This event is postponed. Please refer to the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion website for up to date event information.
Indias Sufi tomb shrines are famously accessible to visitors and pilgrims of all religions and none. In some cases, this open-door policy produces sites of deliberate, intentional mixing where the shared space is taken as emblematic of an idealized form of Indias secular principles. In other cases, the ownership and use of the shrine are contested and the fractures of secularism become readily apparent. Both conditions are intensified in the current environment in which the status of Indias Muslim citizenshere read through Muslim sitesis in question and crisis. This talk will examine the effects of numerous recent developments (the rescinding of Article 370 on Kashmir, the Supreme Courts Ayodhya decision, the CAA, the NRC, and the NPR) on spaces of interreligious devotion in India and what that can tell us about the shifting terrain of secularism.
Anna Bigelow is Associate Professor of Religious Studies specializing in Islamic Studies and the religions of South Asia and the Middle East. Her work focuses on Muslim devotional life, especially sacred spaces and ritual practice. Current research concerns the circulation of devotional objects at Sufi shrines in India and Turkey.
Professor Bigelows first book, Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim North India (Oxford University Press, 2010) is a study of a Muslim majority town in Indian Punjab and the shared sacred and civic spaces of that community. Her second book project is a comparative study of shared sacred sites in India and Turkey tentatively titled The Varieties of Secular Experience: Studies in India and Turkey. This work interrogates the shifting nature of secularism as experienced, interpreted, and adjudicated through shared sacred spaces. Also in process is an edited volume on Islamic Objects (under contract with Bloomsbury) that surveys everyday objects and how Muslims engage and use them.
Professor Bigelow received her BA from Smith College, MA from Columbia University, and PhD in religious studies from UC Santa Barbara. Her research received support from the Carnegie Scholars Program, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Institute of Indian Studies, among others.
