Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora: Beyond Mourning 036781904X, 9780367819040, 9781032108629

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Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora

This book analyses engagements with non-Shia practices of Muḥarram celebrations in the past and present, in South Asia and within a larger diaspora. Breaking new ground by bringing together a variety of regional perspectives (the Deccan, the Punjab, Singapore, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago) and linguistic backgrounds (Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu), the chapters discuss the importance of Muḥarram celebrations in terms of their respective actors. While in some cases these include an interrelationship with Shia Muslims and their traditions of mourning during Muḥarram, other contributions address contexts in which the Shias, and even Muslims, form only a minor component of the celebrations, or even none at all. Focusing on Muḥarram celebrations that are beyond the script provided by Shia Muḥarram practices, this book opens up new perspectives on Muḥarram as a social practice widely shared by South Asians across regions. The book will be a key resource for scholars and students of South Asian studies, Asian religion, in particular rituals and religious practices, and Islamic studies, but also engaging to non-academic readers interested in the practices of several regions. Pushkar Sohoni is Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. His previous book is The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India (2018). Torsten Tschacher is a research-scholar at Freie Universität Berlin studying the history and discursive traditions of Muslims around the Bay of Bengal. His book Race, Religion, and the ‘Indian Muslim’ Predicament in Singapore was published in 2018 with Routledge, and he co-edited, with Deepra Dandekar, Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of Belonging in South Asia (Routledge 2016).

Routledge South Asian Religion Series

11. Religion and Technology in India Spaces, Practices and Authorities Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold 12. The Baghdadi Jews in India Maintaining Communities, Negotiating Identities, and Creating Super-Diversity Edited by Shalva Weil 13. Regional Communities of Devotion in South Asia Insiders, Outsiders, and Interlopers Edited by Gil Ben-Herut, Jon Keune, and Anne Monius 14. Ritual Journeys in South Asia Constellations and Contestations of Mobility and Space Edited by Jürgen Schaflechner and Christoph Bergmann 15. Muslim Communities and Cultures of the Himalayas Conceptualizing the Global Ummah Edited by Jacqueline H. Fewkes and Megan Adamson Sijapati 16. Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia Edited by István Keul 17. Religion and the City in India Edited by Supriya Chaudhuri 18. Religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka Multi-religious Innovation, Paradoxical Interaction, and Shared Religious Spaces Edited by Mark P. Whitaker, Darini Rajasingham-Senanyake and Sanmugeswaran Pathmanesan 19. Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora Beyond Mourning Edited by Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher

Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora Beyond Mourning

Edited by Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sohoni, Pushkar, editor. | Tschacher, Torsten, editor. Title: Non-Shia practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the diaspora: beyond mourning/edited by Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge South Asian religion series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021023627 (print) | LCCN 2021023628 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367819040 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032108629 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003018612 (ebook) | ISBN 9781000456974 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781000456981 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Tenth of Muḥarram. | Islam and culture–South Asia. | Asian diaspora. Classification: LCC BP194.5.T4 N66 2022 (print) | LCC BP194.5.T4 (ebook) | DDC 297.3/6–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023627 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023628 ISBN: 978-0-367-81904-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-10862-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-01861-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003018612 Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

Notes on contributors List of figures Preface

vi vii ix

1 Introduction 1 PUSHKAR SOHONI AND TORSTEN TSCHACHER

2

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders 12 TRYNA LYONS

3

An ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune, Maharashtra 24 DEEPRA DANDEKAR

4

Visual language of piety and power: Ta’ziahs and temples in the Western Deccan 41 PUSHKAR SOHONI

5

The idea of religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements, 1830–1870

53

TORSTEN TSCHACHER

6

Contestation and transformation: Muḥarram practices among Sunni Muslims in South Africa, 1860–2020 71 GOOLAM VAHED

7

‘It ain’t religion; it’s just culture, man!’ Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora 91 FRANK J. KOROM

Bibliography Index

113 122

Notes on contributors

Deepra Dandekar is a historian of religion and gender of modern India, currently working as a researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, on an independent project, exploring the political role of cultural memory in vernacular history writing. Frank J. Korom is Professor of Anthropology and Religion at Boston University. He specialises in South Asian Studies. Author and/or editor of 11 books, he is co-editor of the journal Asian Ethnology. Tryna Lyons is a Seattle-based art historian with a degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book on painters attached to a Hindu pilgrimage temple, The Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan, was published in 2004. Pushkar Sohoni is Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India. He works on the material history of the medieval Deccan, and has written about the sultanate of the Nizam Shahs in his previous book, The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India (2018). Torsten Tschacher is a research-scholar at Freie Universität Berlin studying the history and discursive traditions of Muslims around the Bay of Bengal. His book Race, Religion, and the ‘Indian Muslim’ Predicament in Singapore was published in 2018 with Routledge, and he co-edited, with Deepra Dandekar, Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of Belonging in South Asia (Routledge 2016). Goolam Vahed is Professor in the Department of History, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. He received his PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, and his research interests include migration, identity formation, citizenship, and transnationalism among Indian South Africans, as well as the role of sport and culture in South African society.

Figures

1.1 Street performers masquerading as animals during Muḥarram in Mumbai. Source: The Graphic, 1872 3.1 Muḥarram Procession in Pune Cantonment (November 2013). Source: Deepra Dandekar 4.1 Postcard, A Muharram procession in Pune, c. 1900. Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni 4.2 Etching of the Muḥarram procession in Mumbai (1878). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni 4.3 ‘Taboots in Moharram.’ Photo courtesy: Illustrated London News, 1857 4.4 Muḥarram procession in the mid-nineteenth century. Photo courtesy: Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1855 4.5 Photographic picture postcard, 1921 terminus ante quem, Pune. Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni 4.6 Sangameshwar temple, Saswad (1718). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni. 4.7 Devadeveshwar temple, Parvati complex, Pune (1749). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni 4.8 Rannchhodrai temple, Dakor (1772). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni 7.1 The cover of the program pamphlet for the 13th Kitchrie Festival of Indo-Caribbean Arts and Culture in Flushing, Queens, 2011 Source: Frank J. Korom 7.2 The parade around the Unisphere at the Flushing MeadowsCorona Park in Queens on Hosay Heritage Day, 2001. The procession is structurally marked with drum and cymbal players at the head on the far left, followed by flags, then a red moon (marked by white crescent and star), and finally the tadjah, which was constructed in the adjacent museum that served as a substitute for the imambara in which the sacred structure is normally built. Source: Frank J. Korom

3 29 42 43 44 44 47 48 49 50 92

93

viii Figures 7.3 The Jayadevi Arts poster for the 2013 secular Hosay conducted in Plantation, Florida, which, ironically, is a place where many Indo-Trinidadians have settled as part of a second or third diaspora. Notice the yellow circle on the upper right that says, ‘No ceremonies, no rituals will be performed.’ Source: Frank J. Korom 7.4 The secular tadjah constructed in Plantation, Florida, for a cultural event sponsored by an East Indian NGO that serves the substantial Indo-Caribbean community of Florida. Source: Frank J. Korom

94

96

Preface

The commemoration of the martyrdom of Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (625–680 CE), the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battlefield of Karbala in southern Iraq during the first ten days of the month of Muḥarram has generated substantial interest among scholars of South Asian Islam. Rituals of mourning, recitals of poetry, and, above all, processions carrying models of Ḥusayn’s tomb known as taʿziyah or tābūt have attracted the attention of travellers, administrators, scholars, and artists since the colonial period. Participation in these processions and other rituals surrounding Muḥarram celebrations and commemorations has traditionally been highly ecumenical. Not only were Muḥarram celebrations conducted by a wide array of social actors, both urban and rural, but Muḥarram celebrations were never the preserve of just one religious community, that of Shia Muslims. Historically, Hindus, Jains, and Sunni Muslims not only participated in Muḥarram but also organised the celebrations and processions themselves. Such non-Shia Muḥarram celebrations have often been observed as diverging substantially in atmosphere and rituals from the better-known Shia varieties. Yet Hindu and Sunni participation in Muḥarram met with the disapproval of those who preferred more clear-cut sectarian boundaries and for whom Muḥarram denoted a specifically Muslim or Shia festivity that was not to be attended or shaped by others. At the same time, Indian sepoys, seamen, traders, labourers, and convicts carried their Muḥarram practices to the Caribbean, South Africa, and Southeast Asia, where they were adapted to the local contexts and further transformed. Though South Asian Muḥarram practices have attracted considerable interest, scholarship on the topic has largely focused on Muḥarram as reflecting Ḥusayn’s martyrdom at Karbala and consequently a Shia rite of mourning and commemoration.1 Historians have in particular focused on the emergence of public Muḥarram rites in the state of Awadh during the eighteenth century and their continuation into the colonial period.2 Anthropological research has similarly focused on the role of Muḥarram rituals in fostering various Shiite identities in contemporary South Asia. Even when the participation of diverse religious groups in Muḥarram has been discussed, the discussion usually concerns the relations between Shia Muslims and other religious groups.3 Historical accounts, despite the obvious

x Preface participation of other religious communities and the often carnivalesque rather than mournful atmosphere at these festivals, have commonly understood Shia Muḥarram as the implicit ideal type of Muḥarram celebrations. Notwithstanding the extraordinary reach of non-Shia Muḥarram celebrations in the colonial period from the Caribbean to Australia, Shia Muḥarram has remained the main point of reference for studying Muḥarram celebrations in the past and the present.4 Within South Asia, the number of studies engaging with non-Shia Muḥarram outside the well-studied case of colonial Bombay is low, and almost non-existent regarding the postcolonial period.5 This edited volume brings together engagements with non-Shia practices of Muḥarram celebrations in the past and present, both in the diaspora and in India. The chapters by Frank J. Korom and Deepra Dandekar were originally presented as part of a panel on ‘The Decay and Transformation of Non-sectarian Muharram,’ organised by Torsten Tschacher as part of the 45th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 2016. In addition to these two papers, it also featured presentations by Annu Jalais and Afsar Mohammad. The chapters by Tryna Lyons, Pushkar Sohoni, Torsten Tschacher, and Goolam Vahed were written specifically for this volume. We would like to thank everyone for their participation and enthusiasm. Given the large number of languages involved, we have decided not to impose any system of transliteration on the authors, with the exception of the use of the transliterated form “Muḥarram” throughout the volume.

Notes 1 Syed Akbar Hyder, Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2 Juan R.I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shīʻism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 101–17; Justin Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 91–105. 3 E.g. Patrick Eisenlohr, ‘Media, Citizenship, and Religious Mobilization: The Muharram Awareness Campaign in Mumbai,’ The Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 3 (2015): 687–710; Reza Masoudi Nejad, ‘Practicing Fractal Shi’i Identities through Muharram Rituals in Mumbai,’ Diversities 14, no. 2 (2012): 102–117; Reza Masoudi Nejad, ‘Urban Margins, a Refuge for Muharram Processions in Bombay: Towards an Idea of Cultural Resilience,’ Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle 5 (2015): 326– 347; David Pinault, Horse of Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 4 Cf. Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad: Muḥarram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Mahani Musa, Malay Secret Societies in the Northern Malay States, 1821–1940s (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2006); Ian Simpson, ‘Cultural Encounters in a Colonial Port: The 1806 Sydney Muharram,’ Australian Historical Studies 43, no. 3 (2012): 381–395; Goolam Vahed, ‘Mosques, Mawlanas and Muharram: Indian Islam in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910,’ Journal of Religion in Africa 31, no. 3 (2001):

Preface  xi 305–335; Goolam Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910: The Role of the Muharram Festival,’ The Journal of African History 43, no. 1 (2002): 77–93. 5 Jim Masselos, ‘Change and Custom in the Format of Bombay Moharram during Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,’ South Asia 5, no. 2 (1982): 47–67; Afsar Mohammad, The Festival of Pīrs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

1

Introduction Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher

Practices and rituals that have religious origins are often studied scripturally, to validate them or to explain their deviance from prescribed scriptural tradition. However, such scholarship that is based on the textual understanding of lived religions attempts to reconcile practices with nominal and normative prescriptions. While esoteric and religious textual traditions are important and follow their own internal canonical logic, religious traditions often morph into cultural practices that are barely informed by scripture. These find their own life – being integrated into the realities of political and social organisation – of indigenous and informed habits that have little to do with the origins. These practices often transcend ritualised religion, and in the case of diasporas, they transgress geographies. For example, through the eighteenth century, if not earlier, almost every state in South Asia, even if nominally Hindu, patronised Muḥarram by sponsoring processions or elements therein. Communities of South Asians who maintained Muḥarram processions as part of their ethnic identities spread across the world through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The holy month of Muḥarram – particularly its tenth day – while representing historical and religious events for the Muslim pious, meant completely different things for other communities. In late nineteenth-century Mumbai, the tenth day of Muḥarram was understood by many Hindus as Imam Jayanti (a day to commemorate the birth of the Imam).1 Even though the origins of Muḥarram observances are Muslim, in keeping with a post-modern spirit, the origins do not have to be fetishised. Shia practices have taken on a different life over the past 400 to 500 years across different communities in the world. In fact, it is the non-Shia practices that are of particular interest here, becoming signifiers of a language of political legitimacy and power, and of identity and resistance. The South Asian diaspora in particular kept alive a ‘secular’ and non-sectarian performance of Muḥarram throughout the world, as it spread across continents, reflecting the earlier character of the observances. This volume focuses on non-Shia practices of Muḥarram celebrations in the past and present: in South Asia and within a larger diaspora. The chapters are breaking new ground in a variety of ways. Bringing together a variety of regional perspectives (the Deccan, the Punjab, Singapore, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago) and linguistic backgrounds (Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu), the chapters will discuss the importance of Muḥarram celebrations in terms of their DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-1

2  Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher respective actors. While in some cases these include an interrelationship with Shia Muslims and their traditions of mourning during Muḥarram, other chapters address contexts in which Shias (and even Muslims) form only a minor component of the celebrations, or even none at all. By focusing on Muḥarram celebrations that are beyond the script provided by Shia Muḥarram practices, this volume hopes to open up new perspectives on Muḥarram as a social practice widely shared by South Asian communities across regions. In that sense, the two major centres of Shia Islam in India with great traditions of Muḥarram enactments, processions, and other rituals, namely Hyderabad and Lucknow, have been excluded in this volume, as there have been several studies on Muḥarram in those places. The purpose of this book is not to reaffirm the merely conventional valency of Muḥarram but to present some of its myriad cultural manifestations and understand its role in mediating political and social identities and tensions.

Political legitimacy, public performance, and social resistance Religious practices and rituals are transformed through time, being constantly reinterpreted in their cognitive, material, and performative aspects. The living societies that enact religious rituals themselves are constantly evolving, and specific contingencies of culture, history, and location inform their practices. Yet, there is a belief and conceit that religious practices remain unchanged. Instead of celebrating the diversity of expression in practised religion, there has always been a strong centralising and controlling tendency to reduce the richness of religious practices to single prescriptive moments. This is even more so when many religious rituals morph into social practices that transcend religion. Once firmly embedded in the social fabric of a place, the religious valence of a ritual is transformed and interpreted in different ways by the participant communities. The Nawabs of Awadh, for example, encouraged a cosmopolitan mixing of their population, and encouraged their Hindu subjects to partake of Muḥarram observances in the mourning rituals.2 Muḥarram became open to non-Shia and indeed non-Muslim participants as an act of political consolidation and also as courtly fashion. Thus, it was no surprise that many of the parvenu states emulated such actions and actively patronised Muḥarram processions as well. The Marathas, with new political formations such as Baroda and Indore, acquired cosmopolitan populations in central and north India, and participated with generous donations towards the processions of Muḥarram. These were understood as political acts, conferring legitimacy upon the new rulers as they continued traditions from the past. Even in Pune, the capital of the Brahmin Peshwas, Muḥarram processions became a public spectacle with wide participation till the mid-twentieth century (see the chapters by Pushkar Sohoni and Deepra Dandekar in this volume). Muḥarram retained its strictly religious relevance only for a limited number of ethnic and religious groups, quickly transforming into a secular public event for most of the people. Public processions were accompanied by street performers and entertainment events, thus transforming the sombre remembrance of Husain into a carnivalesque event. Here, indigenous elements were quickly absorbed, and while some of them,

Introduction  3 such as men dressed and painted like tigers, could be conferred the meaning of Sher-i Ali (Lion of Ali, Ali the lion, one wild feline substituting another), several other ritual acts and events eluded a commemorative or religious explanation, and came to stand in for the procession (Figure 1.1). Symbolic representations of the white horse of Husain were overshadowed by a popular narrative of the horse itself having miraculous powers, as seen in the Nanacha Ghoda in Pune which is worshipped by all communities. This was an image of a horse dedicated to Nana Phadnavis, the powerful minister of the Peshwas, by one of his retainers. The statue of the horse is now worshipped, and while it is taken out in procession during Muḥarram, it has a life of its own during the rest of the year, when childless couples pray to it. Thus, Muḥarram began to be observed as a public gathering and spectacle, where the legitimacy of the ruler, the practices of folk religion, and the beliefs of the pious, all converged into a single procession that represented the state, and in the absence of a strong state, it became a statement of resistance to political regimes. Ironically, it was this power of public gathering as political resistance that was harnessed and given a completely different character by Bal Gangadhar Tilak as he galvanised popular support against colonial rule, mirroring Muḥarram with a Ganesh procession in Pune in 1892.3 Shrewdly observing the power of Muḥarram processions to bring together people, Ganesh processions began as a communal activity with several features of traditional Muḥarram processions being given a Hindu turn. The procession was at the culmination of ten

Figure 1.1  Street performers masquerading as animals during Muḥarram in Mumbai. Source: The Graphic, 1872.

4  Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher days from the birth of Ganesh, with ta’ziyah-like floats preceded by performers. The cooling of the alams was similarly emulated by a ceremonial immersion of the Ganesh idols in the river. Without an explicit Hinduisation, diaspora communities too used the procession of Muḥarram as an assertion of ethnic identity, and of resistance to colonial rule.

The diasporic connection: South Asian Muḥarram overseas One of the most striking elements in the history of Muḥarram celebrations is the important role played by the South Asian diaspora in popularising and transforming Muḥarram in various diasporic settings and under various guises, both as a Muslim holiday and as a festival with no or only vague religious associations. From the Caribbean to Australia, Muḥarram celebrations and processions have been closely connected to the migration – both free and coerced – of Indian labourers, soldiers, and convicts to distant shores, or sometimes, even between different regions of South Asia, as in the case of the Mohyāl ‘Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs’ discussed by Tryna Lyons in her contribution to this volume, or Bihari Sunnis in Bangladesh.4 Once outside the familiar contexts of urban South Asia, Muḥarram often took on new shapes and guises. While in many cases Muḥarram retained a highly contested character, the communal fault lines shifted in the diaspora, especially where only a few Shia Muslims were present, who might challenge the right of non-Shias to organise and participate in the celebrations. Instead, Muḥarram celebrations often became a hallmark of ‘Indian’ identities formulated in the shifting contexts of colonial governance, ethnic diversity, and postcolonial citizenship. Yet despite its links to South Asia, the festival also retained its open character in many regional contexts, permitting further transformation and adaptation as participants and audiences shifted. The South Asian communities that carried Muḥarram across the seas were themselves a diverse lot. Some of the earliest recorded instances of Muḥarram processions carried by South Asians to distant shores are connected to the service communities created by the East India Company and other British actors to serve its needs across its far-flung outposts: lascar-sailors, sepoy-soldiers, and servicegroups such as washermen attached to the military. Many of these groups were recruited among Muslim communities of the lower Gangetic Plains in modernday Bihar and Bengal, who were long familiar with the grand Muḥarram processions in Awadh and Murshidabad. While self-identifying Shias likely formed part of many groups of lascars and sepoys, there is nevertheless little evidence of sectarian differences in the early accounts of Muḥarram celebrations performed overseas by Indian soldiers and sailors. When lascars from Bengal led their Muḥarram procession through Sydney in March 1806, observers noted both the flagellations and self-mutilations suggestive of Shia rites and the more carnivalesque mood of non-Shia processions.5 When Dutch observers first noted the Muḥarram processions in the Sumatran town of Bengkulu (Bencoolen) after it was acquired from the British in 1825, it was similarly difficult to identify it simply as a Shia holiday. Significantly, British observers failed to mention the performance of Muḥarram in

Introduction  5 Bengkulu under their rule, probably because they were used to the performance of the festival by South Asian soldiers and convicts, and thus found it unnecessary to comment on it in the Sumatran context.6 In other cases, a Shia connection is even less evident. In other early British settlements in Southeast Asia, such as Penang and Singapore, there is nothing to suggest a Shia presence among those who took part in Muḥarram processions in the 1830s, from which time the earliest descriptions of the festival in the Straits Settlements date.7 Rather, Muḥarram processions here were organised primarily by South Indian traders, shopkeepers, labourers, and boatmen, whose links with the British colonial order were tenuous at best. The popularity of Muḥarram among South Indian Muslims and Hindus cannot facilely be attributed to the spectacular Muḥarram celebrations of Shia-dominated Mughal successor states such as Awadh or Hyderabad. As far as the Tamil- and Telugu-speaking parts of southeastern India are concerned, it might be more prudent to conceptualise Muḥarram in terms of ‘ʿAlid piety,’ as suggested by R. Michael Feener and Chiara Formichi, rather than clear-cut Shia and Sunni identities.8 Yet perhaps the greatest role in spreading Muḥarram celebrations overseas was played neither by South Asian sepoys and lascars in the direct employ of British colonial agents, nor by independent traders and labour migrants such as the South Indian ‘Chulia’ Muslims, but by forced migrants such as convicts and indentured labourers. In the Straits Settlements, convict participation in the Muḥarram processions led early on to anxieties among European settlers, even though their role in the Muḥarram processions was probably minor.9 Yet indentured labourers were central in carrying Muḥarram celebrations to the Caribbean and South Africa. While in the British Caribbean these indentured labourers overwhelmingly hailed from Awadh and Bihar, a region with a strong Shia presence and influence, in Natal, there was a greater share of South Indian Hindus among the migrants.10 Muḥarram in Natal remained largely an affair of working-class Muslims and Hindus from South India and the Gangetic plains in the colonial period: ‘While the Islam of indentured Indians centered on the Muharram, that of traders centered on the mosque, the Urs and the two festivals of Eid.’11 The popularity of Muḥarram in the diaspora has many reasons. Frank J. Korom has suggested that Muḥarram ‘provided a more flexible arena for interracial and interreligious participation’ than did many Hindu festivals, even those that provided similar opportunities for public display.12 The carnivalesque atmosphere of Muḥarram did not only provide welcome entertainment from the harsh everyday of many participants, but it also permitted participants to draw public attention to themselves and to claim public space. As mentioned in the last section, Muḥarram had already served as an arena for the contestation of power and space in South Asia, an aspect that was easily reproduced in the diaspora. During the Muḥarram procession, convicts could lay claim to the very roads that their forced labour had built; sepoys paraded without English officers to command them; and for the time of the procession, Indians could actually scare European settlers. The scuffles and mock-battles that were part of the processions could as easily turn into means to settle old scores as in India, but in the diaspora, new fault lines appeared,

6  Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher which not only included the sectarian and neighbourhood groups known from South Asia but reflected new forms of sociability in diaspora society. Muḥarram processions taken out by labourers of different estates clashed with each other in Trinidad, as did revellers of different occupations in South Africa, or members of rival ‘secret societies’ in the Straits Settlements.13 In the diaspora, Muḥarram celebrations underwent two apparently paradoxical but interconnected transformations. On the one hand, the openness of Muḥarram processions facilitated the absorption of new groups and new practices into the festivities. This had already been the case in South Asia, and the process intensified in the diaspora. The participation of groups of African, Southeast Asian, or Chinese backgrounds transformed the performance and the meaning of Muḥarram. The similarity of Muḥarram with other festivals involving raucous processions, such as a carnival or Chinese temple festivals, provided a permeable context for practices to be appropriated from one celebration into another.14 In the context of Trinidad, Frank J. Korom has noted how Muḥarram, referred to as ‘Hosay’ in Trinidad, has undergone ‘creolization,’ by which he refers to processes of ‘convergence of distinct cultural practices perpetuated by different ethnic groups sharing the same geographic, economic, and political landscapes within a context of unequal power relationships.’15 This involves allowing ‘spontaneous change to occur by drawing on Afro-Trinidadian lexical labels that parallel preexisting ones in [Indo-Trinidadians’] own cultural grammar.’16 In Southeast Asia, Muslims of Southeast Asian and Arab background became deeply involved in Muḥarram celebrations. In the Straits Settlements, Malays developed a carnivalesque performance tradition known as boria, which continued even after the colonial suppression of Muḥarram, which had originally provided the context for boria performances. In Sumatra, Muḥarram processions – known as tabot – developed into a local tradition as the cession of Bengkulu to the Dutch severed the links of the town with Indian sepoys.17 Concomitantly, however, the diaspora situation led to the standardisation of Muḥarram practices, as different groups started to claim that their Muḥarram represented the ‘authentic’ way to celebrate the festival. The close connection between Muḥarram and South Asian migrants often led to situations where Muḥarram was reinterpreted as an ‘Indian’ rather than a Shia or even Muslim holiday. The participation of different ethnic and religious groups in the festival often led to a culturalisation of Muḥarram, as Frank J. Korom describes in his contribution to this volume. Actors began to describe the Muḥarram as a cultural rather than a religious affair, a strategy that could serve both to legitimise Muḥarram practices against criticism, as in the Trinidadian case described by Korom, as well as serve to delegitimise Muḥarram in contexts where only strictly ‘religious’ festivals were tolerated, as described in Torsten Tschacher’s chapter in this volume.

Policing processions: Muḥarram and authority Given the contested nature and the charged atmosphere of Muḥarram performances, it is unsurprising that various actors have attempted to police the holiday

Introduction  7 and prevent, if not the festival altogether, at least those aspects which they thought lacked legitimacy. A public festival as volatile as Muḥarram is sure to raise anxieties, resulting in the formulation of discourses and policies to preclude or limit unwanted practices and antagonistic narratives. The state has often been a prime actor in the policing of Muḥarram, both in order to prevent unrest and violence during the festival, and in order to limit challenges to the state’s authority manifested by the processions. But not all those attempting to regulate the celebration of Muḥarram have been state actors, and even those participating in the festivities have often attempted to regulate what happened in the processions. The colonial state acted as an important regulator of Muḥarram processions. Muḥarram processions, with their unruly revellers and sometimes violent contestations and negotiations of power amongst participating groups, were seen as a security problem and a challenge to the colonial order, especially if subaltern groups such as convicts took part. At the same time, Muḥarram processions were only rarely banned outright. In most cases, while authorities sometimes intervened drastically in the celebrations, or at times even banned processions in a particular year, the focus of the government tended to be more on policing and disciplining participants than on outright ban.18 This includes support for those groups whose version of Muḥarram does tally better with the respective government’s vision of society, as Deepra Dandekar describes in her contribution to this volume regarding the situation in contemporary Pune. Here, while Shias have to conduct their rituals of mourning and self-flagellation away from the public, nonShia gaze, Sunnis are allowed to parade through the centre of the city. The similarity of Sunni Muḥarram to the annual processions for Ganesh Chaturthi seems to play a big role in the partiality of the authorities – paradoxically so, as the latter are known to have been popularised by Hindu reformers to wean Hindus away from the popularity of the (non-Shia) Muḥarram processions. State-influence can also be less direct. Some writers have suggested that the official stance of the postrevolutionary Iranian state has influenced Shias in South Asia to reduce the more festive elements of the holiday and thereby create a greater difference between Shia and non-Shia Muḥarram.19 In a few cases, however, Muḥarram processions were banned completely by colonial and neo-colonial governments. In the late-nineteenth-century Straits Settlements, Muḥarram processions had become connected in the eyes of the police and the government to organised crime in the form of so-called Muslim secret societies, and were consequently quelled. That Muḥarram was increasingly seen as an ‘Indian’ festival at a time when the Straits Settlements negotiated their independence from British India as a crown colony may have contributed further to the willingness of the local authorities to suppress the festival, as Torsten Tschacher argues in this volume. Similarly, Goolam Vahed relates in his contribution how the apartheid regime in South Africa led to the discontinuation of Muḥarram processions in many places, as the reorganisation of space under the Group Areas Act of 1950 transformed Indian neighbourhoods into all-‘white’ areas. In many cases, pressure to clamp down on Muḥarram came from actors who did not participate in the festivities. Especially in colonial settings, the European

8  Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher elite sections of society were among the prime opponents of Muḥarram, resenting the capacity of South Asian revellers to lay claim to public spaces and impose the sights and sounds of their processions onto colonial society for the duration of the holiday. Muḥarram, in any of its guises, was the frequent target of European scorn regarding Asian ‘superstition’ and ‘fanaticism,’ even though occasionally, somewhat more positive evaluations of the holiday can also be found. Indeed, some authors have drawn attention to the way that European observers struggled and negotiated the abject through the simultaneous fascination and horror with Muḥarram performances, with fear and loss of control much more pronounced in written rather than visual representations.20 In their desire to control and limit, if not ban outright, the Muḥarram festival, European publics frequently found themselves at odds with a colonial administration which, for several reasons, was often reluctant to interfere in a ‘native’ festival. Apart from considering Muḥarram processions ‘customary,’ the state was hesitant to antagonise the soldiers, seamen, and service classes on whose skills it depended.21 Another challenge to Muḥarram from the outside was and continues to be voiced by those who considered Muḥarram celebrations to violate religious or cultural boundaries. Sunni reformers have long denounced the celebration of Muḥarram, and their influence has increased over the years. Frank J. Korom, in his contribution, notes the effects of anti-Shia Sunni discourse on the celebration of Hosay in Trinidad, which paradoxically targets precisely the practices introduced into the festival by Sunnis and Hindus themselves.22 Similarly, in South Africa, Deobandi reformism became more strident in its criticism of Muḥarram precisely at the time when apartheid policies greatly curtailed the performance of the festival, as Goolam Vahed discusses in this volume. Hindu reformism since the nineteenth century has similarly sought to reduce the number of Hindus participating in Muḥarram. In western India, Hindu politicians such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak began modelling the Ganesh/Ganpati festival on Muḥarram to provide a ‘Hindu’ alternative to Muḥarram processions, as discussed in the chapters by Pushkar Sohoni and Deepra Dandekar – as the latter points out in her contribution, nowadays, it is the Muḥarram processions in Pune that follow the route and style of the Ganpati processions.23 In South Africa, Hindu reform movements such as the Arya Samaj similarly campaigned against Hindu participation in Muḥarram.24 The contestation over Muḥarram from various sides has led to the development of a variety of discourses that were meant to either challenge or strengthen the legitimacy of the festival and the participations of particular groups in it. An important role has been played by the question of whether Muḥarram was a ‘religious’ or not rather a ‘cultural’ practice, as is discussed for two very different settings in the contributions by Torsten Tschacher and Frank J. Korom in this volume. Tschacher demonstrates how European discourses in the Straits Settlements increasingly came to identify Muḥarram as a sombre ritual of mourning particular to Shia Muslims. Since the holiday as celebrated in Singapore and Penang was, however, primarily a carnivalesque festival celebrated by Sunnis, Hindus, and Chinese, marking Muḥarram as an ‘authentically’ Shia affair allowed Europeans to call for the ban of the festival, since as a Sunni-Hindu carnival,

Introduction  9 it could not claim protection as a ‘religious’ custom. For Trinidad, in contrast, Korom demonstrates how in the southern regions of Trinidad, the largely Hindu and Christian participants have de-emphasised the Muslim religious dimensions of the festival, thereby answering to the more Islamically focused narratives that attach to the Hosay celebrations in northern Trinidad.25 The diversity of contexts in which Muḥarram processions took and continue to take place leads to ever new inflections which sometimes favour ‘religious’ interpretations of the holiday and sometimes ‘cultural’ ones, that at times give special support to the participation of Sunnis, Hindus, and Christians in the festival, while at others identify only the Shia traditions as genuine. The essays in this volume therefore help to decentre and critique the simplistic notion of Muḥarram as a Shia holiday ‘debased’ by Sunni and Hindu participation, and turn our gaze to the politics of assigning identities to a holiday that has had many different meanings for diverse groups of participants.

Contents of the book Hindu devotional practices are imbricated into the ritual of Muḥarram as ta’ziyahs are immersed in water at the end of the procession, and similarly there are several elements of the Muḥarram observances absorbed by practices in other religions. The localisation of Muḥarram practices into the habits of the region and importantly, the integration of the ritual into local communities is highlighted in the research of Tryna Lyons. She studies the Mohyals, an agricultural group in Punjab that retains its ethnic identity across Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism but whose members are all non-Shia. Yet, the appeal of Muḥarram rituals has inspired mythmaking for their communal identity, imbricating themselves in the narrative of the battle of Karbala. Deepra Dandekar examines the Muḥarram festival in the city of Pune in the early twenty-first century, where the actual Shia commemoration is marginal and low-key, away from the public gaze. Instead, Sunni Muslims and other communities are active in the public celebrations of Muḥarram in the city. The architectural manifestation of the ta’ziyahs in western India is studied by Pushkar Sohoni, as he compares them with the style of indigenous eighteenthcentury Maratha temples. There is a formal semblance between the spires of many of these temples and the imagined models of the shrine of Husayn at Karbala, both regional visual articulations of sacral power and piety. In Singapore, the colonial government could not categorise and contain the procession of Muḥarram, as Torsten Tschacher shows in his essay, because of the composite nature of its participants. The procession could not be neatly classified as being only Muslim, posing a problem for the state. Similarly, in South Africa, where a large number of indentured Indian workers were translocated to work on plantations, Muḥarram served as their ethnic festival that provided communal solidarity and resistance, as shown by Goolam Vahed. Diasporic South Asian Muslims were the agents for Muḥarram processions and rituals in several places around the world, including the Caribbean. Frank J. Korom uses Muḥarram in the Caribbean as a venue for the discourse of whether it is a cultural or a religious activity. Of course, in the end, the rituals are not contained within a simple dichotomy.

10  Pushkar Sohoni and Torsten Tschacher

Notes 1 Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), p. 124. 2 Burjor Avari, Islamic Civilization in South Asia: A History of Muslim Power and Presence in the Indian Subcontinent (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 139. 3 Richard Cashman, ‘The Political Recruitment of God Ganapati,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 7, no. 3 (1970): 347–73. 4 For the latter, cf. Annu Jalais, ‘Bengali “Bihari” Muharram: The Identitarian Trajectories of a Community,’ Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle 4 (2014): 69–93. 5 Ian Simpson, ‘Cultural Encounters in a Colonial Port: The 1806 Sydney Muharram,’ Australian Historical Studies 43, no. 3 (2012): 381–95. 6 Cf. R. Michael Feener, ‘ʿAlid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle: Tabot Tradition in Bengkulu, Sumatra,’ in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia: ʿAlid Piety and Sectarian Constructions, ed. Chiara Formichi and R. Michael Feener (London: C. Hurst, 2015), 189–90. 7 Khoo Salma Nasution, The Chulia in Penang: Patronage and Place Making around the Kapitan Kling Mosque 1786–1957 (Penang: Areca Books, 2014), 184–89; cf. also Tschacher in this volume. 8 R. Michael Feener and Chiara Formichi, ‘Debating “Shiʿism” in the History of Muslim Southeast Asia,’ in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia: ʿAlid Piety and Sectarian Constructions, ed. Chiara Formichi and R. Michael Feener (London: C. Hurst & Co. 2015), 3–4. 9 Anoma Pieris, Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 165–87. 10 Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad: Muḥarram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 100; Goolam Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal, 1860– 1910: The Role of the Muharram Festival,’ The Journal of African History 43, no. 1 (2002): 78–9. 11 Goolam Vahed, ‘Mosques, Mawlanas and Muharram: Indian Islam in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910,’ Journal of Religion in Africa 31, no. 3 (2001): 318. 12 Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 98. 13 Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 109–18; Mahani Musa, Malay Secret Societies in the Northern Malay States, 1821–1940s (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2006), 51–8; Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community,’ 86–7; also cf. Tschacher in this volume. 14 Cf. Korom, Hosay Trinidad; Vineeta Sinha, Religion – State Encounters in Hindu Domains: From the Straits Settlements to Singapore (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011); Jan van der Putten, ‘Burlesquing Muḥarram Processions into Carnivalesque Boria,’ in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia: ʿAlid Piety and Sectarian Constructions, ed. Chiara Formichi and R. Michael Feener (London: C. Hurst, 2015). 15 Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 196; also cf. Korom in this volume. 16 Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 199. 17 Feener, ‘ʿAlid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle’; Mahani Musa, Malay Secret Societies in the Northern Malay States, 1821–1940s (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2006); van der Putten, ‘Burlesquing Muḥarram Processions.’ 18 Cf. e.g. Shereen Ilahi, ‘Sectarian Violence and the British Raj: The Muharram Riots of Lucknow,’ India Review 6, no. 3 (2007): 184–208; Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 109–18; Reza Masoudi Nejad, ‘Urban Margins, a Refuge for Muharram Processions in Bombay: Towards an Idea of Cultural Resilience,’ Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle 5 (2015): 329–37; Vahed, ‘Mosques, Mawlanas and Muharram’; Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community.’

Introduction  11 19 David Pinault, ‘Shia Lamentation Rituals and Reinterpretations of the Doctrine of Intercession: Two Cases from Modern India,’ History of Religion 38, no. 3 (1999): 285–305; Richard K. Wolf, ‘Embodiment and Ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram Drumming,’ Yearbook for Traditional Music 32 (2000): 82 note 4. 20 Rebecca M. Brown, ‘Abject to Object: Colonialism Preserved through the Imagery of Muharram,’ Anthropology and Aesthetics 43 (2003): 203–217; Rianne Siebenga, ‘Picturing Muharram: Images of a Colonial Spectacle, 1870–1915,’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2013): 626–643; cf. also Simpson, ‘The 1806 Sydney Muharram,’: 381–395. 21 Cf. e.g. Pieris, Hidden Hands, 176–79; Simpson, ‘The 1806 Sydney Muharram,’ 381–395. 22 Annu Jalais has similarly pointed to the paradoxical identification of Bihari-Sunni Muharram processions as ‘Shia’ by Bengali Muslims; Jalais, ‘Bengali “Bihari” Muharram,’ 69. 23 Cf. also Raminder Kaur, Performative Politics & the Cultures of Hinduism: Public Uses of Religion in Western India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 31–5; Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 27–75. 24 Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community,’ 90–2. 25 Cf. also Afsar Mohammad, The Festival of Pīrs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 13–5, for the manner in which Muḥarram participants in rural Andhra Pradesh distinguished ‘their’ Muḥarram from the Shia-inflected version celebrated in the then-state capital Hyderabad.

2

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders Tryna Lyons

‘What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?’ asks the scheming Mr. Sengupta in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories.1 Although the question’s intent is rhetorical, it seems to hang in the air with special resonance over parts of the subcontinent where oral literary traditions flourish. Believers assure us that the Muḥarram narrative, retold every year by men and women here on earth, has its most attentive listeners among the ‘pure ones’ (maʿṣūmin) in paradise. Communicated in words, rituals, and processional display, the familiar accounts describe the pitiable bravery of ʿAbbās, who died in an attempt to fetch water for the thirsty children of the camp; the martyrdom of Ḥusayn’s six-month-old son ʿAlī al-Aṣghar; and the defiant courage of Zaynab, sister of Ḥusayn. These and other episodes demonstrating the heroism and pathos inherent in the Karbala tragedy make its commemoration distinctive. It stands apart from other South Asian festivals for its intensity of sorrowful emotion and celebration of bravery in the face of certain doom. This much is clear to external observers, even though they may be unfamiliar with Shīʿī perception of the ten days in AD 680 as the fulcrum of world history. Enterprising non-Shīʿī communities across the subcontinent have long enacted tributes to the Karbala martyrs, whose sacrifice was formerly not invested with undue sectarian significance. Jaffur Shurreef’s enumeration of 47 kinds of ‘Muḥarram faqīrs,’ including the famous Deccani tiger mummer dear to colonial amateur photographers, demonstrates the appeal of the festival to those outside the fold. When we come to polities under Shīʿī rule, state annals record occasions when outsiders were permitted, even encouraged, to participate in the events surrounding the annual mourning rites. Still, these out-group actors usually played set roles that ensured they remained extrinsic to the central drama. Festival entrepreneurs have been around nearly as long as the rituals upon which they piggyback, but adherents of the faith tend to question the sincerity of these ‘ten-day Shīʿahs.’ On the other hand, Hindus who elected to parade tomb models (taʿziyahs) were often sponsored by aristocratic rulers who viewed them as potential converts. Late eighteenth-century bulletins from Lucknow detail the daily activities of Āṣaf al-Daulah, including the Shīʿī ruler’s visits to taʿziyah owners during the festive season. The Nawāb invariably presented these (often Hindu) shrine-keepers with cash sufficient to underwrite their expenses. In Mahmudabad, DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-2

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders  13 Avadh’s largest estate, nineteenth-century Shīʿī rulers also incentivised Hindus who paraded Muḥarram models by reimbursing their costs.2

Early evidence of the Mohyāl myth Members of the lineal descent group that figures in this chapter fall somewhere between the entrepreneur and the potential convert. Literate, labile, and wellinformed, the Mohyāls of the Salt Range region of northwestern Punjab (now Pakistan) gambled on identity and negotiated new opportunities whenever ruling administrations changed. A careful reading of nineteenth-century British publications, where references to the community abound, turns up clues about early attempts at self-redefinition. The Mohyāl claim to Brāhmaṇ status apparently followed on a period during which they had carefully emulated higher-ranking castes (the ‘sanskritisation’ model of social mobility). Unfortunately, however, priestly standing did not count for much in Muslim-dominated polities. Then, sometime in the turbulent and culturally fertile nineteenth century, a forgotten genius came up with a motif that pitted pious Hindu warriors against the enemies of Imām Ḥusayn at Karbala. The mythos of the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs was born.3 Let us take a closer look at the mechanisms the group employed to consolidate its identity, including strategic use of British institutions and decrees, and the ways these choices have influenced more than 200 years of caste history. We shall also explore the fascination other groups have shown for the eminently successful Mohyāls, leading to imitation of their improbable claims. In a land where people appreciate great stories and are prepared to spend long nights listening to them, social success sometimes depends upon the skill of the yarn-spinner. An early reference to these hybrid heroes surfaces in a treatise written in Mughal Persian during the second decade of the nineteenth century. Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Qatīl’s Haft tamāshā (‘seven celebrations’) is a kind of ethnography of the castes and religious sects current in Nawābī Avadh. Commissioned by Saʿādat ʿAlī Khān II (r. 1798–1814), the work features groups that are either syncretic or decidedly unorthodox in their behaviour; perhaps the author’s aim is to show the inclusivity of Lucknavī society (in the Persian tradition, the heptad connotes totality and completeness). The author himself was an example of the composite culture of his times, his Hindu Khatrī father having emigrated from northeastern Punjab to Delhi, where Mīrzā Qatīl was born in 1759. He converted to Shīʿī Islam while in his teens, dedicated himself to literary and linguistic activities, and spent most of his adult life in Lucknow.4 Qatīl’s consideration of the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs falls into two parts. To begin with, he introduces the group as a priestly sub-caste that accepts alms from Muslims rather than Hindus. He then tells a sort of founding story that is recounted to this day by members of the clan. Perhaps it is an earlier recension of the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇ legend, for this clerical protagonist is not a warrior and did not meet the living Imām Ḥusayn. In the variant recorded by Qatīl, the Karbala victors are journeying to Damascus, bringing with them the heads of the martyred Ḥusayn and his companions for presentation to Yazīd. The story goes that they stopped for the

14  Tryna Lyons night at a Brāhmaṇ’s house, where the sacred relics performed many miracles. The unnamed patriarch of the Hindu host family filched and concealed the Imām’s head, declining to return it to the visitors. When they threatened him, he decapitated his own son and offered the head to them, insisting that it was Ḥusayn’s. The soldiers refused it, again demanding the genuine article. The old priest beheaded each of his eighteen sons in succession, but to no avail. The soldiers killed him, retrieved the Imām’s head, and went off to Syria to get their reward from the Caliph.5 After relating this myth of origin, Qatīl goes on to tell us about his own encounter with a member of this curious community. It took place in about 1800 at Kalpi (Bundelkhand). I paraphrase the exchange between the two men, which is both illuminating and amusing: A Hindu in the entourage of Mīr Naṣīrullah (son-in-law of the recently deceased ʿImād al-Mulk) came to a house where I was a guest. He introduced himself as a Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇ resident in Karbala-i Muʿālah (exalted Karbala). I asked his name, and he replied ‘Nūr Muḥammad Pāṇḍey.’ ‘And where was your birthplace?’ I enquired in Arabic. He laughed, replying, ‘In our Karbala, nobody understands Persian. The language we speak there is ʿAravī.’ I then asked, in Persian, ‘Where are your wife and children now?’ He responded, with a smile, ‘Ah, this is Arabic, but I speak ʿAravī.’ In the end, it was clear that he was only a donkey from Bundelkhand. I gave him some money and sent him on his way.6 Mīrzā Qatīl was a well-known polyglot, equally at home in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish as in his native languages (Urdu and, probably, Punjabi), and a member of a community that held positions of trust in Lucknow’s administration. He clearly enjoys exposing an impostor whose pretensions point up the risks of cultural fusion for those unable to master its interlocking components. Still, although the visitor’s affectations are laughable, we sense the author’s unease with a ‘donkey’ who, in some ways, mirrors his own imperfect transformations.

The census: risks and opportunities The evasive Nūr Muḥammad Pāṇḍey avoided mentioning his actual birthplace, leading Mīrzā Qatīl to peg him as a probable native of Bundelkhand. However, it is just possible that Pāṇḍey’s family, like that of Qatīl, originated in northern Punjab. Qatīl’s progenitors came from Sialkot, about 150 miles from the Salt Range tract that the Mohyāls called home, and he may well have heard versions of the Mohyāl fable from kinfolk – the story does not seem to be entirely new to him. At any rate, within 70 years the elaborate mythos, already branching in new directions under the Sikhs, would be invigorated by an unintended consequence of the new British regime in the Punjab. The mechanism for this renewal was the decennial census. Colonial India’s first comprehensive census in 1872 galvanised forward-looking members of castes and tribes that compilers characterised as ‘low,’ hence at

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders  15 risk of being excluded from military and civil service. Among these threatened groups were Punjab’s Khatrīs, mainly merchants and administrators, who joined the Kāyasths in claiming warrior (Kṣatriya) status in the Hindu four-fold system of social hierarchy. Sometimes a prominent member of a caste or caste cluster would invent a myth of origin and illustrious history, presenting them as credentials to colonial authorities.7 More often, however, use was made of existing tales of grandeur and bravery told by bards like the Mirāsīs. In the case of the Mohyāls, the tumult of the nineteenth century engendered a spectacular series of legends that enlisted several thousand years of world history and at least three religions in the service of caste glorification. The census presented the Mohyāls with a conundrum. They had put a great deal of energy into perfecting their Brāhmaṇ image, even acting as learned priestly consultants to the Sikh Gurus, but now saw the need to establish a martial profile. While British admiration of Hindu clerics had always been tempered by distaste for their perceived idleness and hauteur, their appreciation of Kṣatriya ‘manly virtues’ was more wholehearted. The canny Mohyāls followed the lead of the Bhūmihārs (‘land-holding Brāhmaṇs’ of eastern India) in splicing the two categories to become ‘priestly warriors.’ Their dual identity had made the Bhūmihārs sought-after recruits to the Bengal Army in Company days. The Mohyāls adopted a similar winning strategy, which included veneration of the varṇa-bending Paraśurāma as ancestor and archetype, when faced with the census challenge.

A warrior race Munshī Rām Dās Chhibbar, who belonged to a particularly literate Mohyāl clan, amassed a collection of quasi-historical caste narratives. Born in Bhera in 1850, he rose to prominence tutoring a number of British administrators in the Urdu and Punjabi languages. Their attestations are appended to a book one of those officials wrote at the tutor’s request. In 1911, T.P. Russell Stracey, Assistant AccountantGeneral for the Punjab and amateur scholar, prepared a wholly uncritical compilation from materials provided by the munshī. The rambling history of the caste has its seven clans descended from the seven Vedic sages (saptarṣi), thus linking it to normative Hindu belief, and counts a number of princes among its members (for example, the eighth-century Brāhmaṇ Rājā Dāhir, who was defeated by the Umayyad general Muḥammad bin Qāsim). The narration alternates between facts (the conversion of some Mohyāls to the Sikh faith) and whimsical proposals (the Datt branch of the group is said to have joined Porus in his battle against the invading army of Alexander the Great). Most fantastic, however, is the tale, seemingly spun out of thin air, in which the Hindu Datts, transplanted to the Middle East, defended Ḥusayn at the battle of Karbala.8 We recognise in this concatenation of fables, recorded by the credulous Mr. Stracey, the hand of a master mythographer. Working from the conceit of the ‘priestly warrior,’ he endeavoured to slot the Mohyāls into every historical situation where Brāhmaṇs had usurped the role of the Kṣatriya military elite. The priest who entertained the Karbala victors in Qatīl’s account (and who attempted

16  Tryna Lyons to pilfer the miracle-working head) morphed into a Hindu combatant who had championed Ḥusayn’s doomed cause at Karbala. A traditional ballad (kabit, from Skt. kavitā; poetry), reproduced in Stracey’s book, was composed to memorialise the alleged event. It follows the Mohyāl Datt clan as its members fight and suffer martyrdom along with Ḥusayn, then traces the survivors’ journey to Kufa, where they avenge the fallen heroes and sack the city, going on to harrow Ottoman and Syrian lands and to conquer Ghazni, Bukhara, and Kandahar before returning as victors to the Punjab.9

Bhera We do not know precisely when or where these tales began to proliferate. Still, the motif of Hindu warrior-priests who take up the sword for Imām Ḥusayn points to a location where Mohyāls, having secured Brāhmaṇ status, wished to please a Shīʿī elite. A candidate for this birthplace is the historic town of Bhera, located on the east bank of the Jhelum.10 Once renowned for fine daggers and ornamental woodcarving, the city had housed a copper mint in Akbar’s time. Its walled perimeter was formerly pierced with the customary eight gates (most were reconstructed by the British), and its quarters were neatly segregated by occupation, caste, and religious persuasion. One of these muhallahs was home to the Shīrāzī Saiyids, who claim to have come to Bhera with Humāyūn in the sixteenth century. They followed the lead of Shīʿī landholders elsewhere by patronising out-group participation in their yearly rituals.11 Conversations with elderly Hindu Bherochīs who fled their hometown at Partition evoke a prelapsarian world of neighbourly cooperation and communal tolerance. Certainly, the residue of successive regimes (Mughal, Afghan, Sikh, and British) lent the once-thriving commercial centre a cosmopolitan patina. One uprooted native son is Prem Sarup (b. 1928), who recalled that the Mohyāl quarter, Chhibbarān dā Muhallah, adjoined that of the Shīʿī weaver community. He speculated that some Mohyāls might have joined the weavers’ Muḥarram processions and mourning assemblies.12 Curiously, while Prem Sarup identified the Mohyāls as Brāhmaṇs, other townsfolk contended that they were Sikhs. In point of fact, at least one clan of this mutable caste did embrace the Sikh faith. The Chhibbars called themselves ‘Brāhmaṇ Sikhs,’ and were closely allied with the later Sikh Gurus. One accomplished eighteenth-century member of the sept wrote a hagiographical treatise that J.S. Grewal sees as an attempt to steer the egalitarian Khālsā institution towards ‘brahmanical’ elitism (which included ‘special privileges’ for the Brāhmaṇ Sikhs).13 The reader will no doubt have surmised that Munshī Rām Dās Chhibbar, who authorised an English amateur historian to write the story of the Mohyāls, belonged to the Brāhmaṇ Sikh community of Bhera. His birth at mid-century followed on the heels of a victory that would profoundly alter the region’s political climate. In 1849, the East India Company had, after two long and bloody wars, finally defeated the formidable Sikh army and annexed the Punjab. The Sikh card having declined in value, some caste members may have felt it was time to return

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders  17 to their seemingly inexhaustible fund of stories and, from the tangled skein, pick a different yarn to spin.

Managing religion’s public profile Early in 1849, Punjab’s new rulers proclaimed that all religions and sects were free to carry out their customs openly, so long as they did not encroach upon the rights of others. This well-intentioned ad hoc announcement opened up fresh opportunities for Muslims, whose festivals had been banned under Ranjit Singh (r.1801–39). In point of fact, however, the Muslim community did not have many public holidays. Hindus (and Sikhs) celebrated a year-long panoply of religious events, but the visible face of Muslim piety was primarily their Shīʿī rituals. By the 1880s, when opportunities for self-governance were opening up under increasingly liberal British decrees, the various religious groups strove to maintain a public presence at least as strong as that of their rivals. The emotionally charged and visually appealing parades of Muḥarram seemed best suited for adoption by the Muslim community as a whole. Indeed, community leaders sought to minimise sectarian differences and present a united Muslim block vis-à-vis Hindus.14 But where, we may ask, did this leave the Mohyāls? We have followed this interfaith, caste-crossing community as it first set its sights on Brāhmaṇ status, then proved its bravery by sacrificing its own sons for a Muslim relic. It may not yet have declared itself Kṣatriya-Brāhmaṇ in Qatīl’s time, but it certainly wished to be known as an unusually intrepid priestly caste. Next, as the Sikhs grew in power and influence, some Mohyāls threw in their lot with this militant religious movement, dedicating their literary skills to the Khālsā (and claiming martyrs among their converted caste fellows). All was well until the Sikh Empire crumbled and a new, foreign overlord appeared. Here, I confess, I sympathise with the khojī, or tracker of stolen livestock in the wild country of old Punjab. As the author of an 1897 gazetteer tells us, ‘When they lose the tracks in unfavourable ground, they make a round (tredh), in hopes of picking them up again.’15 Although evidence is scarce for the couple of decades between annexation and the intrusion of the census, we may imagine a period of regrouping (during which the cataclysm of 1857–58 intervened). I suspect that this interim period saw the Mohyāls draw closer to the Shīʿahs, for whom they had long declared an affinity. When the shape-shifting Mohyāls reappeared, they set to work establishing an updated group profile. By 1891, Bhera’s enterprising and influential Munshī Rām Dās Chhibbar had founded a caste association (sabhā) in Lahore. One of the purposes of the organisation was to produce and disseminate literature about the Mohyāls and their illustrious past. The accounts, later written up in the King’s English by Mr. Stracey, included all the old stories but gave centre stage to the Hindu warriors of Karbala. The selection of this event as the mythomoteur, or constitutive legend, of the community was surely driven by Punjab’s HinduMuslim communal conflict, which had begun in the early 1880s. Caste members saw in the tale of the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs a way to position themselves with a foot

18  Tryna Lyons in both of the sparring factions. They were Hindus (and some were Sikhs) who revered and had defended the principles of Islam. Seldom has a bet been more brilliantly hedged.16

Imbrications Although it is tempting to view the dizzying changes in course taken by this group as simple opportunism, interviews with non-Shīʿahs often reveal their deep connection with Muḥarram’s cult of sorrow. Moods related to abandonment, displacement, and despair are exemplified in the orature of Ḥusayn’s uniquely tragic tale. Perhaps these sentiments resonate with the temperaments of some outsiders, while leaving others unmoved; Shīʿahs claim that those who weep for Karbala’s martyrs must have at least a drop of the Prophet’s blood in their veins. In any case, the stops and starts of the Mohyāl leadership as it searched for a modus vivendi on shifting political sands may well have been reflected in caste members’ oftrevised personal responses to the religions on offer in the Punjab and beyond. We shall presently meet the son of another Chhibbar who changed his mind after fleeing to Delhi, returning alone to his village when his wife and children declined to accompany him. Back in his vaṭan (homeland), now declared a foreign country, he remarried and made a new life for himself. Must indecision always denote insincerity? The cultural topography of West Punjab encompasses a number of unusual, localised interpretations of the Karbala narrative. The frequently used term ‘syncretism’ reflects a misunderstanding of these attempts to link the region and its inhabitants with the wider history of Islam. For example, Shīʿahs of Multan hold that the hidden Twelfth Imām (the mahdī, or messiah) will manifest in their city at the end of time, before joining ʿĪsā (Jesus) to cleanse the world and gather the faithful.17 This conviction led a prominent local cleric to build a facsimile of the Samarra underground room where the Twelfth Imām is understood to have gone into occultation in the ninth century. Surely, the maulānā’s intention was to stress that Multan was one of the holy sites of Islam. Shīʿī religious leaders admit that they sometimes overlook (or even encourage) theologically or historically inaccurate representations, because certain popular beliefs tend to increase faith among the unlettered. These and other imbrications, layered upon an older cultural matrix, make people of the region feel that they, too, are part of Islam’s metahistory.18

Permutations The powerful image of Hindu warriors standing shoulder to shoulder with the beleaguered Imām and his companions captured the imagination of a nascent independence movement in early twentieth-century British India. Premchand took up the motif in his 1924 Hindi drama Karbalā, written to counteract increasingly bitter relations among religious communities and as a nationalist allegory. It makes a brief appearance in a very different kind of literary endeavour, Rāhī

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders  19 Maʿṣūm Raz̤ā’s 1966 novel-memoir Ādhā Gānv, tracing the effects of Partition on his village in Uttar Pradesh. After identifying the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs as Kashmiris whose ancestor had been martyred in the battle against Yazīd’s men, the author adds a footnote to explain why subcontinental Shīʿahs believe the Imām is mystically present in India at Muḥarram. He tells us they are convinced that Ḥusayn returns each year in memory of the brave priest’s sacrifice.19 As for the Mohyāls of West Punjab, their prudent strategy enabled them to land on their feet after the calamitous events of 1947. An indeterminate number of men and women who could not bear to leave their native land appear to have gone underground. I was told that most of those who stayed behind, having quietly converted to Islam, prefer to keep silent about their earlier identity. On the other hand, Mohyāls who managed the traumatic crossing to India have capitalised on their reputation as Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs. Indeed, their claims resonated strongly with the message of communal harmony forwarded by the Nehru administration. To put it baldly, India was at pains to restore the interfaith détente that had prevailed before the independence struggle, while newly minted Pakistan’s urgency was to sort out what it meant to be an ‘Islamic republic.’ The sudden hardening of identity boundaries in Pakistan has been linked to the large influx of religious migrants (muhājirūn) from India, who settled mostly in urban Punjab and Sindh. These immigrant groups, impelled by the sense that they had sacrificed everything for their faith, grew increasingly polarised along sectarian lines. Sunnī migrants were determined to push through an Islamisation campaign in their new homeland. The Hindu-Shīʿī amalgam proposed by the Mohyāls did not tally with this impulse.20 Once the dust had settled, the refugees from the northwest set about recreating their disrupted kinship networks in a new, truncated India, aided by their Mohyāl caste organisation (transferred first to Amritsar and then, in 1955, to Delhi). They have been largely successful in military and business arenas, and, notably, in the film industry. The small community’s penchant for self-promotion has resulted in a number of print and, more recently, online publications. A 2018 caste history, written by a retired Indian Army general, seeks to create a coherent narrative by stringing together the old myths in roughly chronological order. Some stories are pushed even further than Stracey’s renditions; for example, where the earlier version had Mohyāls serving in King Porus’s army, here Porus himself has been appropriated as a caste member. The apparent goal of this hagiography is to demonstrate that brave men from a single descent group have fended off the barbarians at India’s gates for millennia.21 The pivotal Mohyāl myth, with its engaging premise that Hindu priestly combatants were present at Karbala, has led to inevitable borrowings. Some emulators take only a part of the thematic trifecta, either because they do not understand the significance of the whole or because it is not useful to them. For instance, Dr. Dineś Śarmā, mayor of Lucknow from 2006–17, has sometimes identified himself as a Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇ. His personal assistant described to me the event from the mayor’s childhood that led him to bracket his own varṇa with the name of the Prophet’s grandson. After several of his brothers and sisters had died in infancy, Śarmā’s mother requested a Shīʿī housemaid to pass him

20  Tryna Lyons beneath the belly of a Ẕūljanāḥ (the horse, used in processions, that represents Ḥusayn’s battle steed). Through this act, the boy was dedicated to the Imām and placed under his protection. Śarmā’s personal story has been useful in his career as a rising BJP politician and mayor of historically Shīʿī Lucknow, with a mixed Muslim population exceeding 26%. While he straddles the categories of Brāhmaṇ and Shīʿī votary, the mayor’s life story contains no mention of the militancy central to the Mohyāl tale.22

Those who stayed behind The Mohyāls who elected to remain in Pakistan after 1947 and their flamboyant Indian brethren travel divergent paths. As it happens, those who stayed resorted to a kind of taqīyah (prudential dissimulation), the customary stratagem used by Shīʿahs in times of danger. Although community members are almost certainly embedded in locations like Bhera and Lahore, the once-visible group now shuns attention. I was told that members of the Mohyāl Datt clan still resident in Lahore visit an influential imāmbārgāh at Shahdara, on the west bank of the Ravi, for the festival of ʿāshūrāʾ sānī (the second ten days). I had hoped to meet them when I last visited Lahore, but they evaded me. Perhaps the last thing the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs of Pakistan want is publicity. It was, therefore, a rare occurrence when a family in the village of Karyala, a former Chhibbar Sikh stronghold about 50 miles north of Bhera, agreed in 2014 to be profiled by one of the country’s leading English-language newspapers; the patriarch of the household was the man mentioned above, who returned alone from a refugee camp in Delhi. This anomalous notice aside, the Mohyāls who stayed back remain elusive.23 Curiously, however, some unrelated Hindu communities north of the Radcliffe Line have taken up the quasi-Shīʿī practices of the Mohyāls, even adopting their ‘Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇ’ designation. Mithi, the capital of Sindh’s Tharparkar district, is a rarity in Pakistan – a Hindu-majority town. A number of its non-Muslim inhabitants participate enthusiastically in Muḥarram rituals, referring to themselves by the warrior-priest label the Mohyāls invented. Perhaps these Sindhi townsfolk have donned the appellation in much the same spirit as Lucknow’s former mayor, for whom the disparate but linked religious categories seemed most expressive of his relationship with his place of birth and its people. In point of fact, it is even sometimes difficult to know whether the occasional historical reference to a Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇ indicates a Mohyāl or an imitator. We have seen that Muḥarram faqīrs, each with his or her distinctive patter, thronged the observances financed by wealthy aristocrats (thus the artful Bhāṇḍs, or jesters, participate with great exuberance in the yearly commemorations held by Bhera’s Shīrāzīs). Hence, when we read about Multan’s Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs as bearded renunciants (bhairay) commonly seen in pre-1947 days begging for alms in Muslim quarters of the city, we naturally wonder whether these mendicants belonged to the interfaith group we have been considering, were shrewd impersonators, or, perhaps, represent a case of convergent evolution. Further enquiries will be needed to resolve these questions.24

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders  21

The sea of stories We began with a sea of stories – the vast oral literature that swirls around the Karbala tragedy, the patter of festival hustlers, the tales of glory told about their patrons by indigenous panegyrists, and the dazzling series of episodes that make up the Mohyāl saga. These narratives are so much more than idle tales. They serve to fill a hungry belly, to spread a faith or, in the case of the Mohyāls, to help an entire community clamber to the top of the social hierarchy. As I discovered years ago, in the course of my enquiries into the sanskritisation efforts of Rajasthani artists, the varṇa system is far from the straightjacket social reformers imagine. Its purportedly airtight divisions end up being surprisingly vulnerable to the tactics of savvy castes that wish to move en masse from one category to another.25 A single, thrilling motif, like the image of Hindu warrior-priests, their valour fuelled by piety as they engage the enemy on a seventh-century Near Eastern battlefield, can propel a descent group to the highest level.

Acknowledgements My gratitude is due most of all to Dr. Farāz Anjum of the Department of History at the University of the Punjab (Lahore) for his translation of the relevant portions of Mīrzā Qatīl’s Mughal Persian Haft tamāshā. I would also like to thank Dr. Ghulām Shams-ur-Reḥmān of the Department of Islamic Studies and Arabic at GCU Faisalabad for introducing me to the urbane culture of Bhera, and Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿImrān Shāh of Rata for his assistance with my search for the elusive Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs.

Notes 1 First paperback ed. (New Delhi: Penguin, 1991), 20. 2 Jaffur Shurreef, Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Mussulmans of India; Comprising a Full and Exact Account of Their Various Rites and Ceremonies, from the Moment of Birth till the Hour of Death, trans. Gerhard A. Herklots (London: Parbury, Allen, and Co., 1832), 189–216; the tiger appears on 201–02. I heard the term ‘das din ke shīʿah’ used in Pakistani Punjab for those who mourn with apparent fervour during Muḥarram, but revert to their usual creed immediately afterwards. The bulletins listing Āṣaf al-Daulah’s 1794 Muḥarram rounds are reproduced in Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History of the Isnā ʼAsharī Shīʼīs in India, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986), 2: 309–16. On sponsorship of Hindu taʿziyahs in Mahmudabad, see Thomas R. Metcalf, Land, Landlords, and the British Raj: Northern India in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 358. To this day, a group of any denomination taking out a taʿziyah in Multan is given a sum of money (chandah; lit. subscription) by the aristocratic Shīʿī Gardezī family; Tryna Lyons, ‘Some Historic Taʿziyas of Multan,’ in People of the Prophet’s House: Artistic and Ritual Expressions of Shiʿi Islam, ed. Fahmida Suleman (London: Azimuth Editions Publishers in association with Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2015), 231, n. 17. 3 William Crooke dubs the group ‘so-called Brāhmaṇs,’ ‘Musulmān Brāhmaṇs,’ and ‘half-caste Brāhmaṇs’ in The Tribes and Castes of the North-western Provinces and Oudh, 4 vols (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1896), 2:499. Sanskritisation is spelled out in Mysore N. Srinivas, Religion and Society

22  Tryna Lyons among the Coorgs of South India (1952; reprint, London: Asia Publishing House, 1965), 30. 4 Muḥammad Ḥasan Qatīl, Haft tamāshā-yi Mirzā Qatīl (Lucknow: Maṭbaʿ-i Nūl Kishur, 1875). Stefano Pellò provides a brief biographical sketch of the author in ‘A Linguistic Conversion: Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Qatīl and the Varieties of Persian (ca. 1790),’ in Borders: Itineraries on the Edges of Iran, ed. Stefano Pellò (Venice: Venezia Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2016), 206. Retrieved from http:​/​/edi​​zioni​​cafos​​cari.​​unive​​.it​/m​​edia/​​pdf​/b​​ ook​/9​​78​-88​​-6969​​-101-​​0​/978​​-8​8​-6​​969​-1​​01​-0.​​pdf. 5 Qatīl, Haft tamāshā, 39–40. The probable origin of this tale of the wonder-working head and the priest who sacrificed his own sons to save it lies with the Qizilbāsh Kurds. In their version, the rescuer was an Armenian Christian cleric. Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988), 442–44. 6 Qatīl, Haft tamāshā, 40–41. 7 On Khatrī claims to Kṣatriya status, see Lucy Carroll, ‘Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society and the Emergence of Caste(s) Associations,’ Journal of Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (1978): 236 nn.15–16. An example of one of these striking, if implausible, origin legends is the claim made by Ādi Gauṛ artisans of Western and Central India that their ancestors, purportedly the family priests of a mediaeval Tomar ruler, had erected Delhi’s iron pillar to secure his dynasty for all time. Tryna Lyons, The Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan (Bloomington and Ahmedabad: Indiana University Press and Mapin, 2004), 259. 8 T. P. Russell Stracey, The History of the Muhiyals: The Militant Brahman Race of India (Lahore: The General Muhiyal Sabha, 1911), 16, 19–22. Munshī Rām Dās Chhibbar had earlier persuaded a castefellow to write an account of Mohyāl history that called for eradicating certain practices like child marriage and female infanticide. The ‘Islāḥ-i Mohyālī (Reform of the Mohyāls) was a first step towards convincing colonial bureaucrats that the group was dedicated to self-improvement and should be considered for military and civil posts; Stracey, Muhiyals, iii. 9 Stracey, Muhiyals, 63–66. 10 Alexander Cunningham’s speculations on the ancient history of Bhera appear in The Ancient Geography of India: Vol. 1: The Buddhist Period (London: Trubner and Co., 1871), 155. 11 I spoke with Saiyid Shaqlain Shīrāzī (b. 1955) and other family members in Bhera (December 2010). The clan deems Shāh Shams Shīrāzī, whose mausoleum is in nearby Shahpur, its ancestor and spiritual guide. 12 I corresponded with Prem Sarup in November 2018. He is the elder brother of Northern Illinois University sociology professor Gian Sarup (1933–2015), whose engaging blog highlighted his and others’ reminiscences about Bhera. The website is now defunct. 13 Kesar Singh Chhibbar’s particular biases, and his effort to reintroduce social stratification in the Khālsā, are considered in J. S. Grewal, ‘Brahmanizing the Tradition: Chhibber’s Bansāvalināma,’ in The Khalsa: Sikh and Non-Sikh Perspectives, ed. J. S. Grewal (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), 59–87; ‘special privileges’ for the Brāhmaṇ Sikhs are mentioned as part of this push towards imparity on page 85. The Chhibbars, as loyal adherents of the Panth, frequently received hukamnāmās (letters from the Sikh Gurus). Jeevan Singh Deol, ‘Text and Lineage in Early Sikh History: Issues in the Study of the Adi Granth,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 64, no. 1 (2001): 54. 14 The changes in official policy towards Muslim festivals over the course of the nineteenth century in the Punjab (from Ranjit Singh’s outright ban to open encouragement under the post-1848 British administration) are explored in N. Gerald Barrier, ‘The Punjab Government and Communal Politics, 1870–1908,’ The Journal of Asian Studies 27, no. 3 (1968), 523–39. Some Sunnīs promoted the Mīlād al-Nabī festival, observed on the twelfth of the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal as an alternative to Muḥarram; Ghulam Abbas explores the history of the Prophet’s birthday/death anniversary commemora-

Ḥusayn’s Hindu defenders  23 tions in South Asia in ‘A Comparative Study of Visual Cultures: Islamic Festivals in Lahore and Delhi’ (Ph.D. diss., Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2014). A Muslim religious society founded in Lahore in 1885 identified one of its goals as ‘the creation and preservation of friendly feelings and concord between the different sects of Islam’ (quoted in Paul Brass, ‘Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia,’ in Political Identity in South Asia, ed. David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (London: Curzon Press, 1979), 74 n. 42. 15 James Wilson, Gazetteer of the Shahpur District, rev. ed. (Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1897), 207. 16 It is worth pointing out that Saiyids and Brāhmaṇs were viewed as equivalent highranking descent groups in Punjabi society. 17 The association of Multan with the Shīʿī messiah may have originated in a statement made by the sixth Imām, Jaʿfar as-Sādiq (702–65); Abdulaziz Abdulhussein Sachedina, Islamic Messianism: The Idea of Mahdi in Twelver Shi’ism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), 63. 18 A similar sentiment was given poetic expression by Mīr Taqī Mīr of Avadh (1723–1810), who has the besieged Ḥusayn announce his intention to go to India; Juan R.I. Cole reproduces Mīr’s verse in Roots of North Indian Shīʻism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 98. Multan’s Maulānā Saiyid Fazl ʿAbbās Naqvī noted all the details and measurements of the famed hypogeum, with its Gate and Well of the Disappearance, during a pilgrimage to Iraq, before reproducing it to scale at his religious school and centre in the affluent suburb of Gulgasht. The replica Maqām Ghaybat, or place of occultation, was nearly complete at the Jamīʿah Sāhib uz-Zamān when I visited it in late January 2006. 19 An Urdu version of Premchand’s play was serialised in the journal Zamāna in 1926-28. Syed Akbar Hyder explores the work and its reception in Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 171–80. Rāhī Maʿṣūm Raz̤ā refers to the Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇs in his fictionalised memoir Ādhā Gānv (Delhi: Akṣr Prakāśan, 1966), 70–71, 70n3. Some Mohyāls claimed to be from Jammu or Kashmir, but the history of their settlement in the region is not entirely clear. 20 For a discussion of the effect of the muhājir influx on local communities, see Mukhtar Ahmad Ali, Sectarian Conflict in Pakistan: A Case Study of Jhang (Colombo: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, 2000), 16. 21 Porus is identified as a Mohyāl in G.D. Bakshi, Guardians of the Gate: A Military History of the Mohyal Fighting Brahmins (New Delhi: KW Publishers, 2018), 48. The best-known Mohyāls in India were film actors Sunil Dutt and his wife Nargis. 22 Conversation with Birjīs Bahādur, personal assistant to the mayor, in Lucknow (October 2016). I saw Hindu babies passed underneath Ẕūljanāḥs in Dhaka (March 2003). 23 Conversations in 2017 and 2018 at Phularwan with Saiyid ʿAlī Raz̤ā Bukhārī, whose father established the Imāmbārgāh Bāwā Saiyid Ṣadā Ḥusayn Jalālī at Shahdara (Lahore). Karyala is said to have been the birthplace of two late seventeenth-century Mohyāl martyrs to the Sikh faith, Bhāī Matidās and his younger brother Bhāī Satīdās. Chhibbar family members were interviewed by Nabeel Anwar Dhakku, ‘Chakwal’s Lone Hindu Family Leads Peaceful but Secluded Life,’ Dawn, July 13, 2014. 24 ʿAllāmah ʿAtīq Fikrī (d. 1987) recalled seeing these Ḥusaynī Brāhmaṇ mendicants in the Multan of his youth; mentioned in Ajmal Mahār ibn-i Akbar, Multān ke qadīm imāmbāṛe aur majālis-i ʿaza kīrivāyat (Multān: Bahā’uddīn Zakariyā University, Sirāīkī Research Centre, 2004), 43. 25 Lyons, The Artists of Nathadwara, 247–92 passim.

3

An ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune, Maharashtra Deepra Dandekar

Muḥarram can be characterised as a politically meaningful, polyvalent socioreligious festival, especially in regions defined by a Hindu majority population, acquiring various significations to its celebration(s) on Ashura, the tenth day of the month.1 This chapter focuses on Muḥarram celebrations in Pune (Maharashtra), where the festival cannot be viewed as entirely Shia or Sunni, or even exclusively Muslim, with many Hindus participating in the festivities. Hindus are, however, mostly excluded from the Shia commemoration of Karbala, with the latter considered more ‘Muslim’ than its Sunni counterpart, and more exclusive. While local Sunni groups assume leadership in organising Muḥarram processions with large and colourful tazias in Pune, Shias are known to celebrate and commemorate Karbala more privately, organising lamentations or matam at their own Shia mosques. Sunni Muḥarram is, in many ways, an interstitial festival in Pune, celebrated by Hindus according to liberal values of ‘syncretism,’ that entail the public performance of a shared Marathi, Puneri (or Pune-ite) identity. Many Hindu participants walk and dance along with Muḥarram processions, assist in the making of innumerable tazia tableaux, and besides, organise musical bands and entertainment programs. This joint participation performs Marathi Muslim belonging and citizenship in Pune, demonstrating the Muslim right to public, collective places and processional spaces, transforming Muḥarram celebrations into a political symbol, while also producing Sunni Muḥarram as culturally and historically inclusive. However, since Pune is demographically dominated by Hindus, with Muslims constituting a ‘religious minority,’ the very process of forging a Muslim Marathi identity produces their Puneri identity as ‘ambivalently Hindu.’ Muslims, as a minority, thus form another variety of ‘Hindu,’ who are ‘acceptably different’, generating what has been described by scholars as ‘antagonistic tolerance’ between Hindu and Muslim communities, that accommodates religious diversity within politically universalised identities.2 While tazia processions further subscribe to Hindu aesthetics by mimicking the architecture of Maratha-style temples of the Peshwa period, and following the popular style of Ganpati processions in Pune,3 the mixture of Hindu and Muslim aesthetics in the body of the tazia become publicly illustrative of Pune’s Hindu–Muslim syncretism or, then, of Muslim liminality.4 DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-3

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  25 In my understanding of the terms ‘syncretism’ and ‘liminality,’ I draw upon Mayaram’s arguments about Meos in northern India, who share mixed Hindu and Muslim worldviews. The concept of syncretism here, constitutes a synthetic approach to cultures that are otherwise considered exclusive entities and then understood to exert influence over one another through a ‘natural’ process of cultural contact. Mayaram warns scholars that while it is often assumed that syncretism leads to harmony, it actually often results in the exact opposite, by increasing inter-religious tensions within contexts, where polities are historically based on the production of difference and, simultaneously, also its concealment. Syncretism, therefore, does not preclude religious conflict, remaining deeply engaged instead with the staking of boundaries, and eliminating ambiguity through ‘strategic’ cultural practices. Mayaram describes syncretic practices of concealment, as the ‘objective truth of power relations between communities, where sharing worlds that include the transgression of boundaries play no role in its analysis.’5 Instead, she considers ‘liminality’ a better phrase to conceptualise regional, linguistic, and ‘cultural enclosures’ that are produced by myriad identities, reconstituted through memorialisation. While Mayaram’s critique of syncretism apprehends scholars of its limitations as an analytical tool, ‘syncretism’ or liminality in the context of Pune Muḥarram also characterises processions as both boundary-making and boundary-sharing instruments, produced through the ambivalences of both sharing and minoritising. Along with creating liminal Muslim, Shia, and Sunni ‘cultural enclosures’ based on the memorialisation of regional Muḥarram traditions, syncretism also produces religious ambivalences within the local understanding of being Hindu and Marathi in Pune. From this perspective, while Hindus share in Sunni Muslim festivities as part of Marathi culture, Sunni Muslims become transformed into cultural Hindus through Muḥarram processions, with ‘syncretism’ here becoming contextualised in the history of postcolonial state formation in Maharashtra that culminated into a strong ethnolinguistic Marathi identity for all religious groups.6 The Maratha style of temple architecture used for tazias can therefore be considered a memorialisation of both the sameness and difference of religious minorities, wherein tazias constitute a celebratory embodiment of Marathi, Puneri, and Muslim identities.7 This chapter provides ethnographic reflections on Sunni Muḥarram processions and Shia Karbala commemorations in Pune city, collected during fieldwork in 2013 and 2014. I should state that juxtaposing Sunni celebrations with Shia commemorations in this article does not advocate for constructing essentialist identities, especially since there is a tendency to project universal images of Islamic festivals, that produces Maharashtra and Marathi Muslims as outliers to its ‘mainstream’ imagination, based on universalised North Indian imageries of Islam. While the underlying idea of effecting such a ubiquitous Muslim image itself gestures to premeditated political processes, the Muslim identity through Muḥarram celebrations in Pune hints more at an understanding of discursive intersubjectivity, between being both Marathi and Muslim, as a location that negotiates cultural Hinduism for religious minorities within Hindu-dominated Pune. In

26  Deepra Dandekar this sense, Shia commemorations of Karbala are important for decentring universalist Sunni imagery, just as tazias remodelled on Maratha-style temples decentre Hindu nationalism. The result is the generation of a hydraulic model, where the performed political power of liminal cultural enclosures, or local Muslim groups during Muḥarram, is interlinked with Hindus, to produce a compensatory balance of secularism in Pune, a characterising habitus of Marathi inclusive identity. Skultans’s hydraulic model, which I draw upon for my analysis, explains existing gendered interconnections between the illness of men and its healing by women. Skultan identifies a dynamic, compensatory relationship of counterbalance that ameliorates diagnostic tensions of stigma associated with masculine vulnerability to illness, and resolving it through establishing gendered hierarchies between men and women at Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra. Even as men are diagnosed with spirit possession at these temples, which constitutes a cultural diagnosis of mental illness, it is the women who take on the ritual duty of exorcism and healing for male family members, thereby establishing a compensatory counterbalance to the stigma of masculine vulnerability to mental illness, or spirit possession. While this chapter does not use gender analysis as the primary negotiating principle, Skultan’s theory of a hydraulic model can be extended to understand how religious minorities in Pune negotiate tensions with Hindu politics by performing Marathi-ness within Sunni tazia processions as a compensatory counterbalance to existing Hindu– Muslim tensions. Similarly, Shia Muḥarram commemorations of Karbala perform a compensatory counterbalance against Sunni Marathi Muḥarram to articulate and reveal the concealment of Hindu–Muslim tensions in Pune, expressed through the traditional metaphor of Sunni–Shia conflicts that were once common in colonial India.8

Sunni celebrations Thousands of tazias parade through Pune on Ashura day, with both Hindus and Muslims thronging the streets as spectators and participants. While the whole of Ashura day is dedicated to tazia processions, the biggest and most ornate processions begin mid-morning, with smaller ones commencing in the afternoon or evening. The three main processions, according to my informants at the time I attended Sunni Muḥarram in November 2013, commence from areas inhabited by Sunnis in the city: from the Subhanshah Dargah in old Pune (in Ravivar Peth); from Taboot Street and the Ohel David Synagogue, both in the Cantonment area; and from Khadki on the outskirts of Pune. The first two larger groups meet to form a grand procession along Laxmi Road, that later splits into two, with half the group proceeding to Dengle Bridge in Kasba Peth for immersion, and the other half continuing to the Sangam Bridge behind the Pune railway station. While the Khadki tazias proceed along the old Bombay–Pune Highway to the Sanghvi– Bopodi bridge, the procession from Ohel David Synagogue in the Cantonment area, independently reaches the Sangam Bridge, via Jehangir Hospital, to meet the procession from Laxmi Road. Both the Sangam and Dengle Bridge immersions

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  27 are joined by individual and smaller neighbourhood groups that decorate their own tazias more humbly, drawing legitimacy and inclusion for their tableaux through the act of joining up with larger processions. There are, of course, smaller processions of three or four tazias organised on a domestic scale that do not join the larger processions, instead keeping to nearby canals or streams for immersion. Reasons provided for these separate routes are often technical, with many of my interlocutors saying that this splitting up benefits law-and-order management and traffic control in the city, rather than being reflective in any way of any ideological disagreements or disunity among the Sunni Muslims of Pune. As tazia processions enter Laxmi Road, they follow the same route taken by the annual Ganpati festival procession in Pune, matching its pomp and splendour. Although Ganpati processions are dominated by non-Brahmin Hindus, the festival initially originated as a domestic celebration associated with Brahmin families in Pune. This was later transformed by Tilak in the nineteenth century into a non-Brahmin public celebratory procession, that was ironically modelled on the Muḥarram. The elimination of Hindu attachment to Muḥarram processions and festivities is associated with Tilak’s interventions that politically mobilised Hindus against colonialism by subverting and erasing the history of Hindu participation in Muḥarram celebrations. Scholarship has demonstrated how initial Ganpati processions were modelled along the lines of Muḥarram, especially after the 1890s, with Tilak deploying the Ganpati processions to a nationalist politics of devotion, that cleaved Hindus and Muslims apart by spreading negative propaganda about Muslims as cow-killers.9 While Tejani describes nineteenth-century Sunni Muḥarram processions as consisting of an eclectic crowd of dancing girls, tiger-men, buffoons, musicians, and others, Kidambi relates how Muḥarram was commemorated as Imam Jayanti or the Imam’s birthday in Bombay. Tilak’s subversion of Muḥarram and its procession route has become solidified over time, becoming a variety of sedimented knowledge in the public imagination of Pune that conveniently forgets the past of how Muḥarram processions preceded the Ganpati festival, and now identifies the Muḥarram route as an emulation of the Ganpati procession route.10 The political separation of Hindus from Muḥarram mediated by the Ganpati festival initially reduced the number of Hindus within Muḥarram celebrations and decreased the popularity of Muslim celebrations in Maharashtra in general, with the Marathi identity increasingly becoming reified as Hindu in the postcolonial period. Postcolonial Maharashtra inaugurated a brand of modern Hindu secularism politics that conditionally accepted Muslims as culturally Hindu, only if they demonstrated strong regional and ethnolinguistic ties with the Marathi identity.11 As a result, Muḥarram, seemingly mimicking Ganpati, comes to perform a public politics of cultural Hinduism in the city, with Marathi Puneri Muslims being viewed as another kind of Hindu, who share in the Marathi identity. The tazia procession route through Laxmi Road, therefore, is considered prestigious for ‘following’ the Ganpati route and by symbolising Maharashtra’s secularism politics. This politics henceforth, both erases and memorialises the independent history of Muḥarram in Maharashtra, and Hindu participation in Muḥarram, by imbuing

28  Deepra Dandekar Muslim liminality and minority status, with a celebration of syncretism, and cultural Hinduism. Walking this sedimented Hindu Ganpati route with the Muḥarram tazia procession, hence, became symbolic of Marathi citizenship, and Muslim entitlement to Pune city as religious minorities who are conditionally accepted for following Hindu processional practices and festivities. During the celebration, citizens simultaneously perform the Marathi secular as well as their Muslim identity within processional spaces. The procession provides an occasion of tremendous revelry for tazia groups, with participants taking special pleasure in obstructing the city’s traffic, already diverted to suit procession routes. Though Muḥarram routes are pre-decided by the traffic police in Pune, with traffic diversions already announced beforehand in the media, the Ashura day, especially if it coincides with a monsoon downpour, or other celebrations like Shiva-jayanti (Shivaji’s birthday), witnesses considerable confusion, along with law-and-order difficulties. Though the pleasure of occupying public spaces is perceptible and reminiscent of non-Brahmin Ganpati tableaux groups as well, the experience of Muḥarram is different. While non-Brahmin Ganpati groups express pleasure at their brief access to upper-caste, elite Ganpati groups during processions that solidify a Hindu Marathi identity forged by Tilak, the pleasure of Muḥarram processions also lies in subverting the city’s Hindu domination by legitimately occupying public roads as Muslim performative spaces. Sunni Muḥarram, therefore, provides observers with a richly displayed array of ethnographic visuality that communicates the united front of Marathi Puneri Muslims and secular Hindus, who celebrate and perform their cultural enclosures by refashioning tazias to resemble the architecture of Maratha style temples, and especially Khandoba’s temple at Jejuri. The long line of tazias waiting in queue on Laxmi Road, each decorated better than the next, ablaze with twinkling lights and flowers by evening, is indeed quite a sight to behold. The jubilation of tazia groups, with younger members hooting at obstructed and waiting traffic, performatively consolidate an unbroken chain of rightful Muslim and secular presence in Pune, as revellers run and dance on the streets to loud musical hits performed by drumming bands that hit periodic states of frenzied crescendo. This brings us to the difficult question of the tazia’s physicality that is more than a religious symbol of Karbala, and also more than just a liberal symbol of Sunni syncretism in Pune. I argue that the Jejuri-tazia performs the role of the Marathi Muslim body by embodying its historical presence in Maharashtra as a lived continuity. This tazia body is a tense body, unable and unwilling to separate the discursive identities of Marathi and Muslim, that also struggles with the reification of Muslim identity as North Indian. Instead, the Jejuri-tazias embody the unbroken chain of Muslim presence as a legitimate segment of Marathi history, enabled, in this case, by the emergence of Maharashtra, a federalist process not dissimilar to the formation of Pakistan.12 Muslim history and identity ‘is,’ therefore, Marathi history and identity in Pune, just as the tazia ‘is’ the Marathi Muslim body. Tazias in Pune are large models claimed to represent the Karbala shrine. However, they do not bear the slightest resemblance to the Karbala shrine. Instead,

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  29 as mentioned above, they architecturally replicate the Jejuri temple of Khandoba. Like the Jejuri temple, tazias are mostly two-storeyed tall structures with many cupolas and niches surrounding its outside galleries, topped by a medium-sized/ small dome and four minarets topped with smaller domes close to the central structure. Tazia models are made from cardboard, thermocol, gold and silver embossed paper, multicoloured glazed sheets, coloured cellophane sheets, shiny tassels, and adornments, placed on a plinth and hoisted onto a wagon drawn by a motor vehicle or a bullock cart during the procession (Figure 3.1). The bulls pulling the bullock cart are richly decorated with colourful and embroidered cloth coverings as well. Smaller groups that cannot afford vehicles or carts, carry simpler tazias on their shoulders, or hold them by the four corners of their plinths. These are additionally covered with curtains of flowers that hang down their sides in great masses of tuberoses, jasmine, marigold, and roses, interwoven through with twinkling lights. While most individual tazias are commissioned by local Muslim groups from neighbourhood friends-circles (mitramanḍaḷ) and micro-localities, tazias are also associated with local mosques and Sufi shrines reflecting the regional and locality affinities of various Muslim communities in Pune.13 Though artists involved in designing and making Tazias are not necessarily Muslim, just like local drumming groups or musical bands accompanying Muḥarram processions, this does

Figure 3.1  Muḥarram Procession in Pune Cantonment (November 2013). Source: Deepra Dandekar

30  Deepra Dandekar not mean that Hindus control tazia aesthetics. Tazia aesthetics are instead, discursively controlled and defined by a shared, Hindu-dominated, abstract Marathi cultural heritage, traditionally mediated by locality and community leaders, who are expected to uphold regional Muslim traditions. And following a continuous chain of tradition from year to year; differences within tazia aesthetics are only minuscule, like small colourful changes in its dome. Tall staffs (alams) carried during Muḥarram processions enjoy a similar trajectory of subtly shifting meanings.14 Tazia group members dance with the staff, holding it aloft, in ways that are similar to flag dances or lejhim dances, common during Ganpati processions.15 Also, the Muḥarram staff is dressed up as a human effigy, with the top of the staff adorned with a curtain of flowers hanging from its sides, to resemble a bridegroom’s head dress. And indeed, many among my interlocutors called it the ‘bridegroom’ (dulha). I was met with silence and a chorus of denial, on enquiring whether this bridegroom represented the Prophet’s great-grandson, who was briefly married before being martyred at a young age in Karbala. My interlocutors objected, identifying the tall-staff bridegroom with a popular Sufi saint from the old city area of Ganesh Peth in Pune called Mira Datar, who was known to have died on the battlefield while fighting a local Hindu king, an evil magician (in some versions, a monster).16 Mira Datar was on horseback, dressed as a bridegroom with bridal headgear, a curtain of flowers covering his face (sehra), when summoned to battle from his own marriage procession. He was known to have fought and defeated his adversary, at the cost of his life. Beheaded at death, his is a story of martyrdom commonly associated with many masculine heroes from western India, that often involve mythical Rajput soldiers.17 According to my interlocutors, the story of Qasim, the Prophet’s great-grandson was a Shia invention that had ‘copied’ Mira Datar’s story, since the flagstaff and tazia were ‘miraculous’ like Sufi shrines (dargahs), allegedly possessing the power to heal all those who touched it and paid obeisance. Indeed, people could be seen running up, weaving their way through the procession crowds to touch the tazia or flagstaff with their fingertips and kissing their fingertips, in an act of receiving benediction. There is some debate about tazia and tabut, with scholars differentiating between the two based on the meaning of these words.18 While tabut connotes a coffin, indicating commemorative traditions of bearing Imam Hussain’s coffin after the battle of Karbala, tazia signifies grief and participatory martyrdom at the death of the Prophet’s family in the battle of Karbala. However, this difference between tabut and tazia is contextually blurred, rendering debates on the use of these terms technical. Sunni tazias in Pune, moreover, do not connote grief. Instead, tazias in Sunni Muḥarram processions in Pune connote victory over grief, and the valour of Sunnis who celebrate their martyrdom of living as religious minorities and cultural Hindus in Pune, resounding with the triumph of citizenship and belonging. Many younger tazia group members in the processions of 2013 recounted skirmishes from the last years, pointing out particular spots within procession routes where ‘fights’ had taken place. Walking these ‘fight spots’ afresh, taking

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  31 commemorative photographs of themselves with friends, hooting, grinning, and gesticulating for the camera in a jubilant mode was a matter of pride for Muslim youth groups, showcasing their valour against all odds, as they triumphed against their detractors. Needless to say, the streets of Pune are filled with police on Ashura, with nearly the entire police department of Pune (including traffic police) working around the clock to provide processions with protection and preventing local clashes. As one police officer told me, since Muḥarram processions constituted a greater danger than Ganpati, due to the predominance of Hindus in Pune, Muḥarram more than Ganpati, became an ideal occasion for criminals to strike. While the entire police force was kept busy with the ‘procession madness,’ police stations remained nearly unmanned, apart from a skeleton staff; an aspect that allowed criminals free reign over the city.19 However true this view was, it was nevertheless also an expression of Hindu majoritarianism, that identified Muslim processions as causing trouble, while not ceding that it was the over-policing and threat of majoritarian violence that forced greater police presence in the city. I was told there was significant increase in Hindu ‘backlash’ against Muḥarram and tazia processions. Hindus expressed various opinions about it that ranged from ‘Muslims have become too dominant,’ to ‘Muslims in Maharashtra are actually Hindus,’ to ‘Muslims should enjoy festivals but not endanger Hindus,’ on the occasion of Muḥarram. However, the ultimate endorsement of Marathi Muslim syncretism in 2013 came from Girish Bapat (Mayor of Pune at the time), an important BJP leader, who came out on Laxmi Road and presented a bouquet of flowers to the head of a leading tazia group, shaking hands, smiling, and proclaiming Muslims as brothers in the city amidst media coverage. In return, he received a checked and tasselled cotton scarf folded in a triangle that was draped across his shoulders by a group of Muslim leaders. Some of the older men and women among the Muslims I interviewed, who were well aware of the Hindu backlash, only superficially controlled by the presence of leaders like Bapat and the police force, remained philosophical. They counterbalanced Hindu backlash with their own reformist position, calling the tazia ‘idol worship’ or butt puja, and disinvesting it from celebratory practices that they no longer believed in, but only engaged in as part of community tradition in the city, since their children enjoyed it. Such conversations brought home the misaligned criticism that Muslims often face in India, when evaluated as fundamentalists – an evaluation that ignores the subtle sharing between both Hindu and Muslim religious conservatism in limiting earlier joined regional, cultural traditions. There is no one universal Sunni Muslim meaning to tazias in Pune either. Tazias are subject to overlapping stories of Sufi shrines, micro-communities, and localities, important to the quotidian life of religious minorities with a history of procession ‘fight spots’ connected to it. The question of Islamic devotion is, hence, heavily contextualised within local frameworks.20 The embodied presence of Muslim martyrdom, is, however, strongly connected to the lives of religious minorities, who live in Pune as cultural Hindus. The experience of being a minority constituting an elemental part of Muḥarram processional performance, is very much present and embodied by the tazia. One of my interlocutors, for example,

32  Deepra Dandekar a boy about 12 years old, pointed to the wobbly dome of one of the smaller, impromptu-looking tazias that some of his friends were carrying, and asked me rhetorically why the dome wobbled. Before I could answer, he gleefully made a hand gesture, drawing a finger across his throat to indicate decapitation. While his decapitating movement mainly referred to the martyrdom of Karbala, the decapitation was also part of the tazia itself, for its wobbly head, that generated humour and a sense of recognition, among children who were both Marathi and Muslim in the city. It is important to contextualise the politics of tazia designs within postcolonial performances of secularism in contemporary Muḥarram processions. While already during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tazias may have followed Peshwa temple styles, the postcolonial period has transformed their meaning, first in the light of Tilak’s interventions, and subsequently, through the formation of Maharashtra itself, with the Shiv Sena playing a predominant role. This postcolonial reality of Muslims performing cultural Hinduism constitutes an ontological divide, in which tazia designs have gained new meaning. Using the present to analyse the past, or explaining how the present was meaningful in the past, projects postcolonial meanings backwards, to produce universals. While the presence of Peshwa temple-style tazias in the eighteenth century can, for obvious reasons, not be read in the light of meanings produced by postcolonial Hinduism, knowledge of eighteenth-century aesthetics is definitely deployed in postcolonial times to form public, sedimented knowledge of what being Marathi and Muslim means in Pune today. In this sense, cultural Hinduism for Muslims, witnessed in celebratory tazias, modelled on the Jejuri temple that follow the Ganpati procession route, transforms Sunni Muḥarram into a memorialisation of the political past.

Shia commemorations It is equally important to note that this united Sunni Muslim syncretism and cultural Hinduism performed during Pune Muḥarram processions excludes Shias from claims of Marathi-ness. They are often labelled ‘Irani’ and as foreigners to the region, despite the independent history of Shi’ism in Western India. Shia commemorations of Karbala, too, decentre the Sunni performance of cultural Hinduism, by performing the ‘real’ emotions of Karbala martyrdom that is part of a history of Islam outside of India and Maharashtra. Shias thereby reject Sunni celebrations and project Shia-Sunni antagonism in India onto Pune Muḥarram. The Shia-Sunni standoff in Pune creates a competitive variety of Muslim minoritism, that had many of my Sunni interlocutors denounce Shias as ‘fake’ Muslims. Importantly, this Shia difference complicates and threatens Sunni claims to an embodied Marathi-ness by exemplifying the presence of a wider, indeed global Muslim community that rejects both Sunnis and Hindus. Thus, while many Hindus participating in Sunni tazia processions consider Muslims to be cultural Hindus, the same axiom of being Marathi and culturally Hindu does not work for Shias. Since Shias were not culturally Hindu, my Hindu interlocutors mostly considered Shias to be another kind of Muslim, who were foreign, and thus, not culturally

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  33 Marathi. The difference of Shia matam, hence, disaggregates Sunni claims of representing universal Muslim identity, which undermines their Muslim-ness, especially since the paradigm of Karbala is, after all common to both Shias and Sunnis. Ambiguities and ambivalences arising between different Muslim groups and between Hindus and Muslims in Pune, therefore, produce Shias as an insular third group that constitutes a foreign religious minority for both Sunnis and Hindus. Since Shias in Pune are also usually from migrant backgrounds, hailing from Hyderabad, Lucknow, or Gujarat (in the latter case, mostly belonging to the Khoja and Bohra communities) or from places outside India like Iran, Sunnis are further enabled to discriminate against Shias as ‘fake’ outsider Muslims, in a manner reflective of how Hindu conservatives treat Muslims in general. Located on the periphery of the alliance of Hindu-Muslim syncretism in Pune, Shias are unable to compete with Sunnis for any claims of embodied belonging that could identify them with being Marathi, especially since there was no tradition of Hindu participation in Karbala mourning in Pune, in contrast to their participation in celebratory Muḥarram. This is despite strong Shia financial networks with the Aga Khan Foundation in Pune that make them a rather well-to-do group. The situation in Pune therefore differs considerably from postcolonial Mumbai, where Nejad describes Shia tazias and large public majlis ceremonies that organise public water-dispensing at Shia mosques on Ashura day. The history of this Hindu-Shia-Sunni political ‘difference’ in India has also been discussed in considerable detail by Pernau, who outlines how Shia-Sunni skirmishes before 1857 in North India were discursively transformed into Hindu-Muslim clashes in the later part of the nineteenth century, especially as dates for Ashura Muḥarram processions overlapped with Ramlila performances. The triangular nature of religious–political confrontation between Hindus, Sunnis, and Shias on Muḥarram, becomes central to the emergence of a certain secular politics in the nineteenth century that Pernau diagnoses to be a product of Christian-influenced colonial modernity. Extending this argument to the question of state formation in Maharashtra, the Christian influence of colonial modernity can be replaced by Hindu-influenced postcolonial modernity, that gave rise to a different kind of secularist politics that considers Sunni Muslims as Marathi and culturally Hindu, while Shias are characterised as Muslim foreigners. This discursive difference between Muslims as foreigners, and Muslims as culturally Hindu/Marathi, produces very different religious emotions during Muḥarram celebrations. They are quotidian in terms of their local contextualisation within the politics and traditions of postcolonial Muslim identity.21 Shias in Pune do not make Jejuri-style tazias that are immersed in the river like the Ganpati tableaux. Most Shia tazias in Pune are circular and drum-like, large objects made with the help of a bamboo frame, with flags rising out of their circular surface, similar to what Nejad describes for Shia tazias called naql gardani in Iran, that are meant to be shaped like palm trees.22 On Ashura day, local Shias in Pune generally living nearby to Shia mosques congregate in a secluded and enclosed courtyard, park, or square, carrying tazias on their shoulders. Shia tazias are often accompanied by a life-sized coffin-shaped

34  Deepra Dandekar montage that represents Imam Hussain’s coffin (called a tabut or janaza). These are accompanied by staffs held aloft, decorated as human effigies with turbans, clothes, and garlands, that represent the Prophet’s family who were martyred in the battle of Karbala. Processions proceed towards Shia mosques, accompanied by intense public display of grief (matam), as group members rhythmically and collectively flagellate themselves on the shoulders and back, lamenting the death of the Prophet’s family, to the beat of digitally recorded lament songs played on loudspeakers. Sometimes professional singers are employed to sing dirges on a small stage erected at one end of the enclosure where matam is organised. My interlocutors referred to this tradition of dirges as mersiakhani, a genre of compositions expressing grief, said to be perfected by the Nawabs of Lucknow.23 Shia dirges, sung or played during matam, however, rarely belong to the artistic genre of mersia poetry. These are now mostly North Indian vernacular movie songs or imported from Iran, and they provide the congregation with a strong sense of rhythm. Men and women dressed in black walk alongside in the procession, beating their chests in accompaniment to self-flagellation, shouting in rhythm to the songs. Men doing matam often stand bare-chested in circles surrounding the janaza, flog themselves to musical beats, often loudly chanting ‘Hasan! Husain! Ali! Dulha!’ Some participants weep, scream, and wail, clapping their foreheads, and slapping themselves. Even six- or seven-year-old children join matam processions. Once everybody reaches the mosque that is the destination of their procession, the grieving intensifies, with local groups dispensing water to passers-by, concluding the day’s programme with a meeting or sermon. Watching Shia matam is an intense experience, with the streets that the procession passes through, often streaked with blood. This produces the occasion as dramatic, macabre, and ‘real’ especially due to the presence of blood – an experience that exceeds watching a ritual as a mere spectacle. It is common to see weeping and screaming men and women drenched in blood entering the mosque, assisted by others, while exhausted mourners, fanned by family members, lie in a state of drained collapse in the mosque courtyard, moaning and still in trance. The publicly demonstrated violent grief of Shia matam is in unambiguous contrast to celebratory Sunni Jezuri-tazias covered in flowers and twinkling lights. This stark difference of Shia Muḥarram emotively creates public exclusivity to Shia identity in the city, which excludes Sunnis as well as Hindus, and precludes any performance of syncretism. Hindus, in turn, mostly respond with curiosity, disapproval, and anxiety to Shia matam, while Sunnis denounce matam as improper Muslim behaviour. I attended the Shia procession outside the Chand Tara Masjid in Navi Peth (Pune) in 2014, though I did not enter the mosque along with the grieving congregation. Growing uncomfortable with seeing so many people bleed, I asked my Shia interlocutors whether bleeding and self-flagellating devotees could be provided medical aid, since many of the whips had thongs with metal claws attached at its ends. However, almost everyone I asked answered in the negative. The miracle of matam was said to be located in the divine and noble quality of grief for the

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  35 Prophet and his family, and the faithful would never come to any serious harm or injury. While Shia matam is shunned by Sunnis, it becomes an exotic and terrifying spectacle primarily watched by Hindus, who are excluded from its emotional framework. They in turn conveniently interpret matam as a Shia critique of Sunni Muslims, that is then used to undermine Sunni claims of Marathi-ness and cultural Hinduism. Like me, most Hindu spectators did not enter the Chand Tara Mosque with the mourners.24 While Jejuri-tazias replicate the fun of the Ganpati festival during Muḥarram processions, entering the mosque with shouting, grieving, and bleeding Shias, exhausted, drained, and dazed as most of them are, is quite another matter. Some Hindu spectators commented on the blood-streaked roads after matam in irritation, saying that it gave a false impression of riots having taken place there; they felt that the government should disallow such extreme (aghori) ritual demonstrations that create religious, and communal tensions, where none exist. And indeed, the deserted streets did resemble an abandoned riot scene, with odd, upturned blood-stained slippers lying around amidst broken chains, whips, thongs, knives, and glass shards in small pools of blood mixed with dirt. Pune in postcolonial times has never witnessed large-scale Shia-Sunni confrontations or Hindu-Muslim riots, only local skirmishes connected with Sunni tazia processions that involved the emergence of ‘fight spots.’ Meanwhile, an elderly Hindu co-spectator in the crowd outside Chand Tara Mosque surprised me with his theory of matam that not just exemplified Hindu exclusion from Shia Muḥarram, but also Sunni exclusion from it, a rift he tried to explain in Hindu mythological terms. According to him, Shias had a God called Allah who had a wife called Ali (he pronounced it Alli), whom mourners invoked while chanting ‘Ya Ali’! Allah and Ali and their two children, Hasan and Hussain, had been killed in Arabastan in a huge battle, by none other than Muhammad Paigambar (Prophet). And since Shias venerated Allah, Ali, Hasan, and Husain, they lamented the murder of this family at Muhammad Paigambar’s hands. When I interjected, slightly flabbergasted, that Muhammad Paigambar was after all the Prophet himself, my interlocuter’s eyes gleamed. Triumphantly he told me, that Muhammad Paigambar was the Prophet only for Sunnis, and since Muhammad Paigambar had killed Allah, Ali, Hasan, and Hussain, Sunnis and Shias were likely to remain sworn enemies forever. Like during the Mahabharata war, where the heroes of one side had been considered the villains by the opposite camp, Shias and Sunnis formed exclusive camps, with each side claiming to be right. Though I found my co-spectator’s theory astounding, it also indicated a socialpolitical context, where changing friendships between Hindu, Sunni, and Shia groups in Pune produced a tightly negotiated, internally balanced but precarious relationship of secularism politics.

Performing syncretism and concluding thoughts As evident from these ethnographic reflections, the main theme of Muḥarram in Pune, whether Jezuri-tazias or Shia matam, is the performance of Muslim

36  Deepra Dandekar syncretism and cultural (Marathi) Hinduism. Both Muḥarram(s) were located within different emotional layers, and conflicted with one another, the first concealing postcolonial Hindu-Muslim tensions by memorializing the history of traditional Muslim presence in Western India, and the other revealing the concealment of Hindu-Muslim tensions by performing Muslim exclusivity that originated outside India. These differently performed Muḥarram(s), moreover, possessed strong agential value, regenerating the same feelings repeatedly and annually, and thereby developing them into sedimented, rehearsed political relationships between Hindus, Sunnis, and Shias in Pune. The performance of these clearly separated Muḥarram(s), that are nevertheless in communication with each other, produces different varieties of martyrdom surrounding Puneri Muslim secularism as well as a sedimented and performed habitus for each community.25 Sunnis valiantly perform Marathi cultural Hinduism, commemorated by a ‘fight spots’ within their Ganpati processional landscapes. Hindus perform Marathi secularism, and join Sunnis in denouncing Shias as fake Muslims and foreigners to Maharashtra. Shia Muḥarram on the other hand constitutes a third space that holds up a mirror to the Sunni performance of cultural Hinduism, while uncomfortably revealing to Hindus their own, thinly veiled, antagonistic tolerance of ‘real’ Muslims. Hindus and Sunnis remain cognizant of Shia dissent, made ‘real’ by the presence of blood, grief, and violent mourning. Indeed, uncanny resemblances between matam processions and riot scenes compensate for the absence of actual rioting, demonstrating to onlookers, what the scene in one of Pune’s streets would have looked like if there had been no performance of Sunni Muslim cultural Hinduism. Returning to Skultan’s hydraulic model, Hindus, Sunnis, and Shias are hydraulically linked in Pune, to mitigate and ameliorate the rising challenges of Hindu nationalism. By stating this, I do not, however, mean to say that the Muḥarram(s) I attended were performed in any knowing, premeditated manner, predicating performances on the a priori knowledge of its effects and functions in the city. My Sunni interlocutors did not deliberately produce their tazias to look like the Jezuri temple, and neither were details of the Karbala battle or shrine entirely clear.26 Neither did they deliberately mimic Ganpati flag dances when dancing with hoisted Mira Datar staffs, and though they disliked and excluded Shias from their performance of Marathi-ness, and were in return excluded by Shias, they did not know the exact details of the Shia significations of the tazia or staff either, dismissing it as fake superstition. Neither were exhausted, bleeding, and dazed Shia mourners specifically targeting Sunni Muslim syncretism in the city through matam. To plan a traditional, community ritual, to covertly stage and enact a riot scene, without the city ever having such a history of riots, was far from the Shia imagination. Indeed, neither Sunni revellers nor Shia mourners deliberately enact the localised, tense balance between antagonistically tolerant religious communities and the martyrdom of religious minorities forced into cultural Hinduism in Pune, when celebrating Muḥarram. Finally, neither do Hindus ‘think’ that they are actually attending a culturally Hindu, Ganpati-like festival when participating in Muḥarram. They are all dancing, grieving, or performing ‘themselves’ according

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  37 to the habitus of their co-dependent social fields that produced a systemic, locally organised and tense relationship of liminality between Hindus and Muslims in the secular postcolonial Puneri identity.27 While syncretism has been a popular term,28 loosely connoting hybrid religiosity and the merge of worship styles across diverse religious groups, the term has been heavily critiqued due to its vague and problematic usage that assumes this religious merge to have taken place in a social-political vacuum, and between consolidated religious identities that are decontextualised from their historical origins and specific linguistic and demographic frameworks. Neither Hindus nor Muslims in Pune can be considered as unchanging, or universal religious groups, just because their mutual relationships are hydraulically counterbalanced in a tight state of tension through emotional performances of jubilation or violent mourning. Both Muslim syncretism and exclusivity are squarely located within postcolonial Marathi secularism that antagonistically tolerates all religious minorities conditionally if they perform cultural Hinduism. While Shias reject syncretism, their matam is still linked with Sunnis and Hindus. In her discussion of Tilak’s intervention in the Ganpati festival in Pune and Mumbai in the late nineteenth century, Kaur outlines how its liminal, reactionary nature became entangled with collective devotion, local arts, and entertainment organised by local groups at public spaces, politically mobilising the festival as an indigenous intervention against colonial governmentality. While this created Ganpati as a liminal domain for debate and agitation, the festival also represented volatile tension between order and disorder, celebrations, and politics, separating festivals from mundane life. And it was within this performative domain of fluid politics that the ‘people’ as an unstable, ambivalent, and unpredictable category emerged within the public domain, organising lectures, debates, and dramas on current issues, circumventing colonial prohibition on sedition.29 While all these negotiations can be clearly evidenced in the case of Muḥarram in Pune in contemporary times, the difference here lies in the question of Muslim-ness, located in the emergence of Maharashtra as a culturally Hindu state, with this emergence subjecting its religious minorities to the double hierarchy of being answerable, not only to the model of Hindu-Marathi secularism, but to individual Hindus in their own city and locality. Hindu backlash against Muḥarram processions objects to Muḥarram constituting ‘another Ganpati,’ and deconstructs the Sunni performance of cultural Hinduism. Instead it produces tazias as a subversive comment on the allegedly oppressive nature of Maharashtra, likening it to the colonial government that Tilak opposed. This Hindu backlash, hence, uses Tilak’s model to ingeniously subvert Sunni cultural Hinduism, by transforming the Jezuri-tazia into an overarching, but concealed model of Muslim subversion, and resistance to Hindus. Hindu opposers are hence more predisposed to tolerating Shia matam since its exclusivity does not demand any performance of secularism from Hindus. Instead, it undermines Sunni cultural Hinduism by revealing its strategic nature, that in return denounces it as fake and performed only to lull Hindus into a false safety about Muslim otherness. Kaur’s analysis is apt in this context, when identifying Hindus as the

38  Deepra Dandekar volatile, unstable ‘people,’ emerging from the same political structure of Marathi secularism that celebrates traditional Muslim presence in Pune.

Notes 1 There is more than one kind of Muslim celebration of Muḥarram in Pune, with all varieties of Muḥarram processions, engaged and entangled with an extension of colonial policies; cf. also Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Jim Masselos, “Change and Custom in the Format of Bombay Moharram during Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” South Asia 5, no. 2 (1982): 47–67. 2 For a theory of antagonistic tolerance between shrines and adherent communities that share religious spaces through different forms of religiosity, cf. Robert Hayden, “Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites in South Asia and the Balkans,” Current Anthropology 43, no. 2 (2002): 205–31; Robert Hayden et al., Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (London: Routledge, 2016). 3 For a more detailed exposition on the marked resemblance between tazias and Hindu temples of the Maratha architectural style dated to the eighteenth century, cf. Pushkar Sohoni, “Imbrication and Implication: Early Maratha Architecture and the Deccan Sultanates,” Archives of Asian Art 16, no. 1 (2018): 33–46. 4 On the historical development of Indian secularism in the nineteenth and twentieth century, cf. Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 5 Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory, and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 45. 6 Oliver Godsmark, “Searching for Synergies, Making Majorities: The Demands for Pakistan and Maharashtra,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 42, no. 1 (2019): 115–33. 7 Similar research in this direction, of exploring Muslim festivals as arenas of HinduMuslim ambivalence and negotiations have been carried out by Z. Fareen Parvez in her exploration of riots during the Milad-un-Nabi and Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in Hyderabad; “Celebrating the Prophet: Religious Nationalism and the Politics of Miladun-Nabi Festivals in India,” Nation and Nationalism 20, no. 2 (2014): 218–38. 8 Vieda Skultans, “Women and Affliction in Maharashtra: A Hydraulic Model of Health and Illness,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 15 (1991): 321–59. 9 Raminder Kaur, Performative Politics & the Cultures of Hinduism: Public Uses of Religion in Western India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 31–35; Tejani, Indian Secularism, 27–75; for Tilak’s political interventions upstaging the Muḥarram festival, replacing it with Ganpati processions and celebrations in Pune and exhorting Hindus to avoid Muḥarram, also cf. Richard I. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 78. 10 Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 124; Tejani, Indian Secularism, 56–58. For an exploration of relationships between power and solidified, sedimented ritual knowledge that universalizes the history of religious shrines and pilgrimage routes, cf. Jürgen Schaflechner, Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Chage, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 11 Oliver Godsmark, Citizenship, Community and Democracy in India: From Bombay to Maharashtra, c. 1930–1960 (London: Routledge, 2018). 12 Godsmark, “Searching for Synergies.”

Ethnographic exploration of Muḥarram(s) in Pune  39 13 On how local communities constitute independent forms of knowledge, cf. Arjun Appadurai, “The Production of Locality,” in Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, ed. Richard Fardon (Abingdon: Routledge, 1995), 204–25. 14 These are supposed to be replicas of the battle standards at the battle of Karbala, and therefore they are subjected to another level of symbolism, associated particularly with ritual storage and veneration through the year at Ashurkhanas (personal communication, Pushkar Sohoni). 15 Lejhim is part of a Marathi folk repertoire consisting of calisthenics, with dancers aligning in marching formations and moving uniformly to drumbeats, often using flag poles, and bow-like instruments as props. 16 Mira Datar is a powerful saint who takes care of exorcisms, whose main shrine is located in Unnava, Unjha, near Mehsana in Gujarat. There are many sub-shrines of Mira Datar scattered over western India, including Pune and Mumbai, with disciples bringing stones imbued with miraculous powers (barkat) from the core shrine to their cities. Mira Datar sub-shrines are treated as small ancillary but independent dargahs, where attending people possessed by spirits are exorcised. 17 Lindsey Harlan, The Goddesses‘ Henchmen: Gender in Indian Hero Worship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 18 Cf. Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell, Hobson Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, ed. William Crooke (London: John Murray, 1903), s.v. taboot, tazeea. 19 Exactly the concern of the local police in nineteenth-century Singapore, while considering syncretic demonstrations of religious minorities more dangerous (personal communication, Torsten Tschacher). 20 Cf. also Afsar Mohammad, The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 21 Reza Masoudi Nejad, “Practicing Fractal Shi’i Identities through Muharram Rituals in Mumbai,” Diversities 14, no. 2 (2012): 103–17; Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013). For Shia Muḥarram in the context of burgeoning urban spaces in Lucknow, cf. Raphael Susewind and Christopher B. Taylor “Introduction: Islamicate Lucknow Today: Historical Legacy and Urban Aspirations,” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal 11 (2015): 1–42. On questions of how regional, historical, and social contexts change the meaning of Muḥarram rituals, also cf. David Pinault, Horse of Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 22 Reza Masoudi Nejad, “The Discursive Manifestation of Past and Present Through the Spatial Organization of the Ashura Procession,” Space and Culture, 16, no. 2 (2013): 133–60. 23 For an exploration of how Shi’ite kingdoms in Iran and Iraq came into power and emerged from the polities of North India, cf. Juan R. I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shi’ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1772–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 24 For more on Hindu Marathi methodological introspection while researching Marathi Muslim subjectivity in Maharashtra, cf. Deepra Dandekar, “Abdul Kader Mukadam: Political Opinions and a Genealogy of Marathi Intellectual and Muslim Progressivism,” in Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of Belonging in South Asia, ed. Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 25 For an exposition of habitus, as a way of inhabiting a social field created by its power relationships and leadership that interacts with other social fields to produce a sense of legitimacy to traditional ways of being and self-defining self and community within the social field, cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

40  Deepra Dandekar 26 Cf. Mayaram, Resisting Regimes, 38–39, on the limited use of analytical categories like syncretism, wherein Muslim practices associated with Hindu customs are hardly considered ‘syncretic’ by Muslims but considered an embodied part of being Muslim among Mewati Meos. 27 On Pandav Lila and performing and dancing the self as part of the habitus of Garhwali religious life as a social field defined by religious practices and rituals, cf. William S. Sax, Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 28 For descriptions of syncretic Hindu and Muslim shrines in India, cf. J. J. Roy Burman, Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2002). 29 Kaur, Performative Politics, 1–30.

4

Visual language of piety and power Ta’ziahs and temples in the Western Deccan Pushkar Sohoni

Tabuts and tā’ziahs Muḥarram is the name of the first month of the Islamic calendar; the tenth day of Muḥarram known as Ashura is believed to be the day on which Moses won a victory against the Pharaoh. Other popular beliefs assert that it is the day when rain first fell on earth, Adam and Eve appeared, the creation of the ninth heaven (‘arsh), and several other important cosmological events occurred.1 For Shi’i Muslims, the day is particularly significant as it also marks the anniversary of the martyrdom of Husain (625–680 CE), son of Ali (cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad). Muḥarram ceremonies in the cities of India traditionally have had large ephemeral architectural models built of bamboo, paper, and tinsel, paraded along a processional route till their ritual immersion in a body of water, a river, or the sea (Figure 4.1).2 These models are notionally supposed to represent the tomb of Imam Husain, though none of them actually resemble the funerary shrine at Karbala. These architectural models would be correctly called tā’ziah in South Asia; literally, the verbal noun for the root ‘azza in Arabic, meaning to mourn, the word tā’ziah was used for the Shi’a passion plays in Iran. But, as explained by Reza Masoudi-Nejad, there are clear differences between the Arabic, Persian, and Indian uses of the word in the context of Muḥarram: The Arabic term ta’zyeh literally means mourning, so it refers to the mourning ceremonies among Arab-speaking Shi’a communities. In Iran, ta’zyeh refers to the passion play of Ashura by which a part of the Karbala tragedy is performed. However, the ta’zyeh is the symbolic dome of Hussein, which is carried through Muharram processions in India.3 Colonial sources – official, popular, and scholarly – very commonly refer to these representations of tombs as ‘tābuts.’4 This usage may have been a result of local or received knowledge as that term seems to have been commonly in use in India.5 Even now, several people use the words interchangeably.6 A tābut (from Arabic) literally means the funerary coffin that is used to transport the body to a grave, and sometimes buried. While ritual processions for Muḥarram in South Asia often do DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-4

42  Pushkar Sohoni

Figure 4.1  Postcard, A Muharram procession in Pune, c. 1900. Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni.

also have ceremonial tābuts to mourn the death of Husain, the architectural form of the tā’ziah is not to be mistaken for that of the coffin.7 Therefore in this essay, the notional likenesses of Husain’s tombs will be referred as tā’ziahs. For South Asia, the tā’ziah should therefore be understood as a reference ‘to the interpretive, imaginary representation of Ḥosayn’s tomb that is carried in procession.’8

Muḥarram in the Western Deccan In most of British India, public Muḥarram observances were viewed by the administration as a security risk, and by others in the larger community and outside the administration as an opportunity of demonstrating their social authority.9 Muḥarram was marked by a carnival-like atmosphere for the three to five days leading up to the day of Ashura (the tenth of Muḥarram) in the nineteenth-century Western Deccan, particularly at Mumbai and Pune, which are the focus of this essay (Figure 4.2). The descriptions of the processions suggest a number of unusual features. For example, the Muḥarram procession was a large event, secular to the extent that people of all religions and sects in Islam participated in it significantly. In Mumbai, it was popular among several Hindu groups as Imam Jayanti (lit. birthday of the Imam).10 It was also the venue for playing out neighbourhood rivalries and staking claims, with competing groups and their processions refusing to back down upon crossing paths.11 There are constant reports in the Times

Visual language of piety and power  43

Figure 4.2  Etching of the Muḥarram procession in Mumbai (1878). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni.

of India of law and order problems caused by competing groups and processions. Yet, as pointed out by Masoudi-Nejad in the case of Mumbai, the religious diversity and ethnic diversity of the city (and processions) meant that the complex social organisation could not be reduced to simple ‘Muslim-Hindu or Shi’a–Sunni divisions’ alone.12 The changing demographics of Muslim and, indeed, other populations in Mumbai in the nineteenth century eventually meant changes to the character of the Muḥarram procession.13 However, processions of tā’ziahs constructed of bamboo and paper remained throughout, though sometimes highly regulated and curtailed by the city administration in order to maintain law and order (Figure 4.3).14 In north India, at least till recently, such tā’ziahs were actually buried in a field next to a cemetery that was known locally as Karbala,15 while in Western Deccan, they were ceremonially immersed in water at the end of the procession. In the eastern Deccan, in the state of Hyderabad (present-day Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) the ‘ālams were either immersed in a water body, or laid on the banks of a tank.16 Pune, which was the capital of the Maratha confederacy and the seat of the Peshwas (hereditary regent prime ministers who managed the confederated Maratha state), was culturally the most important city in the Western Deccan (Figure 4.4). There are accounts of the brahmin Peshwas’ participation in the Muḥarram ceremony in full state splendour as described by Edward Moor,

44  Pushkar Sohoni

Figure 4.3  ‘Taboots in Moharram.’ Photo courtesy: Illustrated London News, 1857.

Figure 4.4  Muḥarram procession in the mid-nineteenth century. Photo courtesy: Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1855.

Visual language of piety and power  45 I have seen the Peshwa Baaji Rao, his brother Amrit Rao and Chimna Appa, Nana Furnaveese, and other personages of the highest distinction, imitate the Mahomedans in the procession and tumult of the Tabut; and come themselves on elephants, in magnificent state, preceded some of them by field-pieces to fire salutes, to the river to witness the immersion of the Tabuts.17 A similar spirit of non-sectarian participation seems to have continued through most of the nineteenth century till the last two decades when communal clashes were reported. The codification of religious identity through various religious reform movements and legislated norms through most of the nineteenth century seems to have created an imagined appropriate behaviour in lieu of customary practices. The communalisation of the Muḥarram procession and its subsequent mutation into the Ganesh procession is usually ascribed to B.G. Tilak, who famously gave it a political face after riots in 1893.18 The Ganesh procession, before being a public event, was a family-based festival among the higher castes.19 The Ganesh festival, which was celebrated for varying days in private celebrations, was fixed at ten days for the public version.20 Architectural replicas of famous temples or religious buildings made of ephemeral materials often accompanied the Ganesh processions, exactly as previous Muḥarram processions. The idol of Ganesh is immersed at the end of the procession, as were the tā’ziahs. In short, Ganesh festivals, particularly the processions, were organised as counterparts or competitors to Muḥarram.21 In Mumbai, a British cosmopolitan city, similar descriptions are afforded of the multi-cultural participants of the Muḥarram processions in the nineteenth century. The carnival-like atmosphere was noted by all visitors, with descriptions of ‘troops of naked faquers covered with ashes, Seedees or Abyssinians, wrestlers, men garbed and painted as tigers, buffoons, hakeems, singing boys, & c. parade the streets in detached parties, chaunting their hymns in wild and oft-times melodious measure.’22 Young men dressed as animals and in modes of burlesque, often organised into ṭoḷīs (lit. Marathi for bands, from the early Marathi word for vagabond),23 caused harassment to citizens and problems of law and order.24 In fact, it was this motley cast of characters who provided one of the key reasons for controlling and banning the procession from parts of Mumbai and Pune cities by the police departments. The processions are described in most accounts of Mumbai as an important event in the life of the city. For example, ‘Mohorrum’ was described as a festival that did not appeal to ‘real orthodox Mussalmans. A good deal of Hindu superstitions have been adopted in this festival. For instance, a man painted as a tiger, accompanied by drum beating, performs the antics of this animal before the Taboot is immersed.’25 The involvement of the police in providing protection to various processions and regulating routes so that there were few clashes is well documented in newspaper reports of the period.

46  Pushkar Sohoni The common element in both the cities was the presence of large processions carrying the tā’ziahs to their final destination, the sea in the case of Mumbai, and the confluence of the Mula and Mutha rivers in Pune. The procession routes were lined with large crowds, and an air of festivity is often described. The objects of the procession themselves in addition to tā’ziahs were tābuts, ‘ālams, along with aftābgīrs and other ceremonial objects and standards. Important public personages were present, and many of them sponsored the construction of the tā’ziahs, which then became the proxies of neighbourhood prestige and patrons.

Late Maratha temples in Western Deccan None of the representations of the tomb is true to the real structure at Karbala, and their immersion in water at the end of the procession possibly derives from Hindu customary practices of immersing certain deities in water. The architectural forms of the tā’ziah also bear a striking resemblance to the forms of temples built under the late Marathas in the eighteenth century (Fig. 4.5). There is no discourse or theorisation for the built forms of the tā’ziahs, but neither do we have any for these eighteenth-century temples. With only visual evidence and circumstantial arguments, it is possible to make a case for a shared world of the two kinds of architectural imagery. Reduced to formal elements, most of the tā’ziahs have a pyramidal tiered tower, with niches on all sides and on every level. There are small minarets that mark the corners of the lower tiers, and the whole structure is surmounted with a bulbous dome. The dome would often bear a small standard borne on an inverted lotus form so common on the domes of late Mughal buildings. The same architectural formula is seen deployed for the superstructure of several temples built under the Marathas in the eighteenth century. The Sangameshwar temple at Sasvad (1718), the Devadeveshwar temple on Parvati hill in Pune (1749), and the Ranchhodrai temple at Dakor (1772) are just a few examples of the eighteenth-century temples that resemble the Muḥarram tā’ziahs in the Western Deccan (Figures 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8). Such temples have been called type C temples by M.S. Mate in his pioneering study on Maratha architecture.26 Elsewhere, such temples have been referred to as architecture with a ‘hybridisation of the disparate vocabularies of Sultanate architecture and the Yadava temple tradition.’27 The formal traits of the sanctums of these temples include a square chamber with true arches, squinches, and domes.28 While the superstructures that define the temples are of a ‘bewildering variety and defy all attempts to put them in well-marked groups,’29 Mate had formally classified them into 12 types; a large number of those types involved a large bulbous dome surrounded by minarets, blind niches, or kiosks of varying proportions.30 The temples of Kashi Vishveshwar (1730, Mahuli), Khandoba (additions in 1742, Jejuri), Omkareshwar (1760, Pune), Dholya Ganpati (1762, Wai), Bhuleshwar (superstructure, mid-eighteenth century, Yavat) are typical examples of this style of temples. The evolution of these late temple forms is a separate study undertaken by scholars of Maratha architecture,31 but using these temples as a point of

Visual language of piety and power  47

Figure 4.5  Photographic picture postcard, 1921 terminus ante quem, Pune. Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni.

departure, it is possible to see them as sharing the same visual vocabularies as the tā’ziahs. There were other temple forms constructed in the region in the eighteenth century, such as the revival Nagara temples constructed at Tryambakeshwar and Bhimashankar, but these designs possibly did not possess adequate architectural ambiguity to have a wide appeal, and therefore were not used for tā’ziahs. A number of issues are invoked in such a translation of eighteenth-century Hindutemple architecture into nineteenth-century ephemeral tā’ziahs. There are several transgressions: of religious boundaries, of material, and also of temporality at

48  Pushkar Sohoni

Figure 4.6  Sangameshwar temple, Saswad (1718). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni.

play. On the other hand, in north India, the tā’ziahs embodied a different architectural imagination, most likely shaped directly by Mughal architecture.

Conclusion The architectural form chosen for the tā’ziah was a signifier of a sacred building and represented a shared architectural imagination of visual grandeur and sanctity in the Western Deccan. The tomb of Husain was therefore the same form as that of the ‘hybrid’ temples – the visual markers of common values of patronage and prestige. But it was the transformation of the same architectural form across different media that merits interest: the work of artisans working with the permanent materials of brick, stone, and stucco was transformed into temporary structures of bamboo, papier-mache, and tinsel. The adoption of eighteenth-century temple forms as tā’ziahs in the nineteenth century is also curious, since ephemeral productions can easily replicate the latest architectural forms. Why was a particular Hindu-temple typology from the past century thought of as particularly appropriate for nineteenth-century imagined renditions of Husain’s tomb? Why could the newer temple forms of Mumbai and Pune not be adapted for the Muḥarram procession? Perhaps the shared values of the political patronage and historical grandeur of temple architecture from the eighteenth century were never borne in

Visual language of piety and power  49

Figure 4.7  Devadeveshwar temple, Parvati complex, Pune (1749). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni.

the same way by later temples. It could also well be that the new social construction of religious identity and recent political events had taken away the regional sovereignty and authority of the new architecture for temples. Just as earlier revivalist temples, the new architectural forms were emblematic of the region, and of political sovereignty. It does not matter which came first, the tā’ziahs or the temples, and it is most likely that they evolved together. As with nineteenth-century Muḥarram processions, our understanding of the tā’ziahs can bear ambivalent

50  Pushkar Sohoni

Figure 4.8  Rannchhodrai temple, Dakor (1772). Photo courtesy: Pushkar Sohoni.

emotions: of mourning and celebration – for a lost shared tradition. Tā’ziahs in the nineteenth-century Western Deccan could well be only an example of a much larger pattern: like so many aspects of Islam, the procession and its physical manifestations reflected the societies and customs in which they were located.

Notes 1 Jaffur Shurreef, Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Mussulmans of India; Comprising a Full and Exact Account of Their Various Rites and Ceremonies, from the Moment of Birth till the Hour of Death, trans. Gerhard A. Herklots (London: Parbury, Allen, and Co., 1832), pp. 148–9. 2 For a general overview of the architecture of tā’ziahs in north India, see Holly Shaffer, ‘An Architecture of Ephemerality between South and West Asia,’ Journal 18, no. 4, http:​/​/www​​.jour​​nal18​​.org/​​issue​​4​/an-​​archi​​tectu​​re​-of​​-ephe​​meral​​ity​-b​​etwee​​n​-sou​​​th​-an​​d​ -wes​​t​-asi​​a/ (accessed 10 January 2018). 3 Reza Masoudi-Nejad, ‘Practising Fractal Shi’i Identities through Muharram Rituals in Mumbai,’ Diversities 14, no. 2 (2012): 102–17, exact quote on p. 114. 4 For example, see ‘Taboots in Poonah,’ in Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia – Asiatic Intelligence XXIX (1839): 177–78; C. Ryder Smith, ‘Some Indian Parallels to Hebrew Cult,’ The Journal of Theological Studies 14, no. 55 (1913): 424–32.

Visual language of piety and power  51 5 The term might actually have been understood differently in the Deccan, as suggested in John Norman Hollister, The Shi’a of India (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1979, first published 1953 by Luzac & Co, London), 166, ‘Outstanding among the accessories for Muharram is the ta’zia. The word signifies “grief” or “consoling.” In the original meaning the term is applied to expressions of sympathy, and therefore also to the Passion Play for Husain. But popularly, now, the word is used in north India for miniatures of the tomb of Husain, seen to best advantage in the procession of the tenth day. They are called tabuts in south India … Properly speaking, ral [not clear what the “ral” here is] tazias, while varying in size and proportion, and in the materials of which they are made, have in general the shape of a domed tomb. In many places the spirit of carnival has entered into this portion of the commemoration as in others, and tazias for which neither “imitation” nor “miniature” apply, are found in the procession.’ 6 David Fenster, Mehera-Meher: A Divine Romance (Mehernagar: Meher Nazar Publications, 2003), p. 96, glosses over the Muharram procession, and writes: ‘A taaziya or taboot is a replica of Hussein’s mausoleum which is decorated and taken out in processions across the city and finally immersed in the river.’ 7 Shurreef, Qanoon-e-Islam, p. 183, ‘the shape of a mausoleum, (intended to represent the one at the plain of Kurbulla erected over the remains of Hosein,)…’ 8 Peter Chelkowski, ‘Ta’zia’ Encyclopædia Iranica online edition, 2009 at http:​/​/ www​​.iran​​icaon​​line.​​org​/a​​rticl​​​es​/ta​​zia (accessed online at 15 November 2015). 9 David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 64. 10 Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 124. 11 G. H. Huttmann, Recollections of the Deccan and Miscellaneous Sketches and Letters by an Officer of the Cavalry (Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1838), p. 55, ‘It is on this occasion, as also on the preceding night, that disturbances too frequently arise, for if the taboots happen to meet, neither party will give way, and the excitement natural and artificial of the attendants is such, that these broils too often end in bloodshed.’ 12 Reza Masoudi-Nejad, ‘The Muharram Procession of Mumbai: From Seafront to Cemetery,’ in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Peter van der Veer (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 89–109, exact quote on p. 90. 13 Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 125. 14 Reza Masoudi-Nejad, ‘The Muharram Procession of Mumbai: From Seafront to Cemetery,’ in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Peter van der Veer (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 89–109. 15 Reza Masoudi-Nejad, ‘Practising Fractal Shi’i Identities through Muharram Rituals in Mumbai,’ Diversities 14, no. 2 (2012): 102–17, exact quote on p. 115. 16 Sadiq Naqvi and V. Krishan Rao (eds.), The Muharram Ceremonies among the NonMuslims of Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad: Bab-ul-ilm Society, 2004), 16, 67. 17 Edward Moor, The Hindu Pantheon (Madras; Calcutta; Bombay; London: J. Higginbotham; Lepage and Co.; Thacker and Co.; Trubner and Co., 1863), 321. 18 Christophe Jaffrelot, Religion Caste and Politics in India (New Delhi: Primus, 2010), 347–48 passim. 19 Thomas Blom Hansen, Violence in Urban India: Identity Politics, ‘Mumbai’ and the Postcolonial City (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005), 29. 20 Richard Cashman, ‘The Political Recruitment of God Ganapati,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 7, no. 3 (1970): 347–73, esp. p. 352.

52  Pushkar Sohoni 21 Shabnum Shaukatali Tejani, ‘A Pre-history of Indian Secularism: Categories of Nationalism and Communalism in Emerging Definitions of India, Bombay Presidency c. 1893–1932,’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University (2002), 114–21 passim; Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History 1890– 1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 57–61 passim. 22 G. H. Huttmann, Recollections of the Deccan and Miscellaneous Sketches and Letters by an Officer of the Cavalry (Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1838), 54. 23 Anne Feldhaus and S. G. Tulpule, A Dictionary of Old Marathi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 277. 24 Reza Masoudi-Nejad, ‘The Muharram Procession of Mumbai: From Seafront to Cemetery,’ in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Peter van der Veer (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 89–109, details on p. 95. 25 Ben DIqui, A Visit to Bombay (London: Watts and Co., 1927), 91. 26 Madhukar Shripad Mate, Maratha Architecture: 1650 A. D. to 1850 A. D. (Poona: University of Poona, 1959). 27 Ashutosh Sohoni, ‘Brick and Plaster Temples in the Maratha Heartland,’ South Asian Studies 21, no. 1 (2005): 103–20, exact quote on p. 108. 28 Mate, p. 97. 29 Mate, p. 98. 30 Mate, pp. 98–100 passim. 31 For example, see Ashutosh Sohoni, ‘Ganesh Temple at Tasgaon: Apotheosis of Maratha Temple Architecture,’ South Asian Studies 27, no.1 (2011): 51–73.

5

The idea of religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements, 1830–1870 Torsten Tschacher

Muḥarram has long attracted historians of the Straits Settlements, a fascination that goes back to the colonial period. Towards the end of the 1860s, a series of incidents, most importantly the Penang Riots of 1867, had compelled the government to suppress the public celebration of Muḥarram. In contrast to the cities of British India, where carnivalesque revelries continued to accompany Muḥarram processions well into the twentieth century, Muḥarram remained only a memory in the Straits Settlements after 1867. Early accounts of the riotous and noisy festival, nevertheless, continued to fascinate scholars, especially due to what appeared to be a clear linkage between Muḥarram and crime in the Straits. Convicts transported for crimes committed in India freely participated in Muḥarram pageants, and the Muslim equivalents of the dreaded Chinese secret societies had clashed during the festival over the question of ritual honours. This led both officials and historians to wonder how a holiday of mourning had transformed into a carnival of criminals. Soon, a narrative based on snippets of newspaper reports and archival material emerged that explained what had happened: soon after pious Shia merchants and soldiers in the employ of the East India Complany (EIC) had introduced Muḥarram to the colony in the early nineteenth century, the festival had attracted ‘the vilest of the vile’1 inhabitants of the Straits Settlements – Indian convicts, Hindu thugs, and the mixed-race descendants of Indian fathers and Malay mothers, the Jawi Pekans or Jawi Peranakans. These miscreants were held responsible for turning an innocent religious ceremony into a raucous carnival. Once Muḥarram became the preserve of the lower and lowest classes of society, by the mid-nineteenth century, it became vulnerable to the new influence of Indians and Malays copying the Chinese, resulting in the formation of secret societies that soon turned to crime. The advantage of this narrative was that, despite the obvious biases of colonial authors, it provided scholars with a good explanation for how Muḥarram celebrations ‘changed’ between the early nineteenth century and the late 1860s in the Straits Settlements. Where the colonial state had seen mindless violence, postcolonial authors could recover resistance and agency against colonial order through such a narrative. But they concurred with their colonial predecessors in one aspect: Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements changed from a religious performance to a political contestation. DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-5

54  Torsten Tschacher The aim of this chapter is to question the received narrative of successive ‘criminalisation’ or ‘politicisation’ of Muḥarram in the Straits by looking afresh at available sources concerning the celebration of the festival prior to its suppression in the 1860s, such as newspaper reports and government records. My main argument is that Muḥarram and similar non-Christian public festivals and ritual performances became central to a new discourse on ‘religion’ among colonial elites in the Straits Settlements. In contrast to the standard narrative of Muḥarram being transformed from a ‘religious’ to a ‘non-religious,’ ‘political,’ or even ‘criminal’ performance, I will argue that a fundamental change occurred within European strategies that sought to delegitimise the performance of Muḥarram in the colony. Earlier, Asian participants and government officials had defended Muḥarram by claiming that it constituted ‘native custom.’ Increasingly, however, Europeans began asking whether Muḥarram was a ‘religious duty’ under Islam, or even whether it was a ‘religious’ festival at all. By denying that Muḥarram, as it was celebrated in the Straits Settlements, constituted a ‘religious’ festival, these critics rejected the protection given to the performance of Muḥarram by the colonial state. In reality, however, this alleged change from a ‘religious’ festival to a ‘criminal’ carnival can hardly be substantiated or recovered from sources. There is little evidence of the existence of an identifiably ‘Shia’ performance of Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements to begin with. As in India, the carnivalesque holiday served from the very beginning as a site for the negotiation of authority, ritual honours, and power. Nor was Muḥarram the only Muslim public festival celebrated in the Straits Settlements. It was mostly European authors who were responsible for constructing a history of violence around Muḥarram by conflating and confusing different Muslim holidays with it. As a result, in hindsight, violent occurrences during Muḥarram appeared to have been far more frequent than they actually were since every disturbance during a public celebration of a Muslim holiday was surmised to have occurred during Muḥarram. Central to all of this was the category of ‘religion.’ It was, in fact, the introduction of the idea of ‘religion’ into colonial discourse in the Straits Settlements that criminalised a contested festival and its practitioners. My approach here complements that of David Lunn and Julia Byl, who have recently criticised the colonial discourse by pointing to ‘genuine devotional aspects’ in the celebration of Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements.2 Rather than contesting the judgements of colonial discourse, my argument is concerned with the role that the new concept of ‘religion’ played in transforming the way Muḥarram was understood and policed by colonial authorities.

The ‘degeneration’ of Muḥarram: Wynne’s narrative Despite obvious differences in the interpretation of Muḥarram celebrations in the Straits Settlements prior to their suppression in the late 1860s, most accounts of it follow the same general narrative. According to this narrative, Muḥarram was originally a Shia festival commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain and, therefore, by nature, a sombre and mournful religious affair. In the context

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  55 of eighteenth-century India, however, Muḥarram acquired a more carnivalesque character, as Sunnis and Hindus joined in the celebrations and infused them with elements alien to the original spirit of the holiday. Despite the already ‘eclectic’ nature of the Indian Muḥarram celebrations, however, the introduction of Muḥarram to the Straits Settlements is nevertheless surmised to go back to a Shia element in the local Indian Muslim population. More specifically, the narrative identifies soldiers from regiments of the Bengal and Madras Native Infantries and convicts transported to the Straits Settlements as the likely local source of Shia influence. Of these, it was said, the convicts soon took the lead in Muḥarram celebrations. Sharing space with Hindu and Chinese processions, Muḥarram processions competed with as well as appropriated these non-Shia festivities. This amalgamation of traditions was paralleled by an increased participation of individuals from ethnically mixed backgrounds in the festivities, most importantly the Jawi Pekan or Jawi Peranakan, assumed to be the offspring of Indian Muslim fathers and Malay mothers. In turn, the ‘religious’ character of Muḥarram celebrations was increasingly compromised in favour of the more raucous, violent, and carnivalesque elements. The final stage was reached when the already existing link between Muḥarram and convicted criminals as well as the Chinese impact on Muslim social organisation led to the development of the White Flag and Red Flag societies. These Muslim equivalents of the infamous Chinese triads (commonly referred to as hoey or ‘secret societies’ in the Straits context) transformed Muḥarram into a means to contest territories and settle scores, that led to widespread rioting, most notably in Penang in 1867. The latter event, which led to several days of rioting between not only the White and Red Flag societies, but their Chinese allies as well, marked a watershed. The government instituted stricter legislation to contain public outbreaks of violence, and though this did not bring riots to an end in the Straits Settlements, it sealed the fate of Muḥarram processions in the colony.3 In its basic outline, this narrative owes its shape to a senior police officer, Mervyn Llewelyn Wynne, who held the position of Deputy Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police Force just prior to the Japanese invasion in World War II. He died as a Japanese prisoner of war on 4 April 1942, aged 51, less than two months after the British defeat, and lies buried in Kranji War Cemetery, Singapore.4 Just a year prior to his death, however, Wynne had compiled a collection of documentary sources on the activities of secret societies in British Malaya between 1800 and 1935. This compilation was published by the government in 1941, but until 1957, it was kept confidential, accessible only to senior officers and those with a special government permit. Wynne’s work has become highly influential, as he quoted lengthy extracts from the documents and books he studied, and ‘as many of the documents cited in extenso are either difficult of access or no longer available, having been destroyed during the War.’5 But as far as accounts of Muḥarram and the activities of Muslim secret societies go, Wynne largely relied not on government documents that were destroyed in World War II but on published works such as Charles Burton Buckley’s An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore or Jonas Daniel Vaughan’s article on the customs of the

56  Torsten Tschacher Malays of Penang.6 These works are relatively easy to access nowadays, and in general, access both to archival records and to rare publications from the colonial period has increased tremendously in recent years. Most importantly, the National Library Board of Singapore has made a large number of English, as well as some Chinese, Malay, and Tamil newspapers from the colonial period available, and to a large extent digitally searchable, removing the need to rely on sources like Buckley, that were based on old newspapers.7 This makes it possible to evaluate many of Wynne’s sources afresh by subjecting them to new, contextual readings, augmented by other evidence that was not available to or not quoted by Wynne. Moreover, there is a dire need to critically engage with Wynne’s handling of evidence, since not infrequently, Wynne drew highly speculative conclusions, using quotations that obliquely suggested information not contained in the original source. After all, Wynne was a police officer and, first and foremost, interested in knowledge that would facilitate the colonial state in cracking down on secret societies, rather than in questioning the validity of colonial policies and discourses. Shorn of its most bizarre elements, the basic structure of Wynne’s narrative concerning Muḥarram and secret societies in the Straits Settlements survives intact in contemporary accounts. Consequently, many unfounded assumptions which were part of Wynne’s original argument underlie contemporary scholarship. The importance Wynne attributed to Muḥarram celebrations and processions for the development of organised crime in the Straits Settlements is signalled already by the study’s programmatic title, Triad and Tabut. For Wynne, the Muḥarram festival was a key ingredient in what he termed the ‘chrysalis stage of Tabut,’ which led to the development of full-blown Muslim secret societies, the other ingredients being ‘Indian criminal influx,’ the ‘Kedah-Siamese war’ of 1838–39, and ‘religious Jema’ah [societies] under Arab leaders.’8 Wynne’s account is an abstruse jumble of wide-ranging speculation regarding the role of ‘secrecy’ and ‘arcana’ in human history and religion, coupled with bits of information on secret societies in the Straits Settlements. This easy slip between empirical evidence and historical speculation allowed Wynne to construct a narrative that appears convincing even when one does not share Wynne’s biases. Wynne distinguished two separate genealogies of Shia influence on the development of Muḥarram and Muslim secret societies in the Straits Settlements: what he called ‘Shiah religious influence’ on the one hand, that was brought to Malaya by Indian Muslim soldiers and merchants, and on the other hand ‘Shiah criminal influence through the transportation of Thugs and other criminals from India.’9 The connection between ‘thugs’ and Shias was established by Wynne both through popular observances during the Muḥarram festival itself that apparently suggested the influence of thugee, as well as through the absurd but oft-repeated claim that the thugs themselves were influenced by the medieval Shia sect of the ‘assassins.’10 Ultimately, this allowed Wynne to distinguish Muḥarram processions as legitimate, ‘religious’ Shia observances from their ‘degraded’ enactment by disreputable elements such as convicted thugs and Jawi Pekans. Wynne further reinforced the connection between Muḥarram, violence, and crime by a process of ‘filling in the gaps.’ Not only did Wynne frame his

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  57 discussion of Muḥarram by associating it with Hindu holidays such as Dussehra and Holi, and even with European (Catholic) carnival.11 He also tended to identify any Indian religious festival that involved public rituals and processions as Muḥarram, especially when disturbances and clashes with the police occurred during the festival. As I will demonstrate, many of these festivals can actually be shown not to have been Muḥarram at all, but in Wynne’s narrative, this identification reinforces the impression that Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements was a particularly volatile and violent occasion. Similarly, when disturbances took place at festivals, Wynne tended to assume a connection either to organised crime or to convicts, even when no evidence of such a connection existed. He also exaggerated the importance of specific groups to strengthen his case. This is most evident in his argument regarding the presence of ‘thugs’ among the convict population and their influence and importance in turning ‘religion’ into ‘crime.’ Wynne accepted the received British discourse on ‘thugee’ as the activities of a quasi-religious sect of bandit-murderers, who, even when Muslim, murdered in the name of a Hindu goddess, and therefore exemplified the same ‘Hindu-Muslim eclecticism’ which he identified as a hallmark of Muḥarram celebrations in the Straits Settlements.12 Quite apart from the fact that there are massive doubts nowadays regarding the existence of an India-wide network of homicidal ritualists,13 Wynne greatly exaggerated the numbers of convicts transported from India to the Straits Settlements on account of the charge of ‘thugee.’ Thus, by drawing on different sources, he claimed that in 1857, 1,500 out of 2,000, or 75% of Indian convicts in Singapore were members of the ‘Thug’ sect. Yet John F. A. McNair, the former Comptroller of Indian Convicts in the Straits Settlements, on whom Wynne partly bases his argument, makes no such claims. The only figure in his work regarding convicted thugs relates to the time the convict establishment in the Straits was broken up in 1873. At that time, McNair writes, 273 out of 1,127 convicts, or about 24%, had been transported for ‘thugee,’ a far cry from Wynne’s surmises.14 However, Wynne went further, and claimed, again by stretching McNair’s argument rather thin, that large numbers of convicted ‘thugs’ ultimately ‘“merged into the population” of the Straits Settlements, together with large numbers of other Indian convicts who … appear to have had sufficient liberty to enable them to set up in civil life and raise families of “Jawi-pekans.”’15 This is the final important aspect of Wynne’s narrative: the ethnicisation of Muḥarram and organised crime in the Straits Settlements as peculiarly ‘Indian’ phenomena. Much as Muḥarram was in Wynne’s account an ‘eclectic’ mixture of Muslim and Hindu elements, it was most thoroughly ‘criminalised’ at the hands of another ‘miscegenation,’ namely the Jawi Pekans, offspring of Indian fathers and Malay mothers. Here as in other places, Wynne could proceed with his argument primarily because of his own ignorance, as the majority of Jawi Pekans were descendants of Tamil Muslim merchants, shopkeepers, and boatmen, enjoying a sound economic background.16 On the other hand, ‘thugee’ was a decidedly north Indian phenomenon, and McNair reported that convicted ‘thugs’ usually came ‘from different parts of the Bengal presidency, and mostly from round about Delhi and Agra,’ hardly a background that can be established for any nineteenth-century Jawi Pekan.17

58  Torsten Tschacher Consequently, four elements emerge as being central to Wynne’s narrative concerning Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements, namely: the claim that Muḥarram in the Straits was originally a ‘Shia’ festival; the careless identification of any public Muslim festival with Muḥarram; the ‘criminalisation’ of Muḥarram by associating it with disturbances and criminal elements in society, such as convicts and secret societies; and finally, the ascription of an undifferentiated ‘Indian’ identity to the holiday and its processions. By combining these elements, a narrative was produced whereby in the Straits Settlements, a religious festival turned from a solemn memorial practice into a raucous carnival of ruffians and convicts, and finally into the sinister preserve of organised crime. While contemporary accounts usually read his assumptions against the grain by focusing on the way colonial policing was resisted and subverted by those celebrating Muḥarram, they leave many of Wynne’s original assumptions unchallenged. It is hence necessary to take a closer look at the realities of Muḥarram festivities in the Straits before 1867, and at the ideological motivations behind Wynne’s arguments.

Processions, riots, revelries: Asian festivals and European perplexity How did Muḥarram enter the colonial record and turn into a matter of public debate and disciplinary action? While the received narrative suggests that Muḥarram was from the beginning a disruptive affair which regularly devolved into riotous tumult and public disturbance, causing a great deal of anxious policing and colonial angst, in reality, Muḥarram was in the beginning only one of a large variety of ‘native’ festivals that perplexed and annoyed the European residents of the Straits Settlements, though even for the most critical of observers it was hardly more than a ‘nuisance.’ Muḥarram seems to have played the role of a paradigmatic type of Muslim public festival for Europeans, in the sense that the terminologies and expectations attached to Muḥarram, especially the term ‘taboot’ for any type of processional image, were then transferred to other festivities, though a section of European observers always remained cognisant of other public Muslim observances apart from Muḥarram. Even in the final decade before the transformation of the Straits Settlements into a crown colony in 1867, Muḥarram remained just one among several Muslim holidays in need of policing. Therefore, it seems not unreasonable that the importance attached to the festival in the work of Wynne and others, following the Penang Riots of 1867, is connected to the fact that Muḥarram provided the immediate cause for the latter. This raises questions about how European observers engaged with Muḥarram prior to that fateful event. As already mentioned, Muḥarram was one among a range of other festivals observed by non-European inhabitants of the Straits Settlements. Colonial-period authors noted a range of other such occasions, especially Hindu holidays such as Dussehra, Ramanavami, and Charak Puja, as well as Chinese temple festivals. On the Muslim side, however, Muḥarram seems to stand out as the only festival that was identified by its name among Europeans. This did not prevent Europeans

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  59 from noting other Muslim festivities, only that they were usually vague about their meanings. This confused some observers, who were quick to assume that any form of public display by Muslims could only be identified as Muḥarram. Others noted the difference between Muḥarram and other Muslim festivals, even if these were celebrated in a similar manner. An example of this is provided by an altercation between Muslims and the colonial government of the Straits Settlements in 1842. According to a letter by ‘a Singapore merchant,’ the whole ‘Kling,’ i.e., south Indian, population of Singapore had gone on strike, closing down shops and especially the movement of lightermen in the Singapore harbour. This caused more than just a little inconvenience to European merchants, who were dependent on the lightermen to load and unload cargo, ‘it being well known all our cargo boats are managed by klings.’ The reason for the conflict, according to the same letter, was that the government had ‘refused to allow the klings to carry their taboot about the town.’18 The use of the term ‘taboot’ in the letter led Wynne to conclude that the conflict had been due to the Muḥarram processions, and he further surmised that this was the earliest reference to the celebration of that festival in Singapore.19 Yet the date makes this impossible – late May 1842 corresponded to early Rabīʿ II 1258 AH, thus suggesting that the holiday in question was the annual ʿurs of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, a holiday celebrated by Indian Muslims in Singapore well into the early twentieth century.20 Indeed, a year earlier, objections had already been raised against the same procession, and it had been duly noted that the ‘Taboot is we believe the principal procession of the Moharrum festival – but the procession that marched about the town the Sunday before last, … was not the taboot.’21 Indeed, by 1842, Muḥarram was a well-known festival that was regularly invoked as the prime Muslim holiday in the Straits. In a petition to the government submitted in late April 1837 in Singapore, for example, the government’s refusal to permit the wedding procession of the daughter of a Chinese merchant was criticised in the light of the permission given to Muḥarram processions. This comparison was not accidental, as the festival had just been concluded on 16 April, and had provoked some complaints from European residents.22 Muḥarram thus was just part of a far wider range of ‘native’ festivals that aroused the ire of European residents. The most prominent opposition to such festivals and processions contended that ‘the sound of their tomtoms and villainous noises’ disturbed the delicate slumber of the European part of the population.23 Another, though less frequently, voiced complaint were security hazards: processions might cause accidents in roads, block public thoroughfares, and provide a fire hazard on account of the torches carried and firecrackers lit by the participants.24 The ‘riotous and disorderly’ conduct of individuals and ‘rows taking place between rival parties,’ were a third grievance voiced in the English-language press of the time. However, by and large, no direct association with organised crime was noted, except in the specific case of convict processions.25 European observers felt particularly uneasy about ‘the offscourings of Indian jails, armed with swords, spears, &c., and infuriated with urrack and bang, to walk in procession through the town and outskirts.’26 Yet at least in the beginning, this does not mean that processions were in any way particularly connected with criminality.

60  Torsten Tschacher In fact, the last quoted letter actually made the argument that a government that permitted such leeway in processions to convicts could hardly deny a wealthy Chinese merchant the right to hold a half-an-hour long procession on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter. Vineeta Sinha has argued that it was the repeated association of processions with convicts and later, secret societies, which led to the increased stigmatisation of processions and the public practice of non-Christian religions.27 However, I think this argument needs to be modified: rather than stigmatisation by association, I would argue that something more instrumentalist was at work here. The association of processions with crime allowed an offended European public to argue against the toleration of non-Christian religious acts in public. To understand this, it is crucial to carefully distinguish between the government of the Straits Settlements, on the one hand, and the opinion of the European elite public encountered in newspapers, the Grand Jury, or public meetings, on the other hand.28 A case in point is provided by yet another disturbance during a Muslim festival in Singapore that occurred in February 1857. While Wynne claimed confidently that this festival ‘must have been the Moharram festival of that year,’ he automatically surmised the disturbance to have been started by one of the Muslim secret societies, relying on the short account of the event given by Buckley.29 But the detailed account of the inquest that was published in the press allows us to prove Wynne wrong on almost all counts. The holiday, as the date makes clear,30 had been the annual ʿurs of Shāh al-Ḥamīd of Nagore, celebrated at the Singapore Nagore Dargah. There was no procession involved, and the cause of the riot was the insensitive handling of ‘obstructions’ on the road by the police. The government duly suspended from duty Sub-inspector Arthur Pennefather, Sergeant Michael James Hallnan, and Police Peon Tyling. Though the jury after the inquest had held the police blameless in the affair, the government maintained that the inquest revealed the police’s conduct to have been ‘most rash and precipitate.’31 Moreover, when a public meeting of the European inhabitants was called, their resolution to have the three policemen reinstated, resulted in a reminder issued by the governor that this resolution was limited, since it represented only European interests. In fact, a memorial had been prepared by 75 south Indian residents against the resolution of the Europeans’ public meeting. Consequently, the governor upheld the dismissal.32 If Buckley’s account of the incident was biased, it was Wynne who introduced the baseless assumption that the disturbance had been engineered by one of the Muslim secret societies. What had begun as a case of police insensitivity turned in Wynne’s account into the sinister tale of a ‘Muḥarram’ disturbance premeditated by organised Muslim secret societies. The most important aspect of the incident, namely, the visible differences between a prejudiced White public and a far more careful colonial government over the proper handling of nonChristian festivals is lost in Wynne’s account, which relied only on the English press of the time, and therefore reproduced the biases of European settlers in the Straits Settlements, with no attention to alternative perspectives, including those of the government.

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  61 It becomes clear, therefore, that Muḥarram seems to have been neither a particularly ‘riotous’ festival nor a particular reserve for ‘criminal’ activities. While smaller clashes, scuffles and skirmishes between groups bearing tābūt did occur during Muḥarram processions, they were rarely mentioned in anything but general terms and do not seem to have in any way seriously disrupted life in the Straits Settlements. Indeed, it is actually surprising how low the number of incidents during Muḥarram were, for which we can give anything but the most general detail. For example, in the three lunar decades between 1251 AH and 1281 AH (May 1835 CE to June 1864 CE), only two major disturbances occurred in Singapore during Muḥarram: on 10 September 1856 (10 Muḥarram 1273), when convict-protests against being prevented from holding a Muḥarram procession turned violent, and on 15 June 1864 (10 Muḥarram 1281), as a result of an altercation between the Red and White Flag societies that ultimately led to the banning of Muḥarram processions in Singapore. Two disturbances in the course of 31 Muḥarram celebrations (not counting the possibility that there were actually several processions in different parts of the town every year)33 is a low number, given the importance ascribed to the festival as the prime arena of disturbances and organised crime in the Straits Settlements. The situation in Penang prior to the riots of 1867 seems similar; indeed, there is little evidence of major altercations in this city prior to these riots.34 Superficially, it may seem that this confirms the idea that Muḥarram progressively ‘degenerated’ from a ‘religious’ to a, if not ‘criminal,’ then at least ‘political’ affair. But in reality, there seems little to suggest that this was the case. Rather, what changed, as both Khoo Salma Nasution and Vineeta Sinha demonstrate, was the perception of these festivities by European observers.35 It was vital for those who wanted public performances of non-Christian religious practices curbed to find ways to discredit such performances, and to show that what once may have been legitimate festivities had changed to such an extent that they could no longer be considered permissible.

From religious devotion to political carnival: delegitimising Muḥarram The central term in the development of a discourse about processions and their (il-)legitimacy was, and is, ‘religion.’ As observed for the first half of the nineteenth century, it was possible to argue for the legitimacy of a wedding procession on the ground that other communities were permitted similar processions on certain holidays. But increasingly, such arguments came to be questioned. Already with regard to the request of the Chinese merchant to hold a wedding procession for his daughter mentioned above, it was observed that a wedding procession could hardly be compared to the celebration of Muslim and Hindu ceremonies, or the Chinese New Year.36 Increasingly, non-Christians were asked to inform Europeans of ‘the peculiar nature of the ceremony now sought to be celebrated, and their grievance in being refused its observance,’ and it was moreover demanded that processions ‘should be restricted to the most important of the annual holidays of the different nations.’37 ‘Religion’ became a category of

62  Torsten Tschacher increasing importance in arguing whether practices should be allowed. In support of the government’s decision to dismiss three policemen from the force in the aftermath of the Nagore Dargah disturbance in 1857, the law agent who had attended the inquest, Christian Baumgarten, argued that the participants in the festival ‘were there for the lawful purpose of attending the festival and joining in the religious ceremonies that were then being performed, with the knowledge and sanction of the proper authority.’38 By the time of the Singapore Muḥarram disturbances in 1864, arguing for the legitimacy of a procession with the help of the concept ‘religion’ had become common practice. When the disturbance occurred, Thomas Dunman, the Commissioner of Police, wrote to the Resident Councilor: ‘All strict Mohamedans are strongly opposed to the processions and it is well known that such is prohibited by the Koran.’39 Similarly, the legitimacy of the Red and White Flag societies was doubted during the conspiracy trial that followed the 1864 disturbance. In the opening statement for the prosecution, the Crown Counsel, Thomas Braddell, stated that the Red Flag could not be ‘a Religious Society, inasmuch as Hindoos have been admitted into the Society as members, and it is well known that Hindoos and Mahomedans, however they may agree in other daily matters of life, disagree most heartily in Religious matters.’40 Classifying an act as ‘religious’ allowed arguing for a certain amount of protection from the government, while acts not deemed ‘religious’ did not enjoy this protection.41 It is in this context that one needs to assess the claims that the religious character of Muḥarram declined in Singapore in the course of the nineteenth century. This claim was first advanced by Jonas Daniel Vaughan (1825–1891), a prominent lawyer who acted as a Justice of the Peace during the investigations preceding the conspiracy trial of 1865 that followed the Muḥarram disturbances of 1864. In an article concerning Malay customs in Penang and Province Wellesley published in 1858, Vaughan had complained about the Jawi Pekan community of mixed Indian and Malay parentage that during festivals, ‘they attack parties of Klings or Bengalies who may be devoutly parading with their images’ and that they would ‘issue from their houses merely for the purpose of annoying the real devotees.’42 Wynne later interpreted this passage as evidence that a properly Shia religious practice was increasingly undermined by impious nonShias, in particular ‘thugs’ and Jawi Pekans.43 However, it is nowhere stated by Vaughan that the ‘devout’ performances being disrupted were Muḥarram celebrations. In all likelihood, there had never been a properly ‘Shia’ commemorative Muḥarram celebration in the Straits Settlements. All evidence points to the fact that Muḥarram had always been primarily celebrated in the carnivalesque manner in which it was celebrated by Sunnis and Hindus in India already in the eighteenth century. After all, as Khoo rightly points out, the first days of Muḥarram mark not only the commemoration of the battle of Karbala but also the beginning of the Muslim year, something that some contemporary accounts from the colonial period also observed.44 The assumption that the Muḥarram festival ‘degenerated’ from a properly ‘religious’ into a ‘political’ or even ‘criminal’ affair therefore entails reading categories into the evidence that would have made little sense to

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  63 the participants of Muḥarram processions in the nineteenth century. What is more, these categories were originally deployed to justify increasing restrictions placed on the celebrations by the colonial order, which precipitated at least one of the major Muḥarram disturbances of Singapore in 1856. ‘Religion’ was not the only category that mattered in the debates concerning the legitimacy of processions. Ethnicity constituted another contested category that was usually glossed as ‘nationality’ or ‘race’ in the nineteenth-century Straits Settlements. Indeed, a salient characteristic of the nineteenth-century colonial order was the blurring of boundaries between categories such as ‘religion’ and ‘nationality.’ ‘Chinese,’ ‘Malay,’ ‘Hindoo,’ and ‘Mahomedan’ were thus the most commonly invoked categories, the latter usually referring specifically to Indian Muslims. An important reason for referring to these categories in the context of processions hinged usually on arguments that, if the government permitted processions for one group, it would necessarily also have to permit those of the others, or risk discontent. There are several examples from the 1830s and 1840s of Chinese residents of Singapore, who complained that Hindus and Muslims were permitted processions, while Chinese processions were unfairly restricted.45 By the 1850s, however, matters seem to have changed. Now, it was the Indians who begrudged Chinese festivities being less controlled by the government, something the government seems to have taken note of.46 But ‘nationality’ mattered far more than in the context of a mere balancing of privileges and rights. Among the prime justifications the government offered European residents for permitting non-Christian festivities and processions was that it was proper policy in a colony to permit ‘the natives’ their customs. The European inhabitants of the Straits were, however, not convinced by this argument, and quickly pointed out that Indians and Chinese were not ‘native’ to the region, and therefore could not claim any special rights: By those who advocate the propriety of allowing these disorderly assemblages to parade the streets and precincts of the town, it is said, that the Natives ought to be protected in their customs, and the occurrence of same processions at Calcutta and other parts of India, where they are permitted by the Government, is alleged in favour of their sufferance here. No weight … can attach to that argument; the inhabitants of Calcutta, natives of the soil, have a good right to talk of their Native customs, but that right cannot extend to, or be fairly advanced as a ground for the same privilege, by those who are allowed its indulgence in this place, who are all foreigners, strangers from every corner of India, and have the same right to be called Natives here as they would have at Canton or Constantinople … Unless the ordinary rules of speech are to be disregarded in Singapore, the Malays are in strictness the only Natives here, and by them alone … is the right to the exercise of Native customs to be claimed.47 With regard to the Muḥarram celebrations, however, this argument had a major problem: Muḥarram was a Muslim holiday, and Malays were Muslims. Therefore,

64  Torsten Tschacher it was of prime importance to argue that Malays did not join in Muḥarram celebrations, which were, in the eyes of European observers, contaminated by Hindu practice. This is exactly what Vaughan did in his notes on the customs of the Malays of Penang and Province Wellesley, when he alleged that the ‘religion of the Malay is uncontaminated by Hindu example, so that he regards with disgust the orgies celebrated by the natives of India at the Mohorrum.’48 But yet, matters were far less simple than Vaughan alleged, mostly because the boundaries between Malays and Indians were far from clear. Consequently, Vaughan reserved his most acerbic and racist invectives against the Jawi Pekan, or ‘town Malays.’49 Vaughan is the only major author who calls this group Jawi Bukan, ‘not Malay,’ and he makes no attempt to hide his antipathy towards this class of people, especially the second and third generations, who ‘possess all the bad qualities of their paternal [i.e., Indian; T.T.] relatives to the exclusion of Malayan virtues,’ and ‘they become invariably sots, opium smokers, gamblers, brothel keepers, cheats, and in fact the vilest of the vile.’50 It is in this context that Vaughan deplored their participation in festivities and the disruption of ‘devout’ activities. But in contrast to Vaughan’s attempts to exonerate ‘pure’ Malays from the taint of participating in Muḥarram processions, and thereby preventing the argument that Muḥarram constituted a ‘native’ festival, it is evident from the existing documentation that Malays were freely participating in Muḥarram celebrations.51 Perhaps the most telling example of Muḥarram providing Malays with a ‘genuine religious and devotional experience’ is the Syair Tabut, a Malay poem on the last Muḥarram procession celebrated in Singapore in 1864.52 Yet there was more to the identification of Muḥarram as an ‘Indian’ festival, engaged in only by ‘foreigners’ to Malaya, than the desire to delegitimise these observances. As Anoma Pieris points out, two important Muḥarram disturbances, at Singapore in 1856 and at Penang in 1867, ‘coincided with significant changes in the political authority of the settlements.’53 Though the Indian Rebellion of 1857 caused the East India Company to be abolished, yet the establishment of a British viceroy in Calcutta did not lead the Straits Settlements to their desired independence from India. It was only in 1867 that the Straits Settlements were turned into a crown colony which could now refuse to receive convicts from India. In this context, opposition to Muḥarram processions was intricately bound up with the politics of demanding that the Straits Settlements be made a crown colony and the transportation of Indian convicts be stopped. Thus, when on 8 August 1857, the Pinang Gazette published a petition in favour of being made a crown colony, this was immediately connected in Singapore to the Muḥarram disturbances of 1856 and the unreadiness of the governor to prohibit the convicts from holding a procession in town in the following year for fear of a repeated disturbance.54 All this points towards the fact that Muḥarram processions were not originally ‘religious’ functions that had been progressively ‘politicized,’ as is still argued by some.55 Rather, it was the European public in the Straits Settlements that increasingly delegitimised and politicised Muḥarram for its own purposes, especially in the context of gaining ‘independence’ from British India and receiving convicts from there. In this context, Muḥarram acted as the prototype of unwanted public

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  65 assertion by non-European sections of society, which could be easily invoked to delegitimise any non-Christian holiday. Muḥarram also came to symbolise the subjection of the ‘public of the Straits Settlements,’ i.e. the European elites and one or two Asian businessmen, to the colonial government of India, which in their opinion did not have the best interest of the colony in mind, but rather inordinately protected the sentiments of Indians as the ‘natives’ of British India. Much of what we know about Muḥarram in the Straits is thus filtered through the categories of European opposition to the festival. Fundamental to this delegitimisation of Muḥarram and other public festivals was, therefore, not that they had become more ‘political’ in nature during the second quarter of the nineteenth century but, quite in contrast, that they increasingly became classified as ‘religious.’ Paired with the increasingly clearly defined notion of what constituted a ‘native’ in the Straits Settlements, this category finally allowed European elites to delegitimise a whole plethora of public Asian ceremonies. Where earlier, the government had, to a degree, defended such ceremonies on the account that they constituted ‘native custom,’ they could now be criticised for either being not ‘native,’ or not being proper, i.e. ‘religious’ custom – or even both, as in the case of Muḥarram. The standard narrative concerning Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements that emerged in the course of the next decades ultimately eclipsed the fact that nothing had really changed about the festival, but rather, it was European discourse that had transformed. Acknowledging the ‘Shia’ origins of Muḥarram and bemoaning the supposed ‘politicisation’ of Muḥarram served several purposes. ‘Shia’ Muḥarram provided a blueprint by which to evaluate actual Muḥarram celebrations and to mark them as improper. It also enabled European elites to elide the embarrassing fact that for many decades, the festival had actually been considered permissible and legitimate by the government. By positing that Muḥarram had been introduced to the Straits Settlements as a Shia festival, it became further possible to explain this paradox. What had been tolerated by the government had been the legitimately ‘religious’ Shia festival, but as the latter had been highjacked by criminal elements, it had become necessary for the state to ban Muḥarram. In reality, there is no evidence that Straits Settlements Muḥarram had ever been celebrated as the Shia festival of mourning – from its inception, it was rather the kind of carnival that was commonly celebrated by Sunnis and Hindus in many parts of India. While this does not mean that such Sunni and Hindu processions had not themselves grown out of Shia practice in India, the Shia origins of the festival clearly were immaterial in the Straits Settlements. What had changed were the categories of public discourse by which European elites and the state evaluated ‘native custom.’ The standard narrative also eclipsed that Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements had also always been ‘political.’ Muḥarram had allowed actors to showcase their rank and influence in local Indian and Malay society both to their own constituencies as well as to the British. It thus comes as no surprise that in 1864, the Red Flag ‘secret society’ tried to wrest the primacy in the procession from the White Flag, destroying their tābūt.56 Already at that time, some observers extended the narrative of ‘corruption’ to Muslim secret societies, arguing that these societies

66  Torsten Tschacher had been founded with ‘good’ intentions, but had become ‘corrupted’ over time, as Wynne was to later argue as well.57 Yet the assumption that the societies only ‘became’ in the course of time what they were in the 1860s and that they hijacked the Muḥarram celebrations for ‘political’ purposes operates on the same assumption of a clear separation between ‘religion’ and ‘politics,’ and the idea that a purely ‘religious’ Shia holiday had been ‘corrupted’ into a Sunni carnival. Linking Muḥarram with the power of individuals and groups was not a peculiar development of the Straits Settlements, but a pattern widely observed in Muḥarram and other processions in India as well.58 Muḥarram, hence, did not ‘become’ political but had been so already before it was introduced to the Straits Settlements. That the British finally put a stop to these displays of power had, therefore, more to do with their own changing perceptions of ‘religion,’ ‘politics,’ and the legitimate separation of the two, than with the successive criminalisation of the festival or the actors involved in organising it. Muḥarram in the Straits Settlements thus expressed not religion corrupted by politics, but politics perceived as crime due to misunderstandings and changes in colonial attitudes.

Epilogue: The Crown Jubilee, 1887 It was the June of 1887. Singapore was bustling with excitement on account of the upcoming celebration of Queen Victoria’s golden crown jubilee. Various committees planned diverse entertainments for months in advance, meant to mark this important day for the British Empire. A series of speeches were to be delivered by individuals chosen to represent different luminaries and communities, among them, Europeans and Eurasians, the Chinese, the Armenians, the Arabs, Malays, Bugis, Javanese, and Boyanese, the Jews, the Bombay merchants (i.e. the Parsis), the Indian Muslims, the Hindus, and the Chetties. In addition, a number of processions were planned on the two days of celebration, including a ‘Muhammadan procession’ on 28 June.59 Though this ‘Monster Muhammadan Procession’ was somewhat spoilt by bad weather, it was still counted as ‘well carried out,’ and ‘would have been [a] very great success’ under different circumstances.60 There was more, however, to this procession than the enthusiastic epithet ‘monster’ reveals (which the author of the article also affixed to another procession of 3,000 children). A week before the jubilee, it had been reported that several Tamil Muslim merchants, among them Savena Gulam Mydin, who represented the ‘Indian Muhammadans’ during the thanksgiving addresses, were to carry kudus in their procession.61 The term kudu, however, was nothing but the Malay term for the Muḥarram tābūt,62 and a description of one of these kudus from a Malay newspaper bears a striking resemblance to accounts of Muḥarram processions half-a-century earlier: Perarakan Hadjee Cavana Mahomed Mydin sebuah kudu lantera jubili yang mulik lagi berpusing2 bercampur dengan dua ekor harimau orang berkenderanya hindu serta tambur biola […] Maka kudu Hadjee Mahomed Mydin itu sepenuh2 dengan perhiasan lantera dan bunga …

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  67 The procession of Hajee Cavana Mahomed Mydin had a kudu of the Jubilee-Lantern, which was beautiful and kept on revolving, accompanied by two tigers, ridden by Hindus with drums and violas […] Further, that kudu of Hadjee Mahomed Mydin was full of lantern ornaments and flowers.63 There must have been many in Singapore who still remembered the Muḥarram processions of the 1850s and 60s, and these similarities would not have been lost on them. But times had changed. Indians now had new ways of articulating their position in Singaporean society. Tamil newspapers had been founded since the 1870s, with the most successful one, Singai Nesan (Ciṅkai Nēcaṉ), inaugurated on the occasion of the jubilee itself. The government again recognised important members of the community as its representatives, even if only limited to ceremonial functions. Gulam Mydin, who represented the Indian Muslims in the jubilee and had initially come up with the idea of the kudus, came close to acting as the Kapitan Kling of old for Singapore’s Tamil Muslim community, and when he passed away three years later, Singai Nesan celebrated him as ‘the pride of the Muslims in this town’ (innakaril muculīmāṉavarkaḷukkōr tilatam).64 As this obituary makes clear, Gulam Mydin had assumed his position partly due to his generous monetary support to others, money earned either through business or raised through his influence. In many ways, Gulam Mydin was the ideal ‘big man,’ an ideal that many in the White and Red Flag societies of the 1860s must have aspired to. And with government recognition of his representation of community, tābūt processions became ensured as feasible once again, even if now thoroughly secularised in the service of the Queen-Empress. Removed from the domain in which religion and politics intermingled incomprehensibly for European observers, processions once more became a legitimate means of garnering political prestige. Muḥarram itself, however, had been thoroughly criminalised by this colonial discourse that delegitimised the very same political aspirations when formulated as part of what Europeans had conveniently come to conceive of as a ‘religious’ holiday.

Notes 1 Jonas D. Vaughan, ‘Notes on the Malays of Pinang and Province Wellesley,’ The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, New Series 2, no. 2 (1857): 138. 2 David Lunn and Julia Byl, ‘“One Story Ends and Another Begins”: Reading the Syair Tabut of Encik Ali,’ Indonesia and the Malay World 45, no. 133 (2017): 406. 3 Mervyn L. Wynne, Triad and Tabut: A Survey of the Origin and Diffusion of Chinese and Mohamedan Secret Societies in the Malay Peninsula A. D. 1800–1935 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1941); cf. Mahani Musa, Malay Secret Societies in the Northern Malay States, 1821–1940s (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2006), 51–85; Anoma Pieris, Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 165–87; Rajesh Rai, Indians in Singapore 1819–1945: Diaspora in the Colonial Port City (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), 47–50; Vineeta Sinha, Religion – State Encounters in Hindu Domains: From the Straits Settlements to Singapore (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 68–77; Jan van der Putten, ‘Burlesquing Muḥarram Processions into Carnivalesque Boria,’ in Shiʿism in Southeast Asia:

68  Torsten Tschacher ʿAlid Piety and Sectarian Constructions, ed. Chiara Formichi and R. Michael Feener (London: C. Hurst, 2015); cf. also Lunn and Byl, ‘Reading the Syair Tabut,’ 392–93. The only major account that diverges from this narrative is Khoo Salma Nasution, The Chulia in Penang: Patronage and Place Making around the Kapitan Kling Mosque 1786–1957 (Penang: Areca Books, 2014), 184–89. 4 ‘Casualty Details: Wynne, Melvyn Llewelyn,’ Commonwealth War Graves, accessed September 01, 2020, https​:/​/ww​​w​.cwg​​c​.org​​/find​​-war-​​dead/​​casua​​lty​/2​​82211​​2​/wyn​​ne,​ -m​​e​lvyn​​-llew​​elyn/​. 5 Wong Lin Keng and C. S. Wong, ‘Review Article: Secret Societies in Malaya,’ Journal of Southeast Asian History 1, no. 1 (1960): 97–98; cf. Carl A. Trocki, Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800–1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 21 n. 22. 6 Cf. Charles Burton Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (with Portraits and Illustrations, from the Foundation of the Settlement under the Honourable the East India Company, on February 6th, 1819, to the Transfer to the Colonial Office as Part of the Colonial Possessions of the Crown on April 1st, 1867, 2 vols. (Singapore: Fraser & Neave, 1902); Vaughan, ‘Malays of Pinang.’ 7 ‘NewspaperSG,’ National Library Board, accessed September https​:/​/er​​esour​​ces​.n​​lb​.go​​ v​.sg/​​new​sp​​apers​/ 8 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 221. 9 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 185, emphasis in original. Pieris, Hidden Hands, 169, has rightly criticised this claim as a vilification of Shias, but she seems to have been unaware of the role the identification of Muḥarram as ‘Shia’ actually played for the criminalisation of Muḥarram by colonial authorities such as Wynne, as I will discuss below. 10 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 156–72, 188. 11 ‘Christianity and Islam belong to the same stem of revealed religions and, therefore, possess identical arcana of belief’; Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 200; for the discussion of Hindu festivals, see Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 179–82. 12 Cf. Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 180. 13 Cf. for a discussion Kim A. Wagner, ‘The Deconstructed Stranglers: A Reassessment of Thuggee,’ Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2004): 931–63. 14 John F. A. McNair, Prisoners Their Own Warders: A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits Settlements Established 1825, Discontinued 1873, together with a Cursory History of the Convict Establishments at Bencoolen, Penang and Malacca from the Year 1797 (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1899), 145–46; cf. Pieris, Hidden Hands, appendices E-F, 239–41; there seems to have been no separate classification for ‘thugee’ in the sources used by Pieris for these appendices. 15 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 188; the quote ‘merged into the population’ is from McNair, Prisoners Their Own Warders, 161–2, but does not specifically refer to ‘thugs’ in the original. 16 Cf. Helen Fujimoto, The South Indian Muslim Community and the Evolution of the Jawi Peranakan in Penang up to 1948 (Tokyo: ILCAA, Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku, 1988); Khoo, The Chulia in Penang, 121–34; Torsten Tschacher, ‘“Money-Making Is Their Prime Concern”: Markets, Mobility, and Matrimony among South Indian Muslims in Colonial Southeast Asia,’ in Belonging across the Bay of Bengal: Religious Rites, Colonial Migrations, National Rights, ed. Michael Laffan (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 108–12. 17 McNair, Prisoners Their Own Warders, 89. 18 Singapore Free Press [henceforth SFP], May 26 1842, 2; cf. also SFP, May 26, 1842, 3. 19 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 215. 20 Cf. Torsten Tschacher, ‘Witnessing Fun: Tamil-Speaking Muslims and the Imagination of Ritual in Colonial Southeast Asia,’ in Ritual, Caste, and Religion in Colonial South India, ed. Michael Bergunder, Heiko Frese, and Ulrike Schröder (Halle/Saale: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2010), 201, 207.

Religion and the criminalisation of Muḥarram  69 21 SFP, June 3, 1841, 3, emphasis in original. 22 Cf. SFP, April 20, 1837, 2; SFP, April 27, 1837, p. 3. 23 E.g. SFP, June 3, 1841, 3; SFP, April 20, 1837, 2; cf. Sinha, Religion – State Encounters, 69–71 for a more detailed discussion and examples concerning complaints about the noisiness of various non-Christian festivals. 24 E.g. SFP, May 16, 1842, 3; SFP, May 9, 1844, 5; cf. generally Sinha, Religion – State Encounters, 69–71. 25 SFP, April 20, 1837, 2; SFP, May 26, 1842, 3. 26 SFP, April 20, 1837, 2; cf. SFP, January 15, 1857; SFP, August 27, 1857. 27 Sinha, Religion – State Encounters, 69. 28 Cf. Sinha, Religion – State Encounters, 78–81. 29 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 215; cf. Buckley, Anecdotal History, vol. 2, 645. 30 5 February 1857 CE corresponded to 10 Jumāda II 1273 AH, the day of the sandalpaste anointment (cantaṉakkuṭu) during the annual ʿurs for the Nagore saint, and half a year removed from 10 Muḥarram; cf. Shaik Abdul Azeez Saheb, Nagore-e-Sharief: A Sacred Complex Study (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Company, 2014), 147–49. 31 SFP, March 05, 1857, p. 3. 32 SFP, March 05, 1857, 3–4; From Charles Hercules Harrison to Captain Church, February 27, 1857, Straits Settlements Records [henceforth SSR] W24 No. 123; Petition by the Kling Inhabitants of Singapore, March 02, 1857, SSR W24 No. 125. 33 In 1856, the protesting convicts drew in procession from the jail in Bras Basah Rd via Victoria St, Stamford Rd, and St. Andrew’s Rd to reach the government offices on the Singapore River. The processions in the early 1860s followed routes mostly on the town side of the river, along Cross St, Telok Ayer St, Market St, Kling St (today Chulia St), and South Bridge Rd. It is of course possible that the convicts in 1856 took this route only because they had been forbidden from taking part in the processions and wanted to express their protest; cf. Pieris, Hidden Hands, 178; SFP, April 19, 1866, 3; SFP, April 26, 1866, 3, 5; SFP, May 10, 1866, 3, 5–6. 34 Khoo, The Chulia in Penang, 184–89; a skirmish between Muslims and Hindus took place in Penang during the Muḥarram of 1253 AH (April 1837); cf. SFP, May 04, 1837, 2. 35 Khoo, The Chulia in Penang, 188; Sinha, Religion – State Encounters, 69. 36 SFP, April 27, 1837, 2. 37 SFP, June 03, 1841, 3 (‘most important’); SFP, May 26, 1842, 3 (‘peculiar nature’). 38 From Christian Baumgarten to Captain Church, March 31, 1857, SSR W24 No. 172, [12]. 39 From Thomas Dunman to Captain Burn, June 24, 1864, SSR W50 No. 440, [1]. 40 Straits Times [henceforth ST], October 16, 1865, 2. 41 An informative example from a somewhat later period is that of the feasts known as kenduri in Malay. From 1871 onwards, British judges declared trusts made for the organisation of kenduris in memory of a deceased person to be void, as they were not made for a ‘religious’ purpose. Occasionally, however, trusts for the organisation of annual feasts were permitted by the courts, when the judge could be convinced that the purpose of the feast was ‘religious,’ e.g. the commemoration of the Prophet; cf. Tschacher, ‘Witnessing Fun,’ 209–10. 42 Vaughan, ‘Notes on the Malays,’ 139. 43 Wynne, Triad and Tabut, 188–91, 220–21. 44 Khoo, The Chulia in Penang, 184; cf. ST 19 November 1850, p. 5; cf. for the case of India Juan R. I. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shi'ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 101–17; Jim Masselos, ‘Change and Custom in the Format of Bombay Moharram during Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,’ South Asia 5, no. 2 (1982); Jaffur Shurreef, Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Mussulmans of India; Comprising a Full and Exact Account of Their Various Rites and Ceremonies, from the Moment of Birth till the Hour of Death, trans. Gerhard A. Herklots (London: Parbury, Allen, and Co., 1832), 148–228.

70  Torsten Tschacher 45 Cf. e.g. SFP, April 27, 1837, 1; SFP, June 25, 1846, 3. 46 Cf. e.g. SFP, February 26, 1857, 3; From Christian Baumgarten to Captain Church, March 31, 1857, SSR W24 No. 172, [14–15]. 47 SFP, May 05, 1836, 2, emphasis in original; cf. also SFP, May 09, 1844, 5; ST, November 19, 1850, 5. 48 Vaughan, ‘Notes on the Malays,’ 156. 49 Regarding the meaning of the term ‘Jawi’, cf. Michael Laffan, ‘Finding Java: Muslim Nomenclature of Insular Southeast Asia from Śrîvijaya to Snouck Hurgronje,’ in Southeast Asia and the Middle East: Islam, Movement, and the Longue Durée, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009). 50 Vaughan, ‘Notes on the Malays,’ 138. 51 Cf. Musa, Malay Secret Societies, 53–58. 52 Lynn and Byl, ‘Reading the Syair Tabut,’ 406; for a translation of the poem, see Julia Byl, Raja Iskandar bin Raja Halid, David Lunn, and Jenny McCallum, tr., ‘The Syair Tabut of Encik Ali: A Malay Account of Muharram at Singapore, 1864,’ Indonesia and the Malay World 45, no. 133 (2017). 53 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 176. 54 SFP, August 27, 1857, 3. 55 Cf. e.g. Musa, Malay Secret Societies, 53–55; Pieris, Hidden Hands, 174–76; Sinha, Religion – State Encounters, 76–77. 56 SFP, April 19, 1866, 3; cf. Tschacher, ‘Witnessing Fun,’ 199. 57 E.g. ST, October 16, 1865, 2. 58 Cf. e.g. Shereen Ilahi, ‘Sectarian Violence and the British Raj: The Muharram Riots of Lucknow,’ India Review 6, no. 3 (2007); Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’. 59 Straits Times Weekly Edition [henceforth STWI], June 29, 1887, 7–8; STWI, July 06, 1887, 7–11. 60 STWI, July 06, 1887, 10. 61 STWI, June 22, 1887, 2. 62 The term kudu probably derives from Tamil kūṭu, ‘nest, cocoon, hive, dome’; Tamil uru, ‘form, idol’, has also been suggested; cf. Byl, Raja Iskandar, Lunn, and McCallum, ‘The Syair Tabut,’ 421. 63 Jawi Peranakkan, Shawwāl 12, 1304 AH, 3; the word berkenderanya is actually written berkenderang, but this seems to be a mistake. 64 Ciṅkai Nēcaṉ, June 23, 1890, 194.

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Contestation and transformation Muḥarram practices among Sunni Muslims in South Africa, 1860–2020 Goolam Vahed

There are also many baseless practices and customs which people engage in on the tenth day of Muharram. Among these baseless customs and practices is mourning the martyrdom of Hazrat Husain (Radiyallahu Anhu). This practice was introduced in the tenth century of Islam (946 A.H.) by the deviated group known as the Shia. Undoubtedly the gruesome martyrdom of Hazrat Husain (RA) was among the tragic and heart-breaking events that occurred in the annals of history. However, despite that, it has no connection with the blessed occasion of Aashura. Instead, Aashura had received its virtue and auspiciousness even before the birth of Hazrat Husain (RA). Hence the custom of mourning the martyrdom of Hazrat Husain (RA) has no basis whatsoever in Islam.1 Ihyaaud Deen (2011) According to its website, Ihyaaud Deen is a Durban-based blog that was established as ‘a humble effort to present the teachings of the Aslaaf (pious predecessors) from authentic sources.’ The views of the blog resonate with mainstream reformist2 organisations such as the Jamiatul Ulama KwaZulu-Natal. This assertion is supported by the fact that publications of Ihyaaud Deen appear on the Jamiat’s website. This is not to suggest that Muḥarram has no significance for reformist organisations. On the contrary, it is seen as a blessed month, ‘the month of God,’ in which fasting on the tenth day of Aashura is considered to have ‘immense virtues and abundant blessings.’ One of the significances of Aashura for Sunnis is the belief that it was on this day that God destroyed the Pharaoh’s army and liberated the Prophet Moses (Nabi Musa) from his tyranny. Muslims are encouraged to do such things as fast, pray, and exchange gifts on this day, but not mourn Husayn’s martyrdom.3 This was not always the case in South Africa. Muḥarram festivities were an integral part of Indian Muslim life from the time that the first Indian indentured migrants arrived in colonial Natal in 1860 as part of the global circulation of labour that followed the end of slavery in the 1830s. There is much speculation as to why and how Shia Muḥarram practices became popular among Sunnis in India. One legend has it that the Muḥarram tradition originated at the end of the fourteenth century in India when the Shia wife of Emperor Timur (1336–1405) DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-6

72  Goolam Vahed vowed to make an annual visit to the mausoleum of Husayn in Iraq. When illness prevented her from doing so, a replica of the mausoleum was placed at her bedside during the first ten days of Muḥarram.4 Another version of the legend claims that Timur was so deeply attached to the area around Karbala that the ulema built a replica which he took with him when he crossed the Indus to establish political rule on the subcontinent.5 It is also possible that over the centuries Shia Muslims in India found it difficult to make their way to Karbala due to transportation difficulties and costs, and took to building substitutes for the original.6 Notwithstanding pressure from reformists since the 1970s for local Muslims to transform their understanding of the significance of Muḥarram and the practices associated with it, and in particular to de-emphasise the killing of Imam Husayn, many Muslims continue to place importance on his martyrdom. This chapter examines the debate over, and transformation of, Muḥarram practices among Indian Muslims in South Africa with particular reference to the province of KwaZulu-Natal. It examines how the practices and meanings of Muḥarram have changed among Indian Muslims over the past 160 years. The first part of the chapter examines Muḥarram practices in colonial Natal in the period from 1860 to 1910, while the second analyses the impact of the post-1960s Islamic reformism on these practices. Islam is a minority religion in South Africa, with Muslims making up less than two per cent of South Africa’s population of 59 million in 2020. Historically there were two major sub-groups of Muslims, namely Indian Muslims, and the descendants of slaves imported to the Cape in the mid-seventeenth century from Southeast Asia and South Asia, who intermarried with local peoples and are known as ‘Malay’ Muslims. The majority of Indian Muslims are found in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, while most Malays live in the Western Cape. The post-apartheid period witnessed the arrival of several million migrants, including Muslims from various parts of Africa as well as South Asia, which has altered the racial make-up of the Muslim population, as well as practices.7 Historically, the overwhelming majority of Muslims have been Sunni. The few individual Shia Muslims who arrived in the nineteenth century integrated into mainstream Sunni Muslim society and did not have separate mosques and institutions to cater for their specific needs. Since the 1990s, however, Shias have been arriving in the country and establishing mosques and religious centres and have been gaining ground amongst Africans in the townships in particular.8 Though specific numbers are not available – since the 2011 South African census did not take account of religion, and in any event it is unlikely that a distinction would have been made between Sunni and Shia Muslims had religion been included – there is sufficient concern among Sunnis about Shia proselytisation to have produced a severe backlash from Sunni organisations and their ulema who have used public platforms such as mosques, community newspapers, social media, and radio stations to warn Sunnis of the dangers posed by Shias. The KZN Jamiat, for example, published a report by Mawlana Khalid Dhorat in 2014, warning Sunnis of the dangers posed by Shias. The report suggested that

Contestation and transformation  73 the ‘lightning spread’ of Shi’ism was ‘well-calculated, well-funded, and wellmonitored,’ aimed at corroding the Iman (faith) of Sunni Muslims from within and to convert us to the open disbelief of Shi’ism; to allegedly work as a third-force in the political instability of SA; and to ensure that the Muslims of SA and internationally, are never ideologically, politically, or socially united and thereby become a force powerful enough to be reckoned with.9 On 10 May 2018, during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the Shia Imam Husian Mosque north of Durban was bombed, resulting in one death. Many observers believe that this marked the culmination of the ‘hatred’ fomented by Sunni discourse. Twelve arrests were made in October 2018, but the case against the accused was struck off the court roll in July 2020 when the state’s application for another postponement was denied. While the establishment of Shia practices in South Africa is alluded to here, the focus of this chapter is on Muḥarram observances among Indian Sunni Muslims. Historically, the very public observances of Muḥarram were confined to the province of KwaZulu-Natal where the majority of Indians lived. These practices have not been a visible feature of Malay Islam in the Cape, or part of Indian Islam in the Transvaal where the Indian Muslim population comprised mainly of the Gujarati trading classes who were wealthier and urban based as opposed to Natal, where the migrants were mainly working class and came from the rural areas of India. The public Muḥarram practices are also not evident among recent Sunni African Muslim migrants. As one migrant explained, in Nigeria Muharram is mostly celebrated among Sunnis by observing fasts on 9th and 10th Muharam. There are Shia Islamic adherents in some parts of the country who usually move crowds during praising imam Hussein, causing obstruction and civil disobedience. Their activities are quite insignificant in Nigeria.10 This was affirmed in informal discussions with several migrants from African countries. 

The colonial period, 1860–1910 Muḥarram was the first Indian ceremony observed communally in Natal. This appears to have been the case in most colonies where Indian indentured migrants settled and, in common with other settings, both Hindus and Muslims participated in Muḥarram festivities. Muḥarram was celebrated from the time that the first indentured arrived in Natal in 1860. Indentured workers were granted three days’ annual leave during Muḥarram or ‘Coolie Christmas’ as whites referred to it. It became a time when Indians were able to leave their rigid and highly controlled lives on plantations to sing, dance, play music, and generally enjoy themselves.

74  Goolam Vahed There were three aspects to Muḥarram festivities in Natal. The first was the involvement of local neighbourhoods in building taziyahs, which represented the martyred Husayn’s mausoleum at Karbala – and was a ritual of ‘mourning.’ James Meldrum, a visitor to Natal, noted that local groups took great pride in building taziyahs which were made of bamboo and wood, decorated with coloured paper and gold and silver tinsel, and ranged up to 25 feet in height with a base of around ten feet square.11 The second was the nightly public processions in various neighbourhoods from the fifth to the ninth of Muḥarram. Meldrum wrote that ‘for some days previous to the actual celebration the tom-toms were almost continually beaten’ nightly.12 The third and final phase involved each neighbourhood marching with its taziyah to a river on the tenth to immerse it in water.13 According to Schubel, in all parts of the world, there has always been a difference between Sunni and Shia taziyahs. Sunni taziyahs are generally more colourful and jovial, ornate and gaudy, made of bright paper and illuminated with lights. There is also a more celebratory and cheerful attitude, reflected in the beating of drums. Schubel argues that, for Sunnis, there is a sense that Husayn, as a martyr, did not die and there is therefore less of a need for mourning and more of a celebration of his greatness as the family of the Prophet.14 Schubel argues that Shia processions, in contrast, are in a more real sense funeral processions. For Shias the occasion is all about remembering and mourning the death of Husayn.15 The various rituals created around his martyrdom create a liminal arena which allows Shia participants to experience the events of Karbala in a symbolic manner and to experience emotions which have a deep soteriological dimension. By the tenth, the events leading to the death of Husayn evoke a deep sense of grief at the suffering of those at Karbala. By suffering with them they share in their suffering and reward. There is much crying, which is seen as cleansing the heart and mind, and a sign of real piety.16 Competition among Indians from various neighbourhoods, and sugar plantations, as well as employees of the Durban Municipality and the Natal Government Railways regarding the most attractive taziyah gave Muḥarram a competitive edge that often ended in public violence. These activities were an annoyance to whites and the authorities who had to maintain public order. Participants in Muḥarram were portrayed in one contemporary newspaper report as ‘almost naked fanatics’ who were given to ‘nerve shrieking yells’ and ‘monotonous thumping of tom-toms,’ which were seen as proof that they knew little of ‘the history of the patron saints.’17 Such descriptions by white settlers underscore Orientalist images of bloodthirsty fanatics acting out ‘religious zeal’ and creating ‘chaos and disorder.’18 Individual taziyah groups were united on the tenth day of Muḥarram when thousands of participants pulled their taziyahs by hand towards a river. In Durban, taziyah groups marched to the Umgeni River. Along the way, they sang lament songs (marsiyas) to the memory of Husayn, danced and drummed, watched a play enacting the martyrdom of Husayn, and took part in wrestling competitions and stick fights. Some consumed alcohol, as many of the participants were not Muslim. These were days of ‘freedom’ for participants subject to rigidly controlled work

Contestation and transformation  75 environments. James Meldrum opined that in Natal Muḥarram ‘seems largely altered from fast to feast’: Around the pagoda was a motley crowd: Mohammedans in white and in red, with turbans generally in pure white; masquerades, dressed up to represent tigers, who rushed through the crowd, pretending to assault the worshippers, in imitation of the real tigers which frequently attack the procession in India; Hindoo men and women in costumes which nearly defy description, all possible colours and materials seem to have been used. Jewellery was abundant: earrings, nose-jewels, necklaces, bangles, rings, anklets, toe-rings…. The din was terrific. Above the noise of the drums and tom-toms came the yells of the groups of those engaged in mimic battle with long sticks, while the rest of the faithful vied with each other in producing strange weird sounds.19 Taziyah processions made their way to the water where the taziyahs were immersed. According to some explanations this was to remind participants of Husayn’s suffering when he was denied water at Karbala.20 Meldrum described the culmination of the Muḥarram procession at the Umgeni River in Durban in 1893: The pagoda (British colonial name for taziyahs) was taken to the river, where, after great beating of tom-toms and wild dances, the emblems were immersed, most of the faithful also sprinkling their heads with water. Many children were also baptised by their parents. The top of the pagoda was then covered with white cloth, and the lower part opened. From it were taken basins of what appeared to be boiled rice, which was eagerly fought for and devoured. Thus ended the celebration.21 The festival involved as much piety as revelry and there was initially strong opposition from the authorities and later from reformist Hindus as well as middle-class Muslims.22 Early opportunities offered by mission schools resulted in the emergence of a small Western-educated class of colonial-born Hindus around the turn of the twentieth century. Some were critical of Hindu involvement in Muḥarram. PS Aiyar wrote in an editorial in his newspaper African Chronicle that ‘it is the lowest strata of the labouring classes, just for fun and frolic, that make all the fuss, and noise, and disgrace themselves … We do not see how this … can have any sanction from true religious doctrine.’23 Bhessmasoor, a correspondent for the same newspaper, complained that ‘Hindoos ought to consider that the world is laughing at them on their moral degradation and stupidity in taking part in the Festival of Mohammedans.’24 Another correspondent B Mahatho considered it very grievous that the Hindi community, ignorant of the fact that Husayn was murdered by another Muslim took part in a celebration that is opposed to a part of the Mahomedan section, and still more so to the lofty religious views of the Hindoos.25

76  Goolam Vahed These criticisms coincided with the arrival in Natal of missionaries of the Arya Samaj reformist Hindu movement, which was founded in late nineteenth-century India and focused on abolishing the caste system and those rituals considered to be outside the fold of Hinduism. Swami Shankeranand (1876–1977), a missionary of the Arya Samaj reformist movement, who spent almost five years in South Africa from 1908 to 1913, not only campaigned vigorously to stop Hindu participation in Muḥarram but also got the authorities to stop employers granting Hindus time off during Muḥarram and ensuring instead that they were given leave at work and school during the Hindu Diwali festival. As a result of these efforts, Hindu participation in Muḥarram declined considerably over the next few decades.26 There were few institutional Islamic bodies in Natal at this time and Muslim opposition to Muḥarram practices was confined to the odd letter to the press from individual Muslims or petitions to the authorities from middle-class Muslim traders to put a stop to the practice because of the violence associated with it. S Ismail Seepye of Pietermaritzburg, for example, wrote to African Chronicle in 1910: The Muharram Festival is not the Mohomedan’s sacred and religious ceremony, indeed this kind of thing is strictly prohibited by the Islamic laws. We do not find its sanctions in any of our books. Taziyahs or Taboot-making is quite opposed to the spirit and letter of the Quran. Helping and participating in the abominable custom is denounced as Shirk and Bidat. Shirk means those who in remembering God join the names of others to that of God. Bidat means that which has never happened in the time of our Prophet, nor in that of his disciples. According to the Quran there is no crime which equals any of these two…. The authorities should put a stop to this unprincipled and abominable practice once and for all.27 Despite such complaints, Muḥarram remained an integral part of Muslim life until at least the 1960s.

Urbanisation and Muḥarram practices, 1910–1950s The Union of South Africa, based on white minority rule with a Christian ethos, came into being in 1910. Black (non-white) South Africans – Africans, Coloureds, and Indians – were condemned to second-class status. Most Indians were concentrated in de facto residential pockets across the province of Natal, which made it relatively easy for them to establish cultural and religious practices with minimum state interference. They lived on the periphery of major cities like Durban, Pietermaritzburg, and Johannesburg, in semi-rural areas, where some engaged in market gardening and the younger generation were beginning to enter industrial employment.28 There were numerous applications each year from Muslims living in urban areas to organise Muḥarram as many of the activities associated with the festivities contravened one or other of the city’s by-laws. The Town Council was

Contestation and transformation  77 determined to take control of the festival and required participants to seek official permission. Clairwood, south of Durban was a strong hub of Muḥarram activity. M. Fakeer of Pine Road, Clairwood, informed the Town Clerk on 17 April 1934 that he had controlled Muḥarram festivals since the turn of the century and requested permission to use ‘Muharram Festival Drums’ each night; march with his procession until 11:30 pm on the night of 9th Muḥarram, and on the 10th from 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm, before making their way to Umhlatuzana bridge ‘where the dipping will take place.’29 There are many such applications in the archives for each year. Though small in number, some Muslims remained critical of Muḥarram activities. For example, MI Meer, editor of the Durban-based weekly newspaper Indian Views, which mainly served Muslim elites throughout Southern Africa, found no precedent for the public processions in Arabia and felt that with ‘drink, wine and exhilarating tom-toming and dancing indulged in,... the illiterate and unscrupulous Mussulmans and their ignorant non-Muslim friends adopt taziyah-making to make a nuisance of themselves. Educated Muslims feel insulted at the way the hideous performance is conducted.’ Indian Views submitted a petition to the Commissioner of Police imploring him to refuse permission for the procession and to ban tom-toming and displays of naked bodies in public.30 This was to no avail, however, and Muḥarram remained central to the lives of most Muslims. Chief Constable Sergeant Graham was concerned about the revelry associated with the festival. On 7 November 1949 he submitted a report to the Town Clerk that advocated banning or curtailing public activities associated with Muḥarram. He reported that he had interviewed seven ‘better class Indian persons’ in July 1949 who told him that the procession was ‘definitely against the Mahommedan Religion’ and should be prohibited. These individuals belonged to the Natal Muslim Council (NMC), an umbrella organisation formed in 1943 by the (mainly Gujarati-speaking) Muslim trading class to organise and represent Muslims in Natal. Following the meeting, the NMC sent a letter to the Chief Constable on 10 July 1949 calling on him to end Muḥarram festivities.31 The Town Clerk asked the Chief Constable to investigate Muḥarram activities. He reported on 4 July 1950 that Muḥarram had been a common practice for many decades, but ‘these processions have deteriorated from a religious ceremony to an unseemly rabble, and if a large force of police was not detailed for duty a serious riot would take place.’ The Chief Constable added that ‘very few of those taking part are genuine Moslems, being mostly low class Indians. Invariably along the last stage of the route in Umgeni Road fights take place’ while there are ‘serious hold-ups in traffic at peak periods.’32 Fearful of pressure from the authorities, individual taziyah groups organised themselves into the Durban and District Muharram Association in 1949 under the presidency of Tayob Saccoor, a Memon whose family was from Probandar in Western India. The Memon community in Durban built and controlled the Juma Musjidin Grey Street, the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere. Sacoor was a member of the Trust of the mosque and a highly respected community figure. At

78  Goolam Vahed that time, the Memon traders, in contrast to their Gujarati-speaking counterparts, were more receptive to public activities centred around Muḥarram as well as the birth and death celebrations of saints. The City Council did indeed ban public processions in central Durban and turned down an application by the Badsha Peer Mazaare Society in 1950 to march through the streets of Durban with their taziyah. The Badsha Peer Committee was formed in honour of a saint who reputedly arrived in Natal as an indentured migrant in 1860 and died in the colony in the 1890s.33 On 11 October 1950 AS Kajee, a local Indian politician who was an office-bearer of the Natal Indian Organisation (NIO), led a delegation of the Badsha Peer Committee to meet with the mayor to discuss this ‘unprecedented action.’ They promised that the ‘procession will be conducted in a quiet manner.’ The Chief Constable advised that the procession should not be allowed in the city centre but that the taziyah should be taken out of the city centre by truck to Overport and from there participants could march to the Umgeni River. The Badsha Peer Society employed attorneys Cowley & Cowley to take up the issue on its behalf to ensure that such problems would not be faced in future years. The attorneys wrote to the Town Clerk on 30 October 1950 that they were sure that he had a ‘misapprehension’ about the true nature of the festival; it was not simply any ‘“Religious Procession’: ‘it is a public ceremony which had existed since the death of the Grandsons of the Prophet, and which has been observed without a break in this country according to tradition, for approximately seventy years.’ According to the Society, they were willing to eliminate ‘the so-called Tigers’ and ‘Tom-Toms;’ ‘what they desire, is a peaceful solemn procession of Pagodas, followed by choirs singing holy hymns.’ The Council, they pointed out, allowed religious festivals from the Roman Catholic Cathedral to Albert Park, the march by the ex-servicemen’s organisation the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (M.O.T.H.S.) on Armistice Day, and the procession of floats on the day of the University Rag, so there was no reason to ban the Muḥarram procession. The Chief Constable’s riposte was that it was pointless to compare Muḥarram processions with white festivals which, he said, ‘ are amenable to supervision and control, but it is almost impossible to control the fanatical rowdyism, aggravated by the influence of intoxicable liquor, that accompanies the non-European religious processions previously held in the Old Borough.’ Following further representation, the Badsha Peer Society was given permission by the Council on 29 November 1950 to march to the Umgeni from the shrine in Brooke Street in a ‘quiet and respectable manner, without Tom-Toms or Tigers.’ The Chief Constable warned that this easing of restrictions was ‘as a trial, but should the undesirable features which heretofore attended these processions arise I will have no option but to report unfavourably thereon in future.’34 Muḥarram practices continued to thrive until the 1960s, albeit with stringent conditions. The Town Clerk outlined some of these in a letter to the Durban & District Muharram Association on 1 September 1954: routes had to be adhered to; no drumming in the vicinity of European premises; the procession was not to become a source of ‘annoyance’ to the neighbourhood; taziyahs were not to

Contestation and transformation  79 exceed 12 feet in height; loudspeakers were prohibited; there was to be no hindrance to vehicular traffic or interference with pedestrians; harmoniums could not be carried by hand; and promoters of processions had to comply with any other additional requirements of the local police.35 In her 1969 publication Portrait of Indian South Africans, Fatima Meer made detailed reference to some of the practices that she observed among local Muḥarram groups: The most picturesque of all Muslim ceremonials in Durban is the procession of Thaziyahs during Muharram. Thaziyahs were introduced to South Africa in the very early period of Indian indenture by Muslims from South India and were then known as Allahsamy’s Goonda, following South Indian terminology. There were as many as sixty groups in and around Durban alone at the height of its popularity. Thaziya building is a sacred religious act, in many cases assumed by families from generation to generation. An ancient predecessor may have vowed to build Thaziyahs, his descendants are constrained to continue the tradition under threat of some severe tragedy following their failure to do so …. There are hundreds of devotees on the opening of the ceremony, mostly people from the neighbourhood, prominent among them are mothers with babies and young children. Young boys hoist flags at the entrance, red and green inscribed in white with the crescent and moon, fluttering on tall poles. The colours red and green keep recurring, green being the colour of poison and identified with the Prophet’s grandson Hassan who met his death thereby, and red with the colour of the martyrs’ blood at Kerbala, especially that of Hussain. Devotees begin to enter the imambara, bearing their offerings of sugar, sweetmeats, incense, flour, rice, and cooked foods in packages and on trays …. Some devotees buy woollen cords and wear these around their wrists. The cords bear testimony to the vows they have taken. They will wear them up to the ninth day when they will place them on the Thaziyas in their final journey and then immerse them in the river. With the cords will go their troubles. Mustafa attends to each devotee in turn, performing fateha, waving away evil with a switch of peacock feathers and replacing it with ‘good’ by blowing sacred words. The offering is preceded by a vow, mannath, and may also take the form of self in the role of a fakir or dulha. A fakir is one who abandons all material desires and lives on the bounty of God … Dulha literally means bridegroom. In a Thaziya cult, a dulha is one who gives himself wholly to the martyrs of Kerbala, he is ‘married’ to them, identified with them, and as such, one with them … The ordeal intensifies on the eight night, which is the night of alawa, or fire walking. A large circular area, about fifty feet in diameter, is cordoned off with thick ropes. About five hundred spectators push against it in the attempt to gain a better view. A fire is prepared in the centre of the cordoned area, in a pit, about fifteen feet in diameter, and as the flames die down the burning ashes are raked to provide an even field. Mustafa walks around the alawa, sprinkling water on

80  Goolam Vahed the surrounding ground and reciting Quranic verses as he does so. Somebody places a sick baby, dressed in green, in his hands. He walks around the fire with the baby in the hope that it will draw away the illness and then returns it to its parents. The dulhas emerge from the imambara. Mustafa picks a burning ember from the fire pit, squashes it in his incense burner, and smears it on the dulhas faces. The drumming, the chanting and incense burning follows. The dulhas go into trance and in that state are led by helpers into the fire. Once the dulhas have walked the fire other devotees follow. The ninth and final night is the night of Qatl or massacre. The martyrs have been killed. The tragedy of Kerbala has taken place. The coffins of the loved ones are before the devotees. The thaziya bears their bodies. Hitherto concealed and kept in secrecy, it is now brought out to public view for the first time and placed on a raised platform of earth. The people admire its resplendent glory, pink and shimmering silver, a work of love and devotion. A battery charges its many globes, so that the intricate details of its fretwork are brilliantly illuminated. The devotees are obviously moved. Some cry. Then the shouts go up. The drums begin to beat. Tragedy is forgotten and in festive mood the Thaziya is drawn to the tomb of Badsha Peer to meet other Thaziyas. The tenth day is the day of the great procession, when all the Thaziyas meet for the final rite at the river. About half the number of Taziyahs in Durban meet at the tomb of Badsha Peer at midday and proceed to the Umgeni River. Large crowds gather all along the route. Groups of women offer sarbat (sweetened milk) to the public generally in commemoration of the terrible thirst suffered by the martyrs at Kerbala. A shopkeeper who has had great commercial luck, sits astride massive pots of hot broth, and serves portions in plastic bowls to all who gather. The procession moves slowly, stopping every now and again to allow the worshippers to bring their last offerings. The drummers and qawwali singers, and the exuberant shouts of yelling children, lend an air of festivity to what is really a serious occasion. There is the great convergence of traffic, sight-seers and devotees at the river, where the final rite is performed. It is almost six in the evening by the time the procession reaches the spot. Miniature Thaziyas, manath (vow) cords, panjas and flowers are taken off the Thaziya and young boys bear these to the river bank where they are immersed in water. There is weeping and some devotees are so lost in their way home bedraggled and forlorn save for the company of the immediate officials who still feel responsibility for them. They will be dismantled and their frames put to rest until another Muharram, when they will make another resplendent journey.36

Group Areas, Islamic reformism, and changing Muḥarram practices Muḥarram processions began to decline from the late 1960s due to two major factors: the arrival of reformist Islam and dislocation caused by Group Areas. The

Contestation and transformation  81 Group Areas Act of 1950 sought to move South Africans into residential areas segregated by race. Approximately 140,000 Indians in Durban were moved from their original homes to new residential areas in the 1960s and 1970s. Group Areas destroyed closely knit, organically developed communities and ravaged important centres of Muḥarram activities, such as Riverside, Clairwood, and Mayville in Durban. Those dislocated struggled to establish religious and cultural lives in the new areas. As the Indian Muslim Sociologist Fatima Meer told a local reporter in 1970, ‘Indians know removal but little renewal; little resettlement but much unsettlement’.37 Like other Black South Africans, Muslims had to rebuild their lives, including their mosques, madrassahs, and other infrastructure in the two large, alienating townships of Chatsworth south of Durban and Phoenix to the north of the city.38 Muslims had to forge new alliances as they sought to re-establish culture and religion. Where old Muḥarram groups continued to exist, they were no longer made up of individuals around a common locality. Members often lived far apart and only met around the time of the festival. Distance and time made it difficult to carry out all the requirements of the festival over the full ten days. The devastation wrought by Group Areas is illustrated in the story of Riverside, home of Soofie Saheb, a saint who arrived in Natal in 1895 from the town of Ibrahimpatan, Ratnigir, India, and established an important religious centre (darbar) in Riverside, just north of Durban, which was also the site of vibrant annual Muḥarram festivities. Soofie Saheb (1848–1911), full name Shah Goolam Mohamed, traced his genealogy to Abu Bakr Siddique, the first Caliph of Islam and father-in-law of the Prophet. According to oral tradition, one of the first things he did in Durban was to identify the gravesite of the saint Badsha Peer at the local Muslim cemetery and build a shrine there. Soofie Saheb was the sajda khadim (keeper of the tomb) of Badsha Peer, until his death in 1911. He subsequently established his darbar in Riverside on the banks of the Umgeni River. Between 1898 and his death in 1911, Soofie Saheb built 11 mosques, madrassahs, and cemeteries in different parts of Natal. The complex in Riverside is a very impressive site containing Soofie Saheb’s large tomb and a museum that houses his artefacts while a permanent taziyah made of oak is also housed on the site.39 The history of Riverside and that of many other areas was erased under the guise of Group Areas. Daily News reporter Dorothy Mclean poignantly captured this loss when she wrote in 1967: Almost unnoticed, certainly unsung, the old established village of Riverside on the north bank of Durban’s Umgeni River is disappearing – under the Group Areas decree – from the pages of Natal history…. Nothing will remain to tell the colourful story of an Indian community who for most generations lived out their peaceable, industrious lives beside the river…. All that remains of a once-loved home is a temple and mosque. The silence is eerie, broken only by the twitter of swallows among the ruins and the melancholy call of

82  Goolam Vahed the rain-bird, the Coucal, sounding at intervals from the thicket…. Who will remember an integral part of Durban’s early history?40 Appeals to the Durban City Council by the trustees of the Soofie complex in Riverside were in vain and the Soofie family was forced to vacate the darbar by 15 October 1968. The mosque was allowed to stand. A family memoir recalled: Words cannot adequately describe aptly the emotions and thoughts that were running through the minds and hearts of all those present when the buildings were mercilessly destroyed by the bulldozers, which resembled huge dragons. Seventy three years of history and rich heritage, sweat and toil, dreams and visions, were left in tatters overnight.41 Only worshippers were allowed to enter the mosque, as the area surrounding it was set aside for white occupation. This brought to an end the public procession of the taziyah during Muḥarram. The taziyah procession was organised for the last time in 1968; Riverside became a ‘white’ area, and street processions by Indians were banned in the area. After 1968, the Taziyah was kept on the property while devotees visited the darbar during the ten days of Muḥarram. Another instance of a vibrant community destroyed by Group Areas was Clairwood, south of Durban, home to around 40,000 people in the 1950s before residents were forcibly relocated. Siva Naidoo of the Clairwood Roots Reunion Committee recounted how forcible removals under Group Areas impacted on the destruction of religious observances: Let us reminisce, … the ringing of the church bell every Sunday morning from the St Louis Parish, waking up to the sound of the azaan from the Flower Road mosque, our annual Muharram festival with drums and pagodas, people following from one road to another, the annual Thai Poosam Kavadies of the Clairwood Shree Soobramoniar and Jacobs Road temples.42 All of this disappeared as residents struggled to reestablish their lives in the new townships. Also impacting on Muḥarram festivities was the influence of reformist Deobandi-Tablighi Islam, which completely transformed the Muslim community’s beliefs and practices over the past four decades. Conservative and modernist reformist tendencies became manifest among all sectors of Muslim society from the 1960s, resulting in larger numbers of Muslims introducing Islam into their lives in a systematic manner, usually through institutions. This deepened divisions among Muslims as various groups contested the hegemony of ‘their’ version of Islam. The broadest divide was between a ‘popular’ (also knowns as ‘Barelwi’ in the South African context)43 and a ‘scripturalist’ tradition. Both laid claim to the ‘correct’ interpretation of Islam as taught by the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet.

Contestation and transformation  83 The scripturalist tradition was represented by Deobandi Islam which established itself in India in the 1860s when Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi (1832– 1880) and Rashid Ahmed Gangohi (1826–1905) opened a madrassah in Deoband in 1867, and focused on Muslim educational and religious needs in an attempt to create a cohesive cultural community, with a focus on eradicating what they saw as syncretistic developments in Indian Islam.44 They targeted ‘popular’ behaviour such as visitations to the tombs of saints, belief in the intercessionary role of saints, and practices associated with Muḥarram, which they considered to stem from Hindu culture.45 Closely allied to Deobandis was the Tablighi Jamaat, a transnational religious movement founded in Delhi in the 1920s by Muhammad Ilyas (1884–1944). Ilyas believed that there was an urgent need to teach basic Islamic principles to illiterate Muslim peasants and created a grassroots movement whereby all Muslims could generate awareness of Islam among their ‘ignorant’ counterparts.46 The main method of propagation was through groups of lay Muslims visiting Muslim homes and spreading knowledge through face-to-face contact. Tablighis were theologically aligned to Deobandis.47 The embracing of reformism was closely tied to ethnicity. In the 1960s and 1970s, reformist tendencies mainly took hold among Gujarati-speaking Muslims, but also spread to Memon-speakers by the 1990s and to the descendants of indentured migrants (mainly Urdu speakers as the descendants of South Indian migrants also began speaking Urdu during the course of the twentieth century) from the 2000s.

Imam Husayn and Muḥarram in South Africa, 2020 While the seeds of reformism were planted in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, they manifested more widely from the 1990s as these reformist tendencies, coupled with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War world order, as well as the end of apartheid in South Africa, led to great uncertainty, and Muslims in South Africa began turning to Islam as a source of security.48 This reformism impacted on all aspects of Muslims’ way of life, including the ways in which festivals were observed. As evidenced from the epigram, the reformist thrust sought in particular to de-emphasise the martyrdom of Husayn while continuing to accentuate Aashura as a day of religious significance. The Jamiatul Ulama Gauteng is representative of this reformist Indian Muslim tradition. According to its website, Muḥarram is a sacred month and the tenth of Muḥarram (Aashura) is the ‘most sacred day’ of the month, as is made clear in the hadith (traditions of the Prophet). The way to gain closeness to Allah (God) is through fasting, prayer, and charity. Amongst the actions of Shias that were condemned was that ‘they made slapping of the cheeks and tearing of dresses in the name of mourning Husayn Radiallahu Anhu a great act of worship.’ Also condemned was ‘emulating the assassination of Husayn (may Allah be pleased with him) and what befell him and his family, and showing

84  Goolam Vahed remorseful sorrow, crying, beating the chest, and seeking help by repeating: Oh Husayn Oh Husayn?’49 What do reformist Muslims make of Husayn’s death? This question was posed to the Jamiatul Ulama KwaZulu-Natal. Their response on their website, substantiated by verses from the Quran and hadiths, essentially states that Muslims could not rise against rulers unless they were instructing the people to do something that was sinful. Yazid’s father Muawiya passed on the leadership to his son. Husayn, believing that Yazid was a tyrant whose leadership had not been confirmed by the elders of the community, considered it within his right to challenge his leadership. However, when he came close to Kufa he realised that Yazid had established his authority and he was thus unable to challenge him. At this point, Husayn was willing to pledge his allegiance. However, one of Yazid’s generals called for his unconditional surrender and this resulted in Husayn defending himself; the result was ‘the unfortunate incident of Karbala.’ According to the ruling, this ‘is a trivial matter (in the history of Islam), thus many scholars have advised to abstain from indulging and discussing the issue and concentrate on the more immediate and important aspects of Deen.’ Furthermore, ‘there is a general and accepted principle among the scholars that it is impermissible to curse a Muslim no matter how great of a sinner he is.’ Thus, it is not permissible to curse Yazid.50 This is contrary to the Shia view but also to that of some Indian Muslims in South Africa who maintain that Husayn was central to the Muḥarram narrative. For example, Irshad Soofie, a descendant of Soofie Saheb, gave three lectures on Husayn and Karbala during September 2019 at the Chishti Nizami Habibi Soofie International Sufi Order, Pietermaritzburg. The lectures were titled ‘Karbala and the age of Deception’ (6 September 2019); ‘The Distortion of Islamic History after Karbala’ (13 September 2019); and ‘The Aftermath of Karbala’ (20 September 2019).51 In his lecture on ‘The Aftermath of Karbala’ (20 September), Soofie explained: A 56 years old man protesting against corrupt rulers in Makkah, un-Islamic rulers, that’s what happened when Imam Husayn’s blood fell at Karbala. He was martyred, 70 000 angels came weeping and will weep until day of judgement, but Karbala is conveniently left out of our history books. Eighteen direct descendants of the Prophet were martyred, their bodies unattended, including a six month old baby. According to Soofie, the ‘history books tampered with history.’ Husayn was the Prophet’s grandson through his daughter Fathima but, sadly, the rulers (Muawiya and his descendants) have ‘controlled the narrative and manipulated things, and thus took away our reverence to Prophet’s family given by Allah.’ The rulers of the time did not permit books to be written on Husayn and his father, Ali, nor were children permitted to keep the name Ali. Husayn ‘sacrificed his whole family to save the Deen (religion). His message was, “My life can go but the Deen of Allah

Contestation and transformation  85 must be saved.” We cannot take this lightly. The symbolism of Karbala must lead to an awakening amongst Muslims’ about the global situation of Muslims. In his 13 September talk on ‘The Distortion of Islamic History after Karbala,’ Soofie reiterated that history is written by the victors. Imam Husayn lost the battle but he did not lose the war. You want to see our Husayn … go to Karbala. Where is Yazid? Where is he? Where is his grave? We must be thankful to the Chistiya (Sufi) tradition, they kept (Husayn) alive. During Muharram, the qawwals sing marsiyas’, laments to Husayn, to keep this love alive, even non-Muslims knew this. Now they (reformist scholars) want to tell us, ‘where is this in the Quran and hadiths?’ Karbala took place but history is not remembering the martyrs because victors wrote the history, they told historians what to say and write, it happens now with the press, so it was the same then. This Umayyad narrative has been there throughout our (Sunni) history. There is great ignorance, we dismiss it by saying that it is a Shia thing, but now there is an awakening, people realise that something was happening, that the Prophet’s family was killed. Soofie implored devotees to keep the memory of the martyrdom alive at the time of Muḥarram. Reformist impulses have not totally eradicated public performances of Muḥarram. The Badsha Peer Mazaar Society, for example, whose founding members drew inspiration from the saintly figure of Badsha Peer and his tomb at the Brook Street cemetery in central Durban, continues to observe some public aspects of Muḥarram festivities and has been doing so since the 1940s. Its current president is Iqbal Sarrang, who took over as president from his father, Goolam Mustapha-Sarrang, in 1983. The Society annually builds its taziyah in the Ashur Khana, a room filled with spiritual significance, on premises that it acquired in the city centre. But Iqbal conceded that as a result of reformism, the competitive elements, wrestling, the tigers and generally the carnival aspects of the public procession have disappeared. Instead of street processions on the nights preceding the tenth, spiritual aspects such as fasting and offering extra prayers dominate. On the tenth, the taziyah is placed on a steel cart built and pulled manually to the Umgeni River, which has historically been the site where processions meet.52 The procession to the Umgeni River remains a part of the Durban religious landscape although numbers have declined progressively over the years from the 10,000 who attended until the 1950s to around 500 or 600 people. The author attended the 2018 Ashura at the Umgeni River (on 10 September). Durban came to a standstill as the streets leading to the site were gridlocked for three to four hours leading up to sunset and beyond. There were around 20 taziyah processions. These were not drawn by hand as in the past but brought to the river site on the back of trucks or pulled by state-of-the-art SUVs. They were carried short distances by marchers with green and red flags, the women in the processions were mostly attired in black, some of the men wore red hats or green clothing, and the taziyahs were in all shapes and sizes, and colourful. The taziyahs are

86  Goolam Vahed no longer dumped in the river (because of environmental concerns), but a white calico placed in the taziyah is immersed in the water and returned to the truck to mark the end of the ten-day ritual. Many of the participants were not the rural congregants of the past but appeared well educated and economically well-off, judging from their appearance and vehicles. Though the site in Riverside where Soofie Saheb built his mosque was declared a white area in the 1960s, in November 1980 the National Monuments Council of South Africa declared the Riverside darbar a national monument, and in 1999, five years after majority rule in South Africa, Lower Bridge Road, where the mosque is situated, was renamed ‘Soofie Saheb Drive’ in honour of his work among the poor.53 Muḥarram festivities were revived on this site as apartheid ended. Instead of building a taziyah annually, however, the Soofie family built a taziyah of solid oak in 1996 and have housed it permanently at the site. A large number of devotees attend the darbar during the first ten days of Muḥarram, with several thousand attending the darbar on the tenth day, indulging in communal prayer and sharing meals. The Soofie Muḥarram festivities do not include things like people going into a trance and there was no firewalking, suggesting a strategic distancing from earlier and syncretic forms of Muḥarram practice. While Husayn continues to be respected and remembered, many populist aspects of the ritual have been purged.54 At the Soofie Habibia Mosque in Cape Town, which was also established by Soofie Saheb, Muḥarram continues to be acknowledged as a significant day in the Islamic calendar. In 2010, for example, the mosque committee, according to its website, ‘pulled out all the stops in bringing the community its best Muḥarram programme to date.’ The year 2010 was an important landmark as it marked 150 years since the indentured Indians landed in Natal, and the additional focus on Muḥarram that year was part of a wider pattern of commemorations countrywide. Named Marhaba Muḥarram, the festivities lasted from 12 to 19 December and included a series of lectures on Muḥarram by a ‘world renowned scholar,’ the Syrian-born American medical doctor and theologian Shaykh Muhammad Al-Ninowy, whose family traces its lineage to the Prophet. Events included tours of the Muslim heritage of the Cape Flats; talks by other prominent South African scholars, and a 70-stall market (‘souk’) with stalls selling all kinds of products; an international Quran competition; as well as entertainment for children. Organisers partnered with the City of Cape Town, which provided logistical and event management support and corporate sponsors.55 One of the practices that have largely disappeared from Muḥarram festivities is firewalking. Karbala was a military campaign that involved intense suffering and some devotees feel the need to experience physical acts of mourning in order to appreciate Husayn’s fate. Vahed’s ethnographic study of Muḥarram found just one instance of firewalking in the working-class township of Phoenix in Durban which was attended by a handful of devotees. It appears that most had ancestors from South India. Reformist Muslims condemn this practice as it resembles the Hindu firewalking festival of Kavadi.56 Cape Town’s Malay Sunni Muslims have been marking Muḥarram in a different way. Historically, madrassahs

Contestation and transformation  87 performed the ‘Tiene Muharram’ march on the tenth of Muḥarram. Since 2012, the Boorhanol Islam Movement and the Tana Baru Trust have organised a march through the streets of Bo-Kaap, the old Malay quarter, to commemorate the start of the new Islamic year. As one report put it, this was ‘amidst a fanfare of melodious bagpipes, thikrullah and the handing out of goodies to over a thousand children.’ The march is led annually by the Habibia Pipe Brigade. The marchers, men and women, looking resplendent in their white attire, pass by historic mosques before proceeding to the Tana Baru, the heritage site where pioneers of Islam in the Cape lie buried. They include the gravesites of Tuan Guru, Sayed Alawie, Abubakr Effendi, and Paay Schaapie (Tuan Nuruman), four pioneers of Islam who arrived in the Cape in the seventeenth century as slaves. The march in September 2018 was advertised as ‘Paying Tribute to the Pioneers of Islam and their Countries of Origin.’ Tana Baru Movement spokesperson Muhammad Groenewald said that with the gentrification of the Bo-Kaap, ‘the cradle of Islam and a living showcase of the history, culture and institutions of the Muslim way of life,’ there was a real danger that the mosques would become white elephants and such events were crucial to keeping the memories of these places alive.57

Concluding thoughts The meaning of taziyah is constantly changing among Indian Muslims in South Africa. As this chapter highlights, the meaning of the tenth of Muḥarram has changed over time and is likely to change for participants in the future. This underscores the fact that Muḥarram rituals and symbolism are constantly renegotiated even if they appear to be the same from the outside. Urbanisation, forced relocation, education, economic mobility, and the impact of new reformist religious ideas have changed the meaning of and practices associated with Muḥarram. Activities like firewalking, ‘tigers,’ wrestling, and other public festivities have all but disappeared from Muḥarram observances. Reformist Islamic traditions de-emphasise the centrality of Husayn in Muḥarram observances. As far as they are concerned, it is a mere coincidence that Husayn was martyred on Aashura. Other Muslims insist on keeping Husayn central to Muḥarram narratives. These different understandings of Muḥarram reflect the differences in religious and cultural beliefs and practices among Muslims, emphasise the existence of multiple Muḥarram traditions, and underscore that there is no hegemonic, universally authoritative Islamic tradition among Indian Muslims in South Africa.

Notes 1 Ihyaaud Deen, ‘Muharram and the Day of Aashura,’ 4 December 2011, accessed 1 March 2019, http://ihyaauddeen​.co​.za/​?p​=1393. 2 Many of the indentured Muslims and their descendants practised what may be termed a populist form of Islam, drawing inspiration from the Barelwi tradition in India (see Usha Sanyal, Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870–1920 [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999]), while the descendants of Gujarati traders were

88  Goolam Vahed amongst the first to embrace the reformist South Asian Deobandi and Tablighi Jamaat influences from the 1960s (see Francis Robinson, ‘Islamic Reform and Modernities in South Asia,’ in Islamic Reform in South Asia, eds. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 26–50. 3 See Goolam Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910: The Role of the Muharram Festival,’ Journal of African History 43, no. 1 (2002): 77–93. 4 Goolam Vahed, ‘Contesting Indian Islam in KwaZulu-Natal: The Muharram Festival in Durban, 2002,’ in The Popular and the Public: Cultural Debates and Struggles over Public Space in Modern India, Africa and Europe, eds. Preben Kaarsholm and Isabel Hofmeyr (London: Seagull Books, 2009), 107–140: 130. 5 V. Schubel, Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam: Shi’i Devotional Rituals in Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 110. 6 Peter Chelskowski, ‘Art for Twenty-Four Hours,’ in Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation and Eclecticism, eds. Doria Behrens-Abouself and Stephen Vernoit (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 409–421: 415. 7 See Goolam Vahed, ‘Islam in the Public Sphere in Post-apartheid South Africa: Prospects and Challenges,’ Journal for Islamic Studies 27 (2007): 116–49. 8 Sayed Aftab Haidar, ‘Muharram: 10th Night. Ashura.’ Ahlul Bait Foundation of South Africa, 7 February 2011, accessed 1 March 2019, http:​/​/www​​.afos​​a​.org​​/isla​​mic​-l​​ectur​​ res​-t​​ransc​​ribe/​​191​-m​​uharr​​am​-​10​​-ashu​​ra​.ht​​ml. 9 See Khalid Dhorat, ‘The Extent of Shi’ism in South Africa,’ Islamic Awakening, 10 April 2014, accessed 3 March 2019, https​:/​/ja​​miat.​​org​.z​​a​/the​​-exte​​nt​-of​​-shii​​sm​-in​​-so​ ut​​h​-afr​​ica/.​ 10 Kaybee Kareem, e-mail correspondence. 4 March 2019. 11 James Meldrum, ‘The Moharrem Festival in Natal,’ 1893. Killie Campbell Library. PAM 297 MEL. 12 Meldrum, ‘The Moharrem Festival in Natal,’ 1893. 13 See Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal,’ 81–86. 14 Schubel, Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam, 135. 15 Schubel, Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam, 136. 16 Schubel, Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam, 135. 17 Natal Advertiser, ‘Muharram,’ 23 April 1904. 18 Guha Shankar, ‘Imagining India(ns): Cultural Performances and Diaspora Politics in Jamaica,’ (PhD diss., University of Texas, Austin, 2003: 114. 19 Meldrum, ‘The Moharrem Festival in Natal,’ 1893. 20 Garcin de Tassy (trans. M. Waseem), Muslim Festivals in India and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 56. 21 Meldrum, ‘Moharrem Festival in Natal,’ 1893. 22 Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal,’ 89. 23 African Chronicle, ‘Editorial,’ 13 December 1909. 24 African Chronicle, ‘Letters to the Editor,’ 24 April 1909. 25 African Chronicle, ‘Letters to the Editor,’ 13 December 1909. 26 See Goolam Vahed, ‘Swami Shankeranand and the Consolidation of Hinduism in Natal, 1908–1914,’ Journal for the Study of Religion 10, no. 2 (1997): 3–35: 20–24. 27 African Chronicle, ‘Moherram Festival,’ 29 January 1910. 28 See Goolam Vahed, ‘Race, Class, Community and Conflict: Durban’s Indian Municipal Employees Union, 1914–1949,’ Journal of Southern African Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 104–25: 106–107. 29 Natal Archives Repository (NAR), 3/DBN, II, 4/1/2/441. Applications in April 1934 by P. Mohideen and J. Mahomed of Sparks Road included fire-walking ceremony. 30 Indian Views, ‘Editorial,’ 28 April 1933. 31 NAR, 3/DBN, 4/1/4/281.

Contestation and transformation  89 32 NAR, 3/DBN, 4/1/4/281. 33 See Goolam Vahed, ‘A Sufi Saint’s Day in South Africa: The Legend of Badshah Pir,’ Islamic Culture LXXVII, no. 4 (2003): 31–70. 34 NAR, 3/DBN, 4/1/4/1093. 35 NAR, 3/DBN, 4/1/4/283. 36 Fatima Meer, Portrait of Indian South Africans (Durban: Avon Press, 1969), 206–10. Note: Fatima Meer died in 2010 and Avon Press went out of business in the 1970s; hence, it was not possible to obtain permission for publication of this extract from her work. 37 Daily News, 28 August 1970. 38 See Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, eds. Chatsworth. The Making of a South African Township (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013). 39 M. S. Soofie and A. A. Soofie. Hazrath Soofie Saheb and His Khanqaha (Durban: Impress Web, 1999). See the excellent study by Nile Green, ‘Islam for the Indentured Indian: A Muslim Missionary in Colonial South Africa,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71, no. 3 (2008): 529–53, which locates the Soofie Saheb movement in Natal within the emergence of industrialised religious economies in the Indian Ocean during the late nineteenth century and the role of such missionaries in forging a Muslim community amongst disparate groups of people. 40 Daily News, 11 November 1967. 41 Soofie and Soofie, Hazrath Soofie Saheb and His Khanqaha, 153. 42 Zianul Dawood, ‘PICS: A Trip Down Memory Lane for Durban’s Historic Clairwood Community,’ Daily News, 28 June 2018, accessed 13 June 2016, https​:/​/ww​​w​.iol​​.co​.z​​a​ /dai​​lynew​​s​/pic​​s​-a​-t​​rip​-d​​own​-m​​emory​​-lane​​-for-​​durba​​ns​-hi​​stori​​c​-cla​​irw​oo​​d​-com​​munit​​y​ -157​​17262​. 43 Named after Ahmed Riza Khan of Barelwi (1856–1921) who launched a staunch intellectual argument against the Deobandis in favour of popular practices in Islam. See Usha Sanyal, Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870–1920 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 44 See Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 45 See Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 61–63. 46 Ron Geaves, Sectarian Influences within Islam in Britain with Reference to the Concepts of ‘Ummah’ and ‘Community’ (Leeds: University of Leeds Press, 1996), 153. 47 For a discussion on these differences in the South African context, see Goolam Vahed, ‘Contesting “Orthodoxy”: The Tablighi-Sunni Conflict among South African Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s,’ Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 23, no. 2 (2003): 315–36. 48 See Goolam Vahed, ‘Indian Islam and the Meaning of South African Citizenship – A Question of Identities,’ Transformation 43 (2000): 25–51. 49 ‘8 Points You Should Know about the Sacred Month of Muharram,’ September 2018, accessed 13 April 2019, https​:/​/th​​ejami​​at​.co​​.za​/2​​018​/0​​9​/10/​​8​-poi​​nts​-y​​ou​-sh​​ould-​​know-​​ about​​-the-​​sacre​​d​-m​on​​th​-of​​-muha​​rram-​​2/. 50 Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari (Darul Iftaa, Leicester, UK), ‘Husayn’s RA Going against Yazid & the Sunni View on Yazid,’ Jamiat KwaZulu-Natal, no date, accessed on 18 April 2020, https​:/​/ja​​miat.​​org​.z​​a​/hus​​ains-​​ra​-go​​ing​-a​​gains​​t​-yaz​​id​-th​​e​-sun​​n​i​-vi​​ew​ -on​​-yazi​​d/. 51 All three lectures were accessed on 17 April 2020 and obtained from http://www​.sufi​.co​ .za​/lectures/. 52 See Vahed, ‘A Sufi Saint’s Day in South Africa,’ 31–70. 53 Post Natal, 29 September 1999. 54 Goolam Vahed, ‘Contested Meanings and Authenticity: Indian Islam and Muharram Performances in Durban, 2002,’ Journal of Ritual Studies 19, no. 2 (2005): 129–45: 140–42.

90  Goolam Vahed 55 Habibia Mosque, ‘Marhaba Muharram.’ 2010, accessed 14 August 2012, https​:/​/ ha​​bibia​​mosqu​​e​.org​​.za​/i​​ndex.​​php​/e​​n​/mas​​jid​/2​​16​-pr​​ogram​​mes​/p​​e2​/ma​​​rhaba​​-muha​​ rram-​​1432.​ 56 Vahed, ‘Indian Islam and Muharram Performances in Durban, 2002,’ 138. 57 Michael Wolf, ‘Bo-Kaap March Honours Pioneers of Islam in SA,’ Cape Times, 17 September 2018, accessed 12 December 2018, https​:/​/ww​​w​.iol​​.co​.z​​a​/cap​​etime​​s​/new​​ s​/bo-​​kaap-​​march​​-hono​​urs​-p​​ionee​​rs​-of​​-isl​a​​m​-in-​​sa​-17​​09929​​0.

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‘It ain’t religion; it’s just culture, man!’ Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora Frank J. Korom

Interrogating the sacred and the profane In 2011, the Rajkumari Cultural Center in New York invited me to screen my film titled Hosay Trinidad, which is about Muḥarram performances primarily in St. James, Trinidad, one of the two locations where the event was practised back in the early 1990s when I conducted my initial fieldwork there.1 The screening took place as part of the 13th Kitchrie Festival of Indo-Caribbean Arts and Culture in Flushing, Queens, New York.2 The entire multifaceted event, which included various arts and crafts, song and dance, lectures, exhibitions, etc., was billed as ‘Hosay: Tadjah and Tassa’ (Figure 7.1). As the title suggests, the event was intended to be an educational celebration of diasporan arts and culture. Very little was mentioned in the literature and advertisements about the sacred side of the Shi‘i ritual known as Muḥarram in South Asia, from where the East Indian Caribbean population’s ancestors originally came. The event was, in other words, billed as a secular event, in much the same way as Easter is marked popularly not by the resurrection of the Christian God but by bunnies, chocolate, and egg hunts.3 The film screening was scheduled for the evening prior to the staging of a non-religious Muḥarram performance that would occur at the Flushing MeadowsCorona Park in Queens, which is known for its Unisphere that was built for the 1964 World’s Fair. A large tadjah (ta‘zīyeh) representing a martyr’s tomb in Karbala, Iraq that would be paraded around the Unisphere to the accompaniment of tassa (kettledrum) drumming throughout the following day was being completed at the Queens Museum of Art as part of Hosay Heritage Day (Figure 7.2).4 The film hall was packed with people speaking the distinct English patois of the Indo-Caribbean, as well as some scholars and a representative of the Folk Arts Program of the New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA), the organisation that had funded the extravaganza as an aspect of ‘folk art.’ After the film was over and the question-and-answer session had ended, the usual post-lecture banter and social mingling occurred. While greeting and shaking hands with various people, one rather large and outspoken woman came up to me and said in her thick Trini accent, ‘I didn’t like your film.’ Somewhat taken aback, I asked why, to which she responded, ‘You showed only St. James, man; you didn’t bother with Cedros!’ DOI:  10.4324/9781003018612-7

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Figure 7.1  The cover of the program pamphlet for the 13th Kitchrie Festival of IndoCaribbean Arts and Culture in Flushing, Queens, 2011 Source: Frank J. Korom.

Her point was well taken, even though I tried to defend myself by explaining to her what my rationale was. My explanation that telling two stories instead of one would have made the film too disjointed apparently appeased her temporarily, but it still wasn’t satisfying. She frowned and remarked something concerning it being about culture, not religion, and that I should go to Cedros to see how it is really done (emphasis added). I promised her that I would do that, but thinking to myself that I probably would not get the opportunity to do so in the near future – as I had already spent more than a decade studying Hosay, which culminated

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  93

Figure 7.2  The parade around the Unisphere at the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens on Hosay Heritage Day, 2001. The procession is structurally marked with drum and cymbal players at the head on the far left, followed by flags, then a red moon (marked by white crescent and star), and finally the tadjah, which was constructed in the adjacent museum that served as a substitute for the imambara in which the sacred structure is normally built. Source: Frank J. Korom.

with the film, a series of essays, and finally a book of the same title published in 2003 – I simply let the thought recede to the back of my mind. Little did I know then that I would soon be destined to return to Trinidad. A couple of years later, in 2013, I was once again invited to be a cultural consultant for another secular Hosay project, but this time in a location tellingly called Plantation, Florida (Figure 7.3). It was hosted by Jayadevi Arts, Inc.5 Run by a charismatic East Indian woman from southern Trinidad, the overall goals of her organisation are to preserve, teach, and present Indo-Caribbean arts and culture, while rejuvenating traditions and restoring self-esteem. Their tadjah was to be constructed by a builder from Cedros in southern Trinidad, who was a relative of one of the organisers of the event. However, he declined at the last minute, saying that he couldn’t build the structure ‘out of season.’ The question we could rightly raise, then, is, ‘if Hosay is secular, why would this particular tadjah builder then refuse to build out of season?’ This issue will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter. Subsequently, a not very experienced

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Figure 7.3  The Jayadevi Arts poster for the 2013 secular Hosay conducted in Plantation, Florida, which, ironically, is a place where many Indo-Trinidadians have settled as part of a second or third diaspora. Notice the yellow circle on the upper right that says, ‘No ceremonies, no rituals will be performed.’ Source: Frank J. Korom.

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  95 builder from Queens stepped in at the last minute and constructed the tadjah in a rented storage locker, using power tools and inferior materials to guarantee that the structure would be ready by the time of the event. I was cajoled into assisting the minute I landed there. Meanwhile, the organiser frantically moved from one place to the other, tending to all of the last-minute details, including securing the permit to hold the event in a public park. Their advertisements emphasised the strictly secular nature of the event, so no hints of religion were present, and not a single prayer or reference to Islam was made, except by me, when I gave my lecture the evening before the event was to take place. Like the earlier event in Queens, this one was also billed as an ethnic pageant with a colourful architectural display and drumming. The Plantation tadjah, however, remained stationary for the entire duration of the daylong event, which was plagued by heavy rains and intense winds that even flooded the pavilion in which the tadjah was placed while the finishing touches were being applied (Figure 7.4)! In both cases, the sacred space known as an imambara (imāmbāṛā), in which the tadjahs are built, were replaced by secular structures; namely, a museum in New York and a rented storage facility in Florida. The implications of this will be explored towards the end of my discussion below.6 For now, let us explore more of the context in which Hosay developed over time and through space, and why it has remained so controversial for centuries, even prior to its transportation to the Caribbean in the minds of nineteenth-century indentured labourers from British India. The event known as Hosay in the Caribbean, derived from the name ‘Husayn,’ is supposed to follow the Muslim lunar calendar, during which the performances are required to occur for ten days, beginning on the first of the Islamic lunar month of Muḥarram and ending on the tenth (‘āshūrā’), which is the day when Imam Husayn, the younger grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who is the focal point of the event, was martyred.7 It is in his honour that tadjahs are built and paraded to the accompaniment of cymbal, bass, and kettledrum (tassa) rhythms anywhere in the world where South Asians settled in the diaspora that resulted from British colonialism. Indeed, many of those who went to British plantation colonies around the world never returned home. Most lost touch with their homeland and natal village within a generation, due to a lack of literacy and the inconveniences imposed by the plantocracy that oppressively ruled over indentured labourers. In places like Jamaica, however, Hosay (sometimes spelled Hussay) does not follow any ritual calendar at all, but is held on the weekend closest to the sighting of the new moon in August, which corresponds to what used to be called the ‘dead season’ on the plantations, when work was minimal. Rural Indo-Jamaicans who still observe the occasion celebrate it as a means of ethnic solidarity and remembering the sacrifices of their ancestors who came as indentured labourers to the British sugar cane plantations.8 In other words, Hosay has become completely secularised in Jamaica, and is considered to be an ethnic pageant of sorts, just like the ones in the United States discussed earlier. Some Indo-Caribbean practitioners of Hosay, especially those from Cedros, would also like us to believe that Hosay is a totally secular occasion for celebrating

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Figure 7.4  The secular tadjah constructed in Plantation, Florida, for a cultural event sponsored by an East Indian NGO that serves the substantial Indo-Caribbean community of Florida. Source: Frank J. Korom.

Indian culture in the diaspora. Indeed, it has been one of the most common debates revolving around the performance since it arrived in the Caribbean after the abolition of slavery in 1833. But it was already an issue of grave concern to the British in India, who, despite their general policy of non-interference in religious observances, often took positions against or in favour of certain sectarian groups

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  97 involved during Muḥarram in India.9 I have already addressed many of the issues surrounding the debate over ‘praying’ and ‘playing’ or ‘observation’ versus ‘celebration’ in an earlier book,10 so here I will try not to simply repeat what I argued there. Instead, I wish to draw on more recent fieldwork that was conducted in San Fernando and Cedros while I was consulting for a documentary made by the Trinidadian filmmaker, Dion Samsoondar, titled Hosay Cedros: Uniting a Diaspora (2015).11 Coincidentally, it was in between the two events in New York and Florida mentioned above that Samsoondar and his familial associates contacted me with an invitation to travel to San Fernando, where I would work with them on the film. It was during that period that I was once again hurled into the centre of a longstanding controversy that can easily be traced back to South Asia – and even to Iran – over whether Hosay is religious or not. And if it is not religious, then what exactly is it? The answer really depends on whom you ask the question to. Thanks to the ongoing missionary work of the Bilal Mission of the Americas, Hosay in St. James is now widely recognised as a religious observance associated with the Shi‘i master narrative.12 The master narrative refers to the historic event that occurred near Karbala in what is now Iraq and its subsequent mythicisation that provides the underlying logic and justification of the event.13 Prior to their missionisation, outsiders largely saw the St. James Hosay as an Indian ‘carnival,’ an ethnic and racial counterpart to the Afro-Trinidadian Lenten one. Even the BBC would regularly broadcast it live for the many Indo-Trinidadians residing in yet another diaspora that led them to the United Kingdom. Much of the media coverage has focused on its spectacular artistic and musical nature, as an aspect of East Indian heritage. This is less the case in the south, where media coverage has been minimal, mostly confined to local newspapers and television stations. The St. James version, on the other hand, has received virtually all of the international attention, since it has historically been glitzier, louder, grander, and larger than the southern version. The southern version was thus perceived to be more old-fashioned and plain, with simple white tadjahs substituting for the more colourful ones made of kitschy materials in the north. One very noticeable difference, however, is that in the south the tadjahs are immersed whole in the ocean to float off literally into the sunset, which can be witnessed in the closing moments of the film Hosay Trinidad (1998). Due to shipping lanes in the north, however, the St. James tadjahs must first be disassembled before they can be thrown into the ocean, so as to not obstruct the water traffic.

North and south Before I delve into the ideological debates that occur over Hosay between the two communities in the north and the south, it will be useful to provide an overview of some of the surface differences between the two. As mentioned above, there are two major centres of Muḥarram observance in Trinidad today, although the past ten years or so have seen a revival of Hosay in rural areas where it was no longer performed. Of the two areas where the event has been

98  Frank J. Korom maintained continuously since colonial times, one is in the northern town of St. James, the suburb of Port of Spain discussed above, and the other is in the Cedros District in the southwest of the island. Although one could speak of a ‘unified’ Hosay tradition in Trinidad, variation due to rural–urban differentiation, ethnic and religious affiliation, etc., has shaped the observance in subtle ways. Some participants from St. James emphatically state such differences by saying, for instance, ‘we have nothing to do with the southern tradition.’ In fact, many of the people involved in the construction of the tadjahs in the north confessed to me that they have never witnessed the observance as practised in the south, while the southerners insist that their version is the real deal. The reluctance of northerners to relate to the southerners has to do with lingering stereotypes concerning the southerners’ ‘backward’ and ‘uneducated’ ways. Northerners, on the other hand, think of themselves as ‘modern’ and ‘cosmopolitan.’ Parallel traditions have therefore developed out of one imagined parent tradition that was brought to the island by the indentured ancestors of the present generation of Hosay participants. Some of the similarities and divergences are discussed below. In St. James, the five yards that are also called ‘camps’ or ‘tents’ organising the Muḥarram observances are family-based operations, while in the south, the yards only have loose family associations. The southern yards are based primarily on a community network that follows plantation estate antecedents. Within each yard, an enclosure known as the imam house or imambara, a term of Urdu/Hindi derivation, is constructed to serve as a workshop where the large tadjah is completed in secret. In addition to the construction and parading of the tadjahs, two huge moons, known as sipars in India, are constructed and paraded by two other family-based yards. The two moons, one green and the other red, are corporeal representations of Hasan (green for poison), the elder brother, and Husayn (red for blood), the younger brother who lays down his life in the historical and mythical master narrative that underlines the theology of the event.14 Despite the fact that Hasan died elsewhere, his presence in the Hosay performance is quintessential and remains to be a critical part of the contemporary observance. In the north, the core of the observance is drawn from the Muslim community, especially from the Shi‘i sector. It must, however, be underlined that the sectarian distinctions in Trinidad used to be downplayed for most of the year in the past, but during Hosay the distinction becomes more pronounced due to debates over ‘correct’ practice and doctrine. Among Trinidadian Muslims, those who belong to the more orthodox and/or fundamental groups stand apart from the others, regarding themselves as staunch Sunnis, defenders of the purity of Islam. Such groups are often highly political and very critical of the Muḥarram observances in Trinidad. As a result, those who orchestrate Muḥarram activities, particularly the Shi‘i organisers, must always be on their guard against being criticised by such groups. The aforementioned Bilal Mission’s reformist activities as well as the recent academic attention that the event has received, however, has emboldened and empowered the small community of Shi‘ah to assert its sectarian identity much more than they ever have in the past.15 Indeed, the Shi‘ah of Trinidad do not

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  99 even have their own mosque and generally pray alongside of their Sunni brethren at the St. James mosque.16 The number of Muslims involved in the observance in the south is miniscule. As a result, Hosay is organised, controlled, and performed mainly by Hindus and Christians. This is partly due to the fact that Muslims are less in number in the south than in the north. It also has to do with the fact that there has been a strong anti-Hosay lobby there since the events surrounding the infamous1884 massacre, during which government troops opened fire on the processions, killing at least 22 individuals and injuring many other participants and audience members attending the event as it was being performed in San Fernando.17 Although Hosay is no longer commemorated in San Fernando, the 1884 incident is reenacted annually there on the site where the killings occurred. It would be incorrect, however, to consider the conspicuous absence of a significant Muslim population in the south a new development, since it seems that their small numbers there has been a persistent factor in the maintenance and transformation of the tradition in that part of the country. When I asked one of the main organisers of the event in southern Trinidad whether he saw a contradiction in being a Hindu who organises, participates in, and believes in the power of the Muslim ritual, he thought pensively for a moment, then responded, ‘I presume I am a Muslim one month each year.’ Being a Hindu who respects Muslim customs, therefore, is something relevant to the debates over who owns the tradition and to what its essential meaning is. Moreover, Muḥarram, as performed in Trinidad, must be regarded not as a solely local East Indian phenomenon but also as a global one, since Muḥarram has appeal for people of all sorts, not just Shi‘i Muslims or ethnic South Asians. The moment that the Hosay drums begin beating, multicultural and polyethnic crowds are sure to gather. As Hamdoo Emamali, one of the yard patrons in the north, pointed out to me during fieldwork in 1991, ‘Trinidad is a mini United Nations. When the drums start beating, you can’t control the people on the streets because Trinidad is not a Muslim nation. No, you can’t keep them from jumping up or get them to close their rum shops’ (paraphrase). The observance in the Cedros area in the south could serve as an example of cultural mixing, what I elsewhere call ‘creolization,’18 but people there say that their version of the tradition is much older and ‘realer’ than the northern version. In other words, theirs is more ‘authentic.’ It is ‘older’ and ‘purer.’ But despite such claims to authenticity, today’s Hosay performances are amalgams of many different cultural influences that have developed over time, due to the encounter between Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians, who both had to strategise to keep their own traditions alive, while negotiating tolerance of the ethnic ‘Other.’19 Trinidadians who are passive participants, however, regard it as an East Indian ‘festival’ or fête, an Indian carnival, perhaps because of the colonial legacy of representing it as such. This observation should not surprise the astute reader, since the same is true in India, where the process of cultural mixing and cooptation had already been occurring for centuries prior to the arrival of the tradition in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the British Empire after the abolition of slavery that resulted in the indenture system.20 Moreover, some non-Muslims who are

100  Frank J. Korom involved in the construction of the tadjahs suggest that the observance is more of a cultural performance in Milton Singer’s sense than a religious one, in which an ethnolinguistic group’s identity is celebrated.21 Another important socioeconomic aspect of Hosay is that the southern version has not been subjected to great amounts of commercial exposure in the sense that media coverage of the event has been severely limited, as hinted at above. The lack of exposure is partially due to the rural nature of the Cedros area. Having once been coastal sugar cane and coconut plantations, the surrounding villages have retained their rural flavour as stereotypical ‘sleepy fishing villages’ in the ‘deep south.’ The Hosay observance has not attracted many spectators from beyond the immediate area as a result. The St. James Hosay, in contrast, is an urban phenomenon that has received a great amount of attention in the press, on television, and by word-of-mouth, resulting in more extravagant and lavish productions. The government has been partly responsible for this by promoting Hosay as a tourist attraction. A nickname of St.  James is now ‘Hosay Town,’ which is marked by a green archway with characteristic, domelike features over the main road leading into the area. The latter factor has influenced popular perceptions of the event to some degree, and needs to be considered when discussing the variety of meanings embedded in Hosay. To complete this brief overview, let me continue with the essentials of the observance as performed in both the north and the south, before returning to the issues relating to the interpretation of the practices described below. Hosay in Trinidad consists of (i) building replicas of Husayn’s tomb, which in reality are not replicas but rather, like those of South Asia, imaginative renderings of the original structure located at Karbala, the place where Husayn was eventually buried after his beheading. These are called tadjahs in Trinidad, although nowadays the use of the term in everyday discourse is less current.22 ‘Hosay’ is now used interchangeably for both the performative practices and the edifices themselves. For purposes of clarity, I will refer to the edifices in the processions as tadjah and the overall ritual as Hosay. Both areas also (ii) build a small tadjah, which is devoted to Husayn’s older brother Hasan. It is worth noting that some of the active participants still believe that Hasan died together with Husayn at Karbala, despite the Bilal Mission’s attempts to standardise the narratives underlining the historical events that inform the performances surrounding Hosay.23 In reality, Hasan died 12 years earlier than Husayn, probably poisoned by his wife. The coalescence of the two brothers in Trinidad, however, could be the result of the influence of Hindu epics and Indian lore regarding the heroic exploits of twin brothers. Hasan and Husayn are known in much of the Muslim world by the Arabic dual form of ḥasanayn, and in many countries Hasan is also remembered during Muḥarram. In Bengal, for instance, the tragic saga of Hasan and Husayn is even included in a vernacular rendering of the pan-Hindu epic Mahabharata.24 Whatever the case may be, it is clear that the local communities’ history has been reformulated to suit their own sensibilities. The Karbala paradigm’s master narrative of Husayn’s passion continues to undergo change as the creative process of imagining the past produces ever-newer versions of religious and ethnic

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  101 identities but nevertheless provides some semblance of continuity with an imagined Indian past.25 Preparations in both locations also include (iii) the making and parading of flags that parallel the ‘alams or standards of Iran and South Asia, (iv) the cooking of special foods during the ten days of partial abstinence, and (v) the construction of new tassa and bass drums, re-skinning older ones, and beating special ‘hands’ (rhythms) performed exclusively during Muḥarram. The process of building the large tadjah used to take 40 days, according to builders, but now, due to modern construction methods, such as the introduction of power tools and easily manipulated materials like styrotex, the length of time spent on construction has become more flexible.26 The minimum required, however, is to begin on the first day of Muḥarram, as is common in many places in the south.27 In the north, work on the tadjahs usually begins after the holiday feast called Baqra Eid (‘īd al-‘aḍḥā), celebrated on the tenth day of Zul Hijja, the last month of the Islamic calendar.28 Although participants in both locations loosely adhere to the temporal framework of the Islamic lunar calendar, many differences in structure, technique, and design exist between northern and southern tadjahs. The north, for example, is more ‘traditional’ in building the katheeyah (base) and internal frame, which is made primarily of roseau.29 Today four of the five tadjah building crews in St. James employ roseau in binding the base and strengthening the frame. Otherwise, they have departed quite significantly from tradition in the scheme of colour, shape, and external décor, making them more colourful and glitzy, such as the costumes and floats of Carnival. The northern tadjahs exemplify what we might call ‘material creolization,’ which visually reflects the multicultural and cosmopolitan nature of the event in St. James, where it is often compared to the island’s famous Carnival.30 In the south, the frame is now made solely of wood. However, the exterior is more ‘traditional,’ sometimes referred to locally as the ‘old style.’ The structure of the tadjah is angular, the colour predominantly white, and the external decoration based on white crêpe paper flowers called ‘knot rose.’31 In both north and south the height of the tadjah is currently limited to 15.6 feet due to the placement of electrical and telephone wires hanging over the streets. Earlier tadjahs, however, resembled Indian ones that were 20 or more feet high in the past, with as many as 6 or 7 tiers. In both areas, each imambara or camp has a headman, whose function is similar to the sirdār of the plantation period.32 The headmen are collectively responsible for making financial arrangements, securing parade permits from the police, and, in theory, maintaining the orderly behaviour of the crowd during the processional performances and drumming. The latter, however, is the task of the police in reality. Each camp also includes a master builder, his crew, drummers, and the men in charge of maintaining the drums. Although the whole event, beginning with the cutting of the roseau, can be construed as a ‘ritual’ process, a term I have avoided until now, the most intense portions of Hosay begin to increase from the first of the month of Muḥarram, when those who are involved in tadjah preparation abstain from the intake of meat, fried foods, alcohol, salt, and from sexual intercourse. In the past, the prohibition applied to the whole duration of the 40 days, but nowadays most

102  Frank J. Korom only follow the customs associated with abstinence during the 10 days. Some individuals engaged in building the tadjahs at present follow the proscriptions as a form of sacrifice, but it is more a matter of personal volition rather than a general rule, for some people involved in the construction of the tadjahs in the south continue to drink when they are busy building the structures, while others continue to sleep with their wives during the observance. Regular Muslim prayers led by an itinerant imam hired for the purpose also begin from the first of Muḥarram in the north. He leads the communal prayers in Arabic each evening in front of the imambaras, after which specially prepared sweets are distributed to all in attendance. The practice of daily prayers at sunset generally was missing in Cedros for much of the past, although they are now performed, as will be discussed below. The key to a successful observance here is adaptability and tolerance because many of the proscriptions serve more as ideal types, reflecting reality, not replicating it. Shoes must be removed while working in the imambara, which is technically off-limits to women. In reality, however, post-pubescent girls may work inside as long as they are not menstruating. More and more women have been joining Hosay as both drummers and builders in recent years, especially in the south, as well as in the diaspora. Thus, whoever works on the structures is supposed to remain ritually or customarily pure. Acts of abstinence, combined with long hours of hard work during the evening hours and financial investment, are all viewed as ongoing sacrifices made by community members throughout the first ten days of Muḥarram. Like the drama of Husayn’s martyrdom on the plains of Karbala, participants give up much during the ritual period in order to show grief and austerity for the prototypical martyr, thereby experientially identifying with his suffering. By doing this, they participate locally in the global Shi‘i master narrative and paradigm of Husayn’s suffering on the esoteric level. At least this is the Shi‘i version of it. The reality on the ground, however, is much more complicated, as we will see below, for the meanings underlying the practices are topics of hot contestation. In the next section of this chapter, I turn to a discussion of some of the contested issues at stake.

To pray or to play, that is the question I intentionally avoided using the word ‘ritual’ above, since it most often refers to something considered sacred and therefore religious. However, as I already adumbrated, not everyone involved considers Hosay to be religious. Ritual thus becomes custom and religion becomes tradition, thereby breaking down the sacred–profane dichotomy.33 This became even more clear to me when I returned to Trinidad to do a brief stint of fieldwork in Cedros during 2012 to satisfy my critic from the year before, who had scolded me for presenting Hosay as something religious and only from the St. James point of view. According to her, ‘it ain’t got nothin’ to do with religion. It’s culture, man!’ I formulaically heard this same refrain made over and over again by various people, but it was especially true in the south when I visited Cedros several times during my latest period

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  103 of fieldwork. Scholars in other parts of the world, such as in South Africa and Indonesia, have also noticed the same types of discourses.34 As I mentioned above, the people involved in Hosay down south are mostly nonMuslims. Many of them thus feel that Hosay is an ethnic pageant that celebrates the history and culture of East Indians living in Trinidad. It is a time of celebration and, therefore, not one of mourning. ‘What is all this cryin’ for? We supposed to be happy,’ said one person after watching my 1998 film, in which an interviewee gets emotionally choked up when recounting her experiences growing up in one of the Hosay yards. It is precisely this attitude that upsets and agitates many of those involved in the process up north. Their response is often something like, ‘They don’t respect it, man!’ One can take this to mean that they are not remaining faithful to the underlying, esoteric nature of the event. In many ways, the debate between the northerners and the southerners mirrors a larger debate on the island between the Sunni and the Shi‘ah. The Shi‘ah, being a minority within a minority (as they also were and continue to be in India and the rest of South Asia), have developed a survival strategy over the centuries similar to that of the so-called crypto-Jews of the American Southwest, who were able to retain their Jewishness over the centuries by pretending to be Catholics in the Hispanic regions of the New World and elsewhere.35 In the same vein, the Shi‘ah practice what is theologically termed taqīyyah, literally ‘prudence’ or ‘fear,’ which is a precautionary dissimultation or denial of religious belief and practice for the purpose of avoiding persecution.36 The concept has proven valuable over the centuries to assist the Shi‘ah in persevering persecution throughout their history. In India, for example, the Shi‘ah who entered from Iran were already considered a minority within a minority before their sojourn to the Caribbean. It is thus not surprising that in an effort at self-preservation, they did not protest too much when Hindus and Sunnis gradually began to coopt and usurp the public portions of the Muḥarram performances, which led to a more noticeable difference between public and private forms of observance. The public forms, being more open to non-Shi‘i participation, became more celebratory in nature, whereas the private portions continued to remain solemn occasions for annually mourning the death of Husayn, the supreme martyr. Also, it is within the public sphere that we notice most vividly the accretions that Hindus and Sunnis added to the public Muḥarram observances. It is therefore quite clear that the criticisms made by Sunnis against the Shi‘ah and their observation of Hosay in Trinidad simply cannot be blamed on them, since the very things that they criticise, such as the fetishisation of the tadjahs with the accusation that it is shirk (idolatry), were due to their own interventions back in South Asia. The carnivalisation of Hosay, to repeat, was not a result of the arrival of Indians in the Caribbean, but one of the intermingling of Shi‘i, Sunni, and Hindu elements back in South Asia before the indenture period even began.37 The Sunni also object to the drumming, dancing, and drinking on the streets, collectively referred to as fêteing or jumping up. Yet, as the spokesmen for the St. James Shi‘ah are quick to point out, they cannot control the crowd’s behaviour on the streets and are therefore not responsible for the miscreant actions of revellers.38

104  Frank J. Korom If the Sunni had their way, the tadjahs would not be allowed out of the yards in which they are built because they perceive them to be a mockery of Islam. The builders in the yards, however, insist that the tadjahs must go out, since following the rules of tradition is what makes the rite efficacious. If they do not parade them in the streets, they say, the performance would be incomplete, which could be ‘unlucky.’ Custom thus dictates ritual norms and is seen as integral to them. Due to this constant bombardment of criticism, the St. James Shi‘ah ultimately had to resort to taqīyyah as a strategy of survival, so when I first arrived in Trinidad to do fieldwork in the very early 1990s, people in the yards were extremely reluctant to call themselves Shi‘ah by saying things like, ‘we don’t make such distinctions here.’ By keeping silent on the issue of the Shi‘i nature of Hosay, the discourse on ethnic celebration rose to prominence, and it was this interpretation that the government accepted, endorsed, and stressed ever since Trinidad and Tobago’s independence from the British in 1962.39 The T & T Tourism Board even got involved by advertising it globally as an Indian Carnival, in the hopes that tourists would flood the island to participate in the so-called ‘fête.’40 Feeling underrepresented and helpless in the face of Sunni criticism and government cooption, the practitioners in the yards gradually tended to deemphasise or downplay Shi‘ism and let people think what they may about the external, public portions of the performances, which were largely believed to be ethnic and secular, not religious and sacred, at the core. The private performances, on the other hand, remained ritualistic and metaphysical in nature. The inside was thus esoteric and the outside was exoteric, what Sufis routinely refer to as bāṭin and ẓāhir, respectively. In Cedros, meanwhile, the sorts of debates that went on in the north mostly did not occur. One reason is that the northerners ignored them. The second reason is that the southerners historically never stressed the religious or esoteric dimension of the ritual. For them, it was more of a matter of custom and tradition, rather than religion. Still, the tadjahs there were also believed to have some sort of magical power associated with both healing and good luck, but these aspects of the structures were most often written off as superstitions by the intelligentsia. The reasons for this, as mentioned above, is that there are very few Muslims in southern Trinidad, and virtually all of the people who build the structures paraded on the roads and paths in the village of Cedros are Hindus and Christians. Prayer, fasting, sexual abstinence, and all of the other sacrifices that northerners were compelled to observe were more or less ignored in Cedros, except by some pious elders who performed some of the austerities out of respect for the tradition. Moreover, the taboo against women’s participation was also largely bypassed in the south, and people involved in building the structures could often be seen consuming alcohol in or around the premises where the work was taking place. Such drunken processions used to be called ‘rum Hosays’ in the past. Given the fact that the south has traditionally presented Hosay as an ethnic pageant during which mostly Hindus and Christians of East Indian descent participated both publicly and privately by building during the first seven days, then dancing and drinking on the three days of processions before finally immersing

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  105 the tadjahs whole into the ocean, why is it, then, that many of the older generations still follow the ritual calendar and perform the event as doctrinally prescribed during the first ten days of Muḥarram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar? Recall that even in Florida, a master tadjah builder from Cedros refused to build the structure outside of the prescribed timeframe. When I asked people why they would not prepare for the event outside of the sanctioned period, I received the expected ambiguity of answers. Some simply responded that they did not know why, some stressed tradition, others said that it was out of respect for their Muslim brothers and sisters, but the majority said, in private, that it was the fear of suffering some sort of personal, familial, or social calamity. In confidence, I was told of miraculous stories concerning people who were either saved from hardship and turmoil as a result of participating in Hosay or of those who faced catastrophic consequences by not following the proper sequencing.41 One fellow even told me that he was saved from death by practising Hosay, which is why he has been doing so ever since. Some people thus make ‘promises,’ called vrats by Hindus and mannats by Muslims in South Asia, which both mean ‘vow.’ The promises form reciprocal pacts with the objects of veneration to guarantee the ongoing ‘good luck’ of the practitioner, so that no misfortune should fall upon him or her during the upcoming year. The flags paraded on the first night of processions, literally known as Flag Night, represent the individual promises of yard participants. The ‘superstitious’ belief, as some call it, in the power of the tadjahs specifically and Hosay in general are based on Muslim folklore about the spirit of the two brothers, Hasan and Husayn, entering into their respective makeshift mausolea during the event. This belief goes all the way back to India, from whence the rite came.42 The tadjahs are thus believed to be alive, and they remain so until the tenth day, after which the structures are considered ‘dead’ and undergo janāzah funerary prayers that are incumbent upon all Muslims. The funeral prayers were not always practised in the south, yet the belief in the living powers of the tadjahs during that specific period of time is still quite strong, regardless of religious orientations. Even avowed atheists reluctantly told me that they believed in the powers of the Hosay, based on personal experience. One could therefore think of this belief as a shared form of East Indian folklore or oral tradition that cuts across religious lines.43

Hosay hermeneutics in the global ecumene The other related issue that must be considered is the question of authenticity. Which is the real version? In 1996, one of the yard heads said to me that ‘one version’s got to be right and the others wrong.’ This was after the missionary from the Bilal Mission began attending the event annually and criticising the way things were done there. The missionary wishes to standardise Hosay through a process that involves purification by removing all of what he perceives to be the ‘creolised’ elements. The yard head quoted above thus could no longer accept a multivocal or polysemic version of authenticity, given that there exist concepts

106  Frank J. Korom of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ And here is where the issue of tradition is invoked. As we have seen briefly, the answer really depends upon whom you ask, when you ask, and why you ask the question. In other words, it is highly dependent upon context. A variety of personal, social, religious, political, economic, and racial factors all contribute to Hosay hermeneutics. For a government official, Hosay can be a part of national patrimony, for a member of the tourist board it can be a fête with an economic basis, for an Afro-Trinidadian reveller it can be an Indian carnival, for an non-Muslim Indo-Trinidadian it can be an ethnic pageant to remind one nostalgically of home, and for a member of the small community of Shi‘ite Muslims in St. James it can be a passion play with eschatological and soteriological consequences. Finally, for the outside Shi‘i missionary, it can be an incorrect set of performances that deviate from the standard model provided by liturgies and scriptures alien to the local community. As a result, there is a ‘collision of cultures,’ as James Clifford (1994, 302) characterises all discourse in disaporas. At the same time, however, there is another dimension to it that concerns not just contestation but also negotiation. In the global ecumene, the need for negotiation as a strategy of survival is paramount.44 Negotiation is also a part of determinations concerning authenticity. Does anything go? Has the mechanical reproduction replaced the original?45 Or was there ever an original, and, if so, where does its aura reside? Benjamin would say that the aura resides in the original, which becomes devalued with mechanical reproduction, but as I have argued in my previous writings on Hosay, any answer one might posit is bound to be limited in scope, for explanatory models do not totally account for the messy nature of culture, especially in the global context, where everything is subject to interpretation and reframing. Thus, all of the perspectives given above have some measure of legitimacy for the people who accept them as viable interpretations. All answers are therefore both right and wrong simultaneously. Authenticity is, from this perspective, more of an issue of nostalgia and desire based on a (post-)modern loss of faith and meaning, as Charles Lindholm has argued.46 In his book titled Culture and Authenticity, Lindholm argues that authenticity has many guises. It can offer a sense of belonging or connectivity, and, as such, infuses value into things and experiences by emphasising the ‘really real’ or the pure, yet it is not a fixed concept because it changes over time. Authenticity, however it is perceived, is ultimately about purity, which can result in a harmless nostalgia for a better past or even violent ethnic cleansing to achieve purity in the most extreme and harsh cases. Hosay has thus been prone to violence in the past,47 but it also harkens back to an earlier, more harmonious pre-diasporan era utopia.48 Authenticity in the global ecumene is thus a force for both homogeneity and heterogeneity. Tradition, the basis for discourses over authenticity, is inherently conservative, which resists change as best it can to preserve itself continuously over time and through space, yet globalisation slowly eats away at tradition to bring about inevitable change. Tradition persists, though, despite the most powerful forces it faces. With reference to hybridity (what I prefer to call ‘creolization’), Bruno

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  107 Latour suggests that the constant attempt to purify something naturally leads to change.49 Purification is thus an incomplete project. In other words, no matter how much one attempts to mediate the dialectical relationship between tradition and modernity, local and global, change is inevitable, for time and history must move forward. How does such theorising play out in terms of Hosay? As I have previously argued, the Muḥarram rituals, as they developed in Iran, build upon pre-Islamic elements concerning a nascent cult of the dead, with a focus on heroes that we find resurrected in the Persian epic known as the Shahnameh.50 The remembrance of Husayn then develops into private and public observances until it receives official sanction when Shi‘ism becomes the state religion under the Safavids. The fact that the Persian or Iranian ta‘zīyeh does not simply emerge ex nihilo, at the moment of the historical event central to the Karbala paradigm, suggests that it must be seen as building on prior phenomena, some elements abandoned, others emphasised, and yet others reworked. What this dynamic process implies is both convergence as well as divergence, what I have discussed previously as creolisation and decreolisation.51 Creolisation is something that we normally associate with sociolinguistics, but it works well as a model for global culture, as Ulf Hannerz has convincingly demonstrated. He discusses a ‘world’ in creolisation, which suggests that cultural mixing is inevitable as it moves from one place to another, encountering other cultures along the way.52 It is not just something associated with the Caribbean in the same sense that ritual exchange is not only something associated with Polynesia or caste as something solely associated with India.53 Thus, when ta‘zīyeh gets to South Asia, it innovatively takes on brand new inflections but retains several key elements from the Iranian observances. Certain things remain continuous, even as innovations creep in. Notable changes occur even to the name of the event and its key performance in South Asia, yet the Karbala paradigm lends continuity to an ever-changing phenomenon that must adapt to survive. It is worth stressing again that the Shi‘ah lost performative control of the public portions of the event in South Asia, thereby being somewhat dispossessed of a critical aspect of their heritage. Hindus and Sunnis now controlled the public portions of the event, for better or for worse, as the Indian Shi‘ah had to resort more and more to taqīyyah as a strategy for self-preservation and survival. After centuries of mingling, during which the dialectical process of creolisation/decreolisation continues, the entire performance complex gets transferred to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, where it encounters yet another distinct layer of culture associated with Afro-Trinidadians. In the Caribbean a rite of passage becomes a passage of rites, where it continues to go through a series of creative transformations, some conscious, some not, but still remains true to an imagined original or traditional form brought from India under British colonial rule. Creole is, of course, a term commonly associated with the Caribbean, but my argument is that creolisation and its concomitant decreolisation did not just happen or begin in the Caribbean, for it was already happening in India, and even earlier still in Iran (where ludic elements are also present) and most likely even before then in Iraq.

108  Frank J. Korom In Fernand Braudel’s longue durée, mixing and change continue as a forwardmoving force involving constant and conscious interpretation and reinterpretation of practices and meanings that converge in some instances and diverge in yet others as part and parcel of larger historical structures.54 As Henry Glassie notes, change is the natural state of tradition, for it provides, as he puts it, an ‘illusion of stability.’55 Such crisscrossing over time and through space has resulted in the rich panoply of meanings associated with Hosay in Trinidad and elsewhere in the world today. It allows us to appreciate the fact that authenticity is in the eye of the beholder, and that an item of tradition can constantly be in the process of change while magically seeming to stay the same, which is what members in the Hosay yards say when outsiders from the Bilal Muslim Mission, for example, tell them that they are doing it wrong. Here the Hosay practitioners can cite tradition as what they perceive to be static and eternal when they say in a paraphrase, ‘we’re just doing it like our ancestors from India taught us to do.’ What results from the continuous process of tradition making is an ongoing contestation over an imagined form of authenticity that can only be what Max Weber famously termed an ‘ideal type.’56 The ideal type does not exist in reality, but only as a model in the mind of the analyst. The ideal and the real are mere reflections of one another, but one thing is certain: the utopian ideal type never existed in a past golden age (Williams 1973), for tradition is the ongoing byproduct of human creativity, ‘volitional, temporal action,’ the ‘small acts’ that yield ‘big patterns.’57 Hosay’s longue durée, therefore, could not have been possible without the individual agency of each of the people involved in it over the centuries who have left their mark, be they Shi‘i or Sunni Muslims, South Asian or Indo-Caribbean Hindus, or Afro-Caribbean Christians and Shango practitioners. All forms of agency leave their immutable mark on something as emotionally compelling as Hosay, and for that we should be grateful. Meanwhile, back in Cedros, despite the claims that their version of Hosay is the real one because it is secular and belongs to all Trinidadians of Indian descent, we see that there, too, change continues to creep in. When I was in Cedros during my last trip, I noticed more and more things that we might associate with the northern Hosay, like communal prayer and abstinence, are beginning to take hold in the southern version, now that a young but charismatic imam who used to be a budding drummer in St. James before he went abroad to study in an Islamic seminary, attends annually to preside over the occasion. His presence has had a bit of a reformist impact on how Hosay is observed in Cedros, but it is still more or less how I found it first in the early 1990s, namely, an Islamic observance performed predominantly by East Indian Hindus and Christians for the purposes of celebrating their ethnic heritage and their contribution to Trinidadian culture. In the end, the popular Trini slogan, ‘who say, I say, Hosay,’ still applies.

Notes 1 Bishop, John and Frank J. Korom. Hosay Trinidad (DVD). Watertown: Documentary Educational Resources, 1998.

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  109 2 The term kitchrie (khicṛī) refers to a well-known East Indian dish made up of leftover rice and lentils, combined with whatever vegetables are near at hand. It is often used as a metaphor for East Indian culture in the Caribbean, which is a combination of ingredients ‘leftover’ from the Old World and combined with whatever is available in the New World. On the concept and logic of mixing in the Caribbean, with special reference to Trinidad, see Viranjini Munasinge, Callaloo or Tossed Salad: East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). 3 The event, however, did include a number of shorter talks by members of the community on the history of Hosay in Trinidad, but the religious dimensions of the performances were primarily discussed as historical background and tradition. In fact, the term ‘legend’ was used in their pamphlet to refer to the tragic historical events surrounding the origins of Hosay. Most of the speakers were, in fact, Hindu, except for the master builder, ‘Ustad’ Abdool Karatee, who shared elderly memories of past Hosays. The event was thus largely parsed as an aspect of Indian ethnic heritage, rather than a Shi‘ite ritual, in which a museum served as the imambara. 4 The builders were from the ‘imambara yard’ in Richmond Hill, Queens, where a drum room for tassas is also maintained. The self-proclaimed master builder there is the aforementioned Abdool Karatee. 5 www​.jayadeviarts​.inc. Accessed on 13 April 2020. 6 These are not the first instances of the sacred structures being built out of context, for John Nunley of the St. Louis Museum of Art had organised for a tadjah to be built in his museum as part of a festival arts exhibition that he was curating. See John W. Nunley and Judith Bettelheim, Caribbean Festival Arts: Each and Every Bit of Difference (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). 7 The observance of this occasion is to the Shi‘ah what Good Friday is to Christians. Indeed, many observers over the centuries have referred to the Shi‘i Muḥarram rituals performed around the world as a ‘passion play,’ on the analogy of Christ’s passion during the days preceding Easter. 8 Guha Shankar, ‘Imagining India(ns): Cultural Performances and Diaspora Politics in Jamaica,’ Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 2003. 9 Jim Masselos, ‘Power in the Bombay “Muhalla.” 1904–15: An Initial Exploration into the World of the Indian Urban Muslim,’ South Asia 6 (1976): 75–95; also see Jim Masselos, ‘Change and Custom in the Format of the Bombay Mohurrum during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,’ South Asia 5, no. 2 (1982): 47–67. 10 Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad: Muḥarram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 11 Samsoondar is a Hindu Indo-Trinidadian, but he also feels patriotic to his homeland. In his own way of looking at it, he wanted to make the film a statement about the role of Indians in Trinidad and also the role that Hosay played to bring East Indians together, even at times when the Afro-Trinidadian population was hostile to them. 12 Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 232–45. 13 See Michael Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). 14 Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 170–76. 15 Frank J. Korom, ‘Empowerment through Representation and Collaboration in Museum Exhibitions,’ Journal of Folklore Research 36 (2–3) (1999): 235–41; also see Frank J. Korom, ‘Blunders, Plunders and the Wonders of Religious Ethnography: “Archiving” Tales from the Field,’ Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 13/1 (2001): 58–73. 16 The Bilal Muslim Mission, a Shi‘i organisation, was founded in East Africa in 1964 due to the efforts of Sayyid Saeed Akhtar Rizvi. Their goal is to promote Shi‘i Islam around the world. They first came to Trinidad in 1992 after a failed coup organised by a Sunni Muslim group on the island. Their efforts to revive and support the small group of Shi‘ah on the island led to some radical changes in how Hosay was organised, per-

110  Frank J. Korom formed, and perceived in St. James. However, their impact was rather minimal in the south, where Cedros is located. 17 Singh, Kelvin, Bloodstained Tombs: The Muharram Massacre 1884 (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1988). 18 Frank J. Korom, ‘Reconciling the Local and the Global: The Ritual Space of Shi‘i Islam in Trinidad,’ Journal of Ritual Studies 13, no. 1 (1999): 21–36. 19 Martins de Araújo, ‘Trinidad Século XIX: Estaratégias Culturais Entre Indianos e Afro-Descendentes na Festa Muçulmana do Hosay,’ Revista Mosaico 1, no. 2 (2008): 232–44. 20 Goolam Vahed, ‘Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910: The Role of the Muharram Festival,’ Journal of African History 43, no. 1 (2002): 77–93; see also Goolam Vahed, ‘Contesting Indian Islam in KwaZuluNatal: The Muharram Festival in Durban, 2002,’ in The Popular and the Public: Cultural Debates and Struggles over Public Space in Modern India, Africa and Europe, ed. Preben Kaarsholm and Isabel Hofmeyr (London: Seagull Books, 2009), 107–40. 21 Milton Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). 22 Again, the term is derived from a Hindi/Urdu precedent (ta ‘zīya) that goes back to a Perso-Arabic term for the expression of grief. The /z/ shift to /j/ is quite common in eastern Hindi dialects, such as Bhojpuri, which was the form spoken by the majority of people who came to the Caribbean from northern India. Some Muslim Indo-Trinidadians, however, imaginatively refer to it as Urdu, since it has Islamic connotations, being, as it is, the national language of Pakistan, an Islamic republic. 23 Members of the mission now hand out pamphlets every evening to explain their version of the historical events that correspond to each night of public performance. They also urge bystanders to respect the event as a religious ritual by not dancing or drinking, which has led many non-participants to say that Hosay is no longer any ‘fun.’ Indeed, the crowds have thinned considerably over the years since I did my initial research between 1990 and 1996. 24 For one such example, see Brenda E. F. Beck, The Three Twins: The Telling of a South Indian Folk Epic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). 25 ‘Karbala paradigm’ is a term coined by Michael M. J. Fisher, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980) to refer to the all-encompassing impact that the tragic events surrounding Husayn’s martyrdom have had on the collective psyche of Shi‘ah all over the world. See also Frank J. Korom, ‘Reconciling the Local and the Global: The Ritual Space of Shi‘i Islam in Trinidad,’ Journal of Ritual Studies 13, no. 1 (1999b): 21–36 and Frank J. Korom, Hosay Trinidad: Muḥarram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 16–31. 26 It is now also becoming increasingly common for builders to recycle many of the materials, especially the frame, so that they don’t need to begin from scratch every year. Cost is an issue as well. 27 The moon yards of St. James also construct their crescents during the first ten days of Muḥarram. 28 For a description, see Christian W. Troll, ‘Muslim Festivals and Ceremonies,’ in The Muslims of India: Beliefs and Practices, ed. Peter Jackson (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1988), 44. 29 Roseau is commonly called ‘giant reed,’ a grass known as Arundo donax L. 30 My thanks go out to Regina Bendix for suggesting this provocative term to me back in 2001. 31 One of the structures built in 1991 was covered with 24,000 of these hand-made knot roses. An alternative name for these ornaments in south Trinidad is batassah. 32 The imambara (Trinidadian spelling) is a roofed shack with three permanent walls and one wall that is removable so that tadjah segments can be brought out easily and assem-

Muḥarram controversies in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora  111 bled in the adjacent yard. Note that in St. James, use of the word ‘camp’ is discouraged, but tolerated. 33 Frank J. Korom, ‘Contested Identities and the Uses of Tradition among IndoTrinidadians,’ in Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity: A Festschrift for Barbro Klein, ed. P. J. Anttonen (Botkyrka: Multicultural Centre, 2000), 86–99. 34 For example, see Chiara Formichi, ‘Shaping Shi‘a Identities in Contemporary Indonesia between Local Tradition and Foreign Orthodoxy,’ Die Welt des Islams 54 (2014): 212–36, or Goolam Vahed, ‘Contested Meanings and Authenticity: Indian Islam and Muharram Performances in Durban, 2002,’ Journal of Ritual Studies 19, no. 2 (2005): 129–45. 35 See Stanley Hordes, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); also see David Gilitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Albuqurque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002). 36 Etan Kohlberg, Secrecy and Concealment (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1995). 37 Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 53–96. 38 Moreover, say the elder spokesmen, the crowds do not know the real meaning of Hosay, since they are not members of the yards in which the tadjahs are built. Those who participate in drumming and building generally tend to know the core narrative and they observe the various taboos associated with the 10–40-day period leading up to the climax on the tenth day. 39 Independence was based on an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, which granted Trinidad and Tobago independence on August 31, 1962. The newly formed Republic of Trinidad and Tobago then implemented a new constitution, which went into effect retroactively from the moment of independence. Since the newly formed government was almost completely Afro-Trinidadian, one of the issues taken up was the role of Indo-Trinidadians in the new nation, which continues to be debated down to the present, despite the fact that the two ethnic populations have equalled out and East Indians have even served as Prime Ministers of the Republic. 40 In fact, that is how I first discovered Hosay back in 1985, when I stumbled upon an advertisement for British West Indian Airlines (BWIA) that invited the reader to come to colourful Trinidad to experience the India carnival called Hosay. See Molly Ahye, Golden Heritage: The Dance in Trinidad and Tobago (Petit Valley, Trinidad and Tobago: Heritage Cultures, Ltd., 1978). 41 The commitment to be a part of Hosay involves making ‘promises’ (vows) that obligate individuals to contribute financially or by providing materials and labour. Women also make promises, then sew the flags as a symbol of their promise to take out in procession on Flag Night. 42 Rahi Masoom Reza, The Feuding Families of Village Gangauli (New Delhi: Viking Penguin Books India (P), Ltd., 1994). 43 In fact, non-Indians who have been drawn to the practice of Hosay also believe in the power of the structures. One Afro-Trinidadian auto mechanic, who was in his eighties, told me that he once had a heart attack during Small Hosay Night. He believed he was dead, but was taken into the imambara where he was miraculously revived. He had been making promises of one kind or another ever since the incident took place back in the 1950s. On miracles in popular Islam, see Torsten Tschacher, ‘Rational Miracles, Cultural Rituals and the Fear of Syncretism: Defending Contentious Muslim Practice among Tamil-Speaking Muslims,’ Asian Journal of Social Science 37, no. 1 (2009): 55–82. 44 Ulf Hannerz, ‘Notes on the Global Ecumene,’ Public Culture 1, no. 2 (1989): 66–75. 45 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana, 1968), 214–18. 46 Charles Lindholm, Culture and Authenticity (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008).

112  Frank J. Korom 47 Subho Basu, ‘Strikes and “Communal” Riots in Calcutta in the 1890s: Industrial Workers, Bhadralok Nationalist Leadership and the Colonial State,’ Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 4 (1998): 949–83. 48 Fredric Jameson, ‘Reification and Utopia,’ Social Text 1 (1979): 130–48. 49 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 50 Korom, Hosay Trinidad: Muḥarram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 51 Korom, Hosay Trinidad, 194–201. 52 Ulf Hannerz, ‘The World in Creolisation,’ Africa 57, no. 4 (1987): 546–59. 53 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory,’ Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1988): 16–20. 54 Fernand Braudel, ‘Histoire et Sciences sociales: La longue durée,’ Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 13, no. 4 (1958): 725–53. 55 Henry Glassie, ‘Tradition,’ Journal of American Folklore 108, no. 430 (1995): 395– 412, esp. p. 405. 56 Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: The Free Press, 1949), 90–107. 57 Henry Glassie, ‘Tradition,’ Journal of American Folklore 108, no. 430 (1995): 395– 412, esp. p. 409.

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Index

alams, 4, 30, 43, 46, 101 Ashura (Aashura) Day, 26, 71

Gulam Mydin, role in Crown Jubilee celebrations, 66–67

Bhera communities in, 16, 17, 20 Mohyal self-redefinition at, 13–16 boria, 6

Haft Tamasha, Mirza Muhammad Hasan Qatil, 13 Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie, 12, 21 hoey. see Straits Settlements secret societies Hosay Cedros: Uniting a Diaspora (2015), Samsoondar, Dion, 97 Hosay Trinidad, Frank J. Korom, 91–94 Husayni Brahmans, ethnography and history of, 13–14

Chhibbar, Munshi Ram Das caste narratives by, 15, 16, 17. see also Mohyals Chibbars in India and Pakistan, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20. see also Mohyals colonial view of Muharram in India, 41, 42, 43, 45 in South Africa, 73, 75, 77–78 in Straits Settlements, 7–8, 54–60, 62, 64–67 communal disharmony, 5, 30–31, 37, 59–64, 65, 66 creolisation (creolization), 6, 99, 107–108 cultural enclosures, 25, 26, 28 cultural Hindus, 27–28, 31–32, 33, 35, 36, 37 Datar, Mira, 30, 36 Deen, Ihyaaud, views on Muharrum celebrations, 71 Deobandi reformism, 8, 82–83. see also reformism export of Muharram, 1, 4–5, 53–57, 63, 71–72, 73, 95, 97 Ganesh (Ganpati) festival, 3, 24, 27–28, 37, 45 Groups Areas Act (1950), 7, 80–82

Imam Husayn in Muharram narrative, 13, 72, 83, 84–85 warriors of, 13, 17. see also Mohyals Imam Jayanti, 27, 42. see also Muharram celebrations by non-Muslims imambara, 79–80, 95, 98, 101, 102 Indo-Caribbean Muharram (Hosay) atmosphere at, 97, 104 celebrations for, 95, 98–100, 104–105 creolisation and decreolisation of, 6, 99, 105, 106, 107 films about, 91–94, 97 imambara at, 95, 98, 101, 102 international appeal of, 91–95, 97 interpretations of, 95, 100, 101–105, 107 longue duree, 108. see also IndoCaribbean Muharram (Hosay) creolisation and decreolisation modification of, 99–100, 106–107 non-Muslim participation in, 8–9, 98–99, 104–105 origins of, 95 regional similarities and differences, 97–99, 100, 101–104, 108

Index  123 as a religious or cultural practice, 95–97, 102–103, 104–105 as a secular event, 91–97 tadjahs (ta’ziahs), 93, 95, 97–98, 100–102, 105 Karbala narrative of, 13–14, 18, 30, 71–72, 79–80, 84–85 oral literature from, 21. see also Premchand Korom, Frank J., Hosay Trinidad, 91 kudu, 66–67. see also taboot, tabut, ta’ziah matam display of, 24, 33–35, 36, 37 Hindu observers of, 34–35, 36 McLean, Dorothy, on Group Areas Act (1950), 81–82 mersiakhani, 34 Mohyals birthplace of, 16 characteristics of, 13, 14, 15, 19 as Husayni Brahmans, 4, 13, 15, 16, 18–19, 20 imbrications by, 18 in the Karbala narrative, 18, 21 in modern India and Pakistan, 17–18, 19–20 quasi-Shi`i practices by, 20 self-redefinition by caste and religion, 13–15, 16, 17, 18, 19–20, 21 Muharram according to Wynne, 54–58 atmosphere of, 28, 55, 80 as carnival, 2, 4, 6–7, 42, 45, 55, 85, 99 celebrations. see also Muharram celebrations by non-Muslims as Indian identity, 3–4, 5, 28, 55, 57, 58 in the Indo-Caribbean, 98–102 national and international, 2–6, 91–95, 97 in South Africa, 71–74 in South Asia, 4–5, 42, 64 in Western Deccan, 26–27, 29–30, 45–46 changes in practices of, 80–82, 86–87 characteristics of, 1, 53–55, 59, 62. see also processions; ta’ziah colonial view of, 7, 8, 42–43, 54–57, 58–61, 73–78 communal disharmony at, 7, 27, 31, 37, 45, 54–58, 75–76

confusion about, 4, 54, 58–60, 91–92 criminalisation of, 53–58, 61–62 cultural enclosures of, 24–25, 26 degeneration of, 54, 61, 62, 64, 65–66 as a disturbance, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 77 export of, 4, 5, 53–57, 71, 73, 95, 97 faqirs at, 12, 20 Hindu defenders of. see also Mohyals in a Hindu majority, 31, 32, 42 as a holy month, 1, 24, 41, 71, 83, 95, 99, 105 as Imam Jayanti, 27, 42. see also Muharram celebrations by non-Muslims as an Indian festival, 6, 7, 42, 63, 64, 71, 99 interpretations of, 28, 95, 100, 103, 107 law and order issues in South Africa, 77–78 Straits Settlements, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62 Western Deccan, 30-31, 42, 45 as means of counterbalancing religious tensions, 24, 25, 26 modifications in, 1–3, 9, 99, 105, 106, 108 as mourning. see matam narrative, 9, 12, 13, 41, 54, 61–62, 82–83 as part of Marathi culture, 24–25, 26 participation by non-Muslims in, 6, 24, 29, 31, 37, 42, 44–45 performances at, 1, 2, 3, 8, 28, 45, 75, 97 political aspects of, 3, 26, 27–28, 33, 61, 64, 65–66 popularity of, 4, 5 processions. see processions reformism in, 85, 87, 95, 106 as religious or cultural practice, 8–9, 61–62, 65–66, 91–92, 95–97 as secular event, 1–3, 28, 31–32, 35, 37, 91–95 as Shia festival, 4, 24, 54–55, 58, 65 similarities with Ganesh procession, 3, 7, 9, 24, 27, 29–30, 36, 45 social transformation of, 67, 71, 82–83 as socio-political statement, 5, 35, 37, 53, 62 as struggle for independence, 7, 53, 64, 104 suppression of, 4, 6–8, 53, 55, 76–79, 85 as synthesis of cultures, 24, 25–28, 46–50, 99–100, 107–108

124 Index transformation of, 6, 71–72, 80, 81–83 unconventional elements of, 3, 12, 45, 67, 75 Muharram celebrations by non-Muslims as Imam Jayanti, 27, 42 as political consolidation, 2–3, 12–13 as social event, 24, 43, 44–45, 55, 74–76 Muslims as cultural Hindus, 27–28 exclusivity of, 33, 35, 36, 63–64 Puneri identity of, 24, 25, 28, 33, 36, 37. see also cultural Hindus in South Africa, 72 in the Straits Settlements, 5 Nasution, Khoo Salma, 61, 62 pagoda,75, 78, 82. see ta’ziah (tazia, taziyah, tadjah, thaziya) Penang Riots, 53, 58 Premchand, Karbala, 18 processions as amalgam of cultures, 25, 26, 28 characteristics of, 1–3, 24 in Crown Jubilee celebrations, 66–67 fightspots in, 30–31 Ganesh, 3, 7–8, 27–28, 45 in the Indo-Caribbean, 97, 101, 103–104, 105 law and order issues at, 6–7, 30–31, 34, 54, 58–60, 62, 99 limitations on, 55, 61, 63, 76–80, 82, 104 routes, 26, 27–28, 43 similarities, 3, 27, 28, 34–35, 37 as social inclusion, 2, 24, 32, 42–43, 66–67, 75, 104 in South Africa, 75, 77, 78, 80–81, 85 in the Straits Settlements, 58, 60, 63 in the Western Deccan, 24, 26–29, 30, 41, 42, 45, 46. see also Syair Tabut Qatil, Mirza Muhammad Hasan, Haft Tamasha, 13 Raza, Rahi Ma’sum, Adha Ganv, 18–19 reformism, 8, 82–83, 87, 97, 98–99 religious practices as cultural activities, 1–3 as socio-political statements, 2–4, 5, 53–54, 59, 62, (religious practices as sociopolitical statements continued) 64–66 rum Hosay, 104 Rushdie, Salman, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 12, 21

Samsoondar, Dion, Hosay Cedros: Uniting a Diaspora (2015), 97 Sarma, Dr. Dines, Mohyal mayor, 19–20 secret societies in Straits Settlements, 6, 7, 53, 54, 55–56, 60, 65, 67 Shia as copiers of a myth, 30 financial networks, 33 group in Multan, 18 Karbala commemorations in Pune, 25, 32 matam, 33–35, 36, 37 as minority, 103 Muharram celebrations by, 24, 26, 72 Muslims according to Wynne, 56 processions in Pune, 33–34 tazias, 33, 74 Shia-Sunni differences in celebrations, 4–5, 7, 8, 24, 32–36, 53–54, 74, 103–104 in Karbala narrative, 83–84 in South Africa, 71–72 in tazia and tabut, 30 in tazias, 33–34, 74 Skultan, hydraulic model by, 26 Soofie Saheb (Shah Goolam Mohamad) saint in South Africa, 81-82, 84–86 South African Muharram, 7, 8, 75–80 beliefs, 71, 83, 84 brief history of, 71–73 celebrations, 73–76, 79–80, 83, 86–87 changes in practices of, 71–72, 80–82, 83, 86–87 commemoration of indentured Indians at, 86 communal discontent in, 72–73, 75–76, 77, 82 critique of, 74–76, 77–78 effect of Group Areas Act on, 7, 76–77, 80–82 Hindu reformist movement in, 76 Karbala connection of, 71–72, 74 law and order issues during, 7, 73, 74, 77–78 processions for, 77, 78–80 reformism in, 8, 76, 82–85 Sunnis at, 71, 72–73, 85, 86–87 suppression of, 76, 77–78 ta’ziyahs (tazias), 74–75, 76, 77–78, 80, 82, 85–86 urbanisation of, 76–80 Stracey, TP Russell Assistant-Accountant General for Punjab, book on castes in India, 15–16, 17

Index  125 Straits Settlements Muharram boria, 6 celebrations, 54–55 colonial view of, 4–5, 6–7, 8, 55–60, 62–65, 66 communal disharmony at, 5–6, 59–64, 65, 66 criminalisation of, 53, 54, 57, 59–60, 62, 66 Crown Jubilee celebrations in, 66–67 degeneration of, 61, 62 expectations of, 58–59, 61–63 hoey, 55. see also secret societies law and order issues in, 7, 55, 59, 61, 62, 63 procession, 53, 55, 58–59, 62 religious aspects in, 54, 61–62, 63, 64–65 social politics of, 5, 53–54, 59, 62, 64–66, 67 suppression of, 53, 54, 55, 64 taboot. see also tabut Sunni Ashura Day beliefs, 26, 71 beliefs in the Indo-Caribbean, 99, 100, 104 law and order issues, 27, 30–31 migrants, 19 Muharram celebrations, 7, 8, 24, 25, 26–32, 36 Muharram in South Africa, 71, 73 tazias, 30, 31, 74. see also cultural Hindus syncretism as amalgam of cultures, 24–25, 28 as cultural enclosure, 25, 26, 28 as form of identity, 6, 24, 28, 33, 34, 35, 37 as hybrid religiosity, 36, 37 as imbrication, 18 in politics, 27–28 taboot, 44, 45, 58, 59, 76 tabut, 30, 33, 41–42, 45, 46, 56, 61, 66 comparison with tazia, 30 in Crown Jubilee celebrations, 66–67. see also taboot, tadjahs, ta’ziah Tabut, Syair, poem on Muharram procession, 64 tadjah. see ta’ziah (tazia, taziyah, tadjah, thaziya) taqiyyah, 103 tazia. see ta’ziah (tazia, taziyah, tadjah, thaziya)

ta’ziah (tazia, taziyah, tadjah, thaziya) affected by Group Areas Act, 80–82 changes in practices for, 85–87, 107 characteristics of, 27–30, 41, 43, 45–46, 74, 101, 105 as communal projects, 74–75, 101–102, 105. see also cultural Hindus comparison with tabut, 30 construction, 29–30, 41, 101, 102 contributions of non-Muslims to, 29, 45, 55, 77, (ta’ziah, contributions of nonMuslims to continued) 99–100, 106 creolization of, 107 design as amalgam of cultures, 24, 27, 28–29, 46, 47–48, 49 immersion of, 4, 26–27, 41, 45, 46 inspired by temple architecture, 46–50 limitations on, 78–79. see also suppression of Muharram local influences on, 25–26, 28–29, 46, 85–86, 102 lost tradition of, 49–50, 85–86, 105–106 as Maharashtrian identity, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32 meaning of, 41, 42, 107 modernization of, 95, 101, 102 in North India, 43, 48 other terms for, 66–67, 75, 78, 82, 91 political significance of, 27, 59 procession, 79–80, 85–86 procession fight spots, 30–31, 35, 36, 77 procession in Pune, 26–27, 28, 29–30, 33–34, 36 regional differences in the IndoCaribbean, 101–102 sacrifices during building of, 101–102 Shia-Sunni differences in, 74, 103–104 similarities with Ganesh procession, 27–28, 45 of the Western Deccan, 41–50. see also taboot taziya. see ta’ziah (tazia, taziyah, tadjah, thaziya) temple architecture as amalgam of cultures, 26, 28, 29, 46–49 in tazia designs, 24, 32, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 thaziya. see ta’ziah (tazia, taziyah, tadjah, thaziya) thugee, 56–57 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, Ganesh procession by, 3, 8, 27, 32, 45

126 Index Triad and Tabut, Wynne, Mervyn Llewelyn, 56 Vaughan, Jonas Daniel, Malays of Penang, 55–56, 62, 64 Western Deccan Muharram amalgam of cultures in, 25, 26, 28 processions, 21, 30, 41, 42, 45, 46

as socio-political statement, 27, 32, 45 tazias in, 46–50 Wynne, Mervyn Llewelyn Deputy Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police Force, 54, 55, 56 narrative and speculations by, 55–58, 59, 60, 62, 66 sources of information used by, 55–56 Triad and Tabut, 56