ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with a brief review of the principal categories employed by the Hindu middle classes for identifying 'Muslim neighbour-hoods' in the city. It tries to understand the ways in which spatial stigma finds expression in the contemporary times and functions to exclude Muslims from the city's mainstream. Then it moves on to a description of the memories and fear of communal violence among the locality's Muslims and studies the ways in which such perceptions inform their choice of residence in the city. The chapter concludes with a note on the ways in which continued experiences of socio-spatial marginalisation and insecurity could potentially lead to a reverse assertion of identity on part of residents of such neighbourhoods who might eventually find it rather feasible to construct an exclusive identity set apart from and in opposition to that of the city's mainstream. It examines the implications that confinement in a negatively defined space entails for the locality's Muslims.
