Hyderabad, June 22 -- Two treatises-Socio-spatial Consequences of the Disturbed Areas Act 1991 on Urbanizing Spaces in Gujarat by Shrivastava and Saffron geographies of exclusion: The Disturbed Areas Act of Gujarat by Tejani, both of 2002, by all counts a very tough year for harmony and national integration-and an analysis of the Act itself, read in the context of the Constitution, together raise a clear red flag for those willing to read between the lines.

The two treatises show that the spatial organization of urban India is no longer merely a story of economics or demography. It has become, with quiet but gathering force, a story of law: of how legislative architecture can be deployed to draw invisible walls between communities, walls...