Walking down the old serpentine lanes of New Delhi, Rana Safvi is on a mission to hunt down and document the many monuments, shrines and structures that shine a light on India’s extensive past.
On a recent morning, the premodern historian ventured out to trace Mughal-period shrines in Shahjahanabad – an area of the capital known today as Chandni Chowk that corresponds to the original 17-century walled city named for Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.
Safvi, a schoolteacher-turned-veteran writer on premodern India, believes in “accessible” history, which she says runs counter to India’s recent revisionist trend – or what she terms “altered history”.
“I taught history at the school level for years, trying to make it accessible for my students. When I began authoring books, it was with the same intent,” she said. “The idea was to write narrative history that everybody could relate to, and therefore help reduce misinformation.”
The history curriculum in India’s schools has undergone some sweeping changes in recent years, reflecting the authorities’ renaming of roads, stations – and even whole cities – in a bid to erase premodern or medieval Indian history from the public domain. One example is Mughalsarai Junction in Uttar Pradesh, a British-era railway station and one of the oldest in the country, which in 2018 was renamed to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction.
Yet these revisions have not deterred Safvi from documenting India’s heritage, with a particular focus on architecture dating to the various sultanates that ruled parts of India from the 13th century onwards, as well as structures from the later Mughal era.
For her, it’s important to understand that India’s past was diverse and complex. “I have been documenting not only Islamic, but Hindu and Buddhist monuments, including the oldest architectural remains of the earliest rock-cut caves,” she said.
Besides documenting dargahs – shrines built over the graves of revered religious figures – she has also been chronicling Delhi’s Jain and Hindu temples, the existence of which runs counter to the narrative that India’s Mughal-era Muslim rulers destroyed such structures, she said.
Safvi’s arduous task of finding lesser-known monuments began in 2015 when she started working on her book Where Stones Speak: Historical Trails in Mehrauli, the First City of Delhi.
“Since then until the pandemic, [I’ve been] trying to document dargahs by the hundreds and understand the role of a Sufi shrine in the life of a devotee.”
After walking through Delhi’s congested lanes, Safvi took a moment in the late afternoon to relax and nibble on a small plate of snacks, while reflecting on her most recent book, In the Search of Divine, Living Histories of Sufism in India.
The religious practice of Sufism is a form of Islamic mysticism that emphasises introspection, self-discipline and spiritual closeness with God.
The preface to Safvi’s latest book states that it “is the result of lifelong practice of Islam and a decade-old journey into its Sufi traditions”, emphasising that she is a practising Muslim.
“My aim was to show how Sufism had sprang out of Islam and how in its initial phase brotherhood and services towards mankind were highly emphasised,” Safvi said. “Islam expanded thereafter, however people wanted to go back to these tenets of spirituality and Sufism emerged as a movement.”
Safvi has no doubt about Sufism’s longevity. “Sufi traditions of India will remain alive”, she said, while also acknowledging that there was rising bigotry in the country, mostly spread through social media.
But she has not yet faced any problems documenting the many temples – built and patronised during the Mughal period – that are located in the most remote corners of the country, she said.
“I don’t think dargahs are going to be threatened or people will stop visiting them. As long as people have a need to seek, they will visit the dargahs.”
As dusk set in, evening prayer calls from Jama Masjid – one of India’s largest mosques – permeated the air, signalling the start of evening festivities in this part of old Delhi. It also marked the end of Safvi’s journey that day, but not of her mission to unearth India’s Muslim history.
“I never wanted to abort this project and neither was I apprehensive. I am a very proud Indian first and a proud practising Muslim,” she said.