A Manifesto for the Just City

A Manifesto for the Just City
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Hindu dogma. Secondly, there
was also fear of the mixture
with Dalit blood, that is, fear of
miscegenation. And that’s why
a clear-cut demarcation of the
times Dalit could enter the city
and what they could and could not
do was introduced. You can find
many similar parallels in colonial
societies in various parts of the
world, which basically followed
similar rules.
But what we are
talking about here?
Caste discrimination
pre-dates some of
the other instances
of discrimination we
know about. Now,
this situation is also
related to the agenda
of environmental
challenges we must
discuss. Whenever
we discuss the Green
Deal for example, the
consensus around
environmental
justice does not fit
the reality of caste
discrimination nor
does it offer any
solutions for it. This
is because caste
discrimination is
unlike the challenges
faced by the working
classes of other parts
of the world.
This is about the caste oppressed
people whose agenda then gets
subverted. Whereas the Dalit’s
livelihood is a delicate complex
subject. The rural settlements
like the one my family came from
are left behind because of the
lack of opportunities, and people
go to urban areas searching for
jobs. Eventually, they started
developing their own little
economy. And then eventually
over two generations the Dalits
created an area for themselves.
The State then came and started
extracting taxes from them. That’s
why there is always resistance
among this population. Slums also
brought something positive, that
is urbanity. And that brings the
idea of rebellion and revolution.
Dalits use the space of the city
to talk about their fundamental
rights and the right to establish
themselves as equal citizens.
Even today, the many slum
dwellers in India are refugees
inside the Indian nation. The
country doesn’t give them [full]
citizenship. Sometimes if they
are Muslims, they are called
‘Bangladeshi’, people who are
from outside the Indian nation.
BRAHMINS
PRIESTS
KSHATRIYAS
KINGS, RULERS,
WARRIORS
VAISYAS
MERCHANTS, CRAFTSMEN,
LANDOWNERS, SKILLED WORKERS
SUDRA
FARM WORKERS, UNSKILLED
WORKERS, SERVANTS
DALITS (UNTOUCHABLES)
STREET CLEANER, LATRINE CLEANERS,
TANNERS, DEAL WITH DEAD BODIES
(ARE OUTSIDE OF THE CASTE SYSTEM)
THE INDIAN CASTE SYSTEM
Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste
When it comes to Dalits, they
are called criminals. And that’s
why citizenship for these groups
remains a contested issue.
Many urban planners have
romanticised the idea of slums and
tried to compare Indian slums with
favelas, and with African slums.
But slums in the Indian context
represent caste segregation.
Indian slums don’t exist outside
this vicious circle put in place
to control an enormous mass of
people. And that’s why I make
two distinctions. Untouchability
is social separation. In a normal
context, what we have is social
separation between communities,
which we can observe in many
kinds of societies as it predicated
on socialites and belongings.
However, when it comes to
untouchability, in addition
to social separation, there is
territorial segregation and
territorial control is taken away
from this mass of people.
What we see today in major
cities in India is [segregation].
Sixty percent of neighbourhoods
in Calcutta don’t have a single
Dalit resident. In Gujarat, prime
minister Narendra Modi’s
home state, 80 percent of
neighbourhoods in
Ahmedabad and
Vadodara don’t
have Dalit residents.
If you go down
to Bangalore,
21 percent of
neighbourhoods
don’t have Dalit
residents.
So, what does it
mean? Dalit labour
that has been
banished from
integrating into the
city and spaces were
created for Dalits to
remain marginalised.
The social
segregation based
on caste [prevalent
in rural areas]
was immediately
replicated in cities.
We have not addressed the
duplication of this very vicious
caste-based segregation into
urban areas. Political parties have
done an excellent work in [hiding
behind] aggregated data where
you see larger neighbourhoods
being mixed, but segregation
happens at the smaller scale.
That’s why the prime locations
which are considered sacred are
Brahmin occupied spaces. And
you can find [the same pattern]
in cities like Chennai and Bombay
and in every other Indian city,
where they have created gated
communities, which are almost
equivalent to those you can find in
Johannesburg where the former
white colonisers live.
[But] how is city cleanliness
maintained? And this is the catch.