Vol.:(0123456789) Spatial Demography https://doi.org/10.1007/s40980-021-00085-8 1 3 Towards an Enhanced Understanding of Caste‑Based Residential Segregation in Indian Cities: Refections from Kolkata and Bengaluru Ismail Haque 1  · Dipendra Nath Das 1  · Priyank Pravin Patel 2  · Md Hasnine 3 Accepted: 25 March 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Abstract As India urbanizes, residential patterns in her towns/cities have become progres- sively more complex in terms of caste, religion, income and other socioeconomic attributes. Many have conventionally used the Dissimilarity Index (an aspatial meas- ure) to decipher such segregation patterns, yet seldom investigated the vital role of spatial scales and local geographies in shaping them. Utilizing neighborhood-level caste and demographic data for the cities of Kolkata and Bengaluru, this paper unravels the intricacies of caste-based residential segregation patterns and compares their respective trends, using spatially sensitive segregation indices to examine the interactions among diferent caste groups at varying spatial scales. The decompo- sition of these indices into local spatial segregation indices allowed examination of the intra-city segregation patterns existing within these urban spaces more thor- oughly. Findings reveal that, in 2011, Kolkata exhibited a greater degree of caste- based residential segregation than Bengaluru. In terms of their respective decadal trends (1991–2011), caste primacy still played a crucial role in molding residen- tial patterns across Kolkata’s neighborhoods, since an almost negligible improve- ment was discerned in its global indices. The local segregation patterns, however, revealed a complex geography of caste-based residential patterning in these cities, thereby underscoring the necessity of considering scale-dependencies and spatial relationships in such studies. Keywords Urban segregation and caste · Spatial indices · Local and residential segregation · City neighborhoods * Ismail Haque ismailhaque140489@gmail.com Extended author information available on the last page of the article