Every city has an inherited identity shaped by its history and an evolving identity shaped by the people who arrive later.
A great city protects its local culture while allowing newcomers to become part of its future.
Culture should invite participation, not become a test that determines who deserves dignity or belonging.
Newcomers should respect the city’s language, history, and communities without having to erase their own identities.
Mumbai demonstrates how migration can shape a city’s identity, even though it still struggles with inequality and exclusion.
Belonging is also created through public transport, affordable housing, safe streets, and shared public spaces.
Cities should be judged by whether people from anywhere can build a life there and eventually call it home.
People endlessly debate which Indian city is the best, and the answers usually depend on what each person values. Mumbai has its coastline and financial power, Delhi has history and political importance, Bengaluru has technology, Chennai has industry, Hyderabad combines technology and pharmaceuticals with a distinct Deccani heritage, Pune has education, and Kolkata has an artistic and intellectual character that few cities can reproduce. These comparisons can be interesting, but they miss a more important question. Instead of asking which city is better than every other city, we should ask what allows a city to feel as though it belongs to everyone who lives there.
Every city carries two identities. One is inherited from its history; the other evolves through the people who arrive later. Inherited identity comes from the language, food, festivals, architecture, and memories of the people who have lived there for generations. Evolving identity is created by the students, workers, artists, business owners, and families who arrive later and become part of its future. One tells a city where it came from; the other shapes who can become part of its future.
A city without an inherited identity would lose the culture that makes it distinct, but a city without an evolving identity would slowly become incapable of accommodating change. A great city should preserve what it has inherited while remaining open to what it has not yet become. Its history should provide roots rather than build walls around it.
This framework also changes how we think about local culture. Someone who moves to a city should make an effort to understand its language, respect its history, and participate in its traditions. However, culture should be offered as an invitation rather than used as a condition for dignity. Learning the local language can be an act of affection and participation, but it should not become an entrance examination that someone must pass before being accepted as a legitimate resident.
The difference between tolerance and belonging becomes important here. Tolerance allows a person to remain in the city, while belonging allows them to feel that they have become part of it. A person begins to belong when they can contribute to the economy, participate in public life, care about the city’s future, and imagine their children growing up there. They should be able to love, criticise, defend, and help shape the city without constantly being reminded that they originally came from somewhere else.
Mumbai offers a strong example of how inherited and evolving identities can exist together. Its inherited identity comes from the Marathi language, the history of the islands on which it developed, its fishing communities, its architecture, and the many local traditions that continue to shape everyday life. Its evolving identity was built through its ports, mills, markets, universities, businesses, financial institutions, and film industry. Migration did not interrupt Mumbai’s story. It helped write it.
Over the course of an ordinary day in Mumbai, someone can hear Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, English, and several other languages. The city contains communities whose histories stretch across generations, alongside people who arrived only a few months ago with little more than a suitcase and the hope of finding work. These people experience Mumbai in completely different ways, but their versions of the city still belong to the same larger story. Arriving in Mumbai has itself become one of the most recognisable Mumbai experiences.
This is also why I dislike hearing Mumbai described as the New York of India. Mumbai does not need to borrow the identity of a foreign city to prove its importance. Its coastline, local trains, old neighbourhoods, skyscrapers, street markets, film studios, businesses, tunnels, and constant movement have created an identity that belongs entirely to itself. Mumbai is valuable because its inherited and evolving identities have combined to produce something that no other city can fully reproduce.
This does not mean that Mumbai has perfectly solved the question of belonging. The city struggles with inequality, unaffordable housing, overcrowding, political tensions, and occasional hostility towards the same migrants who help sustain it. There is often a large distance between the inclusive idea of Mumbai and the reality experienced by many residents. Even so, the city’s broader imagination remains connected to arrival, reinvention, and the possibility that someone new can eventually become part of it.
Other Indian cities developed through different historical circumstances and therefore balance their two identities differently. Chennai’s inherited identity is deeply connected to Tamil language and culture, while Pune carries the influence of Maratha history and education. Kolkata is shaped by Bengali literature, art, politics, and intellectual life, while Bengaluru combines a strong Kannada identity with its position as a global technology centre. Hyderabad carries a distinct Deccani character formed through trade, language, food, and centuries of cultural exchange.
As these cities continue to attract people from across India, their evolving identities will naturally become more visible. The challenge is not to replace their local cultures with a generic metropolitan identity. It is to allow newcomers to become part of the city without making existing communities feel that their own history is disappearing. Chennai does not become less Tamil because a Punjabi family builds a life there, just as Pune does not become less Marathi because someone from Assam opens a business there. A culture remains strong when people continue to practise and pass it forward, not when everyone from elsewhere is kept at a distance.
Newcomers also have responsibilities towards the places they choose to call home. Belonging should not mean treating a city as nothing more than a marketplace from which employment, housing, and convenience can be extracted. People should respect the local culture, learn about the city, participate in its civic life, and care about the communities that existed before they arrived. This relationship must remain reciprocal, but respecting a city should never require someone to erase their own language, food, religion, surname, or place of origin.
Belonging is not created by culture alone. Cities also express who belongs through the way they are physically designed. Reliable public transport allows people from different incomes and neighbourhoods to access the same opportunities, while safe streets allow more people to participate in public life. Affordable housing gives workers a chance to live near the economy they support, and parks, libraries, promenades, markets, and public squares give strangers places to exist together. These systems determine whether newcomers can actually participate in the city or remain permanently outside its social and economic life.
Perhaps this gives us a better way to judge cities. We should ask whether someone from anywhere in India could imagine building a meaningful life there and whether their children would feel that the city belonged to them too. We should consider whether people can contribute without hiding where they came from and whether they will still be treated as outsiders after spending most of their lives there. These questions reveal more about the greatness of a city than its tallest building or its latest GDP figure.
The greatest cities are not those that choose between inherited identity and evolving identity. They are the ones confident enough to protect their roots while allowing millions of people to add new branches. A city becomes home to everyone when people can respect where they have arrived, remember where they came from, and still recognise themselves as part of the same shared story.