Cities in South Asia

Crispin Bates is Professor of Modern and Contemporary South Asian History at the University of Edinburgh, UK.Minoru Mio is the Director of the Centre for Contemporary India Area Studies at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan.

"This edited volume presents a wide-ranging collection of 18 essays that were born out of workshops and a culminating conference on cities in South Asia. Organized around themes, the pieces in the collection are illuminating and quite timely in light of the significant urban management issues and cultural, sociological, and habitability challenges confronting, especially, the mega cities in the region. The rich mixture of historical context and contemporary developments in this collection is an especially noteworthy strength...Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty." - S. Kukreja, University of Puget Sound, CHOICE

• 1. Introduction: Cities in South Asia - interdisciplinary perspectives Part 1: Ideologies of City Making: the formation of the Indian city 2. Cities in India: an archaeological perspective 3. Who Built ‘the City of Victory’? Representation of a ‘Hindu’ capital in an ‘Islamicate’ world Part 2: Politics of Town Planning: colonial and post-colonial 4. Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 5. Islam and Development in Urban Space: planning ‘official’ Karachi in the 1950s 6. Slums and the Global City: housing plans in Dharavi, Mumbai 7. Cities within and beyond the Plan Part 3: The City as an Arena for Struggles among Multiple Identities 8. The City as Nation: Delhi as the Indian nation in Bengali bhadralok travelogues 1866-1910 9. The Multilingual City of Bombay and the Formation of Linguistic States, 1947-1960 10. Neighbourhood and Urbanisation in Delhi: Durga puja in a Bengali Displaced Persons Colony 11. Urban Thresholds: Crevices, Crossroads, and Magic Remainders Part 4: Lived Cities: Views of Cities from the Ground 12. ‘Fight the Filth’: civic sense and middle-class activism in Mumbai 13. Community of Retrospect: spirit cults in an old city of Rajasthan and reconstruction of locality 14. Solving Family Problems: the role of religious practices for the Indian middle class Part 5: Subaltern Practices and Discourses in Urban Situations 15. News, Gossip and Humour: street perspectives from colonial Calcutta 16. The Postcolonial Street: Patterns, Modes and Forms 17. City and Life: from life stories told by people of the lower strata in Chittagong, Bangladesh Part 6: Consumer Culture in Contemporary South Asian Cities 18. Transformation of a Tourism Space in a City of Consumption: the case of Thamel, Kathmandu 19. ‘Time Gentlemen’: Bangalore and its drinking cultures