The bazaar as archive: Legibility, cosmopolitanism, and ‘refugee entrepreneurs’ in Delhi

Abstract This article examines three refugee-established markets in Delhi, Gaffar Market in Karol Bagh after Partition, Majnu ka Tilla following the arrival of Tibetan exiles in the 1960s, and Little Kabul in Lajpat Nagar shaped by Afghan migration from the 1980s, to explore how displaced communities created forms of urban belonging through commerce. These markets did not grow from state-led rehabilitation policies alone, but from tolerated encroachments, kin-based credit, remembered trade routes, and the tactical use of temporary documents to claim legibility while existing on the margins of the state. Drawing on archival materials, including zoning reports, eviction files, newspaper reports, and planning memos, the article develops the idea of the bazaar as archive: a site where histories of displacement are bureaucratically inscribed through economic activity. It argues that these markets reflect distinct refugee modes of urbanism, which generate varied forms of vernacular cosmopolitanism, a public openness shaped not by law or multicultural planning, but by shared consumption, proximity, and economic trust. These commercial geographies reveal how post-colonial cities absorbed displacement not only through formal schemes but also through the everyday logics of trade and neighbourhood familiarity. Additionally, in the absence of legal recognition, refugees have left their marks through cultural and economic means.