Majlis musings

India never fails to enchant with hidden harmonies. Last week I went with my Hindu friend from Aligarh to the ladies’ Mohurrum majlis at the home of Syeda Syedain Hameed. I find majlis very moving, so I went willingly, in my abaya (black gown and headscarf). Marigolds, lights and agarbattis were set before the alams (banners), in fact the incense-holder was the twin of mine. My friend’s friend, the Rampur shahzadi, was delighted by my abaya and swept me off to Panja Sharif at Kashmiri Gate in the Walled City. This is a general majlis that the Rampur family has endowed since before Independence. Earlier, there were barely ten Shias in attendance but now the majlis attracts a thousand people.

Leaving the car on the main road, we went through narrow gullies to a large hall packed with seated men. A large banner proclaimed, ‘Live like Ali, die like Hussain’ and a fiery, incredibly pink-cheeked imam was sermonising from a high chair. We were taken right behind the imam’s stage to a little screened-off, mattressed corner from where I peered through opaque black drapes at the assembly: it was like being in a remake of Mere Mehboob for me, the ultimate urban Hindu who’s usually found in jeans and a tee. The imam thundered about Islamic morality, rousing great shouts of “Naara-e-Hydari: YA ALI!YA ALI!” He turned out to be a Gujarati called Maulana Kalb-e-Rushaid, from Mahua. “That’s where my dear friend Morari Bapu lives and works. I like him very much,” he said, disclosing that he had had ten years of Koranic education at the Sultanul Madrassa in Lucknow before obtaining his PhD in Islamic law at Qum in Iran. He’d been imam-e-jumma at London, Paris, Tenerife and Reunion Island and now served Delhi. We were amused to realise that we’d both lapsed into French — his was better.

Equally astonishing was the Sikh who recited noha, the Mohurrum narratives. About fourteen hundred years ago, Mohyal Brahmins had fought for Hazrat Ali at Karbala and were known ever after as Hussaini Brahmins. Now I discovered Mahender Singh of Lucknow, who has recited at majlis for 15 years while all around him young men beat their chests to cries of “Hussain! Hussain!”

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Theatre man Aamir Raza Hussain, a majlis organiser, told me, “Once, every Hindu home in Awadh would put up a little tazia. And Mohurrum in India has so many Hindu links.” Take the Hindu banjara tribe in Mayawati’s constituency, Akbarpur. During Mohurrum, it paints its homes like for Diwali and wears red, the colour of celebration But why? “Because this is one day that Imam Hussain and his mother come to our house,” they say sincerely.

Who NEEDS our hate-mongering politicians? The law should absolutely forbid them to touch religion.