Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi by Anand Vivek Taneja (review)

It is common for travel writers, whether they write for The New York Times or Lonely Planet, to juxtapose the tombs and fortifications built by Delhi's medieval Muslim rulers with the modernity of the city's traffic snarls, shopping malls, and office buildings. In these renderings, monuments are mere remnants of times and people long gone, an incongruous and inert backdrop to the bustling life that surrounds them. And, as Anand Vivek Taneja reveals in Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi, many of Delhi's contemporary city planners and preservationists work to make this clichéd view a reality. The Delhi Development Authority attempts to de-sanctify Delhi's monuments in an effort to encroach on space that could become roads and real estate. The Archeological Survey of India, tasked with preserving and managing these monuments, closely monitors and delimits the religious activities that persist at many of these sites lest they spark the kind of communal disputes that threaten the state's ideal of secular order. Yet, in spite of efforts to disenchant Delhi's monuments and the city more generally, Taneja's ethnography uncovers the ways people draw on the past at these sites to construct vibrant intellectual, religious, and moral communities. In doing so, Taneja reveals not only the past's presence in and importance to contemporary social life, but also the ways that restoring these monuments for public use can re-enchant and enrich the lives of Delhi's residents.

The bulk of Taneja's ethnography takes place at Firoz Shah Kotla, a fortified palace built during the reign of Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq (d. 1388 ce). The complex, much of which is in ruins, houses a citadel, a pillar inscribed with the edicts of Emperor Ashoka dated to the third century BCE, a stepwell, an active mosque, and a network of subterranean chambers. Taneja spends his time here not only with employees of the Archeological Survey of India, but also its regular Hindu and Muslim visitors, many of whom come to be in the presence of the (deceased) Sufi saints and jinn ("Islamic spirits") who reside there. The informal community that gathers at Firoz Shah Kotla consists of diverse, and memorable, people such as Pehelwan, an elderly member of the Dalit Balmiki caste; Ajay, a sharp-tongued, puckish young man; and Balon, a bearded, skull-cap wearing Muslim who spends his days attending to the grave of the jinn-saint Nanhe Miyan ("Little Mister"). Throughout the text, Taneja includes rich, fluently translated transcripts of the community's daily conversations, members' narratives of encountering the jinn in dreams and daily life, and accounts of the troubles that community members face at home.

Taneja draws on thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Nietzsche to analyze how people at Firoz Shah Kotla recuperate and repurpose ideas and practices from the past to serve contemporary social needs. Taneja calls this process "jinnealogy," explaining "the memories of jinns, who live far longer than human beings, stretch back several generations of human history. They can connect individuals hundreds of years apart instantaneously, bypassing human institutions of memory and generations of transmission, short-circuiting genealogy (gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary) into electrifying jinnealogy" (p. 44). Taneja uses this idea to reveal and theorize the oft-ignored importance people give to pre-modern ways of being in the world. This insight is a substantial contribution to the anthropology of South Asia and Muslim societies and a critical challenge to the narratives of progress that anthropologists too often implicitly reproduce.

A striking example of jinnealogy is visitors leaving petitions throughout the ruins, many of which Taneja photographed in situ. The petitions are modelled on the shikwa ("complaint"), a document common in the Tughlaq courts, in which practitioners would directly bring a grievance to the king. Yet, much like the documents filed in the offices of India's vast bureaucracy...