ABSTRACT
This chapter delves into the post-partition reconfiguration of the walled city of Jaipur that had originally been dominated by Hindu and Jain merchants, giving space to Sindhi retailers and traders and creation of new markets in the post-independence period from 1950s to 1970s. The spatial and physical mapping of competing communities, like the Sindhis, Muslims and baniya Hindus in the walled city, was also undergirded by contending claims to “authenticity” and belonging, mainly using the trope of purusharth, which the chapter seeks to unpack. More recently, a new idiom of authenticity and governance in the form of “heritage” has made the position of the Sindhi traders precarious.
