Ghettos, recidivism and gated Neighbourhood

Introduction

A social pressure leads to exclusion, a legal pressure leads to suppression and an

economical pressure leads to deprivation. and the combination of these three
(social, legal and economical) pressure leads to the formation of ghettos.
migration is not a problem for the today’s society until unless it is led by any
pressure.ghettos are not a result of a wilful migration of people. In a country like
India where diversity (whether it religious social or economical) is not just feature
of modern indian society but it also a fear in itself. The idea of ghettos was
generated many years ago. however the condition of people living in ghettos
varies from time to time and land to land. In its initial phase ghetto refers to the
colonies of Jews who were restricted to the corner part of the cities.

IN INDIA

It has been observed that the people living in these ghettos particularly belong to
the minority communities like Muslims. In these ghettos the locality is decided by
the major population living in those communities. Mumbra which is one of the
major Muslim ghetto in India is result of 1992-93 riots which was broke out in
different parts of Mumbai. Mumbra has changed the social geography of the city
a large no, of muslim families shifted into the outskirts of Mumbai.the first group
of people that moved mumbra from Mumbai was living in Kannua Nagar in the
suburb of Vikhroli, a mixed neighbourhood, where Hindus and a smaller number
of Muslims lived together without incident. But soon after the riots most of the
Muslim families began to migrate to areas where muslims were in
majority.mumbra was only one of the example of major ghettos in india. It is
obvious to say that communal violence and riots cannot be the single reason for
the formation of these ghettos but we can’t deny from the fact that people living
in these ghettos belong to a particular community.
Facilities

The power and water supply in these areas are very feeble. the living quality of
people living there is very poor. While writing about these ghettos the terms like
hygiene and cleanliness have to be neglected. As you can hardly see any sign of
clean locality. Public infrastructure in these areas are very little. Many a times
builders make profit by making illegal buildings and apartments and selling that to
the local ghettarians which ultimately led to the rising cases of frauds, the
presence of schools and hospitals are very rare in these localities.

Against the order

Ghettos are considered as chaotic and against the order by the people living in
gated colonies. For them the problem can be only solved by Alexandrian solution
i.e. if you are not able to solve the knot then just cut it off. instead of improving
the quality of life in which they are living in. the surrounding has engaged itself in
counting the negative impact it is having on their locality.past governments have
played vital role in formation of these ghettos but none of them tried to solve or
look into their problems. On one side we talk about the diversity of religion,
culture and language.the diversity which is likable but on other side we have a
diversity of separation i.e. ghettos and gated colonies.

A confined life full of compromise

Apart from the fact that they are living together their life is full of isolation they
are not connected with the mainstream society. People argued that they are
happy with the condition they are living in but in reality they don’t have any
other option than being happy. For example why would I study in an indian
university if ill get a chance to study in Howard. All the powers whether it is
political,administrative or social trying to confime them in a limited area or
limited zones. Taking example of the financial,commercial and entertainment
capital of india i.e. Mumbai. 52.5% of the total population are currently living in
slums and ghettos. May be this fact would not shock you but what is your
reaction when I tell you that 52.5% of the total population of that city living in
only 9% of the total geographical area of the Mumbai.
MUMBRA (one of the major ghetto)

Mumbra expanded with great velocity in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid in
Ayodhya. The Bombay riots of December 1992, which overwhelmingly killed
Bombay Muslims, and the retaliatory bomb blasts in January 1993 by the Muslim
underworld, reconfigured the social geography of the city. Bombay Muslims from
riot-hit areas sought safety in numbers and found it in Mumbra, where Muslims
from the Konkani coast had a long-standing presence. Through a combination of
the desire for safety among Muslims, the relatively cheaper price of apartments,
and continued rural-urban migration, Mumbra’s population grew 20 times from
about 45,000 before the 1992 riots to more than 9,00,000 in the 2011 Census —
possibly one of the fastest expansions of an urban area in India. Along with the
strivings, a sense of neglect and discrimination pervades Mumbra, which does not
have a single public hospital. The nearest public hospitals are in Kalua and Thane.
Several clinics and rudimentary private hospitals have come up. Mumbra goes
without electricity for at least six hours everyday.The evidence of incremental
progress was visible in Mumbra. Some streets had been paved with tar. State
Bank of India, HDFC, and Bank of Maharashtra had opened branches or ATMs. A
Domino’s Pizza outlet opened last year. The absence of banking facilities or
companies denying home delivery of products has, for years, been the standard
attitude towards India’s Muslim ghettoes. Barely an hour from the Indian
Parliament, the Okhla Muslim ghetto in New Delhi did not have a single bank
despite a population of several lakh. Two years ago, Jammu and Kashmir Bank
opened a branch in Zakir Nagar. Juhapura, the Ahmedabad ghetto, whose
population doubled after the 2002 riots, still does not get piped water or gas, and
remains excluded from Ahmedabad’s vaunted public transport network.

Mumbra also lives with a hostile relationship with the police. It was home to
Ishrat Jahan, who was killed along with three other men by the Gujarat police.
The Central Bureau of Investigation later described the killings as a “fake
encounter”. Taunts of being a safe house for terrorists are often thrown at
Mumbra. Last March, several hundered policemen raided Mumbra one and a half
hours after midnight. A video recorded by a local journalist shows scores of men
being paraded through dark streets by the police, bundled into police vans, and
held for hours in Mumbra police station. Around 80 people, including young
students, poets and old men were arrested. The police claimed to be looking for
two petty thieves wanted for chain-snatching.

Ahmedabad's Juhapura

Ahmedabad is home to probably India’s biggest Muslim ghetto called Juhapura.

Its emergence was marked by the city’s history of communal violence: Muslims
emptied the old city areas and sought refuge in the city’s western periphery in
Juhapura. Characterised by inadequate public infrastructure, Juhapura presently
houses almost 50% of Ahmedabad’s Muslims. Juhapura is a neighbourhood in
New West Zone of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India near Sarkhej, along the National
Highway 8A that goes towards Saurashtra and Kutch. Initially this area was
developed in 1973 for the people who lost houses in flood, it was founded then
prime minister of India Mrs. Indira Gandhi. First housing society of the area was
Sarni Kamdar.

The population of Juhapura is largely Muslim. Almost 700,000 people live in this
area A large number of Muslim professionals and businessmen also live in this
area.

Juhapura was a small suburb with a small population until the mid 1980s, but
after the communal riots of Gujarat from 1985 until 2002, a large number of the
Muslims migrated to Juhapura from the Muslim and Hindu-dominated areas of
Ahmedabad and surround cities to settle there. This caused a construction and
housing boom and a sharp inflation in the land and housing prices subsequently.

Juhapura is still primarily a residential area but now also hosts a hospital, many
schools, restaurants & dhabas and a food market.
The location of Juhapura does not allow its residents to grow relations with other
residents of Ahmedabad, especially Hindus, given the area’s distance from central
residential and commercial localities of Ahmedabad. On top of that, Muslim elites
of Ahmedabad have a circumscribed influence in professional bodies and politics
of Ahmedabad. These elite residents have turned inwards to build a strong social
cohesion, creating ‘quasi-state’ institutions which make Juhapura a ‘self-
developed’ ghetto. The deficiency of public infrastructure is compensated
somewhat by Muslim charitable institutions which emerged in the wake of 2001
earthquake and continued their activities of relief and rehabilitation work for
mostly Muslim victims post-2002 riots in Gujarat.

Most experiments by such charities have been in the field of education. Post-
2005, Muslim charities realised the need to nurture ‘skills’ among Muslims who
are socio-economically backward. Influenced and funded by conservative
movements of Islam such as the Deoband, many schools adopted a unique
curriculum merging modern/secular modes of education with theological strands
of knowledge: They are merging the space of a school with that of a madarsa. The
form of education prevalent at such schools is not what Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the
pioneer of modern education among Muslims of the sub-continent, advocated,
seeing a synthesis between the ‘work of God’ and ‘word of God’. Instead, these
schools are heavily influenced by the religious idiom, impose moral restrictions on
inter-mingling of different genders, prescribe an ‘Islamic’ dressing for students
and promote religious virtues such as doing namaz five times a day and fasting
during the month of Ramzan.

Orthodoxy is not an element seen only in the schools of Muslim ghettoes but a
common feature of the everyday life in gated communities. Movements like
Deoband/Tablighi Jama’at have borrowed their ideas from the Arab version of
Islam which de-emphasises popular/Sufi traditions of Islam in South Asia such as
the Dargah culture, music and poetry inter alia attempting to awaken religious
morality. Usage of Arabic names for residential colonies, office spaces, schools,
hospitals, and restaurants signifies the influence of the Arab version of Islam.
Conclusion

They are portrayed as problem that exist within the society and create a
ambience of disparity betwenn two sections.but the question arises who saw
them as problem. One can get the answer from the gated colonies near ghettos.
The order was decided by the people who were in powers during the formation of
these ghettos.but they never understood that a complicated pattern can not be
termed as against the order. We can consider some options which can change the
existing complication into desired diversity.providing lands and giving them
property rights definitely can not be the optionas this can encourage migrational
tendencies in the landless peoples. Separating them from the gated colonies is
not assumable as this can create the ambience of imperialism at a ground level.so
the only option that we have today is to improve the quality of living of those
people.government should provide separate quotas in educational institutions in
order to benefit the kids living in thsese ghettos. Water and electricity are the
other factors that contributes significantly in upliftment of these ghettarians.