Delhi Reborn

"This elegantly written book sheds fresh light on issues of violence, migration, citizenship, and the politics of self-expression. It enriches both the narrativization of Partition and historical understanding of India's contemporary emergence as an ethnic democracy."—Ian Talbot, University of Southampton
"In this innovative new history, Rotem Geva explores the sweeping changes that swept over Delhi as a result of India's independence and partition violence in 1947. The millenarian visions that shaped both the Indian nationalist movement and the movement for Pakistan provide a backdrop to the on-the-ground changes wrought by migration, struggles over property, and new forms of religious identity politics and state-making—which transformed the city forever."—David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University
"Rotem Geva supplies a concise, perceptive history of 'how the twin events of partition and independence remade Delhi.'"—Michael M. Rosen, The Federalist
"For geographers, there is much to cherish, admire, and be inspired by here. Though never absent of framings drawn from subaltern or postcolonial theory, this is an empirically grounded volume which takes us deep into the urban geographies of India's capital. These geographies are material and social, but also literary, journalistic, and emotional."—Stephen Legg, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography
"The affective structure of [Delhi Reborn] interweaves disparate or distant events (like the violence of 1857, the partition, or the years of the Emergency) through memories and reportage to situate the memories in a longer lineage of violence. The beauty of this long-term view lies in the fact that instead of framing it as a teleological account of the atrocities that the Muslim community has had to endure in Delhi, it shows how despite the rampant and recurring efforts to displace and hurt families, resistance to these efforts never desist, and take up new forms."—Aprajita Sarcar, H-Soz-Kult
"Delhi Reborn is an exceptional work of urban and local history that examines the city within larger frameworks whilst never losing sight of its purpose: to understand how the particular cultural and political histories of Delhi were transformed by the end of empire, the birth of the new nations of India and Pakistan, and the cataclysm of Partition."—Deborah Sutton, German Historical Institute London Bulletin
"Between searing oral histories and complex political ones, there has been a plethora of important scholarship on the Partition over the last few decades. Rotem Geva's book, Delhi Reborn, is distinctive for the way it focuses entirely on Delhi as a political and cultural staging ground for the Partition and emergence of the newly independent Indian nation-state."—Rashmi Sadana, South Asian History and Culture