Book Reviews

Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory by Syed Akbar

Hyder, 2006. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, xi + 261
pp., ill., $24.95. [AD] ISBN: 978-0-19-537302-8 (pbk)

MARY ELAINE HEGLAND

Department of Anthropology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, USA
MHegland@scu.edu

For anyone with an interest in Shi‘‘a Islam, the Karbala symbolic

complex, or the development, modifications, various manifestations,
changing interpretations, referential uses of, and disagreements about
symbolic complexes, this first book by the erudite author Dr. Syed
Akbar Hyder is a must read. Those students of Shi‘‘a Islam who have
worked in areas further to the west will be particularly amazed by how
widespread Karbala symbols and tropes have been throughout South
Asian history and literature.
In these pages Hyder, a gifted researcher of history and literature,
gives us the results of his combination of approaches: personal
experiential; study of mourning gatherings (in the majalis, musical
performances, Sufi and reformist groupings, and in Texas); literary
analysis; the politics of remembering Karbala; and the movement of the
680 CE martyrdom of Imam Husayn in Karbala from a Shi‘‘a communal
context to a South Asian ecumenical audience. This outstanding study
will join the small number of classics about South Asian Shi‘‘a Islam
available in English.
Because Hyder is Shi‘‘a himself, he is able to convey to readers the
emotions, memories, and meanings of an insider, a much needed
perspective in today’’s world. He brings to us an understanding of what
Shi‘‘a Islam and the central event of Shi‘‘a Islam –– the martyrdom of
Imam Husayn and his followers and the taking of the womenfolk into
captivity in Damascus –– mean to believers and even people outside of
Shi‘‘a Islam in South Asia. Because of his personal history as a Shi‘‘a
from South Asia, and also because of his education at the West’’s finest
institutions, Hyder is able to combine an insider perspective with up-to-
date western scholarly approaches to provide English readers with a
nuanced, problematised, contextualised, and luminous study of how
Karbala and Imam Husayn’’s martyrdom have been relived in ‘‘South

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Asian Memory’’. At the same time, because the author traces the history
and permutations of the Karbala story from its beginning through to
the present, the book is accessible to both non-specialists and new
students of Shi‘‘a Islam.
The Introduction provides a succinct overview of Shi‘‘a Muslim
history and Imam Husayn’’s martyrdom and how it fits into Islam in
general. Hyder explains how he will draw on many types of sources: oral
traditions, interviews, performances, his own presence and
participation, and many writers from South Asia. He will, he says, focus
on poetry and poetics, institutions of Karbala commemorations, and
reformists’’ wielding of the Karbala image. For South Asian reformers,
Hyder claims, ‘‘Karbala is often the medium by which ideal reformist
conduct, nation-building endeavours, and class consciousness are
shaped and defined’’ (11). He warns the readers that he will not privilege
any one interpretation or manifestation of the Karbala martyrdom
complex, but will attend to the ‘‘multiple readings of Karbala...’’, and
bring ‘‘out the dynamic relationship between this religious symbol and
its creators, readers, proponents, detractors, and listeners’’, thereby
acknowledging the tensions among the different deployments of the
Karbala complex and their adherents.
In Chapter 1, ‘‘Visions and Re-visions of Karbala’’, the author talks
about his memories of Karbala and how his family commemorated it as
well as the history of majalis, or the gatherings, to commemorate the
Karbala martyrs in his hometown of Hyderabad. He provides an
introduction to the various sections of the majalis and a discussion
about ‘‘Ashura (the tenth of the Arabic month of Muharram and the
anniversary of Imam Husayn’’s martyrdom) as practiced in Hyderabad.
As other chapters, this chapter is made richer with photographs, his
own memories, and discussions of debates, in this chapter such as those
surrounding the emphasis on mourning and matam –– beating of the
chest in mourning, and other more extreme types of self-mortification.
Chapter 2, ‘‘Mourning in Migrant Space’’, presents mourning
practices of Shi‘‘a Muslims in Houston, Texas. Violence in Iraq and
Pakistan on 2 March 2004 during Muharram, resulting in the death of
many Shi‘‘a persons, made the commemorations of the 680 CE Karbala
massacre all the more emotional. Also, in this chapter, the author talks
about the history of Shi‘‘a in Houston and his own family’’s practices
and poetry for Muharram. He discusses attitudes, perspectives, and
concerns of Shi‘‘a in America, contacts with Hyderabad through media
and electronics bringing Karbala narrations, and the growing

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application of Karbala meanings to Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine,

Kashmir, and Iran.
Chapter 3, ‘‘Commemorative Politics and Poetics’’, deals with recited
Karbala texts, the role of women through emphasis on Zaynab’’s telling
the Karbala story and so keeping the memory alive, and ‘‘situational
hermeneutics’’ (74) of Karbala recitations –– the interpretive strategies,
the recasting of meaning by the interpretive community. The author
documents how the Shi‘‘a majlis has offered an ‘‘alternative history’’ ( 75)
of Islam, and discusses Shi‘‘a controversies related to historical
perspectives. He gives the history of the Karbala martyrs and Zaynab’’s
speeches to keep the Karbala event alive, especially as conveyed in
Rashid Turabi’’s sermons.
Chapter 4, ‘‘Lyrical Martyrdom’’, is perhaps the most delightful
chapter. As a student of South Asian literature, and especially the
poetry, Hyder is positioned to tease out the Karbala imagery and tropes
in various forms of poetry. He looks at Sufi poetry and songs, Persian
poetry familiar to South Asians, Muharram elegy recitations, and
provides texts, translations, and literary analysis of a number of poems,
emphasising symbolic meanings and how references to other texts and
traditions are introduced in such poetry. One can marvel at the
presence of Imam Husayn and the Karbala story in Sufi poetry. The
main difference between the majlis tradition and the mystical tradition
regarding Karbala, Hyder states, is that the former emphases sorrow and
mourning, while the later emphasises the joyousness of Imam Husayn’’s
death as victory and unification with the Beloved, with God.
Chapter 5, ‘‘Iqbal and Karbala’’, will prove fascinating and
illuminating for the student of Shi‘‘a Islam and Shi‘‘a Muslims in
Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and other points west of South Asia. Quite rightly,
in my opinion, Hyder states, ‘‘Surprisingly, the centrality of Karbala and
martyrdom in the discourses of Iqbal has not received due attention,
despite the importance of these concepts for Muhammad Iqbal’’s
concept of khudi, or the desired higher self’’ (138).
I learned the lesson of the Quran from Husain
In his fire, like a flame, I burn
Hyder quotes these lines from Iqbal, even though Iqbal was a Sunni
Muslim. Hyder shows the antecedents of Iqbal’’s devotion to Husayn in
Persian mystical verses, and Iqbal’’s emphasis on the Karbala imagery as
a ‘‘model of and for struggle’’, a ‘‘broader (transreligious) call for justice
and action’’ (157) was carried on by members of the Progressive Writers’’

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Association. Hyder quotes from his interview with Sardar Jafri, a

member of this organisation:
...How could anyone listen to the story of Karbala, of the
oppressed, Husain’’s fight against the most mighty system of
his time, and not be inspired to follow in the footsteps of the
Prophet’’s grandson? Each person could follow Husain in his
own way. (158)
‘‘Ali Shariati and ‘‘Abd al-Karim Surush repeatedly refer to Iqbal’’s
ideas, Hyder states. The author feels that Iqbal’’s influence was to
promote pan-Islamic solidarity and to encourage a spirit of dynamic
interpretation. Unfortunately, although many Pakistanis may be
inspired by the Karbala paradigm and Imam Husayn’’s martyrdom, this
does not seem to have resulted in safety for Shi‘‘as in Pakistan.
In Chapter 6, ‘‘From Communal to Ecumenical’’, Syed Akbar Hyder
documents the many references to Karbala imagery in South Asian
literature. Among those writers who apply Karbala tropes are the
Communist and Urdu writer, Raj Bahadur Gour; Hyderabad
Communist poet, Makhdum Muhiuddin –– who wrote after the
assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘‘...this is the murder of
Husain’’; poets who wrote about Nadir Shah’’s atrocities in 1739 CE and
at the British exile of the last Mughal emperor; Josh Malihabadi (1898-
1982); Jawaharlal Nehru; Rabindranath Tagore, Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava
(commonly known as Premchard); Nathanvilal Wahshi; and many
others. Hyder analyses the significance of the Karbala imagery in the
work of these poets and thinkers as follows:
The presence of the Karbala text invokes two important
themes pertinent to socioreligous reform and the Progressive
discourses. First, by participating in the discursive practices
of various resistive agendas, it provides an emotionally
charged metaphor through which ideal reformist conduct is
shaped and defined. Second, the very memory of Karbala
becomes a subversive force. The continuous use of the image
of Karbala keeps up an unyielding resistance to the status
quo. (200)
We can be grateful to Syed Akbar Hyder for this rich, detailed,
thoroughly researched, and carefully formed study of the many
manifestations of Karbala symbolic complex in South Asian history
and literature. Here too, and not only in pre-revolution Iran, has the

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Karbala paradigm provided imagery for a struggle against injustice.

Also, Hyder persuasively demonstrates how the Karbala complex can be
interpreted in many different ways for many diverse purposes and thus
brings tension and conflict among proponents of different perspectives
–– or perhaps those perspectives are developed and wielded in self-
serving and/or idealistic ways by groups in conflict. In this volume, we
seem to have the efforts of a Shi‘‘a Muslim scholar to understand the
meanings and applications of the Karbala paradigm in the past in order
to try to understand the meaning of Islam, and particularly of the
Karbala event in the present troubled world.

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