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Abstract This article focuses on how urban security has been governed in Mumbai in the aftermath of the 2008 terrorist attacks (26/11). The event was widely cited as a major turning point in the securitisation and militarisation of Indian cities. It also produced significant political upheaval, which in turn generated calls for a major institutional overhaul of the governmental architecture for handling terrorism. This article takes the political and policy repercussions of 26/11 as an intervention into critical debates about the (para-)militarisation of policing and the politics of urban security. Here I shift the focus from the disciplinary and divisive effects of policies towards an emphasis on their spectacular and theatrical dimensions. If we are to make sense of the 'militarised' focus of the policy response to 26/11, I argue, we need to take seriously its populist, aspirational qualities.

This article focuses on how urban security has been governed in Mumbai in the aftermath of the 2008 terrorist attacks (26/11). The event was widely cited as a major turning point in the securitisation and militarisation of Indian cities. It also produced significant political upheaval, which in turn generated calls for a major institutional overhaul of the governmental architecture for handling terrorism. This article takes the political and policy repercussions of 26/11 as an intervention into critical debates about the (para-)militarisation of policing and the politics of urban security. Here I shift the focus from the disciplinary and divisive effects of policies towards an emphasis on their spectacular and theatrical dimensions. If we are to make sense of the 'militarised' focus of the policy response to 26/11, I argue, we need to take seriously its populist, aspirational qualities.

The Mohalla Committees of Mumbai are a civil society initiative for the management of conflict. On December 6, 1992, a Hindu mob destroyed a 400‐year‐old mosque in Ayodhya in North India. Muslims all over India staged protests, and communal riots broke out in various parts of the country, including Mumbai. Not only was there a loss of harmony between Hindus and Muslims in the city, but also a loss of faith by the Muslims in the police. A people‐centered mechanism with the objective of communal harmony, the Mohalla Committees in Mumbai strived to restore peace and to open channels of communication between the police and citizens. Women played a key role in the process of confidence building. This article is a study of the proactive role played by women in continuing the process of reconciliation and peace building.

Der indische Autor Rahman Abbas schreibt über Politik, die menschliche Psyche, über Geschichte und städtische Milieus, die er selber kennt und die muslimisch geprägt sind. Rahman Abbas ist sicher einer der interessantesten Autoren des heutigen Indien. Sein Roman "Die Stadt, das Meer, die Liebe" liegt nun als erstes Werk in deutscher Übersetzung vor. Im Folgenden wird der Roman und das Milieu vorgestellt.

This paper theorizes the transformative potential of women's night-time leisure in Mumbai's urban areas. To this end, I draw on instances from qualitative field-based research focused on Mumbai's call centers and surrounding areas of informal urban activity. For women working night shifts in this sector, leisure activities occur with the help of informal vendors who run food stalls on streets around call centers. These times and space of leisure, I argue, disrupt capitalist and caste-based patriarchal systems. I analyze such leisure as a "limen" (cf. Lugones, 2003 ), a form of liminality that disrupts systems of production and reproduction that constitute the everyday (cf. Lefebvre, 1991 ). I elaborate on the temporal attributes of the limen to show how it goes against the grain of "efficiency" that otherwise shapes women's routines. The fluid spatial nature of women's night-time leisure helps rework dichotomous understandings of the public and private realm, demonstrating possibilities for intimate interactions within the public domain. The limen and intimate interactions therein often occur between food vendors and women working night shifts, revealing an intersubjective dynamic that ephemerally disrupts societal hierarchies. As such, the limen reworks and challenges existing structures, and in doing so, holds significance for envisioning a politics of change.