Rituals and performances supplicating Mānik Pīr, a Sufi culture-hero venerated in isolated rural pockets of western Bangladesh and southern West Bengal (India), function as “infrapolitics” of the subaltern classes in the domain of “popular Islam.” A substantial segment of popular (“folk”) culture of the subaltern classes articulates disguised ideological insubordination critiquing the dominant classes.

Taking issue with Phillip Zarrilli's influential 1990 essay on what it means to “become the character” in Asian performance, Ahmed argues that Zarrilli's construct is problematic when viewed from a Buddhist perspective. Ahmed's case study is Caryā Nŗtya , a ritual dance performed near Kathmandu in Nepal for over a thousand years.