'Mongrel City': Cosmopolitan neighbourliness in a Delhi squatter settlement

This paper examines the construction of a ‘cosmopolitan neighbourliness’ which emerges in a Delhi squatter settlement in the context of communal violence. Through interviews with over 80 inhabitants, I suggest that an openness to ‘others’ in the settlement is produced in order to construct a home for oneself in an exclusionary city through a series of relational constructs – between the ‘cosmopolitan’ city and the ‘parochial’ village; between the ‘murderous’ city and the ‘compassionate’ slum; between the exclusionary urban public sphere and the ‘inclusive’ neighbourhood sphere. The squatter settlement is internalised as a microcosm of a ‘mongrel city’, a place which through its set of oppositional constructs becomes inherently ‘urban’. ‘Cosmopolitan neighbourliness’ on the other hand remains fragile and gendered. It is a continuous strategic practice that attempts to bridge across differences of caste and religion through gendered performances that avert and discourage communal violence even when the city becomes murderous.