Shia Islam in the Indian subcontinent

It is in total contrast to the Shias of the Middle East, who enjoy a local majority in their homelands because they were compelled to ghettoize in the medieval period because of persecution, and because of this demographic resource, they have become important political players in modern times.

According to Derryl N. Maclean, a link between Sindh and Shias or proto-Shias can be traced to Hakim ibn Jabalah al-Abdi, who traveled across Sind to Makran in the year 649 and presented a report on the area to the Caliph.

After the brief Umayyad rule in Sind had come to an end, history counts ten among the seventy notable Muslims of the eighth and ninth centuries bearing a Sindhi family name (14.3% of all individuals) to be Shi'ites.

The influential Muslim theologian, Imam Abu Hanifa (699 – 767) was born to an Afghan family living in Kufa, he had great regard for the Ahlulbayt and supported the Shi'ite revolt led by Zayd ibn Ali.

The other reason for this is that the love of Ahlulbayt and the commemoration of Muharram by the Sufi's helped the twelver Shias integrate well into the Sunni Muslim minority of India and not claim a separate political identity.

Yusuf Adil Shah of Turkic origin, the adopted son of a Shia scholar Mahmud Gawan, declared autonomy in Bijapur in 1489 after his father was executed by the drunk king, and proclaimed Shi'ism as the state religion in 1502.

Ahmed Shah Abdali attacked Punjab in 1747 AD and advanced towards Delhi, but the Shia nawab of Awadh and commander of the Mughal army Safdar Jang defeated him at Manpur near Sirhind.

Although Mir Jafar was made the Nawab of Bengal after his treachery at Plassey, the power and money lied in the hands of British and the responsibility to manage the people on this puppet, like in Arcot or Hyderabad.

While the Mughal Empire had lost its military strength due to series of Afghan invasions, the British had foreseen this battle and had employed locals at large scale and trained them on the lines of European warfare.

The seminary of Darul Uloom Firangi Mahal, established by Mulla Nizam ud Din Sehalvi in Aurangzeb's era now became the most important madrassa of Sunni theology in India.

Concurrent to the American War of Independence, a major threat to the rule of the British East India Company emerged under the banner of Hyder Ali (1766–1782 AD), who was the army commander of the Wadiyar Dynasty of Mysore and then founded the Khudadad Sultanate.

He sent ambassadors to pay homage to Ali and Hussain in Iraq and ordered them to seek permission from Ottoman Emperor to build a canal from Euphrates to Najaf to meet the needs of clean water in the holy city.

[122] Mir George Ali Murad Khan remains one of the few surviving first class rulers of the old Indian Empire, still holding a public Majlis every Muharram at his sprawling palace, Faiz Mahal.

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.

[151] Sirhindi argues: "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.

[154] In a letter to Sunni nawabs, Shah Waliullah said: "Strict orders should be issued in all Islamic towns forbidding religious ceremonies publicly practised by Hindus such as the performance of Holi and ritual bathing in the Ganges.

However the book which gained widespread popularity in the scholarly circles was Abqaat-ul Anwar fi Imamat-i Aaima til Athaar (عبقات الانوار فی امامۃ الائمۃ الاطہار) by Ayatullah Mir Hamid Husain Musavi containing 18 volumes.

At the same time, these decades were marked by a rich profusion and elaboration of voluntary organizations; a surge in publication of newspapers, pamphlets and posters; and the writing of fiction and poetry as well as political, philosophical, and historical non-fiction.

Such social innovations were deemed to be at the root of civil disturbances in a combustible religious society like India, and the British, in their keenness to maintain law and order, actively discouraged them.

It was provided by Molana Abdul shakoor Lakhnavi who now added Farooqi to his name and had become a follower of Deobandi sect and he had established a seminary in Lucknow in 1931 right on the route of Azadari, called Dar-ul-Muballighin.

The next day on Chhelum, there was an incident at Patanala, a narrow lane in Lucknow, housing the Dar al Muballaghin, a Sunni religious institution run by Maulana Abdul Shakur.

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'".

[189] Now Deobandi ulema changed tactics: in 1944 they established a separate organisation to do the dirty work, Tanzim-e-Ahle-Sunnat, solely focused on the anti-Shia violence[195] and the main leaders like Madani started to present themselves as inclusive secularists again.

After the demise of Jinnah, the feudal prime minister of Pakistan, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, allied with Deobandi ulema and passed the Objectives Resolution and adopted the puritanical Wahhabism as state religion.

[197] Although the sectarian hateful literature had been pouring into Punjab since Shah Abd al-Aziz wrote his Tuhfa Asna Ashariya, however, major incidents of anti-Shia violence began only after mass migration in 1947.

[216] Mainstream media, either under fear of jihadists or out of ideological orientation of majority of journalists, chose to hide the identity of Shia victims and create false binaries which made it difficult for the people to understand the gravity of the situation and researchers and human rights activists to gather the correct data and form a realistic narrative.

[227][228] The political Islamist movements in Pakistan have always had an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Shia community which they termed as a Jewish conspiracy against Islam, that is morally corrupt and dangerous for the Sunni majority.

[201] The South Asian ideologue of anti-Shi'ism, Shah Abd al-Aziz, presents a conspiracy theory to explain the origins of Shi'ism, in which the conquered Jews, led by a Sherlock Holmes type character, Abdullah ibn Saba, planned to take revenge from Islam and joined the ranks of Ali as his partisans.

Mushirul Hasan notes: "There was in addition, a concerted move to discourage Shia-Sunni marriages, portray Shias as sexually promiscuous, describe them as heretics and depict them as traitors to the country and as enemies of Islam.

The Sufi saints of India along with the Shi'ite scholars encouraged the mixing and merging of indigenous elements from the rich cultural heritage of the land to that of Muharram thus proclaiming the message of peaceful co-existence among communities and united resistance to tyrannical authority.