Communal Geographies Before and Beyond Partition in South Asia

Communal Geographies: Introducing Spaces Before, After and Beyond Partition

William Gould, Charu Gupta and Stephen Legg

Part I: Internationalism and Borders

1. Prayers, Not Protests: Christian Internationalism and Young Womanhood in South India

Sneha Krishnan

2. B.R. Ambedkar, Partition and the Internationalisation of Untouchability, 1939–47

Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza

3. The Space of the Courtroom and the Role of Geographical Evidence in the Punjab Boundary Commission Hearings, July 1947

Hannah Fitzpatrick

4. Cartographic Anxiety on the Thar Desert: The Border Security Force and Jaisalmer’s Tanot Mata Mandir

Nilanjana Mukherjee

5. Communal Geographies and Peasant Insurgency in Colonial Myanmar

Jonathan Saha

Part II: State, Nation, Province

6. Communal Geographies: Space, Identity and Electoral Constituency in Colonial North India

Nazima Parveen

7. Measuring Race, Space and the Citizen: Anthropology and Statistics in Early Post-Independence India

William Gould

8. State before Partition: India’s Interim Government under Wavell

Rakesh Ankit

9. Searching for Synergies, Making Majorities: The Demands for Pakistan and Maharashtra

Oliver Godsmark

10. Hindu Militarism and Partition in 1940s United Provinces: Rethinking the Politics of Violence and Scale

William Gould

Part III: Presidency Cities and Cities in the Capital

11. Business as Usual? Bazars and Communalism in Colonial Delhi, 1913–32

Anish Vanaik 

12. Mill, Market, Mandir, Masjid: The Geographies of Communal Conflict in Colonial Bombay, c. 1929–39

Prashant Kidambi

13. A Pre-Partitioned City? Anti-Colonial and Communal Mohallas in Inter-War Delhi

Stephen Legg

14. Genealogy of a Partition City: War, Migration and Urban Space in Delhi

Anjali Bhardwaj Datta

15. Forging Communal Space: Negotiating Streets and Practices in Delhi, 1922–65

Saeed Ahmad

Biography

Stephen Legg is Professor of History Geography at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on colonial India in the context of British imperialism and interwar internationalism. His publications include Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (2007); Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities and Interwar India (2014); Round Table Conference Geographies: Constituting Colonial India in Interwar London (2023); and Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (2025).

William Gould is Professor of Indian History at the University of Leeds. He specialises in mid-20th century histories of citizenship in South Asia. His publications including Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (2004); Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia (2012); and Boundaries of Belonging: Localities, Citizenship and Rights in India and Pakistan (2018).

Charu Gupta is Senior Professor of History at the University of Delhi. She is the author of Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (2001); The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print (2016); and Hindi Hindu Histories: Caste, Ayurveda, Travel, and Communism in Early-Twentieth-Century India (2024).