Epsita Haldar

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA, aims to generate new ethnographic art-historical knowledge on Husayn-centric devotion by exploring the relationship between piety, labour, and materiality by mapping a “Husayn-scape” from western Uttar Pradesh to Bengal, tracing how Shiʿi and Sufi devotion to Husayn is translated into built forms (imambaras, Karbalas, dargahs) and ritual objects (taziya, alam, zarih). Epsita Haldar is the Coordinator of this project.

Epsita Halder is Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her research explores everyday vernacular Islam and urban cultures in South Asia through interdisciplinary approaches. She is the author of several acclaimed academic books and contributes actively to international scholarship and public cultural discourse. Aoun Hasan, a Lucknow-based photographer and writer who has majored in Human Rights from Jamia Milia Islamia and works on environmental, cultural, and conservation projects, will join Epsita as a collaborator for this project. Given Epsita’s extensive experience, scholarly expertise, and long-standing engagement with the subject, she is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The project responds to a gap in art-historical writing that privileges imperial monuments while sidelining vernacular, “transterritorial” devotional sites. From Lucknow’s Nawabi patronage to small qasbas and migrant artisan networks, Husayn-centred material forms carry layered memories, techniques, and local adaptations that standard archives and museum histories miss. By tracing the routes of migration, craft practice, and devotional exchange, the research reframes imambaras, Karbalas, and dargahs as living nodes of artistic circulation rather than peripheral curiosities.

The core research methods will include field ethnography, oral-history mapping, archival work (including waqf papers), and photographic documentation of sites, objects, and craft processes. Material analysis will track motifs, construction technologies, colour palettes, and artisanal labour. Additionally, interviews with masons, taziya-makers, and caretakers will surface labour histories and local knowledge.

The outcome of this project will be scholarly essays that will foreground new ethnographic art-historical knowledge on Husayn-centric devotion, an online interdisciplinary seminar, public workshop organised as part of the project and a website. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables, along with the final reports, will include six peer-reviewed art history essays and three photo-essays, documentation of the seminar and the workshop, and a dedicated website hosting photographs, documents, and recorded voices, ensuring open-access digital preservation of the research.

This project aligns with the framework of IFA’s Arts Research programme in its treatment of devotional architecture and ritual objects as mobile, translational archives: it connects macro-scale circulation (transnational ties to Karbala, Najaf, and Iranian models) with micro-scale artisanal choices and market constraints. Its emphasis on “pious labour” -the entanglement of devotion, craft, and the market- brings labour histories into art history in a fresh way. In doing so, it recovers under-documented regional practices, foregrounding community knowledge holders (artisans, caretakers), and producing interdisciplinary, publicly usable resources that expand the archive of South Asian visual culture.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

The Project is part-supported by BNP Paribas India.