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In ‘Juridical Limbo’: Urban Governance and Subaltern Legalities among Squatters in Calcutta, India

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Abstract

A ‘squatter’ in the global South is another word for a seemingly incomprehensible heap of legal ambiguities, messy politics and abject poverty. Squatter dwellers are typically immigrants from the countryside, who squat on seized land and are caught in complex mazes of citizenship, labor and property laws. They are suspended in what I call ‘juridical limbo’—a situation in which overlapping legal identities and contradictory laws render individuals or entire communities into a state of semi-legal existence. Many squatters have fallen through the cracks of the legal arena and are vulnerable to being evicted without proper rehabilitation, but some of them have indeed learnt to use the law’s complications to their extralegal advantage. Using the case of two extraordinary land conflicts in India’s most populous city—Calcutta—this paper contrasts the claim-making strategies of two squatter settlements, providing a rich ethnographic account of their differential success in protecting their territory against eviction and of navigating their semi-legal status. Alongside establishing this variation, this paper also interrogates the proximate causes of this variation and puts forth a theoretical framework that focuses on the legal relationship between the state and the urban poor.

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Notes

  1. Distinction between squatter settlements and slums in Calcutta is that while the former refer to settlements that are on registered land, typically legal and their titles are fully recognized by the municipal corporation (even though the structures themselves may or may not be), the latter refer to illegal encroachments set up on vacant public or private land.

  2. This is common practice in Delhi and Bombay as well. As Bhan and Menon-Sen (2008) point out in the case of Delhi, the BJP regime in a number of cases has been strident in labeling particular settlements as illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, as an excuse for having under-serviced them or evicted them. Similarly in Bombay, as Shahjahan (2010) points out there are several bastis in Navi Mumbai and Thane which are declared as Bangladeshi and are under close surveillance of police. Illegal detention and torture in custody are reported to be highly common in these areas.

  3. “Its Difficult to Identify Bangladeshis, West Bengal Govt. Informs Apex Court”, Hindustan Times.

    February 2, 1999.

  4. By documents, I refer to three major forms of state-issued proofs of name and location—the birth certificate, the ration card and the voter ID. In some cases there are others such as high school certificate, land title, caste certificate, etc. While most of them have always been in existence, the ration card is a more recent one and has become a major marker of identity in India. Since the 1990s, the ration card has been used to prove domicile status in the various Indian states and is accepted as one of the standard documents to verify identity by most government and private offices (Sadiq 2008). The ration card is also the most easily forged and fraudulently acquired.

  5. Since Independence in 1947, the state of West Bengal has been ruled by the Congress from 1947 till 1977 (except for a one term in 1967, when the CPM shared power with Non Congress parties when the Congress suffered a major set back) and by a coalition of Left parties led by CPM from 1977 until May 2011 when an offshoot of the Congress took over, bringing down the world’s longest serving democratically elected communist government.

  6. For an exposition of how engaged ethnography can contribute to the understanding of social movements within shifting fields of interlegality and multiple inequalities, see Sieder (2013).

  7. “Crucial Bridge in Need of Urgent Repair: Bridge on CM’s daily route may collapse any day”, Asian Age, June 13, 1995.

  8. These experts belonged to a consortium of 36 social organizations in the city, called Calcutta 36. Their survey was commissioned by Unnayan, after an accident that occurred on the bridge, causing the death of one person and injuring more than 25 on May 16. Victims were mainly the squatter dwellers who lived by the base of the bridge. The expert committee comprised of Mr. K.P. Poddar, former housing commissioner of the state government, Mr. Chira Dutta, chairman of the Indian Engineers’ Federation, and Mr. P.K. Banerjee, former director of the state water investigation directorate (“Crucial Bridge in Need of Urgent Repair: Bridge on CM’s daily route may collapse any day”, Asian Age, June 13, 1995).

  9. “Slopes beside Park Circus bridge are death traps: probe”, The Statesman, June 9, 1995.

  10. “Land grabbing: Encroachers Impeding City’s Development Projects”, The Statesman, 1995.

  11. The data in this section comes from a survey conducted by Unnayan before the eviction.

  12. Apart from Muslims, there were some Hindus (7%), a few Christians (3%) and the rest identified themselves as either Baishnabs, or didn’t report.

  13. Interview with Debojit Sarkar, CPI (M-L) political activist who attempted to organize the settlement on behalf of his party at the time of eviction, November 2010. The CPI (M-L) or the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) is a party that came up as a response to the CPM’s revisionist politics. They emerged as a pro-armed class struggle party that aimed to entrench itself among the masses of poor and landless peasants.

  14. Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas (2014).

  15. Interview with Arun Das, CPI (M-L) political activist, January 2011.

  16. Interview with Debojit Sarkar, CPI (M-L) political activist, November 2010.

  17. Interview with Arunima Roy, Unnayan activist, November 2010.

  18. Interview with Asim Sanyal, Unnayan activist, October 2010.

  19. Interview with Asim Sanyal, Unnayan activist, October 2010.

  20. Interview with Mumtaz, former Bridge squatter dweller, evicted when she was 10 years old, September 2010.

  21. Interview with Arunima Roy, Unnayan activist, November 2010.

  22. Internal memo of Unnayan: Routine visit to Number 4 bridge, 1 January 1996.

  23. Interview with Ahmad, former Bridge squatter dweller, evicted with family, January 2011.

  24. APDR is part of a countrywide civil and human rights movement. Since its inception in 1972, the association with its branches spread throughout West Bengal, India has been working for the protection of civil and democratic rights of the people and against all forms of state repression.

  25. “4 number puller ghotona niyom noy beytikrom hok”, Kalantor, December 1, 1995.

  26. “Jhuprir Bhangaar Por 1400 Manoosher Thikana Footpath”, Aajkal, November 26, 1995.

  27. “9-year old pavement dweller raped”, The Statesman, December 7, 1995.

  28. Internal memo of Unnayan: Work done on the day of inauguration, September 3, 1996.

  29. “Quit call in save-Lakes suit: MLA action against eviction pushes petitioner to brink”, Telegraph, July 24, 2003.

  30. Case on Protection of Urban Wetlands, Centre for Science and Environment: http://www.rainwaterharvesting.org/people/DOSSIERP/DossierP.pdf.

  31. “War of words over flats for the evicted”, The Times of India, February 13, 2011.

  32. Interview with Pradeep kaka, former Rail colony dweller, August 2010.

  33. “Left Unaddressed: Rehabilitation issue ignored in Kolkata’s eviction drive”, Down to Earth, 30 June, 2003.

  34. “Requiem for squatters”, The Statesman, August 8, 2002.

  35. “MLA leads squatters in Sarovar splash”, The Statesman, July 21, 2003.

  36. “Requiem for squatters”, The Statesman, August 8, 2002.

  37. “Quit call in save-Lakes suit: MLA action against eviction pushes petitioner to brink”, Telegraph, July 24, 2003.

  38. Government of West Bengal, Department of Environment, No. EN/545/1E-45/02 (Pt.1I), April 25, 2003 www.wbgov.com/BanglarMukh/Download?AlfrescoPath=WebContent/Departments/Environment/Other%20Documents&FileName=New_GOs_1.pdf.

  39. “Kolkata families stall their eviction from slum”, IANS, March 2, 2005.

  40. “Tension on track, Lake Eviction Today”, The Statesman, March 2, 2005.

  41. “Kolkata families stall their eviction from slum”, IANS, March 2, 2005.

  42. “Demonstration City”, The Statesman, November 10, 2005.

  43. “Squatters refuse to budge”, The Statesman, November 17, 2005.

  44. Affluent Neighbours Back Squatters Demand, The Statesman, November 21, 2005.

  45. “Halt for Eviction Protest”, The Statesman, November 6, 2005.

  46. “Squatters on Dharna”, The Statesman, November 12, 2005.

  47. “High Hopes of a Home”, The Statesman, November 19, 2005.

  48. “Sarobar Petition Hearing on Monday”, The Statesman, November 26, 2005.

  49. “No Looking back now”, The Statesman, December 17, 2005.

  50. “From here to eternity, The Statesman, January 28, 2006.

  51. Moreover, the Left Front’s (short-lived) urban movement for the poor in the 1970s and 1980s was historically a majority Hindu movement.

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Acknowledgements

The author is currently a Sociologist with the World Bank. However, this article was produced prior to her professional association with the World Bank, in her capacity as a doctoral researcher associated with Brown University. The author is indebted to the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant for financial support for data collection. She would also like to sincerely thank Professor Patrick Heller for his invaluable guidance on this research; Professors Nitsan Chorev, Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ashutosh Varshney for their support, and the activists of Unnayan, Calcutta without whose help this article would be impossible. The author is also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for very valuable feedback on the final draft. These acknowledgements notwithstanding, the author is solely responsible for the argument presented here.

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Correspondence to Shruti Majumdar.

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Majumdar, S. In ‘Juridical Limbo’: Urban Governance and Subaltern Legalities among Squatters in Calcutta, India. Hague J Rule Law 9, 83–108 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-017-0051-4

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