ASHA: Blast From The Past

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

We live at a curious moment in our relationship with the past. History has perhaps never been so publicly visible, yet the historian’s craft has rarely been so poorly understood. Television studios debate medieval rulers, social media circulates claims about events supposed to have occurred centuries ago, monuments are made to testify to identities they may never have possessed, mythology is presented as documented fact, and inconvenient evidence is dismissed because it does not conform to the past we would prefer to possess. Increasingly, the question asked is not “What happened?” but “What should our past have been?” Once that shift takes place, history ceases to be history. It becomes memory, mythology, propaganda or political mobilisation. All these may themselves be legitimate subjects of historical enquiry, but they cannot substitute for history. It is therefore worth returning to a deceptively simple question: what actually is history?

The first distinction that must be made is between the past and history. The past consists of everything that has happened. History is our disciplined attempt to recover, reconstruct and explain that past from the evidence it has left behind. The past cannot be altered. Our understanding of it can and must change when new evidence is discovered, old evidence is reconsidered, or new questions are asked, but that revision must arise from historical method, not contemporary convenience. This distinction lies at the heart of E. H. Carr’s classic What Is History?, in which he rejected the comforting nineteenth-century notion that ‘historical facts’ simply lie waiting for the historian to collect them. Countless events occurred in the past, but only some become historically significant because historians ask questions of them, hence Carr’s celebrated description of history as “an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” The phrase is sometimes misunderstood. Carr was not suggesting that historians may construct whatever past suits their present. Quite the contrary: the historian approaches the past with questions, but the answers remain constrained by evidence. Interpretation is unavoidable; fabrication is not interpretation. There is an enormous difference between saying “this evidence can be interpreted differently” and saying “evidence does not matter,” and that distinction is particularly important today. And thus, every one with a pen, has started writing about the past!

Marc Bloch, in The Historian’s Craft, offered another memorable definition: history is “the science of men in time.” For Bloch, history was not a catalogue of kings, battles and dates but the investigation of human societies across time. The historian seeks to understand institutions, economies, beliefs, social relationships, technologies, landscapes and mental worlds, and above all how they changed. Bloch also insisted upon something fundamental to historical method: sources must be interrogated. A document does not become true simply because it is old. A court chronicler may exaggerate the achievements of his patron; an inscription may proclaim a victory that was less complete than it claims; a colonial administrator may describe Indian society through categories produced by colonial assumptions; a nationalist writer may romanticise the past; a religious tradition may preserve an important collective memory without providing a literal account of an event. The historian’s responsibility is therefore neither to believe nor disbelieve automatically, but to ask questions. Who produced this source? When? For whom? Why? What did its author know? What interests did the author possess? Is the account contemporary with the event? Is it corroborated by independent evidence? What does archaeology suggest? What do coins, inscriptions, administrative records, literary texts and material remains tell us? This process is called source criticism, and without it there can be no professional history. R. G. Collingwood made the point differently in The Idea of History: historical knowledge, for him, arose from the relationship between question and evidence. Sources do not simply speak; historians question them. An imperial order tells us that something was commanded, but the historian asks why it was issued, what circumstances produced it, what assumptions informed it and how it was implemented. The historian is therefore not a stenographer of the past, but neither is the historian its novelist.

At this point we encounter one of the most difficult questions in historical practice: can a historian ever be entirely free of bias? The answer must be an emphatic no. Every historian belongs to a particular time and society. Historians possess languages, educations, intellectual traditions, political environments, moral assumptions and personal experiences. These inevitably influence the questions they consider important. A nineteenth-century colonial historian, a nationalist historian writing during the freedom struggle, a Marxist historian concerned with class and production, and a historian of gender writing today may approach precisely the same period with very different questions. This is not necessarily a defect. Some degree of perspective is unavoidable because history cannot be written without selection. The moment a historian chooses to study peasants rather than emperors, women rather than wars, technology rather than diplomacy, or religious interaction rather than dynastic succession, a choice has already been made. Carr’s “dialogue between the present and the past” recognises precisely this reality: we ask questions of the past partly because of concerns arising in our own time. But there is a fundamental distinction between having a standpoint and falsifying evidence. A historian may possess sympathies, and may even begin with a hypothesis, but what the historian may not legitimately do is suppress evidence because it is inconvenient, distort a translation because its actual meaning is embarrassing, quote selectively so as to reverse the meaning of a source, treat supportive testimony as unquestionably reliable while subjecting contrary testimony to impossible standards, or decide the conclusion before beginning the investigation. The problem, therefore, is not whether historians have biases, for they inevitably do. The real question is whether they possess the intellectual discipline to prevent those biases from determining their conclusions. There are biases that are practically unavoidable, arising from one’s historical location, and biases against which the historian must consciously guard, such as communal prejudice, racial assumptions, national chauvinism, ideological loyalty, personal hostility, hero worship, political expediency and the deliberate selection or suppression of evidence to produce a predetermined conclusion. These must be resisted. The true historian therefore develops habits of self-suspicion. Before questioning the prejudices of a source, the historian must remain conscious of his own; before asking why a medieval chronicler viewed an event in a particular manner, the historian should also ask why he himself finds one interpretation more immediately attractive than another. One of the most dangerous sentences in historical research is: “This must have happened.” Once we decide what must have happened, evidence easily becomes merely the material with which we prove what we already believe. The proper historical question is different: “What does the evidence permit me to say happened?” That small difference contains much of the ethics of historical scholarship.

There is a useful analogy which describes the historian as three persons in one. First, the historian becomes the lawyer for the prosecution, assembling the strongest possible evidence for one interpretation, asking what evidence supports it, how the sources can be read in its favour, and what arguments make it plausible. Then he must change sides and become the lawyer for the defence, subjecting his own first argument to the strongest possible criticism. What evidence contradicts it? Which sources were overlooked? Could apparently decisive evidence bear another interpretation? Are the witnesses reliable? Are there inconsistencies in their testimony? Has chronology been respected? Have later assumptions been projected backwards? Only after both exercises have been undertaken should the historian assume the third role, that of the judge. The judgement must then be based not upon which side the historian personally prefers, but upon the relative weight of the evidence. This is an extraordinarily useful discipline because the greatest danger in historical research is not always deliberate dishonesty; more often it is confirmation bias. We notice evidence that confirms what we already suspect and unconsciously minimise evidence that troubles our interpretation. The historian should therefore deliberately search for the evidence that might disprove his own argument, for that is one of the strongest safeguards against bias. Yet the courtroom analogy requires one important qualification: a historian’s judgement is rarely the equivalent of an absolute judicial verdict. Historical evidence is often incomplete. Sources disappear; witnesses contradict one another; documents survive accidentally; archaeological evidence may permit more than one interpretation. The responsible historian therefore gives not necessarily a final verdict but the most plausible judgement that the surviving evidence permits. Sometimes that judgement will be firm, sometimes provisional, and sometimes the only intellectually responsible judgement will be that the evidence is insufficient for us to know. There is no shame in that conclusion. On the contrary, the willingness to admit uncertainty is one of the marks distinguishing scholarship from propaganda. The propagandist must always possess an answer; the historian must sometimes possess the courage not to.

How, then, does a serious historian minimise bias if bias can never be eliminated completely? The first precaution is comprehensiveness of evidence: one must actively seek evidence that contradicts one’s hypothesis rather than merely accumulating material that supports it. The second is source criticism: sources must be examined for authorship, date, context, purpose, audience and reliability. A statement hostile to an emperor cannot automatically be accepted because the historian dislikes that emperor, any more than an official chronicle praising him can automatically be believed. The third is corroboration: wherever possible, one category of evidence should be tested against another, chronicles against documents, documents against inscriptions, textual evidence against archaeology, official claims against private testimony. The fourth is context: words, institutions and actions must be understood within the circumstances of their own time, and modern meanings cannot casually be projected backwards. The fifth is linguistic competence: whenever possible, historians should engage with sources in their original languages, for translation is itself interpretation, and dependence upon selective or inaccurate translations can reproduce another scholar’s assumptions without the historian even realising it. The sixth is comparison: a policy or event that appears extraordinary in isolation may look very different when compared with contemporary practices elsewhere. The seventh is transparency: the historian should show the reader where the evidence comes from, and footnotes and references are not decorative academic machinery but part of the discipline’s system of accountability, allowing another scholar to ask whether the evidence actually supports this claim. And finally there is peer criticism, for historical knowledge develops through disagreement. Another historian may notice evidence we overlooked, challenge our translation, question our chronology or expose an assumption we did not realise we possessed. A serious historian does not fear such criticism; it is one of the mechanisms through which historical knowledge improves.

These precautions have become particularly urgent in an age in which extraordinary historical claims can travel instantly to millions of people. A statement repeated ten thousand times on social media does not acquire evidentiary value through repetition; a viral video is not a primary source for an event five centuries earlier; a confident assertion is not evidence; nor does an interpretation become historically correct because it flatters the identity of those hearing it. History is not decided by applause. The methods developed by Bloch and the Annales historians remind us that evidence is far wider than written chronicles. Coins, buildings, pottery, inscriptions, maps, agricultural patterns, settlement remains, technologies, languages, revenue records, commercial documents and landscapes can all provide historical evidence. This is important because manufactured histories often depend upon extraordinarily selective evidence: a sentence is removed from a chronicle; a translation is circulated without context; an inscription is interpreted without palaeography; an archaeological claim is made without stratigraphy; a modern meaning is imposed upon a medieval term. The professional historian works in precisely the opposite manner. Evidence is multiplied and cross-examined. A Persian chronicle may be compared with a Sanskrit inscription; an imperial order may be placed alongside a revenue document; a traveller’s description can be tested against archaeological remains; a literary representation may be compared with administrative evidence; coins can contradict chronicles, and archaeology can overturn assumptions derived from texts. This is why historical training matters.

It is also why the contribution of Irfan Habib, particularly in works such as Agrarian System, and explained in his lectures at NEHU, published as Interpreting Indian History, remains so important. Habib insists upon history as an evidence-based discipline and simultaneously demonstrates that evidence does not exist independently of interpretation. The task is not to eliminate interpretation, which is impossible, but to distinguish interpretation grounded in evidence from assertion driven by ideology. Indian historiography provides an especially instructive example. James Mill famously divided Indian history into Hindu, Muhammadan and British periods. This classification was itself an interpretation, and it encouraged generations of readers to imagine centuries of Indian history primarily through the religious identities attributed to rulers. Once such categories become normalised, they begin determining the questions that are asked. A battle involving a Muslim ruler and a Hindu ruler can easily become Hindu-Muslim conflict, yet battles between Muslim rulers do not prove Muslim-Muslim civilisational conflict, nor do wars between Hindu kingdoms demonstrate an eternal Hindu-Hindu antagonism. The historian must therefore change sides repeatedly, like the two advocates in our courtroom analogy. If religious conflict appears to explain an event, assemble the evidence supporting that interpretation, then deliberately ask what evidence might undermine it. Were political alliances crossing religious boundaries? Were material interests involved? Did members of the supposedly antagonistic communities fight on both sides? Were revenue, territory, succession or local power actually at issue? Only then should judgement be offered. Consider the Mughal Empire. To describe it simply as “Muslim rule over Hindu India” may satisfy a contemporary ideological narrative, but it explains remarkably little about how the empire actually functioned. One must examine the mansabdari system, jagirs, zamindars, revenue structures, commercial networks, regional elites and the composition of the nobility. None of this requires romanticising the Mughal Empire. There were wars, coercion, exploitation, discrimination and religious conflict. Temples were destroyed in particular circumstances; others received patronage and grants. Political alliances were made and broken. Policies changed between rulers and sometimes during the reign of the same ruler. The historian’s responsibility is not to make the Mughals either heroes or villains; it is to understand them historically. The same principle applies to every period. History is not a court in which Ashoka, Akbar, Aurangzeb, Shivaji, Tipu Sultan or the British are summoned before the political prejudices of the twenty-first century and simply declared innocent or guilty. And yet, in another methodological sense, the courtroom remains useful: evidence must be heard on all sides before judgement is reached. The difference is crucial: the historian must be a judge of evidence, not a judge passing retrospective moral sentences upon the past.

There is another danger in our present relationship with history: the desire for a glorious or convenient past. Every society understandably seeks pride in its heritage. India possesses an extraordinarily rich civilisational inheritance, but genuine achievements require no imaginary embellishment. The history of Indian mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, architecture, literature, metallurgy and state formation is impressive precisely because it can be studied through evidence. When modern scientific discoveries are casually projected thousands of years backwards, no honour is done to ancient India; on the contrary, its real intellectual achievements are obscured beneath claims that cannot withstand scrutiny. There is also an important difference between mythological truth and historical truth. Myths can possess profound cultural, philosophical and religious meaning, and they tell us how communities understand themselves and the universe. The historian studies mythology seriously for precisely this reason, but archaeology is not mythology, and mythology is not archaeology. The greatness of a civilisation does not require the falsification of its chronology.

Historical interpretations inevitably change, and this is not a weakness of history but one of its strengths. New documents appear; archaeological discoveries are made; previously neglected groups become visible; questions change. Histories once concerned almost entirely with kings and battles expanded to include peasants, workers, women, merchants, artisans, tribes, castes and marginal communities. Economic history, social history, gender history, environmental history and histories of technology have transformed our understanding of the past. This is legitimate revision of history. But revision based upon new questions or evidence must not be confused with rewriting the past to satisfy present political requirements. The distinction may be expressed very simply: the historian revises conclusions when evidence demands it; the propagandist revises evidence when conclusions demand it. That distinction goes to the heart of our present predicament. History has always been connected with power because control over representations of the past helps shape identities in the present. Nations require narratives; communities preserve memories; governments commemorate some events and neglect others; monuments are built, renamed and reinterpreted. The historian cannot exist entirely outside these processes. Carr was right: historians themselves inhabit the present. But precisely because historians possess perspectives and biases, the discipline developed methods intended to restrain them: citation, verification, source criticism, linguistic competence, archaeology, comparison, scholarly debate and the requirement that claims must be open to examination by others. A historian must, in principle, tell the reader: here is my evidence; here is how I have interpreted it; now examine both. That is what separates historical scholarship from propaganda.

This is perhaps the quality most endangered when societies become intensely politicised about their past. We increasingly want history to reassure us. We want our ancestors always to have been right, our community always tolerant, our opponents always oppressive, our civilisation always superior and our preferred political identity to have existed unchanged from antiquity. But the past owes us no such comfort. Human beings in earlier centuries did not live in anticipation of our political arguments. Their identities were multiple, their loyalties shifting and their worlds fundamentally different from ours. Terms such as nation, religion, caste, community and state have themselves changed historically. To impose our categories upon them is not to recover the past; it is to colonise it. What, then, actually is history? History is the disciplined reconstruction and explanation of human societies in time through the critical interrogation of surviving evidence. It begins with questions but does not predetermine answers. It recognises interpretation and acknowledges bias, but develops methods to restrain both. It distinguishes a historian’s standpoint from the deliberate distortion of evidence. It requires the historian to argue one case, then construct the strongest case against it, and finally to weigh the evidence as impartially as humanly possible. It acknowledges uncertainty without surrendering the possibility of knowledge. And above all, history requires an intellectual quality increasingly difficult to preserve in polarised times: the willingness to discover that the past was not what we wanted it to be. Carr’s dialogue between present and past must remain a dialogue: the present may question the past, but it cannot dictate the answers. Bloch’s historian must interrogate evidence, not torture it into confession. Collingwood’s questions must arise from enquiry rather than predetermined verdicts. And Habib’s insistence upon evidence and historical explanation reminds us that interpretations of India’s past must ultimately submit themselves to the discipline of historical method.

The defence of history therefore matters far beyond universities and history departments. A society that becomes accustomed to falsifying its past eventually loses the ability to recognise falsehood in its present. Once evidence ceases to matter for events five hundred years ago, there is little reason why it should matter for events five years ago, five months ago or yesterday. That is why the historian’s craft represents something larger than the study of bygone centuries. It represents a commitment to evidence, reason, argument, intellectual honesty and the possibility of establishing truths about human experience even when those truths are uncomfortable. A historian may never be completely free from bias, for no human being can be, but the integrity of the historian lies not in claiming to possess no bias, but in recognising it, controlling it, exposing one’s argument to contrary evidence and refusing to allow preference to become proof. The historian has no obligation to provide society with the past it desires; the obligation is far more demanding: to hear the evidence for the prosecution, hear the evidence for the defence, interrogate both, and then offer the most plausible judgement the surviving evidence allows. And even that judgement must remain open to reconsideration if new evidence appears. That is not the weakness of history; that is what makes history a discipline.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

Anis Ashfaq, Khwab Sarab. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2018. 456 pp. ISBN 978-969-35-3171-7.

Dr Anis Ashfaq is a celebrated poet, critic and fiction writer, and the author of over twenty-four books. His novels, including Haich (2024), Dukhiyare (2014), Khwab-Sarab (2017) and Pari-Naaz Aur Parinde (2018), have received widespread acclaim, and his 2025 publication, Tarjume aur Mukālmey, extends his engagement with the cultural world of Lucknow through translations and dialogues that further illuminate the literary traditions of the city. His primary expertise, however, lies in literary criticism, and he has published five seminal critical collections that delve into the interpretation and analysis of both contemporary and classical literature: Urdu Ghazal Mein Alamat-Nigari (1995), Adab Ki Batein (1996), Bahas-wa-Tanqeed (2009), Ghazal Ka Naya Alamaati Nizam (2011) and Ghalib: Duniya-e-Ma’ani Ka Mutalea (2022). Although his critical essays began appearing in literary journals during his student days, it was the publication of Urdu Ghazal Mein Alamat-Nigari that solidified his reputation as a distinguished critic. Beyond criticism, he has made significant contributions through translations, sketches, monographs, reportage, travelogues and biographies. In 2022, he was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for Khwab-Sarab, a recognition that affirmed what readers had long known: that here was a writer who had achieved something remarkable in the recovery of a vanished world. He is currently working on a book titled Mere Ladakpan ka Lucknow, which explores the conditions and characteristics of the city as he experienced them in his childhood, a project that promises to extend further his lifelong engagement with the place that shaped him.

I can say, without doubt, this novel is a primer for anyone to understand Lucknow and it’s Shi’a cultural ethos. Interwoven in this fascinating cultural setting is a story which is half autobiographical. Without doubt, Khwāb Sarāb is an excellent work of literature and a must read!

The autobiographical threads woven into Khwab Sarab are neither casual nor incidental, but emerge from the deepest wellsprings of the author’s identity. Anis Ashfaq belongs to a family whose generations have lived in Lucknow, and he traces his lineage to the royal house of Awadh, which makes the city’s history not merely a subject of study but an inheritance carried in the blood. His entire education, from beginning to end, was received in Lucknow, and in 1983 he joined the Urdu department of Lucknow University as a lecturer, remaining there for thirty-two years until his retirement as professor and department chair in 2012. It was in the company of the city’s major literary figures that his creative and critical abilities were nurtured, and this biographical grounding explains the unusual texture of the novel: it is not the work of a visiting scholar reconstructing a world from archives, but of a man who carries the city’s lanes, households, speech and rituals in his very bones. Ashfaq has stated that he was pained by the way present-day historians presented wrong facts and distorted stories of the Nawabi era, and it was this anguish that moved him to write a novel that would set the record straight. One might say that Khwab Sarab is the fruit of a lifetime spent walking the same streets its narrator describes, listening to the same soz, inhabiting the same cultural geography, and it is this lived inheritance that gives the novel its extraordinary authority and its quality of being not merely written but remembered from within.

I initially read this book in 2019 when Ashfaq gifted me a copy when he came to visit my house. But then, due to various engagements, it was but a cursory reading. A second reading more recently compels me to introduce it to those who may have missed on it. It is a recommended reading for all who are interested in Lucknow, or Shi’i culture of Awadh. The following is my assessment of this gem:

There are some literary characters who eventually escape the books in which they were created, passing into popular memory, acquiring alternative biographies and beginning to inhabit that uncertain territory between literature and history. Umrao Jan is one such figure. Since Mirza Hadi Ruswa published Umrao Jan Ada at the end of the nineteenth century, its heroine has been read as courtesan, poet, survivor, representative of a vanished Lucknow and, sometimes, almost as though she were an identifiable historical personality whose life Ruswa merely happened to record. Khwab Sarab begins precisely at this unstable frontier between the remembered and the imagined. It is neither simply a sequel to Umrao Jan Ada nor an attempt to imitate Ruswa, but instead a novel about the search for a story: about what happens when a fictional narrative has become so deeply embedded in cultural memory that subsequent generations begin looking for the historical person behind it. Yet to describe Khwab Sarab only in these terms would miss one of its greatest achievements, for the novel also emerges as an extraordinarily authentic account of the Shi’i cultural world of Lucknow. Its importance lies not merely in referring to imambaras, Muharram observances, old families, religious spaces and neighbourhoods associated with Shi’i life, but in the intimacy with which these details are woven into the fabric of everyday existence. The culture is not externally described but lived from within, and this distinction is crucial. Ashfaq does not present Shi’i Lucknow as a catalogue of rituals or monuments; what he evokes is a social world in which religious practice, domestic space, memory, family relationships, architecture, food, speech, etiquette, mourning, neighbourhood geography and inherited objects form parts of a single cultural continuum. The reader gradually acquires the feeling not of being instructed about this world, but of having entered it, and this is perhaps the most remarkable quality of Khwab Sarab: reading it produces something close to the sensation of lived experience. That effect is reinforced by Ashfaq’s preservation of an older Lucknowi vocabulary. Words such as kotha, soz-khwan, majlis, azadari ka saman, ‘alam, farsh, imambara and the vocabulary of old households and neighbourhood life occur not as antiquarian curiosities but as natural parts of speech. Some remain intelligible today; others have receded from ordinary urban Urdu or have lost the precise social meanings they once possessed, but in Khwab Sarab they recover their original environment.

The shadow of Umrao Jan Ada falls across the entire novel, yet Ashfaq wisely does not attempt simply to reproduce Ruswa’s narrative world. Instead, he begins with uncertainty about Ruswa’s own account. The narrator has heard stories about Umrao Jan from elderly people since childhood and gradually comes to suspect that the published narrative may not contain the whole story. Ashfaq states this suspicion with striking directness: “Batāne wāle batāte hain ki Ruswā ne woh musawwada jis mein unhon ne Umrāo Jān ke yahān aulād kā honā dikhāyā thā, apne sandūq mein is liye rakh diyā thā ki unhen ma’lūm thā ki paṛhne wāle Umrāo Jān ko mān kī shakl mein qabūl nahīn karenge.” The narrator then says that the thought gradually occurred to him that he should try to discover Umrao Jan’s “real” or other story and the manuscript supposedly left behind by Ruswa. The importance of the passage lies not in whether the claim about Ruswa can be historically established; the novel is not offering archival proof. Ashfaq is instead dramatising the very process through which literary memory becomes quasi-history, as a story heard from elders, a missing manuscript, a published novel and the narrator’s own desire to know begin to overlap. Khwab Sarab thus becomes a novel about the production of historical memory itself.

The historical sensibility of the novel becomes even more evident when the narrator turns from textual memory to the physical city. One of the most revealing passages begins almost casually: “Chowk aur mere mahalle ke bīch ek chauṛī sī saṛak hai jo Āsaf-ud-Daula ke Imāmbāṛe kī pusht se Talkatora tak…” The description then moves through the lanes, older houses, workshops and buildings surviving on either side of the road. This apparently ordinary topographical detail is fundamental to Ashfaq’s method. He does not introduce Lucknow by saying that it possesses an important Shi’i heritage; instead he locates his narrator inside its cultural geography. The Asafi Imambara is not presented as a monument to which the reader is transported for descriptive purposes; it is part of an everyday route. The reader learns how one moves from Chowk towards an imambara, how houses stand in relation to streets, how workshops occupy particular localities and how older architecture is absorbed into contemporary urban life, and geography becomes memory. Even a tiny domestic detail can carry an entire social world. Describing older houses in the locality, Ashfaq observes that on many entrances there remains a small plaque bearing words such as “Bighair ijāzat andar ānā man’ hai” – “Entry without permission is prohibited.” Such a phrase could easily be overlooked, yet it tells us about the organisation of domestic space, privacy, social hierarchy and the relationship between street and household. It is through precisely such minute observations that Khwab Sarab ceases to be merely a novel set in Lucknow and becomes a remarkably textured representation of how Lucknow was inhabited. The same is true of words associated with the older urban household. The novel repeatedly evokes the kotha not merely as an abstract “house of a courtesan”, but as a distinct social and cultural institution. Ashfaq recalls a world in which respectable men might attend kothas, where music was taught and heard and where tawa’if culture was integrated, however ambiguously, into elite urban sociability. One passage explicitly speaks of men going to kothas and of courtesans being taught rag-ragini. The word kotha itself illustrates the historical value of Ashfaq’s vocabulary; in contemporary speech it can easily become a crude synonym for a brothel, but in the older Lucknowi context evoked in the novel it carries a much more complex set of associations: performance, musical training, poetry, patronage, cultivated conversation and the socially ambiguous position of the tawa’if. Ashfaq restores that older semantic world rather than imposing the narrower modern meaning upon it.

One of the least immediately obvious but most valuable achievements of Khwab Sarab is therefore lexical. Ashfaq preserves terms that once belonged to the ordinary social vocabulary of Lucknow but are increasingly unfamiliar, altered in meaning or detached from the worlds that produced them. Consider soz-khwan. Early in the novel the narrator encounters references to recognised soz-khwans, men or women trained in the melodic recitation of soz during Muharram. The text remembers individual practitioners and even discussions of the proper rag or manner in which a soz was to be rendered. To translate soz-khwan merely as “elegy reciter” would flatten the term, for a soz-khwan belonged to a distinctive performative tradition situated between poetry, music and ritual mourning. Soz-khwani required voice, memory, repertoire and knowledge of melodic convention, and the fact that Ashfaq’s characters speak of particular soz-khwans by name gives us a glimpse of a world in which such performers possessed recognised social identities. Similarly, farsh in the Lucknowi context means more than “flooring”; when an imambara is prepared and the farsh is spread, the term points towards the ritual transformation of domestic or semi-domestic space, as a room becomes a place of majlis and physical arrangement and sacred commemoration become inseparable. The same is true of ‘alam. The word survives widely, but Khwab Sarab restores the material specificity of the object. Ashfaq speaks of large ‘alams, zari work, embroidery and the other objects collectively described as azadari ka saman. The phrase is difficult to translate adequately; “mourning paraphernalia” sounds almost dismissive and “ritual objects” is too clinical. Azadari ka saman belongs to the vocabulary of the household itself: things carefully stored, repaired, inherited and brought out when the ritual season returns. The language thus becomes an archive.

This quality becomes still more striking when Ashfaq enters explicitly into the world of Muharram and azadari. What he records is not an outsider’s picturesque description of “Shi’i rituals”. He notices the things that someone who has actually lived within the culture notices: the opening of an imambara, the spreading of farsh, the lighting arrangements, preparations for majlis, the wearing of black, the movements of mourners, the material objects associated with azadari, and the manner in which one family’s imambara is connected with another. At one point a character asks: “Azādārī kā sāmān tum gaye baras yahān chhoṛ gaye the; ab tak sāmān rakhā hai?” The ensuing description mentions large ‘alams, zari and embroidery work and other objects preserved for use in an imambara. This is exactly the kind of passage that gives the novel its documentary texture. Ashfaq does not stop to explain to an unfamiliar reader what an ‘alam is or why particular objects matter; his characters already know, and the objects belong to their world. An ethnographer might describe azadari from outside, but Ashfaq represents the everyday conversations through which preparations for azadari actually occur. The very phrase azadari ka saman carries a cultural density that is difficult to reproduce in English, referring not to a single ritual object but to an entire material repertoire accumulated, stored, repaired and brought out again according to the ritual calendar. Ashfaq also understands something fundamental about Lucknowi Shi’i culture: the imambara is not merely congregational space but can be inseparable from family history. In the same sequence, the conversation moves naturally between one household’s imambara and that of another. One character explains that there had been an imambara in her own family and refers to attending another family’s imambara before returning to her own. The significance is considerable. Formal histories of Lucknow understandably concentrate upon monumental imambaras – the Bara Imambara, the Chhota Imambara and other major architectural complexes. Khwab Sarab, by contrast, reveals the proliferation of smaller domestic and familial imambaras through which Shi’i ritual life actually penetrated neighbourhood society. This is where the novel becomes particularly valuable to the cultural historian, reminding us that Shi’i Lucknow cannot be reconstructed solely through royal patronage or monumental architecture. It also existed inside homes, courtyards, neighbourhoods and networks of families. Here again vocabulary matters. Imambara itself is a word so familiar that its historical richness can easily be overlooked. In Ashfaq’s world it may denote an imposing public structure, but equally a family space attached to a house, carrying the memory of ancestors, inherited ritual obligations and the annual cycle of mourning. The same word thus moves between monument and household.

One of the strongest sequences comes when the narrator observes an imambara being prepared as evening approaches. Lamps and lights transform the space; people change their ordinary appearance; black clothing begins to dominate; the sounds of lamentation gradually intensify. Ashfaq then reproduces a soz: “Āe ‘azādāro ke mātam ke din āe…” The precise force of such passages lies in their integration into the narrative. Ashfaq does not announce: “This is how Shi’is mourn during Muharram.” Instead the narrator hears the soz, watches the preparations, encounters people moving between imambaras and experiences the changing mood of the neighbourhood. The word soz itself is important. Literally associated with burning or inner pain, in Lucknowi Shi’i usage it denotes a particular form of elegiac recitation. Likewise soz-khwani is not interchangeable with marsiya-khwani, even though both participate in the larger culture of remembrance. Such distinctions, once part of the instinctive vocabulary of Lucknow’s Shi’i households, are increasingly opaque outside that cultural environment. Ashfaq assumes them rather than displaying them, and that is another mark of authenticity. Another brief passage is equally revealing. The narrator describes moving through the locality during days when participation in majalis structures his movements: “…mujhe dūsrī majlison mein sharīk honā hai…” and elsewhere observes that during those days an imambara remains open for extended periods as people gather and mourning continues. What matters here is the transformation of ordinary time. Muharram in Khwab Sarab is not an isolated ceremony inserted into everyday life; it temporarily reorganises everyday life itself. Visits, conversations, movement through the city and household schedules begin to follow the rhythm of majalis and mourning. The plural majalis itself belongs to this older idiom. Modern speech often substitutes the singularised colloquial majlis even when several gatherings are meant, but Ashfaq’s usage preserves the Persian-Arabic-inflected register that formed part of educated Lucknowi Urdu. This is a small linguistic point, but the novel is made up of precisely such small survivals.

Ashfaq’s language also preserves the vocabulary of the pre-modern and colonial urban social order associated with the tawa’if. The novel uses kotha, tawa’if, soz-khwan and related terms without modern embarrassment or retrospective moral simplification. At one point the discussion explicitly recalls men going to kothas, listening to music and tawa’ifs being taught rag-ragini. This vocabulary matters because modern social categories can easily distort the institution retrospectively. A tawa’if was not simply what English translations routinely call a “prostitute”. The term could designate an accomplished professional woman trained in music, poetry, etiquette and performance, even though sexuality and patronage might also form part of the institution. Similarly, the kotha was a cultural space as much as a physical one. Ashfaq needs neither sociological footnotes nor defensive explanations because his characters remember what these words once meant. The linguistic world of Khwab Sarab therefore resists the flattening of older Lucknow into modern moral categories. The novel’s attentiveness to material objects also deserves special notice. Ashfaq speaks of large ‘alams, zari and embroidery work and other objects used during azadari. This sensitivity is historically valuable. Objects of mourning have craftsmen, materials, forms, styles and histories; they belong simultaneously to religion, artisanal production, domestic patronage and family memory. The vocabulary itself preserves this artisanal world. Zari and related terms evoke not just decoration but skilled urban crafts whose products entered both courtly culture and religious material culture. When such words occur in the same domestic conversation as ‘alam and imambara, an entire economy of craftsmanship appears almost incidentally behind the ritual. Ashfaq notices all these levels without turning the novel into an academic catalogue. The ‘alam is sacred object, work of craftsmanship and inherited possession at once. The novel also captures the movement of azadari from domestic and semi-private space into the streets. One passage describes mourners, standards and processional arrangements in which “…logon ke hāthon mein zar-tār ‘alam the…” — people carried richly ornamented standards in their hands. Elsewhere water is distributed to participants, recalling the thirst of Karbala. The processional landscape brings animals, standards, mourners, water distribution and spectators into a single visual field. Here again Ashfaq’s strength lies in detail. For the historian, such details illuminate how ritual lays temporary claim to urban space. Streets cease for a while to be merely routes of commercial circulation; they become landscapes of remembrance.

The authenticity of Khwab Sarab ultimately depends as much upon language as upon architecture or narrative. Ashfaq’s Lucknow is reconstructed through speech. The forms of address, indirectness, domestic conversation and effortless use of terms such as imambara, majlis, ‘alam, azadari, soz, soz-khwan, farsh, kotha and tawa’if place the reader inside a linguistic world. These expressions are not italicised curiosities within the Urdu original; they belong to ordinary conversation. That matters because cultures survive in vocabulary. A city may retain its buildings while losing the words through which people once understood them. A kotha becomes reduced to “brothel”; a soz-khwan disappears as a recognised social type; azadari ka saman becomes merely “ritual material”; an imambara becomes a “heritage monument”. Each translation may be technically understandable, yet an entire network of lived associations disappears. Khwab Sarab preserves those associations. The novel therefore functions as a kind of lexical archive of Lucknow. Its old words are not decorative archaisms; they identify institutions, occupations, spaces, relationships and practices that no longer occupy the same position in everyday urban life.

Perhaps the greatest praise one can offer Khwab Sarab is that it does not merely describe Lucknow’s Shi’i culture; it makes the reader experience its rhythms. The short passages cited above explain why. “Chowk aur mere mahalle ke bīch…” and immediately we are walking through a known neighbourhood. “Bighair ijāzat andar ānā man’ hai.” and immediately we understand something about the threshold of an old Lucknow household. “Azādārī kā sāmān…” and immediately we enter the material preparations of Muharram. “Mujhe dūsrī majlison mein sharīk honā hai…” and immediately we recognise how ritual governs the movement of people through the city. “Āe ‘azādāro ke mātam ke din āe…” and suddenly the world that has hitherto been reconstructed through lanes, houses and conversations acquires sound. Add to these the kotha, the tawa’if, the soz-khwan, the farsh, the ‘alam and the innumerable other words whose precise cultural meanings are now fading, and one begins to see why Ashfaq’s Lucknow possesses such extraordinary density. These are small phrases and small words, but collectively they create civilisation. Ashfaq does not reconstruct Shi’i Lucknow retrospectively from a distance; he allows us to inhabit it through its vocabulary, routes, domestic spaces, objects and rhythms of remembrance.

Khwab Sarab deserves to be recognised not simply as a continuation of the imaginative world created by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, but as one of those novels in which literature becomes a form of cultural preservation. Its Lucknow is not the tourist’s Lucknow of great monuments, nor is it merely the nostalgic Lucknow of nawabs, courtesans and tehzeeb. It is Shi’i Lucknow as lived experience: imambaras and homes, lanes and rituals, mourning and memory, old families and fading houses, kothas and tawa’ifs, soz-khwans and majalis, farsh and ‘alams, speech and etiquette, objects and obligations, women’s recollections and inherited affiliations. Ashfaq records this world with extraordinary minuteness. The reader does not stand outside it but enters the lanes, sits inside the houses, hears the soz, recognises the soz-khwan, sees the ‘alams being brought out, moves from one majlis to another, encounters the elderly custodians of forgotten stories and gradually begins to understand how an entire culture can reside in words and details so small that conventional history scarcely notices them. This may ultimately be the most lasting achievement of Khwab Sarab. The search for Umrao Jan provides its narrative impetus. The vanished Lucknow provides its melancholy. But the living Shi’i culture of the city, its habits, spaces, language, memories and innumerable nuances, provides its soul. And it is precisely because Ashfaq writes that world from within that the novel acquires an unusual authenticity. One finishes Khwab Sarab with the feeling not merely of having read about a culture, but of having, however briefly, lived inside it.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

The Significance of 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal for the Followers of the Ahl al-Bayt

As the sun sets on 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal and the night of the ninth begins, a profound transition takes place in the devotional calendar of the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt. The extended season of mourning that began with Muharram has reached its conclusion. The black associated with azadari gives way to colour, sorrow gives way to thanksgiving, and the remembrance of martyrdom is joined by the affirmation of hope. The ninth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal, popularly celebrated as Eid-e-Zahra, is therefore not merely a day of festivity. It marks the movement from mourning to renewal, from Karbala to the continuing Imamate, and from remembrance of suffering to confidence in the ultimate triumph of justice.

A tradition widely cited in connection with the day is attributed to Imam Ali al-Hadi, the Tenth Imam, through Ahmad ibn Ishaq al-Qummi: “The ninth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal is the day of Eid. It is our Eid and the Eid of our followers.” Versions of this tradition describe Ahmad ibn Ishaq observing the day with ghusl, fine clothes and perfume, practices associated with celebration. The report has consequently played an important role in the devotional understanding of 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal.

At the same time, some caution is necessary when reconstructing the historical origins of Eid-e-Zahra. Several different traditions have become associated with 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal over the centuries, and they do not all possess the same degree of historical or hadith authentication. The significance of the day is therefore best understood by distinguishing between what can be established historically, what belongs to transmitted devotional tradition, and what the festival has come to mean in the lived religious culture of the Shiʿa.

The End of the Season of Mourning

Perhaps the most immediate meaning of Eid-e-Zahra in South Asian Shiʿi culture becomes clear only when it is placed beside 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal.

For more than two months, the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt have travelled symbolically with the family of the Prophet. Muharram brings the approach to Karbala, the martyrdom of Imam Husain on Ashura, the captivity of the women and children, and the suffering of Imam Ali Zain al-Abidin. Safar continues this landscape of grief through Arbaʿin and the commemorations associated with the Prophet and the Imams. Finally comes 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hasan al-Askari, the Eleventh Imam.

In the traditions of Awadh and much of the Indo-Shiʿi world, this is the culmination of the Ayyam-e-Aza. The Chup Taziya and other observances of 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, as we have seen in my earlier post, give ritual expression to a final farewell to the martyrs of Karbala.

Then comes the ninth.

The contrast is deliberate and emotionally powerful. The azadar does not forget Husain when the black clothes are removed. The mourning ends, but the covenant with Karbala does not. What was expressed for two months through tears, majlis, marsiya, nauha and matam must now be expressed through conduct.

In this sense, Eid-e-Zahra asks an important question: what remains after the mourning of Husain is over?

The answer must surely be the principles for which Husain stood: justice, truth, dignity, resistance to oppression, loyalty to the Ahl al-Bayt and refusal to surrender one’s conscience before power.

Thus the transition from 8 to 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal is not a transition from remembrance to forgetfulness. It is a transition from mourning Karbala to living Karbala.

Why is it Called Eid-e-Zahra?

Popular tradition calls the day Eid-e-Zahra, the Festival of Fatima al-Zahra, the beloved daughter of the Prophet and mother of Imam Hasan and Imam Husain.

One explanation associates the festival with the punishment of those responsible for the tragedy of Karbala. After the martyrdom of Imam Husain in 61 AH, Mukhtar al-Thaqafi established control over Kufa and sought vengeance against a number of those who had participated in the killing of Husain and his companions. Among the principal figures associated with the forces at Karbala was Umar ibn Saʿd, who commanded the army confronting Imam Husain.

A powerful devotional tradition consequently grew around the idea that news of the punishment of Husain’s killers brought consolation to the surviving members of the Ahl al-Bayt, particularly Imam Ali Zain al-Abidin. In popular retellings of Eid-e-Zahra, the arrival of the news is remembered as the moment when happiness returned to a household overwhelmed by the tragedy of Karbala. Just as Fatima Zahra is supposed to have miraculously appeared in Karbala when Imam Husain was martyred and wailed over him, similarly, on getting the news of her son’s executioner being killed, brought her joy. It was on this occasion that her daughter, Zainab and other women of the Household, smile and expressed happiness after an year of intense mourning.

The underlying idea is readily understandable. Eid-e-Zahra represents the conviction that injustice does not have the final word.

Yet the precise chronology found in popular accounts needs qualification. Mukhtar’s revolt and the deaths of the principal figures responsible for Karbala occurred at different times, and the assertion that all the relevant events occurred specifically on 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal cannot simply be treated as established historical chronology. The tradition is better understood as part of the later devotional memory of the day.

Its religious message nevertheless remains powerful: the oppressed may suffer, but oppression is not eternal; power may temporarily belong to the tyrant, but moral victory belongs ultimately to the victim who refuses injustice.

Seen in this light, the joy of Eid-e-Zahra should never become simply joy at another person’s death. Its deeper meaning is rejoicing in the defeat of zulm, not delighting in cruelty; celebrating justice, not vengeance for its own sake.

The Beginning of the Imamate of Imam al-Mahdi

There is, however, another significance of 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal which gives the day a much deeper theological meaning for Twelver Shiʿas.

Imam Hasan al-Askari died on 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal 260 AH/874 CE. With his death, the Imamate passed to his son, Imam Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam. Shiʿi sources therefore connect the death of the Eleventh Imam with the emergence of the Twelfth Imam as his successor and with the beginning of the period of occultation.

For Twelver Shiʿism, Imam al-Mahdi is not simply a historical figure whose memory is commemorated. He is the Living Imam, the Imam of the Age, al-Hujjat and al-Qaʾim, whose reappearance is awaited. Twelver doctrine holds that he will ultimately establish justice and equity in a world overcome by injustice.

This transforms the meaning of 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal.

The previous day commemorates the martyrdom of an Imam. The following day affirms that the chain of divine guidance has not been broken.

The Eleventh Imam departs, but the Imamate continues.

For this reason, 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal may be understood not merely as Eid-e-Zahra but as a renewal of allegiance to the Imam of the Age, Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi.

And herein lies perhaps the greatest significance of the day for the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt.

What Does it Mean to Await the Imam?

To celebrate the beginning of the Imamate of Imam al-Mahdi cannot simply mean waiting passively for his appearance.

The idea of intizar, awaiting the Imam, carries a moral responsibility. If the Mahdi is awaited as the restorer of justice, then those who claim allegiance to him must themselves attempt to practise justice. If he represents truth, his followers cannot knowingly support falsehood. If he stands with the oppressed, allegiance to him cannot coexist comfortably with indifference towards oppression.

The celebration therefore invites self-examination.

What does it mean to say that we are waiting for the Imam if our conduct contradicts the society of justice we expect him to establish?

The true muntazir, the one who awaits, prepares himself morally for the Imam he claims to await. He cultivates truthfulness, knowledge, compassion, courage and justice. He protects the weak, resists prejudice and refuses to participate in oppression.

Thus Eid-e-Zahra connects Karbala with the Mahdi.

Karbala teaches why injustice must be resisted. The Mahdi represents the promise that justice will ultimately prevail.

Between the two stands the believer.

An Eid of the Ahl al-Bayt

There is another beautiful dimension to the name Eid-e-Zahra.

Fatima al-Zahra stands at the centre of the spiritual genealogy of the Imams. She is the daughter of the Prophet, wife of Imam Ali, mother of Hasan and Husain, and ancestress of the succeeding Imams. The tragedy of Karbala is therefore also the tragedy of the children of Zahra.

To call the ninth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal Eid-e-Zahra gives the festival an intimate familial character. After weeks in which the believer has shared symbolically in the grief of the Prophet’s household, the believer now shares in its joy.

This is an essential characteristic of Shiʿi devotion: to rejoice in the happiness of Muhammad and the Ahl al-Bayt and to grieve in their sorrow.

Eid-e-Zahra therefore belongs to the same emotional universe as Muharram. The tears of Ashura and the happiness of Eid are not opposites. Both arise from wilayah, love and loyalty towards the Prophet and his family.

Clarifying a Misunderstanding: Umar ibn Sa’d, Not Umar ibn al-Khattab

It is important to address a misunderstanding that has, unfortunately, tarnished the reputation of this beautiful festival. In some circles, 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal has been associated with the death of the second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab. This has led to allegations that Eid-e-Zahra is a festival of condemning the Khulafa, causing unnecessary sectarian friction and diverting attention from the day’s true significance.

The confusion arises from a simple but significant historical error: the similarity of names between Umar ibn Sa’d and Umar ibn al-Khattab. Let us be absolutely clear about the facts.

Umar ibn Sa’d was the commander of the Umayyad army that confronted Imam Husain at Karbala. It was he who led the forces that massacred the family of the Prophet. According to historical reports, he was killed on 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal by Mukhtar al-Thaqafi as part of the latter’s campaign to avenge the martyrs of Karbala.

Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph, has no connection to this date whatsoever. Historical records, from both Shia and Sunni sources, are unanimous on this point. He was wounded on 26 or 27 Dhu al-Hijjah and died three days later, in the same month of Dhu al-Hijjah, not in Rabiʿ al-Awwal. The Caliph died in 23/24 AH, whereas the daughter of the Prophet, Fatima Al-Zahra died approximately 6 months of the Prophet’s death.

The renowned historian al-Tabari, in his famous history, explicitly records this event in late Dhu al-Hijjah of the year 23 AH. Ibn Sa’d, in his al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, also records his death in the same month of Dhu al-Hijjah. Most significantly, Shaykh al-Mufid, one of the towering figures of Shia theology and history, states clearly in his Masar al-Shi’a that the second Caliph was wounded on the twenty-sixth of Dhu al-Hijjah and died on the twenty-ninth of the same month.

This consensus among historians demonstrates that the association of this event with 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal is entirely without historical foundation. The root of this misunderstanding lies in a confusion of names and a conflation of events over time.

Therefore, the celebration of Eid-e-Zahra need not, and should not, become an occasion for insulting the sacred personalities of other Muslims or deliberately causing hurt to fellow believers. That is the practice of Mu’āwiya and the dynasty which he established. He fine tuned the art of cursing the Ahl al-Bayt.

Love for the Ahl al-Bayt is not strengthened by counter abuse.

Indeed, if Eid-e-Zahra commemorates liberation from oppression and allegiance to the Imam of Justice, then its celebration should embody the ethics of the Ahl al-Bayt: dignity in disagreement, generosity towards others, concern for the oppressed and restraint even towards one’s opponents.

The festival is at its noblest when it celebrates the Ahl al-Bayt rather than hatred of anyone else. As Ayatollah Bahjat wisely advised, in addressing the significance of this day, one should focus on reasoned argument and the demonstration of truth, stating that “neither abuse, nor insult, nor curse is necessary.” He encouraged using the occasion to present clear and convincing arguments for the truth, rather than engaging in practices that cause division.

Prominent Shia scholars and authorities do not consider it permissible to hold gatherings in which the holy figures of other Muslims are abused. The true spirit of this day lies in celebrating the Imamate of Imam al-Mahdi and the principles of justice he represents.

A Day of Joy, Not Sectarianism

The celebration of Eid-e-Zahra need not, and should not, become an occasion for insulting the sacred personalities of other Muslims or deliberately causing hurt to fellow believers. Love for the Ahl al-Bayt is not strengthened by abuse.

If it commemorates liberation from oppression and allegiance to the Imam of Justice, then its celebration should embody the ethics of the Ahl al-Bayt: dignity in disagreement, generosity towards others, concern for the oppressed and restraint even towards one’s opponents.

The festival is at its noblest when it celebrates the Ahl al-Bayt rather than hatred of anyone else.

From Tears to Hope

The real beauty of 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal lies in where it occurs in the sacred calendar.

For weeks the Shiʿa has remembered loss.

Husain has fallen at Karbala. Abbas has fallen beside the Euphrates. Ali Akbar and Qasim have been mourned. The infant Ali Asghar has been remembered. Zainab, also known as ‘Sāni e Zahra’, the second Zahra, has travelled from Karbala to Kufa and Damascus. The captives have returned. Arbaʿin has passed. The deaths of the Prophet and other members of the Ahl al-Bayt have been commemorated. Finally, on 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, Imam Hasan al-Askari is mourned.

And then, almost suddenly, the direction changes.

The ninth morning is a morning of hope.

That transition contains a profound theological statement. Shiʿism does not end at Karbala. Its ultimate message is not despair.

Karbala teaches that truth can apparently be defeated and still remain victorious. Eid-e-Zahra carries that lesson forward: oppression passes, but the cause of justice survives. An Imam may be martyred, but the Imamate continues. The world may be filled with injustice, but the believer must never surrender the expectation of justice.

That is why the most meaningful celebration of Eid-e-Zahra is perhaps not merely new clothes, perfume, sweets or gatherings, beautiful though these traditions may be. It is the renewal of one’s covenant with the Ahl al-Bayt and especially with the Living Imam.

After more than two months of saying:

“Labbaik Ya Husain”

the believer now asks what that declaration demands in everyday life.

And on 9 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, he renews another pledge:

“Labbaik Ya Mahdi.”

The message connecting the two is ultimately one and the same: we stand with justice against oppression, with knowledge against ignorance, with truth against falsehood, and with the Ahl al-Bayt in sorrow as well as in joy.

Thus, this occasion is not a celebration of death. It is not a festival of sectarian division. It is a profound affirmation of life, justice and hope. It marks the transition from mourning to living, from grief to action, from remembering Karbala to awaiting the Mahdi.

As we put aside our black clothes and gather with family and community, let us remember that the true spirit of this occasion lies in renewing our commitment to the principles for which Imam Husain stood and for which Imam al-Mahdi will rise. It is a day to rejoice in the continuity of divine guidance, to strengthen our bond with the Ahl al-Bayt, and to prepare ourselves to be worthy of the justice we await.

May Allah accept our azadari for Imam Husain and the martyrs of Karbala. May He grant us the tawfiq to translate our mourning into righteous conduct. May He keep alive in our hearts the wilayah and love of Muhammad and his progeny, strengthen our allegiance to the Imam of our Age, and count us among those who recognise him, await him and are worthy of assisting the cause of justice for which he will rise.

Eid-e-Zahra Mubarak!

Allahumma salli ʿala Muhammad wa Aali Muhammad.
Allahumma ʿajjil li-waliyyika al-faraj.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

For the Shiʿas of Awadh, the mourning of Karbala does not end with ʿAshura, nor even with the Chehlum or Arbaʿin of Imam Husain. Instead, this profound period of grief continues through the month of Safar and reaches its solemn conclusion only on 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, the day traditionally observed as the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hasan al-Askari, the Eleventh Imam. This date consequently occupies a distinctive and deeply resonant place in the religious culture of Lucknow and of the numerous towns and villages influenced by the traditions of Awadh.

It is a day on which two profound strands of grief come together. The first is the remembrance of Imam Hasan al-Askari, whose death in 260 AH brought the Imamate to his young son, Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam. In Twelver Shiʿi belief, the latter is the Living Imam, presently in occultation. The faithful therefore commemorate the death of the Eleventh Imam while offering their condolences to his son, the Imam of the Age, for the loss of his father. But in the Indo-Shiʿi culture of Awadh, 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal acquired another, equally powerful emotional significance. It became the day upon which the extended season of mourning for Imam Husain, his family and his companions at Karbala finally comes to an end. The azadar (mourner) who has accompanied Husain symbolically from the beginning of Muharram now takes leave of him, and this is what gives the day its particular poignancy. It is not merely another shahadat commemorated in the Shiʿi calendar; it is a farewell.

The ritual calendar that developed in Awadh greatly enlarged the temporal space occupied by Karbala. The first ten days of Muharram naturally formed its emotional centre, culminating on 10 Muharram with the martyrdom of Imam Husain, yet remembrance did not cease with ʿAshura. Other dates followed, including the commemorations associated with the surviving members of the Ahl al-Bayt, the Chehlum on 20 Safar, and the mourning associated with the death of the Prophet and the martyrdom of Imam Hasan towards the end of Safar. The succession of these observances created an almost continuous cycle of mourning extending across more than two lunar months, and the culmination came on 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal. A Government of India ethnographic study associated with the 1961 Census already recorded the Chup Taziya as the most important performance of this day in Lucknow and connected it explicitly with the termination of the mourning period.

Thus, in the Awadh tradition, the beginning of Muharram opens a sacred period in which ordinary time is, in a sense, suspended. From the very sighting of the Muharram moon until the evening of 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, the Shiʿa community adopts a disciplined code of mourning that is outwardly visible in every aspect of daily life. Black clothing becomes the uniform of grief, worn not as a mere fashion but as a public declaration of solidarity with the Ahl al-Bayt. Bright or gay coloured attire is set aside, and the wearing of makeup or jewellery is abstained from, for such adornments are considered incompatible with the solemnity of the season. This external discipline serves as a constant reminder of the tragedy of Karbala, transforming the mourner’s very appearance into a living testament of remembrance. Black, the prominent colour in which they attire, is not merely a colour but a language of sorrow that speaks without words, and it is worn consistently through the majalis, nauha, soz, salam, marsiya, matam, and the carrying of alams and taziyas that create an extended landscape of remembrance. Karbala is not remembered merely as an event that occurred in 61 AH; through ritual and through the very dress of the community, it is made emotionally present. On 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, that sacred season finally closes.

The most dramatic public expression of this conclusion is the famous Chup Taziya procession of Lucknow. Its name is itself significant, for “chup” means silent. Unlike processions characterised by the collective recitation of nauhas, rhythmic matam and public lamentation, the defining feature of the Chup Taziya is silence. This silence does not signify an absence of grief; on the contrary, it represents grief brought to its final and perhaps most intense expression. Historical accounts associate the procession with Nawab Ahmed Ali Khan, known as Aghan or Aggan Sahib and bearing the title Shaukat Yar Jung, and place its emergence in nineteenth-century Lucknow. The details of the origin story survive in somewhat different versions. The 1961 Census monograph records an oral tradition that Aghan Sahib had been detained on a murder accusation and was consequently unable to bury his family taziya on 10 Muharram. Having been cleared and released on 7 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, he took it for burial the following day, and since the mourning period was then ending, the procession was conducted quietly and without matam. Later accounts similarly connect the tradition with Ahmed Ali Khan Shaukat Yar Jung, though details concerning the circumstances differ, and this variation is important. The broad historical association of the procession with his family is much firmer than every element of the popular story explaining its origin, and there is also evidence that a family taziya earlier associated with the Chehlum came eventually to be taken out on 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, thereby transforming the procession into the concluding observance of the entire season of azadari. The Lucknow procession traditionally begins in the early morning from Imambara Nazim Sahib, carrying the taziya together with alams and zari, and ultimately reaches Rauza-e-Kazmain, where the great black taziya is buried. The defining portion of the procession is conducted in silence, and that silence is what gives the procession its extraordinary character.

The Chup Taziya can be understood as the final stage in a carefully developed language of mourning. During Muharram, grief has sound; it is expressed through the voice of the zakir, through the recitation of marsiya and soz, through nauha-khwani, and through the collective responses of the mourners. The names of Husain, Abbas, Ali Akbar, Ali Asghar, Qasim, Zainab and the other figures of Karbala are repeatedly invoked, and the tragedy is narrated and re-narrated. The external code of mourning, with its black attire and abstention from adornment, provides a visual accompaniment to this audible grief, binding the community together in a shared and visible act of remembrance. At the end comes silence. There is something profoundly appropriate in this ritual progression. After weeks of narration and lamentation, there is finally nothing more to say; the azadar has travelled symbolically through Karbala, the captivity of the Ahl al-Bayt and the subsequent commemorations. The silence of the Chup Taziya becomes therefore not an emptiness but a language in itself, saying: the time has come to take leave of Husain.

The date also links the memory of Karbala with the continuing doctrine of the Imamate. On 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, the Shiʿa mourns Imam Hasan al-Askari and offers condolences to Imam al-Mahdi, the son who succeeded him as the Twelfth Imam. In Twelver belief, therefore, the chain of Imams does not terminate historically with Hasan al-Askari; the Imam of the Age remains alive, although concealed from ordinary human sight. This gives the conclusion of azadari an additional theological dimension, for the mourning community is not simply remembering its dead, but understands itself as mourning in the presence of the Living Imam. The condolence offered to the Imam of the Age for his father becomes inseparable, in popular devotional consciousness, from the grief of the Ahl al-Bayt as a whole, and Karbala, Samarra and the continuing Imamate are joined within a single sacred history.

Although the Chup Taziya is particularly identified with Lucknow, the observance of 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal as the concluding day of mourning became much more widespread. The Lucknow tradition itself spread beyond the city, and Chup Taziya observances are documented elsewhere in South Asia. This diffusion should be understood within the larger cultural influence exercised by Awadh upon North Indian Shiʿism. Lucknow was not merely the political capital of the Nawabs; it became one of the great centres of Shiʿi scholarship, ritual and material culture in South Asia. Its imambaras, karbalas, majalis, marsiya-khwani, taziyas, alams and processional traditions supplied models that were reproduced, with local variations, in smaller qasbas and villages. Families, zakirs, ulama, poets and anjumans carried these traditions with them. Consequently, even places far removed from Lucknow could participate in a ritual world whose cultural vocabulary had been profoundly shaped by Awadh. The Chup Taziya therefore belongs to a larger history of the vernacularisation of Karbala in India, where an event of seventh-century Iraq was translated into the social and cultural idioms of South Asia without losing its sacred geography. Karbala remained Karbala, but it could also be encountered through the imambara, taziya, alam, marsiya and procession of an Indian town, and through the disciplined mourning dress that marked the community for over two months.

Perhaps the most revealing way of understanding of this day in the Awadh tradition is therefore through the idea of farewell. For more than two months, the mourner has lived with Karbala. The story has been heard repeatedly, but repetition has not exhausted its meaning; each majlis has returned to another person, another episode, another moment of separation. The tragedy has unfolded through words, objects, gestures, processions, spaces, and even through the very clothes worn by the faithful. Then comes 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal. The Eleventh Imam is mourned, condolences are offered to the Twelfth and Living Imam, the final taziya moves through the streets, and finally there is silence. The extraordinary achievement of the Awadh tradition was to transform historical remembrance into a sustained emotional calendar. It did not permit Karbala to disappear with the sunset of 10 Muharram; it extended mourning across Muharram and Safar until the martyrdom of the Eleventh Imam provided the final moment of leave-taking. Thus, 8 Rabiʿ al-Awwal marks both an ending and a continuity. The formal season of azadari ends, but allegiance to Husain does not. The taziya may be buried, the black banners may eventually be removed and ordinary life may resume, but the ethical and spiritual memory of Karbala remains. That, perhaps, is the deepest meaning of the Chup Taziya: one says farewell to the season of mourning, but not to Imam Husain, and ordinary life resumes with the profound assurance that Karbala endures in the heart of the community.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

The land of Aligarh Muslim University is not merely real estate. Much of the material foundation upon which the University arose represents the accumulated generosity of generations of people who contributed money, property, buildings and land to create and sustain an educational institution. To understand the recurring disputes over AMU’s property, including the latest action by the Aligarh Nagar Nigam on 20 August 2026, one must therefore begin not with contemporary revenue records but with the origins of the University itself.

The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, established by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in the nineteenth century, was essentially a public enterprise. Its buildings, hostels, educational facilities and endowments were created through subscriptions and donations collected from across India. Princes contributed, but so did zamindars, merchants, professionals and ordinary supporters of the Aligarh Movement. The history of the institution is consequently inseparable from philanthropy. AMU’s own records provide numerous examples: Begum Sultan Jahan of Bhopal and her family contributed Rs 50,000 towards the College building fund, and when the campaign for a Muslim university gathered momentum she donated another Rs 100,000, while other rulers, landlords and benefactors supported buildings, hostels and educational activities.

The Riding Club itself grew from precisely this culture of benefaction. Horse riding began at the MAO College in 1889 after Sir Syed persuaded local landlords to send horses and grooms so that students could learn horsemanship. Nawab Mohammad Ismail Khan Sherwani presented four horses, while the Nawab of Chhatari, Nawab Faiyyaz Ali Khan of Pahasu and the Bhikampur estate were among those who contributed horses or assistance. When the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920, the legal position of the accumulated property was explicitly addressed by Parliament. Section 4 of the Aligarh Muslim University Act, 1920 dissolved the MAO College and Muslim University Association and transferred to the new University all their movable and immovable property, rights, powers and privileges, together with those of the Muslim University Foundation Committee. They became vested in AMU for the objects for which the University had been incorporated.

The process of benefaction did not end in 1920. A Government of India reply placed before the Rajya Sabha on 27 November 2024 provides a remarkable catalogue of later gifts and waqfs made to AMU. Among them were 7 acres and 18 dismil in Bahraich donated by Chaudhary Santram; 4.59 acres at Jawan Sikandarpur donated by the Land Management Committee and used for AMU’s Rural Health Training Centre; 1.970 hectares donated in long lease by Amar Pratap Singh, part of which accommodates the Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh AMU City School; and numerous waqf properties endowed by Bibi Fatima, Musharraf Ali Khan, Noor Jahan, Professor Moinuddin, Amir Mustafa Khan, Mohammad Habib-Ullah Khan, Dr Wali Mohammad, Abdur Rehman Khan and Sheikh Abdullah. Today these properties accommodate institutions ranging from the Faculty of Theology and Nadeem Tarin Hall to the AMU Picture Gallery, NSS office and Abdullah Nursery School. This history matters because AMU’s estate is not simply an accumulation of vacant plots around a modern university campus but a historical trust assembled over generations.

The Riding Club and a History of Vulnerable Land

Among the most contested areas has been the land associated with the Muslim University Riding Club and Riding Field. The University’s connection with horse riding goes back to the MAO College period, but the present dispute concerns land in the Bhamola Maafi-Nagla Patwari area which AMU says was lawfully acquired and has remained in University possession and use for many decades. For those who lived through the University of the 1990s, however, disputes surrounding the Riding Club land carry darker memories. When Mahmood-ur-Rahman became Vice-Chancellor in 1995, one of the issues confronting him was encroachment upon University property. At the welcome function organised for him by the Aligarh Muslim University Teachers’ Association, he publicly expressed his determination to have University lands freed from illegal possession. At that meeting, Dr Rajiv Sharma of the Department of History, who was then President of the Muslim University Riding Club, responded to the Vice-Chancellor’s declaration and assured him that he would hand over documents relating to the Riding Club lands which demonstrated the University’s claim over the property. Within about a week, Rajiv Sharma was murdered.

It is essential to state precisely what can and cannot be inferred from this sequence. No investigation or court ever established that Rajiv Sharma was murdered because of the Riding Club land, and it would therefore be historically irresponsible to present such a connection as established fact. Yet historical writing must also record contemporary perceptions when they themselves become part of the history of an institution. At the time, the proximity between Sharma’s undertaking regarding the property papers and his murder created widespread suspicion within sections of the University community that his death might somehow have been connected with disputes over valuable University land. The needle of suspicion in contemporary University discussions also pointed towards an advocate who was widely perceived at the time as being associated with controversial land transactions and alleged land-grabbing activities, including disputes concerning AMU property. That suspicion, too, must be described as contemporary perception rather than proven criminal responsibility, for I have found no judicial determination establishing that individual as responsible for Sharma’s murder.

A later account of Mahmood-ur-Rahman’s vice-chancellorship nevertheless confirms the wider background. It describes his campaign against encroachments as one of the major initiatives of his administration and states that prime land adjoining the Riding Club faced serious threats from land-grabbers. According to this account, encroachments were removed and a substantial area of University land was protected. The same narrative places Rajiv Sharma’s murder within this fraught atmosphere surrounding the Riding Club area. The murder remained one of the unresolved traumas remembered at AMU, and as late as 2007, an account of violence at the University grouped the murders of history teachers Rajiv Sharma and I. G. Khan among killings which had generated a profound sense within the University that justice had not been secured.

I. G. Khan: Another Riding Club President is Murdered

The later murder of Dr I. G. Khan of the Department of History inevitably revived these memories. I. G. Khan, too, had been closely associated with the Riding Club and had served as its President. He was also remembered within the University as someone concerned with protecting University property and resisting illegal encroachments. On 14 February 2003 he was murdered, and contemporary reporting records that he was shot near Jhunjhunupur/Jujharpur in the Akrabad area outside Aligarh and that his car was taken away. How did he reach there, is spite of his allegedly returning home from JNMC, a route quite different from where he was found murdered. Once again, suspicion circulated within sections of the University community that the murder might have had something to do with his activities and the conflicts surrounding property. The coincidence appeared especially sinister because another former President of the Riding Club, Rajiv Sharma, as noted above, had already been murdered.

Here the subsequent judicial record requires an important qualification. Unlike the Rajiv Sharma case, the investigation into I. G. Khan’s murder was transferred to the CBI. Arrests followed, and in January 2016 a Special CBI Court convicted three accused while acquitting two others for lack of evidence. The prosecution case accepted by the court treated the killing as connected with robbery of Khan’s car and other belongings. However the judgment left many un-answered questions and since then no follow up happened. It would therefore be incorrect today to describe the I. G. Khan murder as legally unsolved or to assert that a land dispute was judicially established as its motive. Yet the official verdict has done little to dispel the lingering sense within the University community that there was more to the killing than simple robbery. The circumstances of the murder, combined with the earlier killing of Rajiv Sharma and the intense local conflicts over AMU’s valuable land, continue to generate unease and speculation, even in the absence of legal proof connecting the two events. What remains historically significant is something different: at the time of the killings, sections of the University community perceived a relationship between violence, local vested interests, encroachment and the protection of University property, and that perception formed part of the atmosphere in which subsequent disputes over the Riding Club land were understood.

The Land Question Returns

The issue did not disappear. The origins of the present phase of the dispute can be traced at least to 2023, when the district administration was identifying government land and construction was underway for the flyover between Nagla Patwari and Purani Chungi. According to subsequent reporting, officials initially approached AMU for permission to erect a flyover pillar on land in University possession. AMU maintained that the property belonged to it, but revenue officials then examined the records and concluded that AMU’s name did not appear in the relevant khatauni and that the property was recorded as municipal or government land. That discovery became the basis of the Nagar Nigam’s case. AMU’s case was entirely different: it maintained that the land had been lawfully acquired under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and that the University possessed acquisition papers, archival records and other documentary evidence establishing its title. Thus emerged the fundamental contradiction which remains unresolved: the Nagar Nigam relies principally upon present revenue entries, while AMU relies upon historical acquisition proceedings and long possession.

The First Major Nagar Nigam Action: April 2025

On 30 April 2025, the conflict became physical. The Aligarh Nagar Nigam, accompanied by district officials, entered approximately 41,050 square metres, or about 41 bighas, of land in the Nagla Patwari-Bhamola area that had been in AMU’s possession for roughly eighty years and had been used for Riding Club activities. Municipal boards declaring the property to belong to the Nagar Nigam were installed, and the land was valued in contemporary reports at more than Rs 100 crore. Municipal officials said that revenue records showed the land as government or municipal property and claimed that AMU had been given opportunities to establish its ownership but had failed to produce satisfactory documents. AMU categorically disputed this version, stating that the Riding Field rightfully belonged to the University, that it had been obtained under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, and that it had remained in uninterrupted University possession for nearly eighty years. The University further alleged that it had received no formal notice before the municipal action and therefore no proper opportunity to place its documentary evidence before the authority taking possession.

This was not a minor disagreement over a boundary. Reports published immediately afterwards indicated that the Nagar Nigam was examining another approximately 50 bighas in the same Nagla Patwari area which it also claimed as municipal property and which remained in AMU’s possession, with municipal officials making clear that verification of further plots was continuing and that additional land would be recovered wherever the Corporation concluded that it belonged to the Nagar Nigam. Thus the 2025 operation was not presented by the Nagar Nigam itself as an isolated action but formed part of a wider programme of identifying and taking possession of lands recorded in municipal revenue records. From the University’s perspective, however, this amounted to a continuing threat to an estate that AMU claimed on the basis of historical acquisition and possession.

The Allahabad High Court Did Not Decide Ownership

The 2025 action was challenged before the Allahabad High Court by a group of AMU students. Their PIL asked the Court to prevent the Municipal Commissioner from interfering with AMU’s possession of the Riding Club land and to require removal of the municipal ownership board. The Court dismissed the petition on 21 May 2025, but the meaning of that dismissal is important. It did not hold that the land belonged to the Nagar Nigam. The Court observed that AMU was itself a juristic person possessing the resources and legal capacity to defend its property rights, and it also found that the student petition had not adequately identified the disputed land. Crucially, however, the Bench expressly clarified that dismissal of the PIL should not be treated as an expression of any opinion regarding the title of either the Nagar Nigam or Aligarh Muslim University, and if the title question arose in properly constituted proceedings, it was to be decided independently. This distinction is fundamental: the 2025 High Court order cannot legitimately be cited as judicial confirmation of Nagar Nigam ownership, for the High Court expressly left the title question open.

The State Government Orders an SIT Inquiry

The controversy did not end there. AMU took its case to the authorities, and in February 2026 the Uttar Pradesh Government ordered an SIT investigation into the 41-bigha episode. The Principal Secretary sought an investigation and the Aligarh divisional authorities asked the district administration to prepare a detailed report. Contemporary reports described the inquiry as examining the circumstances in which the land, which had remained in AMU’s possession since approximately 1945, came to be taken over by the Nagar Nigam. The ordering of an SIT inquiry itself demonstrated that the matter was not administratively closed. Meanwhile, the vulnerability of AMU’s larger estate was demonstrated from the opposite direction when in April 2026 the University itself acted against private encroachments on approximately 18 bighas of AMU land behind Nagla Qila, using machinery to remove illegal structures and announcing that fencing would be erected to protect the property. The problem, therefore, is wider than a single confrontation with the Nagar Nigam: AMU possesses a large and historically complicated estate surrounded by an expanding city in which land values have risen enormously, and such property inevitably attracts competing claims.

20 August 2026: The Nagar Nigam Moves Again

On 20 August 2026, the Nagar Nigam, district administration and police once again entered land associated with the Riding Field in the Bhamola Maafi-Nagla Patwari area. This time the authorities measured approximately 3.863 hectares, fenced the land with wire and erected boards identifying it as Nagar Nigam property. Municipal authorities described the land as government banjar and usar land and said that it had been freed from AMU’s possession, with its reported market value now being placed at approximately Rs 500 crore. Municipal Commissioner Prem Prakash Meena stated that the land would be used for public purposes, with possibilities including a police station, school, intermediate college, hospital and sports complex. AMU immediately rejected the action, and this time the University has put forward considerably more precise historical dates. According to the statement issued by AMU after the 20 August operation, the land is lawfully owned by the University, and the University possesses the documentary and legal evidence supporting that claim. Most importantly, the University states that the property was brought under acquisition proceedings under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, from 13 June 1925, and that on 19 November 1940 the Governor of the United Provinces acquired the land for Aligarh Muslim University.

These are not insignificant assertions. If AMU possesses the original acquisition notification, award, possession memorandum and associated government records corresponding to these dates, those documents require legal examination alongside the revenue entries relied upon by the Nagar Nigam. A contemporary khatauni entry cannot by itself settle a complicated historical question of title where an opposing public institution produces earlier statutory acquisition records. Conversely, AMU must place the complete chain of documents in the appropriate legal proceedings and explain any discrepancy between those acquisition records and the later revenue entries. That is precisely what adjudication is for.

A Pattern of Repeated Attempts

Viewed historically, the events of April 2025 and August 2026 cannot easily be treated as unrelated episodes. In April 2025 the Nagar Nigam entered land used by AMU for approximately eighty years, put up its ownership boards and claimed approximately 41 bighas, simultaneously announcing that further land in AMU’s possession was under scrutiny. AMU protested, asserted documentary title and pursued the matter before the authorities. Students approached the High Court, and the High Court specifically refused to decide title against AMU. The dispute subsequently became serious enough for the Uttar Pradesh Government to order an SIT investigation in February 2026. Yet on 20 August 2026, while the fundamental dispute over ownership remained unresolved, the municipal and district authorities again physically measured, fenced and asserted possession over another substantial tract associated with the Riding Field. It is this recurrence that should concern the University community. The question is no longer merely whether one particular plot measures 41 bighas, 4.105 hectares or 3.863 hectares: it concerns a continuing conflict between historical title claimed through acquisition and long institutional possession on one side, and contemporary municipal revenue entries on the other. Physical possession by an administrative authority cannot substitute for adjudication of that conflict.

Revenue Records Are Not the Whole History of Ownership

There is another lesson here. Universities often possess property whose history extends across different legal regimes. AMU’s estate includes land inherited from the MAO College, property vested in it by the 1920 Act, land acquired under colonial land-acquisition legislation, gifts, purchases and waqfs. Records relating to such properties may therefore be dispersed among University files, Collectorate records, acquisition proceedings, old revenue maps, government notifications, mutation registers, waqf deeds and court records. That makes accurate record-keeping essential. AMU cannot simply rely upon the argument that everyone has always known a particular field to belong to the University, for long possession is important evidence but valuable property requires an unbroken documentary chain. The University administration consequently has an obligation to undertake a comprehensive audit of every parcel of AMU property: its gata number, area, mode of acquisition, original deed or notification, mutation history, present revenue entry, physical possession, encroachments and litigation status. Every nineteenth- and twentieth-century acquisition document should be digitised, certified copies should be obtained from government archives, and revenue entries inconsistent with title documents should be challenged and corrected before another crisis develops. The 2025 controversy itself demonstrated the consequences of allowing discrepancies between historical ownership documents and current revenue records to persist.

But administrative deficiencies, if they exist, do not transfer ownership. If the Nagar Nigam believes that land occupied by AMU belongs to it, it is entitled to establish that claim through law. AMU is equally entitled to have its acquisition records and other evidence adjudicated before being dispossessed. Neither side should determine title merely by arriving with officials, police, fencing material and an ownership board.

From Rajiv Sharma to 2026

That is what gives the present dispute its extraordinary historical resonance. More than thirty years ago, a newly appointed Vice-Chancellor, Mahmood-ur-Rahman, stood before the AMU Teachers’ Association and announced his determination to recover University land from illegal possession. Rajiv Sharma, President of the Riding Club, responded that he would give the Vice-Chancellor the documents concerning the Riding Club property, and within days he was dead. No court established that his murder resulted from the land dispute, and it should never be presented as though one had. But the suspicion that surrounded the killing became embedded in the University’s institutional memory because it occurred amid conflicts over valuable land and because Sharma had so recently undertaken to produce the documents. Years later another history teacher and another former Riding Club President, I. G. Khan, was murdered. Contemporary suspicion again generated speculation about property disputes, although the subsequent CBI prosecution produced convictions on a robbery case and did not establish land as the motive. Yet the official verdict has not entirely dispelled the unease within the University community, where the circumstances of the two killings continue to invite reflection on the powerful local interests that surround AMU’s valuable land. The lesson is therefore not that the murders prove some continuing conspiracy, for they do not, but that disputes over AMU’s land have a long and troubled history and have repeatedly become entangled, in University memory, with questions of local influence, encroachment, administrative weakness, enormously valuable real estate and the ability of the institution to defend its property.

A Public Trust Must Be Defended

There is finally a larger principle involved. The people who gave land and property to the MAO College and later to Aligarh Muslim University did not donate it so that future generations could treat it casually. Nor did they give it to be absorbed, through administrative neglect or competing claims, into the expanding real-estate economy of Aligarh. They gave it for education. The AMU Act of 1920 recognised that continuity when it vested the accumulated movable and immovable property of the MAO College, Muslim University Association and Foundation Committee in the University. Generations after 1920 continued the tradition through gifts and waqfs, and the Government of India’s own statement before Parliament in 2024 confirms the remarkable extent of this continuing benefaction. AMU therefore carries a fiduciary as well as an administrative responsibility towards its estate. It must defend every acre that legally belongs to it, identify and remove private encroachments, correct defective revenue entries, preserve and digitise its title documents, and where another public authority claims ownership, pursue the matter relentlessly through the appropriate judicial and administrative forums.

The Nagar Nigam, for its part, is entitled to protect genuine municipal property. But where AMU produces acquisition records dating to 1925 and 1940, where University possession extends across generations, where the High Court has expressly not decided title in favour of the Nagar Nigam, and where the State Government itself has considered the earlier action sufficiently contentious to warrant an SIT investigation, the proper course is transparent legal adjudication, not repeated assertions of possession on the ground. The events of 20 August 2026 therefore raise a question larger than the fate of 3.863 hectares of Riding Field: who protects the historical property of a public university, and by what process may that property be taken from it? For Aligarh Muslim University the answer should be clear. The land entrusted to the institution by benefactors, acquired for it under law and inherited from the movement that created it belongs not to any particular Vice-Chancellor or administration. It constitutes an institutional inheritance held for generations yet to come. Its protection is therefore not simply a dispute over land: it is the protection of a public trust. AMU administration should therefore be more pro-active than they have been in the past.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

By the sixth instalment of this memoir, destiny had finally relented enough to let me secure a teaching position at Aligarh Muslim University. After years spent as a research scholar, living on fellowships, presenting papers at seminars and travelling across the country in search of archives and conferences, I had finally become a temporary Lecturer in the Department of History in February 1989. In those days there were no Assistant Professors. We were simply Lecturers, a designation that sounded reassuringly simple until one actually became one.

My appointment, however, was temporary. Permanency, much like paradise, was promised only to those who displayed sufficient patience. It eventually arrived in 1992, after three years of waiting. Three years during which I learned that the University’s definition of “temporary” bore absolutely no relation to the dictionary definition.

Professor Irfan Habib, my supervisor, meanwhile ensured that no one under his care remained idle. If there was a shortage of teachers anywhere in the University, one of his research scholars was quite likely to be volunteered. I sometimes suspected he kept a mental ledger of everyone’s free time and treated it as University property.

Thus my first teaching assignment was not in the Department of History but at the Students’ Union School. There was a shortage of teachers but an even greater shortage of funds. Permanent appointments were impossible, so the solution was beautifully economical. Seema Singh, Jawaid Akhtar, Sumbul Haleem Khan, Farhat Hasan and I were “requested” to teach there. It was a ‘gratis’ assignment where instead of getting paid, you contributed. A request from one’s supervisor was a curious thing. It sounded optional but rarely was. In fact, it occupied a peculiar space in the academic vocabulary where “optional” meant “compulsory” and “request” meant “command delivered in a gentle tone”.

Soon afterwards I was shifted again, this time to ST School, better known as Minto Circle. That move carried a small but memorable distinction. For the first time since qualifying the UGC NET Fellowship in 1984, I stopped withdrawing fellowship money and began receiving the salary of a Post Graduate Teacher. Looking at my first salary slip gave me a quiet sense of achievement. After years of being a professional student, I had finally become a salaried employee. The amount was modest, but the feeling of respectability was immense.

Not for long, however.

After my temporary appointment as Lecturer in the Department, another assignment came my way. A teacher in the Women’s College had gone on leave and someone was needed to teach the course on History of England. Naturally, the newest recruit was considered the ideal candidate. There was a certain logic to this. If you were the most recent arrival, you were also the most expendable. And if you had not yet learned to say no, you were practically irresistible.

I entered the Women’s College with all the confidence that only an inexperienced young lecturer can possess. I had prepared my lectures meticulously. I had memorised dates, rehearsed arguments and practised my delivery in front of a mirror. What I had not prepared for was the students.

To say that I was nervous would be an understatement.

I was young, untrained, painfully shy and convinced that the hallmark of a good teacher was to remain permanently serious. I never gossiped, never smiled unnecessarily and carefully maintained what I imagined to be an appropriately scholarly distance from my students. I believed that familiarity bred contempt and that a stern expression was the foundation of classroom discipline. How wrong I was.

The students, bright young women that they were, saw through me almost immediately. They recognised my nervousness, my discomfort and my desperate attempts to appear authoritative. They were kind enough not to mock me openly, but I could see the amusement dancing in their eyes.

One afternoon, after finishing my classes, I tucked the attendance register into the carrier of my bicycle and rode away.

My bicycle, unfortunately, had a characteristic common to many owned by young people of modest means.

It had no brakes.

This particular detail is important not because it caused any accident, but because it explains why I was pedalling so slowly. My progress was stately, almost regal. I moved at a pace that would have embarrassed a tortoise. And it was during this leisurely journey that fate, or perhaps a mischievous student, decided to intervene.

Somewhere between the College gate and my destination, one enterprising student quietly removed the attendance register from the carrier without my noticing anything at all. I pedalled merrily home, blissfully unaware that the most important document in my possession had disappeared.

When I finally realised what had happened, I entered a state bordering on administrative despair. The attendance register was not merely a book. It was proof that I had actually been teaching. It was evidence that students had actually been attending. Without it, my entire academic existence could be called into question. I imagined the Principal asking, “How do we know you were ever there?” and myself replying, “Well, I remember being there,” which would hardly count as documentary evidence.

For several days I wandered about wondering whether it was easier to recover the register or simply remain quite. Both options seemed equally plausible. Fortunately, another student, who happened to be rather more responsible than her mischievous friend, managed to recover it. She returned it to me safely and then, instead of expecting gratitude, delivered a stern lecture on the importance of vigilance. She explained, with the patience of someone addressing a particularly slow child, that attendance registers should not be left unattended in bicycle carriers, even if the bicycle was moving at a glacial pace.

The student had become the teacher.

I accepted the lesson with due humility. It was the first of many occasions on which my students would educate me far more effectively than I ever educated them.

Destiny had a great role through out my career. Within a a couple of years of my appointment, it played one of its favourite tricks.

This was before my confirmation as Lecturer. Like every young academic anxious about his future, I was exploring opportunities elsewhere. An advertisement appeared from Jawaharlal Nehru University. I applied and, to my pleasant surprise, was called for an interview.

The difficult part was not qualifying.

It was actually going.

Even today I cannot satisfactorily explain why I lost my nerve. Perhaps it was uncertainty. Perhaps it was diffidence. Perhaps I simply could not imagine leaving Aligarh. Whatever the reason, at the very last moment I decided not to travel to Delhi.

The following day the Selection Committee at Aligarh was scheduled.

As I sat outside the Committee Room rehearsing sensible answers and praying that no difficult questions would be asked, Professor Irfan Habib emerged.

He walked past me.

Stopped.

Turned around.

Looked at me with an expression that suggested I had personally sabotaged Indian historiography.

“Why did you not appear at JNU?” he growled.

“The Vice Chancellor was waiting for you!”

Those were hardly the words one wished to hear a few minutes before facing one’s own interview. I felt my carefully rehearsed answers evaporate from my mind. The dates I had memorised suddenly seemed uncertain. The theories I had prepared appeared flimsy. I sat there contemplating the various ways in which I had managed to disappoint my supervisor before I had even entered the interview room.

The Vice Chancellor was Professor M. S. Agwani, a distinguished scholar who had heard me present at least two conference papers and had shown considerable interest in my early work on medieval archaeology. He had even gone through my preliminary Survey Report on the structures of Fatehpur Sikri, a modest piece of work into which I had poured enormous enthusiasm. And I had stood him up. Magnificently.

As Professor Habib disappeared down the corridor, I could think only of the opportunity that had slipped away.

Surely I had missed the chance of a lifetime.

The following day I was confirmed at Aligarh.

Looking back now, I have no regrets. Had I gone to JNU, life would certainly have followed an entirely different course. Instead, destiny quietly whispered, “Not yet.”

I did not realise then that this whisper would return many years later.

Nearly a decade passed.

I had settled comfortably into teaching and research. My work on Fathpur Sikri had begun attracting attention and several papers had appeared in print. Professionally, however, I remained a Lecturer, though by then I had reached the Senior Scale. Promotions at Aligarh had almost become mythical creatures. Everyone spoke about Selection Committees. Very few had actually seen one. They occupied the same category as unicorns and sensible administrative decisions.

Then came another opportunity.

There was a vacancy for the post of Reader at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Friends encouraged me to apply.

I did.

Soon both my senior colleague and friend, Dr Jabir Raza, and I found ourselves travelling by train to Baroda for the interview. The journey was long, the seats were uncomfortable and our conversation consisted entirely of speculation about what questions might be asked. We constructed elaborate theories about the composition of the Selection Committee and debated the relative merits of various possible responses.

We stayed at a modest hotel near the railway station and spent the evening discussing probable interview questions with the supreme confidence that only anxious candidates possess. By the time we went to bed, we had convinced ourselves that we were prepared for every possible question. We were prepared for nothing.

The interview, however, itself proved unexpectedly pleasant.

Among the experts sat Professor Zamiruddin Siddiqui from Aligarh, who represented what was politely called the “other side” in the long-running academic debates that surrounded Professor Irfan Habib. We had never exactly belonged to the same intellectual camp. In fact, we occupied different continents of intellectual thought. I entered the room expecting a thorough interrogation about my academic loyalties.

The second expert was Professor Kapil Kumar, who by then had begun moving towards the Right and had become an increasingly vocal critic of Professor Habib. Between the two of them, I anticipated a vigorous cross-examination that would test both my scholarship and my diplomatic skills.

I therefore entered the interview room with modest expectations.

To my surprise, neither gentleman dominated the proceedings.

Instead, the Acting Vice Chancellor, an accomplished civil servant and a remarkably well-read lady, conducted most of the interview herself. She seemed genuinely interested in my work, asked probing questions and demonstrated a familiarity with medieval history that I had not anticipated from an administrator.

She questioned me extensively on historical archaeology, medieval architecture and my work on Fathpur Sikri. I found myself warming to the subject, forgetting my nervousness and actually enjoying the conversation.

Halfway through she suddenly asked,

“Are you genuinely interested in joining Baroda?”

One does not usually expect philosophical questions in a job interview.

I assured her that I certainly was. I had prepared a list of reasons why Baroda would be an excellent career move. I had rehearsed my enthusiasm. I was ready.

After the interview was over she called me back once again.

This, I thought, could either be very good news or very bad news.

Fortunately it was neither.

She wanted to show me the University’s Archaeology Laboratory.

Much of its equipment still lay unopened in its original packing cases. The machines were gleaming, sophisticated and entirely foreign to me. They looked as though they belonged in a science fiction film rather than a history department.

Pointing towards the instruments, she asked,

“Can you use these?”

The machines looked extremely impressive.

I looked considerably less so.

With confidence far greater than my actual knowledge, I replied,

“Yes.”

It remains one of the boldest answers I have ever given. It was also one of the least truthful. I had no idea what those machines did, how they worked or even what they were called. But I had learned that in academic interviews, confidence often counted for more than competence. It was a lesson I would later regret.

That evening Jabir and I decided to visit our senior from Aligarh, Iftikhar Bhai, who taught in the History Department at Baroda.

Finding his house, however, became an education in itself.

As we asked residents of the colony for directions, they looked at us rather coldly.

“We don’t know any Mulla.”

The same reply came again.

And again.

No one said “Iftikhar”.

No one said “History Department”.

Simply, “We don’t know any Mulla.”

The words were spoken casually.

Their effect was anything but casual.

They remained with me long after the interview had ended. I could not shake the feeling that I had glimpsed something important about the world beyond Aligarh, something that my comfortable academic existence had sheltered me from.

A few months later the results were announced.

I had been selected.

Reader.

It was a tremendous leap.

At a time when promotions at Aligarh appeared frozen indefinitely, I was being offered a position above the one I held. That too at a place like Vadodara, the city of palaces. Many of those waiting for promotion were my seniors. Some had even been my teachers. The promotion was not merely professional advancement. It was a complete transformation of my academic status.

Naturally I decided to go.

Or so I imagined.

My wife Annie and I began preparing in earnest. Household items were purchased. Utensils appeared from nowhere. Furniture was discussed. The Registrar at Baroda informed me that University accommodation had been identified and that I would receive possession within a month or two. In the meantime he said a Guest House room had been booked for us.

Everything appeared settled.

Except destiny.

Professor Irfan Habib opposed my leaving.

Professor Shireen Moosvi, then Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, also advised against it.

I argued. I pleaded. “This is a promotion.”

“There is no Selection Committee at Aligarh.” “I may wait forever.”

Nothing worked.

Professor Moosvi even enlisted my mother.

That, I realised, was unfair.

My mother naturally trusted Professor Moosvi’s judgement far more than mine. She had heard me speak about my academic achievements with characteristic modesty, which in my case meant not mentioning them at all. Professor Moosvi, on the other hand, spoke with authority. When she advised against the move, my mother listened.

Then came another surprise: Professor Aniruddha Ray telephoned from Calcutta. He too advised me not to leave Aligarh. So did a number of others.

By this stage I had begun wondering whether the entire fraternity of medieval historians had secretly conspired to keep me imprisoned within the walls of Aligarh. I imagined them gathered in some hidden chamber, plotting my confinement while I blithely packed my belongings.

Then history intervened.

The year 2002 arrived.

Ahmedabad burned.

Baroda witnessed violence.

Large parts of Gujarat were engulfed by one of the darkest communal tragedies in independent India. The images on television were horrifying. The reports from the ground were worse. Neighbourhoods that had coexisted peacefully for generations turned against each other. Families were displaced. Lives were destroyed. All over Gujarat thousands were killed. Ahsan Jafri was murdered. The tomb of Wali Dakani disappeared overnight. At Baroda I and Jabir Bhai had visited a Dargah: it was vandalised. NDTV flashed these news for all to see. The PM Atalbihari Bajpai was see reminding rāshtra dharma to the butchers.

Watching those horrifying events unfold on television, I slowly realised what my teachers had perhaps sensed much earlier than I had.

Sometimes the road we fail to take turns out to be the safer one.

Professor Hasan Mahmood himself, a senior Historian at MS University of Baroda at Vadodara eventually had to leave Gujarat but was fortunate to find a new beginning at Jamia Millia Islamia. Many others were not so lucky. The academic opportunities that had seemed so attractive just months earlier now appeared in a very different light.

When I think back today, I cannot help thanking Providence for preventing my departure. I think of all the things I might have lost, all the dangers I might have faced, all the colleagues who had to flee their homes.

Soon afterwards, a Selection Committee was finally held at Aligarh itself.

Farhat Hasan and I were promoted as Readers.

Several of our seniors unfortunately continued waiting. The system was slow, inefficient and deeply frustrating. But it had finally moved.

Although Professor Moosvi had advised both of us not to go to the Selection Committee, as, according to her, we would be humiliated and rejected. For that opportunity I remain deeply grateful to the then Vice Chancellor, Mr Mahmoodur Rahman, who insisted that the Selection Committee be held and, despite considerable opposition from different quarters, ensured that the appointments went through. He was a man who believed in doing what was right, regardless of the consequences. I am also beholden to Professor SP Gupta, the then Chairman, who despite his animosity towards my supervisor, supported me. We had been friends since long: remember he and I had actually visited many historical places together as friends, in spite of all departmental back room politics and groupings.

Looking back over those years, I am struck by a curious pattern.

Whenever I tried to leave Aligarh, something happened.

First it was JNU.

Then it was Baroda.

On both occasions I believed I had lost the opportunity of a lifetime.

On both occasions destiny quietly compensated me without my even realising it. I got what was my due.

There is perhaps a lesson somewhere in all this, though I am still not entirely sure what it is.

Maybe destiny occasionally knows more than we do. Or perhaps Aligarh simply refused to let me escape. Either way, I stayed. And flourished.

The next twist in this improbable journey was still to come.

It involved another promotion, another battle and another chapter in the strange conversation between ambition and destiny.

But that story and some more, must wait until the next instalment.