A Strange Meeting
A village in district Barabanki is a microcosm of the struggle between the Barelvi Sunnis and those with Wahhabi inclinations. The town's population is largely Sunni with a Shia minority. Before partition, the rulers of the estate were Shia and were a collateral branch of the Mahmudabad family. Mahmudabad's Muharram processions are famous all over India and in some parts of the world. When processions were banned in Lucknow, people flocked to Mahmudabad. Bilehra always had smaller processions but the thing that stood out was that most of the crowds were Sunni Muslims.
With the arrival of funds from some Middle East countries as well as returning migrant workers, some of whom had spent years away from home and were influenced by their surroundings, Bilehra gradually saw the rise of Wahhabism. The crowds in Muharram diminished and the number of people who attended prayers at the Barelvi mosque also fell. According to one young man, for a number of years the people who subscribed to the Barelvi school of thought would outwardly show loyalty to the Wahhabis.
The Wahhabis - with their puritanical behaviour and insistence that some Sunnis and all Shias are essentially infidels - have polarised Muslim societies worldwide. Their literalist interpretation of the Quran is reductionist and does not allow scope for debate, analysis or a contextual, historical and consequently nuanced understanding. They strictly forbid music, religious or spiritual, and veneration of holy men amongst many other things.
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