Juhapura: A liminal zone in a globalizing city

For centuries, Gujarat has been known for its long distance trade across the seas. During the colonial times, the textile mill industry gradually developed in Ahmedabad and the city was known as ‘the Manchester of India’. However, for the past few decades, the city has also achieved notoriety for communal violence and the resultant loss of lives and property. This violence has also altered the morphology of the city leading to liminal spaces which are zones of dispossession and contestation. This paper focuses on Juhapura, located at the western extremity of Ahmedabad on the National Highway leading towards Saurashtra. It was a sparsely populated area to begin with but the situation drastically changed after the horrific communal riots of 1969. The beleaguered Muslim population of the city drifted towards Juhapura as a place of refuge as periodic bouts of violence plagued the city. Gradually, Juhapura got the dubious distinction as the largest ‘Muslim Ghetto’ in India. Despite residing in a rapidly globalizing city, the residents of Juhapura occupy a ‘disturbed zone of citizenship’ wherein the state is conspicuous by its absence. After a brief historical discussion on the lived spaces of Ahmedabad, the present study will focus on Juhapura which exists as a state of exception, wherein the everyday lives of the people are a struggle to survive, and a sense of precarity prevails as there is a conscious and continuous denial of rights in both subjective and material forms. Located on the periphery of the state-citizen relationship, dispossession is embedded in the habitus of Juhapura.