Presenters for these ethnographically informed papers work at the intersections between class, labor, and pious practice of the everyday and their technological capabilities. Their ethnographic scope ranges from young women seeking government jobs in Patna; the making and circulation of replica shrines of Husayn (tāʿziyas) in small towns of Masauli, Biswan, and Mahmudabad; and technology use in Lucknow, Hyderabad, or Kolkata during large scale mourning during Muharram. Each paper interrogates the future of Muslim practices, with a keen eye towards labor and class differentials. Whether by centering aspiration, a fundamentally future-oriented term for pious practice in the face of an imaginable yet uncertain future of work, handicraft in terms of lived Islam and smaller towns’ contributions to remembering Karbala, or the imposition of drones and other technological mediations that anticipate the future of Shi’i Muslim mourning, these papers consider the future(s) of Muslim practice in India.
Situated within cultural anthropology, this article speaks to young Muslim women's aspirations of securing government jobs in Patna, India. Drawing on ethnographic research, I demonstrate how women reimagine aspirations as a form of pious practice, cultivating ethical subjectivity in holding kismat (divine will) and mehnat (human labor) in productive tension throughout their aspirational trajectories. Thinking of destiny as something to be made, women focus on hard work as pious labor bracketing conversations around destiny in their tayyari or preparation phase. When examination attempts prove unsuccessful, women distinguish kismat from badkismati (circumstantial ill-fortune), striving to imagine alternative futures that remain open and unknown. By centering aspiration as pious practice, I extend anthropological attention of everyday Islam into the domain of futurity, where futures are simultaneously open and predetermined, and women's ethical subjectivity capable of sustaining hope through prolonged uncertainty while remaining open to divine wisdom.
This paper examines the making and circulation of tāʿziyas in the small towns of Masauli, Biswan, and Mahmudabad in North India to explore how mourning for Imam Husayn becomes embedded in practices of craft, labor, and devotion. While scholarship on Muharram has largely focused on major urban centers such as Lucknow or Hyderabad, this study shifts attention to qasbati contexts where tāʿziyadari is sustained through localized networks of artisans, patrons, and devotees. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and participant observation during Muharram processions, the paper argues that the tāʿziya functions not merely as a symbolic representation of Husayn’s shrine in Karbala but as an intercessory object through which devotees seek closeness to God (Allah).
Annual commemorations of the death of Husayn ibn Ali, Shi’a Muslims’ Third Imam and Muhammad’s grandson, are the world’s largest, transnational, public mourning ritual. Across India, thousands of Shi’a Muslims gather during Muharram to engage in chest beating (ma’atam), processions (juloos), the ambulation of replica medieval battle standards (alams), and more. In particular, juloos and ma’atam practices become sites for technological mediation. Drones, large videocameras, and smartphones enable organizations and individuals to livestream, share, or document the experience to and for absent others – whether out of diasporic distance, safety concerns, or otherwise. Indeed, the digitization of these events are in stark contrast to their otherwise embodied, sensorial, and community foci. How does technological mediation anticipate the future of Shi’a Muslim mourning? Drawing on my 2024-25 fieldwork in Lucknow, Hyderabad, and Kolkata, I argue that mediatization is both practical and expansive, ultimately facilitating a global Shi’a consciousness.