Readers’ comments: Ahmedabad was never a welcoming city
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I agree with the author’s strong criticism of the attacks on book readers in Ahmedabad, but would debate the headline “How Ahmedabad became an unwelcoming city”. Ahmedabad was never a welcoming city. Unlike what the author claims, the city has had a stunted history of public debate and left-wing or lower-caste movements.
Except for a smattering of liberal citizens and activists such as Indulal Yagnik or the Citizens’ Initiative, the city has refrained from embracing a robust liberal or left-leaning tradition. For example, a significant proportion of students in the large-scale Navnirman Andolan of 1974 and anti-reservations protests in the 1980s belonged to the Sangh and its affiliates.
If Mohandas Gandhi made the city his home from 1915 to 1930, his decision was as much stimulated by the financial sustenance that the citizens could provide as it was in the anxiety over imminent violence between caste and religious groups.
Powerful institutions which he went on to establish in Ahmedabad, such as the Textile Labour Association, served as effective centres of peace-building. Yet, the textile industry had its own caste-based hierarchy. Dalits spun cloth, but never weaved because threads broken during weaving had to be joined with saliva. Once handled by Dalits, such cloth would not be touched by...