Ethnicity & Urban Morphology at Bhopal

Collaborators: Manu P. Sobti & Kinghi Thao

This research examines Pathan residential neighborhoods in the city of Bhopal, Central India - a city founded in 1722 CE by Dost Mohammed Khan, an armed recruit who deserted the Mughal Army after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. Bhopal’s unique urban agglomeration developed in the course of the next 150 years on an undulating terrain along the perimeters of a pre-existing water body or lake. Its character seems to have resulted from the interactions of two distinct cultural groups who contested for domination within its urban environment - the local Hindu, Gond inhabitants, and the Pathan clansmen hailing from the Mirazi-Khail family of the Karar tribe in Afghanistan.

While the Hindu population of the Bhopal still preferred to occupy their ancestral homes largely located within the urban core, the large majority of the Pathan administrative and military elite – first seen as outsiders or migrants - settled in two particular quarters of the city, in close proximity to the important public institutions and urban spaces. A detailed documentation and analysis of large areas within these quarters reveals significant complexities not only at the level of overall organization and fabric patterns, but also in the unique nature of the house-types used by the migrant populace which bear distinct resemblance to the Qala house native to rural Afghanistan. With its cultural mix of populations, Bhopal witnessed the creation of distinctly contrasting foreign and indigenous house types.

The research concludes how migrant Pathan populations from Afghanistan, settling in Bhopal’s urban neighborhoods, tenaciously retained the physical structure and layout patterns of their indigenous dwellings, thereby sustaining the essential elements of their traditional socio-cultural structures.