From Girangaon to Mini Pakistan: The Precarious Place of Working Muslims in 20th Century Bombay
2018-2020
Robert Rahman Raman, University of Göttingen

The doctoral project on the social and political history of labour in Bombay (now, Mumbai), focuses on the plebeian culture of Girangaon, the so-called ‘village of textile mills.’ The project studies long-term changes in the identification of Muslim dominated neighbourhoods in Girangaon by its inhabitants as well as others as “Muslim” neighbourhoods and the impact of these precarious ‘placings’ on the social and political landscape of Bombay as a whole. Specifically, the project explores the transformation of localities in Bombay from “’working-class neighbourhoods” with many Muslim inhabitants in the early decades of twentieth century into “Muslim neighbourhoods” in the years following independence, sheltering many workers. It further looks into how these “working-class neighbourhoods” which in the early decades of the twentieth century were identified as an integral part of Girangaon received the derogatory label of “Mini-Pakistan” to indicate their “alien”, quasi-extraterritorial and “unnatural” character in the years immediately following India’s partition in 1947.
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mwfdelhi (November 9, 2021). From Girangaon to Mini Pakistan: The Precarious Place of Working Muslims in 20th Century Bombay. Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies (MWF Delhi). Retrieved March 27, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/rps0