The view from Mathura: nationalist projections in local perspective

Following the Indian Supreme Court's verdict allowing the construction of a Ram Mandir at the site of the former Babri Masjid in 2019, Hindu nationalists have put renewed pressure on the North Indian city of Mathura. There, the seventeenth-century Shahi Idgah shares a boundary wall with a temple complex associated with the birth site of the deity Krsna. Between 2019 and 2023, at least nine court cases were filed to remove the idgah from the vicinity of the Krsna Janmabhumi. With the future of a contentious religious site unfolding in the courts, I adopt an ethnographic perspective to assess the consequences of political stake claiming in the name of religion within the city of Mathura. I argue that the very threat of transforming a religiously plural landscape into a distinctively Hindu territory has had material consequences for those who live in Mathura. This situation demonstrates how rhetorical and spatial erasure mutually reinforce one another within contemporary Hindutva projects, whereby Muslim sacred territory in India becomes progressively more difficult to access, both conceptually and on the ground.

Automated summary

This article examines the consequences of political stake claiming in the name of religion within the North Indian city of Mathura, particularly the contentious religious site between the Babri Masjid and the Shahi Idgah. The study shows that the threat of transforming a religiously plural landscape into a distinctively Hindu territory has had material consequences for the residents, making it increasingly difficult to access Muslim sacred territory both conceptually and physically.