112 – Kingship and Commemoration in South Asia (c. 1400-1800)

October 2, 2025
11:00 am
H15
This panel re-examines the limitations posed by the temporal and disciplinary compartmentalization of area studies, through a longue durée analysis of the concept of kingship and commemoration at a trans-regional and sub-imperial level. The authors scrutinize a variety of visual, architectural, and textual sources (hagiographies, poetry, Sufi literature, and commemorative texts) in Braj, Punjabi, Persian, Arabic, and Urdu and bring together social, religious, political, and literary studies in South Asia between 1400 and 1800. The papers strive to shed light on distinct but interconnected notions of kingship whose development, reception, and dissemination have not received sufficient attention. They examine the dynamic relationship between Persianate culture, kingship, and Sufism in South Asia, focusing on how these forces shaped political and religious discourses. The panel explores how the Sufi orders contributed to distinct and often contested ideas of kingship through their writings, as seen in medieval and early modern sources such as malfūẓāt, Sufi treatises, and hagiographies. Additionally, this panel broadens the discussion to explore how imperial ideologies shaped the evolution of Hindu kingship in early modern South Asia. The papers trace the changing relationship between political authority and cultural identity in Hindu contexts by analyzing religious texts and architectural developments. Furthermore, the panel examines how the commemoration of earlier rulers and poets shaped literary and cultural transformations across South Asia, with a particular focus on the revival and circulation of earlier traditions under Mughal and Safavid rule. In this sense, we think of court or darbar as not just a politically significant space. Instead, we argue that the court plays an active social and religious role in society, especially by encouraging and patronizing the performance of literature and art. We encourage participation from individuals whose work explores themes of commemoration and performativity in pre-modern South Asia across languages and methodologies. This panel offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the intersections of kingship, Sufism, and Indo-Persianate culture, providing new insights into their impact across medieval and early modern South Asia.

Convenors

Mehdi Sham Roshan
Manpreet Kaur
Aditi Jain
Kristof Szitar

Presentations

Commemorating the Old Style: ʿUnṣurī and the Emergence of New Aesthetic Paradigms in the Mughal-Safavid Era
Szitar Kristof - Yale University/Université de Lausanne, Yale University/Université de Lausanne, New Haven/Lausanne, Switzerland
From Sufi Masters to Mughal Emperors: The Legacy of malfūẓāt in Shaping Indo-Islamic Kingship
Sham Roshan Mehdi - Department of Slavic and South Asian Studies (SLAS), Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Courtly ecologies of devotion in early Sikh devotional poetry and hagiography
Kaur Manpreet - Religion, Columbia University, New York, United States
Divinization and Commemoration: An Analysis of Imperial Palaces of Vir Singh Bundela
Jain Aditi - University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States