Communal Geographies: Before and Beyond Partition in South Asia

This book builds on the latest research on India’s partition and the politics of communal identity and explores the intricate relationship between community and religion on the one hand, and space or geography on the other.

Reconsidering the role of space from the quotidian neighbourhood through to the urban, regional, national and international, the chapters in this volume examine how religious community identities have been mapped onto particular spaces, and transformed through the interaction of spatial levels scales. Gurdwaras, mosques, temples, homes, shops, mohallas and the administrative border making of states at urban, regional and national levels have all been implicated in this complex history of mapping and making religious communities. Exploring this rich history through a range of detailed case studies that straddle partition in 1947, the book draws from a number of methods and sources, including archival work, visual analysis, oral history and ethnography.

The chapters in this book were originally published in South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies and are accompanied by a new updated Introduction.

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).