Hindu–Muslim Alliances at Ahmedabad's Double Frontier

ABSTRACT This paper develops the concept of double frontiers —urban sites where capitalist accumulation and ethno‐territorial ordering are articulated—to examine communal capitalism as a mode of authoritarian rule in contemporary India. Focusing on Ahmedabad, India's most segregated city, it shows how segregation shifted after the 2002 pogrom from orchestrated riots to technical procedures of urban development. Based on 19 months of ethnographic research (2017–2021), the paper compares two sites: Juhapura, where riot‐driven displacement, strategic neglect, and legal restrictions converged with informal property markets to entrench segregation; and Ganeshnagar, a resettlement colony where displacement and bureaucratic violence reproduced segregation under Modi's post‐2002 agenda. While both reveal how development conceals communal violence, Ganeshnagar also exposed the order's fragility: its marginality enabled fleeting Hindu–Muslim alliances that unsettled Ahmedabad's spatial order. The paper argues that communal capitalism makes the production of segregation and Muslim marginality central to development, yet also generates openings where solidarities challenge its hegemony.