‘Exist, endure, erase the city’ (Sheher mein jiye, is ko sahe, ya ise mitaye?): Child vigilantes and micro-cultures of urban violence in a riot-affected Hyderabad slum

Abstract

Hyderabad, a city in southern India, has witnessed a saga of religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims, the first large-scale riot being recorded in 1939. As recently as March 2010, paramilitary forces were deployed to rein in extensive clashes over the appropriate placing of religious flags across the city. Along with this convoluted history of religious discord, the rapidly growing slum areas of Hyderabad became receptacles not just of poverty but of radical politics and unrest. This essay interrogates the violent identity politics embraced by riot-affected Muslim male children in a communally volatile slum in Hyderabad, and explores why these boys turned to armed and collective vigilantism to position themselves in a landscape of death, destruction and urban displacement.