Gurugram district and city consist of at least four different and distinct localities. First, there is the “new” Gurugram of gated residential enclaves, shopping malls and commercial precincts that have been privately developed since the early 1980s by large real estate companies. Second, there are older, government planned areas established by the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA). Third, there are localities that are home to a variety of migrant labour that work in factories, homes, shops and fields in a rapidly transforming economic and social landscape. Finally, there is the Gurugram of villages-in-the-city: Rural localities where traditional landowners have recently become enriched through land sales to private and government entities.
Irrespective of the multiple Gurugrams, what is clear is that over the last three decades or so, an area of petty farming, poor irrigation, large chunks of arid lands and medieval era land-holding patterns finds itself in a maelstrom of globally financed urbanisation. It is now a spectacular landscape of constant mobility and transformation. White collar professionals move in and out of gated communities, satellite technologies convert medieval era mussavi (cloth) land maps into GIS ones, poor populations from different parts of India arrive for service sector jobs and there is extraordinary movement of goods and commodities across many landscapes of aspiration and desire.
You would think that in such a place — marked by newness, speed and mobility — there would be no place for violence that is mobilised through appeals to religious identity. After all, what is the religion of a shopping mall or new land markets?
But there is another Gurugram story. One that is also about the silent refashioning of an urban space of mono-religiosity. Cities are meant to be different from villages, allowing for a diversity that flourishes in the absence of rural attitudes and constraints. But that has not really been the case in Gurugram.
The first part of the Gurugram story is about the role of the state in fashioning a particular religious life. The public life of religion in Gurugram has been significantly influenced by what the state does or does not allow. While public displays of religiosity by one religious group are facilitated, those by another frequently bring forth objections about the “inappropriate” use of public lands. Of the 22 mosques in Gurugram, there are just 10 that are considered “official” and this includes one whose construction remains incomplete due to a legal dispute. Ironically, land for this mosque was allocated by HUDA to the local Waqf board but the construction was stopped upon objections from a real estate company. So far, there have been no instances of similar objections to the construction of temples.
Second, there is the private life of religion in Gurugram. The regional diversity of the population that lives within the city’s new residential localities — the gated communities — is simultaneously characterised by a remarkable religious homogeneity. For a city built out of the ebbs and flows of so many global flows, new white-collar migrants to the city have established a remarkably local version of Indian life. The religious life of gated communities is almost exclusively — if not completely — characterised by the symbols and celebrations of just one religion. It is not surprising, then, that those who live within them increasingly experience little of the religious diversity that actually exists outside their gates and, indeed, view it as an aberration rather than the norm.
Third, Gurugram is also home to a new rural middle class. This consists of local agriculturalists on whose lands new Gurugram has been built. Southern Haryana did not benefit much from Green Revolution technology and, for most agriculturalists, farming remained a very hard occupation with few and uncertain returns. With the onset of urbanisation, landholders became enthusiastic land-sellers. Over the past two decades, as land acquisition by both private and government bodies has intensified, Gurgaon’s villages have seen the rise of newly enriched populations. The rise of urbanisation-linked rural wealth has, however, had a peculiar effect on caste and religious identity.
New wealth has reinforced, rather than fractured, old identities. Ever-increasing amounts of money are channeled towards establishing caste as well as religious associations. The village — while increasingly being absorbed within the city — has managed to keep it at bay. New wealth has reinforced the capacity to maintain older traditions.
Recent reports from Gurugram — particularly those coming from government sources — suggest that the violence of the past few days has abated. It is unclear how many Muslim families of working-class backgrounds — faced with implied and actual violence — have returned to their villages. However, reports say that condominium associations have lifted bans on the entry of “delivery boys” and the supply of pizzas, Amazon-sold products and groceries from local supermarkets has resumed.
But normalcy, as measured by the supply chain of goods and commodities, masks a deep malaise about the idea of the city itself. It papers over the lack of attention — perhaps deliberate, for there are political dividends to be had — towards creating “urbanity”, focusing instead on city-making. The state insists on recognising just one kind of citizen as the “normal” and “ordinary” person. Affluent and well-educated Gurugram residents create and retreat to mono-religious spaces, effectively wiping out traces of actual diversity that is essential to a peaceful and equitable urban life. This is also abetted by private capital — in the shape of real estate companies — that add fuel to the bonfire of urban fear that concerns ideas about the “right” kind of religious buildings for “respectable” localities. And, the newly enriched rural population becomes even more enmeshed in ways of the past through means of the present. These are ripe grounds for the making of a dystopic urban future, one that may give off political dividends but can only damage the social fabric. They are also conditions that allow for religious vigilantism and tolerance for it.
Sadly, Gurugram may be an example of how city-making and urbanity are not necessarily connected: A city is just a collection of buildings and governance processes whereas urbanity is a particular attitude. Urbanity — which includes a belief and education in the arts of co-existence and fair play — is not, however, greatly favoured when there is profit in creating disorder. Order, however, is always something more than getting your next pizza delivered without delay.
The writer is British Academy Global Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London and author of Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon
