. Tai Yu Shan: Traditional Ecological Adaptation in a South Chinese Island. Taipei: The Orient Culture Service. Development Bureau, Hong Kong SAR Government. 2018. “Striving for Multipronged Land Supply Report.” Last modified December 2018. https://www​.devb​ .gov​.hk​/filemanager​/en​/content​_1171​/Report​%20(Eng).pdf. Gooch Pernille. 2018. “Feet Following Hooves.” In Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practce on Foot, edited by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, 105–122. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited. GovHK. 2022. “Hong Kong: The Fact Country Parks and Conservation.” Last modified July https://www​.gov​.hk​/en​/about​/abouthk​/factsheets​/docs​/country​_parks​.pdf. Hayes, James W. 2006. The Great Difference Hong Kong's New Territories and its People, 1898–2004. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. ———. 1986. “Stakenet and Fishing Canoe: Hong Kong and Adjacent Islands in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. The Sea and the Shore in Social, Economic and Political Organization.” Proceedings of the International Symposium on Asian Studies 1(1): 573–598. Huebner, Elizabeth. 2014. “Discovering Hong Kong through Movement.” In Reading Hong Kong, Reading Ourselves, edited by Janel Curry and Paul Hanstedt, 114–137. Hong Kong: CityU Press. Lau, D. C. 2003. The Analects. London: Penguin Classics. Palmer, Martin and Elizabeth Breuilly. 1996. The Book of Chuang Tzu. London: Penguin Book. Poteko, Kaja., & Mojca Doupona. 2022. “In Praise of Urban Walking: Towards Understanding of Walking as a Subversive Bodily Practice in Neoliberal Space.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 57(6):863–878. South China Morning Post. 1961. “Lantao Development Making Rapid Progress.” September 19, 1961. ———. 1973. “Go Beachcombing at Cheung Sha.” December 14, 1973. Strickland, John. 2010. South District Officer Reports: Islands and Villages in Rural Hong Kong, 1910–60. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Tilley, Christopher. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments, Oxford: Berg. Vergunst, Jo Lee. 2008. “Taking a Trip and Taking Care in Everyday Life.” In Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, edited by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, 105–122. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Tsang, Steven. 2003. “The Rise of a Hong Kong Identity.” In China Today: Economic Reforms, Social Cohesion and Collective Identities, edited by Leila FernándezStembridge and Taciana Fisac. London: Routledge. Wah Kiu Yat Po (華僑日報), 1956. “大嶼山長沙村發現天然海灘” (Natural beach was discovered in Cheung Sha, Lantau Island), September 2, 1956.

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Wang, Xuetai (王学泰). 2014. 游民文化与中国社会 (Homeless Culture and Chinese Society), Taiyuan: Shanxi People's Press. Watson, James L. 1983. “Rural Society: Hong Kong’s New Territories.” The China Quarterly (London) 95(1):480–490.

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Part III

MICROHISTORIES OF PLACEMAKING

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Chapter 11

Popular Experiences and City Making in Brazilian Amazonia Manaus, 1890–1900 Thaís R. S. de Sant’Ana

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The late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century increase in rubber exports from Amazonia is often used to illustrate economic exchanges between areas that several scholars identify as “developed” and “underdeveloped,” “center” and “periphery” (Baer 1965; Frank 1969; Evans 1979; Bunker 1985). Manaus, a city located in the heart of the world’s largest tropical rainforest and the capital of the state of Amazonas, is commonly depicted as a symbol of the relationship between the global marketplace and urbanization in Brazil. To a certain extent, the rubber trade did help drive rapid demographic and spatial expansion in Manaus and enabled this city to act as a strategic site for the reproduction of capitalism in turn-of-the-century Amazonia (Sassen 2000). Nevertheless, this chapter shows that the prominent position that the capital of Amazonas occupied within the international economic scenario at the time did not necessarily reinforce foreign control either over Manaus’ urban space or over popular practices that made it possible for individuals from a variety of backgrounds to experience this city. The projects which inspired the moniker of Manaus as a “Paris of the Tropics” reverberated modernizing ideals that Brazilian regional and national elite representatives also embraced. Furthermore, local experiences of ordinary people crucially informed everyday dynamics that shaped and sustained this Amazonian capital over time. The foundational questions that guide this study focus on how different agents of change advance their claims for basic rights and recognition, and how they engage with the processes that contributed to reconfigure Manaus at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Specifically, by bringing the roles of popular experiences and state projects to the center of our debates about “the city,” it argues that an emerging expression of community 169

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politics largely connected to the movement of internal migrants in Amazonia constitutes a vital missing thread in the history of the transformation of Manaus amid competing projects for urban change, which in turn complicates simplistic stories of capitalism used to explain the region.

THE CITY AS THE REPRESENTATION OF THE MODERN NATION IN EARLY REPUBLICAN BRAZIL The official discourse in support of the expansion of a national urban and industrial economy in Brazil gained strength in the late nineteenth century, when the country’s central government legally restored the autonomy of its states (formerly provinces during the period of the Empire of Brazil) via the enactment of the first Constitution of the Republic in 1891 (Carvalho 2012). However, the central government continued to exert control at the regional level through traditional oligarchies. Rio de Janeiro, the federal capital, served as the reference of modern Brazil for these regional elites. During the first few decades of the Brazilian Republic, governmentsponsored projects implemented across the country focused on the support of European—often white—immigrant labor for the promotion of an accelerated modernization. At the same time, the poor—often Black and mixed-race— Brazilian working class remained a major target of state-led intervention policies designed to facilitate social moralization and regeneration (Chalhoub et al. 1984/85, 97) with a focus, for instance, on the eradication of habits and behaviors related to what was perceived as vices. This translated into the idea that “regenerated” Brazilian workers would leave their houses every day with the mindset to successfully take care of their routines and chores. In fact, contemporary public mechanisms enforced individual rules of behavior as a way of shaping disciplined Brazilian workers poised to foster fruitful socioeconomic relations in the city, all for the manifestation of the modern nation that members of the Republican elites aimed for (Chalhoub et al. 1984/85, 105). Nevertheless, there was this lingering question of how the implementation of modernizing plans could successfully occur if issues related to the (dire) living conditions of a growing Brazilian working-class population continued to threaten the country’s federal capital. In more than one way, the process of urban renewal of Rio de Janeiro succumbed to the control of a faction of local and national elite interests which considered the redevelopment of existing urban—social, topographical, and economic—conditions the first step toward transforming the entire nation (Pechman et  al. 1984/85, 141). They expected that Rio de Janeiro’s population would eventually meet the modern standard for a country free from social disorder, disease, crime, and poverty and detached from the

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stereotype of “cultural backwardness” that ravaged Brazil’s imperial society (Wadsworth et al. 2001, 71). Among the adopted strategies to ignite waves of nationwide change was the local enforcement of hygiene and social etiquette (Sant’Ana 2008). The press played a major role in the process of surveilling and denouncing stigmatized everyday practices that did not affirm those new (idealized) social norms, as the quote below from one of Rio de Janeiro’s main local newspapers indicates: These meager habits that we maintain at [Rio de Janeiro’s] Rio Branco Avenue, with its legion of idle young men and women who occupy a third of the avenue's sidewalk for hours; they lean against poles and lamps, and watch the people passing by; that does not fit the beauty and progress of our capital . . . These scenes are disturbing to the foreigners who are visiting us . . . and give them the impression that we are lazy . . .; these scenes do not portray . . . healthy joy. Rio [de Janeiro] cannot carry these village-like characteristics anymore . . . (A Noite September 5, 1922)

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The shared quote also denotes that concerns regarding foreign visitor’s impressions of the federal capital stood hand-in-hand with the discourse of urban modernization in turn-of-the-century Brazil. Government-sponsored urban renewal program for Rio de Janeiro prioritized the local elites’ interest in hiding and suppressing existing sociocultural contradictions while increasing the economic value of selected areas in central and southern neighborhoods of the city. Entrepreneurs, planners, architects, and sanitation experts, among other professionals, appropriated and manipulated Rio de Janeiro’s most visible markers—that is buildings, environmental landscape, social spaces, and popular practices—in the process. A quick look into the movement of working-class individuals from the city center to its suburbs signals the impact of this type of strategy among the low-income city dwellers in the federal capital: in 1872, almost 17% of Rio de Janeiro’s households were identified as “suburban,” and 83% as “urban.” In 1890, the percentage of “suburban” households approached 18%, and in 1906, it reached 23% (A Noite January 19, 1921). The population increase in the city’s suburbs suggests that local issues of social equity were in fact enhanced by the reconfiguration of the capital of Brazil at the time (Pechman et al. 1984/85; Sevc enko 1984). During the government of President Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves, from 1902 to 1906, the engineer Francisco Pereira Passos—then Rio de Janeiro’s mayor—and the public-health specialist Oswaldo Cruz—both with previous work and study experience in Paris and familiarity with the work of Georges-Eugène Haussmann (Lenzi 2000)—implemented particularly acute urban renewal and public-health projects in the federal capital. These

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reforms encompassed the opening of new city avenues, the eradication of ponds (which were eventually filled in with dirt), the construction of tunnels to enable quick communication between Rio’s affluent neighborhoods, and the infamous “Bota-Abaixo” policy (“knock-it-down” policy) (Prefeitura do Distrito Federal 1930, 68–70). The latter consisted of a series of expropriation proceedings and demolitions of cortiço houses—the dominant type of housing for Rio’s low-income population—and working-class neighborhoods in the central part of Rio de Janeiro, leaving hundreds of individuals homeless. Similarly, a compulsory vaccination campaign with the purpose of preventing smallpox epidemics targeted working-class neighborhoods in the central part of the federal capital, where most of the population lacked information regarding what vaccines entail and were left confused with the sudden invasion of public-health officials in their homes. City dwellers responded with riots and violence as a consequence; they took the compulsory vaccination campaign as a form of invasion of their community and personal privacy. The “Vaccine Riots” lasted several days and demonstrated the general popular dissatisfaction with the state projects being implemented. Yet, despite its many contradictions, Rio de Janeiro’s modernizing urban reforms decisively influenced the reshaping of numerous cities across turnof-the-century Brazil. Outside of the federal capital, new urban plans placed economic growth over the hopes of most city dwellers, and the tension between government-led development plans and divergent visions of local communities was ongoing.

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VIEWS AND VISIONS OF MANAUS DURING THE BOOM OF THE RUBBER INDUSTRY It has been estimated that between 1890 and 1910, Amazonia’s rubber exports generated an amount of foreign currency earnings which, as a matter of comparison, corresponded to approximately 13 billion in today’s U.S. dollars. According to Samuel Benchimol, this number gives an idea of the economic power of the [Brazilian] rubber industry which attracted [to Amazonia] streams of poor migrants from Brazil’s Northeast region . . . as well as many . . . [foreign] merchants who eventually became part of the local entrepreneurial elites. (Benchimol 1994, 143)

Benchimol stresses, however, that the investment and taxes generated within such a prosperous scenario were mostly applied to the infrastructure and organization of a productive chain . . .

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as well as to the group who benefitted the most [from the rapid expansion of the rubber economy:] . . . merchant-explorers. (Benchimol 1994, 143)

As Amazonia’s rubber industry surged, Manaus solidified its distinctive role in the history of encounters among peoples from both Brazil’s northeast region and the large Amazonia region. The economic linkages between Manaus and the global market contributed, therefore, to accelerate the city’s population growth and spatial expansion in the 1890s. The approximate number of internal migrants entering nineteenth-century Brazilian Amazonia throughout the peak years of the rubber economy was remarkably high. During this period, the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, and particularly Ceará played a substantial role in generating internal migration, and the state of Amazonas was the main destination for longdistance migrants in northern Brazil (Graham et al 1971). The perception of Amazonas as a favorable destination for internal migrants within that contemporary national scenario was clear; this state offered generally uncomplicated and diverse labor environments for newcomers interested in pursuing their abilities and was seen as a place where people from all social classes and statuses could build a new life (Campos 1988). The pursuit of better opportunities for physical and material well-being virtually permeated the experiences of internal migrants from all social classes in Amazona’s capital: Manaus. Augusto Ximeno de Villeroy, a migrant from the state of Rio Grande do Sul and the first Republican governor of Amazonas (1890), strove to strengthen the financial and political autonomy of the capital city while also changing its urban configuration. Decree No.1 from January 8, 1890, for instance, created a municipal council responsible for: assessing the urban limits of the municipal territory, developing a municipal budget, setting up taxation, designing and implementing urban development projects, enforcing public health and hygiene practices in the city, as well as revising the municipal code of conduct concerning occupation and use of the urban space (Município de Manaus 1898, 5–8). The main aspects of this desired urban reconfiguration included—but were not limited to—a systematic management of city services; the development of a stricter municipal enforcement of professional tax collections from merchants and small-scale vendors; authorization for government surveillance of populations who lived in the outskirts of the urban perimeter of Manaus (Município de Manaus 1898, 15–22). Late nineteenth-century Brazilian municipal codes of conduct included specific guidelines and directives concerning the beautification and adornment of cities. Specifically in Manaus, these codes also consisted of an exclusionary mechanism designed to formally support the local government’s attempt to erase the visible and substantial urban Indigenous presence. Turnof-the-century upper and middle Brazilian Amazonia constituted a variety

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of nations. Contemporary authorities regarded the Canumãs and Muras, for example, as índios mansos (“tamed” Indians); and the Parintins and Jauperis as índios selvagens (nonconverted, “wild” Indians). Representatives of these and other nations entered and exited the capital of Amazonas over the years; some stayed longer, others left shortly afterward, but their presence and participation in city making remained overall steady (Campos 1988, p.27;96). Yet, urban codes of conduct designed to control local popular practices established that: non-authorized health care practitioners would be fined; the presence of “half-dressed” and/or “indecently dressed” individuals was no longer allowed in the city’s streets; bathing in the city’s waterways during the day was prohibited; the use of herbal fish poison (i.e., timbó, a toxic vine used to force the fish to come to the surface of the water, so it could be easily caught by hand) was no longer allowed; and constructions resembling “Indigenous aesthetic rules” (i.e., properties with thatched roofs) built within the urban limits of the municipal territory would have to undergo major renovations (Município de Manaus 1898, 29–33; 35). Besides setting exclusionary rules and standards for late nineteenth-century Manaus’ society and built space, these legal demands placed additional financial burden on city dwellers, property owners, and on the municipal budget as well. To help expand their revenue, local authorities established that property taxes in the city would no longer be allocated to the state expenditure but to the municipality. Additionally, the state treasurer (1) made a loan to the local government to cover some of the costs of development projects, and (2) launched a forty-year public service concession to British companies in the capital of Amazonas fuelling major contemporary discussions among local elite members regarding the role of British entrepreneurs in the city’s development (Pinheiro 2015, 42). In 1898, a local contributor to the Comércio do Amazonas newspaper claimed that the “progress” of Manaus could not be subordinated to “British monopolists.” In this contributor’s words, “resistance to the British control” would determine which city dwellers were “the true patriots” (Comércio do Amazonas 5/07/1898). Another very telling text published in the same newspaper stated:

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Manaus’ progress . . . owes a lot to the people from [Brazil’s coastal state of] Ceará . . . this powerful Brazilian element has contributed the most to increasing Amazonas’ revenue, developing its agriculture, etc, etc. [Yet] [t]he beautiful buildings that we see today in Manaus are evidence of [all sorts of peoples’] actual love and interest towards Amazonas where . . . native-born and foreignborn individuals have helped turn this society into a warm and welcoming one. The only exception to this harmony are the English individuals. (Comércio do Amazonas 20/07/1898)

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The selected quote certainly presents traces of nationalism. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to simply claim that British entrepreneurs were the target of anti-immigrant hate in Amazonia. In the background of the perception of English individuals as “the only exception” to some sort of local “social harmony” was the everyday life in the capital of Amazonas. This city where, despite the allure of the rubber industry, both long-term residents and newcomers (1) resisted paying commerce-related fees and taxes imposed by governmental authorities, as well as third-party fees and charges, and (2) struggled with the local high cost of living and a deficient access to basic public services such as water, sanitation, public transport, and so on (Pinheiro 2015, p.42). Within this context, “English individuals” gained the reputation of being self-centered and avaricious types who basically profited from the rubber commerce and benefited from the local socioeconomic dependence on its enterprises, but would not invest back in the city nor consistently work toward delivering effective services (Comércio do Amazonas 20/07/1898). Still, if we move beyond the aforementioned contemporary perceptions and expectations, it is possible to see that the high cost of living in Manaus was directly related to both poorly negotiated concession agreements and fluctuating municipal budgets unable to accomplish many urban projects that had to be completed. These variables became evident in 1896, during the transition process from gas lighting to electric lighting in the city. Such an emblematic introduction of electricity placed Manaus among the first cities in Brazil to have both electric lighting and electric trams.1 But Manaus’ urban transformation retained its incongruous character despite this historic achievement: due to the high cost of its implementation and maintenance, electric lighting remained limited to selected (central) areas of the city for years. The engagement of Eduardo Gonçalves Ribeiro’s administration with the physical space of the capital city was arguably the most notorious in turnof-the-century Amazonas. A descendant of slaves, Ribeiro left the Brazilian state of Maranhão in 1881 to attend military school in Rio de Janeiro. He relocated to Manaus after graduating, and in 1892 was elected Amazonas’ governor—his term ended in 1896. Ribeiro embodied the common entrepreneurial mindset of Manaus’ affluent internal migrant population which involved attempting to enhance the city’s attractiveness as both (1) a destination for skilled migrant workers and new flows of investment, and (2) as a possible expression of urban development in Amazonia (Daou 2014). Manaus’ landscape gained new contours during Ribeiro’s government. Among the projects completed during his administration were bridges made of wood and steel, the local water supply and water treatment systems, as well as houses for the working class. These initiatives influenced many others that were supervised by subsequent governments, such as: the renovation of the main port and customhouse, the construction of the Manaus Opera

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House, and the elevation of majestic public buildings in the city. Local small palaces, luxury shops, bookstores and cafes also multiplied at the time. But the unmet basic needs of most of the population of Manaus (i.e., access to affordable housing, access to affordable food, and sanitation) remained significant. Government propaganda emphasized that urban reforms had permitted the emergence of a more “opulent Manaus with its bridges, avenues, opera house, palaces, new water services . . . spacious streets, squares, etc.” (Menezes 1896). Food insecurity, health insecurity, job insecurity, to name a few, shaped the everyday life of migrant construction workers, small farmers, and rubber tappers from the Brazilian states of Ceará, Pará, Amazonas, among other places. Their engagement with the city exposed the dissonant urban experiences in that “Paris of the Tropics” (Costa 2014, 112). POPULAR EXPERIENCES AND MIGRANT COMMUNITY POLITICS IN THE “PARIS OF THE TROPICS”

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The profile of turn-of-the-century Manaus’s society reflects the ongoing diversity that characterized the waves of migrants entering and leaving Amazonia in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. In 1873, Black and mixed-race individuals (pardos and caboclos) represented almost 83% of the population of Amazonas’ capital (Sampaio 1997, 179). By 1890, there was an increase of “white” individuals, most of them born in Brazil’s northeast region.2 It is valid, however, to note that Brazil’s official census revealed a shift in population composition between 1872 and 1890. The censuses of 1872 and 1890 had four racial categories: “whites,” “Blacks,” “pardos,” and “caboclos.” Despite the contemporary lack of explicit conceptualization of these categories, when Brazil’s 1890 census was translated into French, it presented pardos as “mestiços” (métis), and caboclos as “Indigenous” (indiens) (Oliveira 1997, 185). Therefore, per the 1890 census categories, the population of turn-of-the-century Manaus had the following profile: 39% caboclos (“Indigenous”); 37% “whites;” 21% mestiços (pardos); and 3% “Blacks” (Sampaio 1997, 61–84). Sociocultural influences from individuals originally from both the Amazon hinterland—most of them associated with the caboclo category—and the northeast region of Brazil set a strong tone for socialization and everyday life in the capital of Amazonas. The Pastorinha celebration, for instance, consolidated its place among Manaus’ most popular events. Introduced in colonial Brazil within the context of Jesuit theater and its focus on the conversion of non-Catholic members of Indigenous groups, Pastorinha eventually outgrew its original purposes and became an extremely popular leisure-time activity in rural and urban Amazonas in the second half of the nineteen-century.3

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Similarly, celebrations that coincided with the end of winter in Brazil’s northeastern states—and took place as a way of thanking popular Catholic saints such as St. Anthony, St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter for the rain—attracted hundreds of city dwellers. These events were hardly able to highlight the socioeconomic differences among its participants. In fact, attendance at the described festivities allowed internal migrants to expand their social networks of contacts (Daou 2014, 167). Mutual support centered on common urban struggles for improved and affordable living conditions also acted as a social glue in the capital of Amazonas. City dwellers raised the volume of debates on the social impact of economic volatility, collective rights to basic services, and individual freedom locally. For instance, in 1906, after British company The Manáos Market and Slaughterhouse Ltd. began to manage Manaus’ Public Market, there was an increase in the prices consumers paid for popular items and an attempted monopolization of business practices linked to the commerce of these items locally. In response to those events, a group of fishermen—several of them originally from the Amazon hinterland—went on strike. The strike lasted six days and compromised the supply of fresh food in Manaus; however, it was supported by the public opinion (Balkar and Pinheiro 2018, 114). The fishermen strike echoed not only the concerns of a particular labor or ethnic group but a major concern shared among the local population as well. This was one of several public demonstrations of collective engagement in contestations and negotiations that reverberated among a wide spectrum of the population in the capital of Amazonas (Balkar and Pinheiro 2018). Unlike travelers and explorers who spent limited periods of time in the city, the survival of internal migrants in turn-of-the-century Manaus demanded extraordinary resilience and communal support to face the reality of living in a rapidly expanding urban space constantly challenged by regional, national, and international processes. Over the years, migrants began to organize on their own initiative and demand attention to their claims. The regional and local press was a crucial tool used with the purpose of furthering the unity which internal migrants themselves needed in Manaus. It brought visibility to dynamics taking place in the local urban context and revealed the efforts that migrant communities made to solidify political recognition in the city. The press also featured all sorts of announcements from shops where regional items were available for sale, to rubber trade conditions, and job opportunities for newcomers in Amazonas. The first published edition of the Tribuno do Povo, a newspaper sponsored by the Club União Cearense, was issued on January 12, 1890. In a presentation introduction, this newspaper’s editor expressed enthusiasm for the founding of the Brazilian Republic in 1889 and stated:

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[T]he Ceará-born population living throughout the Amazon valley would not be indifferent to this organizing movement [named the Brazilian Republic] . . . and aligned itself with the avant-garde movement that signaled the triumph of great, humanitarian ideas currently operating in the country. With that in mind, we have recently created the Club União Cearense in this capital which, in order to better exercise its power of influence, has launched . . . [a newspaper] . . . to represent itself in the press . . . The special mission of the Tribuno do Povo is to advocate for the rights and interests of the Ceará-born peoples living temporarily or permanently in the Amazon valley; reminding, suggesting, or requesting that state and local governments take the necessary measures to promote their well-being. (Tribuno do Povo 12 Jan.1890)

This first edition of the Tribuno do Povo described the Ceará-born people as members of the largest community of internal migrants in Brazil’s Amazonia. It also highlighted their crucial contribution to the general individual and public prosperity in the state of Amazonas and chastised the lack of Ceará-born representatives in local government positions. This publication urged that Ceará-born individuals living both in Manaus and in the interior of Amazonas never allow for their “cultural element” to be “amalgamated” with other cultural elements. It also disseminated a warning message: “to disentangle a son of Ceará from the Club União Cearense by placing him in another association is a mistake that could turn out to be fatal for him” (Tribuno do Povo January 12, 1890). Such a threat reflects the paradoxes involving migrant networks of support in Manaus. This form of tribalism directed against other groups was frequently reflective of social status and social power. The Club União Cearense was not the only association of internal migrants established in Manaus. The pamphlet A Colônia Paraense, for example, shed light upon an also large community living in the city. Major and minor local publications published greetings to Pará-born individuals entering and leaving the capital of Amazonas:

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citizen Dr. Innocencio Serzedello Corrêa . . . at this moment, we, Pará-born individuals like you, enjoy the natural satisfaction of having among us a member whose predicates and virtues greatly elevate this family…be welcome here [in Manaus], where you will find other Brazilians, both by birth and by heart, that will also admire you and feel proud of being your fellow citizens. (A Colônia Paraense, Março 1896)

Another common practice shared by newspapers that claimed to speak for migrant communities in Manaus was to denounce and suggest solutions for the contradictions associated with the rapid expansion of the city (Revista da Academia Cearense de Letras 1953, 141):

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The municipal administration has been . . . accepting the complaints made through the press . . . [For instance,] yesterday . . . when a request for action regarding the improvement of the municipal cleaning service [was published] . . . four municipal inspectors were sent into the city streets to inspect them, and provide solutions . . .. We know, however, that it is not easy [for the municipal administration] to provide regular services in a city such as this . . . Our people’s individual interests rarely override [the interest of ] the common good. (O Rio Negro 24 Jul. 1897)

Notwithstanding the suggested link between the rapid growth of the increasingly diverse population of Manaus and a perceived widespread lack of commitment to the common good, the dynamics assessed in this chapter uncover a more nuanced scenario. The newspaper A Pátria, for instance, which eventually emerged as the new voice of the Ceará community in Amazonas, announced in its first edition its intention to also act as the representative of any individual who wished to challenge the shortcomings of contemporary modernizing plans:

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Together with the creation of this newspaper, today we begin the arduous task that we have imposed [on ourselves:] to use our quill in defense of the interests of the colony of Ceará . . .. It does not mean that we will abstain from [writing about] issues that are not directly related to our coestadanos [fellow Ceará-born people] .  .  . because we will never be exclusionary .  .  . we will never deny embracing any and all issues that need to be brought to the attention of the public . . . We will soon publish complaints regarding several subjects that require our attention and once more, those who judge us with passion will understand that while [living in] this state [the state of Amazonas], all we want is for justice to be served, and for our rights to be respected. (A Pátria 1 Oct. 1898)

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS Scholarly works that exclusively focus on national versus international dynamics in Amazonia may obfuscate crucial points of conversation and contention that also characterize city making in the region. This chapter’s assessment of local popular experiences and migrant community politics provides a unique entry point into debates surrounding urban planning and the nature of place. While it is true that the histories that I discuss here cannot position early twentieth-century Manaus as the cradle of a new type of urban governance that benefited most of the city population—note that until mid-twentieth century, Indigenous migrants faced great difficulty in creating and sustaining a common agenda to represent their own interests in Manaus. These histories can set the terms for further debate on global capitalism’s pervasiveness, and well as on individual agency and alternative social constructions of space.

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This study presents the capital of Amazonas as a contested site that was changed and transformed by its own inhabitants as well. It does so by assessing how internal migrants, from a variety of backgrounds, acted as an important driving force for the consolidation of the image of Manaus as a strategic city in turn-of-the-century Amazonia. Their everyday life experiences, networks of support, and local arenas of debate were deeply entangled with both (1) the social production of “the urban” and (2) alternative approaches to development in the region, and played a systematic and influential role in the urbanization processes that took place in northern Brazil throughout the entire twentieth century. NOTES 1. The government of Amazonas financed the public lighting service in its capital because the municipality government did not have enough monetary resources to maintain the system. The Law n. 205 of February 16, 1898, authorized the government of Amazonas to sign a new leasing energy-related contract with the Manaus Electric Lighting Company to secure urban public and private lighting service for 25 years. In 1898, the mentioned company was expected to guarantee the proper performance of a minimum of 325 lamps and a maximum of 425 arc lamps in the city. Private lighting was provided through incandescent bulbs that had a luminous intensity of 16 candles, and its cost varied according to the number of lamps purchased per customer (Nascimento 2017, 27). 2. Otoni Mesquita confirms that between 1872 and 1890 there was a population decline in several cities located in the northeast region of Brazil such as São Luis, Fortaleza, João Pessoa, Natal, and Recife (Mesquita 2009, 185). 3. Refer to Bailey et al, 2019.

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A Colônia Paraense. 1896. A Noite.1921; 1922. A Pátria. 1898. Baer, W. 1965. Industrialization and Economic Development in Brazil. Homewood, Illinois: Irwin. Bailey, G. et  al. 2019.  The Jesuits II: Cultures Sciences and the Arts 1540–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Benchimol, S. 1994. Manaós-do-Amazonas – Memória Empresarial. Manaus: Universidade do Amazonas. Benchimol, S. 1999. Amazônia: Formação social e cultural. Manaus: Editora Valer/ Editora da Universidade do Amazonas. Bunker, S.G. 1985. Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern State. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Campos, H. L. 1988. Climatologia médica do Estado do Amazonas. Manaus: Associação Comercial do Amazonas, Fundo Editorial. Carvalho, J. M. 2012. The Formation of Souls: Imagery of the Republic in Brazil. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Chalhoub, S. et  al. 1984/85. “Trabalho escravo e trabalho livre na cidade do Rio: vivências de libertos, ‘galegos’ e ‘mulheres pobres.” Cultura e cidades. Revista Brasileira de História, 8–9: 97. Comércio do Amazonas. 1898. Costa, F. D. S. da 2014. Quando viver ameaça a ordem urbana: Trabalhadores urbanos em Manaus, 1890–1915. Manaus: Editora Valer. Daou, A. M. 2014. A cidade, o teatro e o país das seringueiras: práticas e representações da sociedade amazonense na passagem do século XIX-XX. Rio de Janeiro: FAPEJ. Embelezamento, 1926–1930. Paris: Foyer Brésilien. Evans, P. 1979. Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Frank, A.G. 1969. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review Press. Graham, D. et al. 1971. Migration, Regional and Urban Growth, and Development in Brazil; A Selective Analysis of the Historical Record, 1872–1970. São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas-USP. Lenzi, M.I. 2000. Pereira Passos: Notas de Viagens. RJ: Sextante Artes. Menezes, A. C. 1896. Almanach do Amazonas para 1896. Manaus: Diário Oficial. Mesquita, O. 2009. La belle vitrine Manaus entre dois tempos 1890–1900. Manaus: Editora da Universidade Federal do Amazonas. Município de Manaus. 1898. Município de Manaus, Leis, Decretos e Resoluções de 1890 a 1897, Tomo I. Typ. do Amazonas. Nascimento, M. J. 2017 Levantamento histórico da matriz energética em Manaus. Master’s Thesis, Universidade Federal do Amazonas. O Rio Negro. 1989. Oliveira, J. P. de. 1997. Pardos, mestiços ou caboclos: os índios nos censos nacionais no Brasil (1872–1980). Horizontes Antropológicos. Pechman, S. et al. 1984/85. A reforma urbana e seu avesso. Cultura e cidades. Revista Brasileira de História, 8–9: 141. Pechman, S. et al. 1996. Cidade, Povo e Nação. Gênese do Urbanismo Moderno, RJ: Civilização Brasileira. Pinheiro, M. L. U. et al. 2018. Mundos do Trabalho na Cidade da Borracha, Paco e Littera. Pinheiro, M.L.U. 2015. A Cidade Sobre os Ombros: trabalho e conflito no Porto de Manaus (1899–1915). Manaus: FUA. Prefeitura do Distrito Federal. 1930. Cidade do Rio de Janeiro: Extensão, Remodelação, Revista da Academia Cearense de Letras. 1953 Sampaio, P. 1997. Os fios de Ariadne: tipologia de fortunas e hierarquias sociais em Manaus, 1840–1880. Manaus: Editora da Universidade do Amazonas.

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Sant’Ana, T. R. S. de. 2008. A Exposição Internacional do Centenário da Independência: modernidade e política no Rio de Janeiro do início dos anos 1920. Master’s Thesis, IFCH/UNICAMP. Sassen, S. 2000. “The Global City: Strategic Site/New Frontier.” American Studies, 41, nos. 2–3: 79–95. Sevcenko, N. 1984. A revolta da vacina: mentes insanas em corpos rebeldes. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Tribuno do Povo—Órgão do Club-União Cearense. 1890 Wadsworth et  al. 2001. “Children of the Pátria: Representations of Childhood and Welfare State Ideologies at the 1922 Rio de Janeiro International Centennial Exposition.” The Americas, 58, no. 1: 65–90.

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Chapter 12

Sufi Shrines in Hyderabad and Its Community’s Claims within the Urban Amy Mei Yen Phua

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Sufi shrines, known as dargahs, are sites where people, Muslims and some Hindus, commonly visit to obtain spiritual blessings. They are the graves of holy men, known as the Sufis. While alive, these Sufi masters gained a large following of people due to their spiritual charisma and moral authority. A typical layout of a dargah consists of an outer courtyard and an inner sanctuary (see figure 12.1). The inner sanctuary is where the grave lies and is considered a sacred space to enter. Typically, in India, the grave is covered by a dome structure, as an indicator of where the grave lies from the outside. Surrounding the grave is the outer courtyard, where there is a more open space where people can sit around, relax, or meditate. Larger dargahs in India have a garden outside the outer courtyard also, this is where families would spend their time on weekends or during their free time to lounge around. After the Sufi saint physically dies, their graves are believed to be imbued with spiritual blessing known as barakat and are visited by people within the community and from afar to obtain blessings. While Sufi shrines are ubiquitously placed throughout the world due to the spread of Sufi Islam from the Middle East since the twelfth century, this paper focuses on the Sufi shrines located in Hyderabad, India, and the significance of their history and legacy. This paper argues that Sufi shrines in Hyderabad are not merely sites of spiritual and religious significance, but due to Hyderabad’s historical context as a former Muslim princely state, Sufi shrines are sites where networks and patronages of the earlier Persianate polity are embedded and stake their claim within the urban. During times of crisis within the country, such as the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Registry of Citizens (CAA-NRC) by the Indian Central government, which Indian residents take as a sign of the state’s attempt to discriminate against the Muslims in India, the Sufis rise to the occasion to represent the Muslim community to 183

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Figure 12.1  A Dargah with Outer Courtyard Leading to Inner Sanctuary. Source: Author's Photo.

stake its claim and belonging within the urban. Using historical anthropology and ethnography as method, this paper unpacks the significance of the dargah in the Old City of Hyderabad, and how it acts like a node that pulls Muslim networks and relations of the earlier polities to it. Through that, I argue that the dargah is the pulsating point of the Muslim culture within the Old City, and the people who represent this community are able to lay a claim within the urban because of the dargah’s strong material and cultural presence.

VIGNETTE/CONTEXT In mid to late 2019, the central government of India introduced a series of policies, known as the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The NRC is an attempt to legalize residents of India

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who have been residing in the country but who are unable to present legal documents of their citizenship, and hence run the risk of being deported. The CAA comes in to legalize those who have been residing in India before 2014, except for Muslims and Jews who are exempted from this policy. Indian Muslims and many other residents of India, who believed in the secular constitution of India, were furious when these policies were introduced. They believed that the policies were meant to phase out the presence of Muslims within the country. In reaction, large-scale protests were organized all over India, including Hyderabad, where more than 40% of Hyderabad’s estimated population are Muslims. A large-scale protest, informally known as the “Million March,” was organized in early January of 2020. It was led by a network of various Muslim and civil society organizations within Hyderabad and was attended by hundreds of thousands of protestors. Within Hyderabad, many other communities and organizations mobilized themselves to form protest rallies during that period. One of them is Bahir,*1 who is Pirzada (next-in-line to be the Sajjada Nasheen/successor) of a very famous dargah in a town on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The protest rally was organized in conjunction with the Indian National Congress party. Bahir’s family have been ardent supporters of the Indian National Congress party, an opposition of the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rolled out the CAA-NRC policies. In times of political turmoil, Sufi saints and their representative successors step in to intervene and do what is right for the people. During the rally, Bahir delivered an emotionally loaded speech address to remind the audience of the Indian Muslim’s belonging to India. I quote an excerpt from his speech which I accessed through an Instagram account of Bahir’s supporter:2

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we want our rights, the CAA and NRC . . . is it correct? Yeh log bhool rahe hain ki hum Hindustani Mossalman hain, paidah hone se pehleh bhi the, hamaare pehle alam mein, jab humari maa ke peth me the, us waqt bhi hindustan ki sar zamin par the! paidah hone ke baad bhi, Hindustan ke sar zamin par hain, marne ke baad bhi, Hindustan ke sar zamin par hi dafan hone vale hain! (Translation: We want our rights, the CAA and NRC . . . is it correct? Not at all! These people are forgetting that we are Hindustani Muslims, we were there before birth, we are here now and we will be there when we die, buried in this land!) (Bahir, CAA Protest Rally, Hyderabad, December 2019)

Bahir’s speech indicates very strongly that he regards the Muslim community of Hyderabad and India as very much indigenous to the country itself. It was

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a performance, loaded with emotions, to remind people how individuals of the Sufi Muslim community like himself, were born from the very grounds of India and will very surely be buried within the grounds of India. The invocation of material space within the urban, such as how they were born and will be buried within the grounds of Hyderabad, much like the dargahs which are tombs of holy men buried in the grounds of India, illustrates the materialization of their claims on the urban. Bahir’s role as a Sufi person, who is given the opportunity to be on the stage to rally the community alongside politicians, is indicative of his influential status within the Hyderabad Muslim community, due to the historical and political significance that the Sufi community has left in Hyderabad’s urban history. The legacy of the Sufi community’s presence lies in the material grounds of the dargah, where the Sufi master has been buried. The physical death of the Sufi saint marks the birth of a new beginning for the Sufi community. Following the death of a Sufi master or saint, his grave becomes a dynamic site of cultural memory where his legacy and posterity are sealed into the soil of the city by his burial. A combination of his legacy, in the form of the spiritual blessing known as barakat, is believed to be imbued into his physical body after death and buried in the ground. Barakat is also believed to be imbued in the property of the dargah granted to his family in perpetuity, known as Waqf property, establishing the posterity for his successors and followers. Although there are changes in political regimes and forms of government administration throughout the centuries, the Sufi institution in the form of the dargah, after the death of the saint, has never experienced a complete change or dis-rupture in its practices, due to the freedom in which they are able to own land and continue their ritual practices for generation after generation. The freedom to own land was granted to them during the period of the Muslim dynasties, where plots of land known as Waqf, were granted to them in perpetuity to allow these Sufi families to have subsistence by landownership while they provide the people with religious and moral guidance. This is not to say that the practices have never changed over time, or that there are no challenges posed to the Sufi institutions over time. However, due to the degree of autonomy that religious institutions have in their practice, there has never been an overhaul in the entire system of ideologies or doctrines, unlike in political regimes. The Sufi institution, in the form of the dargah, the tomb of the Sufi saint, becomes a centripetal point; or a node of networks of another temporality within urban Hyderabad, juxtaposed with the neoliberal temporality of Hyderabad of the Indian nation-state. The neoliberal temporality of Hyderabad largely resides in the newer parts of the city, that developed from the mid-1980s, to attract global corporations such as Microsoft and

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IBM to establish their headquarters. Some people that I spoke with during my fieldwork in Hyderabad between 2019 and 2020 categorize the differing temporalities within Hyderabad as “Old City” and “New City” and see them in terms of binaries or polarities, especially new migrants from the other parts of India who moved to Hyderabad for work and livelihood in the last two decades, who have no context of the cultural significance of the historic city. Many of them feel that the “Old City,” where the older polities of Hyderabad lie, and also where the heart of the Sufi community and the former administrative area of the Muslim polities are located, are “backward” or not as “developed” as the “New City,” a site that has been transformed into a hub for multi-national corporations such as Google, IBM, and Microsoft had stationed their offices within. However, those with a sense of appreciation of Mughal and Persianate history, such as scholars and heritage enthusiasts, would say that Hyderabad is a synthesis of traditional and modern, where its inherent internationalism and composite cosmopolitan culture “has fused well with the trends of globalization, particularly in the areas of technology, information technology, trade, culture music and .  .  . languages” (Azam 2018:16). Instead of perceiving the city as a polarity, as if the old clashes with the new, in recent decades urban scholars have started to think of the city as a crumpled geography of social-material relations (Hetherington 2013), a mille-feuille pastry where a thousand fragile layers of spaces are crumbled and mingled across their orderings like a palimpsest of spaces (Lefebvre 1992). Urban space is not homogenous, but each space is layered with meaning over time-space, with each space having its own temporality. In this case, the Old and the New City consist of different temporalities co-existing alongside each other. When one travels around Hyderabad, one will find pockets of spaces with old-world charm, and not far from that they find themselves surrounded by a new space with shopping malls and global offices that one can find in any other city. I argue here that the “Old City” is not in any way rendered obsolete or irrelevant in its place within urban Hyderabad. It still holds a significant power in terms of negotiation and participation in politics and in its representation of the Muslim population whose culture lies within the “Old City.” A large part of this is due to the long-standing role that Sufi people have played in Muslim society since the founding of Hyderabad. I will first delve into the history of Hyderabad to illustrate the significance that the Sufis wield in the representation of the traditional Muslim population in Hyderabad today. I will then discuss the significance of the Sufi institutions, namely the sites of the dargah and its presence known as barakat, and the role it plays in assembling the networks and forms of political authorities of the Muslim community within urban Hyderabad.

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HYDERABAD’S PERSIANATE HISTORY AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUFISM The city of Hyderabad was first founded by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1591 of the Persianate Qutb Shahi Dynasty. During the period of Muslim reign in Hyderabad, from the Qutb Shahi dynasty to the Asaf Jahi dynasty, the Persianate culture, fusing with local Sanskritic cultures, flourished. Sufi persons, who came alongside Muslim rulers from the Middle East, were attributed to creating such a composite culture, melding Persian, local, and Sanskritic cultures together through literature and language and even played a role in the creation of the composite language called Dakhni. An adaptation of this language form is still being spoken today by people within the Deccan region, namely Hyderabad and parts of Karnataka. The Deccan was an excellent place for syncretism and vernacularization, as different communities met and mingled without being dominated by one overarching imperial power, leading to the burgeoning of creativity, innovation, and syncretism (Leonard 1973; Beverley 2015). The Asaf Jahi dynasty used Persian as its court language until the midnineteenth century and adhered to Persianate court decorum known as Adab (which is also interchangeably known as a form of moral conduct), until the reign of the sixth Nizam, where the court language then changed to Urdu. The Persianate cultural continuity persisted in the Asaf Jahi period, through the use of Persian in poetry, and also through the conduct of Adab (Kia 2020), which was not only practiced by people in courts but also in general Hyderabadi society. Both of these practices were heavily influenced by the Sufis’ contribution to poetry and writing as well as their passing on of Sufi ethical values. The poetries and writings are largely used in Bollywood today as ballads (ghazals) that express divine love interchangeably with romance,

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THE CESSATION OF THE MUSLIM DYNASTY AND FOUNDING OF THE INDIAN NATION-STATE Soon after Hyderabad was ceded to the Republic of India in 1948, and in 1956, Hyderabad was then linguistically regrouped with the Telugu-dominant eastern part of South India known as Andhra Pradesh. Powerful dominant Telugu Hindu castes such as the Reddies and the Kamas, many of them hailing from the more affluent parts of Andhra Pradesh, began to settle in Hyderabad and purchase land. In the 1990s, Hyderabad’s Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu from the Kamma caste paved the area northwest of the Asaf Jahi’s capital for development, to transform it into an information technology hub. The Kammas and Reddies, who are Telugu Hindus, have since

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established a strong culture and presence in the “New” city region, and own land over there (Punyamurthy 2016). In the 1990s, Chief Minister of Hyderabad Chandrababu Naidu opened up Hyderabad city to economic liberalization, with the aim of transforming Hyderabad into an IT hub, known as HITEC City (Hyderabad Information Technology and Engineering Consulting City) to attract foreign international investments and transnational corporations. HITEC City paved the way to create a “knowledge enclave” or high-tech enclave known as Cyberabad, or “New City.” This was located in the northwest region of Hyderabad. The rise in the northwestern part of Hyderabad with foreign investment coming in, meant that land prices soared drastically, where in some parts of the city near the HITEC area, it was reported that land prices have escalated 100% in just two years (Younus 2019), resulting in large-scale migration of people moving from other regions of India to Hyderabad to work for a living; which dilutes the local Hyderabadi culture. The location southeast of Hyderabad, where the earlier empires of the Qutb Shahi and Asaf Jahi administration were built, with their palaces, institutions, and residential areas for their subjects, then became known to new migrants as the “Old City.” To contrast the modern-ness of the neoliberal, informational technology region of urban Hyderabad, the former Asaf Jahi administration of the 500-year-old city has been relegated to be a regressive, underdeveloped, and “backward” town (Beverley 2015) by current urban planners and new settlers to Hyderabad who came into the IT city from other places of India, not knowing much about the history of Hyderabad. Events and incidents in post-Partition India have seen a regression in the way Muslims and Muslim-dominated cities and administrations are being viewed. Generally, an anti-Muslim sentiment arose in the last few decades among the majority of Hindu populations (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2012; Naidu 1990; Sherman 2015). Political stratagems in India, playing on populism politics, have further divided Hindus and Muslims and mobilized the poor for their own gain. This has resulted in widespread violence and deaths, especially in the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Godhra-Gujarat violence in 2002. These incidents have marked one of the most violent conflicts between Hindus and Muslims resulting in over ten thousand deaths, and the incident created rippling of conflicts throughout the country (Shani 2007; Naidu 1990; Sherman 2015). Hyderabad, too, was not exempt from the repercussions and was entangled in the ripples of communal conflicts. After the riots, new boundaries around communal identities were formed around major urban places in India including Hyderabad, and were defined through ethnic and religious lines (Mehta and Chatterji 2001). Spaces with communal ethnic and religious identities were formed across the urban spaces in India (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2012:21). The congregation in numbers allows

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them to have a sense of participation in urban citizenship, as well as the collective negotiation of their belonging in a state that makes their existence as Muslims increasingly difficult. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE “OLD CITY” The “Old City” is not only a place of refuge for Muslims but also a space that retains historical and social memories, undergoing enduring changes over time. It serves as a marker of identification and is produced by, as well as reproduces, multiple sovereignties, moral orders, and emotions. . .” (Khan 2015:620). One of my interlocutors, Zain;*3 told me that this space has a “Muslim Culture” where the inhabitants feel comfortable dwelling in it. It is a familiar space where the space acquires meaning as a place through emotions, coming together in the realm of nostalgic memory that invokes affective pasts and spaces (Khan 2015:626). For example, in Raisur Rahman’s article (in Khan 2015:626), Rahman talks about how small towns known as qasbas became spaces with a deep sense of belongingness for Muslims especially after the 1857 Rebellion in India which led to a loss in political and cultural sovereignty of both Muslim and Hindu Indians. The emotional identification with the qasba was articulated and performed through Urdu literary production such as poetry, biographical dictionaries, genealogies, memoirs autobiographies among many, to commemorate the love and pride of their homeland. In a similar way, post-partition, the people in the “Old City” in Hyderabad commemorate their culture in almost identical ways, and one of them is through the commemoration of the saints and important Sufi figures at ceremonial rituals within the dargahs. To illustrate the significance of the dargah, in the next section, I give a vignette of a description of the dargah as an effective site of Muslim belonging.

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A GLIMPSE INTO THE SCENE OF A DARGAH TODAY A visit to a 500-year-old dargah in Hyderabad, known as the Hussain Shah Wali dargah, transports one into a different temporality. The dargah, a towering dome-like monument with a mixture of Indian and Persian features, is a testament to Indo-Muslim composite culture that characterized the reign of the Muslim dynasty of Hyderabad in the sixteenth century. This dargah was constructed in 1620, following the death of the Sufi saint Hussain Shah Wali, who also worked for the king as an engineer of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, the first dynasty founded in Hyderabad. Inside the dargah, a dazzling array of

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mosaic mirrors decks the top of the dome. Exquisitely carved pillars with Indian lotus designs at the top, marble floorings, the scent of rose, perfume, and sandalwood wafts from the coverings of the tomb or mazar, placed by devotees. The site felt like a complete juxtaposition to the surroundings outside. The juxtaposition from the chaotic and heavy traffic environment to the quiet and regal spaces of the dargah seemed to visually herald a different temporality. Like other religious spaces, people move and behave within the dargah in a very reverential manner, and they treat the space very sacredly. However, the site of the dargah is also quite unique; the architecture of dargahs brings one back to the medieval period of Persianate culture, where the dome and the inner décor of the dargah also resembled mosques and palaces in Iran. as its architecture parallels one of a medieval Persian court (Nile Green 2012). Anand Taneja (2017), in his study on a Jinn-dargah in Delhi, has discussed how people who visit the shrines, Muslims and Hindus alike within the vicinity, go to the shrine to petition for very relevant and present needs to the Jinns who are revered in the shrine. The petitioning of such needs is practiced in many other dargahs, in hopes to intercede for everyday needs of the devotees, such as the passing of their children’s examinations, getting a match for their children’s marriage, and even getting bailed out of civil court cases. In a government that is mired in bureaucratic red tape and characterized by hostility and lack of care (Gupta 2002; Taneja 2017), the act of petitioning to a saint is a “reimagination of the subject’s relation to the state,” by enacting a form of intimate sovereignty between the individuals and the saints (Taneja 2017). Furthermore, many Sufi saints when they were alive, acted as qazis (judges)in their lifetime under the Muslim dynasties, advising on matters and disputes pertaining to the people. After they have passed on, the community still believes in the saint’s presence to intercede in the form of his spiritual presence that dwells within the dargah, as well as the spiritual blessing that is imbued onto the saint after death, known as barakat. The devotees hang their bureaucratic documents; such as examination applications and court litigation papers; tied in a red string, to the gates and doors within the inner courts of the dargah; in hopes that the saint will supernaturally intervene in their cases. They also believe in the physical healing power of the saint; when the devotees themselves or their family members have ailments that need treating. The impact of the belief in barakat on the people is twofold. First, the community believes that through the materiality of the dargah, such as dwelling in the space or touching the artifacts within the dargah, barakat as a form of blessing can be transmitted into their bodies; helping them in their needs or healing their bodies. People interact with material artifacts in the dargah in corporeal ways. Through the acts of prostrating and waving the fumes of incense into bodies, people imbue the sacred objects into their beings. They

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also consume the rose petals placed onto the covering of the tomb, and some women used soot from the burning of incense to line their eyes for aesthetic purposes. Some also believe that barakat is passed on to the successors of the Sufi dargah, and also their family members, and hence would touch the feet of the Sufi families not only as a form of respect but also a form of receiving blessings from them. Second, barakat is also affective; it evokes feelings and sensual intensities from the reading of the space or the material artifacts within the dargah itself (Navaro-Yashin 2012: 168). The discharge of affect as barakat in the dargah is very significant. Together with written tradition, such as hagiographies of the life and works of the Sufi master, as well as the spiritual genealogy that connects the Sufi master to the Prophet, it then becomes an authorizing force that pulls people and networks into its vicinity, creating a polity of the Persianate temporality. This temporality particularly comes to its zenith during important festivals like the Urs, which is the anniversary of the Sufi saint’s death in the dargah.

R&L THE URS EVENT

The Urs festival, I argue here, is the heightened centripetal accumulation of networks, diasporas and lineages coming together at the heart of the dargah. During this time, it is also said by my interlocutors that the presence of barakat is most prominent during the event of Urs, when the spaces of the dargah are believed to be the most holy and sacred. This is because death of the Sufi master signifies the reunification of the Sufi master’s soul to Allah. Hence, an interlocutor, by the name of Israth, who is a caretaker of a dargah told me, that the word dargah means a door (dar) and place (gah). When put together it is a door that connects one to the spiritual realms of the Almighty. Many paraphernalia and rituals were used and enacted during this time. Paraphernalia such as incense, flowers, and jaggery sweets will be used as an offering to place on the saint's tomb. At one Chishti order dargah I was observing, devotees brought flowers and jaggery equivalent to the weight of a toddler. There was even a measuring scale that one could use to balance a child on one plate and the weight of jaggery and flowers on the other. Food will also be distributed in portions by the thousands from large cauldron pots in the kitchens of the dargah, and they are known as langar, or community kitchen. It is a way of communally feeding the community surrounding the dargah vicinity, as a way of reinforcing the community ties through food. It is also believed that barakat would fill all the items and paraphernalia during the auspicious day of the Urs (Snehi 2019). Sufi followers who come from various Sufi orders will also adorn attires that mark them as followers from the different Sufi orders; for example, the Chishti order would usually wear

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an egg-yolk color turban while people of the Qadri order will wear a green topi (cap). The Urs is not only a ritual to celebrate the religious aspects of the saint’s union with God, but it has also evolved to become a marker of identity, an event in which relations are reaffirmed, and an opportunity for patronage to happen. It is through such festivals that the site of a dargah as a heterotopian space becomes more pronounced. Heterotopian spaces here refer to sites of otherness where communities can claim meaning and identity through their practices in relation to these spaces (Foucault 1984). During the Urs, the belief is that the barakat is the strongest (Valdinoci 2009), and this would draw pilgrims and people who belong to the Muslim Sufi community from all over the region to the premises of the dargah, to partake in the blessings which is believed to be at its zenith during this time. The believed presence of this barakat draws more than just pilgrims to the site of the dargah, especially if the dargah is a prominent one. During this occasion, people who are descendants of Sufi saints from neighboring dargahs and different Sufi orders, with whom their forefathers have had a history of relationship and connection with the saint of the celebrated dargah, would also travel from afar to join the Urs event. The Urs is also a symbolically political affair since politicians from the city would patronize dargahs. Dargahs have been known in Muslim societies to be a sacred place for symbolic politics, where the legacy of the saint “is an endless reservoir of legitimacy and his shrine has become a ‘pantheon’ for all party leaders and politicians” (Aziz 2001:166 in Philippon 2012). For example, in Hyderabad, the Owaisi family, who represent the Muslim community in the AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) Party, regularly patronize dargahs. In particular, the Owaisi family has been in power and has been the main political representative of the Muslim residents in the Old City for many generations, especially after the time of the Police Action (Parvez 2017). Although the patronizing of religious sites is a common phenomenon for political leaders to garner votes, dargahs are more than religious sites, they represent the legitimacy of the earlier Muslim dynasties, largely so because many prominent Sufis worked closely with the rulers, and many of them either intermarried or held key governmental positions when they were alive. Therefore, the presence of the dargah, especially in such events, can be very influential, to the point that it could bear a sovereign power that is equivalent to the powers of kings in the past (Brittlebank 1995; Bayly 1989). These visitations by politicians and other prominent Sufi figures to the premises of the dargah during Urs are significant, as they carry and continue the relationships and networks of patronages for generations. With the visitations of persons of other Sufi orders, pilgrimages, and patronages of local elites, the Urs serves as a reminder of a dargah’s elite and aristocratic past.

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It also connects dargahs around India to a “high culture of ritualised shrine memory spaces across the expansive geography of Indian Muslim origins, travels, and settlements” (Green 2012: 34). This is similar practice with Ho (2006, xxv) as he traced the Hadrami Arab diaspora. He noted how successful burials establish pilgrimage as an important form of travel. This parallels the pilgrimage at dargahs, whereby devotees of the dargah would travel from around India, to camp around the premises of the dargah to partake in the Urs celebration. Here, there is the idea that the saint has left behind a legacy, almost like a myth or tradition that people adhere to like a sense of nationalism. Ho (2006, 3) talks about the idea of a sense of belonging to a nation or a birthplace, where these two words have similar etymology of the word, nasci (birth). For diasporic populations, the place of burial of ancestors are beginnings for their descendants, marking their presence in a land. The Sufi community hence find their nasci in sites of these graves, specifically holy graves like dargahs, where these sites then act as points of reference of a type of nationalism that predates back to the Persianate cultural era, providing roots in a world that is constantly shifting and where populations are mobile. The Urs event ultimately climaxes with a “Sandal” procession that takes up the entire evening to night. An important member of the Sufi family, usually the descendant of the Sufi saint who is holding the seat of the dargah known as the Sajjada Nashin, would usually be the lead of the procession. Holding a pot of sandalwood paste on his head, he would lead the procession of about a few kilometers starting from the dargah and around its vicinity, and back to the dargah itself. Usually, the procession is a very euphoric event, as many people in the crowds would follow behind the sandalwood bearer and rush to touch the pot as they believe that the touch will bring them spiritual blessings. The procession ends with the spreading of the fragrant sandalwood paste onto the covering of the tomb of the dargah as a mark of respect and blessing to the saint of the dargah. The entire scene of the procession, especially for prominent dargahs, is usually momentous enough for it to be featured on the local news platforms. Processions have a significant function anthropologically and geographically speaking. It is a display of power and dominion over the spaces around the dargah. In her research on observing dance and parades in Bolivia, Sian Lazar (2015) found that processions have intertextual references to that of street protests and demonstrations. Both protests and processions express a symbolic and experiential power that tries to assert sovereignty or a space that inverts or disturbs the usual quotidian spaces. There is a highly theatrical character of protests that is associated with traditional carnivals, where such performances create free flow of symbols and identity positions, bodily display, and repertoire of acts into an ordering of identities (Hetherington 1998). Theatrical work, in the form of ritual processions and performances,

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offers a broader understanding of the significance of social space to the production of identities through performances that are politically charged (Hetherington 1998,143). In the Urs procession, identities of a pre-national polity or dominion are invoked, as partakers of this street procession come together from various places and networks in numbers and through ritualistic commemoration to partake in the belief in the imbuing of a symbolic power (barakat) over the region, establishing its sovereignty. I take this alternative form of sovereignty as a way the Sufi Muslim community claims and contests the spaces around the dargah and within the Old City, as reminiscent of a pre-national polity. The above context of the dargah site has illustrated how Bahir, mentioned in the opening vignette, places his weight on his lineage to legitimize his presence as the descendant of a Sufi saint, of a prominent dargah. Bahir’s speech was influential not only because of his great oratory skills but his ability to represent the Sufi Muslim population of Hyderabad as a whole. His followers believed in his moral and spiritual authority to lead because they believed in his inherited barakat, to negotiate their belonging within Hyderabad in the present context, where the Muslims felt discriminated over the CAA-NRC policies and a slew of incidents that happened over the past few decades that aggravated the Hindu-Muslim divide.

R&L CONCLUSION

While present policies and events have created much ethnic strife and conflict between Hindus and Muslims, and while the development projects by present urban planners in Hyderabad has relegated the former region of Asaf Jahi administration in Hyderabad as the “Old City,” this paper serves to illustrate the idea that the city is not a homogenous space where one simply accepts the status quo by those who say that the New City is progressing but Old City is regressing and obsolete. I illustrated that the city is made up of heterogeneous pockets of spaces, that contain different temporalities and within each temporality possesses an authority in its own right. Through the lens of the Sufi dargah, in this chapter, I have discussed how the affective concept of barakat has drawn people and networks into the premise of the dargah, which contains repositories of spiritual lineages and networks that dates back to the medieval times. With these spiritual lineages, the site of the dargah has a substantial authority and presence that is able to pull the Muslim community together and create a substantial presence that can stand up to challenges to the Muslim sense of belonging within the urban in changing political contexts.

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NOTES 1. Not real name. 2. The Instagram account has since been deleted due to circumstances unknown. 3. Not his real name.

REFERENCES Azam, Kousar J. 2018. Languages and Literary Cultures in Hyderabad. London: Routledge. Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses, and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beverley, Eric Lewis. 2015. Hyderabad, British India, and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brittlebank, Kate. 1995. “Sakti and Barakat: The Power of Tipu’s Tiger: An Examination of the Tiger Emblem of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.” Modern Asian Studies 29(2). Cambridge University Press: 257–269. Contractor, Qudsiya. 2012. “Unwanted in My City”: The Making of a “Muslim Slum” in Mumbai. In Muslims of Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation edited by Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot, 23–42. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. 1986. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16(1): 22–27. JSTOR, Johns Hopkins University Press. Gayer, L., and C. Jaffrelot. 2012. Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation. Comparative Politics and International Studies Series. London: Hurst. Green, Nile. 2012. Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India. India: Oxford University Press. Gupta, Akhil. 2012. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Durham: Duke University Press. Hetherington, Kevin. 2013. “And Noise: The City, Memory and the Archive.” The Sociological Review 61: 17–33. Hetherington, Kevin. 1998. Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics. London: Sage Publications. Ho, Engseng. 2006. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkley: University of California Press. Kia, Mana. 2020. Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism. Redwood City, United States: Stanford University Press. Khan, Razak. 2015. “The Social Production of Space and Emotions in South Asia.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58(5): 611–633. Kugle, Scott. 2016. When Sun Meets Moon: Gender, Eros, and Ecstasy in Urdu Poetry. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks. University of North Carolina Press. Lazar, Sian. 2015. “This Is Not a Parade, It’s a Protest March’: Intertextuality, Citation, and Political Action on the Streets of Bolivia and Argentina.” American Anthropologist 117(2). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: 242–256.

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Lefebvre, Henri. 1992. The Production of Space. USA: Wiley. Leonard, Karen. 1973. “The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad: An Historiographic Essay.” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society: 205–213. Mehta, Deepak, and Roma Chatterji. 2001. Boundaries, Names, Alterities: A Case Study of a “Communal Riot” in Dharavi, Bombay. In Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery edited by Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman & Margaret Lock. University of California Press. Naidu, Ratna. 1990. Old Cities, New Predicaments: A Study of Hyderabad. Sage Publications. Parvez, Z. Fareen. 2014. “Celebrating the Prophet: Religious Nationalism and the Politics of Milad-Un- Nabi Festivals in India.” Nations & Nationalism 20(2): 218–238.Philippon, Alix. 2012. “The ‘Urs of the Patron Saint of Lahore: National Popular Festival and Sacred Union between the Pakistani State and Society?” Social Compass 59(3). SAGE Publications Ltd: 289–297. Punyamurthy, Shiva T. 2016. “Understanding Display Boards: A Semiotic Analysis of Caste Signs in Hyderabad.” Amity Journal of Media & Communication Studies 6(1): 26–31. Sherman, Taylor C. 2015. Muslim Belonging in Secular India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snehi, Yogesh. 2019. “Historiography, Fieldwork and Popular Sufi Shrines in the Indian Punjab.” The Indian Economic & Social History Review 56(2). SAGE Publications India: 195–226. Taneja, Anand Vivek. 2017. Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. California: Stanford University Press. Thrift, Nigel. 2000. “Afterwords. Environment and Planning.” D, Society & Space 18(2). Pion Ltd: 213–255. Valdinoci, Mauro. 2009. “Saintly Intercession in a Sufi Dargah of Hyderabad.” Journal of Deccan Studies 7(2): 31–68. Younus Lasania. 2019. “Hyderabad: Land Prices Have Escalated by 100% in Just 2 Years.” The Siasat Daily, July 24 2019. https://www​.siasat​.com​/hyderabad​-land​ -prices​-have​-escalated​-100​-just​-2​-years​-1559162/.

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Chapter 13

Theatrical Landscapes Exploring Single-Screen Theaters in Ernakulam as Urban Icons and Indicators Rajarajeshwari Ashok

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Cinema, a distinctive cultural phenomenon, is intricately tied to the organization of space, making it fundamentally different from other cultural forms (Shiel 2001, 5). Within the context of global capitalism, cinema possesses a distinctive potential to illuminate the lived spaces of the city and urban societies, thereby offering a comprehensive understanding of its themes, forms, and industry. Shiel (2001) argues that by exploring the organization of space in cinema, we can gain insights into the intricate interplay between the cinematic medium and the physical environments in which it unfolds. The power of images lies in their ability to shape our perceptions and emotional responses toward the subject matter they portray. Within this context, the city itself can be seen as a “social image,” (Alsayyad 1978, 268) an entity that has been extensively studied across disciplines such as literature, sociology, geography, and anthropology. Film, as a medium, allows for multiple interpretations and meanings to emerge from the same image. Cinema thus plays an amplifying role in shaping our understanding of the city and its complexities. As Ravi Vasudevan points out in Cinema in Urban Space (2003), it is essential to consider the cinema’s public presence, which becomes apparent through its exterior appearance, advertisements, and billboards. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the cinematic space, it is essential to consider its public presence and situate it within its broader context, taking into account its proximity to complexes, shopping malls, markets, and residential areas. Additionally, it is important to assess how the cinema is positioned within this contextual framework, determining whether it is intricately integrated into city life or situated on the outskirts, while also examining the transportation routes that connect various spaces. The unique and unmatched 199

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projection experience on the screen in a dark hall is also interdependent on the surrounding environment where the cinema is located. Tony Fitzmaurice illustrates the interplay between cinema and city when he says that It is, of course, a truism to point out that film is the urban cultural form par excellence—that film is a highly capitalized and labor-intensive product, whose origins (in Lyon in 1895) and destination (the now ubiquitous multiplex) are tied in with the fortunes of the twentieth-century city. (Fitzmaurice 2001, 19–20)

That is, just as the city is shaped by the influence of images and representations film is also formed by physical elements such as the built environment, demographic changes, land speculation, and capital movements. Ernakulam, a rapidly developing urban center, has witnessed significant transformations in recent decades, impacting various aspects of its cultural and social fabric. The presence of single-screen theaters continues to persist, serving as unique cultural artifacts amid the changing urban landscape. This paper presents an interdisciplinary investigation into the role of single-screen theaters in Ernakulam, Kerala, as a window to comprehend the city’s film-viewing style and its relationship with the process of urbanization. First, I examine the historical significance of single-screen theaters in the city to unravel the evolving role of these theaters as cultural landmarks and community gathering spaces. The section traces the existing single-screen theaters in Ernakulam and the ones that have been shut down or converted into other establishments in the past. Furthermore, I employ spatial analysis techniques to understand the spatial distribution and accessibility of single-screen theaters within the urban fabric of Ernakulam. By examining the patterns of their location and their relationship with other urban amenities, I shed light on the spatial dynamics of these theaters and their role in shaping the urban landscape. Next, the paper delves into the sociocultural aspects of film-viewing in Ernakulam’s single-screen theaters. Through ethnographic observations and interviews with cinephiles, film technicians, and theater owners, I investigate the unique film-viewing practices, preferences, and cultural experiences associated with these spaces. The chapter tries to contribute to our understanding of how cultural practices, embodied in the realm of film, intersect with urban dynamics, influencing the formation of urban identities and negotiate the idea of space in a rapidly urbanizing context.

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FILM THEATERS: CULTURAL LANDMARKS AND COMMUNITY GATHERING SPACES In the pre-digital era, the concept of booking tickets online was an alien notion. Instead, we would venture to the theater in advance, excitement,

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and anticipation pulsating through our veins. The sight of snaking queues, each individual waiting for their chance to obtain a coveted ticket, was a testament to the collective yearning for cinematic bliss. The euphoria of securing a ticket brought immense relief, yet the uncertainty of a sold-out show loomed like a shadow of disappointment. As the minutes dwindled, we rushed into the theater, a symphony of whispers and shuffling feet. The lack of numbered seats demanded strategic timing; an early arrival ensured claim to the best vantage points. And then, in unison, we witnessed the grand unveiling—the majestic rise of the curtain, signaling the commencement of our cinematic voyage. The vibrant camaraderie enveloped the air as we hooted and cheered in unison with fellow enthusiasts. During the intermission, a brief respite from the on-screen narrative, a mad dash ensued to indulge in the delicacies of the cinema foyer. Peanuts crackled between our teeth, while the local popcorn, fragrant and inviting, found its way into our eager hands. These cherished memories, etched into the minds of premillennial kids, encapsulate the pure joy and shared experiences of a bygone era of filmgoing. This section tries to trace the single-screen theaters in Ernakulam1 and their present condition. First, it is necessary to clarify in what sense the word “single screen” is used. It is commonly used to refer to theaters which have single exhibiting screen as opposed to multiplexes which have many screens. However, the examination of film theaters in Ernakulam reveals intricate complexities that challenge the conventional notion of “single-screen” establishments. Saritha, Savitha, and Sangeetha Theaters (on Banerjee Road) operate within a shared building structure, akin to a multiplex, housing three distinct screens. This architectural arrangement allows for simultaneous screenings of different films. The film distribution within this structure is subject to strategic placement, with films possibly relocated based on popularity to smaller or larger screens. In contrast, Shenoys and Little Shenoys Theaters (on M. G. Road) function independently, yet are situated within the same compound. Notably, the ownership of Shenoys, Little Shenoys, Sreedhar (Shanmugham Road), and Padma Theaters rests in the hands of a single proprietor, creating an interlinked network. Similarly, Vanitha and Vineetha Theaters (Edappally), owned by the same individual, are situated in the same compound. However, unlike the latter, Vanitha and Vineetha feature multiple screens within their shared space. These intricate dynamics challenge the simplistic “single-screen” categorization, demanding a more nuanced understanding of the diverse operational structures within Ernakulam’s filmtheater landscape. Hence here we need to understand single-screen theaters as those owned by local entrepreneurs as compared to multiplexes which might have a single corporate owner and centralized decision-making across many geographies.​

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It is critical to examine the theaters in Ernakulam that have become iconic cultural landmarks within the city (figure 13.1). Notably, a significant trend has emerged wherein theaters have predominantly conglomerated in the vicinity of M.G. Road (Ashok 2020, 10). According to personal communication with Kitho2 (Personal Communication 2019), the street in Ernakulam held

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significant prominence as a thriving hub of business activity during the 1980s. It served as a central location for various economic enterprises, including the spice trade, bookstores, bakeries, educational institutions such as schools and colleges, music stores, clothing outlets, sports grounds, and hotels. Furthermore, this street played a crucial role in connecting the mainland of Ernakulam city to the island regions, such as Fort Kochi and Mattancherry. As the main thoroughfare linking the island parts of the city with the mainland, this street served as a vital transportation artery. It acted as the primary conduit for individuals traveling from the island regions to access different areas within the city. The street’s strategic position made it an essential passageway for the movement of people and goods, facilitating economic exchanges and contributing to the city’s overall vitality. The bus stand situated off this street enabled the easy passage of people both within and outside the city. Similarly, boat jetties on Shanmugham Road, which lies parallel to M. G. Road, connected Ernakulam city not only to the islands of Fort Kochi and Mattancherry but also to islands like Vypin and Njarakkal. Banerjee Road connected both these roads together. The multiplicity of businesses and establishments situated along these streets not only fostered economic growth but also created a vibrant social and cultural atmosphere. The coexistence of diverse enterprises, ranging from traditional spice trade to educational institutions (Colleges like St Albert’s, Maharajas, St. Teresa’s, and Government Law College are situated on or off these roads) and commercial outlets, infused the street with a dynamic blend of activities and interactions. This confluence of commerce, education, leisure, and daily life transformed the street into a multifaceted space that catered to the diverse needs and aspirations of the local community and visitors alike. Historically significant theaters that have closed down include Lakshman Theater, which was located in Valanjambalam near the overbridge. It started functioning in 1942 and was the oldest theater in Ernakulam (Sreejith 2021). This releasing center was where the Maharaja of Cochin, the Maharaja of Travancore, and other royal family members watched films occasionally. This was the first theater started by the Shenoy group. Menaka Theater, which was situated on Shanmugham Road, has now been transformed into Penta Menaka, a commercial complex hosting several small businesses. Mymoon Lulu Theater (figure 13.3) on Chittoor Road (the road which is to the left and parallel to M. G. Road) was shut down a few years ago and is currently facing demolition. A. J. Hall at Kaloor (right next to Kaloor bus stand), currently a bustling wedding venue, was once known as Seena Theater (figure 13.2).3 Ashoka Theater, adjacent to the Mathrubhumi Building in Mathrubhumi junction, no longer exists, leaving its exact location in the current city landscape difficult to ascertain, even for individuals who frequented the theater in the past. “I think the structure still stands, and has been converted

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Figure 13.2  A. J. Hall, Which Used to Be Seena Theater. Source: Author’s Photo.

into some other business,” says Ashok, who has been a resident of the city for decades (Personal Communication 2023). Devi Theater, situated in Pachalam (Shanmugham road ends at Pachalam), and the theater in Pathadipalam (near Edappally) remain embedded in collective memory, although specific details prove elusive. The recollections of a theater named KBK near Vazhakkala (Kakkanad side) also persist, though it has been replaced by an unfinished residential complex. “There was a theater called KBK near Vazhakkala. Now there is an apartment there but it was abandoned halfway through construction. I have seen numerous films there,” Sabu Pravada, a native of Ernakulam recollects. Kanoos Theater, formerly known as Deepa Theater, is situated at the end of M. G. Road, near the Shipyard. At the heart of M. G. Road, Shenoys (started functioning in 1969), Little Shenoys (as previously mentioned, within the same compound), Padma (started functioning in 1946 and is the second theater started by Shenoys group), and Kavitha Theaters are situated. Sreedhar Theater (started functioning in 1964 and is the first air-conditioned theater in Kerala. Owned by Shenoy group) is located on Shanmugham Road, the road parallel to M. G. Road, while Saritha, Savitha, and Sangeetha Theaters (started functioning in 1981) are positioned on Banerji Road, the primary artery connecting M. G. Road to Shanmugham Road. Among the current

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Figure 13.3  Mymoon Lulu Theater, Which Was Closed Down Years Ago. The Building Had Started Being Demolished at the Time This Picture Was Taken in May 2023. Source: Author’s Photo.

operational single-screen theaters in Ernakulam, Vanitha Vineetha Theater is the only exception, as it is situated away from the centralized M. G. Road area, at Edappally. These observations underscore the complex dynamics of theater presence and transformations within the urban fabric of Ernakulam, necessitating further scholarly investigation and documentation on why single-screen theaters close down. Such documentation is not just about nostalgia but is also an important chronicle of changing urban life. It is important to recognize that the dynamics of the streets, namely, M. G. Road, Banerjee Road, and Shanmugham Road, may have evolved over time due to changing socio-economic factors and urban development. Investigating the historical significance of these streets, its transformation over the years, and its current state offers valuable insights into the shifting landscape of Ernakulam. The past and present of these streets, shed light on its role as

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a nexus of economic, social, and cultural exchanges, providing a broader context for comprehending the city’s development and urban connectivity.

SINGLE-SCREEN THEATERS: NAVIGATING CHALLENGES My research journey into examining the condition of single-screen theaters in Ernakulam began with a set of initial hypotheses derived from studies focusing on multiplexes, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rise of OTT (over-the-top) platforms for film releases. These studies suggested that single-screen theaters across the country were facing significant challenges and a decline in patronage. Armed with these preconceived notions, I embarked on an ethnographic exploration, engaging with theater owners in the region. However, the findings of my fieldwork in Kerala proved to be surprising and challenged my initial assumptions. The situation in Kerala’s single-screen theaters differed from the broader narrative, revealing unique dynamics that demanded a more nuanced understanding of the complexities at play. This unexpected discovery prompted a critical reassessment of my research framework and a reorientation of focus toward uncovering the distinctive realities and challenges faced by single-screen theaters in the Kerala context. The paper brings in the missing perspective of the industry personnel, those who are actually involved in the business of cinema and theater. These include theater owners, film producers, workers at multiplexes, publicity designers, and art directors. It argues that contrary to scholarly suggestions the industry pegs the prospective survival of single-screen theaters in Ernakulam contingent upon the quality and content of the films being crafted. It is the inherent entertainment appeal and artistic merit of these cinematic creations that magnetize audiences to theaters, irrespective of prevailing social and economic conditions. This section critically examines the multifaceted factors impacting the viability and endurance of single-screen theaters in the city, encompassing an in-depth analysis of their geographical locations, the historical challenges they have encountered, such as the emergence of multiplexes, and the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, it delves into the intricate interplay between the nature and characteristics of films being produced, unravelling their profound influence on the survival and prospects of single-screen theaters within the urban landscape.​ The concentration of Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI) within urban areas, often forming specialized clusters, is a well-documented phenomenon (Tomczak & Stachowiak 2015). The cultural and creative sectors include a wide range of industries and activities that are rooted in cultural values and encompass various forms of artistic and creative expressions, which

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are produced individually or collaboratively. This spatial concentration is primarily attributed to the effects of urbanization, wherein the interplay among diverse sectors and activities creates a synergetic environment that mitigates the higher costs associated with transportation and operations. The agglomeration of CCIs in urban settings fosters dynamic interactions, knowledge spillovers, and creative collaborations, propelling innovation, competitiveness, and cultural vibrancy. This spatial clustering facilitates the exchange of ideas, skills, and resources, attracting a talented workforce and fostering a supportive ecosystem that nurtures the growth and sustainability of creative enterprises. While the high operational costs in urban areas pose challenges, the benefits derived from the urban agglomeration of CCIs outweigh these constraints, making cities indispensable hubs for creative and cultural production. Cinema as discussed previously, is a distinctive cultural phenomenon. Cultural practices, like the act of viewing films in a theater, are often reflective of social conflict, accepted norms and the contemporary ethos, and play an important role in producing meaning about the world. In her scholarly work, Madhuja Mukherjee (2020) offers a compelling examination of the centrality of place and locality within the realm of film theaters, particularly focusing on the historical emergence of these cultural spaces in specific areas of Calcutta (Mukherjee 2020). By delving into the distinct characteristics of these locales, such as the bazaar atmosphere and the presence of middle-class habitats, Mukherjee highlights how these contextual factors contribute to the formation of community-specific hubs of leisure and entertainment. Drawing upon the theoretical insights put forth by Stephen Hughes (2003), Mukherjee underscores the significance of considering the interplay between films and their viewers. She contends that any comprehensive analysis of films’ meanings cannot disregard the dynamic and reciprocal relationships that unfold between cinematic works and their audiences.​ I have discussed in another article that the film theaters, distribution companies, and film publicity designers were all situated in or around M. G. Road till about a decade ago (Ashok 2020). The bustling M. G. Road in Ernakulam emerged as a vibrant hub of filmic activity, comprising a diverse array of businesses related to the film industry. This conglomeration encompassed publicity designers, photography studios, art supply establishments, film theaters, and film distribution offices. The film theaters, many of which served as important releasing centers, flanked the street. The street in Ernakulam was a thriving commercial center, encompassing sectors like spice trade, bookstores, bakeries, education, music stores, fashion, sports, and hotels. It served as a vital link, connecting the mainland to the island regions of Ernakulam. This location’s significance is highlighted in Siyad Koker’s4 quote, emphasizing the importance of the street for sustaining single-screen theaters. He said

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“Do you know what is the most important factor to consider before starting a film theater? The location. You have to make sure that the theater is situated in a space that has a recurring film-viewing public.” The significance of the theater’s location cannot be understated as it plays a crucial role in determining its success. Prior to establishing a theater, a fundamental consideration is the presence of a film-going audience within the vicinity. It is imperative that the surrounding area accommodates a sufficiently sizable population capable of sustaining the theater’s operational expenses while also generating profits. During the 1980s and 1990s, Kerala had a limited number of releasing centers, approximately 70 to 80 in the entire state. Consequently, films had the potential to enjoy extended runs in theaters, contingent upon positive reception from viewers. In this context, word-of-mouth recommendations proved instrumental in attracting individuals residing far away from releasing centers to travel to Ernakulam for film screenings. The fact that Ernakulam was a city, frequented by visitors for shopping, religious pilgrimages, and tourism, ensured a substantial inflow of people into its theaters. Many individuals, particularly those hailing from areas devoid of releasing centers, availed themselves of the opportunity to watch films while visiting the city for other purposes.

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“In fact, one way through which we recognised the success of a film being screened in another theater was through the spillage we get right before or after a film begins. Sometimes, right before a film began in Mymoon Lulu, people would come running from Shenoys because the show there was sold out. This was an indicator of the film in Shenoys being well liked by the audience” Siyad Koker recalls.

The confluence of factors discussed above, including the limited number of releasing centers in Kerala, the cultural significance of Ernakulam as a city attracting visitors for various purposes, and the willingness of audiences from distant areas to travel to Ernakulam for film screenings, collectively contributed to the establishment and sustenance of multiple releasing centers in the city. Then is it true that single-screen theaters are currently facing the threat of closure? If true, what are the factors that led to this unpleasant situation? Siyad said: There has always been something or the other which people saw as threats to the existence of single-screen theaters. In the late 1980s, when televisions became common in households, many people in the industry were worried if people would come out of their houses to watch films. Some were even wondering whether to make a plea to ban TV channels. But then what happened? Did people stop coming to theaters? No right?

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As previously alluded to I embarked upon this investigation with certain preconceived notions concerning the challenges encountered by single-screen theaters. What Siyad said was in stark contrast to say, S. V. Srinivas’s opinion that: The number of movie theaters peaked in the early and mid 1990s only to begin falling rapidly by the end of the 20th century, even before the first multiplex had been opened. Industry representatives attributed this alarming development to the growing popularity of cable and satellite television, which was now available in South Indian languages. (Haubitz, Zoche, & S. V Srinivas 2016)

As highlighted by Srinivas, the emergence of cable and satellite television undeniably raises the question of its impact on the cinema-going population and potentially contributed to the closure of several theaters. However, Siyad vehemently asserts that the influence of such technological advancements did not significantly affect the viability of single-screen theaters in Kerala, or at least did not culminate in their outright closure. The landscape of theatrical exhibition in India has witnessed a dramatic transformation over the past two decades, with the rise of multiplexes exerting a significant influence on box office dynamics. However, the scenario in the southern states presents a distinct picture. Despite experiencing a notable decline in numbers, single screens have managed to retain their significance in terms of box office collections, contributing as much as 60% of the total revenues. One key factor attributing to the continued relevance of single screens in southern India is the emergence of a new breed of exhibitors in the early years of the twenty-first century. These exhibitors, rather than owning the neighborhood theaters, opt for leasing arrangements that is, they lease out their theaters to aggregators who have a large number of theaters under their control. In that sense, these aggregators have similar bargaining power as that of multiplex chains. S. V. Srinivas, in the specific context of single-screen theaters in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, underscores this phenomenon (Srinivas, 2021). Based on an in-depth analysis of the perspectives shared by numerous theater owners in Ernakulam, it becomes evident that Srinivas’ assertions are indeed corroborated when examining the landscape of singlescreen theaters in Ernakulam.5 Despite initial apprehensions surrounding the potential obsolescence of single-screen cinemas in the wake of the advent of multiplexes, the prevailing sentiment among theater owners, such as the outspoken Saju Johny,6 is that these concerns were largely unfounded. Johny vehemently argues that the presence of multiplexes has had an inconsequential impact on the viability of single-screen theaters, attributing their enduring survival to a confluence of factors.

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A crucial aspect that Johny underscores is the exorbitant ticket pricing prevalent in multiplexes. The steep cost of admission is further exacerbated by the inflated prices of refreshments, which often exceed the actual film ticket expenses. Such inflated pricing structures create a notable disparity between multiplexes and single-screen theaters, rendering the latter more economically accessible to the majority of moviegoers. Johny contends that the average family, constrained by limited financial resources, cannot afford the luxury of indulging in the supplementary amenities offered by multiplexes. Consequently, these families opt to patronize single-screen theaters where the ticket prices remain relatively reasonable, aligning more closely with their financial capabilities. Johny said: There is also the matter of the theater itself. Single-screen theaters are larger with bigger screens. Multiplexes can seat 200 or 350 people depending on their size. A single-screen theater can seat more than a thousand people at a time. Clapping and cheering along with a thousand people is much more exciting and enjoyable than clapping with three hundred people.

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Furthermore, Johny elucidates that the distinct appeal of single-screen theaters lies in their role as dedicated cinematic spaces, unlike multiplexes where movie viewing is often relegated to being merely a component of a larger mall experience. In contrast to the multifunctional nature of multiplexes, where shopping, dining, and entertainment are intertwined, Johny argues that single-screen theaters afford an immersive and uninterrupted cinematic experience (Personal Communication 2023). For cinephiles who prioritize the film itself over ancillary attractions, the ambiance and exclusive focus on the cinematic presentation offered by single-screen theaters become paramount. Another reason attributed to the decline of single-screen theaters is the Covid-19 pandemic and the increased popularity of OTT releases. I was under the assumption that many people would prefer watching films after it comes on an OTT platform after a month of theatrical release and this tendency must be seriously affecting the ticket sales in single-screen theaters. Emerging research highlights a noteworthy trend wherein a significant portion of the population exhibits a preference for consuming content primarily through OTT platforms, reserving visits to movie theaters for occasional experiences (Varghese, S., & Chinnaiah, S.2021). Startlingly, around 50% of respondents in recent studies perceive OTT platforms as disruptive to the traditional movie theater model. The underlying motivations driving this shift in consumer behavior predominantly revolve around the paramount factors of convenience and choice. The advent of OTT services provides unparalleled convenience, allowing individuals to access content at their own discretion, on their preferred devices, and in the comfort of their personal space. Additionally, the wide array of content offerings available through

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these platforms further entices viewers, as they gain access to a diverse range of genres, languages, and even international productions. Consequently, the allure of seamless service, personalized viewing experiences, and the abundance of captivating content collectively contribute to the growing prominence of OTT platforms, inevitably impacting the movie theater landscape. When I asked Mr. Siyad Koker if he is afraid that OTT boom would keep people away from theaters, he asked me “If that was the case, then how come Romancham (2023) was such a big hit? How come 2018 (2023) is inching towards becoming the biggest box office success in the history of Malayalam cinema?” The perspectives shared by Siyad and Saju shed light on the intricate dynamics that determine the success or failure of films in the theatrical landscape. Siyad emphasizes the critical role played by the nature of the film itself, arguing that the quality and appeal of the content ultimately determine its box office performance. According to Siyad, word-of-mouth plays a pivotal role in influencing the audience’s decision to watch a film. This notion gains credence when considering the resounding successes witnessed in Malayalam cinema, which would not have been possible if audiences had been solely reliant on OTT platforms (Personal Communication 2023). Furthermore, the concerns surrounding the proliferation of A-centers, which could potentially impact ticket sales due to decreased footfall from distant areas, were not sufficient to push theaters out of business. Ernakulam, being a bustling commercial hub, maintained a sufficiently large population to sustain the theater business even amid the challenges posed by the pandemic. However, it is worth noting that newer theaters in other parts of Kerala, established shortly before the pandemic, faced significant hardships in repaying loans and managing operational costs. The lack of entertaining and captivating films released in the past few years further exacerbated their struggles, as audience turnout dwindled. Consequently, these theaters often had no choice but to cease screenings until they secured a more successful film, perpetuating a cycle of uncertainty. In contrast, long-standing theaters managed to weather the storm despite the presence of underwhelming films that quickly concluded their theatrical run. Their ability to survive stems from their relatively modest financial commitments, primarily limited to staff salaries and basic maintenance. Saju echoes this sentiment, asserting that the impact of multiplexes, OTT platforms, and the pandemic on their business has been overshadowed by the paramount importance of high-quality content. Both Saju and Siyad harbour no doubts regarding the audience’s willingness to visit theaters if the film’s appeal and quality are compelling. These aspects underscore the multifaceted nature of the challenges faced by theaters, revealing that the sustainability of the theatrical business is intricately intertwined with factors such as content quality, audience reception, and financial commitments. As such, a concerted effort to foster a vibrant

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film ecosystem that prioritizes engaging and entertaining content becomes paramount for the continued prosperity of single-screen theaters.

FUTURE OF SINGLE-SCREEN THEATERS By borrowing from Hughes’s (2003) conceptual framework, Mukherjee (2020) underscores the importance of understanding films not as static entities but as living entities that come to life in the context of their reception. Films acquire their meanings and interpretations through the active engagement and participation of viewers, who bring their own subjective perspectives, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences to the cinematic encounter. Mukherjee’s viewpoint underscores the reciprocal nature of the film-viewer relationship, emphasizing that the meanings and impact of films are co-constructed within this dynamic interplay. This perspective challenges any simplistic notions of film as a one-way communication medium, instead highlighting the dialogic and transformative nature of the cinematic experience. By foregrounding the significance of place, locality, and the viewer-film relationship, Mukherjee’s scholarship illuminates the complex web of influences that shape the meanings and reception of films. Her insights invite a reevaluation of the conventional understanding of films solely as textual artifacts, urging scholars and practitioners to recognize the multi-layered dynamics at play in the production and consumption of cinema. Such a critical understanding of films as embedded within specific spatial and social contexts enriches our understanding of their cultural significance and encourages a nuanced exploration of the intricate connections between films, their audiences, and the broader sociocultural fabric In light of these compelling arguments, it becomes apparent that the future prospects of single-screen theaters in Ernakulam are not as dire as initially predicted. The distinct economic accessibility, coupled with the immersive film-centric experience they provide, have contributed to the sustained relevance and viability of single-screen theaters in this region. As such, it is crucial to recognize the intricate interplay of factors that have safeguarded their existence and continued appeal amid the proliferation of multiplexes in the contemporary cinematic landscape. The distinct characteristics of each geography highlight the importance of thorough engagement and critical examination. However, it is crucial to recognize that the dynamics observed in one location cannot be universally applied to others. This emphasizes the necessity for comprehensive analysis and in-depth discussions when exploring diverse geographies. The comprehensive understanding of space as simultaneously material, conceptual, experienced, and practiced (Lindner, & Meißner 2020) is highly

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relevant when studying single-screen theaters in Ernakulam. By adopting the spatial turn in this analysis, the paper explores the intricate dynamics between the physical locations of these theaters, the conceptual frameworks that shape their existence and operation, the lived experiences of both theater owners and audiences, and the societal practices surrounding film exhibitions. Investigating the spatial dimension of single-screen theaters in Ernakulam allows an examination of their geographical distribution within the city, their proximity to other cultural landmarks, and their relationships with surrounding urban spaces. This analysis provides insights into the materiality of these theaters, infrastructural features, and spatial arrangements that contribute to the creation of a distinct filmic space. Applying the comprehensive understanding of space to the study of single-screen theaters in Ernakulam unravels the complex interplay between the physical, conceptual, experiential, and practiced dimensions of these cultural institutions. This interdisciplinary approach enables us to gain deeper insights into the social, cultural, and spatial dynamics that shape the existence, challenges, and resilience of singlescreen theaters in the city.

R&L ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank Yamini Krishna for her guidance and feedback on this chapter. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers of this chapter for their feedback. I would like to thank Siyad Koker, Saju Johny, B. Ashok, and Sabu Pravada for sharing their experience about working in the film industry and in Ernakulam. I would like to thank Vinayak Ashok for his valuable feedback and help while writing this chapter. I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to all the workers of the film theaters that I visited in Ernakulam. NOTES 1. When I say Ernakulam, I do not mean the Ernakulam district. The theaters included in this study are the theaters that are or were situated in the city of Ernakulam. This comprises only the mainland of Ernakulam, up to the outskirts of Edappally, and does not include islands like Fort Kochi or Mattancherry. 2. Kitho was an art director and publicity designer who worked in the Malayalam film industry. His office was situated on M. G. Road and had witnessed the changes that the street underwent over decades. He passed away in October 2022. 3. Seena Theater can be seen in the film Aparan (1988). The hero can be seen coming out of the theater, and waiting outside for someone. 4. Siyad Koker is a film producer and was a theater owner. He used to own the theater Mymoon Lulu in Chittoor Road, Ernakulam.

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5. I do not think theaters in Ernakulam have been given on the basis of lease. This research did not uncover any evidence which proves that it has ever been given for lease. There have been instances of sale and closure. As I have personally met or know of the current owners of the single-screen theaters in Ernakulam, I operated on the belief that all the theaters are currently run by their owners. 6. The owner of Kavitha Theater, Ernakulam.

REFERENCES Agarwal, M., 2022. “The Dying Single-Screen Theatres of India Are Taking with Them Her Cultural Heritage.” Architectural Digest India. 22 August 2022 https:// www​.architecturaldigest​.in​/story​/the​-dying​-single​-screen​-theaters​-of​-india​-are​ -taking​-with​-them​-her​-cultural​-heritage/ Alsayyad, Nezar. 2020. “The Cinematic City: Between Modernist Utopia and Postmodernist Dystopia.” Built Environment (1978) 26, no. 4: 268–81. http://www​ .jstor​.org​/stable​/23287791. Athique, A. 2009. “Leisure Capital in the New Economy: The Rapid Rise of the Multiplex in India.” Contemporary South Asia 17(2): 123–140. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1080​/09584930902860843 Ashok. 2023. Personal Communication. May 2023. Ashok, R. 2020. “In Retrospect: The Spatial Shift of the Film Publicity Industry in Kerala During the 1980s.” South Asian History and Culture 11(2): 113–135. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/19472498​.2020​.1755125 Fitzmaurice, T. 2001. “Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context.” In Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, edited by M. Shiel & T. Fitzmaurice, 19–31. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Grüning, Barbara & Tuma, René. 2017. “Space, Interaction and Communication: Sociology in Dialogue with Spatial Studies: An introduction.” Sociologica. 11. https:\\doi​.o​rg\10.2383/88196. Johny, Saju. J. 2023. Personal Interview by the Author. May 2023. Haneef , M. 2015. “Man who Introduced Multiplex to Kerala Passes Away at 90: Kochi News - Times of India.” The Times of India. 3 May 2015 https://timesofindia​ .indiatimes​.com​/city​/kochi​/man​-who​-introduced​-multiplex​-to​-kerala​-passes​-away​ -at​-90​/articleshow​/47142232​.cms Haubitz, S., Zoche, S., & S.V Srinivas. 2016.. “The Nation Under One Roof.” In Hybrid Modernism: Movie Theatres in South India, edited by Haubitz Zoche & Christian Lange. Leipzig: Spector Books. Hughes, Stephen P. 2003. “Pride of Place.” In Seminar-New Delhi: 28–32. MALYIKA SINGH. Kitho. 2019. Personal Interview by the author. June 2019. Kumar, P. K. A. 2023. “Apsara, a Reminder of Plight of Single-screen Theatres and Cinema-owners.” The Hindu. 3 June 2023. https://www​.thehindu​.com​/news​/ national​/kerala​/apsaras​-closure​-a​-reminder​-of​-plight​-of​-single​-screen​-theatres​-and​ -cinema​-owners​/article66927445​.ece

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Pillai, S. 2014. “Kerala Goes Through Frenetic Theatre Boom Fuelled by Gulf Money.” India Today. 10 September 2014. https://www​.indiatoday​.in​/magazine​/ indiascope​/story​/19821115​-kerala​-goes​-through​-frenetic​-theatre​-boom​-fuelled​-by​ -gulf​-money​-772359​-2013​-07​-30 Lindner, C., & Meißner, M. 2020. “Introduction: Urban Imaginaries in Theory and Practice.” In Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries. Oxon & London: Routledge. Mollan, C. 2023. “In Photos: India’s Disappearing Single-screen Cinemas.” BBC News. 5 March 2023. https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/world​-asia​-india​-64800607 Mukherjee, M. 2020. “Inside a Dark Hall: Space, Place, and Accounts of Some Single-Theatres in Kolkata.” In Popular Cinema in Bengal. Genre, Stars, Public Cultures edited by M. Mukherjee and K. Bakshi, 190–204. New York & Oxon: Routledge. Shiel, M. 2001. “Cinema and the City in History and Theory.” In Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context edited by M. Shiel & T. Fitzmaurice, 1–19. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Siyad Koker. 2023. Personal Interview by the author. 30 May 2023. Srinivas, S.V. & Nanduri, Raghav. 2021. “Amplification as Pandemic Effect: Single Screens in the Telugu Country.” IIC Quarterly special issue on Indian Cinema Today and Tomorrow: Infrastructure, Aesthetics, Audiences. T. J. Sreejith. 2021. സിനിമാല�ോകത്തെ ഷേണായിമാർ. Mathrubhumi. 30 January 2021. https://www​.mathrubhumi​.com​/movies​-music​/features​/shenoys​-theater​-ernakulam​ -history​-padma​-kavitha​-lakshmana​-1​.5397512 The Times of India, 2021. “Kochi: Shenoys Theatre Reopens After Major Renovation.” The Times of India. 13 February 2021. https://timesofindia​.indiatimes​.com​/ city​/kochi​/shenoys​-theatre​-reopens​-after​-major​-renovation​/articleshow​/80886099​ .cms Tomczak, P., & Stachowiak, K. 2015. “Location Patterns and Location Factors in Cultural and Creative Industries.” Quaestiones Geographicae 34(2): 7–27. https:// doi​.org​/10​.1515​/quageo​-2015​-0011 Varghese, S., & Chinnaiah, S. 2021. “Is OTT Industry a Disruption to Movie Theatre Industry?” Academy of Marketing Studies Journal 25(2). Vasudevan, Ravi. 2003. “Cinema in Urban Space. Seminar, 525.” Seminar. https:// www​.cscsarchive​.org​/dataarchive​/otherfiles​/Ravi​%20Vasudevan​.pdf

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Chapter 14

Caste of Our Neighbors Understanding “Middle-class” Attitudes toward Caste through Urban Property in Kolkata Sreya Sen

R&L LOCATING CASTE1

South Asian cities are not only a manifestation of development goals and transformation of spaces but also a site of dispossession, discrimination, social and environmental degradation, sociopolitical struggle, and anxieties. As social relations get constructed over space, juxtaposing spatiality and inequality necessitates a holistic understanding of the functioning of social processes in urban space and requires a deeper deconstruction and reconstitution of social theories in the light of the ensuing discourses on both. The voluminous amount of literature on inequality particularly stresses on the various aspects of social stratification. These studies also point out that inequality has been a persistent feature across human societies. It is crucial to note here that the contemporary world has also seen a manifold increase in newer forms of inequalities, and today the elements of hierarchy and inequality are continuously reproduced at diverse levels. As urban restructuring moves along the parallel axis of changing aspirations of citizens and their demands for the “right to the city,” this chapter broadly highlights the ubiquitous presence of various aspects of social inequality such as class, caste, race, gender, religion and ethnicity which certainly cannot go unnoticed. Though some scholars would argue that the traditional forms of inequality have collapsed, particularly in the urban context, others would point out how the forms have undergone rapid changes but the phenomena as a whole still persist. 217

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In India, layers of discrimination are entangled with the everyday lives of people. In this chapter, I bring forth some of the diverse practices of reproduction of caste boundaries in Kolkata2 through the lived narratives of its inhabitants. Bengal claimed to be counted as a “caste-less” society, as opposed to the high level of ritualist caste practices and manifold caste-based discriminations prevalent in other parts of India. But this is something that demands further academic engagement, as recent works on Bengal (Bandyopadhyay 2004; Bandyopadhyay 2008; Sen 2012 & 2013; Banerjee 2016; Ghosh 2017; Sinharay 2019), and through this chapter, I, suggest otherwise.3 Arguments on how and why Bengal was considered “caste-less” will become evident in due course of this chapter. The discussion demands to lay out that earlier neighborhood structures in Bengal, as mentioned in several documents (such as Mukherjee 1970), were caste-based, as individuals preferred living in close proximity to their kin members or gyati-gusti. Several localities in Calcutta were, therefore, named after the majority caste surname residing there, such as Pal-para, Sen-para, Ghosh-para, Sil-para, Bose-para, Sikhdar-bagan, Dutta-bagan, Gangulybagan, Kar-bagan, Singhi-bagan, to name a few. Often the names of localities were developed based on caste occupations too, thereby mentioning who lives there, such as Mochi-para (cobblers), Teli-para (oil pressers), Kumartuli (potters), Coloo-tola (oil pressers), Kansari-para (bronze utensil makers), Darji-para (tailors), Shankhari-para (dealers of the conch shell and conch products), Karmakar-para (blacksmiths), Tanti-bagan (weavers), Shankrapara (jewelry makers), and so on.4 This underlines why an area develops centering on a particular occupation needs to be thoroughly considered and revisited. Interestingly, different sources (King 1980; Chattopadhyay 2005; NaikSingru 2007; Shaw 2012; Datta 2012) attested that the British administrators had sharply divided colonial cities such as Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta into “dual cities” of White Town (occupied by the colonizers) and Black Town (occupied by the colonized), with Grey Town referring to the zone in between. Focusing on Calcutta’s morphology, Chattopadhyay (2000) also emphasized the blurring of boundaries and asserted fluidity between these categories. However, what is significant to note in this context is that the Black Town or the areas occupied by the natives, were organized according to caste boundaries (Naik-Singru 2007). In the years following the Independence, though the prejudices between Black Town and White Town visibly collapsed, patterns of bias and preference for certain locations over others continued. Moreover, the influx of refugees following the long Partitions continued to change the meaning of home and dwelling greatly across Indian cities, including Calcutta.5 New colonies and rehabilitation facilities for displaced individuals altered the topography of these cities drastically. As a result, in contemporary

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times, at first glimpse, the tussle between caste and class may seem to have been diluted to a large extent. But, upon in-depth observation, it reveals that both social and spatial inequalities persist, often entangled. Though few existing literature and ongoing fieldwork experience demonstrated that caste exists in West Bengal, it was challenging to uncover the operations of caste here, particularly in urban areas among the bhadralok.6 This chapter pursues the debate and fleshes out with empirical evidence the significance of caste boundaries within the discussion on the urban property and housing patterns among the middle classes7 in Kolkata. First, I begin with a discussion on how caste boundaries are reproduced in the urban context. Second, I talk about the presence of caste consciousness among neighbors and then ask how caste intersects with class during social mobility. Finally, I discuss how caste is socially constructed in the city and then draw a conclusion based on the above deliberations.

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REPRODUCTION OF CASTE BOUNDARIES

There are certain tangible grounds on which caste operates, and in the process, an intangible concept of caste becomes interconnected with our everyday lives. I contribute toward this aspect of caste in contemporary India by underlining its relation to urban housing and its role in shaping the urban context. Also, to encapsulate the problems of caste boundaries in urban areas, it should be mentioned at the outset that though there have been studies of social inequality in India, spatial inequality has not been sufficiently engaged by scholars. While numerous studies have discussed caste discrimination, the idea of the middle class in India in relation to spatial inequality or segregation has been majorly overlooked. Mehta (1969) analyzed the residential distribution of caste and religious groups in Poona that persisted despite the city’s growth and development and found high levels of segregation based on caste and socioeconomic status. Following this, not much attention was given to analyzing the patterns of spatial inequality in Indian cities. It is only recently that scholars are shifting their attention to these questions of inequality and exclusion, though mostly in terms of understanding the exclusion that the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) experience in Indian cities, using ward-level census data and conducting quantitative studies (Vithayathil and Singh 2012; Thorat, et al. 2015; Sidwani 2015; Bharathi et al. 2019). With the regularized movement of people to the city at different junctures, caste-based closed neighborhoods were forced to experience infiltration of people from other castes. During fieldwork, on the one hand, some interlocutors pointed out that earlier, it was easier to understand and even assess

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an individual’s family background and status by merely asking the name of the neighborhood they belonged to. On the other hand, interlocutors often exclaimed that as opposed to earlier times, it has now become difficult to understand from the surnames of their neighbors whether the person belongs to the general category8 or reserved categories.9 General category or reserved category is a new way of practicing caste discrimination based on the affirmative action provided for historically disadvantaged groups. Consider a narrative from the field where the middle-aged interlocutor, who is an engineer by profession, shared that though his family is Brahmin, the performance of different pujas (ritualistic worship) was rather less in their house. He recollected that his grandparents, especially his grandmother, were extremely liberal and did not engage in any of the traditional practices of discrimination. Not only did he narrate about having friends from different castes, but he also pointed out that he had an inter-caste marriage without any opposition from his extended family. In this context, what was intriguing is that despite the interlocutor being aware of their caste positioning or that of the others around him, he continued to deny the existence of caste boundaries, both in their earlier and present neighborhoods and in their family practices. His narrations on “casteless-ness” depicted an ironical attitude typical of the upper-caste members. Interestingly, few interlocutors pointed out that when inter-caste questions are weighed alongside inter-religious ones, they often comply with inter-caste relations rather than allow a Christian or Muslim to enter their intimate family bonding. They made it evident that formal interactions with Christian and Muslim colleagues had to be maintained in metropolitan cities, but affinal relationships were never preferred. Elderly interlocutors explained that they allowed their children to marry according to their choice, without any pressure from the family. Yet they also clarified that one should not marry below their caste and class positions. What needs to be emphasized here is that those interlocutors belonging to higher castes expressed that they often interact with members of other castes in their workplace. Still, when they return home, they prefer maintaining their distance from other castes. I argue that while this openness made the interlocutors secular and liberal in their workplace, it also indicated the neighborhood dynamics. Therefore, this indicates the negotiations with caste in the private space are different from those in the public place. Beteille (1996) has argued that caste matters only in the private sphere, but following Bandyopadhyay (2008) I argue that caste is an essential element in the construction of the middle-class self and this is irrespective of the public-private binary. In the course of her hour-long interview, sitting in her living room, another interlocutor, who is an educationist, recounted that her father was a gora Brahmin (staunch upper caste), and he believed that if castes do not match,

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then thoughts do not. She argued that since childhood, as she was exposed to the writings of Indian Hindu monk and philosopher Swami Vivekananda, she learned to consider everyone equally and would often engage in debates with her father regarding their differing opinions on caste issues. However, over time she realized that since caste was mainly based on occupations, families get used to a particular pattern of living over generations. Then quite ironically, she added that, scientifically speaking, there are some long-term effects of caste in people’s genes. People who are surrounded by learning will develop specific skills over generations, while those surrounded by labor will learn those. She mentioned that this reflects through a fundamental difference that can be observed in how people talk, interact, and in their outlook. Here the interlocutor emphasized the occupation-based traditional caste understandings. However, nowadays, such beliefs have been diluted greatly with access to education and occupational mobility that people experience, especially in the urban context. Therefore, as an occupational division of caste no longer remains stringent, more flexibility is added to caste understandings. As I continued fieldwork, most interlocutors seemed comfortable discussing caste in the context of marriages10 or commensality practices. But questions about caste and urban housing had to be posed repeatedly to maintain the focal point. One interlocutor drew a comparison with other metropolitan cities in India and alleged that upper-caste homeowners in Chennai and Bangalore were particular about renting their houses to vegetarian tenants. Few recent studies (such as Bhanutej 2014) attest to this aspect when they point out how upper-caste Hindu homeowners prefer tenants who are also upper caste rather than lower caste and also Muslims. This primarily relates to the food habits of the upper-caste Hindus, who refrain from consuming non-vegetarian food. Thus, the notions of purity and pollution lurked in the background while homeowners chose the tenants who would occupy their property. Every time I raised the question of whether caste matters while choosing and interacting with neighbors, I received a variety of answers, reluctantly or otherwise, asserting one’s higher caste position in society. There were a few attempts of subsiding caste consciousness through social mobility as well. This demands further engagement with understanding the close relationship between caste and class, and what happens when segregation becomes a way of life and leaves its imprint on individual psyches and lives. In the following section, I address some of these concerns.

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IS CASTE OPERATING BEHIND THE VEIL OF CLASS? This section is devoted to understanding how the logic of caste interpenetrates the logic of class. Various studies have pointed out that when migrants

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reach the city, they depend upon kin members, caste, and regional networks regarding decisions about the choice of destination and adjusting to the new urban space. Therefore, the relationship between caste disposition and housing cannot be denied toward underlining the reproduction of caste boundaries in urban areas. Seeing Indian caste structures through the lens of Bourdieu’s (1984) notions of social reproduction and how caste manages to shape access to social, political, and cultural capital may be interesting here as I trace the relationship between caste and class. During fieldwork, as I started observing who lives where in Kolkata— whether that is based on caste or class, whether there is a relation between caste and locational preferences—it was soon realized that “neither a caste represented a homogeneous group with a given identity, nor its relations with other castes and with the Hindu society in general ever remained static” (Bandyopadhyay 2004, 32–33). As mentioned earlier, with people moving to new neighborhoods, it was often observed that the caste composition of those neighborhoods underwent changes. Bandyopadhyay (2004, 33) further writes that historian Sumit Sarkar had alerted us about how caste identity often overlaps with other competing identities such as class, religious and national identities. Therefore, the intertwined and interconnected existence of various identities demands our attention. Consider here a narrative from the field. An interlocutor, who is a science professor in the city, explained that her family had a flourishing business and owned a large property in the city. Traditionally, they belong to the teli caste (oil pressers; who are non-upper caste). Despite their caste background, they received the services of other Brahmin families as house cooks and priests. She considered that though a societal hierarchy persisted (with regard to caste), the economic position of people also mattered to a large extent. This allowed them to enjoy certain comforts, such as service from an upper caste, which otherwise the traditional caste rules denied them. Therefore, she underlined how the economic conditions of individuals often traverse caste boundaries. Another interlocutor who worked with a private bank in the city asserted that in the urban context, the realities of people are rapidly changing. Based on her observations of her peer groups, she pointed out that in the present times, a person’s education and financial status are important considerations, irrespective of their caste background. Here the interlocutor indicated that education, wealth, non-manual labor, and engagement in modern urban professions assisted in the social mobility of those from lower castes. It assisted people to invest in the newly developing housing projects in the city allowing them to improve their living standards.11 But whether this enabled them to acquire the bhadralok status and the respectability which follows needs to be further reflected and debated.

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In contrast, a few interlocutors during fieldwork drew my attention to what they considered an acute situation. Belonging to the Brahmin and Kayastha categories,12 these interlocutors pointed out that ever since several individuals from reserved categories have had access to higher education and have risen in economic resources, their caste identities often take a backseat. In this context, an interlocutor who is a homeopathy practitioner by profession mentioned that most of her neighbors were Marwaris in their new apartment and only 20 odd families were Bengali Hindus. Being a minority community in the apartment block, these families were all close-knit and engaged in multiple social and cultural events—from going out to eat together to even organizing Durga Puja13 in the apartment complex. She noted that though these families belonged to different caste backgrounds and were aware of it, their similar class positioning bound the members together and facilitated their social life in the city. Hence, some believed that it was a common practice in urban areas to harp on the class identity and channel concentrated efforts to develop it further, sometimes even by consciously keeping the caste identity hidden. Therefore, it was observed that class identity is foregrounded in everyday interactions with neighbors by keeping the uncomfortable discussion on caste identity in the periphery. Another interlocutor was quite vocal when he exclaimed with much disdain that the house next to his in their new apartment in North Kolkata had been booked by a Jana family from Contai (in Purba Medinipur district, around 150 kilometers southwards from Kolkata). On pressing him further about his reasons for such loathing, he pointed out that he was uncomfortable about having SC/ST families as his neighbors and, in addition to hailing from a suburban area or mofussil. While investing in a multi-story apartment, the interlocutor claimed that he knew in a way that he was choosing his neighbors. But in the face of a situation where his neighbor belonged to a particular lower caste, he was in a fix. He felt that his purpose of investing in a newly built residential project had been defeated to some extent. This leads me to question if and how the gated community spaces are opening up and whether there is a reimagining of bhadralok-ness in the city. Another asserts that it was observed that the new middle class, who in several cases were the upwardly mobile individuals and families belonging to the lower class and invariably middle or lower castes, claim to have newly acquired wealth and make it evident in their everyday life practices. This is in contrast to the old middle class, those who have possessed wealth and respect for years in Bengali society. This indicates how those in higher socioeconomic positions view those aspiring or attempting to climb the ladder. In other words, this reflects the attitude of upper castes toward accepting these instances of social and economic mobility, yet denying any structural mobility along caste lines to occur.

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To understand the present situation, consider another narrative where the interlocutor resorted to explaining the situation in her neighborhood near the airport in greater detail. She pointed out that while one side was populated mainly by Brahmins, on the other side of the lane, Muslim, Namashudra and Bagdi (SCs) families stayed on the peripheries, not mixing with different upper castes. She remarked that a caste-centric village culture prevailed in those areas of the city, where the upper castes resided in the core areas while the lower castes resided in the peripheries. However, recently, with the spread of apartment buildings across the neighborhood, she noted that land is sold to people without considering their caste to a large extent. Therefore, asserting how caste practices are gradually getting diluted. This addresses questions related to when we talk about mixed neighborhoods, whether these are mixed in terms of different sub-categories of upper caste or across varnas and jatis. Throughout this section, we also find that several interlocutors shared that their parents were staunch believers of the caste system but they claim to no longer believe in it. This was suggestive of their progressive nature and being able to overcome the various evils that caste posed. However, what needs to be understood here is that most of the interlocutors who expressed this opinion were members of the higher castes, and it was relatively more accessible for them not to appropriate their caste identity in several instances. This echo with what Deshpande (2013) says about castelessness among upper caste individuals belonging to the general category. Therefore, receiving people’s responses to caste politics in the contemporary city and their proximity to other castes guided me toward comprehending how even class has caste.

R&L CASTE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

This section develops arguments around how caste identities are socially constructed over time. It is accepted that caste as a form of social stratification has been prevalent for centuries. Though its nature and strength have changed, it has continued to disaggregate the Hindu society into varied layers. Caste in modern India has been unfolding itself in newer ways as various market mechanisms allow for the consolidation of material resources in the hands of certain groups. In this regard, Desai and Dubey (2011, 47) argued that “The continued dominance of Brahmins in Indian society and economy is perhaps the clearest example of this consolidation.” While volatility and vulnerability persist in the case of lower castes, even though they are the majority population across most Indian states, it was observed during fieldwork that attempts were being made to change their position within Bengali society. This was sometimes done through acquiring education (as discussed in the previous section) and, in other cases, through denying their caste position.

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I draw the reader’s attention to one such situation I encountered repeatedly during fieldwork. It was observed that every time questions related to caste were raised, several interlocutors would either overlook the subject matter and give other responses or give brief passing responses. As a researcher, I insisted on getting more responses in this regard. In a few instances, I even attempted to understand the interlocutors’ caste position from their surnames. However, in instances where it was not obvious, I requested the interlocutors to guide me further as caste and status are so intrinsically entangled in Indian society and cannot be overlooked in the urban context. This led to the observation that most interlocutors claimed to occupy Kayastha position within the caste hierarchy. This, I consider to be their attempt to be recognized as an upper caste rank next to the Brahmins. Since various identities are closely tied to their communities in rural areas, every family knows the details of their neighbors and theirs. While in urban areas, anonymity is highly valued; which, on the one hand, allowed lower caste members to hide their caste identity and, on the other hand, pretend as a middle caste, if not upper caste. In this whole process, however, it was further interesting to observe that these middle or lower caste interlocutors did not completely dismiss caste but endeavoured to alter its understandings pivoting around caste positions in their mind and that of others, as they could not change their caste realities. In West Bengal, the Left Front14 achieved a landslide victory in 1977 and stayed in power for the next 34 years, making it the longest-ruling democratically elected Communist government in world history. Since 74% of the state population then belonged to the rural areas, the Left Front government prioritized rural development to maintain their massive majority and solidify their base in the state. During this time, land reforms were focused, and Operation Barga of 1977 distributed inheritable rights of lands they tilled to sharecroppers. But instead of “promoting the interests of the rural and urban lower classes, it gave primacy to the traditional rural and urban middle-class base” (Ghosh 2017, 4). The support that Left Front received from refugees (who moved to West Bengal following Partition) was immense, and several top-ranking Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] cabinet members traced their familial roots back to East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Commentators have argued that the party took decisions in a top-down manner and “leadership remaining ossified and dominated by the upper castes” led to the fall of the Left Front (Ghosh 2017, 4). However, in 2011, things changed when people voted for the Trinamool Congress, which marked the end of an era. Ghosh (2017, 22) notes that the high-caste Hindu Left leadership often ignored the problems of the untouchables and continued to focus mainly on class issues. He (2017, 22) further argues that “there has been a certain ambiguity in West Bengal regarding the practice of untouchability” due to the lack of inter-caste violence in the state as compared to other parts of the

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country. This, however, does not overrule the practice of residential segregation, endogamous marriages, ritual ranking, and proscribed behavior based on caste that is prevalent in the state. Instead, “the domination of this state‘s political, social, and cultural domains by the upper castes” reflects what is not always an absent-minded casteism at work but a deliberate affair (Sen 2013).15 Hence, the society in Bengal was often incorrectly considered “casteless” without giving due observation to its political and economic conditions. Therefore, how and by whom the discussions on caste were being socially constructed is something one has to reckon with in the given context.

CONCLUSION As some of the boundaries of social stratification are reproduced in new forms, there exists a process of continuity and change that guides most of the social interactions about home and neighborhood in Kolkata. It would be worthwhile to consider the relation between caste mobility and housing mobility and also understand the limits to such ideas. While the interlocutors expressed their aspirations for owning a better house and being recognized by others for it, they seemed uncomfortable about the same among those they thought were below them. This also limited their interactions with their neighbors belonging to different castes. As the field suggested, while the interlocutor and the person living next door may have similar financial capital, clearly what differed is the cultural capital, and this became the deciding factor about who interacts with whom in multi-family apartments. Therefore, questions about identity are framed through different markers apart from people’s financial capital. While this has been the case for defining the bhadralok identity in the past, this chapter also shows that it is so in contemporary times as well. I assert that a caste-class continuum is operational in Kolkata, but here caste is present by its absence in the narratives. Though through fieldwork it became clear that caste exists in an urban context in Bengal alongside the class and operates through covert processes; what became a curious point of inquiry is its lack of discussion among the middle classes. Unlike class, the lack of expression of caste demands further academic engagement and analysis. The idea of passing as another, for example, which was so prevalent in other urban contexts, was visible during my fieldwork as well when interlocutors claimed upper caste status through their practices and lifestyle. The side-by-side existence of caste, as a completely functional and yet hidden dimension, expresses a certain disjuncture in the urban context. This chapter foregrounds the absence of studies on caste in urban housing and challenges the common misconception of urban being casteless.

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Therefore, it projects how caste is shaping the social and economic landscape and also essentially the urban geography in India.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am sincerely grateful to Prof. Surinder Singh Jodhka, whose advice has guided me at different stages of this work. I also thank the editors of this book for their incisive comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter.

NOTES 1. Caste is a system of social stratification. The term “caste” refers to an aggregate of persons, whose obligations and privileges is fixed by birth, sanctioned and supported by religion. The Hindu Vedic system in India points out fourfold groups or varnas—the brahmins (a priestly group); the kshatriyas (a warrior group); the vaishyas (trading and manufacturing people) and shudras (servants and service providers). There are various other categories subsumed within these varnas, referred as jatis (see Jodhka 2012 for an introduction to caste). 2. This bustling metropolis in the eastern part of India was called Calcutta for several decades until it was officially changed as Kolkata in 2001 by the government of West Bengal. In my references to the city prior to 2001 I have used Calcutta, whereas in the years following 2001 I have used Kolkata throughout the chapter. 3. This chapter relies considerably on a section from my Ph.D. thesis submitted at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Two rounds of qualitative fieldwork were conducted between September 2017 and December 2018 in Kolkata in order to sociologically study the changing property relations among the middle-classes. Almost all the interviews were conducted in the interlocutor’s residence, except a few which were conducted in public spaces like cafes. The interviews were mainly conducted in Bangla/Bengali; later it was translated to English, by the author, while keeping the English words and phrases used by the interlocutors in place. 4. Sengupta (2017, 3) notes that the city was divided into many paras, tolas and tulis which were terms used to distinguish localities. Further, these areas were identified by physical features such as bagan (garden), pukur (pond) or a bazaar (market). 5. It has been argued that “there were three partitions in 1947—of British India and of the provinces of Bengal and Punjab—that created the new nation-states of India and a spatially fragmented West and East Pakistan” (Roy 2012, 3). In my thesis I engage mainly with the Partition of Bengal as most interlocutors shared narratives related to that. I also refer to the events which carved out Bangladesh in 1971 as and when interlocutors mentioned about it. Since the movement of people continued for few years around this time, the influx of people continued to have an impact on the population already residing in West Bengal. Like Roy (2012), even I see Partition as a process rather than a single event.

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6. Literally, the term bhadralok refers to a “well-mannered person.” It is also a term used to describe educated gentlefolk from the middle and upper classes in Bengal. Typically, they are considered to have a high social status in Bengal. As pointed out by Bandhyopadhyay (2004:25), a bhadralok belonged primarily to the three traditional upper castes of Bengal namely Brahmin, Kayastha and Baidya; but was not restricted to them entirely. 7. This work broadly defines the middle class as a socioeconomic category. In selecting the Bengali Hindu middle class respondents, home ownership was an important entry point in understanding their class position in Kolkata, along with their educational qualification, profession, cultural capital, consumption patterns, and aspirations. 8. The Government of India defines the General Category or General Caste as the caste that does not come under Schedule Caste (SC), Schedule Tribe (ST) or Other Backward Caste (OBC). Largely, they are socially, economically and educationally advanced. 9. Consider the surnames such as Das, Ghosh, Roy and Sarkar, to name a few, these can belong to Kayasthas, other caste groups (including Nabasakhas) or Scheduled Caste groups. As there are overlapping of surnames of different caste groups, researchers take gotra into consideration. In addition, some use their acquired or received titles, referred in Bengali as padabi, such as Munshi, Majumdar and Chowdhury, thereby adding to the difficulty of understanding the person’s caste position. 10. According to Rabindra Ray: “The Bengali Hindu population . . . takes its religion, including caste (particularly in matters of marriage) as seriously as the rest of India. Ideas about pollution and untouchability are the same as elsewhere in India.” (Ray cited in Ghosh 2017, 21). 11. This observation aligns to a large extent with recent studies on caste such as the work of Deshpande (2004), Subramanian (2015) and Yengde (2019). 12. In Bengal, Brahmins, Baidyas, and Kayasthas are considered as upper caste categories. 13. Durga Pujo is an annual festival among Hindu Bengalis where Goddess Durga is worshipped for four days in autumn. It is an important marker of Bengali identity in Kolkata and beyond. Ghosh (2000) has written about the transformation of this festival from a rural family ritual to an urban secular public performance. Though it is a key festival of the Bengali upper caste Hindus, over the decades it has seen the participation of many across class and caste lines. 14. The six founding parties of the Left Front included the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the CPI(M), the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the Marxist Forward Bloc (MFB), the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI), and the Biplabi Bangla Congress (BBC). Ghosh (2017, 1) notes that “Over the years, the Left Front, though joined by the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1982, came increasingly to be controlled and micro-managed by the CPI(M), so much so that towards the end of its rule, Left Front and the CPI(M) had almost become synonymous in common use.” 15. In the recent years academic and activist focus has been on the importance of the Namasudra Matua sect to West Bengal politics, see Sinharay (2019).

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REFERENCES Bandyopadhyay, Sarbani. 2008. “Caste and Bengali Middle Class Self.” West Bengal Sociological Review 1: 53–67. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. 2004. “Introduction: The Historiography of Caste in Bengal.” In Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal, 11–39. New Delhi: Sage. Banerjee, Mukulika. 2016. “Foreword.” In The Politics of Caste in West Bengal edited by Uday Chandra, Geir Heierstad and Kenneth Bo Neilsen, xiii-xv. New Delhi: Routledge. Béteille, André. 1996. Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bhanutej, N. 2014. “Housing Apartheid in Indian City.” Aljazeera, February 28, 2014. https://www​.aljazeera​.com​/features​/2014​/2​/28​/housing​-apartheid​-in​-indian​-city Bharathi, Naveen, Deepak Malghan and Andaleeb Rahman. 2019. “Neighbourhoodscale Residential Segregation in Indian Metros.” Economic & Political Weekly 54 (30): 64–70. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chattopadhyay, Swati. 2000. “Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59 (2): 154–179. Chattopadhyay, Swati. 2005. Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the Colonial Uncanny. New York: Routledge. Datta, Partho. 2012. Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta c. 1800 – c. 1940. New Delhi: Tulika Books. Desai, Sonalde and Amaresh Dubey. 2011. “Caste in 21st Century India: Competing Narratives.” Economic and Political Weekly 46 (11): 40–49. Deshpande, Satish. 2004. Contemporary India: A Sociological View. New Delhi: Penguin. Deshpande, Satish. 2013. “Caste and Castelessness: Towards a Biography of the ‘General Category.’” Economic and Political Weekly 48 (15): 32–39. Ghosh, Anjan. 2000. “Spaces of Recognition: Puja and Power in Contemporary Calcutta.” Journal of Southern African Studies 26 (2): 289–299. Ghosh, Atig. 2017. “Left Front Government in West Bengal (1971–1982): Considerations on “Passive Revolution” & the Question of Caste in Bengal Politics.” Policies and Practices, 93: 1–28, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group. Jodhka, Surinder S. 2012. Caste. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. King, Anthony D. 1980. “Colonialism and the Development of the Modern South Asian City: Some theoretical considerations.” In The City in South Asia edited by Kenneth Ballhatchet and John Harrison, 1–17. London and Dublin: Curzon Press Ltd. Mehta, Surinder K. 1969. “Patterns of Residence in Poona, India, by Caste and Religion: 1822–1965.” Demography 6 (4): 473–491.

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Mukherjee, S.N. 1970. “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta, 1815–38.” In Elites in South Asia, edited by Edmund Leach and S. N. Mukherjee, 33–78. London: Cambridge University Press. Naik-Singru, Romola. 2007. “Mumbai: Spatial Segregation in a “Globalizing” City.” In Globalizing Cities: Inequality and Segregation in Developing Countries, edited by Ranvinder Sandhu and Jasmeet Sandhu, 131–170. New Delhi: Rawat Publications. Roy, Haimanti. 2012. Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens in India and Pakistan, 1947–65, History Faculty Publications, Paper 21. http://ecommons​.udayton​.edu​/hst​_fac​_pub​/21 Sen, Dwaipayan. 2012. “Caste Politics and Partition in South Asian History.” History Compass 10 (7): 512–522. Sen, Dwaipayan. 2013. An Absent-minded Casteism? Seminar 645. https://www​ .india​-seminar​.com​/2013​/645​/645​_dwaipayan​_sen​.htm Sengupta, Kaustubh Mani. 2017. “Community and Neighbourhood in a Colonial City: Calcutta’s Para.” South Asia Research 38 (1): 1–17. Shaw, Annapurna. 2012. Indian Cities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sidwani, Pranav. 2015. “Spatial Inequalities in Big Indian Cities.” Economic and Political Weekly 50 (22): 55–62. Sinharay, Praskanva. 2019. “To Be a Hindu Citizen: Politics of Dalit Migrants in Contemporary West Bengal.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 42 (2): 359–374. Subramanian, Ajantha. 2015. “Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57 (2): 291–322. Thorat, Sukhdeo, et​.a​l. 2015. “Urban Rental Housing Market: Caste and Religion Matters in Access.” Economic and Political Weekly 50 (26 & 27): 47–53. Vithayathil, Trina and Gayatri Singh. 2012. “Spaces of Discrimination: Residential Segregation in Indian Cities.” Economic and Political Weekly 47 (37): 60–66. Yengde, Suraj. 2019. Caste Matters. New Delhi: Penguin.

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Chapter 15

War on Slums Slum-Free City Programs and People’s Struggles to Stay Put in Visakhapatnam Indivar Jonnalagadda

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The long decade of the 2000s, starting in the late 1990s and stretching into the early 2010s, is recognized as a transformative period for Indian cities, which underwent significant urban renewal through processes of “world-class city” making (Ghertner 2015). It has also been amply recognized that this transformation came at the cost of unprecedented rates of slum demolitions and evictions (Bhan and Shivanand 2013; Dupont 2008), as city governments sought to remake urban spaces through the banishment and peripheral resettlement of slum-dwelling populations (Bhan 2009; Doshi 2013; Weinstein 2017). Zooming out to the global scenario reveals parallel processes of banishment-based renewal across the globe during this time period (UN-Habitat 2011; Weinstein 2021). Cities across the world underwent a growing “revanchist urbanism” (Smith 2005) that sought to reclaim urban space from the “masses,” “the urban poor,” “illegal immigrants,” which are not only socioeconomic but also ethnoracial categories (Ranganathan 2022; Weinstein 2021). There was an evident humanitarian crisis across the world with an intensification of state-led forced evictions during this time period (UN-Habitat 2011). In the name of urban development through private investment and market capitalism, a battery of violent spatial practices were replicated by city governments across the world to displace poor communities and smoothen urban space for accumulation by private capital (Banerjee-Guha 2010; Harvey 2007). But a few years out from this moment of heightened violence, and in a context where eviction and resettlement continue unabated even if at a smaller magnitude (HLRN 2022), what new insights emerge about evictions and the banishment of the poor? In an introductory letter to a 2002 report on the adverse effects of structural adjustment programs on the global poor, then Executive Director of 231

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UN-Habitat Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka invoked the idea that “poverty is becoming a fortress without drawbridges” (IFUP 2002). She points out that the sequestering of the poor into fortified enclaves is the result of a structural process, and her use of this imagery is only exemplary evidence of a discourse about intense segregation that was pervading all scales. In the study of slums in India, Liza Weinstein (2017) has powerfully shown that in the cases where communities successfully resist relocation, the insecure and precarious tenure that they accomplish takes the form of confinement. Weinstein thus adds much-needed nuance to the idea of slums as fortified enclaves, by highlighting that slums fortify insecurity, rather than security. During my fieldwork in Visakhapatnam (also known as Vizag), this sense of intense segregation and confinement was palpable among communities faced with a violent state bent on eviction and resettlement. In the heart of Visakhapatnam, near the city’s major railway station, I was talking to a group of women in a small squatter settlement called Indira Puram. This settlement was surrounded by middle-class housing societies with all the essential infrastructural connections such as water supply, underground sewerage, electricity supply, and so on, but Indira Puram was four rows of shanties with one shared public water tap, no toilets, and no formal electricity connections. The women I was with had just shown me the many remaining signs of devastating damage from the cyclone Hudhud which had made landfall right over Visakhapatnam mere days before my visit. We sat down in a home that was relatively unscathed by the cyclone and I interviewed them about the history of their settlement, their political activism, and their aspirations for housing. The women wasted no time in explaining to me that their settlement has been under tremendous pressure of resettlement in the recent past. A pressure which was unprecedented in force and which they had been opposing stridently. In fact, they described their predicament over the past few years as being in a state of war with the government. One of the women Durga said:

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When we moved here, Vizag was still not very big. The only work our people [migrant Mala people] did was to beat drums or carry dead bodies to the cemeteries. We went on beating our drums in this small settlement and so they let us be. Then as Vizag was glamorized and decorated, the government started eating all the land up so as to hand it over to all the big people (nayakulu). Now they won’t even let us stay here. They have a mafia, and an army to themselves, and immense influence over our lives. (Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in Indira Puram, November 2014, Visakhapatnam. Emphasis added)

This chapter presents an instance of “actually existing neoliberalism” (Brenner and Theodore 2003) in Visakhapatnam to explain the relationship between urban violence and neoliberalism, and second to understand the nature of poor people’s claim-making in this exceptionally violent interval of

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time. I describe this time period as a war on slums, which akin to the “war on drugs” or “war on terror,” facilitated the use of exceptional forms of state violence to control and reconfigure slum spaces that were deemed as threats to security and public health (Gupta 2015; Sharan 2014), and also as nuisances to elite aesthetic sensibilities (Ghertner 2015). Although the local motivations for slum evictions differed, in broad strokes, the re-configuration of the state’s land-use ideology from public good to private accumulation afforded new logic and techniques for dramatic and spatially selective violence across contexts (Banerjee-Guha 2010; Harvey 2007). In this chapter, I show that in response, mobilizations from below contested this ideology and generated powerful political idioms. They articulated the right to freedom from caste oppression, the right to dignity, and a right to public land, which pushed beyond the limits of the discourse on the right to stay put. I revisit oral histories of two embattled squatter settlements called Indira Puram and Ambedkar Colony in Visakhapatnam, collected in 2014. Visakhapatnam is a tier-II city, which at the time of my fieldwork prided itself for being the “fastest growing city in India.” Drawing on the narratives of groups of Dalit women activists affiliated with a leftist political movement, I read the oral histories as testimonies from the “war on slums” that dominated neoliberal urbanism in India and beyond. I ask, what kinds of claims to the city were being made by women from intensely embattled slums? What new political possibilities emerged through their organization in the face of violence, and what possibilities were foreclosed? The chapter consists of three sections. In the next section, drawing on oral histories of women in two settlements, I describe the narratives and embodied practices through which they opposed and resisted forceful resettlement. The following section draws on fieldwork in Visakhapatnam to detail the translocal organization of women and the repertoires of political claim-making enabled by such solidarities. The final section reflects more broadly on the violent process of urban renewal and some of its effects on state-citizen relations in slum settlements facing the threat of eviction.

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Indira Puram was settled by Mala migrants (a Dalit group) from Srikakulam district 70 years ago and continues to be a community of Mala households. In the 1980s, several years after occupation, when slum notifications were being carried out in Visakhapatnam, a private party objected to notifying Indira Puram and claimed the land was theirs. The governmental process of notification officially declares an area as a slum and obligates the government to make physical and socioeconomic improvements, whereas a stalled

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notification creates an enclave ineligible for direct provision of municipal services—a space of fortified insecurity. The caste basis of urban spatial segregation in Visakhapatnam is incontrovertible. Slums are called murikiwadas in Telugu, or “places of dirt.” Through the use of this nomenclature, governance itself racializes places and people and marks them out for inevitable improvement or removal. Thus, the confinement of insecure tenure further has to be connected to caste-based environmental unfreedoms at various scales (Ranganathan 2022). In reading the narratives of both Indira Puram and Ambedkar Colony below, the structuring role of caste cannot be overlooked. Like in many other settlements in the city, the land disputes concerning Indira Puram were frozen in the courts and the settlement never got notified as a slum. At least, the pending court case meant that they had a stay order, hence they had some basic legal protection. Many years after the failed notification, starting around 2010, Indira Puram faced a constant threat of relocation. Residents recalled multiple incidents of arson in a bid to evict the settlement during this period. But they kept opposing the plan to relocate them and kept rebuilding their settlement. Notwithstanding this opposition, the government kept putting pressure on them to relocate to Bakkenapalem in the far north of the city. The oral histories I collected focused heavily on the day when the government took drastic action and arrived to forcefully evict them. As Padma, a third-generation resident of Indira Puram said:

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They came with “police power” and got us put in jail, saying that we need to vacate the place. Somehow with the support of the sanghams (organizations) we are still here and still keeping courage. (Interview with Padma, November 18, 2014, Visakhapatnam)

This bid to forcefully evict is a typical manifestation of urban renewal in Indian cities, even though urban renewal is informed by government schemes which nominally prescribe participation and consent. Housing schemes developed by the Central Government prescribed that wherever possible, slums should be “redeveloped” in situ as long as they were on “non-objectionable” land. In Visakhapatnam, this applied to a small proportion of notified slums, but for the larger number of non-notified slums on objectionable and disputed lands, the government proposed to relocate them to new housing colonies on the northern periphery of the city. The proposals were met with stiff resistance across the city by the squatter settlements because they did not recognize people’s possession of lands over generations, nor their labor in improving the land. Further, resettlement would completely disrupt their established livelihoods and communities.

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In their recollections, residents of Indira Puram allege that the Municipal Commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) made explicit statements about demolishing all the slums in Visakhapatnam. They reported him issuing statements like: “I will demolish all 741 slums in Visakha and make the city like Singapore.” Irrespective of whether these statements were truly uttered by the GVMC Commissioner, an atmosphere of intimidation existed whereby residents of Indira Puram and other squatter settlements recognized that their presence was not desired in the core cities. The aforementioned attempt at eviction took place a few days before the harvest festival of Sankranti in 2012. Indira Puram was surrounded by a large mob allegedly consisting of political workers, goondas, and the police. The people of Indira Puram were prepared for such an eventuality and had support from the city-wide Murikiwada Nivasula Sankshema Sangham (MNSS) and the Progressive Organization of Women (POW). The latter organization was led by Advocate Lakshmi, whom everyone called Lakshmi-akka. Suvarna, a mother of three and a domestic worker by occupation, said:

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They got a horde of police and said load them into the vans. As many as they are. Women were also pushed into these vans. They tore our clothes. There’s a photo of Lakshmi-akka being brutalized by the police, it’s terrible. (Interview with Suvarna, November 13, 2014, Visakhapatnam)

This time period has left an indelible mark, and the women stubbornly hold on to the memory of this attack by the state by keeping images from that day. The images serve two purposes: first, they help circulate a powerful narrative of the state’s violence against poor Dalit women, to appeal to the media, to human rights groups, and to middle-class populations who are ignorant of the murky lives in the murikiwadas; second, the central image, which is of the police attacking Lakshmi-akka, is kept carefully by the women as veneration for her self-sacrifice. The images also facilitate solidarities among the women from different Dalit and Adivasi communities. Each time they journey to show solidarity with squatters elsewhere (as described in the next section), they go with the awareness that they could be on the frontline. This practice of acting as human shields is most pervasive among the women of another settlement called Ambedkar Colony on the western periphery of Visakhapatnam. The residents of Ambedkar Colony recall that the GVMC frequently sent bulldozers to the settlement with the intent to demolish it, and the women of the colony resisted by either climbing up on the machine or by blocking its operation by lying down in its path.

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This is Ambedkar Colony . . . We came here in 2002. 2–3 months after we came here, the Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO) heard about our settlement and came and demolished all our huts. After that, we were at war with them and for a year, we did the rounds of the MRO office . . . They said we don’t have the right to occupy this land . . . At that time, we would come back at night and sleep near the destroyed huts . . . But we have no other place and shelter, so we decided that we will die but we wouldn’t leave this place. (Focus Group Discussion in Ambedkar Colony, November 20, 2014) While metaphors of war abound in the narratives of squatters in the city, the violence on the part of the state is legitimated by law and policy. Squatters are repeatedly charged with criminal offenses such as land-grabbing and obstructing an officer on duty, in order to warrant the use of force against them. And the discourse animated by policies for urban development, and visions of urban progress, builds a consensus around their status as an illegal and undesirable excess in the core city (Davis 2006; Doshi 2019). The inability to counter the government through legal institutions leaves only one resort for squatters to make claims on space, and on the state—to use their bodies and their oppressed caste identities to resist and oppose violence. This “use” is not a choice. In the context of acute pressure on land, they become marked as belligerent by the very fact of their being in a certain place that is desired by the state, and by associating with a leftist group that the government perceives as adversarial. They find themselves marked out as an exception from law and legal process and encircled by a revanchist city. This situation creates a peculiar state-citizen relation for residents of Indira Puram and Ambedkar Colony in Visakhapatnam. From their perspective there is only a network of state actors with complex inter-relationships. In their narratives, my respondents never use the term “prabhutvam” (government/state in Telugu), they always refer to so and so MLA of such and such party, or this officer of that caste. Thus, there is a strong disillusionment with what Thomas Blom Hansen (2005) has called “myth of the state.” In their perception, the legitimate state embodied by institutions such as the State High Court and the Chief Minister are too distant to matter. Besides, they perceive them to be impervious to their concerns. For example, many respondents cited the fact that the Chief Minister of the state Chandrababu Naidu, after the Hudhud cyclone in 2014, went on a tour of Visakhapatnam and lamented for the fallen trees, but neither visited nor mentioned the slums. Within the enclaves, then, residents only see a disaggregated set of forces with particular interests, arraigned against their own. As Weinstein also points out, the state is not experienced as abstract guarantees but as a concrete set of relations (Weinstein 2013). The possibility of making claims on the state, for such squatters, only appears in moments of violence. In fact, it is only through its violence that the state takes a definite form.

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This mode of relating to the state produces a sense of desubordination, that is “an erosion of respect and deference for both those who have power and their right to govern” (Desai and Pithouse 2004). These moments in the history of squatter settlements of Visakhapatnam have repeatedly been moments of violence; ranging from being denied access to water, to being neglected following a devastating cyclone, to being “attacked” by a mob intent on driving them out. It is in these moments that residents are able to make claims that will be heard by the courts, by special commissions, by human rights groups, and so on. But also crucially, by others like them, as I describe in the next section.

TRANS-LOCAL SOLIDARITY One hot afternoon in November 2014, I was in Ambedkar Colony talking to six women from that colony under a tent in front of the settlement. All of them were Dalit women, immensely proud that their settlement was named after Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and that they were represented in court by K. Balagopal, a prominent human rights activist in their fight to claim the land their settlement is on. Today they are all part of the Progressive Organization for Women, which they call Mahila Sangham. I had already been speaking to the women for about an hour, but our conversation got cut short when one of the women, Syamala, received a phone call. She tensed up and just said “vastunnamu” (“We’re coming”). She turned to the other women and said:

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They’re pulling down houses in Swatantra Nagar. [she turned to me] In Madhurawada, there is a place called Swatantra Nagar, they are all Dalits. The government people are tearing their houses down. [turning back to her fellows] We have to go. Now. (Fieldnotes, November 20, 2014, Visakhapatnam)

Within half an hour three seven-seater auto-rickshaws showed up. Twenty women from the colony, whoever could manage to leave house and household behind for the evening, gathered and got on their way to Madhurawada which is 30 kilometers away at the northern edge of the city. I asked to accompany them, and on reaching Swatantra Nagar, found large groups of women from several other slums across Visakhapatnam which were equally distant, including the women I knew from Indira Puram. When my group from Ambedkar Colony arrived, they immediately got to gathering information on exactly what had happened over there. On November 20, 2014, a Zonal Commissioner (ZC) was passing by Swatantra Nagar when she noticed a house being built with pakka (permanent) walls and a pakka roof. One particular household, having received

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construction materials through charitable organizations involved in cyclone relief had decided to use these materials and strengthen their house. A few hours after the ZC went by, 20 people including personnel from the GVMC and the police allegedly came and started breaking down the structure with hammers and other tools. A violent confrontation ensued when people from the colony tried to stop the demolition. One man was seriously manhandled and beaten, but eventually the assaulters retreated. But the message of the GVMC was clear, people in a murikiwada like Swatantra Nagar do not have the right to build a pakka house. Advocate Lakshmi was present there, and she rallied all the women around her and gave a rousing speech about the atrocity of the Municipal Corporation’s actions. The women were furious. They collectively chanted slogans decrying the injustice and Advocate Lakshmi called for the gathering to walk to the nearby zonal office of the Municipal Corporation. Thus, a large group of mostly women, many of whom were from slums elsewhere, marched to the ZC’s office on Swatantra Nagar’s behalf, chanting “GVMC attacked the helpless poor. Shame! Shame!” As we reached the office, the doors of the premises were hastily shut down as the clock had just struck 5:00 p.m. (see figure 15.1).​ These women travel 30 kilometers on a weekday to show solidarity to another neighborhood, despite having remarkable adversities of their own. This is motivated, activated, and sustained through a discourse of dignity,

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Figure 15.1  Chanting Outside the Municipal Zonal Commissioner’s Office. Source: Author's Photo.

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through outrage over the abuse of Dalit and tribal women’s bodies, and by circulating stories and images of the same. In person, Lakshmi-akka is a mild woman, but in a rally, she is capable of delivering fiery polemics and she stands at the frontline when relations with the government come down to a war footing. Her charismatic personality, rhetoric, and symbolic sacrifice by receiving the violence on behalf of others have won over to the POW the loyalty of women and men in a number of slums in Vishakhapatnam. The women in these slums, mostly Dalits or Adivasis, are its strongest supporters. Thus, a particular network of settlements acts as a united front through trans-local solidarities between women’s groups. A conflagration in a slum in the far north of Vishakhapatnam is therefore met with mobilization of women slum dwellers from across the city, even the far west and south. The support of POW and MNSS gives these women a platform to connect with others to collectively contest the violence of the everyday state and become fierce leaders in their localities in place of men. Resistance manifests at three different registers. First, through public demonstrations and press conferences where it mobilizes a discourse of universal values such as justice and dignity. Second, through litigation and representation at government offices where they mobilize a discourse of equity and ill-treatment of Dalits and Adivasis. Third, through acts of physical opposition to the apparatuses of state violence where women’s bodies and Dalit and Adivasi women’s bodies are used as human shields, in a strategy that Banu Bargu has called “the weaponization of life” (Bargu 2014). In these three ways, the politics of these two settlements went beyond the confinement and insularity of a right to stay put. But this also had its limits.

R&L BEYOND THE RIGHT TO STAY PUT

Unknown to the residents of Indira Puram, the court case about their settlement had been cleared and the land was found to be revenue land, suitable for slum notification and regularization. In addition, the government also put out a notice saying that the people of Indira Puram would be relocated very nearby in H Palem on two acres of land near the city railways station, where buildings were being constructed for their resettlement. In a Kafkaesque turn of events, residents claim that this order never reached them and eventually after a period of time had lapsed and no action was taken, they allege that the two acres of land were resumed by the local government and the apartments rightfully constructed for Indira Puram residents were being given instead to preferred clients of the local politicians. Eventually, political allies of Indira Puram, MNSS, and POW uncovered the details of this proposed resettlement which never occurred. With the

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information disclosed, the people of Indira Puram started demanding that the land be given to them (as they were evidently promised) or at least that they be allocated flats in the apartment blocks that were already constructed. After the violent eviction attempt on Sankranti in 2012 (see previous section), residents of Indira Puram were emboldened to follow POW’s strategy to occupy the buildings at H Palem, over which they claimed to have legitimate rights. Therefore, in late 2012, under the cover of night, Indira Puram residents with POW activists broke into the buildings, broke the locks, and occupied the flats. This move was carefully planned. POW had drawn up a table with the flats in the buildings enumerated. Indira Puram residents then organized themselves and distributed the flats among themselves. Following the occupation, the government had few options to evict the occupiers. They would not destroy newly constructed buildings and hence, the occupation was left alone, but they were also left in the dark. The government refused to provide electricity, gas, or water. With the help of some NGOs, the occupiers equipped their houses with solar lamps and solar heaters. Over the next year, the government kept sending them notices to vacate the premises and they kept sending petitions to the government claiming their right to occupy and demanding that they be provided basic services. At this impasse, the government, in late 2014, agreed to negotiate with the residents and regularize their occupation. It was preceding these negotiations that I visited the colony. The erstwhile Indira Puram residents had settled into a rhythm at the H Palem site. While I was visiting, as I sat drinking tea and looking at some old documents with Jyothi (a young and literate leader of the settlers) and her mother-in-law, a man and a woman had come to take a look at the colony and claimed that they were allocated flats here but had not been allowed to move in. They asked Jyothi and her attaiya (mother-in-law) whether they knew of the illegal occupation. Jyothi and her mother-in-law feigned ignorance and asked them to go speak to the Municipal Corporation. I found this incident striking because strident occupation had given way to a quieter form of possession. Although they had insurgently occupied the flats, they were less interested in exhibiting that as an achievement, or performing dissidence, than in finding a settlement with the government. Hopefully, a settlement that will not disturb the status quo they insurgently produced and one that may allow them greater flexibility from that starting point. But this transition from an insurgent to a more passive position was not available unless the government granted some recognition and dialed down the pressure. In Ambedkar Colony, people experienced a vicious cycle. Due to their strong opposition to state actions, the residents, particularly women, of Ambedkar Colony have been constant targets of further state violence. Radha, one of the older women activists from Ambedkar Colony said:

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They keep filing cases. There are even cases against two women who have died .  .  . They keep coming with arrest warrants .  .  . From the beginning, everything has been fought for. Not for one minute can we sit down and think we’re at peace. We can’t sit, we can’t sleep. There’s no peace. Constantly we wonder what will happen next. (Interview with Radha, November 19, 2014, Visakhapatnam)

The people of this settlement are singled out and repressed, for example, when a city-wide protest was called against the inadequate cyclone relief efforts in slums across the city, a police team was sent to ensure that the women of Ambedkar Colony would not be able to attend the demonstration at the Collector’s office. Yet the women strategized and some of them escaped by pretending to accompany a pregnant woman who they claimed was going into labor. Syamala said:

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Even when we go and ask for residency certificates in the name of our children’s education or if we ask for anything else, they just see the name “Ambedkar Colony” and flatly refuse. Even when we ask for voter cards, they ask where we live, we say Ambedkar Colony and they say “no, we won’t give you.” Meaning all these people in Ambedkar Colony are deshdrohis (traitors/seditionists). For taking the name of Ambedkar? They look at us with such disdain . . . For everything we have had to oppose them. So they have started looking at us as somekind of deshdrohi, as people looking to start fights. When we asked properly they would not let anything reach us, and when we asked loudly they call us deshdrohi? (Interview with Syamala, November 21, 2014, Visakhapatnam)

Thus, on the one hand, trans-local organizing and alliances with social movements and NGOs helped residents of both Indira Puram and Ambedkar Colony to come together in articulating a political claim over the city as a commons, particularly public land and infrastructure. On the other hand, while they are able to build a trans-local and progressive politics, there is also an adversarial relationship with the state. The state’s antagonism is experienced simultaneously as caste oppression, indignity, and arbitrary violence.

CONCLUSION The politics of India’s slum dwellers from this intensified moment of the war on slums has been interpreted in terms of the “right to stay put” (Weinstein 2014; 2017), which is a defense of tenure without a demand for a broader right to the city. Through this example of struggles in Visakhapatnam, I present a case where the outcome of conflict between the government and governed was not merely a contingent negotiation of governmental benefits

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(Chatterjee 2004), nor just a preservation of tenure through the right to stay put. Rather, the outcome was a trans-local politics of opposition to slum relocation. A city-level organization of women to contest demolitions and evictions. And when opportunities presented themselves, also a politics of occupation and invasion through the invocation of rightfulness. Further, this kind of trans-local and collective politics did not only emerge in Visakhapatnam under the aegis of an adversarial organization like POW. Such movements also emerged in other Indian cities both large and small under the aegis of people’s movements that pooled together a number of political strategies including local organization, NGO support, political patronage, mass movements, and so on (Anand 2017; Appadurai 2001; Bhide 2009). Looking retrospectively at this historic moment, and seeing slums as embattled enclaves of violence, calls for a reassessment of the right to stay put. Across its various manifestations, the politics of the right to stay put explicitly contested the new contours of slum-free urbanism. Finally, the Visakhapatnam cases draw out three themes that were not necessarily at the forefront of urban studies imagination in the moment of war on slums itself. First, a growing disillusionment with the state and its mandate to ensure the public good. Second, a foregrounding of caste-based discrimination and atrocity, both at a strategic level and at a more fundamental affective level. And finally, trans-local solidarities and resistances which contested and dialectically transformed the foray of neoliberal urbanism, pushing as far as possible against the confinement of slum governance.

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Anand, Nikhil. 2017. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 2001. “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics.” Environment and Urbanization 13 (2): 23–43. Banerjee-Guha, Swapna, ed. 2010. Accumulation by Dispossession: Transformative Cities in the New Global Order. New Delhi, India: Sage Publications. Bargu, Banu. 2014. Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons. New York: Columbia University Press. Bhan, Gautam. 2009. “‘This Is No Longer the City I Once Knew.’ Evictions, the Urban Poor and the Right to the City in Millennial Delhi.” Environment and Urbanization 21 (1): 127–42. Bhan, Gautam, and Swathi Shivanand. 2013. “(Un)Settling the City: Analysing Displacement in Delhi from 1990 to 2007.” Economic & Political Weekly 48 (13): 54–61.

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Bhide, Amita. 2009. “Shifting Terrains of Communities and Community Organization: Reflections on Organizing for Housing Rights in Mumbai.” Community Development Journal 44 (3): 367–81. Brenner, Neil, and Nik Theodore, eds. 2003. Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe. London, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Chatterjee, Partha. 2004. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press. Davis, Mike. 2006. Planet of Slums. New York: Verso. Desai, Ashwin, and Richard Pithouse. 2004. “‘But We Were Thousands’: Dispossession, Resistance, Repossession and Repression in Mandela Park.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 39 (4): 239–69. Doshi, Sapana. 2013. “The Politics of the Evicted: Redevelopment, Subjectivity, and Difference in Mumbai’s Slum Frontier.” Antipode 45 (4): 844–65. ———. 2019. “The Redevelopmental State: Governing Surplus Life and Land in the ‘Urban Age.’” Development and Change 50 (3): 679–706. Dupont, Véronique. 2008. “Slum Demolitions in Delhi since the 1990s: An Appraisal.” Economic and Political Weekly 43 (28): 79–87. Ghertner, D. Asher. 2015. Rule By Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi. New York: Oxford University Press. Gupta, Akhil. 2015. “Is Poverty a Global Security Threat?” In Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South, In Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation edited by Ananya Roy and Emma Shaw Crane, 24–31. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2005. “Sovereigns beyond the State: On Legality and Authority in Urban India.” In Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World, edited by Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, 169–91. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Paperback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. HLRN. 2022. “Forced Evictions in India: 2021.” New Delhi: Housing and Land Rights Network. IFUP. 2002. “From Structural Adjustment Programmes to Poverty Reduction Strategies.” Marrakech: International Forum on Urban Poverty, United Nations Human Settlements Programme. Padma. November 18, 2014. Interview by the author. Vishakapatnam. Ranganathan, Malini. 2022. “Caste, Racialization, and the Making of Environmental Unfreedoms in Urban India.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45 (2): 257–77. Roy, Ananya. 2005. “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 71 (2): 147–58. Sharan, Awadhendra. 2014. In the City, Out of Place: Nuisance, Pollution, and Dwelling in Delhi. c. 1850–2000. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. Smith, Neil. 2005. The New Urban Frontier : Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London, UK: Routledge. https://doi​.org​/10​.4324​/9780203975640. UN-Habitat. 2011. “Forced Evictions: Global Crisis, Global Solutions.” Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

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Weinstein, Liza. 2013. “Demolition and Dispossession: Toward an Understanding of State Violence in Millennial Mumbai.” Studies in Comparative International Development 48 (3): 285–307. ———. 2014. The Durable Slum: Dharavi and the Right to Stay Put in Globalizing Mumbai. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2017. “Insecurity as Confinement: The Entrenched Politics of Staying Put in Delhi and Mumbai.” International Sociology 32 (4): 512–31. ———. 2021. “Evictions: Reconceptualizing Housing Insecurity from the Global South.” City & Community 20 (1): 13–23.

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Chapter 16

Tribal Aspirations and the City Elvin Xing Yifu

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India has the largest youth population in the world, with more than 808 million youths under the age of 35. This “demographic dividend,” defined as the proportion of working-age population (ages 15–64) increases relative to the dependent population (those under 15 and over 65), is expected to result in a larger workforce, leading to increased productivity and economic growth for India. With this in mind, there is a large corpus of research on youth in India from scholars such as Nakassis (2016), Lukose (2009), Dyson and Craig (2018), and Ahuja and Ostermann (2016). Nakassis, in particular, examines Indian youth culture as manifested in the everyday. He highlights how notions of status, value, and social hierarchies affect and manifest the anxieties and perspectives that Indian youths have toward their life trajectories. In this chapter, I draw on these scholars and focus on the aspirations of tribal youths and how they are expressed and negotiated in today’s India. I do this by presenting a case study of Koya youths who are part of a tribal community in rural Telangana. Through this case study, I argue that tribal youths position themselves in strategic ways to fulfill their aspirations and in so doing, facilitate their claims to the city. As a corollary, I argue that the notion of tribal communities as peripheral to the city needs to be critiqued. Rather, we need to view tribal communities as constituent of the rich diversity in urban spaces. I begin with a brief overview of the tribal discourse in India and how it has created a civilizing discourse on tribal communities, rendering them as “primitive” and “backward.” Next, I present a research project initiated by the Koya youths to highlight how they contest this discourse and engage in a form of active “time pass.” Here, I follow Craig Jeffrey’s (2010) seminal work on “Timepass,” where he shows how lower middle-class Jat (middlecaste) men from provincial India craft active and differentiated responses toward their unemployment. Likewise, I show how these Koya youths do 245

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“timepass” by engaging in a research project on Koya Indigenous knowledge. I argue that this participation in a research project is not merely about salvaging their culture. Rather, I show that it is a decolonizing endeavor that positions these Koya youths as researchers. This allows the Koya youths to gain social capital while waiting for opportunities to fulfill their aspirations. Next, I begin by discussing how tribal aspirations are shaped by their identity as Scheduled Tribes (ST for short) and access to reservations. As the topic of reservations for marginalized communities in India has been wellresearched and widely debated by scholars and policymakers, my intention in this chapter is to present a more nuanced picture of reservations for tribal communities. It is no surprise that with access to reservations, the aspirations of tribal youth are largely aimed at gaining employment in government jobs. However, I show that even though reservations are constitutionally guaranteed for tribal communities, the ground reality is that access to reservations is often fraught with much difficulty. This necessitates that tribal youths engage in active timepass as they strategically position themselves while waiting to fulfill their aspirations. Finally, I examine how these Koya youths move from their village to Hyderabad in pursuit of their aspirations. In doing so, I argue that their perceptions of Hyderabad as the city where their aspirations can be realized to show that these tribal youths are not limited to the “rural” but are equally apt in navigating the “urban” in the pursuit of their aspirations.

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PROBLEMATIZING THE “TRIBAL” DISCOURSE Prior to British colonial rule, tribal communities in central India largely existed as forest kingdoms and had their own social, economic, and political systems. For example, the historian Bhangya Bhukya (2017) describes how Gond kings emerged as dominant political powers during the middle of the thirteenth century in central India, existing as independent states that ruled over vast territories. Although tribal communities responded through rebellions against British colonial rule, the lack of a unified resistance meant that these rebellions were quelled with force and further extended British dominion over tribal areas. To further solidify their rule, the British relied on what the historian and anthropologist Bernard Cohn, terms as “investigative modalities” to “classify, categorize, and bound the vast social world that was India so that it could be controlled” (1996, 4–5). These “investigative modalities” were a result of extensive ethnographic data collection and manifested in the form of “government gazettes, reports, and histories” (Cohn 1996, 5). For example, Sir Herbert Hope Risley (1891) and William Crooke (1896), both officials in the colonial administration, published the first two handbooks

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of tribes and castes in British India in the 1890s. These handbooks were described by the anthropologist Fuller as the “most detailed and comprehensive ethnographic studies of people living in India published in the Victorian age” (2017, 29). Thus, scholars argue that these anthropological accounts were deployed as technologies of power designed to control and manage the Indian population. Although these accounts provided rich ethnographic details about the tribal communities of India, there was little to no input from the tribal communities themselves. These communities were subjected to the anthropological gaze of the British and their assistants, who were non-tribals. In fact, most of these assistants belonged to upper-caste Hindu society (Cohn 1987). This lack of input from the tribal communities aptly fits Dirk’s description of colonial ethnography: “The colonised subject was first and foremost a body, to be known and controlled through the measurement and interpretation of physical subjects . . . there was little interest in the subjectivity, will, or agency of colonial subjects” (2011, 193). This “little interest in the agency of colonial subjects” resulted in producing a civilizing discourse that propagated the tropes of primitiveness and backwardness applied to tribal identity. In what follows, I provide some examples to illustrate the colonial discourse on tribal communities in India, beginning with Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari’s Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909). Here, I draw attention to Thurston and Rangachari’s description of the Koyas; according to them, the Koyas:

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lead an unsophisticated, savage life, and have few ideas . . . They excite admiration by their truthfulness and simplicity; contempt by their drunkenness, listlessness, and want of thrift; amusement by their stupidity and their combination of timidity and self-importance; and disgust by their uncanny superstitions and thinly veiled blood-thirstiness . . . Their laziness is notorious, and their stupidity is attested by numerous stories. (1909, 44, 47)

Another example is taken from Dalton’s (1872) Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. In his description of two tribal communities, the Marias and the Gonds, Dalton used phrases such as “uncivilized .  .  . they have very little clothing, wither for warmth or purpose of decency and as their bodies are generally begrimed with ashes and dirt, they do not present an attractive appearance”; “primitive”; and “very backward in arts” (1872, 277, 283–84). Similarly, Doron discusses how Mallahs, a boatmen community in Benares, were described as “savages” and having “criminal dispositions” in William Crooke’s The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (quoted in Doron 2013, 37, 49). These examples point to how tribal communities are stigmatized as “primitive” and “savage,” lending further legitimacy

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to the civilizing mission of the British colonial rulers and the dispossession of these communities. Hence, drawing on primary sources, along with studies by subsequent scholars, such as Dirks (1997), Bhukya (2008), and Pels and Salemik (1999), we gain a better appreciation of how colonial anthropology was key to the project of homogenizing and totalizing tribal communities. Despite achieving independence from British rule, tribals in India remain trapped in the tropes of primitivism, backwardness, and untrustworthyness (Sur 2021, 58–59). This discourse, according to Bhukya, had the effect of “stigmatising the adivasi social as primitive, uncivilised, isolated, barbaric, violent, human sacrificers, criminal, backward, and completely distinct from that of the normal human species in mentality and mode of livelihood” (2008, 109). They are seen as residual communities and continue to be seen through a “civilizing” discourse that places them in a static mode of identity and culture, further compounding their subordination and prejudice by the Indian state in its various outfits. This is evident in contemporary reports, where the livelihood of the Koyas is described as “of a primitive nature, and their standard of living is low” (Tribal Cultural Research & Training Institute 2018, 4). Their denigration and subordination are materialized in how tribal communities have little to no say when facing forced displacements and land alienation—an all too common occurrence, documented by various scholars (see, for example, Baviskar 2004; Ghosh 2016; Kumar and Puthumattathil 2018). I raise this “civilizing” discourse of tribals to examine the implication of such static and pejorative depictions by state and non-state actors. Apart from the perpetuation of static stereotypes, this discourse obscures how tribal communities, such as the Koyas, exercise agential power to create strategic positionings to fulfill their aspirations. Also, it reduces tribal communities to the realm of the “rural” and “agrarian,” resulting in a spurious “rural-urban” divide, where tribals are viewed as peripheral to the urban spaces in India. This necessitates a closer examination of tribal aspirations in India. In what follows, I do this through a case study of Koya youths in a rural village to show that tribal aspirations are complex and multifaceted.

R&L TIMEPASS: AGENCY, REFUSAL, AND PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS

The term “timepass” is commonly used by Indian youths to denote the passing of time in an unproductive manner. Jeffrey (2010, 2017) argues that the act of “timepass” can be unpacked to reveal different meanings for Indian youths. “Timepass” can connote “detachment from one's situation and the sense of being entitled to a more exciting life elsewhere” (Jeffrey 2017,

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408). It is also a “social act” where youths share the experience of “waiting to realise their aspirations, come to strike up friendships and develop shared goals” (Jeffrey 2017, 409). In following Jeffrey, I argue that the Koya youths are engaging in productive “timepass” to strategically position themselves to fulfill their aspirations. What I refer to as a research project was a product of discussions between me and Arun, one of the youth leaders in the village. He was interested in deploying anthropological research methods to preserve and propagate Koya Indigenous knowledge. In the summer of 2017, the Koya youths of the village began the initial groundwork for a research project on Koya Indigenous knowledge. They were divided into teams of four or five members each. Each team selected a topic of Koya Indigenous knowledge to cover, for example, rituals and customs, forest medicine, and agricultural techniques. Daily meetings with the Koya youths were held once in the morning and another in the evening. The morning meetings were focused on delegating tasks and discussing the topics given to each team. The evening meetings were mainly focused on resolving problems or issues encountered during the data collection. For about eight months, each team went about recording oral histories, writing copious amounts of field notes, taking photos, and collecting specimens of forest fruits and medicine. After about eight months of data collection, the project culminated in a 300-page book written in Telugu in mid-2018. Following the successful book launch and the pledging of support from the Tribal Cultural Research and Training Institute, the Koya youths proceeded to conduct more research and expanded their data collection beyond Telangana. In September 2019, they embarked on a field trip to the Kachargadh Caves in Maharashtra, a site of cultural significance to the Gonds and met with Gond elders. This meeting facilitated the sharing of perspectives on the common heritage and histories between the Gond and Koya communities. An interesting insight from the meeting was learning about the Gond deity Pahandi Pari Kupar Lingo and his role in establishing the Koya Punem, an animist religion practiced by both Gond and Koya communities (Kabeer et al. 2019, 18; see also Poyam 2019). This meeting provided a deeper understanding of Koya religion and illustrated how the Koyas possess their own forms of religious practices and should not be cast as “backward Hindus” (Ghurye 1963). Thus, through field visits and collecting dynamic oral histories, they gained new insights about Koya Indigenous knowledge. Thus, by participating in this research project the Koya youths have become active participants in reclaiming knowledge and power over representation of their own cultural worlds. As such, I argue that this project is more than an attempt at cultural and heritage preservation. Rather, the research project represents a form of agency for the Koya youths. The anthropologist Sherry Ortner’s notion of agency is instructive:

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In one field of meaning “agency” is about intentionality and the pursuit of (culturally defined) projects. In the other field of meaning agency is about power, about acting within relations of social inequality, asymmetry, and force. In fact, “agency” is never merely one or the other (2006, 139).

This theorizing of agency resonates strongly with both the inception and the execution of the research project. This project is intentional in addressing the desire of the Koyas to make sense of their identity on their own terms. It recognizes how others have appropriated and misused their knowledge. It also signals a clear desire to go beyond merely salvaging the cultural heritage of the Koyas. It is an intent to reclaim what constitutes the Indigenous and distinctive knowledge of the Koyas and, in doing so, to foreground their own perspectives and narratives. It is an exercise of power too, for it is they who retain control over what constitutes Koya Indigenous knowledge and their expression of Koya identity. The research project also aligns with the second field of meaning, where agency is about acting against power within relationships marked by uneven social relations. As mentioned in the first chapter, tribal communities in India continue to be viewed through a civilizing discourse and placed in an asymmetrical relationship through which they continue to be marginalized and infantilized by state policies and actors. In initiating the research project, the Koya youths have sought to redress this marginalization by rejecting the civilizing discourse and formulating their own narrative of what it means to be Koya through this project. This brings me to the second aspect of the research project where I draw from Carole McGranahan’s (2016) theorizing of refusal as an ethnographic concept and practice. Two aspects of refusal resonate with my analysis of this project. First, McGranahan describes refusal as generative where “refusal might be thought of as a stoppage, an end to something, the breaking of relations . . . however, the ending of one thing is often the generation of something new” (2018, 322). Through the project, the Koya youths are refusing to acquiesce to the current discourses and are generating new insights into different aspects of Koya life. Indian and foreign scholars have conducted considerable research on the links between the Gond and Koya communities in India (von Fürer-Haimendorf and Elizabeth von Fürer-Haimendorf 1943, 2021; von Fürer-Haimendorf,1982; Yadav, 1970). Yet, there has been little research on how these communities make sense of their shared linkages and how it affects their sense of identity. The field trip to Kachargadh Caves in Maharashtra and meeting with the Gond elders allowed the Koyas to understand their shared heritage with the Gonds and create future opportunities to examine these linkages in greater detail. Further, it allowed them to forgie new epistemologies, and to creatively articulate linkages from their

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distinctive perspectives. These insights represent the generative aspect of the research project when Koya perspectives are placed at the forefront and in a position to be open to regeneration and innovative interpretation. Mohawk anthropologist Simpson notes that “within Indigenous contexts, when the people we speak of speak for themselves, their sovereignty interrupts anthropological portraits of timelessness, procedure, and function that dominate representations of their past and, sometimes, their present” (2014, 97). Likewise, I suggest that the research project has interrupted the static external representations of Koya in India. It represents Koya by destabilizing colonial and state-based interpretations and thus facilitates the sovereignty of Koya perspectives and deepens the understanding of Koya histories, myths, and religion. Of course, all knowledge production is mediated—and anthropological research and methods are one such filter. Yet the ability to deploy this filter and manipulate it is an indication of agency by the tribal communities by asserting their claims and forging an imagined community in the Andersonian sense. The book serves as a material testament to the depth, complexities, and innovation of Koya knowledge. It demonstrates that this group of Koyas are not merely research subjects; rather, they are capable of being researchers who generate and distribute knowledge through their language and by printing books or in institutions such as museums and youth movements. McGranahan adds another dimension to this project of refusal—hope. According to her, “hope combines with will to refuse authorized anticipations, thus moving away from the probable into the possible. The wilful aspect of refusal brings us back to transformation and generation, to the possibility of acting to spark change” (2016, 323). For the Koya youths, this means embarking on a research project to build on existing knowledge while uncovering new aspects of Koya Indigenous knowledge. It creates further scaffolding for building a material culture, one that “exists not [only] through our consciousness or body, but as an exterior environment that habituates and prompts us” (Miller 2005, 5). Think of the published book which is not merely a record of Koya Indigenous knowledge; rather it allows for the possibility for the Koyas to understand what it means to hold that rich identity and heritage, subverting what is of the degrading and diminishing effects of elite historiography. The theme of hope is especially salient as in terms of how the Koyas position themselves as tribals in India. Learning about their Indigenous knowledge through participating in research opens opportunities for Koya youth to engage in deepening their cultural knowledge in forging a sense of Koya identity and to strategically deploying such knowledge to their own ends. It provides them the capability to decide how they want to fashion themselves as tribals in India. It allows for the possibility for others, especially the Indian state (however loosely

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defined), to appreciate Koya Indigenous knowledge and use it in future policy planning.

ENGAGING IN PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS In this section, I focus on the Koya youths and argue that their involvement in the research project represents an engagement which we might call as “prefigurative politics.” According to Jeffrey and Dyson, prefigurative politics is the investment of efforts and resources to create reimagined possibilities of the future in “circumstances characterised by power, hierarchy, and conflict” (2021, 643). When the Koya youths conduct research on their Indigenous knowledge and culture, they establish themselves as researchers and knowledge producers. It is a reimagination of Koya identity that is not restricted by the tropes of primitivism and backwardness, which are commonly associated with tribal communities in India. Moreover, this reimagination of Koya identity serves to empower other aspects of Koya identity and creates new possibilities of being Koya in India. For example, when they research Koya religion, or Koya Punem, it deepens their understanding of Koya religious practices and paves a deeper understanding of tribal religion. I present a short vignette as an example of the engagement in prefigurative politics by the Koya youths. On our way back from the field trip to Kachargadh Caves in Maharashtra, we stopped at a small town for a break. We had already been on the road for about eight hours, and our bodies were sore from sitting in a cramped vehicle. While sipping a much-needed chai, I turned to Shanti, one of the Koya youths, and asked her how she felt about the trip. She said: “I am tired, but this is a good project. I am learning so much about my own culture and history, about what is Koitur.”1 As I pondered over her comment, I realized that the youths were not merely collecting data for a research project. There was an intentionality that drove these youths to invest their time and effort during their summer holidays. For most youths, the summer holidays are a time for relaxation. Yet, these youths were busy attending meetings, going on long field trips, and carrying out time-consuming fieldwork. Furthermore, by being involved in the process of data collection, they were able to ask questions and develop a deeper understanding of their culture and acquired the ability to influence how it might be interpreted or represented. Through their involvement in the research project and initiating events such as these, the Koya youth are creating their narrative of what it means to be Koya in India. In my interactions with them, I am often struck by their keenness to learn about their culture and history. They take much pride and joy in their involvement with the project. It cultivates in them a sense of what

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it means to be a Koya, a realization that their culture and identity are not inferior. It provides them the capability to decide how they want to fashion themselves as Koyas in India. It is a form of political activism as they imagine themselves to be part of the larger global Indigenous community. As they continue to engage in research, it is an engagement in prefigurative politics that empowers other aspects of their identity and orients the Koyas toward a reimagined future in which tribal communities in India are not defined by anachronistic tropes. Even though the research project does not directly translate into these youths getting university admissions or gaining employment in government jobs, it allows the Koya youths to contest the notion that tribal communities are “primitive.” In showing that they can become researchers in their own right, it adds to their social capital, allowing them to gain confidence and expand the horizons of their aspirations.

R&L TRIBAL ASPIRATIONS AND THE ST STATUS: BOON AND BANE

I begin this section with a short vignette from my fieldwork among the Koyas. As the loud crowing of the rooster reverberated throughout the village at seven in the morning, I reluctantly woke up and went for my morning walk. The morning walk had become a daily ritual for me to clear my mind before settling into the hustle of fieldwork, which I had been conducting among the Koyas, a tribal community located in Telangana, India. When I walked past an open field, I saw Vinay and his brothers doing sprints, while their cousin Praveen stood at the side, shouting words of encouragement at them occasionally. Their exhausted faces indicated that they had been working out for at least an hour or so. When they completed their sprints, I walked over to them and jokingly told Vinay, “You are already very fit, so there’s no need for you to exercise. I think I need more exercise than you. Are you preparing for a volleyball tournament?” Vinay smiled and said, “No, brother. We are preparing for the police job.” Upon seeing my puzzled look, Vinay explained that he and his two brothers needed to pass a preliminary written exam, a physical fitness test and a final written exam to be selected as Telangana Police trainees. He ended off by saying, “We are Scheduled Tribe (ST), so there is reservation for us. We must try for these jobs.” The very next day, Arjun asked me to meet him at Swathi’s house in Kamaram. When I walked over, he asked if I could help Swathi apply for admission to universities based in Hyderabad. Swathi wanted me to help with applications to three universities (Osmania University, English Foreign Languages University, and University of Hyderabad) for three different

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disciplines (English, Anthropology, and Sociology). As I navigated the various admission websites and assisted her in filling out the applications, I received notifications that stated 7.5% of its seats for each postgraduate course are reserved for candidates from ST communities and that the qualifying mark for postgraduate courses for these candidates is generally 5% lesser than that for other candidates. To put this in context, figure 16.1 shows the University of Hyderabad’s intake for the academic year 2022–2023. Under the ST column, a total of 182 seats, or 7.59%, are reserved for ST candidates out of the 953 seats offered. However, a closer look at the breakdown of the numbers highlights the competitiveness for seats and the importance of the ST status for the Koya youths. The 182 seats are spread out unevenly across the degrees and subjects offered. figure 16.2 shows the breakdown of seats for some of the courses in the Master’s program at the University of Hyderabad. For example, 50 seats are offered for a Masters of Mathematics but only four of those seats are reserved for ST candidates, and 56 seats are offered for a Masters of Physics but only three seats are reserved for them. Thus, although reservations for ST candidates in terms of university admissions are guaranteed at 7.5%, this percentage refers only to the total number

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Figure 16.1  Breakdown of Intake of Students in Universities in Hyderabad (Listed in Text) for 2022–2023. Source: Author's Photo.

Figure 16.2  Breakdown of Seats for Master’s Program at the University of Hyderabad. Source: Author's Photo.

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of seats, but not for every degree or subject offered. Consequently, ST candidates, like Swathi, have to apply for multiple courses in different universities to enhance their chances of obtaining a university degree. I present these short vignettes to raise two important points; First, these vignettes reflect how aspirations of tribal youth are intertwined with the ST status. The ST status is inimically linked to what Xaxa (2001, 156–90) describes as a policy of positive discrimination. This policy is most pronounced across lower caste communities and STs. The reservation policy is manifest in three main areas: reservation of seats in state legislatures, jobs in government services, and admissions to institutions of higher learning, especially in colleges and universities. With this policy in place and its privileges enshrined in the Constitution of India, it is not surprising that many Koya youths aspire to work in government jobs, such as with the Telangana Police or Forest Department, or to pursue a university degree and work in educational institutions as teachers. As Jonathan Parry (2020) has illustrated, securing government jobs allows the individual to accrue not just monetary benefits but also gain stature within the community. Also, these jobs are often inherited through generations, which leads to financial stability and opportunities to create generational wealth. For members of the ST community, reservations can offer the promise of potential employment, which in turn enhances both economic and social capital. It is not surprising the ST status has become a boon for tribal youths and influenced many tribal youths, like others, to aspire for government jobs. However, access to these jobs is often fraught with difficulties, and even with reservations, tribal youths are not guaranteed employment. According to Cheerangote (2018), his research on reservations for tribal communities has shown that the benefits of reservation are not uniformly distributed, and more often than not, only a few communities are able to access these reservations. For example, in Telangana, this has led to a rift between tribal communities and the Lambadas, where the tribal communities are accusing the Lambadas of being given more reservations. Furthermore, the limited number of seats for ST candidates means that ST candidates throughout Telangana must compete among themselves. Regardless, the ST status for Swathi does provide her a slight advantage, although not guaranteed, to attain a university education: a path considered effective to for her to realize her aspirations to be a teacher. To this end, one can also see how Swathi is exercising her agency to strategically navigate a system that has, over generations, stacked the cards against them.

R&L HYDERABAD: CLAIMING THE CITY

In this section, I focus on the perspectives of the Koya youths toward Hyderabad to argue that tribal communities lay claim to the “urban” and like many

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others, view the “urban” as a place where aspirations can be fulfilled. During my fieldwork with the Koyas, I observed that most of the Koya youths would stay in the village only during the summer months. When I spoke to then, they shared with me that they spent most of their time in Hanumakonda, a major city and the district headquarters of Hanumakonda district in the Indian state of Telangana. Due to the large number of educational facilities, such as degree colleges, private schools, and, in Hanumkonda, these youths would attend lessons there and prepare for university entrance examinations. For others, this could mean taking up entry-level jobs to gain work experience. From there, they would move on to Hyderabad for further education or find employment. In one of my conversations with Rajesh, a Koya youth who found work with a multinational company that was based in Hyderabad. He shared that even though he is a Koya, he did not see his tribal identity as a disadvantage. There were initial obstacles in adjusting to the pace of the city and environment of the city, but this was common for people who moved from rural areas to urban cities. He soon got used to it over time and navigated the city like any other Hyderabadi. Using himself as an example, he talked about how Hyderabad presented more opportunities for tribal youths to explore other forms of employment, apart from pursuing government jobs. When asked about their perceptions of Hyderabad, the youths shared that Hyderabad was a place where they felt they could realize their aspirations. Furthermore, they did not feel that Hyderabad was some distant city which is beyond reach or that they are limited to the rural areas of Telangana. Interestingly, many of the tribal youths did not express a desire to live or settle in Hyderabad, despite its allure as an urban metropolis. To them, Hyderabad served a practical purpose for them as many institutes of higher learning are based there. Like many other Indian youths, the Koya youths lay claim to Hyderabad as they viewed it as a place that provided the best means for them to realize their aspirations and gain access to employment. This claim to the city is exemplified in the deliberate movement from the village, to Hanumakonda, and finally to Hyderabad. In each stage, the Koya youth prepare and position themselves to ensure their aspirations can be fulfilled, be it preparing for university admissions, or taking up jobs to gain work experience. To be clear, this is not a romanticization of Hyderabad as a “city of dreams” for tribal communities. The Koya youths move freely between the rural and the city and are equally comfortable in both spaces. My point is to show that there is a spurious rural-urban divide, where tribal communities are seen as peripheral to the “urban” or are limited to the rural spaces in India. This spurious divide is reminiscent of the civilizing discourse that was presented earlier in this chapter. By highlighting the pragmatic mindset of these Koya youths, it is clear that tribal communities enact claims on the city and access to its opportunities.

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CONCLUSION To conclude, I turn to a lecture on the topic of “Decolonizing Tribal Studies in India” by Virginius Xaxa (2021), a member of the Oraon community and a prominent tribal researcher from India. Here, I focus on an important point raised in his lecture. One of the problems with tribal studies is the concept itself and how tribes are looked at in a colonial social structure. The idea of a tribe was represented as primitive, savages and inferior beings which continues even today . . . If you really want to reclaim or decolonize tribal studies, then tribes must be seen as a society like any other society. Xaxa highlights how certain presumptions, or tropes, have created reductive and static representations of tribal societies in India. To debunk these reductive and static representations, we need to recognize that tribal societies are constantly in flux, and tribals are continually engaged in exercising their agency in terms of making sense of their cultural practices, meanings, and aspirations. This chapter is an attempt to move in this direction and draw attention to the complexity of tribal aspirations. To clarify, Koya youths, like most youths in India, do aspire for government jobs. It is by examining how they pursue these aspirations that illustrates that tribal youths are not “primitive” or “backward.” By engaging in their version of “timepass,” these Koya youths strategically wait for opportunities to gain access to government jobs while building up their social capital. As a corollary, this engagement in “timepass” opens up new possibilities for tribal youths to lay claims to the “urban” and achieve their aspirations for a good life via other opportunities in Hyderabad. It is evident that in today’s India, tribal youths are no longer limited to the “rural,” but are adept at navigating between the rural and the urban. Hence, we need to view tribal communities in ways that go beyond the tropes of primitivism and recognize their agential power toward realizing their aspirations and in enacting their claims to the city.

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1. Colonial records revealed that tribal communities, such as the Gonds and Koyas, identified themselves with Koitur. For example, according to Eyre Chatterton (1916, 6), “Not that the name Gond is the name which they have called themselves by; for to themselves they are, and always have been, simply, ‘Koitur,’ or ‘Men’” (see also Thurston and Rangachari 1909, 53; von Fürer-Haimendorf 1982, 14). Other translations of “Koitur” include “human beings” and “people.”

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REFERENCES Ahuja, A. and Ostermann, S.L. 2016. “Crossing Caste Boundaries in the Modern Indian Marriage Market.” Studies in Comparative International Development 51: 365–387. https://doi​-org​.libproxy1​.nus​.edu​.sg​/10​.1007​/s12116​-015​-9178​-2. Baviskar, Amita. 2004. In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley. 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bhukya, Bhangya. 2008. “The Mapping of the Adivasi Social: Colonial Anthropology and Adivasis.” Economic and Political Weekly 43 (39): 103–9. Bhukya, Bhangya. 2017. The Roots of the Periphery: A History of the Gonds of Deccan India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Cheerangote, Saidalavi. 2018. “Can Different Tribes be Treated Alike? Revisiting the Reservation Policy for Scheduled Tribes.” Language in India 18 (3): 418. Cohn, B. S. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crooke, William. 1896. The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. Dalton, Edward Tuite. 1872. Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. Dirks, Nicholas B. 1997. “The Policing of Tradition: Colonialism and Anthropology in Southern India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 (1): 182–212. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/S0010417597000078. Dirks, Nicholas B. 2011. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Doron, Assa. 2013. Life on the Ganga: Boatmen and the Ritual Economy of Banaras. Delhi, India: Foundation Books. Dyson, Jane, and Craig Jeffrey. 2018. “Everyday Prefiguration: Youth Social Action in North India.” Transactions – Institute of British Geographers (1965) 43 (4): 573–85. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/tran​.12245. Fuller, C. J. 2017. “Ethnographic Inquiry in Colonial India: Herbert Risley, William Crooke, and the Study of Tribes and Castes.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23 (3): 603–21. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/1467​-9655​.12654. Ghosh, Devleena. 2016. ‘“We Don’t Want to Eat Coal:” Development and its Discontents in a Chhattisgarh District in India.’ Energy Policy 99: 252–60. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1016​/j​.enpol​.2016​.05​.046. Ghurye, G. S.1963. The Scheduled Tribes. 3rd ed. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. Jeffrey, Craig. 2010. Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jeffrey, Craig. 2017. “Timepass.” South Asia 40 (2): 407–9. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​ /00856401​.2017​.1297028. Jeffrey, Craig, and Jane Dyson. 2021. “Geographies of the Future: Prefigurative Politics.” Progress in Human Geography 45 (4): 641–58. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​ /0309132520926569. Kabeer, Naila, Nivedita Narain, Varnica Arora and Vinitika Lal. 2019. ”Group Rights and Gender Justice: Exploring Tensions Within an Indigenous Community in India.”

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Working Paper (33). International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. https://www​.lse​.ac​.uk​/International​-Inequalities​/Assets​/Documents​/Working​-Papers​/LSE​-III​-Working​-paper​-33​-Kabeer​.pdf. Kumar, Dhiraj, and Antony Puthumattathil. 2018. “A Critique of Development in India’s Predominantly Adivasi Regions with Special Reference to the Hos of India’s Jharkhand.” Contemporary Voice of Dalit 10 (1): 10–27. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1177​/2455328X17744627. Lukose, Ritty A. 2009. Liberalization's Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. McGranahan, Carole. 2016. “Theorizing Refusal: An Introduction.” Cultural Anthropology 31 (3): 319–25. https://doi​.org​/10​.14506​/ca31​.3​.01. Miller, Daniel. 2005. Materiality. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. Nakassis, Constantine V. 2016. Doing Style: Youth and Mass Mediation in South India. Chicago; University of Chicago Press. Ortner, Sherry B. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press Parry, Jonathan. 2020. Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group. Pels, Peter, and Oscar Salemink. 1999. Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Poyam, Akash. 2019. “Mind Our Language.” The Caravan. 9 August 2019. https:// caravanmagazine​.in​/culture​/gond​-gondi​-koitur​-dictionary​-adivasi Risley, Herbert Hope. 1892. The Tribes and Castes of Bengal. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press. Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sur, Malini, 2021. Jungle Passports: Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-Bangladesh Border. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Thurston, E., and K. Rangachari. 1909. Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 4. Madras, India: Government Press. Tribal Cultural Research & Training Institute. 2018. Sammakka Saralamma Medaram Jathara – Kumbh Mela of Telangana. Hyderabad: Tribal Welfare Department, Govt of Telangana. von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph. 1982. Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival. Oakland, California: University of California Press. von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph, and Elizabeth von Fürer-Haimendorf. 1943. The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad. London: Macmillan. Xaxa, Virginius. 2001. “Protective Discrimination: Why Scheduled Tribes Lag behind Scheduled Castes.” Economic and Political Weekly 36 (29): 2765–72. Xaxa, Virginius. 2021. “Decolonizing Tribal Studies in India.” Last Modified 27 September 2021. Accessed January 2, 2022. https://raiot​.in​/decolonising​-tribal​-studies​ -in​-india​-prof​-virginius​-xaxa/. Yadav, K.S. 1970. “Directed and Spontaneous Social Change: A Study of Gonds of Chhindwara.” Economic and Political Weekly 5(11): 493–98.

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Index

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abolition, 69, 76 Adivasi, 235, 239, 248 agency, 72, 76, 249–51, 257 algorithm, 67–68, 73, 76 Alienation, 134–35 allegory, 66–67, 76 Alves, Francisco de Paula Rodrigues, 171–72 Amazon, 169–80; migrations to, 173. See also Amazonas (state); the city; indigenous peoples; Manaus; modernization; rubber trade Amazonas (state), 169, 173–80, 180n1; the press in, 171, 177–79. See also Manaus; migration; indigenous peoples; the Amazon; De Villeroy, Augusto Ximeno Ambedkar, Dr. B. R., 237 Ambedkar Colony, Visakhapatnam, 233–37, 240–41 Asakusa, 81–92, 92n2 aspirations, 103, 145, 217, 232, 253–54 attack, 235, 237–38 backwardness, 99, 119, 139, 141, 142, 144, 245, 247–49, 252 Balagopal, K., 237 Balaju, 95–97, 101, 102, 104, 106 Banerjee Road, 201, 203, 204

Baneshwor, 95, 97, 106 banishment, 231 barakat, 183, 186, 187, 191–93, 195 Bargu, Banu, 239 basic services, 240 belonging, 28, 111, 116, 118, 145, 154–55, 160–64 Bengaluru/Bangalore, 120, 139, 140, 149 bhadralok, 219, 222–23, 226 Black Lives Matter, 66–67, 69 Black Panther Party, 50, 58, 58 box office, 209, 211 Brazil, 1, 169–78, 180, 180n2. See also Rio de Janeiro; the city; migration; modernization; Ribeiro, Eduardo Gonçalves Brazilian cities, 169, 171–80, 180n2; in the Amazon, 175; and its dwellers, 171–73; and national identity, 170–72. See also Brazil; indigenous peoples; Manaus; migration; modernization; popular experience; Rio de Janeiro Buddhism for the Human Life’ (人生佛教)-Humanistic Buddhism, 128–29 bulldozers, 235 Calhoun College (part of Yale University), 55, 57–58, 60

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Index

campus, 35, 57, 59–61, 73, 75, 119 caring: caregiving, 143–45, 148, 150. See also practice of care caste: atrocity, 238, 242; caste-class continuum, 226; “caste-less” society, 218; discrimination based on, 242; environmental unfreedoms based on, 234; identities, 111, 119, 140, 188, 218, 236, 245, 247, 255; oppression, 233, 235, 241; segregation based on, 141–42, 234; structuring role of, 219–26, 234 CETA Murals, 50, 54–56 Chandrababu Naidu, 118, 120, 189, 236 Chan-o-Cha, Prayut, 12, 14 Chinese Cultural Revolution, 126 Christianity (in Hong Kong), 127–28, 133 cinema, 199–201, 205, 206, 209–12, 214n5 cinematic space, 199, 210 Citizenship Amendment Act and National Registry of Citizens (CAANRC), 184–85 city-as-action, 11, 14, 22 claim-making by the poor, 232–33, 236–37 Collector, 241 Colonialism, 126–28, 162, 176, 218, 246–48 community, 200, 203, 206 company town, 69–72 confinement, 232, 234, 239, 242 Connecticut Hall, 61 costumes in protests, 19–20, 23 Covid-19 pandemic, 205, 210 craft labor, 71–72 Creative and Cultural Industries (CSI), 205 cultural landmark, 200, 202, 213 cyclone, 232, 236–37, 241

demolitions, 231, 242 denizens to citizens, 16–18 De Villeroy, Augusto Ximeno, 173 diaspora, 110–12 digital media, 114 dignity, 233, 238–39; discourse of, 238; right to, 233 Doctor Strange, 95, 96, 102, 103 drought, 141, 145–48 dual cities, 218

Dalit, 233, 235, 237, 239; communities, 235; migrants, 233. See also Mala Dargah, 183–95 Deccan, 188

handover of Hong Kong, 126 hang shan, 155–56, 160 Hansen, Thomas Blom, 236 heterotopian spaces, 193

education and production processes, 71–72 Eight-Fold Path, 128 electricity, 232, 240 Elicker, Justin, 53 elite aesthetic, 233 emotional imaginary, 111–12 enclaves, 232, 236, 242; of the poor, 232; slums as, 232; of violence, 242 Ernakulam, 199–205, 207–9, 211–13, 213n1 evictions, 231, 233, 242 exception from law, 236 experimental gardens, 73–75

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filmic interruption, 95, 104–6 forceful resettlement, 231–34, 239 Fordism, 70 Four Noble Truths, 128 Future Forward Party, 12 Ganesha, 140, 141 Global City, 118 government, 231–34, 236–37, 239–41; city governments, 231; governmental process, 233; offices of, 239; pressure from, 234; schemes of, 234; war with, 232–33, 236, 239 Gramsci, Antonio, 69–72, 75

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Hopper, Grace Murray, 59–60 human shields, 235, 239 Hyderabad, 109–21, 121nn2–3, 121nn5–7, 183–95, 246, 253–57 Hyderabadi Muslim, 109–21 Hyderabad Karnataka, 139–42, 145 hyper capitalism, 127 identity, 49, 56, 61, 66, 111, 113, 116–17, 154–55, 163, 193, 222–23, 246–53 illegality, 231, 236 indigenous peoples, 173–74, 176, 179 Indira Gandhi, 146, 147 Indira Puram, Visakhapatnam, 233–37, 239–41 industrial park, 75 infrastructure, 67–68, 74, 76, 100, 119–20 infrastructure, 232, 241 intellectual, 71 interruption, 95–106

monuments; urban practices and policies land-use ideology, 233 Lantau Island, 155–56, 158, 160–64 Lefebvre, Henri, 16, 66–67, 187 leftist group, 236 Lèse-Majesté Law, 13 liberal humanism, 72 livelihood, 234 location filming, 95, 99, 100, 104–6 Madhurawada, Visakhapatnam, 237 mainland, 203, 207, 213 Mala, 232–33. See also Dalit mall experience, 210 Manaus, 169–80. See also migration; the Amazon; Amazonas; popular experiences; Ribeiro, Eduardo Gonçalves; De Villeroy, Augusto Ximeno; rubber trade Mandal Revenue Officer, 236 Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 74 May Day 1970, 58 Menafee, Corey, 50, 56–57, 59–60 M.G. Road, 201–4, 207, 213n2 middle caste, 223, 225, 245 middle class, 219, 223, 226 migration: community politics, 169, 172, 177–80; internal migrants, 139, 140, 147, 149, 170, 172–73, 176–80; international migrants (immigrants), 111, 170, 174, 177; race and ethnicity, 173–74, 176–79. See also the Amazon; indigenous peoples; Manaus Milk-Tea Alliance, 19–20 mobilization, 239 modernization, 169–72, 179 monument, 27–42, 66, 68, 76 Mount Auburn Cemetery, 73–75 moving bodies, 12, 17–18, 21–23 multiplex, 200, 201, 205, 209–12 Murikiwada Nivasula Sankshema Sangham (MNSS), 235, 239 murikiwadas, 234–35, 238

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Jameson, Fredric, 66, 75–76 Jokarama, 140, 141, 144–46

Kamar-Taj, 102, 103 Kathmandu, 95–106 Kathmandu Valley, 100–103, 105, 106 Kerala, 200, 204, 205, 208, 209, 211 kong wu, 156–60, 163

Lakshmi, Advocate, 235, 238, 239. See also Progressive Organization of Women (POW) land, 232–34, 236–37, 239–41; disputes over, 234; land-grabbing, 236; objectionable and non-objectionable, 234; possession of, 234; public land, 233, 241 landscape: cinematic, 212; democratized, 33, 41–42; destruction of, 32, 34, 36; memorial, 27, 30–31; racialized, 27–28, 31–32. See also Confederate

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nature, 69 neoliberal city, 16–18, 23–24 neoliberalism, 232 neoliberal urbanism, 233, 242 Nepal, 95, 99–101, 103 New Haven City Hall, 53–55 New Haven Green, 50, 51, 52, 55, 58 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 240–42 Nostalgia, 83–92, 116–20 nuisance, 233 occupy, 236, 240, 242; politics of occupation, 240, 242 oral histories, 233–34 OTT, 205, 210, 211

Public Art Archive, 54–56 public good, 233, 242 public memory: Black counternarrative, 29, 31; Lost Cause, 28, 30, 32, 34, 42n3. See also counter-memorial redevelopment, in situ, 234 repertoires of claim-making, 233 resistance, 12, 15–16, 105, 174, 234, 239, 242 revanchist city, 231, 236 Ribeiro, Eduardo Gonçalves, 175–76 Richmond: Arthur Ashe, 33, 42n4; history of, 27, 31–33; Robert E. Lee, 30; Rumors of War, 27, 36. See also Confederate monuments; landscape right(s): claiming, 240; human rights groups, 235, 237; rightfulness, 239, 242; denied, 236, 238; to dignity, 233; to freedom from caste oppression, 233; right to public land, 233; to stay put, 233, 239, 241, 242 Ringgold, Faith, 60 Ring Road, 100–102 Rio de Janeiro, 170–72 rubber trade, 169, 172–77, 179

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Palang Pracharat Party, 12 Passos, Francisco Pereira, 171–72 Patan Durbar Square, 96, 101, 102, 104 performative strategies, 11–12, 15, 17, 19, 20 periphery, 231, 234–35 police, 234–35, 238, 241 Police Action 1948, 111, 116 poor, 231–32, 238; global poor, 231; poor communities, 231; poor women, 235 popular experiences, 169, 173, 176–79; and city-making, 173–79; and nationalism, 170–72, 175; and state projects, 171–72, 175–76. See also Brazil; Brazilian cities; indigenous peoples; migration; modernization poverty, 232 practice of care, 24, 139–50, 154–55, 159, 160, 163–64 prefigurative politics, 252–53 private capital accumulation, 231, 233 Progressive Organization of Women (POW), 235, 237, 239–40, 242 Prospect Street, 52 protest, 11–24, 27–42, 49–51, 58 protest art, 35–38, 49–50, 54–57; graffiti, 35–36; politically-engaged, 36, 38, 41, 42; protest signs, 36, 39

Sakariba, 81 Salovey, Peter, 53, 59 Satsaksit, Wanchalearm, 13 security and insecurity, 232–34 segregation, 232, 234 Seymour, George Dudley, 53–54 Shitamachi, 81, 83, 91–92 Singapore, 235 Sitchirawatanakul, Panassaya, 13 slum, 141–42, 144, 231–42; demolitions of, 231, 242; evictions of, 231, 233, 239, 242; governance of, 242; notification of, 233–34, 239; slumdwelling populations, 231; war on, 233, 241–42. See also demolitions; evictions; murikiwadas; poor; resettlement; squatter; squatter settlement

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slum-free urbanism, 231, 242 spatial inequality, 219 spectacle of solidarity, 18–23 squatter, 232, 235–36 squatter settlement, 233–35, 237 state: antagonism of, 241; claims on, 236; everyday state, 239; ideology of, 233; state-citizen relations, 233, 236–37; state violence, 231, 233, 235–36, 239–40 street processions, 194–95 structural adjustment programs, 231 Sufism, 183–84 Sumida River, 81, 84, 89–90 theater, 200, 201, 203–11, 213, 213n3 Thomas, Barbara Earl, 60 Tibaijuka, Anna Kajumulo, 232 Tokyo, 81–92 Town-Gown Relationship, 49 trans-local solidarity, 233, 237, 239, 241–42

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urban renewal, 31–34, 231, 234 Urdu, 116–17, 188, 190 Urs, 192–95 violence: arbitrary forms of, 241; enclaves of, 67, 69, 242; exceptional forms of, 232–33; memories of, 116– 17; moments of, 236–37; resistance to, 233, 236, 239; of the state, 17, 27, 116–17, 231, 233, 235–36, 239–40. See also attack; demolitions; evictions; forceful resettlement Visakhapatnam, India, 232–37, 239, 241–41; Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC), 235, 237–38; Vizag, 232; Zonal Commissioner in, 237–38

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underdevelopment, 141, 142 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 100 UN-Habitat, 232 urban practices and policies, 27–30; African American burial sites, 39; housing discrimination, 27, 32, 38; markers of, 27–29, 36, 38; material culture, 28, 42n2; new urbanism, 40; reshaping or reshape, 27, 31, 34, 41

walking, 12, 57, 71, 155–56, 158–60, 163 war: metaphors of, 236, 239; on slums, 231, 233, 241–42; with the state, 232–33, 236, 239 water supply, 232, 237, 240 Weinstein, Liza, 232, 236 world-class city, 231 WPA (Works Progress Administration) Program, 54, 60 Yale, Elihu, 60, 61 Yale and Slavery Working Group, 61 Yamanote, 81, 83

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About the Editors and Contributors

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C. Yamini Krishna works on film history, urban history, and Deccan history. She has received her Ph.D. from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She has been the recipient of India Foundation for the Arts research grant (2023), Asia Art Archive–Shergil Sundaram Foundation archival grant (2022), Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute Independent Research Grant (2022), Philip M Taylor Award for best article by a new researcher (2021), and Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship (2017). Her work has been published in Urban History, Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, South Asia, South Asian Popular Culture. She currently teaches at FLAME University, India. Amy Mei Yen Phua is a doctoral candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her areas of interest are Urban Anthropology, Religion, and Nationalism in the region of South Asia. Her PhD project is on the Sufi institution and community in the city of Hyderabad, India, and how their presence has been a significant force socially and politically within the urban context. Nisha Mathew is a historian of the Indian Ocean. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and has held research fellowships at the Asia Research Institute and Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore until 2020. Her recent publications include “At the Crossroads of Empire and Nation-State: Partition, Gold Smuggling, and Port Cities in the Western Indian Ocean” (Modern Asian Studies), “Bhakt Nation: The Return of the Hindu Diaspora in Modi’s India” (History and Anthropology), and “Strongmen and Informal Diplomats: Towards an Anthropology of International Relations” (History and Anthropology—co-authored). She currently teaches social theory at the School of Law, Mahindra University, Hyderabad. 267

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About the Editors and Contributors

Rajarajeshwari Ashok is an independent scholar. She was a Ph.D. research scholar at the Department of Film Studies, the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, and submitted her thesis on Malayalam film publicity in 2022. She completed her M.Phil. in English Literature from Christ University, Bangalore, and M.A. in English Literature from M. G. University, Kerala. She is a recipient of KCHR (Kerala Council for Historical Research) PhD Fellowship (2016–2019) and the Kerala State Chalachithra Academy Fellowship (2020). Her areas of interest include Malayalam cinema, European Cinema, and Pop Culture. Thaís R. S. de Sant’Ana is an assistant professor of Latin American History at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her current project investigates entangled histories of migration, urban, and environmental processes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Amazonia.

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Lok Hang Hui is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, University College London. His research project looks at the lived experience families have with their Buddhist altars (butsudan) in rural and suburban homes with a view to understanding family life and caring practices in contemporary Japan. He has studied the social life of Japanese candles (warosoku) for his M.Phil. degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is interested in traditional Japanese crafts and utensils used in everyday life, and how these objects related to home and domesticity. Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa with a focus on folklore and cultural studies. In 2017–2023 she lived in Richmond, Virginia and taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, and she is currently an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Her current research interests include material culture as community engagement, race and social justice, and place studies. She is the author of Global Tarantella: Reinventing Southern Italian Folk Music and Dances (Illinois Press, 2017). Indivar Jonnalagadda is assistant professor of International Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology and South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research over the past nine years has engaged with questions of urban governance, housing rights, sanitation infrastructure, and right to education, among others. He has published peer-reviewed articles in Urban Studies, IJURR, City, EPW, the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, and others. He is very interested

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in public scholarship and in experimenting with multimodal and accessible formats for sharing research findings. Dikshya Karki is a media anthropologist with a doctorate in Visual and Media Anthropology from Heidelberg University, Germany. She has worked as a researcher on various heritage projects in the Kathmandu Valley. Karki has also taught at the Department of Languages and Mass communication, Kathmandu University. Her research and teaching interests include film, media, and popular culture in South Asia. Laura A. Macaluso, Ph.D., researches and writes about monuments, museums, and material culture. She has written or contributed to more than 10 books and is the author of essays and blog posts in the field of cultural heritage. Currently, she’s working on a publication project with Amy Speckart, PhD for the 250th anniversary of the United States, titled Revolutionary Narratives, Stories for a Reflective, Inclusive and Expansive 250th Commemoration and is also under contract to publish Art for Hartford, A Capital City and Its Public Art. See more of her work at www​.lauramacaluso​ .com/.

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Marin Nycklemoe is a Ph.D. scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She completed her Masters at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She researched the neurological potentials and effects of mindfulness on the brain. She is currently studying the practices, experiences, and expressions of mindfulness within both secular and Buddhist spheres. Mina Qiao obtained her PhD in Japanese Studies from the University of Munich (LMU) and now teaches Japanese literature at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Her recent publications include Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature (Lexington, 2022) and The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2023). Sreya Sen is currently working as an assistant professor of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India. She received her Ph.D. from the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Coming from disciplinary training in Sociology, she is enthusiastic about exploring the multifaceted nature of the spatial transformation of cities, especially in the Global South. Through her research, she engages

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About the Editors and Contributors

with the debates pivoting around class and housing; and the changing spatial imageries of cities, particularly Kolkata. Swathi Shivanand is an assistant professor at the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India. She has a Ph.D. in Modern History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her more recent work includes studying the impact of the pandemic on Bengaluru’s garment workers and charting the history of the garment industry in the city. Swathi’s interests lie in the interstitial histories of development, in particular the intersections between space, gender, and labor. Richard Simpson teaches in the English Department at the University of South Florida. His research on collaborative modes of knowledge-making through civically-engaged participatory pedagogies and digital mapping has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant. Richard is also recipient of a Humanities Center Postdoctoral Fellowship from Carnegie Mellon University and a Louis O. Kelso Fellowship from the Rutgers School of Labor and Management Relations. He has taught at the University of Miami and directed the University of Alaska Southeast Environmental Studies program. Richard is currently working on a book tracing the pedagogical motives of urban formations from postrevolutionary America to the present.

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Rubkwan Thammaboosadee is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Performing Arts, Bangkok University, Thailand. She teaches modules such as Arts and Politics, Playwriting, and Dramatic Literature, and Citizenship and Social Transformation. Her research interests focus on cultural performance and its relation to the sociopolitical context. The circle of her research on performance studies extensively covers various areas, including everyday life, political movements, happiness, neoliberalism, consumption, and social media. Additionally, she is an independent writer for stages, films, and storybooks. Her writings aim to create dialogues between the neoliberal socioeconomic conditions and their impacts on everyday life. Lee Ann Timreck is an independent folklorist and historical researcher, and since 2017 has presented at numerous professional conferences on the contributions of nineteenth-century African American art to the historical record. In 2021, she presented “Visualizing Emancipation Through the Language of Sculpture” at the Popular Culture Association annual conference. She also conducts historical research and produces finished biographies for the Library of Virginia’s Dictionary of Virginia Biography (DVB) program.

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Her recent book on the Black emancipation experience, as visually expressed through the emancipation-themed sculpture of African American artists Mary Edmonia Lewis and Meta Vaux Fuller, is being published in August 2023 by University Press of Mississippi. Elvin Xing Yifu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology from the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. His research is focused on an ethnographic study of the Koyas, a tribal community located in the region of Telangana, India. Through conducting ethnographic fieldwork with the Koyas, he explores how Koya identity is an arena of polyphonic voices where multiple articulations, contestations, and claims are constantly enacted.

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