ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the entwined processes through which the city and religion are mutually produced by analysing the event of Eid Milad-ul-Nabi (annual celebration of Prophet Muhammad’s birth) in working-class neighbourhoods of Lahore. In these mohallas, teams of boys and young men decorate their streets and display fantastical models using funds they have collected from the neighbourhood. This resulting constructed world, which is viewed and experienced by large audiences from inside and outside the locality, is designed to not only express Islamic sensibilities but also to reimagine the space of the neighbourhood. We read these decorations as material embodiments of the creators’ interpretation of their own lives and the world around them as well as expressions of their desires and demands. The solidarities, rivalries and contestations that mark the process of making and displaying these decorations also render Milad a key site for the production and reproduction of the social relations that define these neighbourhoods.
