Horse of Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India

285 Pages·2001·15.341 MB·English

by  D. Pinault

Horse of Karbala
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Horse of Karbala
Muslim Devotional Life in India
David Pinault
Palgrave
* HORSE OF KARBALA
Copyright © David Pinault, 2001.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-312-21637-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case
of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2001 by
PALGRAVE™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE™ is the new global publishing imprint of St. Martin's
Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers
Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd).
ISBN 978-1-349-61982-5 ISBN 978-1-137-04765-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-04765-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pinault, David.
Horse of Karbala Muslim devotional life in India / David Pinault.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Shia--lndia. 2. Religious life--Shia. 3. Shia--Customs and practices.
4. Karbala (Iraq), Battle of, 680. I. Title.
BP192.7.I4 P559 2000
296.8'2'0954--dc21
00-024005
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Acme Art, Inc.
First edition: February 2001
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Jody
with love
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ........................... ix
Illustrations ......................................... xiii
ONE
Initiation: Hyderabad, 1989 .............................. 1
TWO
An Introduction to the Shia Tradition in Islam ............... 11
THREE
Blood, Rationality, and Ritual in the Shia Tradition ........... 29
F 0 U R
"Would That You Could Bury Me, Too, Beside My Brother!":
Women's Roles in Shia Devotional Literature ................ 57
F I V E
Shia Ritual in a Sunni Setting: Muharram Observances
in the Hill Station of Darjeeling, West Bengal ............... 87
SIX
Horse of Karbala: Ladakh, Shia Ritual, and
Devotional Literature Relating to Zuljenah ................. 109
SEVEN
Muslim-Buddhist Relations in a Ritual Context:
An Analysis of the Muharram Procession
in Leh Township, Ladakh .............................. 133
E l G H T
Shia Lamentation Rituals and
Reinterpretations of the Doctrine of
Intercession: Two Cases from Modern India ................ 157
NINE
The Day of the Lion:
A Ladakhi Shia Ritual Determined
by the Zodiacal Calendar .............................. 18 1
TEN
Shia Encounters in the United States:
Notes on Teaching the Shia Tradition
in American Classrooms ............................... 209
Notes .............................................. 225
Bibliography ......................................... 243
Index .............................................. 253
Preface and Acknowledgments
Between 1989 and 1999 I made seven research trips to South Asia. With
the exception of a side trip to Pakistan to see Sufi shrines in Lahore and an
excursion to Sri Lanka to visit Buddhist pilgrimage centers, I focused on
India and its Shia Muslim minority population. In each setting within India
I examined religious rituals honoring the memory of the Imam Husain, the
Prophet Muhammad's grandson, who was martyred in battle in the seventh
century A.D., at a place in the Iraqi desert called Karbala. Husain died in
the month of Muharram (the first month in the Islamic calendar). Annually
Shia Muslims throughout the world set aside this month to mourn Husain
and the other Karbala martyrs who died with him.
In my travels I gave particular attention to three locales in the
subcontinent. The first was Hyderabad, in south-central India, where Shia
liturgical practices (notably with regard to the veneration of alams, copies
of the battle-standards carried at Karbala) show influence from Hinduism.
My time there gave me the opportunity to study Shia-Hindu interactions
in a ritual setting. It was in Hyderabad that I first learned about flagellation
as artform and about poetry as a means to personal salvation in the afterlife.
My second worksite was Darjeeling, in the tea-country district of
West Bengal's Himalayan foothills. Here Muharram liturgies are arranged
by Sunni rather than Shia Muslims. Darjeeling's Muharram is marked by
stick-play, joyous drumming, competition-minded processions: carnival
rather than mourning.
A few years ago I shifted my focus to a third region: Ladakh, the
northeast quadrant of Jammu and Kashmir state, a mountainous frontier
realm sharing a border with Pakistan and Tibet. The population includes
Buddhists, Sunnis, and Shias. The Indian military presence in Ladakh
(which has increased in recent decades because of intermittent conflicts
with China and Pakistan) has diversified the region's religious profile
further, through the establishment of Hindu and Sikh shrines for the benefit
of soldiers garrisoned in Ladakh. While in Ladakh I studied the local
Zuljenah processions, in which a horse representing Husain's battle stallion
is caparisoned and led riderless through the streets of towns such as Leh,
the district capital. In Leh's Zuljenah procession the "Horse of Karbala" has
its mane streaked with red paint and its flanks smeared red to recall the