Focusing on five Islamic monuments in Delhi, this study shows how their modern history was carefully created by both the colonial and the later postcolonial states. Although framed as objective archival truths, these histories were meant to erase or marginalize powerful and persistent affective appropriations of the monuments by groups who often existed outside the center of power. Each chapter traces the multiple modern histories of a single monument from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. The monuments are ...
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Focusing on five Islamic monuments in Delhi, this study shows how their modern history was carefully created by both the colonial and the later postcolonial states. Although framed as objective archival truths, these histories were meant to erase or marginalize powerful and persistent affective appropriations of the monuments by groups who often existed outside the center of power. Each chapter traces the multiple modern histories of a single monument from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. The monuments are the Red Fort; the Sufi shrine Rasul Numa Dargah; the Jama Masjid; the Purana Qila; and the Qutb Complex. "
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