The politics of celebration: interrogating the secular heritage of the Phool Waalon Ki Sair festival in Delhi

Abstract

Phool Waalon Ki Sair (Procession of the Florists) is one of the historic festivals of Delhi. Established in 1812, it is hosted annually at a Hindu temple and an Islamic shrine in Mehrauli to commemorate the secular heritage of Delhi by promoting harmony between the two religious communities. Mobilising archival records, secondary sources, and ethnography, I problematise the concept of secular heritage through an analysis of the origin and evolution of the festival as well as the politics of its celebration. I argue that its primary aim has never truly been the assertion of social parity between Hindus and Muslims. Instead, since its inception and until the present, the actors and institutions comprising the state in Delhi have utilised the festival primarily to control the temple and the shrine in Mehrauli, thereby also establishing their authority over the city and its people. By offering a social history of the festival’s transformation over two centuries, this case study demonstrates that the reinvention of precolonial cultural phenomena is crucial to the construction of the modern notion of secular heritage. Such a process further enables state sponsored actors and institutions to control urban spaces and their inhabitants in postcolonial India.