Sensory Life in South India: Counternarratives of Islamic Material Culture: ISM Fellows Lunch Talk with Harini Kumar

The Islamic built environment in India is under tremendous strain today. Adherents of Hindu nationalism continue to disparage mosques in particular as “ocular reminders” of India’s Muslim past. In this fraught context, how can we understand the range of significations that such sites have for Muslims? This talk focuses on mosques on the southeastern coast of India, built in a distinctive style that is rooted in local architectural idioms. Such mosques are an integral part of the Tamil sacred landscape, indexing the region’s longstanding Muslim presence as well as histories of maritime trade and mobility. This presentation explores how the materiality of the built environment mediate people's connection to the past, and how such sites are spaces of heritage, historical consciousness, and affective resonance. In doing so, this research offers fresh insights into sensory life and religious belonging from a region that has long been considered marginal to the study of Muslim societies.

This event is free, but registration is required. Lunch will be provided.

Open to Yale Community only.

Contact: Katya Vetrov

Speaker bio:

Harini Kumar (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is a sociocultural anthropologist with research interests in lived religion, Islam and Muslim societies, kinship, gender, ethics, material culture, and migration. At the ISM, she will complete her first book manuscript, Formations of Tamil Islam: Belonging, Place, and Historical Consciousness in South India, which is an ethnography of Muslim religiosity and lived experience in Tamil-speaking South India. It argues against the totalizing logics of Hindu nationalism to focus instead on alternative modes of constructing self and community that do not reduce Muslim lifeworlds to just a minoritized identity. Kumar’s new project on transoceanic Muslim mobilities explores the connections between South India, Southeast Asia, and the Americas through the enduring legacy of a Sufi saint. It traces present-day continuities with older racialized networks of trade, indentureship, and migration, providing new perspectives on religious belonging that emerges from an interconnected ocean space.

Prior to joining Yale, Kumar held a two-year postdoctoral position at Princeton University. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and by several programs at the University of Chicago and Princeton University.