are in order.
There are some great differences concerning the manner in which muḥarram is observed in predominantly Muslim countries and in India. Perhaps the greatest and most significant difference between India and Muslim nations lies in the use of the word ta‘zi̅yeh. Whereas the term is used in Persian to refer to the ritual drama, it has a different connotation in South Asia. There it is the name given to the model cenotaphs, the focal point of the public processions that take place during the event in many parts of northern India. Such differences notwithstanding, the historical consciousness instilled in believers by the Muharram narratives continued to remain an integral part of the ritual complex as developed and practiced in India. Indeed, I believe I can reasonably argue that it is the historical narrative that has kept the tradition alive and vital in many parts of the world. According to oral legend, muḥarram was known in India as early as 1398 C.E., when the conqueror from Samarqand, Timur Lenk (1336–1405 C.E.), better known as Tamerlane in English, crossed the Indus to implant Islam firmly in the subcontinent and to establish political rule.3
Vernon Schubel provides an abbreviated account of the legend:
[W]hile in Iraq Timur converted to Shi‘ism and became so deeply and emotionally attached to the area around Karbala that he would not move his troops from that spot. In order to deal with this situation, the ‘ulama of the region built a replica of the tomb which he could take with him out of the dust and clay of that place. It is reported that nightly sounds of mourning and lamentation could be heard arising from the model. It was this ta‘zi̅yah which was brought to India by Timur during his invasion.4
Given that Timur visited Karbala only after his invasion of India, the historicity of the account is questionable. Nonetheless, it is a pious narrative still in circulation today that functions as an etiological justification for the ostentatious practice of building model tombs. These artistically rendered replicas of Husayn’s actual tomb at Karbala came to be known as ta‘zi̅yahs in Urdu and other north Indian languages. In South Asia, symbolic pilgrimage thus came to replace the arduous physical pilgrimage to Karbala.
Note that in India and elsewhere on the subcontinent the object of veneration is given the same name as the staged, dramatic renderings of Husayn’s passion in Iran. This interesting terminological shift suggests something pervasive about Indian public display events—the importance of external displays and processions during communal rituals. In this sense, these rituals share much in common with Hindu religious processions. The similarity between Hindu and South Asian Muslim processional rituals has not gone unnoticed. Garcin de Tassy, for example, wrote in 1831 that “Muslim festivals, … appear to read like those of the Hindus.” To illustrate, he compares muḥarram to the Durga pūjā: “Like the Durga Puja, the ta’zia is observed for ten days. On the final day the Hindus immerse the image of the goddess in a river amidst huge crowds and great pomp, while a thousand musical instruments are played. The same thing happened with the Muslim festival. Mourning is observed for ten days and the ta’zia, a replica of the tomb of Husain, is generally immersed in a river with the same pomp.”5 Juan Cole has pointed out more recently that Hindu participation in muḥarram has been fairly widespread for centuries. He also notes that Hindus introduced certain practices to the observance that were adopted by high-caste Muslims.6 The observances during Muharram were thus transcommunal from early on in the encounter between Muslims and Hindus, allowing for public occasions during which actors could negotiate radically different cultural and sectarian worldviews. But as Saiyid rightly points out, Hindu influence alone is not enough to explain muḥarram’s development in South Asia.7 In fact, even though rituals performed during the month of Muharram creatively adapted to Indian customs, very strong thematic ties to Iran remained.
In South Asia, the Iranian root concept of spatial separation between private and public aspects of the rite remained intact, even while localized rituals developed to express grief for Husayn by creatively incorporating indigenous customs (‘ādat). In South Asia, the ta‘zi̅yah procession (julūs) became the most popular display of public veneration or, alternatively, celebration during the month of Muharram, while the tradition of the majlis (mourning assembly) became a private expression of grief par excellence for the Shi‘ah. Although they remain separate, the interrelated nature of private and public forms of observance is a central theme in South Asia as it is in Iran.
Muḥarram as a regular observance did not become widely established in precolonial India until Mughal times (beginning in 1526 C.E.).8 But aside from Lucknow, the major Shi‘i center in India, where an elaborate muḥarram-centered ritual complex developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under the royal patronage of the Navabs of Avadh, the observances never took a fixed form.9 This is in part because aside from the Navabi period (1720–1856 C.E.) of Lucknow, there was never a strong Shi‘i power base to facilitate fixed observance.10 Further, a canonical source for the standardization of observances does not, to my knowledge, exist in Shi‘i literature on jurisprudence produced in South Asia. This may be one reason why there is such a seemingly contradictory complex of practices associated with muḥarram in India, not to mention the fact that the Shi‘ah are a relatively small minority throughout South Asia. In colonial times, for example, they did not exceed 4% of the total population in any of the provinces of British India, with the largest concentration being found in the former United Provinces, where they comprised over 31% of the total Muslim population.11
The numerical inferiority of the Indian Shi‘ah should suggest that while theology may have been relatively fixed, local custom was grafted onto central aspects of the Shi‘i observance to produce ritualistic forms not recognizable in Iran. Add to this the fact that Hindus and Sunnis also participate in various capacities, and we have an inevitable context for innovation, adaptation, and transformation. Nonetheless, a fairly strong core of motifs from the Shi‘i master narrative, kept vivid through mars̲i̅yah and other chanted traditions, has provided some continuity. The ritual traditions surrounding days seven through ten, the culmination of the observance marked with grand processions through the streets of cities, towns, and villages throughout South Asia, demonstrate the continuities quite well.
It is important to keep in mind that India was a religiously plural society during the Mughal period. The Muslim population in precolonial South Asia, though politically and economically powerful, was always a quantitative minority, and within this minority the Shi‘ah constituted only a small percentage of the total population. Muslims thus had to cope with the Hindu majority and its overwhelming culture. As a result, a number of Hindu influences crept into muḥarram. This is only natural because social encounter inevitably results in cultural mixing to create innovative hybrid forms of local practice. The same process already seems to have been occurring in ancient Persia, where an earlier generation of scholars attempted to locate the origins of the lamentations for Husayn in pre-Islamic rites of renewal and eulogized mourning for fallen heroes. The process of religious and cultural mixing continues in the Indian subcontinent but with a unique twist. The Shi‘ah of India had to cope with negotiating their forms of observance with Sunni varieties. Sunnis, it must be emphasized, also observe muḥarram, especially on the tenth, but do so for very different reasons. Ideological conflicts thus often erupt into physical violence between the numerous parties concerned.
To begin with, the concept of vicarious suffering, so prominent in Twelver Shi‘ism, has been somewhat alien to Hindu thought, even though the idea is present in Mahayana Buddhist texts concerning the bodhisattva ideal. Hindus also do not observe or commemorate religious occasions; rather, they celebrate and play them out in accordance with the doctrine of li̅lā (divine play). The disputed issue of celebration versus observance is a pervasive one in South Asia, but the debate is not solely an Indic innovation, because we have already seen that similar discourses periodically took place at the Shi‘i geographical core in Iran, as they do in many parts of the Muslim world. Concerning the proper way to observe and perform such rites, the eighth imām,
