Urban Renewal and Caste Dynamics: Political Assertion and Subversion of Dalit Localities in Pondicherry

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyse the intersection of the caste and land question within the urban context through my analytical concept of ‘Power Induced Spaces’. Looking at the Dalits’ housing settlements in Pondicherry and similar works in Chennai and Villupuram reveals the underpinning of subtle and evident caste politics in defining their spatiality and livelihoods. Metro-cities in India have a long history of violent evictions, uprooting and subjugation of ‘subalterns’, here, Dalits through eviction under urban renewal and smart city projects. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork from 2021-24 reveals a compelling spatio-political agency of how Dalits form a collective assertion through the “Dalit Association” grouping all Dalit neighbourhoods in urban Pondicherry, and how, at another field site, they had to derive an individualised strategy to navigate the power structure. Analysing these cases would critique the abstract theorisation of caste dynamics in urban sites and evading caste factors in policymaking and bureaucracy. It further significantly contributes to the concrete understanding of caste situating in everyday material reality and the agency of ‘subalterns’ in negotiating with bureaucrats, politicians and the legal system. In this paper, I emphasise the complexities of assertion and subversion of ‘subalterns’ agency through different cases studied at Dalit localities, which form spatial politics. Critiquing the elite framework of corruption narratives (Doshi & Ranganathan, 2017) and NGO’s participatory approach (Cooke & Kothari, 2001), my field and theoretical work include literature, few are ideas of the everyday state practices (Bjorkman, 2014; Anjaria, 2006), legal pluralism starting with classics such as Razzaz (1993) and neighbourhood associations (Auerbach & Thachil, 2014).