The Delhi riots – tracing the historical reasons
By Amirullah KhanandNahia Hussain| Published: 5th April 2021 8:45 pm IST Relatives mourn Mohammad Mudasir, 31, who was killed in rioting in Delhi. Photograph: Manish Swarup/AP
Nahia Hussain
The interaction between identity, history and community evolves spaces into contested or cordial ones. Nazima Parveen, in her book ‘Contested Homelands: Politics of space and identity’ describes how the perspectives around Muslim dominated localities have changed over the past four decades. In the 1940s, Muslim occupied areas were administered for the sake of communal harmony; in the 50s, the same areas needed to be protected, and in the decade of the 60s, these zones were marked as isolated, unhygienic and those that needed to be cleansed. In the 1970s Muslim dominated areas were viewed as ‘