Urban tapestry elements at threadbare discussion

What is common between persecution of Falun Gong sect followers by Chinese or the repeated threats to Chhat Puja celebrations in Mumbai?

Though removed from each other they are essentially a struggle for space with the ‘other’ whose expressions are seen as ‘a show of strength.’ Socio-cultural and politico-spatial dynamics like these, which are part of the urban tapestry are being discussed at a special five-day workshop — Stop Or Go: The Social Dynamics of Urban Movement - at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. 

Organised by Tiss, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute (MPI), for the Study of Religious & Ethnic Diversity, Germany and Partners for the Urban Knowledge, Action & Research (PUKAR), the workshop aims to deal with notions of movement through the city, including traffic, religious processions, transport, connectivity, and everything that stops or delays movement. Larger processes of movement like migration and attempts to stem it, as well as gated communities, no-go areas and forms of surveillance of movement.

“We are looking at cities as theatres of motion and mobility, which inspire the possibility of moving up, in or around while their materialities may also be moving in, down or out,” explained Prof Dr Peter van der Veer of MPI.

Weishan Huang from the MPI spoke of the persecution of the Falun Gong followers and the spirited resistance they have put up. However, she also pointed out how the Chinese diaspora has mixed feelings on the issue, in her paper Transnationalising the Public Sphere? Falun Gong’s Campaign in New York.

From shaming the dragon for its politics of exclusion to how human beings are dumped to a sub-human existence on Mumbai’s garbage dumping ground, the next paper by Qudisiya Contractor of TISS spoke of ghettoisation where a city continuously signals a community that it is unwanted and rejected.

Anita Patil of PUKAR asked how communal stereotypes are also peddled by Bollywood, which has such a large sway over national imagination. “From the Pathan money-lenders to bhais and smugglers, the working-class coolies and tongawallah heroes to the traitors and drug peddlers in contemporary cinema, I have wondered why they belong only to one community?” she asked.

Dr Laxmi Lingam of TISS hoped, “The workshop would help document the times we live in and map our cities keeping all these factors in mind.”