A Drama of Saintly Devotion: Performing Ecstasy and Status at the Shaam-e-Qalandar Festival in Pakistan

Abstract

The event of Shaam-e-Qalandar is a recent addition to Pakistan’s largest Sufi festival and represents an emerging performative religiosity characterized by a mixture of ecstatic devotion, conspicuous consumption, and aesthetic and stylistic inspirations from Lollywood films, wedding celebrations, and pop concerts. Sponsored mostly by small business owners, this new religiosity also reflects a shift in the distribution of power and authority in Pakistan’s religious communities.