The Dawoodi Bohras, a branch of the Ismaili Shia Muslim sect, have for centuries been unified under a supreme spiritual leader or Dai Syedna, who has helped them remain well-knit and maintain a unique cultural identity
The streets around the tomb of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussain, in Iraq’s Karbala are packed with devotees 24×7. The faithful carry flags of their countries as they march down the streets in groups hailing Imam Hussain and the Prophet’s family. Indian and Pakistani flags are the most prominent among them. Elegies to the martyrs of Karbala in Urdu, a bridge language in South Asia, also stand out in the background.
South Asian pilgrims, mostly Indian and Pakistani, outnumber the devotees who visit Karbala and other shrines in Iraq. Around a kilometre from Imam Hussain’s shrine, palm tree-shaded Faizi Hussaini is a major centre for the South Asian Dawoodi Bohra community in Karbala. The pilgrims from the community—Indians and Pakistanis— stay there during their pilgrimage.
Groups of pilgrims were sitting in the centre’s courtyard having dinner from large round stainless-steel plates or thaals when we arrived there as part of a group of journalists covering the war on ISIS in February 2016. The women wore multi-coloured two-piece ridas—tops covering their heads and ankle-length skirts—similar to hijab. The men were dressed in traditional overcoats, saya kurtas—three-piece white tunics, and golden embroidered caps.
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The Distinctiveness
The unique Bohra dressing is part of the distinctiveness the community has maintained. The multi-course food— mutton raan, dum ghosht, biryani, kuddal paliddu—that the devotees were having is another facet of the distinct Bohra culture. For centuries, the community has stayed unified under a supreme spiritual leader or Dai Syedna, which has helped the Dawoodi Bohras remain well-knit and maintain their distinctiveness.
A regular visitor to Iraq, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the current supreme leader, stays at the centre during his visits to Karbala and leads prayer services. A photograph of Saifuddin adorned a wall at Faizi Hussaini, which hosts up to 30,000 Dawoodi Bohra pilgrims annually. Faizi Hussaini is part of a network of Bohra centres and institutions that bind the community of a branch of the Ismaili Shia sect, mostly of traders with roots in India’s Gujarat. Half of about a million of them live in India, where the Syedna is based in Mumbai.
In 2016, the community was in the middle of a rare conflict—the succession battle between two claimants to the supreme spiritual leadership for two years. The battle began with the death of Mohammed Burhanuddin, the 52nd Syedna, in 2014. Saifuddin took over as his interim successor in 2011, days after Burhanuddin suffered a stroke. His half-brother Khuzaima Qutbuddin contested the succession, claiming he was chosen in secret in 1965 as the 53rd Syedna. Qutbuddin passed away in March 2016, with his petition in the Bombay high court in 2014 challenging Saifuddin’s elevation undecided.
The pilgrims at Faizi Hussaini avoided any talk about the leadership tussle, for Syedna plays an overarching role in their lives. Bohra reformists have accused him and his clergy of acting like totalitarian kings’ and controlling the community so tightly that they need their permission for practically everything.
Scholar and reformist Asghar Ali Engineer told GlobalPost’s Hanna Ingber in April 2011 that Bohras cannot literally breathe without the clergy’s permission and that there is total control over not just religious but also secular matters. Even to marry, Bohras need Syedna’s permission.
‘To be buried, I need his permission,’ Engineer told Ingber, who noted in addition to coercion, the reformists accuse the Syedna and priests of corruption and non-transparent taxation. ‘If a member of the Bohras publicly questions the Syedna, does not follow the strict rules, or shows sympathy for the reformists, the high priest excommunicates him or her. Once someone is excommunicated, his marriage is dissolved and he can no longer enter Bohra mosques or associate with the community.’
Engineer’s mother was forced to move out of his house to maintain ties with the community when he was excommunicated in the 1970s. His wife and children, who stood with him, were also excommunicated.
Political Flexibility
The Bohra spiritual leadership has escaped scrutiny thanks largely to its strategy of maintaining cordial ties with whosoever is in power to protect the community’s interests, primarily related to business and trade. Saifuddin has been particularly known for political flexibility and resourcefulness, like his predecessors. He has sought to maintain closer ties with Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is known for its hostility towards the larger Muslim community.
Dawoodi Bohras have regularly shown up at Modi’s public events as a mark of support. They have been an exception among the larger Muslim community, which has been invisibilised under Modi’s reign. Bohras were among the targets of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat when Modi was the chief minister of the state. Modi refused to even express remorse over the pogrom under his watch, which partly propelled his popularity nationally and helped him become the Prime Minister in 2014.
The BJP’s rule has since coincided with hate campaigns and violence with impunity against Muslims as well as the weaponisation of laws against them, including undermining their citizenship. Modi once famously refused to wear a Muslim skull cap when offered at a public function. He has been photographed in possibly all the headgear popular in India.
Modi has similarly stayed away from Muslim places of worship while he is a regular temple visitor. He made an exception when he visited Syedna at a mosque in the central Indian city of Indore in 2018. The need for state patronage to protect wealth accumulated through money collected as religious taxes from the community has been cited among the reasons for Syedna’s unusual warmth towards Modi.
The Reticence
One of the staffers at Faizi Hussaini, who spoke to us, belonged to Indore. He strictly avoided political talk but told us he had worked at the centre for about eight years. ‘…there is no fear,’ he insisted. ‘This place is close to the shrine, and there is no fear; no threat; we live peacefully.’
A woman in ridha, who was keen to speak to us, echoed the staffer. She told us she was from Mumbai and lived in Karbala with her husband, who worked there and looked after pilgrims. ‘…we get residence and everything; very comfortable. I am not scared. We bow to Imam Hussain…there [maybe] a war going on… [but we have] nothing to fear… we have come to Imam Hussain [shrine] for pilgrimage and that is all… he is great and nothing will happen…he will look after us. They [pilgrims] come leaving everything behind…,’ said the woman in the backdrop of a wall with clocks showing Iraq, India, Pakistan, and Dubai time. Another woman joined the conversation, saying she was from Godhra in Gujarat. ‘No fear,’ she reiterated as others joined her in repeating this in unison.
Setting Apart
The attempt to set themselves apart from other Muslims among Dawoodi Bohras was evident also in Karbala, hundreds of kilometres from India. The Bohras have cultivated an identity, which has helped them to escape much of the anti-Muslim discrimination, which has since 2014 degenerated into outright hostility with the BJP’s rise.
There are perhaps practical reasons behind this. In her April 2011 piece in GlobalPost, Ingber wrote that India’s Muslims tend to be marginalised and there is also long-standing prejudice against them, which can cause discrimination ‘in everything from housing to jobs.’ She added the Bohras want none of that and quoted Zameer Basrai, a Bohra architect, saying they never associate the Bohras with the rest of the Muslim population. ‘And the Bohras have worked hard to keep it that way.’
While they avoided politics and other contentious issues, the Bohra devotees in Karbals did not mind talking about more mundane issues such as cuisine, which is known to have Yemeni influence. The influence is a result of interactions between the community and Yemenis thanks to the relocation of the first Indian Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin from Gujarat to Yemen in the 18th century.
Dining Together, Staying Together
Sagla Bagla, a flaky multi-layered sweetmeat similar to Middle-Eastern Baklava, and Sufoot, a dish of layered rice pancakes of beaten yogurt, mustard, cucumber, boiled mincemeat, carrots, and peas fillings, have Yemeni roots. Food is a key aspect of Bohra family and community life including at Faizi Hussaini. It is driven by the belief that if you dine together, you stay together. At least one family meal is eaten daily in thaal. Community meals, like at Faizi Hussaini are mostly served in thaals.
Bohras consider feeding the needy or niyaz a duty on a daily basis. They have tried to promote integration also through the common Lisan-ul-Dawat language, which is fundamentally Gujarati written in the Arabic script.
It is this kind of innovativeness, wrote Sifra Lentin, a fellow at Indian think tank Gateway House, ‘combined with the Bohra’s willingness to experiment in the cultural sphere – like the culinary and linguistic –by throwing together seemingly disparate elements that have helped create a composite cultural ethos, unique only to the Dawoodi Bohras, wherever they may reside.’ The ethos was palpable at Faizi Hussaini.
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is a journalist and the author of the Penguin Random House book The Other Side of the Divide
