Overview

Tracing the journey of meat from the farm to the meat shop and other workspaces of the butcher within the multi-sited margins in Delhi, the current volume intimately follows the lives of Qureshi butchers and other meat sector workers in this transforming mega-city. The author addresses the tensions that meat throws up in a bristling society whose stakes are now more than ever intense. She shows how meat is also a rising sector in the Indian economy, and fetches precious foreign exchange. Qureshi butchers stand at the crossroads of class, caste, stigma, religion, market, urban ecological policies, and a never-ceasing political debate around these issues. Delhi's Meatscapes brings together rare archival documents, vernacular sources, and ethnographic insights gleaned from several years of immersion in the city's meatscapes and is the first of its kind for urban anthropologists, economists, political scientists, policy planners and readers who wish to take a hard look at their own (non-) meat choices.

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9780199477807

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Reviews

'Zarin Ahmad's book is not only an in-depth ethnography of the Qureshis (Muslim community of butchers) of Delhi showing all the facets of their life, at the family level, in the urban space and in the local economy: it is also a study of the marginalization of Muslims in an Indian megalopolis, and even more interestingly of the place of meat in a Hindu-dominated city. The 'beef ban' introduced by some BJP governments after 2014 makes it even more topical.' -Christophe Jaffrelot, senior research fellow, CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, France 'This is a model work of scholarship: richly researched, closely argued, and lucidly written. It effortlessly crosses geographical and disciplinary boundaries to narrate the interlinked histories of a community, the Qureshis; a commodity, meat; a city, Delhi; and a country, India. The book should attract a wide readership within and outside the academy.' -Ramachandra Guha, historian, Bengaluru, India

'Zarin Ahmad's book is not only an in-depth ethnography of the Qureshis (Muslim community of butchers) of Delhi showing all the facets of their life, at the family level, in the urban space and in the local economy: it is also a study of the marginalization of Muslims in an Indian megalopolis, and even more interestingly of the place of meat in a Hindu-dominated city. The 'beef ban' introduced by some BJP governments after 2014 makes it even more topical.' -Christophe Jaffrelot, senior research fellow, CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, France 'This is a model work of scholarship: richly researched, closely argued, and lucidly written. It effortlessly crosses geographical and disciplinary boundaries to narrate the interlinked histories of a community, the Qureshis; a commodity, meat; a city, Delhi; and a country, India. The book should attract a wide readership within and outside the academy.' -Ramachandra Guha, historian, Bengaluru, India

Author Information

Zarin Ahmad is an Affiliated Research Fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi. She is a New India Foundation Fellow and received her doctorate in South Asian Studies from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has previously worked on refugees and Muslim minorities in Sri Lanka in the context of the war.

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