ABSTRACT
To speak of civil violence between Hindus and Muslims in India always seems to evoke history in a way that it is the present moment that gives meaning to the past. Beginning with the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, it seems as though the historical significance of the Partition is sedimented into the everyday interactions between Hindus and Muslims. This chapter discusses the complexities of gender for wounded bodies, especially processes by which adult males, caught in violence, are denuded of their masculinity. It argues that the violence between men is tied to the idea of national borders and segregated spaces. The chapter shows that 'signatures of terror', in Nordstrom's phrase, are crucial in the making of neighborhood spaces as national borders and the unmaking of male bodies. For Muslim residents of Dharavi the neighborhood has become a distancing device; it distances the domestic from the public, but not by establishing a gap between the two.
