Reporting Riots: Processions, Police and Public in the New Imperial Capital of Delhi (1911-1925)

The routes of procession mark the city with each step, each halt and each congregation. In this essay, I will look at the routes of procession of Muharram in the city of Shahjahanabad, with respect to the ossification of pathways by police paraphernalia stationed at each turn. I will specifically discuss the cases of reporting ‘riots’ in the British records from 1911 to 1925. The streets are marked not merely by reasons of memory and landscape, but also through disciplining by the colonial state. The city of Delhi saw two major communal riots: one in the 1880s and the other in 1920s. The atmosphere of Delhi by the early twentieth century observed changes in communal identities. The tension between the communities in both the cases was triggered by the Muharram processions coinciding with Hindu festivals. The fractures in ‘practices of the communities’ into ‘communal practices’ that demand peacekeeping are evident by the 1920s.