Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine a localized context of durgahs (tomb shrines) in contemporary northwest India in Punjab. These shrines are at the forefront of claims over religious space by dalit groups.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine a localized context of the ubiquitous presence of durgahs (tomb shrines) in contemporary northwest India in Punjab. After the partition of 1947 and politicized religious identities which virtually erased public worship at shrines associated with Muslim sacred practice, sufi shrines in Punjab have emerged in the twenty first century as a phenomenon of ritualized worship and attracting new followings of worshippers. The paper will argue that this exhibits a transformation of public spiritual practice as well as assertions of claims to visibility and symbolic ownership of the social land material landscape by marginalised groups. Contestations over management and lineages of spiritual authority in durgahs in the locality of Nakodar near Jalandhar shows how durgahs have become a part of dalit assertions of belonging in a region where land ownership and political power contestations over land are rife. Subaltern claims to space in this context are refracted through the legitimacy and authority conferred by a shrine space. In tracing the development of the Murad Shah shrine and subsequently the struggle for control of this site, the developments of alternative shrines in the same proximity provide a cogent example of the struggles over space that articulate caste and class politics in rural Punjab.