Anand Vivek Taneja
Biographic Data
| ID | 149579 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anand Vivek Taneja |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anand Vivek |
| FAMILY NAME | Taneja |
| SIGNATURE | TANEJA A V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0544-4597 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Appropriating English
Commentaries on Irfan Ahmad's Rappaport Lecture, “Drinking Secularism”
As an admirer of the work of both Irfan Ahmad and the late Shahab Ahmed, I find this sh‘er by the Urdu poet Amjad Islam ‘Amjad’ to be an apt opening for my comments on Irfan sahab's Rappaport Lecture, which is a trenchant critique of Shahab Ahmed's seminal work, What is Islam? For in this brief essay, while I agree with some of Irfan Ahmad's critiques, and explore how they open new ground for Islamic studies, I do not wish to discard the valuable…
Hindustan Is a Dream
In a time of dominant Hindu nationalism and rising Islamophobia in India, Urdu poetry is the medium in which an alternative political theology finds popular articulation, questioning the "normative horizon" of the nation-state. The political theology being articulated through Urdu poetry is one that is concerned not with the state, but with the constitution of the self through a network of thick relations to locality. The vision articulated by th…
The (Critical) Edge of Tradition
In this essay, I explore an emergent trend within both authoritative Islamic discourse and Urdu public culture in north India, in which the poet Mirzā Asadullāh Ḳhān “Ġhālib” (1797-1869) is portrayed as a saintly and prophetic figure. I aim to show that claiming Ġhālib as an authoritatively Islamic figure—and hence his life and poetry as Islamically authoritative and legible—at this historical moment of unprecedented Islamophobia and anti-Muslim …
Jinnealogy
In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they write out requests as if petitioning the state. At a time when a Hindu right wing government in India is committed to normalizing a view of the past that paints Muslims as oppressors, Anand Vivek Taneja's Jinnealogy provides a fresh vision of r…
Saintly Animals
In this article I explore stories and rituals surrounding sanctified birds, snakes, cats, and stones in contemporary Delhi and rural Uttar Pradesh. These stories and rituals, while drawing on long-standing Indic and Islamic traditions that centrally feature animals, are in many ways novel and unprecedented. They serve as a critique of dominant anthropocentric discourses of religion, and they point us toward possibilities of reimagining the relati…
Jinnealogy
In this article I explore what I call jinnealogy, a theological orientation that emerges when the genealogies of human memory are confronted with the amnesic forces of an obliterated landscape. In stories told in contemporary Delhi, long-lived jinn act as transmitters connecting human beings centuries apart in time. In petitions deposited to jinn-saints in a ruined medieval palace, medieval ideas of justice come together with modern bureaucratic …
Saintly visions
This article is centrally concerned with understanding the perceived presence of Muslim saintly figures at various medieval ruins in contemporary Delhi. I explore how popular relationships with these ruins, centred on the presence of the saint-figures, are not ‘historical’, but still indicate meaningful connections to the medieval past. To understand these connections, this article explores the epistemological and ontological privileging of the i…
Pirate modernity
Pirate modernity: Delhi's media urbanism, by Ravi Sundaram, Abingdon, Routledge, 2010, 228 pp., ISBN 978-81-89643-07-2 In the preface of the book, Ravi Sundaram writes, ‘(r)ather than media analysi
Jinnealogy
In this article I explore what I call jinnealogy, a theological orientation that emerges when the genealogies of human memory are confronted with the amnesic forces of an obliterated landscape. In stories told in contemporary Delhi, long-lived jinn act as transmitters connecting human beings centuries apart in time. In petitions deposited to jinn-saints in a ruined medieval palace, medieval ideas of justice come together with modern bureaucratic …
Jinnealogy
In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they write out requests as if petitioning the state. At a time when a Hindu right wing government in India is committed to normalizing a view of the past that paints Muslims as oppressors, Anand Vivek Taneja's Jinnealogy provides a fresh vision of r…
Saintly Animals
In this article I explore stories and rituals surrounding sanctified birds, snakes, cats, and stones in contemporary Delhi and rural Uttar Pradesh. These stories and rituals, while drawing on long-standing Indic and Islamic traditions that centrally feature animals, are in many ways novel and unprecedented. They serve as a critique of dominant anthropocentric discourses of religion, and they point us toward possibilities of reimagining the relati…
Saintly visions
This article is centrally concerned with understanding the perceived presence of Muslim saintly figures at various medieval ruins in contemporary Delhi. I explore how popular relationships with these ruins, centred on the presence of the saint-figures, are not ‘historical’, but still indicate meaningful connections to the medieval past. To understand these connections, this article explores the epistemological and ontological privileging of the i…
Hindustan Is a Dream
In a time of dominant Hindu nationalism and rising Islamophobia in India, Urdu poetry is the medium in which an alternative political theology finds popular articulation, questioning the "normative horizon" of the nation-state. The political theology being articulated through Urdu poetry is one that is concerned not with the state, but with the constitution of the self through a network of thick relations to locality. The vision articulated by th…
The (Critical) Edge of Tradition
In this essay, I explore an emergent trend within both authoritative Islamic discourse and Urdu public culture in north India, in which the poet Mirzā Asadullāh Ḳhān “Ġhālib” (1797-1869) is portrayed as a saintly and prophetic figure. I aim to show that claiming Ġhālib as an authoritatively Islamic figure—and hence his life and poetry as Islamically authoritative and legible—at this historical moment of unprecedented Islamophobia and anti-Muslim …
Pirate modernity
Pirate modernity: Delhi's media urbanism, by Ravi Sundaram, Abingdon, Routledge, 2010, 228 pp., ISBN 978-81-89643-07-2 In the preface of the book, Ravi Sundaram writes, ‘(r)ather than media analysi
Saintly visions
This article is centrally concerned with understanding the perceived presence of Muslim saintly figures at various medieval ruins in contemporary Delhi. I explore how popular relationships with these ruins, centred on the presence of the saint-figures, are not ‘historical’, but still indicate meaningful connections to the medieval past. To understand these connections, this article explores the epistemological and ontological privileging of the i…
Jinnealogy
In this article I explore what I call jinnealogy, a theological orientation that emerges when the genealogies of human memory are confronted with the amnesic forces of an obliterated landscape. In stories told in contemporary Delhi, long-lived jinn act as transmitters connecting human beings centuries apart in time. In petitions deposited to jinn-saints in a ruined medieval palace, medieval ideas of justice come together with modern bureaucratic …
Saintly Animals
In this article I explore stories and rituals surrounding sanctified birds, snakes, cats, and stones in contemporary Delhi and rural Uttar Pradesh. These stories and rituals, while drawing on long-standing Indic and Islamic traditions that centrally feature animals, are in many ways novel and unprecedented. They serve as a critique of dominant anthropocentric discourses of religion, and they point us toward possibilities of reimagining the relati…
The (Critical) Edge of Tradition
In this essay, I explore an emergent trend within both authoritative Islamic discourse and Urdu public culture in north India, in which the poet Mirzā Asadullāh Ḳhān “Ġhālib” (1797-1869) is portrayed as a saintly and prophetic figure. I aim to show that claiming Ġhālib as an authoritatively Islamic figure—and hence his life and poetry as Islamically authoritative and legible—at this historical moment of unprecedented Islamophobia and anti-Muslim …
Jinnealogy
In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they write out requests as if petitioning the state. At a time when a Hindu right wing government in India is committed to normalizing a view of the past that paints Muslims as oppressors, Anand Vivek Taneja's Jinnealogy provides a fresh vision of r…
Hindustan Is a Dream
In a time of dominant Hindu nationalism and rising Islamophobia in India, Urdu poetry is the medium in which an alternative political theology finds popular articulation, questioning the "normative horizon" of the nation-state. The political theology being articulated through Urdu poetry is one that is concerned not with the state, but with the constitution of the self through a network of thick relations to locality. The vision articulated by th…
Commentaries on Irfan Ahmad's Rappaport Lecture, “Drinking Secularism”
As an admirer of the work of both Irfan Ahmad and the late Shahab Ahmed, I find this sh‘er by the Urdu poet Amjad Islam ‘Amjad’ to be an apt opening for my comments on Irfan sahab's Rappaport Lecture, which is a trenchant critique of Shahab Ahmed's seminal work, What is Islam? For in this brief essay, while I agree with some of Irfan Ahmad's critiques, and explore how they open new ground for Islamic studies, I do not wish to discard the valuable…
Appropriating English
Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Islam (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)