LADAKH STUDIES 12, Autumn 1999 - International Association for ...

zanjiri-matam is quite popular among Ladakhi Shias. Therefore, despite the 1994 decree, the
Islamiya School continues to sponsor lamentation processions in which marchers perform
flagellation with zanjirs and shed their blood.
IKMT, I was told by Shias in Leh, interprets Khamenei’s fatwa more broadly. This organization
understands qameh-zadan to refer to any action whatsoever of cutting oneself. Therefore the
popular practice of zanjiri-matam is to be considered haram (legally forbidden). For this reason
IKMT sponsors processions in which participants do nothing more severe than hath ka matam
(bare-handed chest-beating).
In my own estimate IKMT is looking to the deeper meaning informing Khamenei’s
pronouncement. The ayatollah makes it clear that his worry is the damage done to Shia Islam’s
image abroad if non-Shias see marchers spilling their blood and harming themselves. Thus IKMT’s
Muharram processions conform to the spirit of taqrib: offering an image of Shiism calculated not to
offend Sunni Muslims.
Ritual differences between IKMT and the Islamiya School reached a flash point in 1997, I was
told, when each faction staged its own separate Muharram procession in the town of Kargil. IKMT
marchers restricted themselves to chest-beating; Islamiya School loyalists scourged themselves
bloody with zanjirs. Thereby each group proclaimed its adherence to a particular understanding of
Shia Islam. When the two processions converged at the town’s qatl-gah (literally the “killing-site”,
an open space where mourners gather on Ashura), fighting broke out between the two groups.
Since then, I was told, the factions have avoided violent confrontations; but they continue to hold
separate Muharram marches, in which each group manifests its own understanding of Khamenei’s
restrictions on matam: Islamiya School marchers use zanjirs, IKMT processionists limit themselves
to bare-handed chest-strikes.
4. Conclusion. Self-mortification rituals and Shia identity in Ladakh
Despite criticism from ayatollahs, maulvis, and educated Shias alike, bloody matam continues to be
popular in Ladakh. The reasons for this popularity involve factors not sufficiently taken into account
by Shia reformers. Earlier I stated that at the popular level Shia communities tend to define
themselves as those Muslims who excel beyond all others in their love for the Prophet’s family. To
engage in excessive and apparently irrational behavior, to hurt oneself physically through zanjirzani,
shows that one deserves to be ranked among the muhibban-e Ahl-e bayt, to borrow Kashifi’s
devotional phrase, “the lovers of the Prophet’s family,” those Muslims who merit Paradise through
their lamentation. Thus Muharram self-mortification entails a demonstrative aspect directed to an
audience within the Shia population: disregard for one’s own safety validates one’s claim to intimate
self-abnegating love for the Prophet’s family.
Again and again, in interviews with South Asian Muslims, not only in Ladakh, but also in
Hyderabad, Lahore, Delhi, and Darjeeling, I have been told that matam is a practice that is
primarily and characteristically Shia. Matam is something Shias do; and the bloodier forms of
matam, zanjir-zani and the like, comprise matam par excellence. Thus as an outward-directed
demonstration, bloody matam serves to demarcate forcefully Shia gatherings from non-Shia,
whether Muslim or Buddhist, a practice that can be especially useful in a setting such as India,
where Shias are a minority population withn Islam, and where Muslims in turn are a minority who
feel themselves surrounded by a majoritarian Buddhist or Hindu population.
In conclusion, what I have witnessed in recent years is an attempt by the higher levels of the
Shia religious hierarchy to rein in the more controversial forms of Muharram ritual, motivated in
part by issues involving the image of Shiism abroad and international rapprochement with non-Shia
Muslim communities. But despite attempts by the Iranian clergy to curb matam, self-flagellation
continues to be popular in part precisely because it is repugnant to some onlookers, precisely
because it establishes distinctions and reinforces boundaries and discourages assimilation. At the
28