Haunting and the Politics of South Asian Archaeology: Stories of three Jinn-haunted ruins

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology in South Asia" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In this paper I will look at stories of three jinn-haunted ruins in contemporary South Asia: The Moti Masjid in the Lahore Fort, parts of the abandoned Mughal capital of Fatehpur Sikri, and the ruins of Firoz Shah Kotla in Delhi. All three are associated with South Asia’s pre-colonial Muslim rulers, and all three are sites associated with Islamic spirits known as jinn, where the veneration of jinn as (Muslim) saints has become prevalent in recent times. In this paper I will look at the stories of jinn told at all three sites and understand why the return of “liveliness” to these sites through rituals and beliefs around Islamic spirits poses a challenge to the amnesias inherent  in post-colonial nationalist politics as well as the erasures of everyday life and relations from monuments in colonial and post-colonial  practices of preservation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Historical Archaeology in South Asia   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology