Although the issue of citizenship has attracted the interest of some political scientists in relation to the problems of contemporary Indian democracy, historians have generally tended to shy away from exploring the concrete demands for civic rights that accompanied, but were by no means identical with, the struggle for national self-determination. Indeed, the dominance of nationalist and nation-oriented frameworks in Indian historical writing has tended to thwart interest in the materialities of local issues directly affecting the livelihoods of people. The astoundingly low profile accorded to what Manuel Castells described more than a quarter of a century ago as ‘the urban question’, is a revealing manifestation of the relative neglect of local and social histories.