ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the functioning of an advisory committee in Jaunpur, created at the behest of Lord Curzon, tasked with consulting with government and overseeing the repairs to Jaunpur’s main Sharqi-era monuments. The relationship between the advisory committee, the Archaeological Survey of India, and other local administrators was a complicated and sometimes fraught one, which allowed for the taking of far more local initiative in conservation efforts than Lord Curzon might have imagined. The meetings of the advisory committee are discussed, with particular reference to the views of Nawab Abdul Majid, a prominent local landlord and traditional caretaker of the main mosques. It is argued that Majid’s priorities for the mosques rarely coincided with those of the Archaeological Survey, in particular, as Majid envisioned these spaces not as historical, per se, but rather as forming an integral part of Jaunpur’s contemporary Sunni social landscape.
