Who, after all, is a Dilliwallah? For decades, Delhi has resisted answering this question. Instead, it has let its residents stitch something of themselves into an ever-expanding, ever-evolving patchwork of belonging. Its many-splendoured character refuses the easy definitions that questions of identity so often demand.

But cities change. Their doors may open wide for some, even as the meaning of belonging grows more uncertain for others. Has the Delhi of today begun to draw lines around who gets to call it home?

It is a question that has acquired a new urgency of late. The building collapse at Saidulajab in May, then another this week at Satya Niketan, followed just two days later by the assault on a musician from Manipur, Chongtham Vikram Singh, who had made the city his home, should be a moment of reckoning for the city. For they raise an uneasy question: Who gets to feel at home today in a city whose story has always been that of people arriving from elsewhere and finding a place within it?

Delhi has always had its cruelties. It has discriminated against the poor and has witnessed horrific communal violence. There have always been some enclaves whose residents made others feel less welcome. But there was something very reassuring about........

© Indian Express