It was a normal weekday evening in Jama Masjid. There were crowds, both Indian and international, walking around the 16th-century architectural marvel. People were sitting in the open spaces and corners of the masjid, talking to each other in-group. It was a late evening. At that time, we could hear the muezzin (the one who proclaims the call to prayer) knocking on the microphone and reciting a dua, (invocation) just before the maghrib aazan.
Aazan (the call for prayer in Islam) demands reciprocation in silence in religious tradition. But here in Jama masjid, aazan takes place amidst chaos. One could see people chit-chatting with each other while the aazan is being recited through the microphones. This continues even when the prayer takes place. One could even spot people watching TikTok videos and Instagram reels while prayer takes place inside the masjid. Thus, this space, theological in appearance, constantly re-configures itself into various other forms of space. This theological appearance in our primary gaze slowly transforms into other socials if we could ‘re-quicken our ears’ and re-adjust our sense to perceive the sensorial experiences of the social that the space of Jama masjid offers. This paper is an attempt to trace this very social through understanding the sonic and olfactory scapes of Jama masjid, Delhi to see how this conception provides us with a radically different understanding of this space, distinct from a passive monument meant to be ‘preserved/conserved’.
Sound, Smell and Space: Modalities of Making
There are various ways to think about the Jama masjid as a space that produces and regulates sound (noise). Is Jama masjid a theological space or a historical site? Is it a cultural space reflecting Mughal heritage? How can we choose from this and imagine Jama masjid as a space? Maybe, we can say that it is a confluence point of all these imaginations. Hilal Ahmed observes that the ‘Jama Masjid is not a protected monument in the strict legal sense’. He adds that the ‘representation or a symbol of medieval Muslim heritage in postcolonial India converted into an officially recognized ‘historical object’ (Ahmed 2013: 51). Archaeological strictness is very low, compared to other Mughal monuments, where we can witness that the daily prayers are offered without any restrictions. The imagination of sound in a masjid is typically associated with the sound of namaz, aazan and Quran recitation.
Jama masjid radically subverts this conception in a limited way, though. Jama masjid is a space of noise. Luigi Russolo has shown us how ‘noise has infinite varieties’ (Rosollo 1967:12) that are meant to be celebrated to realise the possibilities of noise. Lovers who produce soft sounds and laughs, the sound of mothers who shout at their kids, and the sound of families who share jokes and laughs together are a few examples of the wide varieties of auditory experiences produced within the limits of the architectural space of the Jama masjid. It is also interesting to note that these sounds of culture every day often overlap with the theological sensations and auditory productions within the masjid, ie. in the form of aazan or recitation of the Quran during the prayer or the recitation from a group sitting in the courtyard of the masjid. This curious overlapping of the material and the metaphysical gives shape and meaning to the everyday experience of Jama masjid as a sensory space. Sensory experiences are often ignored or considered only as passive biological, psychological experience that does not actively contribute to the cultural-social every day. But, the recent anthropological scholarship on senses recognizes senses not merely from ‘ a biological ground on which cultural meanings are constructed’, but rather tries to understand the ‘materiality and sociality of the senses as culturally constituted and constitutes the sensorium as a cultural entity’ (Porcello et. al 2010, 52-53).
Apart from the interior sounds, the sound from the famous Meena Bazar and food street, all contribute to the ‘celebration of noise’, which makes the Jama masjid a peculiar space, apart from its religious and historical importance. It is also important to note how the space tries to reclaim its theological space along with the gender connotations embedded with it. It is said that namaz is a munajat (conversation) with God. In that sense, Masjids should be a space that constantly reproduces metaphysical conversations. It is essential to mention in which aforementioned space (as Jama Masjid) this material commerce and exchanges occur. The recent protests against the regime have also created another kind of influence over the soundscape of the Jama masjid, as it was one of the important sites of daily protest gatherings, where we could witness the sound of women who were singing revolutionary songs and shouting anti-state slogans from the steps of Bab-Abdulla Gate. We can thus see the potential of Jama Masjid, which constantly redefines its own space by constantly re-conceptualizing it.
When you search for pictures of Jama Masjid on the web, most of the images are of Jama Masjid on Eid. The non-static, brimming, overflowing Jama masjid. On Eid days, when you go to Jama masjid, you can see numerous photographers and videographers of the various press, national and international. Most of them might have reached there in the early hours to claim a convenient position to capture the ‘Jama masjidness’ of Jama masjid. Most of these frames will claim a space on the front page of national dailies later, the day after.
Arguably, this packed ‘Jama masjidness’ claims a significant share of people’s popular/ photographic representations and imaginations (most of them might not have visited the space, though). Thus, it establishes as the popular normative representation of this space. Earlier, this paper was skimming around the potential of Jama Masjid, which constantly redefines its own space and variations of its soundscapes. But when we subvert this imagination, soundscape works as an attribute of the space, which is ‘central’ to another way of thinking in which, auditory and olfactory contribute to the production of space and determine it. Simpson (2016) argues that ‘sound can play in the ongoing production of social space’ and this production is ‘not only in terms of how social spaces are felt and perceived by those that inhabit them but also in terms of their character and conviviality (or lack thereof)’ (Simpson 2016:16). This logic of subversion intrigues us to enquire into the nuanced aspects of senses that form a space along with its (spatial) particularities.
Contours of Class: Distinctions of Sound
“It would be too noisy and packed with an uncultured crowd. I cannot even think of going there now. How do you even manage to go there every day?” responded S, one of my friends after checking his imported wristwatch. He was indicating the time. It was almost maghrib time. I had invited him to tag along while I was about to go to Jama masjid for my regular visit. After distinguishing listening and hearing, Chandola (2012) asks whose listening is given preference, desired and demanded and how these hierarchies of preferences are determined by ‘the character of space, cultural contexts, and soundscapes’ (Chandola 2012: 397). The sound of the everydayness of the Jama masjid is crucial in the perception of the mentioned space.
Chaos or unending noise is the peculiarity of Jama masjid’s every day. Noise has a specific undertone of socio-political hierarchy for quietness, or simply the absence of noise is a privilege in urban soundscapes, which marks class/caste difference. The helplessness or inability of the residents/ dwellers in Jama masjid to distance themselves from noise is also a marker of class. Their everyday commercial engagements with the urban locals make it a necessity. It is also true in the case of the Urdu bazaar, an earlier literary hub, now filled with various non-vegetarian eateries. Each eatery will have a seductive open kitchen which fills the street spaces with the smell of spices and meat along with the loud invitation calls of staff, both from inside and outside of the shop. The very area is also packed with rikshaws of various types- cycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws and e-rikshaws- along with other vehicles that make unending noise by honking, which also gives us another face of the chaotic-ness of the space. Therefore, this chaos every day determines the Jama masjid as a social space.
‘The inculcation of civic sense’ (Gupta 2003:150) to these urban dwellers and people was always a major concern of the civil society residing in the lush green southern parts of Delhi. In contrast to Gupta’s observation that ‘these first-generation urbanites will be more concerned to fight for their rights than to think of a large, amorphous ‘community’ (Gupta 150), these spaces have often proved that the sense of community is rigid and strong, which was visible in the recent protest demonstrations against the citizenship amendment acts near the Jama masjid and Turkman gate.[i] Those demonstrations had invited a lot number of masses near the masjid, though it ended in brutal suppression. In contrast to the ‘civilized’ Jantar Mantar protests, these protests, especially the one at Turkman gate, had invited criticism from the upper-class civil society of Delhi, that it was chaotic and violent and lacked discipline. Most of the minority spaces of protest had also been criticized for raising undesirable ‘sounds’ of ‘slogans’ that were accused of causing instability to the secular fabric of the resistance movement in specific and nation-state at large.
Chandola, from her ethnographic experiences, portrays how class acts as a distinction in perceiving ‘sound’ by distinguishing it from chaotic ‘noise’. For the civilized urban citizens, the space of Jama masjid is ‘frustrating, nerve-racking’ in addition to the ‘loud, crudely amplified’ noise, as it was for one of the friends mentioned above (Chandola, 2012:400). This opinion is not an isolated one as it is shared by many. This leads us to the understanding of the observation of David Howes that ‘the cultural productions constitute social relations through sensuous experience’ (Porcello et. al 2010: 54). These sensory experiences of chaos and noise are mediated by the cultural sophistication created by aesthetic distinctions, where taste ‘functions as the marker of class’ (Bourdieu 1984: 1-2).
Politicizing the aesthetic
While finding the reasons for the thinking, acting and dressing of Muslims in a ‘particular’ form, Ramachandra Guha argues that by doing this, Muslims are seeking consolation in their glorious past from discriminating present, who have once ruled over great kingdoms in Iran, Andalusia, Turkey and India as well. He remarks that ‘the political overlordship is long gone; yet, in gorgeous buildings and traditions of music and literature, its traces remain’ (Guha 2018). But Guha’s exoticization largely ignores the Muslim every day and the political and social struggles of their day-to-day existence by essentializing and homogenizing the identity into a singular-monolithic form. Culturally embodied Muslims, wearing headscarves and skull caps are a common sight in the immediate geographies of Jama Masjid. Even at times the contemporary times of political calamity (after the N.E Delhi pogrom and the recent Ram Navami communal clashes), they choose not to detach from their embeddedness, which they attach to their ‘dignity’ and ‘self-respect’. It is important to note this exoticization in the case of the Jama masjid too. This writing has mentioned earlier that the monumentalisation of the Jama masjid was of a ‘specific kind’ with ‘complex intermingling of official history, conservation laws and the idea of an Indian Muslim heritage’ (Ahmed, H 2014: 146). As a social space, the Jama masjid has been consistently subverting the colonial perception that viewed the Jama masjid as an ‘aesthetic object devoid of political energy'(Rajagopalan 2016:105).
From Imam Bukhari’s ‘political Fatwas’ against the emergency regime of Indira Gandhi and the ‘closure of Masjid’ to open the doors of another one, Babri (Ahmed, H 2014: 147-164), to the current moment of Chandra Shekhar Azad during the time of Anti-CAA-NRC protests, this idea of viewing Jama Masjid as ‘Singular object of aesthetic contemplation and delight’ (Rajagopalan 2016: 105) was challenged. The socio-spatial relations between the Jama masjid and the localities of its immediate geography have a riotous political history from the Emergency period to the recent protest period. This ‘archiving’ of Jama Masjid as a ‘particular aesthetic moment’ actually erases the colonial and postcolonial political history of affect, that the old-Delhi Muslim residents particularly associate with the space of Jama Masjid. In contrast to the Foucauldian notion that the modern bureaucracies turned documents into monuments, Mrinalini Rajagopalan, in the context of colonial India, observes that the monuments were turned into documents since our histories were considered ‘less reliable’ and ‘hagiographies of folklore’ (Rajagopalan 2016: 3-4). Colonial experts viewed architectural objects as the only stable documents from which they could excavate data regarding the past. Imagining Jama Masjid as a ‘document’ of the colonial past and postcolonial present of Muslims is vital to tackle the ‘aesthetic fetishization’ that was continued by the post-colonial state and the civil society, but a varied form of assimilating ‘cultural diversity’ and converting the active political status of the space into the ‘passive’ cultural monument.
Conclusion
Fergusen and Gupta (2002) call for an understanding of the states as ‘not simply functional bureaucratic apparatuses’, but as ‘powerful sites of symbolic and cultural production’. These sites ‘are themselves always culturally represented and understood in particular ways’ (Fergusen and Gupta 2002: 981). Taking a cue from the methods of domesticating a social space by regulating and restricting it into the aesthetic domain of a ‘cultural monument’, we can understand how the state does not function as a hierarchical apparatus that regulates/restricts from above but how it works as a meaning-making enterprise embedded in the everyday practices, by differing the meaning of the space of Jama masjid. A sensorial approach to the space of Jama masjid enables us to understand the space beyond its immediate appearance as an architectural marvel or as a cultural monument, where ‘sight’, the privileged sense of the West, is given primacy. (Porcello et.al 2010: 54). It helps us to move towards the soundscapes and olfactory horizons of the space, which reveals to us the active nature of the space embedded in the everyday mundane.
Gopal Guru and S. Sarukkai (2019) observe that ‘Sound, smell and taste determine everyday social’ (Guru, Sarukkai 2019: 10). Those who have been to Jama masjid at least once in their lifetime cannot imagine Jama Masjid as a space devoid of noise and the delicious smell of kebabs. It’s therefore exciting to reimagine the social space of Jama Masjid from this press/media representation of Eid’ Jama masjidness’ to a chaotic space with the delicious aroma of Mughal cuisine where auditory/olfactory constitutes the imagination of space, which is a ‘sphere of coexisting heterogeneity’ (Massey 2015:9). While at the same time, this aesthetic ‘passivity’ is never an excuse for the space since it can re-organize itself into an active protest site, as we have seen during the CAA-NRC protests. This understanding reveals to us how Jama Masjid is a space that is constantly and consistently re-configuring itself through various acts without compromising any of the factors- political, cultural or social- which inform the formation of the same space.
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[i] https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/caa-protest-jama-masjid-chandrashekhar-azad-delhi-police-delhi-gate, accessed on 19th March 2023.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/anti-caa-demonstration-at-jama-masjid/article30597238.ece, accessed on 19th March 2023.
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Afeef Ahmed is a second-year master’s student at the Department of Humanities and Social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar.