Blessed are those who mourn

Blessed are those who mourn
Mushirul Hasan

It began exactly nine days ago when the Muharram moon was sighted in the distant horizon. Immediately the women, including the newly wed, removed their jewellery, their bangles and flashy clothes. For the next nine days, they will set aside comfort, luxury and convenience. Politicians will turn pious for a change; musicians will put way their musical instruments, and poets, accustomed to regaling audiences with ghazals, would switch to writing elegies and dirges. Whether in Lucknow, Kolkata, Mumbai or Chennai, notice the long procession of replicas of Husain's tomb and flags along the streets with a vast crowd of mourners, who scream out their lamentations and beat their breasts. At night, you will notice the glow of a million lamps from the illuminated imambaras (where the mourners congregate).

Today is the ninth of Muharram, a day of mourning marked with utmost solemnity. Clad mostly in black clothes, millions around the globe would set aside their daily chores to grieve for the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, Husain, and his 70 companions who were brutally killed on the banks of the river Euphrates in Karbala (Iraq) in AD 680. They will march, as they do year after year, through the lanes and by-lanes in fervent lamentation chanting, ``Ya-Husain, Ya-Husain'', rhythmically beating their chests, self-flagellating, carrying replicas of Husain's tomb, his coffin, his standards and insignia, and his horse.

Tonight, groups of women, largely Hindus, will move about the villages wailing and reciting dohas, mostly improvised lyrics, on the epic tragedy. They will offer flowers and sweets at local karbalas (sites where the replicas are consecrated), and seek Husain's intercession to cure the diseased, avert calamities, procure children, or improve the circumstances of the dead. For the rural communities, Husain's trials and tribulations inspire faith in a universal nemesis ensuring justice for oppressed souls.

It is not unusual for the Hindus to participate in Muharram observances. W.H. Sleeman found, in 1849, Hindu princes in central and southern India commemorating Muharram with processions. In Gwalior and Baroda, both erstwhile Hindu states, Muharram was observed with splendid solemnity. In Lucknow, thousands of Hindus chanted dohas along with the Shias and Sunnis. Muharram had passed off peacefully in Banaras, a Hindi newspaper reported in July 1895, ``when it is Hindus who mostly celebrate (sic) this festival (sic), what fear can there be''.

Husain is everybody's hero, the embodiment of virtues of piety, courage and self-sacrifice. He did not seek power. He represented the authentic voice of Islam and, for that reason, boldly challenged the un-Islamic practices of the Umayyad ruler, Yezid. He laid down his life but did not compromise with a bloody-minded tyrant. He is the leader of lovers, the free cypress from the Garden of the Prophet, the meaning of the great offering mentioned in one of the Quranic verses, the building of the confession of faith. He is, just as his father Ali and his grandfather, a model of the Perfect Man who becomes a martyr in his strife for God's unity against the rulers of this world.

Every age brings forth a new Yezid, but resistance to tyranny, as is illustrated by Husain's legendary example, is incumbent upon every man of faith. No wonder, his followers rally round him, year after year, to share his family's pain. Employing the paradigms of Husain and Karbala, Mohammad Iqbal had sent forth the following message: Nikal kar khanqahon se ada kar rasm-i Shabbiri (emerge from the confines of the khanqahs and, re-enact the example set by Husain).Husain's martyrdom has served, to the Shias (as opposed to the Sunnis) of all times and in all places, as an everlasting exhortation to guard their separate identity and to brave their numerical inferiority in the face of firmly established and sometimes oppressive majorities. It makes sense in terms of a soteriology not dissimilar to the one invoked in the case of Christ's crucifixion -- just as Christ sacrificed himself on the altar of the cross to redeem humanity, so did Husain on the plains of Karbala to purify the Muslim community of sins.

The reasons for the popular appeal of Muharram ceremonies becomes apparent when one adds to all this the cathartic effect of weeping as a means of releasing pent-up grief over the agonies of Husain's family. The ritual recreation of Karbala creates an environment that, in Clifford Geertz's terms, establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men and women by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence. Clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality make the moods and motivations uniquely realistic.

Sadly, Muharram has ceased to be a common symbol of veneration in the subcontinent. It leads to Hindu-Muslim fracas, especially when the Muharram observances coincide with Dussehra. It triggers Shia-Sunni riots in Lucknow, the site of all sorts of polemical controversies. Shias and Sunnis have separate graveyards, separate mosques, separate schools, and separate religious and charitable endowments. These institutions define the boundaries within which they are required to stay apart. One cannot but bemoan the fact that they live as separate entities in a world fashioned by the religious and political leadership.

In Pakistan, the lines of cleavages are sharply demarcated following the rise of Shia militancy and the spurt in Sunni fundamentalism in the wake of the Taliban incursion. Whatever the reasons, the fact is that a nation created for Muslims in the name of Islam stands deeply divided along sectarian lines. Women wail in agony and young men speak angrily of revenge as sectarian violence takes its toll in different parts of the country. The results are for everybody to see. Muharram practices, which have always been rejected by Sunni purists as un-Islamic are now being targeted with greater intensity. Consequently, Muharram has become an exclusively Shia concern in its format as well as in the composition of the participants. A powerful symbol of unity has, thus, been transformed into a potent vehicle for sectarian mobilisation.

Ten days of mourning will culminate tomorrow, the final mournful tribute to the Lord of the Martyrs. Cries of ``Wa Mohammda, kushta shud Husain'' (Oh Mohammad, Husain has been martyred!) will rent the air. In the stillness of the night, hear the following heart-rending lament: When the caravan of Medina, having lost all/Arrived in captivity in the vicinity of Sham/ Foremost came the head of Husain, born aloft on a spear/ And in its wake, a band of women, with heads bared.

Muharram has ceased to be a common symbol of veneration. It leads to Hindu-Muslim fracas, especially when the Muharram observances coincide with Dussehra