Ghosh, Anindita (Senior Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, The School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK.)

Claiming the City: Protest, Crime, and Scandals in Colonial Calcutta, c. 1860-1920 Ghosh, Anindita (Senior Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, The School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK.)

This book on colonial Calcutta charts the history of its urbanization from below in its streets, strikes and popular urban cultures. Claiming the City offers a close up view of the citys underbelly by drawing in a range of non-archival sources, from illustrations and amateur photographs to street songs, local histories and memoirs which show how Calcutta was not just a problem to be disciplined and governed as the colonialists would have us believe. Instead, itemerges in Ghoshs study as remarkably lively and crucial site for the shaping of a discourse of rights and claims to the city by various marginal urban groups. In doing so, the book uses the everyday as a prism for capturing the many urban political and social imaginaries that shaped the city throughscandals, crime, street songs, protest and violence.