ABSTRACT
The city of Hyderabad in South India is home to one of the country’s largest and most vibrant Shi‘i communities: roughly 35 percent of the city’s fi ve and a half million people are Muslims, of which approximately two hundred thousand people1-somewhere near 10 percent of that population-are Shi‘i.2 This chapter examines the gendered contribution of ritual to the shaping of Shi‘i identity within this community,3 and looks in particular at the popular religious gathering known as the majlis, or mourning assembly.4 I argue that implicit in the majlis is a powerful gendered message: namely, the strength and importance of women’s actions and leadership. Men and women organize and attend these events throughout the calendar year (especially during the Muslim months of Muharram and Safar) to remember the suffering and death of beloved members of the family of the Prophet Muhammad (the Ahl-e bayt [Arabic: Ahl al-bayt]). When women participate in a majlis with men, ritual leadership is in male hands and women tend to follow the dictates of purdah (seclusion).5 However, women also organize and participate in female-only assemblies in which they lead the recitations, ritual activities, and discourses. I contend that men and women experience and perceive the majlis differently, albeit with signifi cant areas of commonality. To more closely examine these spheres of difference and overlap, I focus on the role of the zakira6 (female orator) who fulfi lls-as does her male counterpart (the zakir)—the important religious responsibility of keeping alive the community’s founding stories. I discuss the origin and growth of this role, and examine its impact on women’s self-understanding, and on questions of identity among Shi‘is. I begin, however, with a look at the complexities of religious and social identity for Shi‘i women in Hyderabad.
