ABSTRACT
The event of violence occurred in a shantytown called Dharavi in Bombay. It began on the day of the demolition of the Babri mosque (6 December 1992) in Ayodhya, a town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, some 2,500 kilometers northeast of Bombay. The violence continued till the third week of January 1993. The anxiety regarding belongingness to the nation-state comes to rest in Dharavi neighborhoods for both Hindus and Muslims in a discourse of insider and outsider as imprinted on the form of social relations. These social relations are then ordered within a technical rationality. The attempt of Dharavi residents to obtain ration cards, to have themselves listed as voters, to get proof of residential ownership, are also claims to establish belongingness through a ritualized relation to the state. The Dharavi Mohalla Committee was formed in September 1993. Its main function was to keep open channels of communication with the police.
