Since Independence, Muslim politics in India has mainly been framed through the idiom of identity. While political engagements calling for democratization and increased participation in public life have occasionally occurred, scholarly interest in the ongoing shifts in Muslim political demands is recent and new. Simultaneously, the emerging literature on the politics of patronage and post-patronage networks in democracies of the Global South present anthropologists with new tools for studying the changing contours of the political mobilization of the urban poor. Using ethnographic narratives collected during fieldwork in Park Circus—one of Kolkata’s many Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods—which remains stigmatized and socially and spatially set apart, this article highlights the emerging modes of political engagement among poor and lower middle-class Muslims. I carefully document their efforts to negotiate a perceived ‘better’ life within a fast-changing neoliberal urban landscape that is prejudiced against them. For many ordinary Muslims, this has involved a movement away from the traditional elite-led politics of identity towards more plebeian forms of assertion and activism aimed at eking out a respectable living by working through extant structures of the local administration and networks of power in the neighbourhood.

中文翻译：

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谈判更美好的生活：加尔各答普通和贫困穆斯林政治的新趋势

自独立以来，印度的穆斯林政治主要是通过身份习语来构建的。虽然偶尔会发生呼吁民主化和更多参与公共生活的政治活动，但学术界对穆斯林政治需求不断变化的兴趣是最近的和新的。同时，关于全球南方民主国家赞助政治和后赞助网络的新兴文献为人类学家提供了研究城市贫民政治动员不断变化的轮廓的新工具。使用在公园马戏团（加尔各答众多穆斯林占主导地位的社区之一）实地考察期间收集的民族志叙事，该社区仍然受到污名化，在社会和空间上与世隔绝，本文重点介绍了贫困和中下层穆斯林之间新兴的政治参与模式。我仔细记录了他们在对他们有偏见的快速变化的新自由主义城市景观中协商“更好”生活的努力。对于许多普通穆斯林来说，这涉及到从传统的精英主导的身份政治转向更平民化的主张和激进主义形式的运动，其目的是通过在当地行政机构的现有结构和权力网络中工作，过上体面的生活。邻里。