From Girangaon to 'Mini Pakistan': The Precarious Place of Working Muslims in Twentieth-Century Bombay

本研究项目测试了以下假设：(a)在二十世纪的过程中，孟买工作的穆斯林的自我认同和其他人的认同的变化导致了他们的社区在城市空间中的不稳定和不稳定的“位置”；(b)这些不断变化的认同和不稳定的位置对大都市的政治文化产生了整体影响。具体来说，它探讨了公众对孟买地区的看法，即从拥有许多穆斯林居民的“工人社区”转变为庇护许多工人的“穆斯林社区”。在20世纪上半叶，像Madanpura和Mominpura这样的地方，根据内部和外部的观点，与印度当时最大的工业区在孟买中部被称为“Girangaon”（或“磨坊村”）。这些社区居住着大量的穆斯林工人，他们从印度北部的城市和农村地区被吸引到印度棉纺织工业的中心。然而，到本世纪末，它们得到了“迷你巴基斯坦”的贬义标签，以表明和主张它们的“外来”、准域外和“非自然”性质。从20世纪初到1992年至1993年的孟买骚乱，这些地区与邻近的印度教或达利特人为主的社区纠缠不清，提供了一个充满活力的力量领域，不同的社会政治潮流在这里相遇，并为改变城市的政治格局做出了贡献。以反殖民民族主义、泛伊斯兰的Khilafat运动、工人的共产主义动员、穆斯林分离主义、宗教复兴倾向以及基于“种族”和语言的区域次民族主义等形式，这些潮流及其遭遇在影响和塑造吉兰加翁主要穆斯林社区的社会政治氛围方面发挥了重要作用。除了探索吉兰加翁的穆斯林工人与这些竞争潮流之间不断变化的联系，主要基于之前被忽视的非官方印度语言来源，本研究旨在研究吉兰加翁的穆斯林居民在这段时间内自我认同和定位自己（作为织布工、穆斯林或孟买工人）或被他人认同和“安置”（作为工人、吉兰加翁居民、吉兰加翁居民、吉兰加翁居民、吉兰加翁居民）的过程和手段。外星人甚至是入侵者)。

This research project tests the hypotheses (a) that, in the course of the twentieth century, the changing self-identifications as well as the identifications by others of Bombay's working Muslims entailed an instable and precarious 'placing' of their neighbourhoods in urban space and (b) that these changing identifications and precarious placings impacted on the metropolis's political culture as a whole. In concrete terms, it explores the transformation, in public perception, of localities in Bombay from 'worker neighbourhoods' with many Muslim inhabitants into 'Muslim neighbourhoods' sheltering many workers. In the first half of the century, localities like Madanpura and Mominpura were fully integrated, according to both inside and outside views, with India's then largest industrial district in Central Bombay that was increasingly known by the epithet of 'Girangaon' (or 'mill village'). These neighbourhoods housed large sections of Muslim workers who were drawn to the centre of Indian cotton textile industry from various, mainly North Indian urban and rural areas. Towards the end of the century, however, they had received the derogatory lable of "Mini-Pakistan" to indicate and assert their "alien", quasi-extraterritorial and "unnatural" character. From the beginning of the 20th century until the Bombay riots of 1992-93, these localities, in inextricable entanglement with adjacent predominantly Hindu or Dalit neighbourhoods, provided a dynamic field-of-forces where different socio-political currents encountered one another and contributed to transforming the political landscape of the city. In the forms of anti-colonial nationalism, the pan-Islamic Khilafat movement, communist mobilisation of workers, Muslim separatism, religious revivalist tendencies, as well as 'ethnicity'- and language-based regional sub-nationalism, these currents and their encounters were instrumental in influencing and shaping the socio-political atmosphere of predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods in Girangaon. Along with exploring the shifting associations Muslim workers of Girangaon had with these competing currents and mainly based on previously neglected unofficial Indian-language sources, this research aims to study the processes and devices through which the Muslim inhabitants of Girangaon over this period of time self-identified and located themselves (as weavers, Muslims, or Bombay workers) or were identified and 'placed' by others (as working people, inhabitants of Girangaon, aliens or even intruders).