Abstract:

Shiʿis constitute a highly visible but woefully underexplored minority in both India and Pakistan today. This chapter focuses on three major – and largely external – shocks that the community has experienced since the nineteenth century. They had significant impacts on Shiʿi religious authority and the interpretation of the faith. The revolt (also known as the “Mutiny”) of 1857 against British rule brought an end to the Shiʿi state of Awadh, a wealthy and powerful patron of Shi’i institutions, scholarship, and art. As a consequence, Shiʿi communal life began to coalesce around voluntary associations and other models of leadership throughout northern India. The next major turning point constituted the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947. While leading scholars stayed behind in what became India, many esoteric preachers migrated to Pakistan, trying to carve out new Shiʿi spaces in the state that was supposed to form a Muslim homeland. These voices were eventually challenged after a new generation of reformist-minded ʿulama returned from their studies in Najaf, Iraq to Pakistan. A final turning point is the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which caused significant internal cleavages in both India and Pakistan. Politicized scholars who embraced Iran’s revolutionary ideology became pitted against those who rejected such readings of the faith.