Antinomian Saints and Future Bodies: Narrative Audience Formation in the Seventeenth-Century North Indian Hagiography Ḥaqīqat al-Fuqaraʾ

This paper examines how hagiographical representations of saintly bodies shape “future bodies” through a close reading of the seventeenth-century North Indian verse hagiography Ḥaqīqat al-Fuqarāʾ. Depicting the Punjabi Sufi saint Shāh Ḥusayn (d. 1599) as an antinomian figure, the text offers an extended account of his bodily intimacy with a Brahmin boy named Mādhō. While acknowledging that such intimacy was seen as morally suspect in its context, the narrative reframes it as the saint’s distinctive mode of spiritual instruction. Drawing on recent scholarship in Hagiology, I argue that by juxtaposing the outer appearance and “inner reality” of the saint’s antinomian acts, the Ḥaqīqat interpellates its audience as subjects trained to privilege inner realities when evaluating others, while regulating their own bodily conduct in accordance with prevailing norms. Accordingly, this paper expands understandings of “future bodies” beyond technoscientific enhancement to include the narrative formation of ethically disciplined religious subjects.