Violence in Urban India : identity politics, 'Mumbai', and the postcolonial city
- Delhi Permanent Black 2001
- 269p.
When ‘Bombay’ became ‘Mumbai’, it was the culmination of a process that transformed India’s first symbol of modernity and cultural diversity into an urban landscape of violent nationalism and ethnic conflict. Challenging conventional writings on Indian politics, Thomas Blom Hansen shows that the xenophobic public culture of the Indian city, specifically contemporary Mumbai, has deep roots in regional histories and contested identities. He shows how the atmosphere of urban India, its dominant public languages, and its political power structures have changed over the past thirty years.