Abstract
Studying the spatial exclusion of Dalits is distinct from looking at caste as an axis of spatial organization in the city. The “urban” is not just a location for mapping the social geography, but a mode that engenders spatial inequality. This article probes the spatial strategies of urban planning, between the 1920s and 1970s, which produced exclusionary spaces and masked the dynamics of caste within its techno-managerial rationality. It refocuses the lens of scholarship on Bombay from the urban periphery moving beyond the three popular sites of Bombay’s historiography: the factory, the neighborhoods of mill district, and the Island City. Exploring the politics of urban expansion, it illustrates how the planning regime reproduced hegemonic caste-class relations, which relegated Dalit migrants to the city’s fringes, on low-quality lands, and in segregated neighborhoods. Based on life histories, this article shows how Dalits created spaces for living, linked inextricably to their labor, and contests the abstract notions of space like “slum” that identify and mark people and their spaces. It also explores the affective relations nurtured and solidarities forged in the Dalit neighborhood on the terrain of urban politics, which recognizes Dalit actors and their struggles for redistribution and dignity.
Chembur mājhā bale qilā āhē
(Chembur is my impregnable fort)
Introduction
In his memoir—Memories of Babasaheb Ambedkar—Ramchandra Londhe, an 84-year-old resident of Chembur (a suburban locality in Bombay), reminisces the presence of Babasaheb Ambedkar in his neighborhood.
2
Londhe was a member of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF), which was the second political party founded by Ambedkar in 1942 to campaign for the constitutional rights of Dalits. Londhe’s memoir is a recollection of Dalit labor at the dumping ground and their struggle for survival in the city. This narrative conjures up the affective relations among Dalits as they encountered Ambedkar in their locality: Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar used to visit Chembur frequently. I remember two public meetings, one that took place in 1948 and other on 28 May 1952. The memory of the first meeting is most memorable and very touching . . . One day at about 3 to 3.30 pm, we organised a public meeting to be addressed by Babasaheb. The ground opposite to the Welfare Centre at Pestom Sagar Labour Camp was crowded with thousands of people. On stage Madhav Keshav Kamble’s (Kelvadekar, Pune) group Samata Pravartak Jalsa Mandal (Equality Promoters’ Jalsa Group) was performing their social awareness jalsa and songs based on the Ambedkarite movement . . . A few activists brought the news that Babasaheb had reached the railway crossing at Chembur. On hearing this, some activists and Samata Sainik Dal volunteers ran towards the railway crossing. During those days, cars could be driven only up to that point. They could not travel further because of the railway tracks. Babasaheb was about to get down and walk to the meeting place. A few energetic and enthusiastic activists came forward and said to him, “No, Babasaheb, do not climb down from the car.” Babasaheb said, “The meeting is getting unnecessarily delayed! It is not possible to take the car to the meeting ground.” “Nothing doing, you just sit in the car.” Astonished, Babasaheb and Maisaheb [Savita Ambedkar] watched all this from the car. Rajaram Aba Bhandare, Vetal Tuka Tandale, Kamble Vastad (Tasgaonkar), wrestler Ranjane Ramraje (Bhilwadikar) and others got under the car from four sides and lifted it up, crossed the railway track and put it down on the other side. Then the car could go to the meeting place. This was the most memorable and remarkable scene. It goes to show how much love and faith activists had for Babasaheb. No other leader all over the world would have received this kind of love and respect.
3
This anecdote—with its reprints and retelling—has become a part of the collective memory of generations of Dalits residing in Chembur. Writing about what makes Oral History different, Alessandro Portelli suggests, “it tells us less about events than about their meaning.” 4 The uniqueness of oral sources lies in their plot, and “the organization of the narrative reveals a great deal of the speakers’ relationships to their history,” writes Portelli. 5 During my fieldwork, Dalit activists and residents narrated the above anecdote with significant descriptive and performative variations. The point of emphasis in their narrative varied across three generations of Dalits, whose life histories I recorded. 6
While the admiration for Samata Sainik Dal (Army for Equality) was central to the first generation’s recall, 7 the second generation narrated the history of Chembur as a seat of the struggle for equality, and the third generation emphasized the presence of Babasaheb Ambedkar in their neighborhood. The protagonist of their story was the Dalit activist, the neighborhood, and Ambedkar, respectively. 8 The varied iterations of this story represent a polyphony of voices across generations of Dalit residents. The speakers endeavor to show how Chembur emerged as the base for Dalit movement in Bombay during their respective times. The story’s persistent circulation also gestures toward the inspiration that successive generations of Dalits have drawn from Ambedkar’s presence in their neighborhood.
The picture of Chembur that emerges from the above description is very different from how the colonial administration, planners, and urbanists conceived this space. Their vision was to create a “garden suburb” to achieve the dispersal of the population toward the north of Bombay City. Dalit workers do not figure in such “representations of space.” 9 Juxtaposing the planning regime’s imaginations with Dalit workers “lived space,” I bring to fore the making of Dalit Chembur.
Situated at the intersection of Urban and Dalit Studies, this article explores the spatial exclusion of Dalits in Bombay, and how the hierarchical caste relations were (re)produced in the city. Before I go into a discussion on the existing scholarship in these fields of enquiry, two terminological specifications are in order. First, when we say “Bombay,” we are referring to two geographical scales. “Bombay Island City” (henceforth Bombay City) is the core urban area created from an archipelago of seven islands during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Map 1) 10 ; and “Greater Bombay,” formed in 1951 by merging the Bombay Suburban District (BSD) with Bombay City for municipal administration (see Map 2). Second, “Chembur-Trombay” refers to Trombay Island on the north-east of Bombay City, merged with Salsette Island in 1920, and administratively reconfigured as BSD.
Bombay and its environs.
Greater Bombay showing BDD schemes in the Bombay Suburban District and the proposed Greater Bombay limits.
The scholarship on Bombay, like other metropolitan cities in India, is vast. In some ways, it converges on questions around the making of “colonial city,” processes of capital accumulation, and the anticolonial movements. While the social geography of colonial Bombay is one of the central themes of urban historiography, this scholarship mainly explores the creation of Bombay City, the separation (or overlaps) between “white town” and “native town,” and the working-class neighborhoods of “mill district.” 11 Historians focused primarily on the colonial city and the period up to the 1930s. 12 The writings on contemporary Bombay explored the processes of urbanization, deindustrialization, and the intensified forms of violence in the city after the 1970s. Thus, two kinds of gaps in the existing scholarship persist. First is the temporal gap, that is, inattention to a particular phase of urban history (middle decades of the twentieth century), and second is the spatial gap, that is, excessive focus on the core urban areas of the city to the neglect of its suburbs and peripheral regions. 13 Tracing the genealogy of the contemporary city to the processes set in motion during the interwar period, which persisted through the 1960s, and proved to be crucial in shaping the contemporary forms of urbanism, remains marginal. 14
In this article, I refocus the lens of scholarship on Bombay from the perspective of towns, villages, and neighborhoods annexed to Bombay City in the process of creating “Chembur Garden Suburb” in the 1920s and “Greater Bombay” in the 1950s. Such repositioning enables an engagement with the city from its periphery rather than its older, urban core, and thereby complicating the teleological story of urban expansion. The phenomenon of urban expansion is not natural, essential, or inevitable. It is a process by which the extension of a city’s limit is pursued, explained, and legitimized. It involves the conversion of agricultural land surrounding the city to urban building, expansion of communication networks, and extension of municipal services. A teleological story would mean explaining the expansion based on the incessant demands of the city. The idea is to reverse this gaze and explore the processes underlying such expansion.
Chembur was a peripheral region until the 1990s. It was what scholars conventionally referred to as the “peri-urban interface” or that “interstitial zone between the urban and rural.” 15 AbdouMaliq Simone, however, suggests that the periphery signifies multiple things—a “frontier,” “buffer or in-between space,” “hybrid space,” “generative space” or a “potentially distressed space.” 16 I focus on this urban periphery in two senses: first, as a physical space encompassing Bombay City’s outer limit that manifests marginalization; second, as a socio-spatial configuration that is potentially generative and subversive. Thus, on one hand, I illustrate how the planning regime, between the 1920s and 1970s, produced the hierarchical social geography, which relegated Dalits to the fringes of the city, on low-quality lands, and in segregated neighborhoods. On the other hand, I explore how the marginalized created a foothold in the city. The life histories of Dalit activists and residents of the segregated neighborhood in the suburb offered a glimpse to reflect upon Dalit life and labor beyond the three popular sites of Bombay’s historiography: the factory, the neighborhoods of mill district, and the Island City. Herein lies my epistemological choice of a Dalit neighborhood in Chembur—Pestom Sagar Labour Camp (now known as PL Lokhande Marg).
Reviewing the rise of Dalit Studies, Ramnarayan Rawat identifies three broad categories in the scholarship on Dalit society: occupation, dignity, and space. 17 While occupation was a prominent category in the colonial and postcolonial ethnographic writings, Dalit movements for recognition and redistribution have received scholarly attention since the 1970s. The third category of space has not been central to academic explorations, albeit significant in Dalit literature. Following Rawat’s schema, I discuss a similar classification of writings on Dalits in Bombay.
Sociological literature has focused on occupational segregation and exclusionary practices at the workplace based on the practice of untouchability. 18 Expanding this canvas, labor historians have explored how the caste identities persisted in the practices of labor recruitment, leisure, and settlement patterns in the city. 19 More recent scholarly investigations on Dalits follow two broad trajectories, albeit with significant overlaps. One is the movement-centric narrative of Dalit politics, and the other is burgeoning analyses of Dalit literature. Both these strands have not explored the urban space as such, and the underlying interests that produce exclusionary spaces. 20 While most of these studies are empirically grounded in the city, they treat the city as merely a backdrop, or a given, where other subjects may be explored, rather than view the city itself as produced. 21 Nevertheless, histories of Dalit movement in Bombay reveal how Dalits were mobilized, under the leadership of Ambedkar, and how they, in turn, shaped the city through conflicts, negotiations, and transgressions. 22
The question of where Dalits reside matters because it mediates the urban experience of caste and shapes the formation of Dalit political consciousness. In a recent essay, Anupama Rao makes an interesting deployment of the spatial category, explores how Bombay emerges as a character in Dalit sahitya (literature), and suggests that urban migration and modern work in colonial Bombay transformed the experience of caste and its literary expression. 23 Making a different analytical move, through an examination of photographs of Bombay’s built-environment, especially of Dalit and working-class houses, Juned Shaikh suggests how Dalits creatively used the prevailing discourse of “improvement” to demand housing built by the state on the one hand, and used those tenements to assert their own claims to the city, its public spaces, and “fashioned new identities—be it as Dalits or as workers.” 24 My approach is twofold: to probe the spatial strategies of urban planning that produced exclusionary spaces, and to reflect on the official creation of a Dalit neighborhood as a “slum.”
Methodology
I grapple with three distinct (yet related) questions in this article. First, where was Chembur located in the urban morphology of Bombay, and how was it conceived? Second, what was the nature of the sociospatial organization of the Dalit neighborhood? Third, what did Chembur as Ambedkar’s bale qilā (impregnable fort) imply from the perspective of its Dalit residents? Engaging with these questions in the three sections of this article, I straddle between archival records and oral narratives deploying the tensions, silences, and erasures, which emerge within and between these two sources.
For instance, the official reports are silent on the drought-induced displacement and migration during the 1970s, which raises serious doubts for writing contemporary urban history based only on official sources. 25 Similarly, the annual administration reports of the Municipal Commissioner are silent on the number of conservancy workers employed by the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) and their conditions of work at the dumping ground. 26 On the other hand, the low average lifespan of conservancy workers, due to the appalling conditions of their work, 27 makes the project of oral history also challenging. Hence, I reconstruct the migration and settlement of Dalit workers in the neighborhood, anecdotally and partially, based on the memories of its residents. Forging a tenuous relationship between history and memory, Paul Ricoeur suggests “that everything starts, not from the archives, but from testimony . . . we have nothing better than testimony, in the final analysis, to assure ourselves that something did happen in the past, which someone attests having witnessed in person.” 28 Drawing from Ricoeur, this article engages with the interplay of memory and history, seldom combined to craft historical narratives of the city.
Further, we could explore the question of why Ambedkar referred to Chembur as his “impregnable fort” during the 1940s and 1950s in multiple ways—by tracing the history of Ambedkar’s politics in Bombay, examining the electoral prospects of Chembur for Dalit politics, documenting the contribution of Chembur in furthering Dalits’ struggle for rights, mapping the rise of Dalit movement in different localities of Bombay. My approach is to reflect upon Dalit activists’ memory of Chembur as Ambedkar’s impregnable fort. I inverse the question from why Ambedkar thought of Chembur as a reliable place for Dalit politics to how the residents of Chembur remember and invoke Ambedkar’s presence in their neighborhood. This reversal is to look at the neighborhood from the perspective of its residents. This approach allows for exploring the history and memory of the neighborhood from below, thereby, recognizing Dalit actors and their struggle for dignity.
Re-Inscribing Caste: Spatial Planning and Practice in Bombay
East-West Zonation of the City and Suburbs
Trombay Island—located to the north-east of Bombay City (or Bombay’s core)—was one of the seven islands of Salsette. 29 In 1920, the provincial government merged the twelve villages of Trombay, divided in half between Khoti and Ryotwari land tenures (see Table 1), with the larger Salsette Island, and reconfigured it as Bombay Suburban District (BSD). The 1921 Census of India noted the “sprawl” of Bombay City and the consequent growth of “suburbs,” which led to the administrative reconstitution of Salsette and Trombay Islands. 30 Two of the twelve villages were prominent koliwadas (settlements of fishing communities): Trombay and Mahul. Since fishing was the mainstay of Kolis, the earliest inhabitants of Bombay, the koliwadas were located close to the sea and connected to the Gateway of India (in South Bombay) via the sea. There was also a settlement of Roman Catholic converts, who called themselves “East Indians,” in the khoti village of Maravli. 31 Spread amid the two koliwadas were nine other foothill gauthans (villages) inhabited by Panchkalshi, Agri, and Kunbi caste groups who cultivated fruits, vegetables, and paddy. Away from the bustle of the city, Bombay’s travel guide recommended Trombay hill for walking expeditions. 32 The view from the hill was picturesque and provided a magnificent sight of Bombay’s harbor, Thana creek, foothills, and the fields.
Statement of Trombay Island.
Source. Compiled from different sources by the author.
Report on Re-organization of Local Self-Government in Salsette, 1925. Mumbai: The Government Central Press, n.d. Appendix D, p. 13.
Annual Administration Report of the Municipal Commissioner of Greater Bombay for the year 1951-52, Part II. Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay. Mumbai: Bombay Central Press, 1952. Statement A, p. 7.
The Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency, Vol. XIII, Thana, Part I. Mumbai: The Government Central Press, 1882.
In 1907, the colonial government considered the outward growth of Bombay City and the utilization of Trombay Island for the settlement of wealthier classes through a policy of “rigorous suburban development.” 33 This spatial strategy was to offset the escalating pressure on land in the crowded southern areas of Bombay City. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce considered Trombay as the most suitable location for the elites, after Malabar and Cumballa Hills on the western coast. According to the Chamber, “On the breezy slopes of Trombay the increasing commercial aristocracy will find all space it needs for half a century.” 34 The unavailability of easy access to Bombay City, however, made Trombay less attractive, and the consensus emerging among the business magnates was to maintain the status quo on land-use. 35 Consequently, the urban policy of 1909 recommended reserving the western shores for wealthier classes, Salsette Island for the middle classes, and locating the working classes close to their places of work in the eastern and northern parts of Bombay City. 36
Although the government temporarily shelved the project of suburban expansion, Dalit migrants began creating a foothold in Bombay by filling the low-lying areas of Chembur village. Reclaiming the marshy areas was in line with the colonial policy of urban “improvement” to thoroughly drain the city. The notable difference, however, was the legitimacy accorded to this process of reclamation. While the state converted the reclaimed land, near Malabar and Cumballa hills on the western coast, to valuable real estate, which was occupied by the city’s elites, cementing the class-based spatial organization of Bombay City, 37 Dalits occupied the self-reclaimed marshy areas on the eastern inland. The result was the creation of differentiated property, and consequently, the value of the land. This difference of state’s recognition and the hierarchy of lands (and its people) was a significant marker of East-West zonation of what would eventually be known as “Greater Bombay.”
Heterogeneous Suburbs, Differentiated Neighborhoods
The colonial government sought to reclaim lands for habitation during the second half of the nineteenth century, while the focus was on annexing new territories to Bombay City during the early twentieth century. Institutions like the Bombay City Improvement Trust (BIT) and the Bombay Development Department (BDD) played a significant role in shaping the course of urban development and crystallizing the social geography of Bombay. 38 Set up following the outbreak of the plague epidemic in 1898, the colonial state empowered the BIT to sanitize the “native town” and undertake aggressive urban planning. 39 The BIT seized upon slum clearance as a fundamental aspect of urban renewal; “a discourse of ‘improvement’ became the cornerstone of colonial attempts to define a new phase in the evolution of the city as a modern metropolis at the onset of the twentieth century,” writes Hazareesingh. 40 Despite the Trust’s failure to carry out its stated objectives during the thirty-five years of its existence, Kidambi shows how “its policies had profound, albeit unintended, consequences for the development of Bombay’s spatial organization and social geography.” 41
The BDD was set up in 1920 to address the “housing famine” after the end of the First World War, which particularly affected the working classes and seen as Bombay’s most acute social problem. 42 In addition to the construction of industrial housing, the BDD enjoyed a broader mandate. Three key projects of the BDD were (1) Back Bay reclamation scheme to cater to the wealthier classes for residences, offices, entertainment, as well as for government and private buildings; (2) industrial housing scheme for the working classes; and (3) suburban schemes for the middle-classes (see Map 2). 43 Historians have shown how the Back Bay scheme failed, how the industrial housing was a nonstarter, and the suburban projects of the BDD were in contrast to the BIT’s mixed-class suburban utopia. 44 By the end of the 1920s, the BDD folded into the Development Department of the provincial government as it got embroiled in what was known as the “Back Bay Scandal.” 45 Notwithstanding opposition, the BDD carried out one of the suburban schemes in Trombay Island, that is, Suburban Scheme III (also known as Chembur Garden City). 46 The urban development projects of the BDD reflected the land-use proposed by the business magnates. They engendered class-caste based social geography even in the outlying areas of Bombay City, as I illustrate further.
The spatial conception of Suburban Scheme III involved the division of Trombay into two zones. The BDD earmarked the north-east for “offensive trades” like tanneries, milch cattle stables, slaughterhouse meant to be shifted outside Bombay City, and categorized the north-west section as a “residential area” for housing the “lower middle classes.” 47 While the former plan did not take off immediately, it formed the basis for the “industrial location policy” in the period after Independence. 48 The latter scheme produced the grid layout, boulevards, uniformly divided plots, and bungalows, which fostered the spatial division between Chembur East and Chembur West along the Great Indian Peninsula (GIP) railway line.
The “Chembur Garden City” scheme was ambitious in its conception. It intended to create 2,500 building sites (on 357 acres of land measuring around 600 sq. yards per plot), provide water supply and drainage facilities. 49 However, the BDD managed to dispose of merely 100 plots (of 70,000 sq. yards) to St. Anthony’s Homes Co-operative Housing Society by 1925, 50 and provide water supply connection to 45 plots in 1928. 51 These plots were solely leased to the members of St. Anthony’s Church Parish and remained exclusionary. 52 The social composition and built-form of this locality were in stark contrast to Chembur gaothan in its vicinity and the Dalit settlement (Pestom Sagar Labour Camp) across the railway line.
The Maharashtra State Gazetteer describes Chembur as “wilderness” before its development as “a residential area.” 53 Notwithstanding this statist characterization, Chembur gaothan was a settlement of Panchkalshis (who refer to themselves as Somvanshi Kshatriya Pathar), and they were one of the oldest inhabitants of Trombay Island, along with Kolis, Agris, and East Indians (described earlier). The precincts of the gaothan had narrow and winding lanes that culminated at the center, which was a community space dotted with wells and a temple complex. 54 This neighborhood was referred to as “Hindu Chembur” to distinguish it from the neighboring Christian locality of St. Anthony’s Homes. The land surrounding the gaothan was cultivated by the villagers, and acquired by the BDD for Chembur Garden City Scheme. 55 This process was one of converting land-use from agricultural to urban building resulting in the shift of its occupants.
I shall discuss the making of Dalit neighborhood in the next section. It is worth mentioning here that the GIP Railways took over the Municipal kutchra (garbage) line from Kurla to Deonar, and opened it for passenger traffic in 1924. 56 This line ran through the villages of Chembur, Borla, and Deonar driving a wedge between the two sides of the railway stations. The physical division of these villages pronounced the social distance between the eastern side occupied by wealthy Roman Catholics and middle-class Panchkalshis, while Dalits occupied the western side. The East-West zonation of Chembur remains a discernible feature of this suburb till date. Although the BDD failed to reinvigorate the outlying areas as Bombay’s suburbs, it laid the foundation for locally differentiated and exclusionary neighborhoods.
Urban Expansion, Reproducing Exclusion
While the growth of Chembur-Trombay was insignificant during the 1920s and 1930s (see Table 1), its expansion was phenomenal in the period after Independence. It was owing to the spectacular growth in the population with a resultant increase in the demand for housing. The population of Bombay (including the city and suburbs) increased from 1.8 million in 1941 to almost 3 million in 1951 (see Table 2). This growth is attributed to wartime inflation in economic opportunities, expansion of labor-intensive textile industry, and the emerging capital-intensive industries, along with the influx of refugees from Sind and Punjab following the Partition of India. 57 During 1941-1951, the decadal growth rate of Bombay City was around 56 percent compared with 114 percent in BSD, which was the highest during the twentieth century. The suburban growth continued to be higher during the 1960s and 1970s, even as it drastically reduced in Bombay City.
Population of Bombay City, Bombay Suburban District, and Greater Bombay.
Source. Table 3.1 The growth of population in Greater Mumbai from 1901 to 1991. Regional Plan for Mumbai Metropolitan Region (1996-2011). Mumbai: Bombay Metropolitan Regional Planning Board, 1995, p. 33.
The underlying impetus for this suburban growth was the reiteration of the spatial strategy, that is, to enhance the outward growth of Bombay City during the mid-twentieth century. In 1945, the government set up the “Bombay City and Suburbs Post-War Development Committee” with a mandate to undertake suburban development and town planning. The Committee recommended the dual process of decongesting the core and decentralizing the industries. 58 Decongestion was in terms of the number of people who lived in the core urban area; earmarking different localities to be designated and designed for various classes of people. Decentralization meant reducing the concentration of industries and mixed land-use functions performed by older parts of the city. The Committee also proposed the formation of “Greater Bombay” by annexing the villages and towns adjacent to Bombay City and subsuming varied forms of local self-government within the BMC. 59 The macro-level tools employed to plan the built-form of “Greater Bombay” was physical “zoning”, by fixing the functions and users of land, and formulating the “Master Plan.” 60 Overall, this plan favored any form of “development” toward the north of the Island City. It is plausible to argue that the physical geography of Bombay’s core could enable only a north-ward growth. Within this supposedly “inevitable” growth trajectory, however, it is pertinent to explore the politics of urban expansion.
Gyan Prakash has analyzed the discursive aspects of modernist planning initiated by urbanists and architects between 1940s and 1960s, which culminated in enlisting the modernizing state for the idea of “New Bombay.” 61 For this article, I zoom into the specifics of urban plans for Chembur-Trombay, which shows the earmarking of this territory for two distinct functions, following the spatial strategy of the BDD, albeit with slight modifications. First, it was primarily zoned as a “residential area” by the Post-War Development Committee in 1946, and proposed for housing one lakh middle-class people as it was in the vicinity of Bombay City and well connected by the suburban railway. 62 Second, it recommended new docks here to divert the port traffic and prevent congestion in the core urban areas. 63 The Master Plan for Greater Bombay fervently reiterated both these proposals in 1948, 64 due to the unprecedented growth of the city following the Partition of the subcontinent, and a more broad-based industrial diversification of the city’s economy after the Second World War.
Chembur-Trombay was, thus, divided into two zones. A “residential area” for housing the Partition refugees, industrial workers, and the lower middle classes; a “restricted industrial area” for large-scale petroleum refineries and chemical industries located close to the deep-water jetty of Pir Pau. 65 Although the plans proposed to shift the “offensive trades” to the extreme north, the BMC lodged the slaughterhouse and tanneries in Chembur. Within two decades, the concentration of noxious and polluting industries produced this region as the infamous “Gas Chembur.” 66
The industrialization of Trombay necessitated the creation of housing units for its workers. The Bombay Housing Board embarked upon furthering the housing agenda of postwar reconstruction. It was set up in January 1949 after two years of the “Industrial Truce Resolution” passed by the Industrial Conference in December 1947 at Delhi. 67 It was the first provincial government initiative to formulate a long-term housing policy and undertake direct as well as assisted construction. 68 It built housing colonies for the industrial workers close to Chembur railway station. 69 Chembur expanded further with the allotment of former military barracks for housing the poorer sections of Sindhi refugees in Wadhavli village. 70 The Housing Board renovated the barracks as well as constructed new buildings; this locality is a thriving neighborhood of Sindhis, popularly referred to as “Chembur/Sindhi Camp.”
Although a wide gap between housing shortage and creation of housing stock remained, 71 it is noteworthy that the Housing Board created housing typologies consistent with the “income” of its residents by providing “appropriate” built-form and access to amenities. 72 The government departments, in charge of providing accommodation for their employees, replicated this pattern based on occupation and bureaucratic rank. For instance, the BMC built and/or allotted tenements in segregated localities or apartments for conservancy workers. These chawls or “labor camps” were dispersed throughout the city, yet the eastern suburbs (administrative wards of L, M, N, S, and T) housed most of them; five were in Chembur alone, and the largest one was Pestom Sagar Labour Camp. 73 In July 1958, a special correspondent of the Times of India characterized the division of public housing as reinforcement of hierarchy in the city, calling it the “new chaturvarnya.” 74 Central to this conception was the caste-class based ordering of the city and its residential spaces, which remains masked under the techno-managerial rationality of urban planning.
The foregoing discussion shows that Chembur-Trombay was a heterogeneous space in terms of occupation, class, and community of its inhabitants. The various koliwadas (settlements of fishing communities), gauthans (villages), working-class apartments, middle and upper-middle-class bungalows, municipal quarters, and bastis (settlements) of Dalit workers contributed to this diversity. The neighborhoods of this suburb were, however, distinct, homogeneous, and exclusionary. Each locality was marked along “community” lines and constituted by specific religious and caste groups. The Dalit neighborhood of Pestom Sagar Labour Camp was not an enclosed space but a segregated one, and the spatial strategies of urban planning produced this exclusion at the neighborhood level in colonial and postcolonial Bombay.
Geographies of Difference: Making of a Dalit Neighborhood
Migration and Settlement
Dalit migrants began settling in Chembur from the turn of the twentieth century when the BMC decided to transport the city’s waste to its outskirts and reclaim the marshy land in this locality. The village was sparsely populated (see Table 1), and Dalits settled in the vicinity of their work. The colonial government, pursuing its expansionist and sanitary agenda, acquired 823 acres of land in Chembur village for dumping garbage, 75 and the BMC leased the reclaimed land for cultivation, fishing, skinning of dead animals and private industries.
Dalit migrants mostly resided in self-constructed huts on government land on the western side of the GIP railway line. They labored to produce this land by reclaiming the low-lying marshy areas from the Thane creek. The BMC also rented the run-down barracks left behind by the English troops after the Second World War to Dalit safai kamgar (conservancy workers), 76 and the Bombay Housing Board rebuilt the concrete structures in 1960. 77 The self-constructed huts and military barracks were two distinct housing typologies of Dalit residence at Pestom Sagar Labour Camp. 78
Londhe, whom we met at the beginning of this essay, narrated how he came to live in Chembur, the concentration of Dalits in this neighborhood, and the nature of work at the dumping ground: My muluk [native place] is Sangli. I came to Bombay when I was 4 years old with my mother, father and sisters. Initially, we stayed with my maternal uncle. He worked in Ghatkopar and made leather belts used by the military. He had a big jhopada [hut] near Chembur railway station, and we stayed with him. I have lived in Chembur for most of my life. When I got a Central Government job, I was allotted the government quarters in Koliwada at Antophill. I lived there only for 10 years from 1980 to 1990, and after that I came to stay here [Samrat Ashok Nagar Co-operative Housing Society in Chembur]. . . . When we came to Bombay, my father worked in the BMC as a sweeper. All the waste of Bombay was collected together at Mahalaxmi, which was filled into 36 open wagons of the Kurla-Deonar Railway [KD Railway]. Then these wagons were taken from Mahalaxmi via Dadar and Kurla to the dumping ground at Govandi and Deonar. My father used to pull down the waste from these carriages and spread it out on the marshy land. He was a member of the Union formed by the labourers working on the dumping ground. . . . Babasaheb Ambedkar used to visit Chembur once in fifteen days. The reason for his visit was that a very large number of the residents of Pestom Sagar Labour Camp belonged to our community [Mahar]. They had migrated from Sangli, Satara, Nashik and Nagar in large numbers.
79
This excerpt shows the concentration of Dalits in the lower rungs of municipal labor, their association with the filth of the city, and their life determined by the imperatives of work at the dumping ground. During the first decade of the twentieth century, an estimated number of 500 Mahars resided in Chembur and worked for the BMC. 80 By 1920s, the sweepers of Bombay were almost exclusively Mahars (although not all Mahars in the city were sweepers), and the muccadams (jobbers) belonged to other castes and religions: caste-Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Indian Christians. 81 In an insightful analysis of the sweepers of Bombay, Jim Masselos suggests that the “entrapment” of Dalits stemmed not only due to their low-ritual position in the Hindu-caste hierarchy but also “from an urban context and the needs of urban [colonial] government.” 82
At Pestom Sagar Labour Camp, kinship ties played out in the process of creating a space for living and finding employment in the city. As people from particular villages or districts settled together, they named the streets after their villages, social reformers, or visionaries from their communities.
83
These names were symbolic of the caste, native town, or occupation of its residents. At the material level, living in proximity to their relatives or acquaintances provided a sense of comfort, security, and bonding in this vast and anonymous city.
84
Suresh Sawant describes how the early migrants created a mutually supportive environment in the neighborhood: In those days, if there were even a single relative or acquaintance’s house in Bombay, then people would come from the village, stay there at night, have their meals and then go out to find work during the day. This was their first thikana (base) in Bombay. Our house was only 10*12 sq. feet, but there would be around 15-20 people staying at one point in time. It was not that everyone had to sleep inside the house. Some would sleep inside the house; some would find space outside in the street, others would lie down near the gutter or wherever they would find someplace to sleep. Finding a place for sleeping was not an issue, but they needed to have some thikana in the city to go back to.
85
Differences also manifested in the neighborhood based on the occupation of land and size of jhopada (hut) during the 1940s-1950s. A few interviewees, for instance, provided conflicting versions about a piece of land occupied by a particular Dalit family from Kolhapur, considered to be the “richest” in the neighborhood. Ramchandra Londhe held that the land belonged to Raute from Chembur gaothan and used for grazing buffaloes by this Dalit family; Hausabai Handore claimed that they bought the land from a Brahmin widow and cultivated paddy; Rekhabai Kamble said that it belonged to the BMC and used for cultivation of paddy and maize. 86 All three of them agreed that the land was below Tata power cables where the Dalit family eventually built many huts, named it Malekarwadi (after their village in Pandala taluka), and invited many Dalits from their district. Without trying to resolve the complex issue of ownership, I look at the tenancy relations within the neighborhood among the various streams of Dalit migrants. Since the entire area was low-lying and the land occupied was minimal (out of the 823 acres acquired by the BMC in 1897 for reclamation), there was much scope for the early occupants to build large huts, which they eventually partitioned and rented out.
Multifarious streams of migrants expanded this neighborhood. From the 1970s onward, two shifts in the intra-state and intra-city migration were salient: more migrants began to arrive in Bombay from Marathwada than Konkan region,
87
and Dalits in the city began to move toward the eastern suburbs of Greater Bombay.
88
Consequently, Dalit settlements in Pestom Sagar began to grow and spread out. The existing Dalit residents divided their dwellings and sub-let them to make room for the newer migrants. A significant number of poor Muslims also moved to this neighborhood and created their separate localities, like Quadriya Nagar and Amir Baug in the 1960s. In the following excerpt, Suresh Sawant recollects, based on his family’s experience, how Dalit mill workers shifted toward the eastern suburbs of Bombay: When my parents came to Bombay they lived in someone else’s house on rent in BDD chawl and my father used to work in Kohinoor Mill in Dadar. But as the families grew, they were moving to these newly made jopadpatti. At that time Sion was the boundary of Bombay; Chembur had only a couple of villages, apart from the Raj Kapoor bungalow and some other bungalows on the hills. This area was mostly daldal (quicksand) or marshy land. Some people were filling up these marshy areas and making their hutments in Chembur. My parents also got to know that some jhopadi were available on less rent, and this news spread in the mills. So, many more people, like my father, moved and began to live in these bastis, mostly in Chembur but also in some other faraway places where these jopadpattis were available. It was a cheaper option for many people, and they used to get an entire jhopadi to live in, unlike the shared accommodation in Worli. They used to get these houses for 15 rupees rent, and so they moved to these places.
89
In the 1970s, drought-induced Dalit migrants from Marathwada also occupied land in this area. Despite efforts of the government to restrict “refugee” movement from creating “additional strain and stresses,” via relief works, on the “overcrowded city” of Bombay,
90
an EPW correspondent in November 1974 reported, the stream of people coming to Bombay from the villages is unabated. Most of these migrants are from the districts of Aurangabad, Osmanabad, and Parbhani of the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. A large number are from Buldhana, Sholapur, and Nagar. Some have even come from Gulbarga in Karnataka state. A majority of the migrants are Buddhists; a large number belong to the Matang community (one of the scheduled castes in Maharashtra); and several of the others belong to such backward castes/tribes as Laman, Vanjari, Pardhi or Dhor. A few belong to the upper castes. Some are owners of four to five acres of land, but most are landless labourers or small farmers cum farm labourers.
91
This rare report of the time also spoke of 10,000-odd migrants who lived on the railway platforms until the police evicted them, forcing them to live on the streets along the central and western railway line. 92 Chembur also provided refuge for such drought-induced migrants. 93 Their settlements were called dushkal wadi, later renamed as Panchasheel Nagar (near Amar Mahal junction), Mahatma Phule Nagar (PL Lokhande Marg), Bhimwadi (Govandi), Anna Bhau Sathe Nagar (Mankhurd), and Rahul Nagar (Vashi Naka). 94 These names are of symbolic significance to Dalit migrants, and it is common to find many bastis with such names in the city.
The drought of 1970-1972 circulates in the collective memory of Dalits residing in Chembur as the worst drought in Maharashtra as well as an event that brought to fore class differences between the rural and urban poor, and among Dalit communities. Suresh Sawant narrates the destitution of migrants and their initial negotiations to find refuge in the city: The vulnerabilities of those who came to Bombay during the 1970s were much severe both in the village and in the city. They were people from our community itself [Buddhist]; but Marathwada was a more backward region than ours [Konkan]. They were poorer, less educated, not very clean and culturally different. Their initial options were either begging or rag picking. When they came to our houses to beg, even our relatives did not treat them equally. They settled in Mahatma Phule Nagar in our basti, but our people used to consider them lower in the hierarchy. Since we came to the city earlier and lived here for a longer period, our community [Buddhist] itself used to look down upon them. Most of them eventually worked with the Telephone company [BSNL], and their job was to dig the roads, lay the cable lines and so on. They managed to settle with a permanent job in the city over a period of time. But the subsequent generations of migrants did not even manage to get permanent jobs. They were engaged in similar work but on a contractual basis.
95
This account provides insights about the economic and cultural differences among Dalit migrants, which were discernible in their everyday lives and how it played out in this neighborhood. My description about the internal dynamics of the neighborhood helps to avoid framing it as a homogeneous space, although it is crucial not to lose sight of the overall spatial exclusion produced at the level of the neighborhood in Bombay. The segregation of Pestom Sagar Labour Camp itself facilitated and produced an assertive Dalit politics that raised questions of the dignity of labor and belonging in the city. The next section explores the terrain of urban politics and salience of the neighborhood that remains entwined with Ambedkar’s legacy.
Neighborhood, Memory, and Politics
Narrating the sensory experience of laboring, the violence of untouchability in the city, and caste discrimination by municipal authorities, Ramchandra Londhe recounts his childhood memory of Ambedkar’s visit to the dumping ground. He provides a vivid account of what Ambedkar might have felt on this occasion: “We the workers of KD Railway clean up Bombay’s waste. We get injured by glass, tin and nails in the waste. These injuries never get treated and we get no medicine. We do not get any infrastructural and basic facilities. We have to work as contract workers.” The safai kamgar expressed many more such complaints. Babasaheb heard all of them quietly and with a long sigh said, “What is the kind of work you do? Where do you work? I want to see it!” To that few of them said, “No, no, Babasaheb! Please do not come to our workplace. It is very dirty. All the waste of Bombay is accumulated there. You cannot stand its smell.” Babasaheb asked them, “Then how come you tolerate it?” One of the workers said, “Our sense of smell has gone dead. We are used to that dirty nauseating smell now.” “Still, I want to come. I want to see myself the place and nature of your work.” Babasaheb was insistent. . . . Babasaheb and Bhatankar and other leaders were discussing the issues faced by the workers. Meanwhile, a strange drama was taking place outside. Few of workers had gone to the K. D. Railways office at Chembur station. They were requesting an officer named Kulkarni for ladis (a special vehicle described below). “Why do you need the ladis?” asked Kulkarni. “Our leader Babasaheb has come. We want to take him on ladis to the place where we dump the waste at Govandi.” Babu Sable (Vitekar) replied boldly. “We do not give the ladis to Mahars! It is only to be used by Railway officers!” replied Kulkarni. The workers were angry. Babu was very angry and he stormed out. He took a tin can and filled it with cow dung and human excreta, and he ran back into Kulkarni’s office. Before anyone realised it, he threw it at Kulkarni. Kulkarni’s face and dress were soaked with the dirt. The mob was very angry that Kulkarni had refused to give the ladis. Ladis is a kind of small vehicle having four wheels that runs on the railway tracks. This vehicle is used by the track inspectors of the railways. Two workers push the ladis by both the hands; slowly it would gather speed and the workers would stop pushing. After sometime the ladis becomes slow and the workers push it to speed up again. Dr. Ambedkar and other leaders were unaware of this drama outside. Babasaheb looked at his watch and said that it was getting late and they should start. Babasaheb along with Bhatankar and other workers of KD Railway started walking towards the Govandi dumping ground. After walking almost a kilometre, Babasaheb and the crowd stopped at the spot where the train stopped for dumping the waste, and the stench was so strong that everyone tried to cover their nose with handkerchiefs to avoid the awful, nauseating smell. Waste from all over the Bombay was there. The awful smell of decaying dead bodies of dogs and cats was enough to cause a headache. At that spot, the workers emptied the wagons daily standing amidst all the waste. They then had to spread the waste on the ground. In the process of spreading the waste, ants and insects and whatnot would crawl onto the legs of the workers. The ant and insect bites often caused allergic reactions erupting in a rash and red boils. They caused itching all over the body. The tin, glass pieces in the waste often cut into the workers’ bodies. Lack of proper medical attention caused these wounds to suppurate and become septic. Workers also got tetanus. Topping it all was the constant awful smell, all the time, all the seasons, whether summer, winter or rains, workers had to deal with waste. Babasaheb was shaken after observing this site. There were tears in his eyes. He was very upset with the fact that workers had to suffer all this for their survival, to fill their stomach, and yet remain poor. Experiencing this dreadful reality of the workers, he made a vow to change it. He was sad that the people of his community had to do such work. He told the workers, “Come, I can’t see any more of this hardship and suffering in your lives. I will make all efforts to change the situation.” With this, he turned back but was very disturbed. He had experienced and witnessed a very disturbing reality. He must not have slept well that day in Rajgruha (his residence in Dadar). He must have tossed about restless all through the night. Next day Babasaheb met the Governor of the State of Bombay and presented a written statement to him. In that written statement he had asked him to address the problems faced by the KD Railways contract workers involved in clearing waste sympathetically and from a humanitarian perspective, to provide them with proper facilities, dispensaries, medicines and first aid services. Immediate action was taken with sympathetic consideration about the issues raised by Babasaheb in his written statement. Immediate directives were given to the officers and the Parsi contractor to improve the situation and provide proper facilities. In response to his orders, workers were provided with a hat-like leather cap. They were also given gumboot and supply of bandages to protect their leg, and one blanket every year. A dispensary was started within KD Railway office. Workers got these facilities and were reassured. A leader like Babasaheb who could understand and feel himself the difficulties and pain of his people is like a Mount Everest in this humanity. That is why the story of his life of struggle is a beacon for the lives of all our marginalised people (emphasis added).
96
How do we read Londhe’s memory about Dalit workers’ past in the city? The difficulty of crafting a historical truth or narrating the lived experience of Dalit workers is palpable. Nonetheless, it captures the voices of those erased out of history and shapes alternative versions of the past. In this long account of Ambedkar’s empathetic leadership, Londhe foregrounds the stigmatized life of Dalits in the city. The precarity of laboring in proximity to the city’s refuse (garbage, scraps, shit, and carcasses) marks the continuum between Dalit life and urban materiality. It raises an ethical question about Dalit labor and the urban experience of Dalits. We could read Londhe’s memory as an antidote to forgetting the laboring experience of Dalits and the structural violence of caste in the city. It is also a form of critique of the “urban” that perpetuates caste inequities and embodies the violence of everyday life.
Another aspect of Londhe’s recollection is the mobilization of Dalit workers, and how they forged solidarities of anti-caste and working-class politics in the neighborhood. During my fieldwork, I often heard accounts of mass meetings organized in Chembur, and how the workers participated in protests/satyagraha. 97 The welfare center in the neighborhood, used as a vyayamshala (gymnasium) where the children played carom and exercised, 98 was the site where Dalits organized their political meetings, performed parades of Samata Sainik Dal, and rehearsed their performances of Ambedkari jalsa. 99 This center was significant in the life of the neighborhood as it inspired children and young men who attended Ambedkar’s meetings, heard his speeches, and eulogized his presence, as recounted in the introductory anecdote. The welfare center was a precursor to the Buddha Vihara, an important space and institution in Dalit-Buddhist neighborhoods, which flourishes to date.
Pestom Sagar Labour Camp, where a majority of its residents worked as safai kamgar, was also crucial for labor politics in Bombay. From the 1930s to 1950s, Chembur was one of the main sites of mobilization by the Bombay Municipal Kamgar Sangh (BMKS). Four years after its formation, in 1939, the BMKS boasted a membership of 1600 municipal workers in Bombay. 100 The members were both Gujarati and Marathi speaking Dalits, and the latter group constituted largely Mahars who were most active in the organization. During the initial period, the BMKS (under the leadership of Ambedkar) negotiated with the BMC on behalf of conservancy workers for an increase in minimum wages and improvement in their working conditions. 101 The safai kamgar formed a crucial base for the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in the provincial election of 1937, and for the All India Scheduled Caste Federation (SCF), launched in 1942, to ensure the constitutional safeguards for Dalits. These political parties were short-lived. However, their influence and legacy were significant—especially as models for political organization and modes of mobilizing Dalits—thereby having a pervasive impact on the later course of Dalit movement. 102
One of the defining moments for the safai kamgar was their prolonged five-month-strike, demanding higher wages, free municipal accommodation, and better working conditions. 103 Nine thousand municipal laborers struck work on May 13, 1949. The Municipal Commissioner of the BMC B.K. Patel considered the workers’ demands as “extravagant” and termed the strike as “illegal” under the Bombay Public Security Measures Act, 1947. 104 On the very next day, the police detained the office-bearers of BMKS, P.T. Borale, G.J. Mane, and J.G. Batnakar; the Municipal Commissioner refused any negotiation with the labor leaders unless the strike was withdrawn unconditionally and the workers resumed their duties. 105
The Congress Party, which succeeded the colonial government in the 1946 provincial election, was not in favor of the strikers holding the government to “ransom.” They requisitioned military troops and home guards to assist in keeping the city clean, even as it recruited casual workers. 106 The opposition leaders of the Socialist Party met the Home Minister Morarji Desai, urging him to form an “ad hoc committee,” which would interview the leaders in jail to find an “amicable solution” and end the strike. 107 Despite the opposition’s appeal to the Congress government to abandon its “repressive policy” of arresting and detaining labor leaders, 108 sixty-three conservancy workers and three muccadams were sentenced to three and four months of rigorous imprisonment, respectively. 109 Twelve thousand workers (out of a total of 18,000) demanded the release of their labor leaders as the strike progressed. 110 In less than a month, the BMC dismissed 238 strikers from municipal services and threatened them of eviction from their residential quarters and loss of provident fund. 111 The workers, however, remained unperturbed even by the ultimatum of mass dismissal, and the strike gained momentum, reaching a critical stage by July 1949. 112
The BMKS sought the intervention of Ambedkar, Law Minister to the Government of India, 113 after talks between B.G. Kher, Premier of Bombay, and the opposition leaders failed, 114 as did attempts by labor leaders to persuade the Municipal Commissioner to make certain concessions. 115 Ambedkar’s biographer Dhananjay Keer writes that Ambedkar was inclined to intervene but to break the strength of the mobilization he was given an ultimatum: to either resign as the President of BMKS or give up his seat in the Constituent Assembly. 116 The workers persuaded Ambedkar not to quit from the drafting committee of the Indian Constitution since it was more in the interests of Dalits that he remained in the Assembly. 117
Significantly, the Bombay High Court concluded that the strike was “lawful,” ordered the release of labor leaders, and set aside the conviction of municipal workers. 118 After four months of protracted strike, the BMC reluctantly agreed to refer the dispute for adjudication under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. 119 The BMKS subsequently withdrew the strike due to the unrelenting stand of the BMC, 120 and the Municipal Commissioner withdrew his consent to submit the issue for arbitration. 121 Withdrawal of the strike had severe repercussions for the workers leading to their geographical dispersal, and contractual employment became the norm. 122 The BMC also privatized the work of unloading the garbage at the dumping ground, and contracted M/s Anderson Dawn & Co. to carry out this essential municipal service. 123 The conservancy workers continued as contract workers until the representation by Dalit Panthers (Raja Dhale’s faction), at the peak of national Emergency in 1976, when the BMC hired them as permanent Class IV employees. 124 As a note of recognition, Kisan Mane, a Dalit activist from Chembur, led the delegation of conservancy workers to persuade the Panthers to take up their concern with the state government. Mane also wrote newspaper articles but published them in the name of Raja Dhale since the former was in government employment at the time.
After describing this momentous strike of safai kamgar, based on newspaper reports of the period, a question arises as to why is it forgotten by the subsequent generations of Dalits residing in the neighborhood? What are we to make of this silence? The complexity of memory is bound up with the process of forgetting. 125 Although the “idea of an exhaustive narrative is performatively impossible” and the narrative contains a “selective dimension,” as Paul Ricoeur suggests, the narrative configuration provides insights into the “ideologizing of memory.” 126 The collective memory of Dalit residents about Ambedkar’s presence in the neighborhood constructs an image of the past where they commemorate the leader as the agent of history. In other words, their recollection is closely tied to make Ambedkar the protagonist of a heroic struggle for self-respect and social recognition. It, however, elides the material impacts of the strike (and its “failure”) upon the everyday lives of Dalit workers.
Re-Producing Exclusionary Spaces
From Below: Exit Strategies and Entanglements
Ravi Ahuja in a recent essay illustrates how the municipal sweepers’ strikes were becoming the order of the day in the last years of the 1940s “not only in large cities with long histories of worker and Dalit mobilization but also in numerous middle towns.” 127 Ahuja traces the crisis of labor after the Second World War, and argues that the late 1940s was a “catalytic moment in the history of Indian labour” in the sense that it witnessed “the visibility of workers in the wider political arena.” 128 He also posits that it was the “climactic moment of India’s urban labour force in the twentieth century.”
Chembur’s Dalit activists and residents forgetting the momentous 1949 safai kamgar strike reflects a shift in the register of Dalit politics in Bombay. The question of Dalit labor began to recede to the background. It shifted toward the attainment of education, conversion to Buddhism, and the development of a Buddhist identity from the mid-twentieth century onward. Ambedkar made significant strides for motivating the conservancy workers to educate their subsequent generations, which became central to the lives of many Dalits in this neighborhood and laid the foundation for their upward mobility.
The pursuit of education echoed not only in the political agenda focused on the reservation policy but also in the local negotiations with the state to achieve redistribution of land for housing in Bombay. For instance, the first-generation educated youth from Pestom Sagar Labour Camp formed a group of 50 members and demanded land to build their “own” houses. In 1960, the state government granted them three acres and five ghuntas of marshy land for 99 years as leasehold property in Chembur. 129 The members then formed a Co-operative Housing Society (CHS) named Samrat Ashok Nagar and undertook the construction of a modest house measuring 450 sq. ft. They were not related to each other and did not hail from the same taluka or district, as we saw in the case of their earlier settlement in the neighborhood. The commonality that brought them together was the attainment of education, higher levels of government employment, and their conversion to Buddhism.
This exit strategy was the first concerted attempt, by educated and well-employed Dalits, to move away from the impoverished neighborhood of Pestom Sagar Labour Camp. 130 Furthermore, in my conversations with the residents of Samrat Ashok Nagar, first-generation Dalits denied the embodied experience of segregation in Bombay. Moving from rural Konkan to Bombay in the 1930s, and working at the higher echelons of government service, engendered a sense of liberation, which was a significant experience of their life in the city. 131 However, the second-generation Dalits, born and raised in the city, pointed to the structural workings of caste-based segregation in two fundamental ways. First, the land allotted by the state government was marshy and in the urban periphery, which was uninhabitable and evaded any attempt of redistribution by progressive policies. 132 Second, there are two possibilities for improving this residential complex in the future but both are mired in distinct complexities. 133 On one hand, the self-re-development of the housing society might not attract caste-Hindus as prospective tenants or buyers of flats in a Dalit apartment. On the other hand, inviting a builder might necessitate declaring the CHS as a “slum” to enjoy certain financial incentives. 134
Samrat Ashok Nagar exemplifies the urban Dalits’ paradoxical experience of prospects for upward mobility and the entanglements of caste and housing in the city. In the 1950s, the struggle for redistribution of land was salient for one section of Dalits. Despite their differential access to resources, they made collective efforts to invest in their specific long-term aspiration and urban existence. It provided them avenues for social mobility and economic advancement away from the segregated neighborhood that provided no security of tenure. However, they moved to another locality that was environmentally precarious, and they remain stigmatized. It shows how the caste determinant may be reinvented in a new guise to maintain distance from Dalits and their places. On the other hand, their mobility failed to challenge the ownership model of property and its modes of legality, which continued to haunt the Dalit residents who were left behind. I elaborate this in the next subsection on how the label of “slum” emerged to characterize the cityscape at the urban periphery. Paying attention to the structural conditions can offer insights into the political possibilities and limits of particular forms of agency.
To further elucidate the (re)production of segregated Dalit Chembur, and the structural violence of caste in the city, consider the intertwined relation between Dalit labor and municipal housing. 135 First, the quarters of different rungs and departments of municipal staff were located in different localities or separate apartments. The BMC, a powerful institution of urban local governance in the country, thus, maintained and perpetuated the segregation of buildings and areas according to occupation and bureaucratic rank. Second, the municipal housing in Pestom Sagar Labour Camp was mainly for conservancy workers who were permanently employed by the BMC. Hence, large numbers of safai kamgar were not even entitled to these quarters because they were contract workers. Third is the perpetuation of conservancy labor among the children, family members, or relatives of safai kamgar. It continues till date due to not only the practice of “preferential treatment” (referred as P.T. case) but also the concerns of losing the municipal accommodation where they have lived for at least two to four generations.
In the bureaucratic terminology, P.T. case means that the BMC will allot the job of a retired/deceased safai kamgar to his or her legal heirs or family members. It is noteworthy that this rule applies only to the conservancy department (now known as Solid Waste Management). One of the bureaucrats of this municipal department emphatically said that there is no perpetuation of caste-based labor since they recently amended this rule to transfer the job to anyone nominated by the safai kamgar. 136 Nonetheless, according to him, 95 percent safai kamgar were “Scheduled Castes,” Marathi, or Gujarati speaking. The other option for the workers is to rent a house amid the burgeoning squatter settlements or move further away to the urban periphery since the exorbitant rent in the city, even at the lower level of the rental market, makes private housing unaffordable. In such circumstances, municipal staff quarters provide a respite from having to negotiate for housing in the city. This dependence has more often than not led to the continuation of conservancy labor, at least among one of the family members, even among educated Dalits, to retain the staff quarters. This entanglement is one of the ways in which the operations of caste and spatial segregation in the city mutually reinforce each other.
From Above: Producing the “Slum” Officially
While housing for conservancy workers did not figure in the priorities of the city administration, 137 modest attempts by Dalit migrants to create a foothold in the city produced conflict over the legality of modes and practices of urban citizenship. The state did not recognize Dalits’ claim to the reclaimed land, as it does not fit into the ownership model of property, and they were vulnerable to displacement. 138 Contrast this with many state-sponsored, mass-scale efforts of land reclamation to meet the relentless needs of Bombay City, which constitutes a rational, formal, planned, and legitimate action by the colonial and postcolonial states. 139
A “critical event” of state intervention during the postcolonial period was the national political Emergency of 21 months from 1975 to 1977. 140 The Indira Gandhi–led Congress government in Bombay adopted a two-pronged strategy of “urban development”: first, demolishing the “slums” that stood in the way of infrastructure projects; second, enumerating the neighborhoods and issuing a document called “photo-pass” (a photograph of the families in front of their homes, which would establish particular households with particular structures). 141 While the city witnessed a series of “brutal demolition” drives during the Emergency era, 142 the state government surveyed Pestom Sagar Labour Camp. In this process, the residents who sub-let their houses/plots stood to lose, while the tenants received a certain degree of security of tenure. The older residents of the neighborhood (who claimed “ownership” to many huts) considered this move as regressive; nonetheless, they welcomed the Emergency since they believed that it put an end to goondagiri (hooliganism). 143
In the 1970s, the spatialization of violent conflicts in the neighborhoods of Bombay produced a volatile political milieu. From the perspective of Dalit residents of Chembur, the various restrictions imposed during the Emergency were significant as they curbed the rent-seeking practices of local dadas (thugs). 144 Rent-seeking had grown rampant with the arrival of Dalit migrants affected by Marathwada’s drought leading to extortion rackets in the city. The authoritarian state powers regulated the local conflicts in the suburban neighborhoods. While there was much brouhaha about curbing the civil liberties among the middle classes, Dalit organizations in the neighborhood, including Dalit Panthers in Bombay, supported the Emergency. 145
In June 1972, Dalit Panthers emerged as a militant organization, formed by urban, educated, Dalit-Buddhist youth, inspired by the American Black Panthers of the sixties. 146 It was a new form of Dalit militancy in an atmosphere dominated by the Shiv Sena (Shivaji’s Army), a social movement started in 1966 to challenge the ruling Congress party. 147 Within the Panthers, one faction led by Namdeo Dhasal perceived the Emergency as an opportunity to secure the rights of the downtrodden. 148 They highlighted the ameliorative aspects of the administration, notably the Twenty Point Program launched by the central government in 1975. 149 The Raja Dhale faction, however, did not ally with the Congress, 150 but negotiated with the state government to secure concessions for Dalits, as stated earlier about the formalization of Dalit conservancy workers.
Coming back to the question of the legal status of self-built houses, the state government “regularised” this neighborhood by declaring it as a “slum” under the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971 and initiated various “improvement” programs. This law defined a slum as “any area declared as such by the Competent Authority.” 151 For declaring a slum, the authority had to satisfy himself under Section 4(1) as follows:
(a) any area is or may be a source of danger to the health, safety or convenience of the public of that area or of its neighbourhood, by reason of the area having inadequate or no basic amenities, or being insanitary, squalid, overcrowded or otherwise; or
(b) the buildings in any area, used or intended to be used for human habitation are (i) in any respect, unfit for human habitation; or (ii) by reasons of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangement and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of streets, lack of ventilation, light or sanitation facilities or any combination of these factors, detrimental to the health, safety or convenience of the public of that area, the Competent Authority may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare such area to be a slum area.
152
This law codified what was, through the twentieth century, the official discourse about insalubrious environmental and social conditions. Such an overarching definition bestowed enormous powers on the state government, which declared a large number of distinct neighborhoods as slums.
153
By enumerating them as slums, the government perpetuated the east-west zonation of the “garden suburb” as well as masked the spatial exclusion produced by the planning regime as discussed in the first section. In December 1990, an article appeared in The Times of India, with the headline “A tale of two Chemburs.”
154
It stated that the suburb was “on its way to being known as the twin suburb of “Chembur and Slumbur” . . . the growth of slums in this once idyllic suburb . . . has been so rapid since 1976 that one half of it qualifies to be renamed ‘Slumbur.’” While the state held the designation as relevant for policy formulation, it grouped the urban spaces into generalizations that obscured the lives of the urban poor. As AbdouMaliq Simone writes, The content of deprivations are numerous and interlocking, and have ramifications that extend across generations and territory. . . . Yet, the long lists of deprivations do not in themselves summarize what actually does take place in slums. In other words, the absence of certain material conditions assumed to support a viable life does not rule out life altogether. Residents find particular ways of dealing with those absences in particular combinations of generosity, ruthlessness, collaboration, competition, stillness, movement, flexibility, and defensiveness.
155
The Slum Areas Act, 1971 included provisions for “improvement” (rather than clearance alone), which marked a shift in the official policy toward slums in the post-Independence period. Amita Bhide characterizes this period as a “phase of tolerance” since it involved the provision of basic facilities and a guarantee of rehabilitation in case of displacement. 156 This recognition by the state granted the residents of the neighborhood a certain degree of legitimacy and security of tenure. However, it exacerbated the conflicts at the local level by ignoring the complex tenancy relations and diversity of settlements. I propose that this law also created the semblance of an emerging Dalit propertied subject, albeit with the minimal right of dwelling and not an individual/collective right of ownership. In other words, the legal grid implanted on the space retained the difference between occupancy and ownership. Dalits’ claim to land and housing, thus, remained tenuous and fragile in the everyday state practice.
The second case of municipal buildings in Pestom Sagar Labour Camp makes for a revealing case study of the state’s penchant for declaring diverse neighborhoods as “slums.” As mentioned earlier, the BMC allotted military barracks to conservancy workers in Pestom Sagar during 1940s, and the Bombay Housing Board rebuilt these tenements in 1960. The difference in the land-use categorization of these buildings, in the Development Plan for Greater Bombay of 1967, 1981 and 2014, shows the insidious production of “slum” by the planning regime. 157
The first plan designated this locality as “Public Housing,” a category that brings with it state involvement and responsibility in the production of housing stock. In the second plan, the area was classified as “Municipal Staff Quarters,” a reduction in scope from its earlier categorization as public housing, indicating an employer-employee relationship to the land. Finally, the existing land-use map of the recent Development Plan (2014-2034) colored this entire area brown. It categorized the municipal buildings as a “Slum Cluster,” bringing with it the attendant attributions of degraded living, best suited for demolition and redevelopment.
Categorizing this land as a “slum cluster” raises intriguing questions since the ownership of tenements is with the BMC, and the residents pay a monthly rent. Municipal buildings at Pestom Sagar Labour Camp do require substantial repair. However, “the re-development of these buildings cannot be done under the slum rehabilitation scheme” assured a bureaucrat of Solid Waste Management Department, clarifying that “it is municipal staff housing and not an ‘encroachment.’” 158 Why then has this area been classified as a slum? Is it based only on the condition of the buildings? Is it the people who live on this land, and their ways of life, the basis of such classification? Will the state classify all the buildings requiring repair as a slum? The categorizing of municipal housing as “slum” enjoins an ascriptive call for action, which the state could ultimately deploy to justify the eviction of Dalit workers in favor of supposedly “higher” commercial users of the land.
Slum emerges as a hegemonic category deployed for classifying diverse neighborhoods (and typologies of housing), which affects governmental intervention and social relations. The outcome of categorizing land and coding spaces is material as well as symbolic. Labeling the space as a slum has important implications for what kind of state intervention is possible, whether it is demolition, upgradation, or redevelopment. Such actions intend to align these urban spaces with the vision of Mumbai as a “global” or “world” city. On the other hand, the nomenclature also delimits the possibilities available to its residents to assert their claims. As the label entered the language of political advocacy because of its bureaucratic significance and its link to official policy, it became ubiquitous. It erased the sense of place, and thereby of history and memory, by devalorizing the space and its people.
Conclusion
To conclude, I present two sets of figures below that show the contemporary manifestations of the historical processes explored in this article. First, based on the 2001 ward-level census, Trina Vithayathil and Gayatri Singh suggest that caste-based residential segregation is more prominent than other socio-economic categories in the seven largest metropolitan cities of India. 159 The most segregated cities are Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Delhi, followed by Chennai and Bangalore, and then Mumbai and Hyderabad. While they show that caste continues to be a significant axis of urban residential segregation in contemporary cities, they also note two limitations of quantitative studies.
On the one hand, the differing and large size of (municipal) wards within each city masks the intra-ward level trends of spatial segregation. On the other hand, the substantial variation in the measures of the central tendency makes comparisons within and across cities challenging. In this article, I traced the intra-city and intra-ward level differentiation in Bombay, which showed caste-based residential segregation at the level of neighborhood, within the suburb of Chembur, administratively referred to as “M” ward. It also posited the East-West zonation of Greater Bombay, which becomes further evident with the following indicators.
According to the Mumbai Human Development Report 2009, the average Human Development Measure (HDM) of the city was 0.56. 160 The south-western ward “D” (including localities like Girgaum, Malabar and Cumballa Hills, Walkeshwar, Mahalaxmi) ranked first with the highest HDM value (0.96). On the other side, the north-eastern ward “M/east” (comprising of areas like Trombay, Chembur West, Govandi, Mankhurd) ranked last with the disproportionately lowest value (0.05). It is noteworthy that “most of the wards which lie below the Mumbai average are the eastern wards.” 161 If we take another indicator, Navtej Nainan shows how the uneven development of Greater Bombay reflects in the real estate prices, 162 which is the manifestation of historically produced residential segregation as described in this article.
The objective of looking at the constitutive role of space that produced the segregation of Dalits was to interrogate the spatial conceptions and practices through which regimes of caste inequality continue to persist and to document struggles against it. This article weaved together archival sources and oral narratives to probe how the hierarchical caste relations were (re)produced in the city. It showed that the making of “Chembur Garden Suburb” and “Greater Bombay” envisaged re-territorializing urban space, which exacerbated the differentiation at the neighborhood level, and produced Pestom Sagar Labour Camp as a segregated locality. It also brought to fore the spatial strategies of urban planning, which masked the appropriation and control of urban spaces by the dominant castes and ascendant economic groups. The Dalit neighborhood in Chembur, thus, emerged in the continuum between state’s non-recognition (including neglect and exclusion) and its regularization as a “slum.”
Tracing the process of migration and settlement in Chembur, this article also explored how Dalits created a space for living linked inextricably to their labor in the city. It focused on the memory of Dalit residents to craft the historical narrative of the neighborhood from below. In doing so, it has shown how the spatial segregation of Dalits shaped the neighborhood’s politics, which remains entwined with Ambedkar’s legacy. This exploration helped to analyze the “slum” as a social and historical category and to contest its ubiquity in the urban discourse as symbolizing squalor, filth, poverty, and crime. It is crucial to question the bureaucratic classification of diverse neighborhoods (and distinct housing typologies) as slum because such abstract notions of space identify and mark people and their places. It also sets in motion further segregations and dislocations under newer redevelopment regimes.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article is based on my MPhil dissertation—(Re)inscribing caste in urban spaces: Microhistory of a Dalit Buddhist neighbourhood in Bombay—submitted to the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta in May 2015. I presented an earlier version of this article at the Young Scholars’ Seminar—Articulating Caste—organised by the Centre for Study of Discrimination and Exclusion at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 5–6 October 2015.
My attempt to narrate the history of a politically significant neighbourhood in Bombay would have been impossible without the memoirs and life histories of its residents. I thank all the participants who allowed me to visit them and record their history as a community. I am thankful to Prof Lakshmi Subramanian for guiding me through this research, and Prof Amita Bhide for sharing her insights about the neighbourhood. I thank Dr Priya Sangameswaran, Dr Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Dr Sukanya Sarbadykary, my friends Swathi Shivanand and Shivangi Jaiswal, who made significant interventions and enriched this article. I am grateful to Swatija Paranjape for translating the Marathi documents, and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author Biography
.