Introduction
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Muslim religious and charitable endowments, whether Shi‘a or Sunni, had attracted the growing attention of the British. The colonial state was keen to ensure their better management, but approached the issue with extreme caution, not wanting to be seen to be interfering in the religion of its subjects. Underlying this was also an interest in trying to codify Hindu and Muslim personal law in the hope of establishing a common body in which the courts of British India could administer for all its subjects.Footnote 1 In practice, however, as Werner Menski has shown, this objective was not achieved; Hindu and Muslim personal laws, and various regional interpretations of them, continued to coexist side by side with a growing corpus of codified laws in British India.Footnote 2 Such new laws as were introduced tended to be based on a limited, and not always secure, understanding by the British of complex local, regional, and sectarian differences.Footnote 3 Moreover, they failed to take adequate account of the personal laws and customs already in place, which varied from one part of British India and one community to another. The difficulties are well illustrated by the history of the Husainabad Trust (‘the Trust’), one of UP's largest religious endowments.
Admittedly, the Husainabad Trust was not typical. It did not constitute a waqf as defined by law, since neither the principal amount in trust, nor the income from it, was dedicated to religious purposes, but rather to particular persons and their descendants. These were people who had enjoyed a special relationship with Muhammad Ali Shah, the former Nawab of Awadh, by virtue of marriage, service, or birth.
Waqf was a permanent dedication of property for purposes recognized by Islamic law as religious, charitable, or pious. It included movable and immovable property earmarked for the welfare of orphans, divorced women, education of the poor, as well as for the maintenance of the shrines of saints and celebrations of their anniversaries. On the other hand, trusts according to English law were a tripartite contract between the donor, beneficiary, and the trustee or trustees, as F. W. Maitland, Downing Professor of English Law at Cambridge, succinctly put it.Footnote 4 Trusts were a mechanism for preserving and augmenting wealth, and as such had long been popular among the English landed classes.Footnote 5 Trusts in India have sometimes also been described as a kind of insurance policy for future generations; and the Husainabad Trust is best understood from these perspectives.
The Raj found the Muslim Waqf Act of 1936 to be unsatisfactory, since it failed to achieve its objectives. The Central Sunni Board of Waqfs was the main body responsible for the management and survey of waqf properties. A portion of all waqf income was given to the Board and apart from being audited by the Board. In Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Central Board was divided into the Shi‘a Waqf Board and the Sunni Waqf Board, as the Shi‘as and Sunnis had made it clear to the colonial government that they wanted separate boards. In a bid to decentralize the management of the boards, district waqf committees were to be set up in each district of the state. The failure to appoint district waqf committees under the act meant that the term of the Central Sunni Board was extended indefinitely, which led to concentration of power in the hands of a few. Also, the act did not address the problems arising from the lack of clarity regarding the fate of Waqf-Alal-Aulad or private auqaf, which were tied down by litigation in courts. But the outbreak of the Second World War, and popular unrest during the 1940s, meant that little could be done at the time to reform the management of waqf. From a British perspective, not only Muslim endowments and institutions needed reform; so too did Hindu endowments and charities.
After partition, migration of Muslims took many mutawallis,Footnote 6 or caretakers of charitable endowments, to Pakistan, with dramatic consequences for waqf and trust properties left behind. After 1948, with evacuee property legislation and zamindari abolition also on the cards, the Indian state too was increasingly sucked into managing these properties.
The fate of waqf brought the question of charitable endowments and state control to the forefront of provincial politics, since there were many properties in the heart of cities and, as such, they had become increasingly valuable as these cities grew and as property prices spiralled with the refugee influx. In neighbouring Pakistan also, the state in this context tried to expropriate or at least control waqf property. As Jamal MalikFootnote 7 has shown, the 1960 West Pakistan Waqf Properties Rules were intended to discipline the sajjada nashins, or guardians of the shrines and ulema, some of whom regarded auqaf as personal fiefdoms that added substantially to their status and influence in society.Footnote 8 The act also took over all properties where the income was used for a family's personal benefit.Footnote 9 In India, too, the government wanted laws to control waqf properties, because incomes from waqf underpinned much social and political influence, which potentially could be problematic for the state. But this was not an easy task, as the British had realized long before independence; it raised complex, and controversial, issues about the power of the state, the role of religion, and the rights of minorities.
The fate of the Husainabad Trust was one such issue. The UP government's stance on the Trust was particularly controversial especially, since it also raised questions regarding the powers of a ‘secular state’ to interfere in religious affairs. By engaging in debate with Muslims regarding the Trust, the UP government sought to address the challenges it faced from an increasingly vocal minority in the 1960s, which impacted upon local and state politics in more ways than one. Lucknow, where the Trust and its properties were situated, thus emerged as a centre where Shi‘as fought tenaciously to protect Nawabi legacy and the symbols associated with Shi‘ism that they identified with.
Much scholarly literature has been devoted to the study of Hindu and Muslim religious endowments in British times, their management, and the impact of official intervention, particularly in the late nineteenth century. As Justin Jones's work on the Shi‘as of the United Provinces has shown, endowments and waqf played a crucial part in keeping Shi‘a institutions going after the Nawabs of Awadh patronage declined and then came to an end. The Husainabad Trust and the history of Shi‘as of Lucknow were closely intertwined, as noted by scholarsFootnote 10 who have studied its role in Awadh society, both before and during colonial times.Footnote 11 Yet, despite its huge importance for Shi‘as and the wider Muslim society of UP, relatively little is known about the management of Husainabad, or its everyday functioning, after 1947.
What measures did Lucknow's Shi‘as take to keep the state out of their religious affairs when the state government attempted to introduce a Scheme of Management for the Husainabad Trust in 1960? This will shed light on the Trust's continuing influence, long after the decline of court patronage, in providing the Shi‘as of Awadh with some continuity of organization, and some resources to ensure that continuity.
After August 1947, the Raj's obligations and treaty commitments were transferred to the Government of India and, in this way, Husainabad became the responsibility of the Government of India. Partition, as scholars have noted, caused Muslims throughout India to surrender some part of their religious space and to cut back on some of their religious observances.Footnote 12 Yet, the Husainabad Trust allowed Shi‘as to retain Muharram in all its grandeur in Lucknow. Moreover, Shi‘as across India joined together to defend the Trust, and this consolidated Lucknow's status as the Shi‘a stronghold of independent India. The fate of the Trust, and the issue of state control, transcended regional boundaries and helped an increasingly assertive identity to emerge across India. One might suggest then that, if UP emerged as India's ‘Muslim heartland’, Lucknow emerged simultaneously as India's ‘Shi‘a heartland’? The location of the Trust in Lucknow, the centrality of Muharram among Lucknow's Shi‘a population, suggests that, as a centre, Lucknow assumed political and social importance for Shi‘as as they contested government interference.
After Pakistan's creation, the Husainabad Trust assumed an even greater importance for the Shi‘as who lost many of their trust properties to Pakistan, since some of these trusts were located in areas that were now a part of either West Pakistan or its eastern wing. There were of course Shi‘a endowments other than Husainabad, which controlled landed properties in different parts of the country and where Shi‘as had a presence. But all of them faced radically changed circumstances after independence. In Bengal, for instance, the Mohsinya Trust, set up by Haji Muhammad Mohsin in 1806, owned the zamindari Syedpur estate in Jessore, which had a special significance for the Shi‘a community.Footnote 13 After Bengal's partition in 1947, the properties of the Trust went to East Pakistan – another reason that helps to explain why the Husainabad Trust, as one of the few remaining Shi‘a resources, was important for India's Shi‘a community. In the 1950s, the Shi‘a minority in Pakistan were victims of considerable sectarian violence, and so felt increasingly threatened on both sides of the new borders of India and Pakistan.Footnote 14
The Husainabad Trust and early legislation
But first some background. According to its Deed of Trust dated 23 November 1839, a sum of 12 lac sikka rupees (the value of Rs 1 million in coins) earning 4 per cent as annual interest was deposited in perpetuity with the East India Company's treasury in Lucknow.Footnote 15 The income of 48,000 Lucknow sikka rupees was intended for persons mentioned in the Trust deed and for the upkeep of Husainabad Mubarak.Footnote 16 Although 12 lakh rupees was the initial endowment, over the years, the Nawabs of Awadh had put in much more money as loans to the British, and this too added to the corpus of the Husainabad and Allied Trusts. The Trust deed of 1839 specified that
it is incumbent on the officers of the Honourable Company to pay in perpetuity from the residency treasury to Rafiq-ud-Daula Bahadur and Azim-Ullah Khan Bahadur and to their descendants generation after generationFootnote 17 the money for the expenses of the Husainabad Mubarak in four quarterly payments in equal instalments.Footnote 18
The deed was seen as an agreement and, as an ‘agreement’, it was a unique arrangement under the Government of India Act XV of 1878, by which sections 1, 2, and 3 gave government the right to appoint the trustees. Sections 9 and 10 gave government the power also to appoint and dismiss the Trust's secretary.Footnote 19 Since 1878, the Husainabad and Allied Trusts had been managed under these arrangements, which armed the government with much greater power than it had over other auqaf.
The manner in which the act came to be passed and be implemented reveals government's determination to bring this Trust under its control. After the 1857 rebellion, much of the property of the rebels was confiscated and, despite evidence to the contrary, much of the blame for the rebellion was placed on disaffected Muslims.Footnote 20 The deputy commissioner reported after a full enquiry in June 1858 that:
Ali Baksh Khan and Rafiq-ud-Dowlah, trustees of Husainabad Endowement and Sherfood-ud-Dowlah, agent for the payment of the stipendiaries, have fraudulently abused their trust in delivering up all and endorsing some of notes constituting the endowment of the said Imambara to Rebel Mammu Khan. The Chief Commissioner under the authority of the Supreme Government of India, hereby declare them and their heirs incapable of any longer managing the trust and dismiss their respective offices of trustees and agents.Footnote 21
Concluding that the Husainabad Imambara had sheltered rebel troops, the British charged the trustees with breach of trust and embezzlement of Trust funds.Footnote 22 After the rebellion, the British sacked all existing trustees and appointed Mohsun-ud-Dowlah and Mumtaz-ud-Dowlah in their place.Footnote 23
The Awadh setting, as Justin Jones has shown, was profoundly affected by internal dynamics within the Shi‘a community. In the early twentieth century, the Shi‘a community in Awadh was changing, as Shi‘a mujtahids (‘learned men’) competed to ‘purify’ practices associated with Muharram and to reassert the Shi‘a character of Lucknow's public spaces.Footnote 24 As Jones has persuasively argued, Shi‘ism was redefined in the colonial period, with some distinctly modern manifestations.Footnote 25 Shi‘as were prompted to reinvent their distinctiveness in an environment where many claimants battled for religious authority, and they did so through the printing press, madrasas, and institutions that all involved a wider public engagement.Footnote 26 This sparked off a religious revival and heightened tensions not only between Shi‘as and Sunnis, but also between different groups among Shi‘as themselves.Footnote 27 Clashes between Shi‘as and Sunnis during Muharram became a feature of a developing Shi‘a self-awareness in the twentieth century.Footnote 28 This is the context in which the elaborate Muharram processions came to be such a powerful Shi‘a symbol in Lucknow.Footnote 29 The Husainabad Trust's importance for the Shi‘a minority in Lucknow derived, in large part, from its role in the biggest public ceremonial manifestation of Shi‘a presence in Awadh, Muharram. Muharram was the ceremonial mourning for the martyrdom of Imam Hussain at Karbala, and held enormous significance for Shi‘as across the world.Footnote 30 Muharram processions had been patronized by the Nawabs of Awadh since the late eighteenth century, and they had become a symbol of Nawabi power and independence.
Sandra Freitag and Nita Kumar, writing on collective action by Hindus and Muslims, have shown how important these expressions of popular culture in ‘public arenas’ were.Footnote 31 These public rituals assumed more significance especially after the displacement of Muslims after partition across the subcontinent. According to the 1881 Census, Shi‘as comprised 23 per cent of the population of Lucknow district. After partition, however, the number of Shi‘as remaining in Lucknow cannot be accurately ascertained.Footnote 32 According to Jones, the Shi‘as tended to be ‘between 10 and 15 per cent’ of UP's urban population in towns such as Jaunpur, Allahabad, Fyzabad, Moradabad, and Muzaffarnagar.Footnote 33 Several smaller towns, including Mahmudabad and Nasirabad, continued to be dominated by big landholding Shi‘a families.Footnote 34 Ratna Naidu's study on Hyderabad after partition shows that the Shi‘a population of the walled city declined from 22 per cent to 6 per cent in the 1960s.Footnote 35 Many migrated to Pakistan, while others moved north to Lucknow and other places in UP.Footnote 36 In the 1970s, it gained its population marginally, yet there were only 12,541 Shi‘as living in Hyderabad in 1971.Footnote 37 Although no data exist on their socio-economic background, according to Naidu, they must have been those who held high positions in the Nizam's Administration.Footnote 38 With the migration of these old families, the decay of the walled city had set in. The Telegu-language requirement of the state of Andhra turned against those who were proficient in Urdu.Footnote 39 The pensioners of the Nizam's Administration and caretakers of mosques earned between Rs 400 and Rs 1,000, which meant it was difficult for them to maintain their families, let alone their old lifestyles.Footnote 40 The inroads made by Hindus and marwaris into the walled city further added to the tension among the communities in the walled city. However, Muharram processions in Hyderabad retained its original character but not without violent clashes with Hindus, especially during the Ganesh festival.Footnote 41 The Jan Sangh had made inroads into the walled city apart from the Congress and the Majlis-Ittehadul-Muslimin, a political outfit established in 1928 who were consciously wooing Muslims, which added to the tensions that often culminated into riots during festivals in the 1970s and 1980s.Footnote 42
Meanwhile, the situation in Lucknow was quite different. The wasiqadars (as the pensioners were called) enjoyed a special status because of their relationship with the Trust, their pensions, and their status as covenanted legatees of the Court of Awadh.
Since wasiqas were heritable in perpetuity, the number of wasiqadars increased with each generation, and the value of each wasiqa went down. In consequence, by 1947, the amount that each wasiqadar received was pretty insignificant.Footnote 43 However, it was not the amount of the wasiqa that mattered; the mere receipt of wasiqas had come to denote noble ancestry. Wasiqas, moreover, were just not given to Muslims, nor were the sole beneficiaries of these pensions members of the royal family of Awadh.Footnote 44 A wasiqadar could be a loyal servant of the Nawab, a companion of his wife, sometimes a skilled local artisan, or even the family of a Hakim or a doctor who had caught the attention of patrons at court.
Jones has shown, in Lucknow, the legatees of the old Nawabi courtly nobility, about 1,700 strong, wasiqadars were a group in decline and still struggling to retain the last vestiges of their connections with the Nawabi court.Footnote 45 But, as symbols of continuity with a past with which many Shi‘as identified, they nonetheless retained influence as Muslims in UP suffered the myriad traumas of displacement after partition. Their role in the Husainabad Trust and in Shi‘a institutions, arguably, did not decline as much as other relics of courtly life, when other sources of Shi‘a patronage dried up or disappeared. The Trust and its affairs gave the wasiqadars a ceremonial role, despite their diminishing economic status. As prominent legatees of the Trust and the old Court of Awadh, wasiqadars could, from time to time, still make their presence felt, whether as negotiators with the state or by protesting against state interference in the Trust's affairs. The wasiqadars had also set up an association of their own to maintain their continuing relevance in Lucknow's social and political life. In 1912, the Awadh Wasiqadars and Political Pensioners Association was founded primarily to keep a watchful eye on the affairs of the Trust.Footnote 46 Long after court patronage had fallen through the trapdoors of history, the Trust still gave the descendants and wasiqadars a public role, however limited, which harked back (however weakly) to their erstwhile association with the Nawabi court at Lucknow.
In addition, the Trust continued to fund Shi‘a educational institutions such as Sultan-al-Madaris or the Arabic school. But, as official control over the Trust grew, the power of the wasiqadars admittedly shrank, along with the value of their wasiqa. They continued to draw pensions, even though their worth declined. Their continued role in the elections to the Trust, however, gave them a standing in the public eye because Muharram was central to the Shi‘a sense of identity not only in Awadh, but across India. In public and private spaces, Muharram remained an important ceremonial occasion in Lucknow, with impressively large processions being organized by wealthy zamindari families and, for Shi‘a women, marked with much passion in the privacy of their homes. The existing literature of Muharram in Lucknow gives a detailed account of its importance and different ways in which it was commemorated in Lucknow.Footnote 47
A quick survey of the properties that constituted the Husainabad and Allied Trusts spread across the old city of Lucknow will help to assess their ceremonial and religious importance. The Imambara Husainabad or ‘Chotta Imambara’,Footnote 48 built by Muhammad Ali Shah in 1837, was one of several properties owned by the Husainabad and Allied Trusts. Nawab Muhammad Ali Shah had created the Trust partly to pay for the expenses and the repair of the Husainabad road and illuminations during key festivals. The ‘Bada Imamabara’, or ‘big Imambara’, where the Shahi Imam held majalis (gatherings) and Friday prayers – a practice that continues to this day – incurred costs. Juan Cole estimated that about a million rupees were spent on decorating the imambaras. Hundreds of gold and silver replicas of Imam Hussain's Tomb at Karbala were placed within the Imambara as offerings to the Imam, lit up by numerous glass chandeliers, some of which survive to this day.Footnote 49
Each of these buildings had an intimate connection, in one way or another, with the history of the Nawabi court. Their names are redolent with emotive overtones of ties that the Court of Awadh, and the wider Shi‘a community of Lucknow, had with Karbala and the Shah Najaf tomb in Iraq. Moreover, some of these imambaras served as mausoleums for Nawabs and their wives, as well as places for mourning the martyrdom of Imam Hussain and the martyrs of the battle of Karbala. It was these buildings in which functions central to Shi‘a religious and social life were held and their importance, both cultural and symbolic, grew. Their significance lay in their dramatic visibility in Lucknow – a constant and poignant reminder to Shi‘as of their glorious past. Shi‘a customs and religious practices were tied to this legacy, so many felt it was incumbent upon them to fight the state when it sought to interfere with it.
The Husainabad Trust and key players—the state and the trustees
The papers of the Husainabad Trust do not constitute a full record of its proceedings, but they are revealing nonetheless. From 1921 until 1929, the reports of the management of the Husainabad Trust show how deeply it was involved in Shi‘a life in Awadh. The main item of expenditure was, of course, paying out pensions or wasiqas.Footnote 50 But Trust funds also paid for the theology teacher at the Husainabad Government High School and for winter clothing and food for unspecified Persian itinerants (perhaps religious mystics or indigent travellers), some of whom had fled long ago from Iran to the Court of Awadh, seeking modest patronage.Footnote 51
Details of Trust expenditure confirm that it also paid for the majalis and other religious ceremonies of ‘Shi‘a Musalmans’, as well as for pilgrimages to Karbala. Some money went to the Shi‘a Orphanage and the Arabic School. Overall, the accounts reflect a varied portfolio of activities, most of which aimed to preserve the Shi‘a faith and institutions in Awadh. Over the years, the trustees looked for new ways to increase their income, particularly by seeking aid from government (Rs 3,000 was sanctioned for grants-in-aid for Sultanul Madaris or Arabic School)Footnote 52 for scholarships for study in Iraq and for the newly established Husainabad Dispensary, which implied more government interference.Footnote 53
The Trust reports show how the patterns established in the latter half of the nineteenth century carried over into the twentieth when, in the 1930s, Shi‘a -Sunni clashes over the performance of religious rites increased, and government had increasingly to intervene to dampen down conflicts, for example by restricting Sunni recitations, which provoked Shi‘as.Footnote 54 Lucknow had a history of Shi‘a -Sunni antagonisms where Shi‘as tried to contest their minority status while fighting for an increased political role for themselves in what they saw as Shi‘a ‘space’.Footnote 55
The Husainabad Trust after independence
After independence, UP was in turmoil. Constant migration to and from Pakistan, the influx of more than half a million refugees, communal riots, although not as vicious as in Bengal and Punjab, and several localized violent conflagrations all heightened tensions. The government at the centre enacted law after law, leading to the widespread expropriation of Muslim property. Land, whether ‘public’ or ‘private’, now had entered the volatile arena of politics in a new and a powerful way. This brought the Husainabad Trust and its properties into a renewed focus. Its Annual Administration Report for 1945–46, published in 1947, again revealed exponential increases in expenditure and a stagnant income.
As in previous years, expenditure far outstripped its income, which remained essentially the same as that received almost two decades before in the 1920s. Expenditure on wasiqas remained static, but expenditure on management had increased considerably (expenditure on furniture purchased for ceremonies had increased from Rs 792 in 1944–45 to Rs 1,906 in 1945–46 and establishment costs rose from Rs 31,000 to Rs 33,000 for the same period), particularly its support of religious ceremonies (expenditure on majalis increased from 28,000 in 1945 to 37,065 in 1946), despite the parlous state of the Trust's finances.Footnote 56 Given the sharp rise in food prices after partition and the continuing inflationary spiral after the war, this rising expenditure on religious ceremonies, where food was a big item, inevitably went up, as did dearness allowances, which were also tied to the cost of food. In brief, the Trust faced a financial crisis. But facing as it did competing demands after independence from Shi‘as and Sunnis meant the new Indian government was very chary in how it dealt with it.
In early 1948, both the Sunni Waqf Board and the Shi‘as held mushairas or poetic symposia in Lucknow on 17 and 18 January to press their competing claims to recite either the Madhe Sabha or Tabarra.Footnote 57 In neighbouring Pakistan, two months later on 21 and 22 March, many Shi‘a landlords, backed by ulema in the erstwhile Muslim-majority provinces who had backed the Muslim League, joined together to establish the All-Pakistan Shi‘a Conference in Lahore.Footnote 58 It demanded that Shi‘as be allowed to manage their endowments and auqaf, free of government interference.Footnote 59 In Pakistan, as in India, there was much uncertainty about how new legislation would affect Shi‘a autonomy and this deeply worried many members of the community. Moreover, there was no clarity regarding minority rights in Pakistan, especially due to the on-going anti-Ahmadiya movement there in the early 1950s. Tahir Kamran has pointed out that the rivalry between the Ahrars and Ahmadiyas turned violent especially at a time when the Ahrars were struggling for political survival in Pakistan.Footnote 60 The Khatam-e-Nubuwwat movement and the violent events of 1953 enhanced the power of Sunni groups in Pakistan, who demanded that the state acquiesce to even narrower definitions of being Muslim and being Pakistani, namely Sunni.Footnote 61 The tensions between the Ahmadiyas and Ahrars later spilled over to other minority communities due to the former's exclusiveness, their cultural and religious practices, and threats they posed to the conception of Pakistan as an Islamic state.Footnote 62 Ahmadiyas, like the Shi‘as, were not ready to settle into their minority status – they demanded cultural and political rights; in the case of Ahmadiyas, they demanded a separate area (Baluchistan) for themselves.Footnote 63 It is the refusal of the minorities to settle into their minority status that upset the political balances in the newly independent nation-states. Meanwhile, the governments of India and of UP began devising new laws that threatened to dismantle old structures of land ownership. This raised tensions throughout UP, not least among the Shi‘as of Lucknow, especially over the fate of the trusts, places of worship, and endowments.Footnote 64
Significantly, almost all Shi‘a political organizations of any note, such as the Shi‘a Political Conference and the All-India Shi‘a Conference, had backed Congress and not the Muslim League (except for a few prominent individuals) and this was perhaps one key reason why so many prominent Shi‘as stayed on after partition.Footnote 65
The history of these two organizations, and their relations with the government, calls to be mentioned here. Founded in 1907, the All-India Shi‘a Conference drew the bulk of its 5,000 or so members from the United Provinces and in smaller numbers from Bihar, the Punjab, Hyderabad, and Bombay.Footnote 66 Since the time of its establishment, its main activity was to lobby on government on the cultural and educational needs of Shi‘as.Footnote 67 Several prominent wasiqadars of Lucknow, but also the Nawabs of Rampur and Pirpur among them, were its members.Footnote 68 The Conference put unremitting pressure on the British, and this meant it often clashed with existing mutawallis of various auqaf, and also with the trustees of the Husainabad Trust.Footnote 69 Well before independence, various other Shi‘a organizations had also stepped up their demand for reform of the Trust, and of auqaf more generally.
The All-India Shi‘a Conference thus eschewed active participation in politics. By contrast, as its very name indicates, the Shi‘a Political Conference was deeply involved in politics. Founded in 1925 by a troika consisting of Nawab Ali of Akbarpur, Syed Ali Zaheer of Jaunpur, and advocate Haider Mehdi from Allahabad, the Shi‘a Political Conference's purpose was to give Shi‘as a political voice.Footnote 70 Zaheer, a scion of an influential Jaunpur Shi‘a family, had retired as Chief Justice of the Court of Awadh in 1934.Footnote 71 In 1946, he contested elections unsuccessfully against Choudhary Khaliquzzaman, who fought on a Muslim League ticket.Footnote 72 Later, in 1952, after returning from Tehran, Syed Zaheer served as a Minister of Justice and Labour in G. B. Pant's cabinet.Footnote 73 The Shi‘a Political Conference had always set its face against separate electorates – a major point of difference between it and the Muslim League – and was active in the tabarra agitation.
Despite their anti-League credentials, Shi‘as, like other Muslims, faced severe challenges after partition. Just as Sunnis, they had to bear taunts and threats and pressure to quit India and go to Pakistan. Their world had changed. Many lost their land and their homes under evacuee property law. Zamindari abolition in 1951 also hit their substantial agrarian interests hard. Stripped of their land, their political and social position was hugely diminished.
Independence, India's subsequent police action in Hyderabad, and the ending of the Jagirdari system there meant that many of the main old sources of patronage for Muharram processions were drying up.Footnote 74 After 1947, many Shi‘as migrated from remote villages, where Muslims still constituted roughly 40 per cent of the population, and hence provided, in Muslim eyes, more secure surroundings.Footnote 75 After 1947, Awadh's Shi‘a aristocracy tried to exert such little influence that they still had in two main ways. The first was through the sponsorship of the public Muharram processions in Lucknow.Footnote 76 The second was by employing Shi‘a ulema, trained in the law schools of Iraq and Iran.Footnote 77 By commemorating Muharram and other public ceremonies, Shi‘as in Lucknow were still able to mark an identity distinct from that of majority Sunnis. The Husainabad Trust, above all, provided significant organizational continuity to Shi‘a institutions in a time of great flux. Financial and institutional support from the Trust enabled Shi‘as to continue to commemorate Muharram in Lucknow, and also to keep up a semblance of a distinctive religious education by trained alims and also of social welfare for their community.
Soon, however, the Husainabad Trust also came under threat from the new order. Government, it seemed, wanted to regulate every aspect of the Trust's functioning, management, and funds, presenting the Shi‘a community with another set of challenges in Lucknow and across India.
The state government's immediate priority was to settle the question of whether or not the Husainabad Trust was a waqf at all. If it was, it could be brought under the revised Muslim Waqfs Bill, which began to be drafted in 1949, and this, in the government's view, would be a good thing. Discussions between government, the Shi‘a Waqf Board, and the Niamatullah Enquiry Committee revealed that the state government was very keen to bring the Trust under the UP Muslim Waqf Act, and to treat it as a private auqaf or waqf-alal-aulad, on the grounds that it had been set up for the benefit of descendants of the Nawabs. The United Provinces Zamindari Abolition Committee had recommended that private waqf could be expropriated without any let or hindrance, and the state government was pushing through a raft of Bills about Muslim waqfs, all of which threatened what remained of the order of things as Shi‘as had known them.
But mounting a campaign against waqf was a delicate business, even for a government that had got the bit between its teeth. In 1935, when Syed Ali Zaheer had introduced a Bill in the UP Legislative Assembly, sharp differences of opinion about the future management of the Trust had emerged.Footnote 78 Zaheer argued that management should be given over to the Shi‘a community. The Lucknow District Commissioner had strongly objected, arguing that this went against the wishes of the founder and would place extra burden on the Trust's already strained resources.Footnote 79 This episode led to a series of complex arguments involving all sides of Shi‘a society, including royal descendants and wasiqadars, the state, mujtahids, and ulema. But, after independence, Zaheer, who, as UP's Minister of Justice and Labour, came to exercise much influence in the making of the UP Muslim Waqf Act, had a major impact upon new law. Indeed, Zaheer, an influential Shi‘a Congress politician elected consecutively for three terms (1952–62) from the Lucknow West assembly constituency, where many Shi‘as resided, seems to have been the key man in formulating the new legislation.
Hard evidence about these moves remains elusive. But a few files that have survived confirm how serious the problems in the management of the Trust had become before independence. In elections to the Trust Committee, held just before partition, on 19 July 1947, telegrams were sent to wasiqadars and newspaper notices in Urdu were placed in ‘Wasiqadar’ (a bi-weekly) and other Urdu dailies, urging all those ‘residing in Lucknow’ to vote.Footnote 80
That election had been caused by the death of Prince Mumtaz Qadar Mirza Muhammad Safdar Saheb, a recipient of a wasiqa of a relatively modest sum of Rs 300/12.Footnote 81 The remaining trustees appointed a new trustee: Mirza Muhammad Hasan Ali, the son of the deceased trustee, aged 22 years, in his place, who received a wasiqa of Rs 57/14/5 per month, since his father's wasiqas had to be distributed equally between siblings.Footnote 82
However, Syed Muhammad Murtaza, a prospective candidate for the same vacancy as trustee, contested this appointment. On 12 September 1947, he petitioned Hafiz Muhammad Ibrahim, provincial Minister of Endowments, claiming that the ballot papers in the election were flawed. Although the District Commissioner allowed the petitioner to inspect the papers, the petitioner claimed he had only been given an hour to do so.Footnote 83 The election was nevertheless deemed valid by the government and Syed Muhammad Murtaza's objections were set aside. Before 1947, elections to the Trust had often been fiercely contested, with warring candidates seeking government's intervention on their behalf. This had increased the government's involvement in the Trust's affairs, with power to decide disputes – a role that the Indian state sought to arrogate to itself after independence.
Prince Mumtaz Qadar had left behind four daughters, two sons, a widow, and an aged father. In this particular case, the original wasiqa of Rs 300 was divided equally among all the heirs, reducing what each received to a very small amount. The ins and outs of the affair cannot be wholly understood without a grasp of Shi‘a laws of inheritance, which governed the disbursement of wasiqas. According to Shia law, all relatives of the deceased were entitled to a share of his inheritance unless specifically excluded.Footnote 84 Rights of inheritance by matrimony also existed, so the husband or wife was not excluded from a share.Footnote 85 If the deceased left behind a child and a widow, the widow was entitled to a share of the property along with the child, who received a separate share. In India, the estate of a Shi‘a Muslim who dies without leaving an heir goes to the mujtahid of the locality nearest to his home, as the representative of the Imam.Footnote 86 Both males and females have the same rights of inheritance, but male descendants are entitled to twice the share that females receive.Footnote 87 Evidence suggests that the Awadh kings followed the rule in the trust deeds they executed. Malka Jahan, the wife of Muhammad Ali Shah, was given a part of his wealth as a stipend that continued generation after generation.Footnote 88
After 1947, the office of the Husainabad Trust continued to maintain a wasiqa register.Footnote 89 This was a comprehensive list of the wasiqas that descendants received. Wasiqas were of two types: ‘amanati’ and ‘zamanati’ – the former for members of the royal family, the latter for servants of the Nawabs and their descendants. In some cases, wasiqas were hereditary and, in others, only for the lifetime of the wasiqadar, after which they reverted to the Trust. Since persons receiving wasiqas of a few hundred rupees had to pay stamp duty to the state, the register is firm evidence of the regularity with which the wasiqas were received and paid.Footnote 90
The Trust also maintained a register of ‘Kiraya Dukanat and Arazi’, which contained detailed information about the collection of rents on a mohalla-by-mohalla basis.Footnote 91 These rents constituted an important source of income for the Trust. In older parts of Lucknow, many descendants of Shi‘a families lived in homes built on Trust land, in Kashmiri Mohalla, Sheesh Mahal, Mansoor Nagar, Shehenshah Building Nakhas, Rais Manzil, Barood Khana, Chauk Kotwali, Sadaatganj, Kankad wala Kua, Governor's Colony, Faazil Nagar, Thakurganj, Purana Haiderganj, and Muftiganj. All of these places were in old Lucknow, and it was in these areas that those entitled to elect the trustees of the Husainabad Trust mainly lived.
This helps to explain the significant position among the residents of Lucknow that the Trust came to occupy after 1947. The presence of the Trust in Lucknow only added to the importance of the city for Shi‘as residing in Lucknow and around the countryside because they could receive monetary help from time to time. After the seizure of land belonging to Muslims, regardless of whether they had migrated to Pakistan or stayed on in India, the Husainabad Trust still managed to retain a degree of independence. Shi‘as who had lost their land to the government were nevertheless able to continue to reside undisturbed in homes built on Trust lands, receive rent from shops, and also educate their children in schools and colleges maintained by the Trust, all on the payment of a nominal fee.
Over time, however, the declining influence of wasiqadars meant that either government or profiteers had encroached upon large parts of the land belonging to the Trust, cutting at the lifelines that the Trust provided for many indigent Shi‘as. Tussles between government and the Trust Committee continued well into the 1950s, with the state trying to devise ways of managing Shi‘a and Sunni auqaf better.
At the same time, local landlords who lost their zamindaris were seeking to regain control over district waqf committees. Organizing opinion against government's efforts to bring the Husainabad Trust under the UP Muslim Waqf Act, they held meetings in villages and towns where Shi‘as had a substantial presence. This created another new Muslim leadership in towns and the countryside, as old elites tried to gain power and influence in new arenas. It also hindered the state's ability to dismantle the old structures of authority in UP, despite its plethora of new land laws.
In the debates about the Husainabad Trust, three different perspectives emerged: the first was that of leading mujtahids, the second of the All-India Shi‘a Conference, and the third was that of Shi‘as outside UP. After independence, the government quickly realized it faced a daunting task. Its first step was to determine whether Husainabad was a trust or a waqf. When the views of all Shi‘a mujtahids were solicited, to a man, they declared that the Trust was not a waqf. Maulana Mufti Syed Ahmed Ali, Qibla, Principal of the Nazimia Arabic College, Maulana Syed Kalbe Husain Sadiq, the Imam-e-Juma, and Jamaat, Shamsul Ulema, and Janab Maulana Syed Ibne Hasan Sahib all took the same view because the wadiyatnamah Footnote 92 (which they described more as a gift than a waqf) did not fit the definition of a waqf; nor were the conditions that define a waqf present in the Husainabad case.Footnote 93 In seeking the opinions of the leading mujtahids, the state recognized their importance. Involving mujtahids to help resolve disputes over endowments was, of course, not something new. In 1884, mujtahid Muhammad Ibrahim, as Justin Jones has shown, asked the government to vacate the compounds of the Asaf-ud-daula Imambara and Asafi Masjid and urged it to hand them back to the Khandaan-i-ijtihad family, who led Friday prayers.Footnote 94 The mujtahids of Lucknow, including Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi and his family, had been the highest authority in these matters since the time of the Nawabs of Awadh. After independence, they continued to insist that the government had to heed their views.
The Husainabad Trust's claimants: descendants and the Shi‘a community
Understandably then, many Shi‘as from UP and indeed from other provinces were distressed when the state government decided to bring Husainabad under the UP Muslim Waqfs Act. For instance, the executive committee of the Anjuman Islahul Mominin in Kanpur on 15 March 1950 resolved ‘that the Husainabad and Shah Najaf Trusts were governed by a special act and that their management was satisfactory. They strongly protested against attempts to bring the Trust within the scope of the UP Muslim Waqfs Act which would be prejudicial and contrary to the purposes of the Trust’.Footnote 95 Most district and local organizations of the Shi‘as agreed, echoing the same sentiment.
There were, however, some dissenting views. The District Shi‘a Conference of Mubarakpur, Azamgarh backed the 29th resolution of the 35th All-India Shi‘a Conference, which, on the contrary, wanted the Husainabad Trust to be governed by the UP Muslim Waqf Act.Footnote 96 A popular Urdu newspaper, and the mouth-piece of the All-India Shi‘a Conference, Sarfaraz, on 20 April 1949 reported that a special meeting of Shi‘as had been held in Allahabad in the house of Nawab Agha Mehmood Sahib to urge that the Husainabad Trust be brought under the UP Muslim Waqf Act. The meeting also wanted the All-India Shi‘a Conference's representation on the newly constituted Waqf Board to be increased from one to eight members.Footnote 97 Interestingly, by aligning with one political side or the other, Shi‘as had begun to take an active, indeed combative, part in matters affecting their political, religious, and cultural life. Moreover, the All-India Shi‘a Conference clearly took up the Husainabad issue as a way of bargaining with the state government to increase its representation on the Shi‘a Waqf Board – a demand that was only plausible if they could demonstrate they had some popular backing in the community. Thus, contrary to the view that UP's Muslims withdrew from public life after partition, Shi‘as asserted themselves in increasingly organized ways, particularly on questions affecting their cultural rights. They did not, however, speak with one voice: Shi‘as across UP were divided on this issue, as on so many other matters.
Nor did the Husainabad Trust's future remain a solely UP affair. On 22 November 1955, the Managing Committee of the Dargah Shah-e-Mardan Fund Committee, Kucha Chalan, Delhi, expressed its flat opposition to bringing the ‘royal trusts of Husainabad and Shah Najaf’ under the Shi‘a Waqf Board. This would be highly detrimental to the best interests of the trusts, since, it argued, the Shi‘a Waqf Board was notorious for mal-administration. Furthermore, the resolution declared, ‘this meeting therefore strongly appeals to the Uttar Pradesh government that in the view of the promises made of not interfering in the religious affairs of the Shi‘as against their wishes and requests the government to drop the amendment’.Footnote 98 In April 1960, a meeting of the Calcutta Branch of the Awadh Royal Family Association declared that ‘having regretfully learnt that a bill is being passed in 1960 and request the Government of India not to allow the bill to be passed against the Husainabad and Allied trusts’.Footnote 99 The Anjuman-i-Mohammadi of Calcutta passed a similar resolution, stating ‘that we the Shi‘as of West Bengal strongly protest against the proposed Waqf Bill 1960 as we have special interest of these endowments in mind as they belong to the last King Wajid Ali Shah's forefathers who [were] interned in Calcutta’.Footnote 100
These resolutions show that the fate of the Husainabad and Allied Trusts had set off a complex struggle and debate about Shi‘a identity. Many Shi‘as profoundly objected to government's proposals. Despite their regional and local differences, other Shi‘as from different corners of India joined the protest. The mujtahids wanted no government interference at all in the affairs of the Trust. Other organizations such as the All-India Shi‘a Conference wanted the Trust to be brought under the Shi‘a Waqf Board, which would give them a voice – a renewed opportunity to have a say on such issues. The split in the community was out in the open.
These agitations and protests, which began in 1949, continued into the early 1950s and right until 1960. For all its differences and despite the fact that they constituted a minority within a minority, the Shi‘as took on the state to protect their cultural space. After independence, leadership and organization among Shi‘as, if not among all Muslims, tended to develop around specific cultural issues such as language, education, and the fate of endowments; and here was another example of a new leadership coalescing around such a cause. Moreover, the flood of petitions and resolutions presented to the government underlined how significant the Husainabad Trust's status in the Shi‘a heartland was and how important it was in rallying Shi‘as as the cause rallied the community across India. The Nawabi city and its old institutions thus became the focal point around which Shi‘a responses to independence, and resistance to the interventions of the Indian state, were built. So intense were Shi‘a protests and its petitions so numerous that government decided to do nothing for the time being, shelving the issue until it finally passed the new Scheme of Management only in 1960.
These arguments and counter-arguments baffled Pant's government. On 18 April 1950, it solicited the opinion of Sir Iqbal Ahmed, the retired Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court. The learned judge opined that the two institutions, namely the Husainabad Imambara and Queen-side Shah Najaf, were in fact mausoleums.Footnote 101 He based his conclusions on the fact that Ghaziuddin Haider had given a loan to the East India Company to fight the Burmese War in 1825 at a 5 per cent rate of interest, and that Muhammad Ali Shah had advanced another loan in 1839. The essential requirement in creating a waqf was that the sigha Footnote 102 or an acceptance be read out while it was being set up, which had not happened in either case.Footnote 103 The Nawabs of Awadh, devout Shi‘as, with access to the best scholarly advice, must have been aware of this requirement. So, the judge concluded, the Husainabad was not a waqf, but a trust.Footnote 104
The judge argued, moreover, that an Imambara was a place for burial, at which religious ceremonies could be held, but this did not make it a waqf. Pensions were an expression of the king's favour and they too could not be assumed to be a waqf.Footnote 105 Sir Iqbal, with a point-by-point application of Shi‘a law, backed his conclusions. Under Shi‘a and Sunni law, a waqf of income and profits, without the dedication of the corpus, was not legally valid.Footnote 106 In the Husainabad case, the principal amount had not been dedicated to its purposes, only the interest derived from the principal.Footnote 107 This also suggested to the learned judge that Husainabad was not a waqf. Another essential condition for creating a waqf, the judge pointed out, was that the ‘possession of the property was made over to a mutawalli’, not to the East India Company or to the pensioners.Footnote 108 So, in the judge's final and unequivocal opinion, the Husainabad Trust was not a waqf, and had never been a waqf.
On 12 April 1950, a similar opinion was given by Akhtar Hussain, an eminent advocate. In his view, the money deposited by Muhammad Ali Shah was an amanat (or trust, a deposit with a condition) with the East India Company and, by virtue of it being an amanat, the ownership still vested with the original owner. Furthermore, a trust – a creation of English law – was administered in India in accordance with the provisions of Act II of 1882.Footnote 109 Outlining the most important differences between a waqf and a trust, he pointed out, was that a waqf was irrevocable, whereas a trust could be revoked by the owner at any time.Footnote 110 Moreover, a trust was vested with trustees, which gave them immense power, whereas a waqf was vested in God. In the case of the Husainabad Trust, a sigha was an essential requirement that was absent in this case.Footnote 111 Confusion had stemmed from a British lack of understanding of endowments and trusts in their Indian setting, since, in most cases, they did not fit into the emerging corpus of the Anglo-Muslim law.Footnote 112 So, although the money had been deposited with the East India Company, it was never meant to be a waqf. Rather, Nawab Muhammad Ali Shah wanted his dependents and descendants to receive pensions out of the interest on this loan to the company. Once again, it was the British who had, by their own decision, converted a vehicle to provide pensions into a quasi-waqf in order to bring management under waqf laws.
It was not only the Shi‘a Waqf Board with which the new Indian state had to deal. The descendants of the Nawabs, and heirs of the trustees who had been deprived of their rights in the management of the Trust in 1858, now emerged from the woodwork to demand that the state restore their rights. In particular, they reacted to rumours that the property of dispossessed participants of the 1857 uprising was going to be returned to their rightful heirs by independent India's government. On 2 January 1948, The Pioneer claimed that the Bihar government had decided to return the property of Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur, which had been confiscated in 1857.Footnote 113 That led to a flood of petitions from persons claiming to be the true descendants of the original superintendent and vakil of the Trust mentioned in the Deed: Rafeeq-ud-Dowlah and Azimullah Khan Bahadur. Mehdi Ali Khan also petitioned the Minister of Waqfs claiming to be the rightful heir of Rafeeq-ud-Dowlah. He urged the state government to appoint him as a trustee, thereby restoring honour to his family for his great-grandfather's sacrifices in the national cause and, in particular, for fighting the British in the rebellion.Footnote 114 On 24 May 1956, Waris Ali sent a petition along similar lines, also claiming to be a descendant of Rafeeq-ud-Dowlah.Footnote 115 Both men threatened to resort to the court of law if their claims were not addressed.
The state government had to deal with innumerable such petitions, in which each petitioner claimed to be a descendant of the original agent of the Trust. In this case, two persons claimed that they were the descendants of Rafeeq-ud-Dowlah. Both provided detailed genealogies to support their claims. Another claimant was Baqar Ali Khan.Footnote 116 Mahmooda Begum of Hyderabad also staked her claim to the effect that, according to the deed, Nawab Mohammad Ibrahim Khan Shareef-ud-Dowlah, forefathers of her husband, were the first agents of the Husainabad Trust, having occupied the post of Madarul Moham under the Nawabs of Awadh.Footnote 117 Munawar Ali Khan claimed to be the descendant of another trustee mentioned in the deed: Azimullah Khan.Footnote 118 Other petitioners took a different tack, claiming to be descendants of trustees appointed after the rebellion by the British.Footnote 119
Faced by this plethora of competing claims, some asserting they were descendants of trustees appointed by the Nawabs, others arguing that they were descendants of the trustees appointed by the British after the rebellion, the state government faced the awesome task of looking into each and every claim, while trying to allay a tide of Shi‘a discontent in UP and elsewhere. In the context of Congress efforts in the 1950s to woo Muslim voters, Shi‘a members of the legislature rallying on this issue was a matter of concern. All claimants, however much they disagreed among themselves, took the view that the British never had any intention of honouring their commitments under the Trust deed, and had deliberately flouted them. Now it was the responsibility of independent India's national government to redress the wrongs committed by alien rulers.
Further complicating the issue was the fact that none of these claimants had challenged the status quo in a court of law for the past 90 years, accepting the management of the Trust. Yet, now, they suddenly had sprung into life and sought restoration of ancient rights.Footnote 120 This presented the government of UP, including influential Shi‘a Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and the cabinet minister, Syed Ali Zaheer, with a tricky problem that resisted an easy resolution.Footnote 121
Fatwas issued by Shi‘a mujtahids claimed that bringing the Trust under the Shi‘a Waqf Board would make the already dire finances of the Trust worse. After the Second World War, the British had reduced the interest paid on the securities of the original loan from 3.5 per cent to 3 per cent, which cut the income of the Trust by a substantial Rs 20,000 a year.Footnote 122 Placing the Trust under the UP Shi‘a Waqf Board would add another Rs 15,000 to the expenses of the Trust, since all trusts had to pay, out of their resources, a fixed administration fee for the Board at 6 per cent.Footnote 123
The Trust thus gave Shi‘as a cause in which to orchestrate an unusually united voice in defence of their cultural and religious rights. Everyone could see that the finances of the Trust were sorely strained. Even though Syed Ali Zaheer, as Minister of Justice, wanted to place the Trust under the Shi‘a Waqf Board, he saw the wisdom of keeping the issue under wraps until the 1957 elections were done and dusted.Footnote 124 In a confidential note of October 1955, he claimed that the agitation to keep the Husainabad Trust independent had no significant backing, promoted as it was by self-interested maulanas who personally did well out of the Trust by all manner of allowances.Footnote 125 The agitation, however, did have the support of some Congressmen, with particular backing from the Minister of Health and Civil Supplies.Footnote 126 In his memoirs, Syed Ali Zaheer recalls Congress politics in the mid-1950s and, as a member of the Sampurnanand faction, he concluded that the issue was aggravated by UP's factional politics.Footnote 127 Factional politics in UP had a lot to do with the power, influence, and building of a key constituency, and hence the affairs of the Trust have to be seen in this light. Moreover, different faction leaders could use the issue of the Trust to embarrass opponents and demand concessions for themselves. His view was that the amendments relating to Husainabad were only a minor part of the Muslim Waqf Bill, and so he decided that it would be wise to introduce a separate Scheme of Management for the Trust, to avoid unnecessary fuss and opposition.Footnote 128 The Husainabad Trust was, in his opinion, caught up in the factional politics of the Shi‘a community and of the Congress.
In December 1955, the government appointed the Husainabad and Allied Trusts Enquiry Committee (‘the Committee’), with Syed Siddiq Hasan in the chair. The Committee concluded that the main issue was the non-payment of rents for many years by trustees and other persons residing in the Najaf premises.Footnote 129 The Trust's buildings and properties were in an appalling state. No attention had been paid to their repair or maintenance for many decades; nor had any serious effort been made to increase the revenue from them.Footnote 130 The Committee noted gross negligence in the Trust accounts as a routine feature. Key files had been lost; no stock-taking had taken place since 1945–46. Costly valuables, such as oil paintings of the Nawabs, had been stolen from the Picture Gallery, now used as offices of the Trust.Footnote 131 Huge sums had been spent on uncontrolled and unauthorized travel allowances. Payments to charities were not made through institutions, but arbitrarily given on the say-so of managers.Footnote 132 Rents had not been revised to meet the new circumstances of the mid-1950s, and the rate of interest received had also gone down. While the Committee recommended that the deputy commissioner should be placed in charge of overseeing the Trust's budgets, this was roundly condemned by all critics as unacceptable interference. Despite this, the Enquiry Committee had laid the foundations for a new Scheme of Management of the Husainabad and Allied Trust, which finally was enacted in 1960.
‘Muharram in two cities’
No discussion of the Trust and its expenditures is complete without an account of Muharram in Lucknow and changes that took place after 1947. The relationship between the Trust and this key event in the Shi‘a calendar calls to be explained. Muharram has often been studied in the pre-colonial and colonial periods, but not in Lucknow after independence. Since the emphasis of our enquiry is on dislocations among Muslims after partition, and the subtle elements of continuity and of change in customs and traditions of this minority community, it is important to understand Muharram's role in post-independence Lucknow.
In 1961, a Government of India study looked at and compared Muharram practices in Lucknow and Delhi. This study described the Imambara of the Husainabad Trust as one of the most important religious institutions of the Shi‘as.Footnote 133 It organized majalis and processions on the first and the tenth days of Muharram.Footnote 134
According to the study, the most important Muharram practice in Lucknow was the bari zarih procession organized by the Husainabad Trust.Footnote 135 It involved the display of elaborate standards known as alams,Footnote 136 a traditional mehndi Footnote 137 ceremony, and the distribution of sabeel or sherbet.Footnote 138 The procession started from the Asafi Imambara, passed through the chawk area of Lucknow, and ended at the Husainabad Imamabara.Footnote 139 The very route of the procession emphasized the centrality of Husainabad, since it began and ended around the two imambaras managed by the Trust. Mehndi processions on the seventh day of Muharram also began from Imambara Asif-ud-daula and ended at the Imambara Husainanbad. Even though hundreds of taziaFootnote 140 and zarih processions were organized in Lucknow on the tenth day of Muharram, the most important of them was the wax tazia of the Husainabad Trust.Footnote 141
The zarih, according to the 1961 report, was the most important procession at the Asif-ud-daula Imambara. It signified Hussain's travel from Medina to Mecca; and the wax zarih also was a symbol of the tomb of Imam Hussain.Footnote 142 It was designed to bring the pious closer to Hasan and Hussain, and to the tribulations of the Prophet's family. The zarih procession, too, was organized by members of the Trust.
The government study underlines the central role the Trust occupied in the azadari processions that were regularly attended by between 2,000 and 4,000 people.Footnote 143 It suggests that the Trust provided the azadari procession with a buniyaad, or underpinnings, that had remained strong despite UP's transition from colonial times to independence. Moreover, it suggests that the processions had retained their grandeur, pomp, and popularity. It is clear that, in the eyes of the anthropologists who authored the report, Husainabad Trust played a key organizational role in Muharram.
By organizing these processions on Muharram, the trustees and other key members of the Husainabad Trust reinforced the symbolism of their past association with the Awadh court, and their continuing presence in a changing contemporary Shi‘a world. The comparisons of Muharram in Delhi and Lucknow also suggest that Shi‘ism actually was alive and well in post-independence India, but above all in Lucknow. In contrast, Shi‘as in Delhi struggled to keep the observances of Muharram going after independence. The report suggests that in fact Lucknow's Shi‘as became more assertive after many Sunnis had left the city, and it noted the ‘freedom’ with which Shi‘as felt able to commemorate Muharram.Footnote 144
Furthermore, according to the report in 1949, Shi‘as took the unprecedented step of forbidding Sunnis from burying tazias in Karbala Kazmain.Footnote 145 In a clash in 1951, in the violence between Shi‘as and Sunnis on Muharram, several people were killed.Footnote 146 Black banners containing aayat or quotes from the Quran were put up all around the city – a public proclamation of Shi‘a dominance. Thus, it seems Lucknow was re-emerging as a centre of Shi‘a influence, where the community felt strongly enough on occasions to assert itself powerfully against Sunnis. In stark contrast, Sunnis no longer held any public majalis in Lucknow; and only a handful of Sunni families had tazias in their houses.Footnote 147
According to this thoughtful study conducted by the Government of India in the 1960s, Maulana Kalbe Abid, Imam-e-Juma (leader of Friday prayers) attended the tazia procession of the Husainabad Trust held in February 1960, along with office-holders of the Trust, thereby giving the procession their seal of approval.Footnote 148 By taking part in the tazia processions of the Trust, leading mujtahids not only legitimized the procession, but bound the mujtahids and Husainabad firmly together in a powerful, and publicly advertised, alliance. The procession included elephants and camels, all decorated with silver emblems. This elaborate display also was a sign that the Trust still commanded wealth.Footnote 149 In 1961, Prince Humayun Ali Jah, a direct descendant of the Nawab of Awadh, was the first eminent notable to come before the marsiya reciters of elegiac poetry in the procession. He was first to weep and express sorrow, followed by the other members of the Trust, in strict order of precedence.Footnote 150 The processions thus gave the descendants of the royal family of Awadh an opportunity to reassume a ceremonial and public role, in the quite different setting of independent India.
The regional differences in Muharram observances in different parts of South Asia were stark, affected as they were by several complex factors, including patronage, the depth of Shi‘a -Sunni antagonism, and the pattern of local ritual observances. In Delhi, the Nawab of Rampur helped to fund majalis in Dargah Panja Sharif after 1947.Footnote 151 Although Muharram continued to be commemorated in Delhi after independence, the massive emigration of Muslims from Delhi resulted in majalis and processions not being attended any longer in large numbers. For example, only 50–70 persons regularly attended majalis in Delhi and, even in the privacy of their homes, Shi‘a Muslims no longer observed elaborate traditional rituals.Footnote 152 In Banaras, temporary imambaras were built in some localities and Alavas, or fire trenches, were dug in front of these temporary imambaras.Footnote 153 This was the vital difference between the Muharram in Lucknow and elsewhere, since Lucknow's elaborate observances put those of Shi‘as elsewhere in India totally into the shade. Moreover, elaborate Muharram processions in Lucknow meant that the city retained its dominance as far as Shi‘a customs and practices were concerned at an all-India level.
The Scheme of Management
On 28 November 1960, despite opposition from all quarters, the government of UP at last enacted its Scheme of Management for the Husainabad and Allied Trusts. Even though it was technically a part of UP Muslim Waqf Act 1960, this scheme was presented as separate package, in an attempt to blunt the critical edge of opposition to the scheme.
Under the new deal, the Committee of Management's chairman was the ex-officio Collector of Lucknow. One Shi‘a member of the state legislature was given a place, and also one member of the Board of Trustees of the Shi‘a College in Lucknow.Footnote 154 In addition, two persons drawn from among the wasiqadars of Husainabad and the other allied trusts, and one descendant of Rafeeq-ud-Dowlah and Azimullah Khan Bahadur, the agents mentioned in the original deed, were also included as members of the Committee of Management.
The scheme clearly specified a procedure for dismissals and appointments, and the term of office of members of the committee was limited to five years to prevent the ills of incumbency.Footnote 155 By this Scheme of Management, the state government hoped to do justice to the claims of the descendants of the original trustees, which many felt had been denied by the British, and at the same time to excise the worst abuses of the old system of management.
However, the government's new scheme led to even more conflict and confrontation. With the power of dismissal now vested in the state government, the new system harked back to the 1878 Act, which had given the British the ultimate word in appointments and dismissals. The state government also arrogated to itself wide powers to overrule the Committee of Management in cases of lax or bad management, abuse of authority, and defiance of government orders.Footnote 156 However, in the face of the widespread opposition during the drafting process, the government had to proceed cautiously, so the provisions of the Scheme of Management ended up being quite similar to the provisions of the UP Muslim Waqfs Act of 1960; indeed, the scheme was classed as a part of that act.
The chairman, in other words, the Collector of Lucknow, thus had the casting vote on the Committee of Management whenever the trustees were at odds evenly divided and unable to reach a consensus.Footnote 157 A yearly audit was made an absolute requirement.Footnote 158 The retirement age of the secretary of the Trust was brought down from 65 to 62 years, and the government retained the right to appoint, dismiss, or supersede the secretary if this was felt to be necessary.Footnote 159 Moreover, the members of the Committee would now be chosen by election, with descendants and the pensioners residing in Lucknow district entitled to vote.
No sooner had the Scheme of Management been announced than it was challenged. In writ petition number 235 of 1960, filed before the Allahabad High Court, Nawab Azmat Jahan Begum denounced the scheme as unconstitutional, illegal, and void, as far as the Shah Najaf King's and Queen's side Trust were concerned.Footnote 160 A court order followed, which deemed that the voters under the Queen and Kings’ Side of Shah Najaf Trusts could not vote or have a say in any election under the Scheme of Management, 1960.Footnote 161 The court ruled in Azmat Jahan's favour, announcing that the state government had no right to draft a scheme for the Shah Najaf Trusts.
Furthermore, in another writ petition (number 324 of 1963), the election of new trustees and the authority of the Commissioner of Lucknow as chairman were also challenged.Footnote 162 In this, the petitioners, Abid Ali Khan and Kazim Ali, questioned the wide powers the Commissioner had been given under section 16 of the Scheme of Management. The issue was that the Commissioner had questioned the electoral rollsFootnote 163 and then had set aside the election of Abid Ali and Kazim Ali as trustees, on 30 March 1961. The petitioners, Abid Ali and Kazim Ali, claimed that the Commissioner was in cahoots with other conniving parties, whose machinations were against the best interest of the intended beneficiaries of the Trust.Footnote 164 They questioned the Commissioner's power to entertain any election petition beyond the prescribed period of 15 days, under section 16 of the scheme.Footnote 165 According to that section, a petition could only be entertained within 15 days of the announcement of results.Footnote 166 They also questioned the wide powers that the Commissioner had assumed in this case, especially in questioning the authenticity of the electoral rolls.Footnote 167 According to section 13 of the scheme, the electoral rolls, once prepared and inspected within 15 days, could not be questioned thereafter.Footnote 168
Conclusion
This case is a pointer to the wide powers that the Commissioner had assumed under the new Scheme of Management. He was the deciding authority in cases relating to elections, appointments, and dismissals through which the state government wielded enormous power over the Trust's affairs. But it is also testament to the growing willingness of disgruntled Shi‘a notables to resort to the court, using ‘writ petitions’ to challenge not only the government, but also Shi‘a rivals. Once the courts were involved, elections were declared void because of voting irregularities.Footnote 169 As a result, the arguments continued to rage. Wasiqadars, mujtahids, learned judges, and the All-India Shi‘a Conference all joined in a cacophony of voices ready and willing to challenge government even as they fell out with each other. ‘Accommodating and adjusting’ hardly captures the spirit of this vigorous public debate among Muslims. The creation of Pakistan had created a new set of problems for Muslims, especially since many of the caretakers of auqafs migrated to Pakistan or were assumed to have left for Pakistan. It re-ignited the conflict between Shi‘as and Sunnis since they fought for control over their property, especially in cases where original deeds of waqf were lost or misinterpreted by the state. However, they resisted government interference at every stage, and resistance intensified rather than waning as electoral politics came into play.
In the western districts, namely Aligarh, Saharanpur, Bulanshahr, Muzaffarnagar, Deoband, Khurja, Meerut, and Shahjahanpur, the presence of Muslims in large numbers meant that they could be the deciding factor in elections in these constituencies. After the first general election, it had become difficult for parties including the Congress to ignore Muslims. The Jan Sangh, the Praja Socialist Party, and the Swantantra party were issuing tickets to Muslims in a bid to capture their votes. Congressmen were not averse to enlisting the support of Nawab Aizaz Rasul and his begum, both ex-Leaguers, primarily due to their capacity to deliver votes during elections. Likewise, the Congress party wooed Shi‘as in Lucknow by repeatedly issuing the ticket to Syed Ali Zaheer from Lucknow West constituency because Shi‘as were predominant there. Similarly, the Congress party paid heed to the religious and caste affiliations by consciously issuing tickets to Muslims in the Amroha and Farukhabad by-elections in 1963. By the end of the 1960s, Congress was wooing both Shi‘as and Sunni separately, maintaining a balance in representation in the legislature or with party posts. These pockets of support were crucial in local elections at the block and municipal level. Intra-party competition and factionalism in the Congress only furthered this trend where the support of Muslims and Scheduled Castes was sought in a bid to embarrass opponents and capture the municipal seats. Different groups among Muslims, on the other hand, tried to use electoral politics to their advantage in ensuring their demands were heard, if not fulfilled. The clauses of the Waqf Bill, the status of Urdu, and the absence of Muslims from government jobs had become poll issues and protests by Muslims on these issues were by no means uncommon.
These protests were characteristic of both Shi‘a and Sunni Muslim politics in UP in the 1960s, which questioned the state about the lack of cultural and linguistic safeguards with even greater energy. A new and robust Muslim ‘public sphere’ had emerged, but not without internal contradictions and controversy. The fight among Shi‘as and Sunnis for their ‘space’ shattered the myth of homogeneity of the Muslim community after 1947. The case of the Husainabad Trust at Lucknow shows how certain Shi‘a institutions and groups in the city were rejuvenated after independence, and came to play a central role in the political and social life of Shi‘as across UP in the 1950s and 1960s.
