Muharram 10: ’Ashura: Commemorating Imam Hussain- The Prince of Martyrs

Great piece; thanx naqsh
Imama-i-aaleey maqaam is the conscience of humanity.

``insaan ko baidaar tu ho lainey do

har qaum pukaarey gi hamaairay hain Hussain``.

How much of this is fact, and how much fiction? Intriguing nevertheless.

Hindu Followers of a Muslim Imam

One of the most important events in early Muslim history was the battle of Karbala fought in 680 CE in which Imam Hussain, grandson of the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and her husband Imam Ali, was slaughtered along with a small band of disciples in a bloody battle against Yazid, a tyrant who had usurped the Muslim caliphate. The slaughter of Ali is one of the pivotal events that led to a divide between the `mainstream` Sunni and Shi`a communities, with the latter ascribing special importance to the family of Ali. This event occurred in the Islamic month of Muharram, and it is for this reason that this month is observed with great solemnity in many parts of the Muslim world.

What is particularly striking about the observances of the month of Muharram in India is the prominent participation of Hindus in the rituals. This has been a feature of popular religion for centuries in large parts of India, and continues even today, albeit on a smaller scale. In towns and villages all over the country, Hindus join Muslims in lamenting the death of Hussain, by sponsoring or taking part in lamentation rituals and tazia processions.

In Lucknow, seat of the Shia Nawabs of Awadh, prominent Hindu noblemen like Raja Tikait Rai and Raja Bilas Rai built Imambaras to house alams, standards representing the Karbala event. The non-Muslim tribal Lambadi community in Andhra Pradesh have their own genre of Muharram lamentation songs in Telugu. Among certain Hindu castes in Rajasthan, the Karbala battle is recounted by staging plays in which the death of Imam Hussain is enacted, after which the women of the village come out in a procession, crying and cursing Yazid for his cruelty. This custom is known as pitna dalna. In large parts of north India, Hindus believe that if barren women slip under an alam moving in a procession they will be blessed with a child.

Perhaps the most intriguing case of Hindu veneration of Imam Hussain is to be found among the small Hussaini Brahmin sect, located mostly in Punjab, also known as Dutts or Mohiyals. Unlike other Brahmin clans, the Hussaini Brahmins have had a long martial tradition, which they trace back to the event of Karbala. They believe that an ancestor named Rahab traveled all the way from Punjab to Arabia and there developed close relations with Imam Hussain. In the battle of Karbala, Rahab fought in the army of the Imam against Yazid. His sons, too, joined him, and most of them were killed. The Imam, seeing Rahab`s love for him, bestowed upon him the title of Sultan or king, and told him to go back to India. It is because of this close bond between their ancestor Rahab and Imam Hussain that the Hussaini Brahmins got their name.

After Rahab and those of his sons who survived the battle of Karbala reached India, they settled down in the western Punjab and gradually a community grew around them. This sect, the Hussaini Brahmins, practised an intriguing blend of Islamic and Hindu practices, because of which they were commonly known as `half Hindu, half Muslim`. A popular saying about the Hussainis has it thus:

Wah Dutt Sultan,
Hindu ka dharm
Musalman ka iman,
Adha Hindu adha Musalman

(Oh! Dutt the king-With the religion of the Hindu
And the faith of the Muslim
Half Hindu, half Muslim)

But there is also another version of how the Dutts of Punjab came to be known as Hussaini Brahmins. One of the wives of Imam Hussain, the Persian princess Shahr Banu, was the sister of Chandra Lekha or Mehr Banu, the wife of an Indian king called Chandragupta. When it became clear that Yazid was adamant on wiping out the Imam, the Imam`s son `Ali ibn Hussain rushed off a letter to Chandragupta asking him for help against Yazid. When Chandragupta received the letter, he dispatched a large army to Iraq to assist the Imam. By the time they arrived, however, the Imam had been slain. In the town of Kufa, in present-day Iraq, they met with one Mukhtar Saqaffi, a disciple of the Imam, who arranged for them to stay in a special part of the town, which even today is known by the name of Dair-i-Hindiya or `the Indian quarter`.

Some Dutt Brahmins, under the leadership of one Bhurya Dutt, got together with Mukhtar Saqaffi to avenge the death of the Imam. They stayed behind in Kufa, while the rest returned to India. Here they built up a community of their own, calling themselves Hussaini Brahmins, and although they did not convert to Islam they kept alive the memory of their links with Imam Hussain.

The Hussaini Brahmins believe that Krishna had foretold the event of the Imam`s death at Karbala in the Gita. According to them, the Kalanki Purana, the last of eighteen Puranas, as well as the Atharva Veda, the fourth Veda, refer to Imam Hussain as the divine incarnation or avatar of the Kali Yug, the present age. They hold Imam Ali, Imam Hussain`s father, and son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, in particular reverence, referring to him with the honorific title of Om Murti.

The Hussaini Brahmins, along with other Hindu devotees of the Muslim Imam, are today a rapidly vanishing community. The younger generation abandoning their ancestral heritage, often now seen as embarrassingly deviant. No longer, it seems, can a comfortable liminality be sustained, and ambiguous identities seem crushed under the relentless pressure to conform to the logic of neatly demarcated `Hindu` and `Muslim` communities. And so, these and scores of other religious communities that once straddled the frontier between Hinduism and Islam seem destined for perdition, or else to folkloric curiosities that tell of a bygone age, when it was truly possible to be a bit of both `Hindu` as well as `Muslim` at the same time.

Naqsh,

Thanks for the article in rememberance, and particularly the footnote ``Indeed both the authors translated above were Sunnis.``

This is timely in the current debate on the Shia/Sunni divide. In my mind, there is none as far as the external role of Islam overall is concerned as a major player in world affairs. However, an internal schism does exist at the highest spiritual level, which translates into a temporal and political one, once inflamed. That divide is easy game for others to prevent its becoming a monolithic juggernaut.

What do you think?

#2 by zeemax

How much of this is fact, and how much fiction? Intriguing nevertheless.

In my city of Hyderabad, Hindus accompany the Tazia procession with as much vigor as Muslims do. I`ve heard the same about other places, both towns and cities in India, but I can only vouch for Hyderabad.

#4 Harish: And in Bhopal and Mhow in MP. If nothing else, we as kids used to join in so that we had the most excellent meals afterwards. Taaziya Badau

#5 by beady

I`ve heard the same about Bangalore, Lucknow, and Delhi besides other cities and towns too.

Re: # 7

i`m surprised but happy!
most shias in india are in lucknow right~?

Tazia processions, eid celebrations, annual urs programs - have been part of them all :)

Re: # 8

Imam Paak never went looking for trouble. When all other avenues were exhausted and the only options left to him were to either pledge allegiance to the dog Yazid and thus accept a unjust person as ruler over the Muslims or to fight, Imam Paak chose to follow the honourable path of martyrdom thus fulfilling the words of his Grandfather sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam.
He saved Islam with his blood.

Ya Hussain!

This article reinforces the perception that Muslims have always solved their quarrels by resorting to violence. Which is pretty consistent with how they solve their disputes with non-Muslims. With Islam, it’s my way or the highway. Today, 38 pilgrims in Karbala joined Hazrat Imam Hussain and the other 70 and some Pakistani Shias reached there as well during the last week. The place must be getting very crowded.

Re-enacting the events of Karbala or flogging oneself to commemorate some hideous past is completely irrational. It is quite masochistic to even observe Moharram.

Re: # 10

i don`t agree with all you`ve written. please remember that hazrat abu sufyaan became a muslim during the lifetime of the Prophet and was a great Sahabi as was Hazrat Amir Muawiyah his son. Imam Hassan would NEVER have handed over the rulership of the Ummah i.e. the Caliphate to him if he had thought otherwise. That Yazid the Accursed turned out to be a bad apple is not the fault of his illustrious father. You cannot blame the father for the sins of the son.

We consider Yazid a kafir. As for the rest of the Umayyads after Yazid, with the exception of Hazrat Umar ibn Abd al Aziz, I agree, the rest were tyrants and very bad Muslims and a disgrace who treated the Aal of the Prophet very badly.

Asif Sahib,
Thank you for sharing this passionate commemoration of Imam Hussain`s ordeal. The legend concerning the Hussaini Brahmins by Zeemax in #2 is also very inspiring. I have always believed that Islam was hijacked by the Ommayyads after the Holy Prophet`s (PBUH) death in 632 AD.

Islam, as expressed by Imam Ali and his son, Imam Hussain, was always more compassionate, less aggressive, and more egalitarian than the oligarchy represented by Ommayyad Quraish Meccan Arab-centric policy of the descendants of the Holy Prophet`s (PBUH) most serious and committed enemy, Abu Sufyan.

No wonder that so many Hindus sympathize with Imam Hussain and are usually very pro-Shia.

Re: # 11

Urstruly Sahib, the reason your ancestors have nothing to do with it is because they were busy worshiping monkeys in India when Imam Hussain was being butchered by bayghyarat thugs.

Imam Hussain was not the first and neither he will be the last who died for a cause. As a matter of fact when he requested a safe passage for himself and his family as an exile he forgo his cause as well. This turns the whole episode into a gruesome and shameless murder. But what is done is done.

What really worries me is the cult like mindset of the people who claim to be his followers. If one takes the example of Qramtah and Assassins of Hassan bin Sabah (The old man of the mountain) this cult has potential to be extremely deadly. Today a shia child is raised with the mindset that those who are not shia are the followers of the murderers of Hussain; and that really worries me. Personally, me, my ancestors have nothing to do with what happened to Hussain 1400 years ago; this is besides the point that everybody thinks that what happened to him was unjust and an attrocity but on the other hand shias have turned it into a ritual to formally curse everyone and everything that is not shia. It worries me. Worst of all the rememberance of Hussain (Maatam) has been turned into a form of worship and followers expect God`s blessing (swaab) for what they do. This is an innovation in the religion and it is detrimental to their own well being in the afterlife.

The CIA has funded some organizations in Pakistan who committs act of shameless violence on shias after the Revolution in Iran. These madarchods have to be eliminated by using state apparatus to its fullest. I wouldn`t mind if these very faujis Bugti them. As a matter of fact American government has to be held responsible for funding, training, and creating these thugs. They must be asked whether they are with us in the war against terror or against us. They just cannot keep on funding these nuts on one end and expect our cooperation for something else. Personally, the antics of these thugs turn my stomach. Frankly one has to be pretty shameless to chalk the walls with slogans like ``Yazeed Amir ul momineen hain`` ugghhh. what a mind job.

Re: # 24

It is not innovation.

Hadith of Prophet:

My companions are like the stars, follow any one of them and you will be guided. Therefore to follow Hazrat Abu Bakr is following the Prophet.

How DARE you suggest that the most beloved to the Prophet of the whole Ummah, the most afzal after all Prophets in creation, committed shirk. The hadith of Ya Muhammada is recorded and battle of yamamah is history. So now you and other maudoodites know islam better than Sayyidina Abu Bakr? Or the aimmah e paak?
And what about all the others at the Battle of Yamamah? Would they stay silent if `shirk` as you call it was being committed? Would Hazrat Imam Zayn al Abidin have said Ya Rahmatulil alameen, adrikni [help me!] if it was shirk?

Allah save the Ummah from mullahs like you!
with all due respect, of course.

Nara e Haidari!
Ya Ali!

The grandfather of Ismail Dehlavi, whom you admire, and who wrote the utterly burnable book Taqwiyatul Iman, thus spreading wahabism in india, was Shah Wali Allah Muhadiss Delhvi. He (rahmatullah alayhi) writes that whenever I am faced with a problem I turn towards Najaf Ashraf in Iraq (i.e. the grave of Imam Ali) and say the Naad e Ali -i.e. Ya Ali Madad (in longer form). He also says his ancestors have always done this!