[Reader-list] Fabricating New Minarets of Identity

[Tasveer Ghar]

Fabricating New Minarets of Identity
While the Swiss ban the minarets, South Asians fabricate new ones
By Yousuf Saeed

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“Tamam ahle watan ko baqrid ki mubarakbad. Zamzam minar (Greetings of
Id-al Azha to all citizens of India. Zamzam minaret). R.C.C.
Prefabricated strong minarets. They save time and money, and are
beautiful. Hyderganj Chauraha, Lucknow.”

The above Hindi advertisement of prefabricated minarets appeared on
30th November 2009, in the Urdu newspaper Rashtriya Sahara, published
from NOIDA/Delhi, coincidentally on the day some people of Switzerland
voted to ban minarets in their country. Such advertisements have also
been seen as small stickers stuck on the walls of mosques in Delhi or
Uttar Pradesh. Prefabricated minarets for mosques in South Asia is a
new phenomenon, probably started in Pakistan (as I noticed in 2005
during my research trip in Lahore), and has now been introduced in
India (being sold at least in Ghaziabad and Lucknow) a couple of years
ago. These are intricately designed minarets of various sizes (from 7
to 30 feet tall), molded with cement, steel, plaster of Paris and
paint. While some samples are kept in the open shops of the
supplier/manufacturer, one can order the minarets to be made according
to one’s requirement. The new ones come in white or cream coloured
finish, and could be painted or decorated further according to a
mosque’s design. While one still needs to find out who designs them
and where they are used, their smaller size, easy portability and
quick availability says a lot about the popular aesthetics of small
mosques in India. The prefab minarets are not necessarily meant for
new mosques alone – sometimes they can add a new look to an old and
dilapidated mosque. The latest and most-easily seen example is the
Aulia mosque embedded within Delhi’s Connaught Place market that seems
to have installed a small prefab minaret on one of its walls, probably
to catch up with the major restoration work going on in the entire
Connaught Place complex in preparation of the forthcoming Commonwealth
Games.

While the original purpose of a minaret in a mosque was for a muezzin
to climb to a higher level to call out for prayers to the people in
the vicinity, they soon started being identified with a uniquely
“Muslim” identity and are now considered an integral part of Islamic
architecture all over the world, even though Islamic scriptures have
no relevance for minarets or domes. The prefab minarets are unlikely
to play any role beyond providing decoration and identity to a mosque
due to their small size and delicate raw material (although they claim
them to be strong). Moreover, while the construction of mosques in the
past was a labour-intensive and often communal activity in which the
local residents participated as if in an act of devotion, the prefab
archetypes in religious shrines herald a new era where an easy
mechanical production of a component or full building evokes awe and
wonderment. This may not be very far from other examples of prefab
religious buildings such as the Akshardham temple (in Delhi) or the
proposed Ram temple at Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh), which is planned to be
entirely composed of prefab material – signs of the New Age religious
pride.

But while some religious South Asians learn to use new technologies to
augment their faith and identity, some in the west go to the other
extreme by denying the use of any symbols of religious identity,
especially “external” ones, in their lands. While globalization and
world trade may have brought in the concept of prefab architecture
into India, the same also inevitably leads to a reverse flow, of
Asian/Islamic cultures into the West. One needs to see how long it
will take for us to accept and tolerate each other’s cultures while we
already accept their merchandise.

(Readers’ comments are welcome)

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