'City of sand': Stately Re-Imagination of Marina Beach in Chennai

The launch of economic neoliberalization in India in the 1990s unfolded a new urban habitat in Indian metropolitan cities with public spaces becoming an important part of a parvenu visual display. A vigorous state-led bourgeois imaginary based on an aestheticized model of order and cleanliness ensued, but its realization is often 'cracked and refracted', illustrating the problematic conceptualization of public spaces in postcolonial India. This article examines the imagination of the Marina beach in Chennai, from its creation in the colonial era to the different cycles of re-imagination pursued in the postcolonial years. In doing so, it highlights a fundamental difference between the Western and indigenous understandings of open spaces, which is characterized by conflict at two levels - first of all, between the public and the common, and secondly, between the public and the crowd. This persists to date, as a result of which state-produced plans for the Marina have come across weakly and attempts to implement grand visions on the beach have frequently been thwarted. Reduced to a narrower set of fragmented pursuits, the state (and those who subscribe to its bourgeois imaginary), instead of looking for a reconciliation between the two conceptualizations of open spaces, increasingly employs class stereotypes to legitimize one (the public) and discredit the other (the common/crowd). Resume Dans les annees 1990 en Inde, le debut de la neoliberalisation economique a revele un nouvel habitat urbain dans les villes metropolitaines, les espaces publics revetant peu a peu un aspect important dans l'exposition des nouveaux parvenus. Il en a resulte un fort imaginaire 'bourgeois' porte par l'Etat et fonde sur un modele esthetique d'ordre et de proprete qui, une fois concretise, apparait souvent 'fendille et deforme', illustrant les problemes de conceptualisation des espaces publics dans l'Inde postcoloniale. Cet article s'interesse a Marina Beach (Chennai) et a la maniere dont le site a ete imagine depuis sa creation a l'epoque coloniale, jusqu'aux differents cycles de re-imagination dans les annees postcoloniales. Ce faisant, il met en evidence une difference fondamentale entre les notions occidentale et nationale d'espace ouvert. Celle-ci se traduit par un conflit a deux niveaux qui persiste encore a ce jour: d'une part, entre le public et la communaute; d'autre part, entre le public et la masse. De ce fait, les plans que l'Etat a elabores pour la Marina ont manque de vigueur et les tentatives d'amenagements grandioses sur la plage ont souvent ete contrecarrees. Reduit a une panoplie retrecie d'actions fragmentees, l'Etat (et les adeptes de son imaginaire bourgeois) n'a pas cherche a concilier les deux conceptualisations de l'espace ouvert, accentuant progressivement sa preference pour des stereotypes de classe afin de legitimer l'un (le public) et de discrediter l'autre (la communaute ou la masse).