Paper short abstract:

This paper explores retrospective accounts of young Dalit men and their participation in urban violence. Analysing their accounts, the city and their location within it emerged as a dominant theme in the analysis. This paper unpacks these anxieties and opens up new ways of imagining urban masculinities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper engages with retrospective accounts of young Dalit men and their participation in communal conflict of 2002. My ethnographic landscape is Gomtipur, a mixed suburban neighbourhood that developed in the 1960s and 70's to house the migrant mill workers that moved into the city. The deindustrialisation process in the 80s tied into the rise of Hindu nationalism in the neighbourhood and the escalation of communal conflict in the city. The decades of the 1990s and 2000 saw increasing segregation on religious lines in this neighbourhood. It also saw increasing unemployment with second and third generation young men becoming easy target for Hindu nationalist organisations to work with and use as 'foot soldiers' during periods of violence.

Analysis of these narratives reveals their ambiguous relationship with Hindu Nationalism, their justifications for participation in violence, but also highlights anxieties and insecurities that stem around their location within the city and the impact the globalised city was having on slum lives. In exploring young men, urban vulnerability and participation in violence, this paper raises important questions around men and masculinities, but also ethical dilemmas in the study of violence.