In and around the dark recesses of the ruins of a
fourteenth-century palace in Delhi, Anand Vivek Taneja finds a counterculture
to the demands of today’s India. In Taneja’s view, this world of jinn
veneration is more inclusive and less judgmental than the outside world and
hearkens back to a fast slipping past, with elements from before colonialism
and modernity. Jinn veneration turns out to be a great lens through which to
explore many aspects of North Indian society today, from the experience of
love, legal consciousness, and the relationship between communities, to ecology,
the role of history, and protection (or lack thereof) of monuments.
Anand Vivek Taneja, Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. Reviewed by Gijs Kruijtzer
The book is
also a testament of hope. The author argues forcefully that we can take hope
from precolonial India. But is the North Indian precolonial past as a whole
indeed a good foundation for hope? Over the years 2007 to 2014, Taneja spent time talking to
people and immersing himself in what he calls the “ethics of nameless intimacy”
at the Firuz Shah Kotla ruins (p. 91). He also photographed in situ
some of the letters that people have addressed to the jinn-saints and
have hung on the walls or inserted in the crevices in the alcoves
where candles are lit for the various jinn-saints. In addition, he picked some
of the letters from the trash—for workers of the Archaeological Survey of India
(ASI) periodically sweep them into piles before burning them.
All in all, his
sample of letters numbers around two hundred. Taneja also received two
weeks of access to the ASI record room, but due to its ill organization he
can only describe his research there as “random access” (p. 31). This was
enough to reveal, however, that contrary to the claims of some of his
interlocutors, the veneration of saints at Firuz Shah Kotla does go back
further than the 1970s...
