Investigates how a rural town became a site of community-making, mobility, and identity formation

In 2002 widespread communal violence tore apart towns and villages in rural parts of Gujarat, India. In the aftermath, many Muslims living in Hindu-majority villages sought safety in the small town of Anand. Following such dramatic displacement, the town emerged as a site of opportunity and hope. For its residents and transnational visitors, Anand’s Muslim area is not just a site of marginalization; it has become an important focal point and regional center from which they can participate in the wider community of Gujarat and reimagine society in more inclusive terms.

This compelling ethnography shows how in Anand the experience of residential segregation led not to estrangement or closure but to distinctive forms of mobility and exchange that embed Muslim residents in a variety of social networks. New Lives in Anand moves beyond established notions of ghettoization to foreground the places, practices, and narratives that are significant to the people of Anand.

New Lives in Anand is available in an open access edition through the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, thanks to the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749655

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"Sanderien Verstappen’s wonderful new book New Lives in Anand tells us that the story of Gujarati Muslims does not end with violence and displacement...[T]he book shows us how new lives and connections are made by communities who have deep ties to a region and a way of life that cannot be reduced to the word 'Muslim.'"

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"Verstappen...holds herself accountable to the often-contradictory stories that her interlocutors tell about their relationship to communal violence. The threat of violence is still present as a binding force, but processes of social change are made livable by a new aesthetics of mobility and connectedness."

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"The book is instrumental in charting a new paradigm to theorize segregated Muslim spaces and Muslim middle-class formations."