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. Studying how the Shiv Sena and similar militant outfits have advanced their new, plebeian culture and altered the nature of urban politics in India, Blom Hansen provides a vivid picture of urban violence even as he argues that such changes represent the ‘vernacularization of Democracy’ in the country as a whole. This book also contains revealing insights into Mumbai’s Muslim communities and the authorities’ understanding and control of religious violence. Unfolding at a crucial juncture when the globalisation of India’s economy has had a massive impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, this is a story that resonates with ideas on the nature of contemporary urban India and its possibly volatile future.
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