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Experiments with Khomeini's Revolution in Kargil: Contemporary Shi‘a networks between India and West Asia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2014

RADHIKA GUPTA
RADHIKA GUPTA*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Leipzig, Germany Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Shi‘i scholars from India have been a sizeable presence in seminaries in Iran and Iraq, both historically and today. Yet there is a dearth of scholarship on Shi‘i linkages between India and West Asia, with the exception of historical work on the patronage of shrine cities in Iraq by centres of Shi‘ism in India. Departing from this geographical and historical focus, this paper lends insight into contemporary religious networks between India and West Asia, using the example of the Twelver Shi‘a in Kargil, a region located on India's ‘border’ with Pakistan in the province of Kashmir. Kargili scholars travelled overland via Afghanistan or by sea from Bombay to Basra to study in seminaries in Iraq and Iran from the nineteenth century onwards. Increasing fluency in Urdu in post-colonial India enabled them to connect with Shi‘i institutions in other parts of India, which mediate religious, cultural, and financial flows from a transnational Shi‘ite realm. These networks of religious learning are not only conduits for the transmission of textual, doctrinal knowledge, but also for politico-religious ideologies that are selectively harnessed, and often exaggerated, to effect significant social and political changes in micro-locales. While local conflicts are over-determined by the evocation of transnational links, they also reflect, even if only through rhetorical and partial reproduction, doctrinal and politico-religious schisms among Shi‘i leaders in West Asia. This is illustrated by an ethnographic account of the activities undertaken and contestations provoked by the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust in Kargil, a modernist reform movement that has selectively appropriated Khomeini's revolutionary ideologies to instigate social change and shape local politics and religious practice in Kargil.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2: Networks of Religious Learning and the Dissemination of Religious Knowledge across Asia , March 2014 , pp. 370 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This paper draws on fieldwork conducted in Kargil between 2007 and 2011. I thank all those quoted for sharing their knowledge with me.

References

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7 Marsiyas are elegies. Qasīdas are poems in praise of the Prophet, his family, and the lineage of Imams.

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17 This information is based on interviews with Kargili scholars in Qum in 2009.

18 The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Iran, created in 1987, established cultural bureaus separate from the Iranian embassies in certain countries like India and Lebanon to foster cultural exchange. These centres became conduits for the ‘cultural politics’ of post-revolution Iran. Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shi‘ite Lebanon, p. 161.

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21 Khums is a tax incumbent upon the Shi‘a. It is one-fifth of the income of a person which is left over after all annual living expenses have been met. Khums is divided into two parts: māl-e imam and māl-e sādāt. Māl-e imām is given either to a mosque, imambara or madrasa, or to the local representative of a mujtahid. Māl-e sādāt is given to poor Sayyids (descendants of the family of the Prophet and the Imams).

22 This is particularly striking in Kargil compared to other places in India such as Mumbai, for instance, where some of the more popular clerics are from Uttar Pradesh. Again, the predominance of the local language, rather than the use of Urdu, may partly account for this. Kargili preachers trained in Iran or Iraq continue to impart religious knowledge in Balti or Purigi, dialects of Tibetan.

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24 With the declaration of the British mandate in Iraq in 1920, senior Shi‘i ‘ulama (clerics) in the shrine cities declared any association with the British to be illicit. See Cole, Juan, Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture, and History of Shi'ite Islam (I. B. Tauris: London, 2002), p. 174Google Scholar; In general, the colonial or ‘quasi-colonial’ experience contributed to a resistance to change among ‘ulama. Rahman, Fazlur, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, London, 1982), p. 63Google Scholar.

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26 It is important to note that neither Najafi House in Mumbai nor the Iran Cultural Centre in Delhi publicly engage or propagate any Iran vs. Iraq religious politics surrounding the leadership and legitimacy of different ayatollahs.

27 Motahari, Morteza, ‘The Fundamental Problem in the Clerical Establishment’, in Walbridge, Linda S. (ed.), The Most Learned of the Shi‘a: The Institution of the Marja‘i Taqlid (Brill: Leiden, Boston, Koln, 2001), p. 172Google Scholar.

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29 This quote refers to Hizabullah's success in forcing Israel to retreat from its occupation of South Lebanon. The example sought to convey that this victory was possible because Nasrallah believed in Khomeini's ideology that politics and religion are inseparable, upon which the concept of the velayat-e faqih is also founded.

30 The Hill Council is a decentralized government body with extensive powers of developmental decision-making and implementation in the district, backed by control over financial resources.

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33 This endorsement of Indian secularism is in part shaped by the sectarian violence against the Shi‘a in Pakistan.

34 This is based on research conducted in Mumbai in 2012.

35 Pinault, David, The Shi‘ites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (I. B. Tauris: London, 1992), pp. 94–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 This is not to suggest that the emulation of Shirazi was encouraged over that of Ayatollah Khoi.

37 Metcalf, Barbara D. (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1984)Google Scholar.

38 Meir, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth-century Iraq, p. 41.

39 In the women's seminary Bint al-Huda, for example, the completion of a five-year programme structured around a semester system earns a student to a BA degree. Students choose a specialisation after five semesters.

40 A person taking up the study of falsafa cannot become a mujtahid, which requires a specialisation in fiqh and usul. However, a person studying falsafa can get a PhD degree.

41 See <http://www.winislam.com>, [accessed 3 December 2013].