The Madhe Sahaba Agitation was a civil disobedience movement launched by Deobandi Muslims of Lucknow in the first half of the twentieth century to counter the commemoration of the tragedy of Karbala during Muharram.

[1]Until the end of the sixteenth century AD, only two anti-Shia books were written in India: Minhaj al-Din by Makhdoom-ul Mulk Mullah Abdullah Sultanpuri and Radd-e Rawafiz by Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi.

[2] Sirhindi approvingly quoted a group of transoxianan ulema: "Since the Shia permit cursing Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and one of the chaste wives (of the Prophet), which in itself constitutes infedality, it is incumbent upon the Muslim ruler, nay upon all people, in compliance with the command of the Omniscient King (Allah), to kill them and to oppress them in order to elevate the true religion.

[11] Troubles between Lucknow's Shias and Sunnis were initiated by Syed Ahmad Barelvi, when he visited towns on Awdh, Bihar and Bengal from 1818 to 1820 to preach his radical ideas.

[12] Barbara Metcalf offers the following explanation to his anti-shi'ism: A second group of Abuses Syed Ahmad held were those that originated from Shi’i influence.

Muhammad Isma’il wrote, "a true believer should regard the breaking a tazia by force to be as virtuous an action as destroying idols.

However till the end of nineteenth century, the anti-Shia sentiment was marginal and the followers of Syed Ahmad Barelvi were small in numbers.

Some people nursed sectarian prejudices, but most consciously resisted attempts to create fissures in the broadly unified and consensual model of social and cultural living.

Regardless of the polemics of the Ulama and the itinerant preachers, bonds of friendship and understanding remained intact because Shias and Sunnis of all classes shared a language, literature and a cultural heritage.

It appears further that women of the town had begun not only to frequent the route of the tazias but to set up tents on the fair ground where they received visitors"[15]A Deobandi cleric Abdul Shakoor Lakhnavi started to replace the mourning with celebration of moral victory of Imam Hussain over Yazid.

[16] Shias submitted a complaint to the office of Lucknow District Magistrate to take notice of the situation ban anything which went against the character of Muharram.

Serious riots broke out in 1907 and 1908, after which a four-member committee under the chairmanship of Justice T. C. Piggot, an ICS officer and a judge of High Court, was formed to look into the matter.

[15] After the deflation of the Khilafat movement in the 1920s, the clerics had lost their support in public and Muslims started to follow modern minds like Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

It was provided by Molana Abdul shakoor Lakhnavi who now had established a seminary in Lucknow in 1931 right on the route of the yearly Shia procession, called Dar-ul-Mubalaghin.

Dhulipala says: "The problem broke out with renewed vigour in 1936 on Ashura day when two Sunnis disobeyed orders and publicly recited Charyari in the city centre of Lucknow.

The summer of discontent rumbled on as sectarian strife, hitherto dormant, turned into a common occurrence in the daily lives of Lucknawis.

Husain Ahmad Madani (1879–1957), principal of the renowned seminary at Deoband along with other Jam'iyat al-'Ulama' leaders, jumped into the fray.

Though a fervent advocate of secular nationalism and a principled critic of the «two-nation theory», he stirred sectarian passions unabashedly.

[14]In April 1938, when the Chehlum procession passed in front of the newly built Madrassah Darul Mubalaghin, bricks were thrown on it from rooftop, as a result ten Shias got killed and dozens were injured.

Birdwood says that, in Bombay, where the first four days of Muharram are likely to be devoted to visiting each other's tabut khanas, women and children as well as men are admitted, and members of other communities – only the Sunnies are denied 'simply as a police precaution'".

[17]Justice Munir writes in his report: "How they attempted to defeat the Muslim League with Islam as their weapon will be apparent from some utterances of Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar, the Ahrar leader, to whom is ascribed the couplet in which the Quaid-i-Azam was called kafir-i-azam.

Speaking outside Bhati Gate at a public meeting of the Ahrar, he said that he had, for the preceding two or three months, been asking the Muslim League whether the names of sahaba-i-karam would be revered in Pakistan, but had received no reply.

In this connection we may also mention a similar effort made by the Muslim League itself in 1946 to have pirs and masha'ikh, who command considerable followings, on its side in the struggle for the establishment of Pakistan.

When this news reached the nearby Deobandi seminary of Khairpur, students of Madrassa went to Therhi and burned both Taziya and Imambargah.

[23] On the same day a mourning procession was attacked at Bhati Gate, Lahore, with stones and knives, killing two mourners and injuring about a hundred.