This paper studies contemporary Eid-i Milad celebrations in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. Focusing on public processions and domestic gatherings, it examines how Prophetic devotion is performed, embodied, and collectively authorized beyond scholarly, textual arenas.
The commemoration of the Prophet’s birth has long been a site of intra-Muslim polemic among competing Sunni maslak (orientations). Situating contemporary celebrations against this history, it argues that Eid-i Milad in Bareilly materializes the theological and legal reasoning articulated by Ahmad Raza Khan and his followers in defence of the practice. For practitioners, the city is a “fortress” of Prophetic devotion, marked by the legacy of the Barelvi tradition. Ritual practice here does not merely express doctrine but renders it sensorial, affective, and spatial. At the same time, devotees also contend with a crackdown on Muslim public devotion by an increasingly majoritarian state.
In Bareilly, devotion is not only theorised but claimed and contested in public space.