Illegible Histories and Sacral Margins: The Djinns of Feroz Shah Kotla
Visibly in a state of ruin, the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi stands as a dargah (Muslim shrine), albeit without the light of a bygone saint on its premises. This fourteenth-century monument is home to dark, sooty, underground alcoves that house a “ministry of djinns.” It draws people—primarily from the Muslim faith—hoping to appeal to said djinns to allay their troubles and anxieties. Believed to hold the power for apotropaic magic, the djinns are said to be supernatural creatures built from smokeless fire. At Feroz Shah Kotla, people submit written petitions to add evidentiary weight to their prayers. These petitions are often accompanied by multiple photocopies to ensure that they reach the right “department” in the right alcove (in an uncanny parallel to the functioning of subcontinental bureaucracies), before the djinns make their decisions at the midnight durbar (court).
According to anthropologist Anand Vivek Taneja, the prevalent practice of djinn-worship on this site gained in popularity after the Emergency (1975–77)—a period that saw suspension of democracy and consequent lawlessness that affected various communities, especially the urban poor in Old Delhi. A pre-modern space of Islamic sovereignty was thus converted into a sacred pocket—premised on the hallowed inhabitation of a colony of djinns—in the aftermath of state-sanctioned violence on the disenfranchised body. Most of the present crowd at Feroz Shah Kotla traverses the distance across the Yamuna River from a resettlement territory that houses many of the displaced people from the time of the Emergency. The rituals of veneration around the djinns thus point to a distressed illegibility of the postcolonial condition of everyday life in Delhi.
Taha Ahmad captures the daily happenings in the alcoves (including periods of possession that he bore witness to on site) through the series, A Displaced Hope, built over years with cultivated access to the events. Ahmad states that his intention was to attempt to capture a reality where self-proclaimed “godmen” (who declare themselves as intermediaries) prey on common, hopeful people by extorting money in exchange for a guarantee. While this documentary index is relevant, the images also make legible an obliterated past by verifying histories of presence through the capture of extra-institutional practices. The figures that populate the images believe in, and navigate their trust in, the efficacy of the djinn as an agent of care in the absence of the government. Feroz Shah Kotla then stands in a space that exists in quiet resistance to the erasures of the modern nation-state.
All images and captions by Taha Ahmad. From the series A Displaced Hope. Images courtesy of the artist.
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