ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ambivalent image of chawls as places that are historically significant, but also associated with lower-class status in the contemporary middle-class imagination. The historical significance of chawls is invoked by heritage activists who aim at conserving chawls by declaring them as heritage sites to render them exempt from redevelopment ventures. Furthermore, a wider, predominantly Maharashtrian public exhibits a nostalgic view of chawls informed by ideals of conviviality and neighbourly solidarity. This view collides with chawl residents’ opinions about their homes who do not necessarily regard the built form of chawls as the locus of value. Herzfeld’s concept of social and historical time is utilized to account for the rupture between the everyday use of chawls and the role of chawls in discourses about tradition, cultural identity and authenticity. This rupture is used as a vantage point to interrogate the social production of historic value and its complicated relation to aspirations.
