Andreas Rieck, in The Shias of Pakistan: An Assertive and Beleaguered Minority (Hurst and Company 2015), has produced a seminal document about the Shia community of Pakistan. Holding a doctorate in Islamic Studies from the University of Hamburg, Rieck served with the U.N. Mission to Afghanistan before spending four years in Pakistan with the Hans Seidel Foundation. Since 2007, he has been an adviser to the German Federal Criminal Police Office, Berlin.
Numbering some 20-25 million, the Twelver Shia Muslims of Pakistan are the second largest Shia community in the world after that of Iran. However, as a minority of 15 percent or a little more among a population of more than 220 million, primarily Sunni Muslims, their situation cannot be compared with that of the Shias in Iran, Iraq or Lebanon, where their demographic strength has translated into political power. Unlike the Shias of Lebanon, and more recently Iraq, most Shias of Pakistan have never been inclined to engage themselves politically in parties or other organizations particular to the Shia community. Shia parties and organizations have never played more than a marginal role in Pakistan’s politics, and none of the many prominent political leaders in Pakistan who belonged to the Shia community has ever campaigned on a Shia communalist platform. Rather, one can observe a tendency among Pakistani Shias in politics and public service to downplay their Shia identity—without denying or hiding it—and to emphasize common ground with their Sunni compatriots.
Non-sectarian political identity
From Pakistan’s foundation in 1947 until today, mainstream political parties have never made any distinction between Sunnis and Shias, whether at leadership or grassroots levels, and Shias have fully integrated into all sections of political, professional and social life in Pakistan without any discrimination. They have rather enjoyed a privileged position in many professions due to their social and educational background. It can even be argued that the Sunni-Shia divide generally i.e. apart from terrorist violence against Shias—has never been a significant political issue in Pakistan, with the exception of 1980.
Shiism reached the Indian subcontinent almost as early as Islam itself. Its history in India of more than a thousand years is characterized by many ups and downs, which to some extent have paralleled the fate of Shiism in the Muslim world as a whole. Although the gradual Muslim conquest of India, starting with Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh (711 A.D.) and reaching its heyday in the 16th century, was generally led by Sunni Arabs, Turks, Afghans and other Central Asians, Shias from the same countries and from Iran have in most cases also participated in their military campaigns and occupied administrative posts, becoming rulers over parts of India themselves for centuries. Moreover, most of the preachers who contributed to the mass conversion of Hindus to Islam in the conquered Indian countryside were Sufis and/or sayyids who accorded social veneration to Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and the Ahl al-Bait, thus paving the way for an outright Shia mission at a later stage. Nevertheless, Shiism in its various forms was embraced only by a minority of Indian Muslims even when protected and patronized by Shia rulers.
Evidence from history
The resurgence of Shiism after the death of Aurangzeb and the decline of Mughal power gave a new boost to sectarian polemics and conflicts. While Awadh and Bengal emerged as new Shia strongholds in the first half of the 18th century, anti-Shiism was on the rise in Delhi and Lahore. Shah Waliullah Dehlavi (1703-62), the most important Muslim religious thinker of his century in the subcontinent, considered sectarian divisions the main cause behind the sinking fortunes of Muslims in India. In one of his writings, he tried to bridge Shia-Sunni doctrinal differences by expressing admiration for Ali Ibn Abi Talib and all Shia Imams “for their spiritual greatness.” He also insisted that Shias were not outside the pale of Islam.
An offshoot of Shah Waliullah’s movement, the Deobandi school of thought, has produced numerous ardent opponents of Shiism since the late 19th century. It is named after the small town of Deoband, 90 miles north-east of Delhi, where a Darul Ulum was set up in 1867, becoming a model for dozens of madrassas in the following decades. The principal concern of the ulema at Deoband and the thousands of donors who sponsored the seminary was to keep up a standard of religious learning and observation of Jamiat tenets that would enable Indian Muslims to withstand the challenges of British rule—which was firmly entrenched after the failed uprising of 1857—and Hindu revivalism.
Lucknow, the bedrock
Communal organizations first developed in Lucknow, which had remained the center of Shia religious learning in India under direct British Rule too. The British had already, in 1856, abolished jurisdiction by Shia ulema and the Shia seminary set up by Amjad Ali Shah, but they continued to grant stipends and titles to individual ulema even after some of them had supported the Mutiny. They also strengthened the position of some Shia talluqadars who in turn continued to sponsor Shia and other religious institutions. The ulema founded new seminaries in Lucknow and anjumans for the organization of Azadari ceremonies. Such local anjumans sprung up in all towns with a sizeable Shia population in northern India towards the end of the 19th century and have remained a feature of Shia religious life in the subcontinent ever since.
In the decades following the failed uprising of 1857-58 some Shias were loosely associated with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his movement for Muslim educational reform. Shia Maulvi Chiragh Ali (1844-95), who made a career in the civil service of the Uttar Pradesh and later of the Hyderabad State (Deccan) impressed Sir Syed Ahmad Khan with his writings advocating a modernist interpretation of the Quran and Hadith as sources of Islamic law. His apologetic interpretation of jihad was much in line with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s arguments urging Muslims to come to terms with British rule.
Sir Syed the uniting factor
In 1864, when Sir Syed Ahmad Khan founded a society for the introduction of Western sciences among Indian Muslims, the most enthusiastic response came from Maulana Siraj Husain, a son of Shia mujtahid Muhammad Syed Quli Kintu. Most influential among Shia modernists who cooperated with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was Syed Amir Ali (1849-1928) from Calcutta who had a distinguished career in the judiciary and in politics. His book The Spirit of Islam, published first in London 1891, became one of the most widely-read defenses of Islam’s Prophet against Christian criticism during his lifetime.
In his other major book, A Short History of the Saracens, he tried to bridge the main controversial point between Shias and Sunnis by differentiating between an “apostolic” caliphate of Ali and the pontifical caliphate of his three predecessors. He also showed readiness to set aside his Shia beliefs for the sake of Muslim unity during the Khilafat Movement. In 1877 he founded a National Mohammedan Association which was the first political organization of Indian Muslims, though popular response to it remained modest.
Together in Aligarh
The Shias had a great part in Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s most important legacy, the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh (founded in 1877). When fundraising started for the college scheme in 1872, Shias were among those leading the campaign as well as among the subscribers. One of the latter was Raja Amir Hasan Khan of Mahmudabad (d. 1903), heir of a large estate in Lucknow. Although he withdrew his annual grant in 1888, compensation was immediately found from Shias in the Hyderabad State thanks to the efforts of S. Husain Bilgrami.
In 1904 and again in 1910, Raja Muhammad Ali Muhammad Khan of Mahmudabad (1879-1931), the eldest son and successor of Raja Amir Hasan Khan, made donations of Rs. 100,000 to the Aligarh College. He also headed a committee set up for raising funds to elevate the college to university level in 1906 and toured Indian provinces for that purpose. From 1920 to 1923 he became vice-chancellor of the newly created university. The initial drive for Muslim University Aligarh had come from another Shia leader, the Agha Khan III, during a session of the All-India Muslim Educational Conference in Bombay in January 1903. The institution set up in 1886 by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan implemented the goals of the Aligarh College with the establishment of modern Muslim schools throughout India. Shias participated very actively the efforts of the Muslim Educational Conference, often also presiding over its annual sessions in different Indian towns.
Counting on the Shia aristocracy
Raja of Mahmudabad, a personal friend and supporter of S. Wazir Hasan, headed the Muslim League from 1915 to 1918 after having been one it’s vice-presidents since 1907. Since 1910, when the central office of the League was transferred from Aligarh to Lucknow, he financed it with fixed annual charity of Rs. 3,000. Basically loyal to the British, the Raja was more committed to Indian self-rule than the Aga Khan. In 1915 he supported the brothers Muhammad and Shaukat Ali after another Shia aristocrat of the U.P., Raja Hamid Ali Khan of Rampur, had confiscated their property. He together with S. Wazir Hasan, was to convince Jinnah to join the Muslim League in 1913
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), the later Quaid-e-Azam and founder of Pakistan, has, of course, been the greatest source of pride for Pakistan’s Shia community ever since the establishment of the state. Yet never in his political life did Jinnah display anything even remotely resembling Shia communalist thinking. Born a Khoja Ismaili, he converted to Twelver Shiism around 1904 without ever bothering much about its religious tenets. He started his political career as a member of the Indian National Congress in 1906, following the example of one his most admired Bombay friends, Justice Badrud Din Tayyabji.
Jinnah the Shia founder-‘uniter’
Jinnah was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council, winning his first laurel by reversing some British legislation on Auqaf which was contrary to the sharia. His achievements were lauded by leaders of the Muslim League, and Jinnah was invited to attend its sessions from December 1912. When he agreed to join the League in 1913, he did so as ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a cause to which he remained committed against many odds until 1928. Jinnah’s later transformation into advocate of Muslim rights in the face of a “hostile” Hindu majority was entirely political and accompanied by genuine abhorrence at inter-Muslim sectarian controversies. So consistently had Jinnah played down his Shia identity that after his death he was claimed by many Sunnis as having been one of their own denomination.
In the 1920s the impact of Shias—including Jinnah—on Muslim politics in India was less than it had been during the first two decades of the century owing much to the mess left behind by the Khilafat Movement and other unsuccessful campaigns. Muslim leadership became ever more divided with the emergence of new organizations such as the Jamiyat al-Ulama-e-Hind and the Khilafat Conference. Even the Muslim League split over the issues of separate electorates and proper response to a British commission charged with finding a solution to the constitutional problems of India.
Conclusion
In spite of some shortcomings of the Muslim League in curbing Sunni sectarians within its ranks, Jinnah’s task was made easier by the fact that the majority factions of the two largest organizations of Sunni ulema remained in the Congress camp even after the pro-Hindu bias of the Congress had become obvious in 1937. Andreas Rieck concludes: “Shias in Pakistan are nowadays threatened by terrorist violence, but they are far from being an oppressed minority. Throughout the history of the young state of Pakistan they have been fully integrated at all levels of Pakistan’s society, and they have stood up for their rights whenever that was perceived to be necessary.”