VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This paper positions the recent Farmers Protests in India as a critical moment in the redefinition of the idea of public space, challenging conventional and normative urban notions within social and political theorisation of space. Peripheral from the traditional protest site locations in the political capital city of Delhi, both figuratively and spatially, farmers from Haryana and Punjab adorned three state highways from November 2020 to December 2021 in their protest against the three farm bills. In this temporary occupation, the ordinary highways became extraordinary spaces of everyday life, transforming into highly meaningful places of congregation, care and community, whose impact lasted way beyond the protest duration. Drawing from an ethnographic study of the protest sites, the research analyses how new forms of resistance emerge in these sites chosen by the public. By analysing the organic processes involved in the movement, occupation and identity formation, it examines the unique urban morphologies of transience, formed during the social and spatial evolution of the protest site. Findings reveal how the boundaries between public and private, formal and informal, temporary and permanent were blurred, thereby questioning the idea of permanence as a prerequisite for urban space theorisation. This represents how such spatial acts of resistances are basically manifestations of marginalised and non-urban actors, where new communities of citizenship formed at protest sites are instrumental in redefining the space as opposed to the dominant authoritarian narrative of the planned public space. Therefore, this paper situates within a larger discussion of processes of space making in the city, particularly those from ground up.