Rather than large-scale state initiatives like the Delhi Improvement Trust. Old Delhi in this period was transformed through a multitude of market-driven acts of urban construction. Indeed the property market itself was changing in important ways: from one predominated by relatively small-scale owners to the emergence of real estate firms like Delhi Land and Finance (DLF). These developments inevitably reshaped the operations of the state in urban space. Urban plans were proposed. but their implementation in Old Delhi was deeply embedded in the increasingly complex relationship between the state and the property market. Finally, Possessing the City explores conflicts over the commodification of land. It examines, in particular, the disparate politics that emerged around urban housing in Delhi: from municipal clerks, to Gandhian campaigns. The influence of commodification, however, was also present in struggles that were not ostensibly about economic issues: clashes over religious sites in the city. Through careful attention to the historical interrelationships between state, space, and the economy in Delhi, this volume offers a novel interpretation of the social history of late-colonial Delhi.
The thesis and its subsequent avatars were, in large part, guided by Dr Nandini Gooptu's close and acute reading. Prof Neeladri Bhattacharya has been, since my formative academic years at JNU, a constant source of ideas and good advice. Prof Tanika Sarkar and Dr Radhika Singha taught courses that shaped my academic work.
This research would not have been possible without the support of the Clarendon Fund, the Balliol College C. R. Parekh Scholarship, the Institute for Historical Research and Royal Historical Society's Marshall Fellowship, and the Beit Fund. I am particularly grateful to Prof Bhikhu Parekh and Prof Peter Marshall for their generous endowments.
The librarians and archivists at the Department of Delhi Archives and Teen Murti changed numerous times during this research but were unfail-ingly helpful. The same holds true for the staff at the British Library in London. Mr Maan and Om Prakash at Town Hall cheerfully accommodated me at the payroll office even when my tugging at piles of municipal registers left their workspace saturated with dust. Kevin Greenbank, Barbara Roe, and Rachel Rowe at CSAS responded with characteristic good cheer to my monopolistic designs on the microfilm machine over a period that seemed unfairly interminable, even to this eager researcher.
Presentations organized by Ravi Ahuja (at Goettingen), Stephen Legg and Prashant Kidambi (at Nottingham), Eleanor Newbigin and Upal Chakra-barti (at SOAS), and Carlos Galvis and Prof Richard Dennis (at IHR) were occasions to air rudimentary versions of many ideas that have improved greatly as a result of feedback and criticisms. Contributing to Janaki Nair's textbook on urban history helped clarify much of the urban theory that I eventually used. A special debt must be recorded to Ammi (Khadija Azeem), who sat patiently with me for weeks trying to decipher documents drafted by careless clerks at the turn of century.
Hindu (931)
Agriculture (122)
Ancient (1095)
Archaeology (773)
Architecture (564)
Art & Culture (919)
Biography (718)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (569)
Islam (243)
Jainism (310)
Literary (888)
Mahatma Gandhi (378)
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