Broken Homes

Illustration/Uday Mohite

People scoff at coincidences in movies - pointing out that these are artificially designed events, the director forcing an outcome when they cannot make a story work organically, on its own merits.

Through last week, it was hard not to think of coincidences. The demolitions in primarily Muslim bastis in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, held traces of an earlier demolition, that of the Babri masjid, with its chilling slogan, "ek dhakka aur do, Babar ki santaan ko". That metaphorical violence seems to have become all too literal today.

At the same time these also remind us of other slum demolition drives, we have periodically witnessed. Anand Patwardhan's iconic 1985 documentary, Hamara Shahar (Bombay, Our City), chronicled the struggles of Bombay's poor in the face of slum demolitions, when, ironically, they were the very people who built this city's high-rises. The demolition of slums was casually defended by elites, in the name of some sanitised city of the future.

In 2005, Vilasrao Deshmukh's government carried out a demolition drive. which was ardently supported through an SMS campaign by many of this city's leading lights (some of whom would define their politics as liberal today, and many who are ardently right-wing now). I recall receiving one such SMS from a woman actor I admired which said, "land is being illegally claimed. People continue to defecate in front of our buildings." It will remain a mystery why the actor thought demolishing slums was a better solution to open defecation than constructing toilets.

In the case of the Jahangirpuri demolitions many right-wing supporters are having Twitter conniptions, featuring words like illegal, encroachment, Bangladeshi. The echoes of those Babri Masjid slogans are a little too loud in their tweets. But so are the echoes of those who have defended breaking the homes of the poor and disenfranchised for decades. It is not as if those who hate Muslims, love the
not-Muslim poor.

None of them are as concerned about the illegality of demolitions carried out without a notice - which is the point the Jahangirpuri case currently turns on. People often talk about legality as if it is a natural state and as if it is synonymous with justice. But, is legality affordable for all? What makes it affordable? Is it subsidised by your caste, your religion, your background, to what extent the system is on your side - and to what extent you are on the side of the system? People remember legality when it is the homes of the poor that must be broken, but invoke justice, not legality, when their own structures, all puns intended, are threatened. The poor frequently have their homes broken for new developments, yaniki, unkindly adjust. Seventy seven per cent of Delhi is unauthorised construction, but it is the bastis of the poor that get moved to make way for development - roads, metros, office complexes - with promises of rehabilitation and state housing that are rarely kept. Yaniki the creation of modern, developed nations, which fulfil our fantasies of progress, are subsidised by the lives of the poor. Bastis get moved further and further to the margins of cities, to the margins of nations, to the margins of development, receding into a comfortable distance for those who dream of automatic futures, automated by violence. Marginalisation becomes literal.

People are quite right to scoff at coincidences.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com