Qudsiya Contractor on “Old Shanghai” and Hindu/Muslim Relations in Modern India

KFG Fellow Qudsiya Contractor‘s research explores how religion and religious identities impact the urban experience of the poor in Mumbai. Her project focuses on the Muslim poor in a Mumbai neighborhood and explores how socio-spatial segregation, a lack of basic amenities, economic deprivation, police surveillance and political marginalization play out in everyday life.

She has recently published two articles. One, entitled “Nostalgia for Shanghai’s Shikumen”, discusses efforts to demolish old housing, called Shikumen, and how nostalgia about these structures continues to be present in people’s minds. She writes that “a sentimental longing for the past lingers on in Shanghai”.

Her second article discusses “How Jaggi Vasudev has helped strengthen fears about Muslims”. In it, she and her co-author Suryakant Waghmore show Vasudev’s teachings are based in elite Hindu traditions and they illustrate how Muslims are constructed as new outcasts as a result. The authors show how “as a political category, Muslims invoke fear. They are suspected by many people of harbouring anti-national and anti-liberal sentiments.”

Both articles have much broader implications about memory and urban development, and religious coexistence and hierarchical power structures. They provide a fascianting opportunity to reflect on religion and urbanity in modern societies – enjoy reading!