This paper explores the case of a Hindu woman who was buried in a Muslim graveyard in Delhi, in accordance with her last wish, as she preferred burial over the traditional practice of cremation. This situation arose in the midst of growing conflicts between the two communities, and illustrates how a resilient ethics of congestion informs finding innovative ways in the face of an impasse to reinvent and sustain everyday life. The lack of 'secular' burial options in the city meant that the deceased woman's family had to seek out burial grounds in other communities. The paper provides a detailed account of the negotiations, events and rituals that followed.
In addition to challenging the notion of ethics as a moral code, the paper departs from the prevalent understanding of ethics as a means to reinstitute everyday life after an evental rupture. Instead, it argues for an ethics of congestion that emerges from the choked-up passages that push everyday life to its limits. For this purpose, the paper expands the meaning of congestion beyond urban traffic and dense living conditions to include any factor that impedes the autonomous movement of the body, from religion and ideology to bureaucracy and emotions. Ethics in such a situation often requires to rethink the techniques of the body and the field of meanings and social relations in which it is placed. Based of extensive field work in following up the case and detailed recording of the ritual, the paper calls for rethinking the notions of religion, ethics, body and community from the perspective of urban congestion.
