Politics of Mobility and Delhi’s Migrants: Examining Modes of Cosmopolitanisms in Aman Sethi’s A Free Man

Abstract

The idea of cosmopolitanism suggests recognition and respect of all forms of differences and diversity, and engagement across various class, ethnic, cultural and national affiliations. In the literature on cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitanism is conflated with globalisation and mobile capitalism, which focuses on the lifestyles of those ‘elite’ few who are world travellers and have cultivated the taste for ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ in the designated ‘consumptionscapes’ of the city. But what about those not belonging to the upper classes and moving from one place to another within the same country or the city? What about the acceptance and respect for the differences embodied in the figure of the ‘Other’, migrants? Can a migrant, who does not belong to the upper class, be called cosmopolitan? The paper aims to examine the class consciousness and the centrality of mobility in cosmopolitanism by looking at the varied modes of cosmopolitanism as displayed by the working-class migrants in urban areas. In contrast to the cosmopolitanism of transnational elites or the capitalist cosmopolitanism of the rich and upper middle classes, cosmopolitan generosity and reasoning have been shown to exist amongst non-intellectual, relatively immobile and working-class groups that provide a significant challenge for how we think about the cosmopolitan identity. It is suggested that we need to reconsider any dualistic notion that cosmopolitans are mobile or elite, or better still, both mobile and elite. Aman Sethi’s A Free Man is interrogated for its representation of the working-class migrants in Delhi to study the (im)mobility and cosmopolitanism of the marginalised migrants who do not belong to the privileged section of the society.