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" Following the Pir: "
Mahboob Ali Mohammad
D. R. Davis, Jr.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1103832
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| Doc. No
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TLpq755706018
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| Main Entry
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D. R. Davis, Jr.
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Mahboob Ali Mohammad
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| Title & Author
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Following the Pir:\ Mahboob Ali MohammadD. R. Davis, Jr.
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| College
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The University of Wisconsin - Madison
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| Date
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2010
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| student score
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2010
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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312-n/a
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| Abstract
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Following the Pir: Shared Devotion in South India is an ethnographic study of the religious life of a village called Gugud[dotbelow]u in Andhra Pradesh. It focuses on the public event of Muharram in Gugud[dotbelow]u which takes on a strikingly-different color than Muharram as it is practiced by urban Shi'i communities across South Asia. This is due to the central place of a local pir, or saint, called Kullâyappa. The story of Kullâyappa is pivotal in Gugud[dotbelow]u's local religious culture, effectively displacing the better-known story of the Imam Hussain from Shi'a Islam, and each year 300,000 pilgrims from across South India visit this remote village to express their devotion to Kul[dotbelow]l[dotbelow]ayappa. The ten-day rituals of Muharram in Gugud[dotbelow]u function like a stage on which various global Islamic practices come to frame a local pir tradition surrounding the life story of Kul[dotbelow]l[dotbelow]ayappa and this dissertation focuses on the various rituals performed and the many narratives told during Muharram in Gugud[dotbelow]u. It also looks at how some devotees refashion their lives after Kul[dotbelow]l[dotbelow]ayappa's example, as they encounter it in the rituals and narratives of Muharram. The public event of Muharram, however, has become a point of contention in Gugud[dotbelow]u, with various religious individuals and groups now disputing the significance of what happens in Gugud[dotbelow]u during Muharram. Despite this, the public rituals that are focused on the pir Kul[dotbelow]l[dotbelow]ayappa continue to be centrally-visible in Gugud[dotbelow]u's religious life, their tradition still maintaining a successful blending of various Hindu and Muslim practices. As part of its ethnographic aims, this dissertation records multiple interpretations of Muharram and Karbala as they are given in Gugud[dotbelow]u, and argues that this set of shared devotional practices in Gugud[dotbelow]u represent a distinctive local religious culture. This dissertation also explores how attention to the religious life of Gugud[dotbelow]u expands our understanding of devotion to the martyrs of Karbala across the wider Muslim world. This exploration is done in a number of ways. The dissertation documents the local shared religious practices and pir narratives in a manner that acknowledges the tensions between Gugud[dotbelow]u's Muharram tradition and localized Islam in the village. It also analyzes localization as a process that creates and maintains both the local Muharram tradition and a kind of localized Islam. Finally, it tries is to comprehend the many-layered perceptions of these two processes as they are articulated by different caste groups in Gugud[dotbelow]u. In other words, this dissertation deals with the mutual constitution of Gugud[dotbelow]u's Muharram tradition and its variant of a localized Islam through the mediation of processes of localization.
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Devotion
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India
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Philosophy, religion and theology
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Pir
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Shared rituals
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Social sciences
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