Man wants to know and be known. That’s perhaps the perennial instinctual urge man has inherited from the animal kingdom he is part of and developed it further in the evolutionary process. A large number of animals have community life which is mostly instinct-driven. Human community despite having the underpinnings of instincts is largely shaped by consciousness which is uniquely human. Ancient human settlements were small where members knew each other that created a bond and solidarity which worked as a bulwark against foreseeable and unforeseeable natural disasters and calamities. Ever-present natural threats forced men to act together that ensured their survival. The acting together meant intimacy among the actors which implied knowing each other inside out. Consequent solidarity helped men cope with the threats to human life which implied strict adherence to norms, acceptance of collective responsibility and conformity to group behaviour.

All of this enabled people to perpetuate human life but it had a cost; man was denied what we nowadays call private space. The reason was that utmost priority was the protection and safety of the group, not the individual who, though crucially important as a member of the group, was insignificant as a separate entity. In a historical process with the stabilising of human groups one can witness gradual emergence of hierarchies generally based on division of work which has had manual and intellectual nature. Gender also played an important role in determining one’s overall position in the scheme of things.

Primitive and later agrarian society by virtue of being dependent on close-knit communities felt safer in small settlements. And a small settlement invariably meant little space for individual activities and solitude which prevented the creation of private space. How can you have a private space in a society where the very notion of public and private space is non-existent? Community has an undifferentiated space shared by all as defined by socio-cultural practices. In our part of the world society was more complex and life tightly regulated because of prevalence of caste system under which one’s social status and profession were predetermined. Here the future was irrevocably determined by the past. In other words, the past repeated itself as the future ad nauseam. A person was (still is, to some extent) born in a caste, or worse, out of caste, which automatically defined his profession, status and life to come with surgical precision. The situation of those born in lower castes or out of caste was unbearably painful which combined the worst elements of caste and class. They were discriminated, denigrated, disgraced and kept at bay, to say the least, for none of their fault. All this happened in the public space as there was no private one worth the name.

The historical situation was exacerbated as there was no way out for the victims of caste biases and class prejudices to escape from the social degradation and humiliation inflicted on them in the public. History, changes in historical conditions, to be more exact, provided the way out by boosting birth rate which led to population density, accelerating the process of urbanisation. Urbanisation, despite all its ills and negative impact on the environment, has proved an undisguised blessing for those trapped in small settlements or countryside.

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A city as they call it is a jungle. It’s an apt metaphor though dead for being overused. Jungle is place that is a sanctuary of diverse creatures. It’s both an open and enclosed space simultaneously. It’s an underground chamber as well as vaudeville. It’s a track as well as a cave. It’s a hunting ground as well as a hideout.

The city reveals as much as it conceals. All this has been made possible by the density of population. Population density and sprawl have created the phenomenon of anonymity inerasably associated with the city life. Anonymity like death is a great leveler; it treats the big and small the same way i.e. indifferently. Being treated indifferently may be an agony for those who think they are indispensable. But those who suffer discrimination because of their caste or profession being treated indifferently means being treated fairly. In our specific historical context being ignored like nonentities is not their problem, being disgraced certainly is. So it shouldn’t be surprising to see our cities swarming with the rural poor, especially the people of low castes with hereditary professions. Anonymity is the refuge of the wretched. It can devour without destroying what the caste and class ridden society, especially in the countryside, spews. It helps free the down-trodden from the shackles of the oppressive past and the tentacles of not-easy-to-escape destiny imposed from above.