Back to Events of Week No. 46: Monday 13th November 2023 to Sunday 19th November 2023
Thursday | 04:15 PM | Tea with a Tiger: Contemporary Vernacular History and Discourse in Western India - Dr. Deepra Dandekar (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient) Departmental Colloquium Summer Semester 2023 - History Department | Session 4: 16.11.2023 Dr. Deepra Dandekar (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient) This presentation explores two popular hagiographies of the Sufi saint Sailani Baba (1871-1906) whose dargah is extremely popular with Hindu devotees in Maharashtra. Said to have arrived from Delhi, Sailani Baba died and was buried in Pimpalgaon-Sarai, a village between Chikhli and Buldhana. While Sailani Baba’s hagiography was compiled by students in the mid- 20th century, it was made popular through a booklet that was regularly updated, translated, and transcribed into different languages and scripts. This hagiography has in the last half-century, been complimented by other hagiographies, composed by Sailani Baba’s Hindu devotees, that posit him as a Shaiva – Natha saint, and as a supporter of the Hindu nationalist political party, the Shiv Sena. While these Hindu renditions composed in traditional bardic forms, borrow information from the original booklet, they also transform the narrative to produce ambivalence around Baba’s Musalmaniyat (Muslim identity). Based on a book project that explores dargah discourse, i.e. dargah miracle stories and hagiographies through a subaltern studies lens, I argue that the Sailani Baba discourse is not only limited to telling a story of a pre-Partition Muslim past; it recounts the postcolonial history of contemporary transformations in Maharashtra that form the context for its miracles. Address Südasien-Institut Gebäude 4130, Raum 010.01.05 Voßstr. 2 69115 Heidelberg Homepage Event https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/history/kolloquium/kolloquium.php Organizer Südasien-Institut Homepage Organizer Contact URL https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/history/kolloquium/kolloquium.php |