ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to examine the contribution of ethnic politics and violence in the production of spaces and usurpation of public spaces available to Muslims and the deterritorialisation/denationalisation (in fantasy) of existing Muslim spaces. It shows how religion, caste, region and nationalism are mixed and interacted together for 'othering', alienating, rioting, killing and denationalising certain groups in order to capture power, prestige and money. The chapter explores the 'spatiality of sociality' and 'sociality of spatiality' in the city. This helps in understanding how boundaries between 'public' and 'private', 'ours' and 'theirs', and 'material' and 'metaphorical' spaces are continually constructed and reconstructed and socio-spatial processes are sustained or altered. The chapter discusses the rise of politics of violence in Mumbai with a focus on the Shiv Sena. It deals with the outcomes of the politics of violence that is production of ethnic spaces.
