英領インドにおける宗教施設運営 --サーラール・マスウード廟の事例--

Abstract

This article deals with the history of the Dargah, or tomb, of Sālār Masʻūd (who is also known as Ghāzī Miyān) in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh during the latter half of the 19ᵗʰ century. This sacred tomb of the Muslim martyr is the site of syncretic rituals and attracts both Muslim and Hindu pilgrims. Due to its unique features and rituals, the tomb has become a subject of much academic research dealing with the culture of the legends concerning it. Consulting a series of documents in the Uttar Pradesh State Archives in Lucknow, I have been able to shed light on the previously unexplored economic aspects of the management system of the Dargah and the British intervention in it during the latter half of the 19th century. The period spans the beginning of British rule in 1858 to the promulgation of the Waqf Act in 1913. Sālār Masʻūd Dargah possessed tax-free land for its maintenance, but its economy heavily depended on the various kinds of offerings from visitors. Khadims, the shrine attendants, of the Dargah developed a system for sharing such offerings, allowing each a fixed portion. In the 1860s, the British government started to intervene in the Dargah’s management. The British government applied different legal measures to the Dargah on the basis of their changing understanding of its religiosity. Then, khadims started to claim their own rights using the administrative and judicial procedures in accord with the logic of the government. In the 1870s, the government organized a committee for the Dargah’s management. In the course of the 1890s, the government decided that most of the committee’s members should be chosen by local Muslims, thus localizing and ʻMuslimizingʼ its management. When the Waqf Act was applied to the Dargah in the middle of the 20th century, it was officially categorized as Islamic, at least at the administrative level. This process shows how a marginal institution with an ambiguous religious status was assigned to a broader religious category by the modern administrative system.