ABSTRACT
The deployment of ideas of ‘civil disobedience’, ‘Satyagraha’ and ‘revolution’, and the consolidation of the notion of a ‘people’ contesting the state both occur at a time of Indian modernity that might be called post-national. The most significant manner in which the post-national moment resonates within the politics of urbanism concerns the repositioning of the language of anti-colonial nationalism from the national sphere to the suburban one. Post-national urbanism—a time of significant ongoing renegotiation of the relationship between the state, private capital and citizens—is the context within which Residents Welfare Association activity redefines notions of ‘civil society’. Gated residential communities are being constructed across 300 or so Indian cities and topographical transformations are accompanied by broader discursive shifts regarding family life, state, nation and citizenship. The processes of new urbanism in India provide a fruitful entry into an understanding of changing relations between the state, citizens and private capital.
