Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to examine, through the lens of space and infrastructure, two different notions of citizenship and belonging. One of a modern post-colonial Indian state, and one different time-space that is implicit in its participation and patronage of Muslim shrines known as dargahs.

Paper long abstract:

Visitation of Sufi shrines (dargahs) is a quotidian practice in Hyderabad, India. However, a deeper examination into the networks and practices surrounding dargahs reveal an implicit set of practices belonging to an earlier regime, juxtaposed with an expanding neoliberal metropolitan Hyderabad today.

Amidst Hyderabad's modern cityscape, pockets of the city, including the "Old City", operate in different time-spaces. Formerly a princely state of the Nizams, Hyderabad was forcibly occupied by the Indian independent state in 1947. Discrepant administrations between old and new regimes have contributed to elusive land rights and regulation. These discrepant, intangible state infrastructures have led to haphazard urban planning, overcrowding and land encroachment. There has been illegal piping of waste systems to waterbodies, and a general neglect of physical infrastructures constructed by the Nizams; such as lakes, urban settlement and architecture which are now managed by the Indian State administration.

Although past monarchs have faded in power and presence within the state, their late spiritual Sufi advisors; buried in dargahs, and their successors today, are still being patronized among local communities, forming allegiances of a citizenship in a different time-space. Their networks and alliances with former aristocrats create a different spatial existence and legitimacy, with land endowment gifted by past rulers. These are intertwined in a web of networks between the present municipality and historic ruling. By navigating spaces and networks surrounding Muslim dargahs, I unpack the heterogenous notions of citizenship and belonging of Hyderabadis, through patronage, politics and land rights surrounding dargahs and their successors.