From Guests of the Imam to Unwanted Foreigners: the Politics of South Asian Pilgrimage to Iran in the Twentieth Century

In January 2020, Iran’s religious representative in India, Hojjat ol-Eslam Mahdi Mahdavipour, called for efforts to attract more Indian pilgrims to the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Iran, noting that out of 250 million Indian Muslims, only around 150,000 came as pilgrims yearly.

Until the 1930s, Mashhad, Iran received thousands of pilgrims from South Asia yearly, a central node in the Shiʿi shrine city network spanning the Persianate world. Within decades, South Asian pilgrims had all but disappeared from Iran. This article examines how Reza Shah’s drive to ‘nationalize’ Iran spelled the end for this transregional network, leading to harassment of South Asians, increasingly seen not as ‘guests of the Imam’ but as foreigners tied to British colonialism. These decrees included dress codes that banned turbans and veiling, requiring South Asians to wear distinct national clothing that visually marked them as foreign. As Reza Shah sought to demonstrate Persia’s development as a power on a par with European states, pilgrimage became a battleground for anti-imperialist sentiments – taken out on colonial subjects themselves. South Asians in Mashhad – primarily British Indian but also British Afghans – bore the brunt, including as victims of the Gauharshad Massacre. Modern Iranian nationalism required disentangling Iranians from pre-existing transregional linkages and subsuming local identities rooted in mobility, as in the shrine cities, to a homogenous national identity defined by borders and territory. Those inassimilable to the project of Iranian national sovereignty, like the long-standing South Asian community from Iran, were expelled.

In January 2020, Iran’s religious representative in India, Hojjat ol-Eslam Mahdi Mahdavipour, called for efforts to attract more Indian pilgrims to the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Iran, noting that out of 250 million Indian Muslims, only around 150,000 came as pilgrims yearly.  Indeed, their large population contrasts with the near total lack of Indian Muslim presence in Iran, despite proximity and friendly relations. Since the mid-2000s, Iran has opened up to transnational Shiʿi pilgrimage on an unprecedented scale, expanding religious, political, and economic relations across the region. Before 2003, almost no Iraqis visited Iran. In 2019, between 2 and 3 million Iraqis came as tourists and pilgrims. Visitors from Persian Gulf states like Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia also increased dramatically, despite political tensions. But pilgrims from South Asia – home to a quarter of the global Shiʿi Muslim population – have lagged far behind.

Articles in the Iranian press frequently stress the importance of building bridges with South Asia, pointing to historical ties. Few, however, consider why ties were severed, or why Iranians are largely unfamiliar with South Asian Islam today. Only a century ago, pilgrims from British-controlled India were a significant presence in Iran. Around 1,000 South Asians could be found at any given time in the shrine city of Mashhad in the 1920s. These included pilgrims as well as a permanent community of merchants, agricultural workers, artisans, and volunteers at Imam Reza’s shrine. Considered ‘guests of the Imam’, an infrastructure of religious endowment funds addressed their needs, a product of strong relations between Iran and South Asia in the nineteenth century powered by wealthy Subcontinental Shiʿi dynasties and stability in Qajar Iran…

Bibliographic Information

Thesis Title: From Guests of the Imam to Unwanted Foreigners: the Politics of South Asian Pilgrimage to Iran in the Twentieth Century

Author(s): Shams, Alex

Published in: Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 57, Number 4, 7 June 2021, pp. 581-605

 Language: English

Length: 24 Pages

From guests of the Imam to unwanted foreigners