These days more than a million Bohras worldwide are
furiously engaged in celebrating (or being made to celebrate?) the
100th birthday of their religious head, the 52nd dai, or
‘summoner to the faith’. Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin is 52nd in the
chain of duat (plural of dai) which started in Yemen
with the first dai, Zoeb bin Musa (d. 1151 AD). However, when
the political situation in Yemen became difficult to live with, the
23rd dai, Syedna Izzuddin, nominated an Indian named Yusuf
Najmuddin as his successor and 24th dai and India has remained
the main centre of the dawah, or mission, ever since. The
Bohras belong to the Ismaili Shiite branch of Islam.
The Bohras in India are all converts from Hinduism
to Islam who belonged mainly to the middle caste of traders. The
majority of them are still traders who live mainly in Indian trading
centres such as Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune,
Chennai, Cochin, Hyderabad, Indore and so on. They were all converted
in Gujarat and speak Gujarati. The word Bohra is most likely a
corruption of the Gujarati word ‘vohra’ derived from ‘vyavahar’
(to trade).
Today Bohras live all over the world. Most of them
are of Indian origin and speak Gujarati wherever they are. Since they
are basically traders, they, like other Muslim trading communities in
India i.e. Khojas and Memons, are prosperous compared to other Indian
Muslims (There is however a lot of poverty among a section of Bohras,
many of whom live in slums in cities like Mumbai.)
The Bohras and Khojas are two communities in Islam
that have developed a churchlike structure and are tightly controlled,
particularly the former, by the priesthood. It is easier for the
priesthood to control a community if it happens to consist largely of
traders, as traders possess a very different psychology, that of
submission and peace. There is hardly any dissent, as it leads to
turmoil and affects the peaceful conditions necessary for trade and
commerce. And being historically involved in commerce, they had little
or no time for the intellectual activities so vital for dissent.
However, with the onset of modernity in the
beginning of the 20th century, dissent did emerge as the younger
generation took to modern education and entered the legal, medical,
engineering and other professions. Two lawyers from Burhanpur
challenged the then dai for his refusal to permit modern
education; the dai responded by excommunicating them.
This marked the beginning of the reform movement in
the Dawoodi Bohra community, a movement that has continued until
today. Modernity created the space for such issues as modern education
and other forms of intellectual dissent. The priestly establishment,
unused to dissent in any form, required nothing but total submission
which was no longer possible. The Bohra religious establishment
(called kothar in Gujarati) let loose oppression to deal with
the situation.
Moreover, with the growth of modern means of
communication like railways, motor transport, the telephone and
telegraph under British rule, trade expanded, becoming much more
profitable than before. The Bohra dai became much wealthier by
extracting more money from his followers and he used this money-power
to wield greater political influence. The then dai, Syedna
Taher Saifuddin, father of the present dai, shrewdly exploited
his increased power to ruthlessly put down dissent in the community.
Abdul Hussein Adamjee Peerbhoy – son of industrialist and
philanthropist Adamjee Peerbhoy – the man responsible for the
construction of the Matheran Hill Railway in the early 1900s, dared to
challenge the high priest but was ruined in the process.
Notwithstanding all this repression however,
dissent did not disappear; it flourished. When India became
independent, reformists had new hope of support from a democratic
India. But the priesthood attempted to “manipulate external democracy”
(as the American scholar, Theodore Wright Jr, put it) “to frustrate
the internal democracy” within the Bohra community. Fat donations to
political parties (all except those of the left) bought the high
priest their support. Even parties like the Shiv Sena and BJP obliged
the syedna.
Worse still, the well-known Sunni ulema and Muslim
political leaders all supported the high priest while he made
donations to their organisations. The reformists were initially
accused of ‘heresy’ and ‘non-belief’ and hence, according to these
Muslim leaders, they had no right to challenge the dai. Even
when in 1988 the Bohra dai openly pronounced curses on the
first three caliphs – highly revered by Sunni Muslims as companions of
the prophet – and there were riots between Bohras and Sunni Muslims in
Mumbai in which three persons were killed, the Sunni leaders and
Congress leaders came to his rescue. He tendered an apology and the
matter was hushed up.
The Bohra high priest’s establishment is very
powerful and, as we have always maintained, any religion which becomes
an establishment loses its religiosity and spirituality and turns
instead into a den of corruption. This is the history of all organised
religions. Syedna sahib has a large family (consisting of more than
200 members) dependent on the income from seven taxes collected in the
name of Islam, which runs into hundreds of crores of rupees every
year. This income has multiplied several fold as Bohras went abroad
and began to earn in pounds and dollars.
The high priest collects these taxes in ruthless
and coercive ways, as shown by the report of the Justice Nathwani
Commission appointed by Shri Jayaprakash Narayan (the then chairman of
Citizens for Democracy) in 1978. The commission, comprising, among
others, legal luminaries and eminent human rights activists like
Justice VM Tarkunde and academics like professors Alam Khundmiri and
Moin Shakir, concluded that: “Our inquiry has shown that there is
large-scale infringement of civil liberties and human rights of
reformist Bohras at the hands of the priestly class and that those who
fail to obey the orders of the syedna and his amils [local
priests], even in purely secular matters, are subjected to baraat
[excommunication], resulting in complete social boycott, mental
torture and frequent physical assaults.” (This writer was assaulted
five times, including once in Cairo.)
The Nathwani Commission conducted its inquiry into
the violation of human rights in the Bohra community in the late
1970s; little has changed since then. The violations go on and
hundreds of Bohras continue to suffer.
The reformists want this to stop; they want
democratic and accountable functioning by the priesthood. In fact, had
there been any degree of religiosity, there would have been humane
treatment of followers. The high priest turned 100 (according to the
Islamic calendar; he is 96 according to the Gregorian one) but he and
his establishment have not mended their ways. On the contrary, he has
become much more repressive and now uses modern technology as an
effective tool. The kothar has recently issued digital identity
cards without which you cannot enter a Bohra mosque or jamaatkhana
or mausoleum, and the card is only issued to those who have paid all
taxes and not shown any sign of dissent.
On the syedna’s 100th birthday we saw an extensive
propaganda campaign launched through newspaper advertisements
projecting him as an ‘ambassador of peace, harmony and goodwill’.
The Times of India alone carried nine pages of advertisements on
the day of his birth and several other English, Gujarati and Hindi
papers did much the same thing. Similarly, crores are being spent on
several celebratory events and this will go on for a whole year. Are
these the ways of a spiritual leader? A man is known by his actions,
not by the outpouring of a propaganda machine.
(Asghar Ali Engineer is a noted Bohra reformist and human rights
activist.)
