A Hindu warrior's forgotten sacrifice in Karbala

New Indian Express

27-04-2025

The barbaric Pahalgam massacre brings this unsung history to mind in response. The Battle of Karbala took place on the tenth day of the Arabic month of Muharram in 680 CE at Karbala in present-day Iraq. On one side were the supporters and clan of the Prophet of Islam's grandson, Hussain, while on the other were the troops of the Umayyad Caliph, Yazid the First.
Hussain, the son of Hazrat Ali and the Prophet's daughter Fatima, came to fight the forces of the oppressive Caliphate at the request of the people of Kufa, even though his brother Hassan had already been killed by these rival political forces in Islam. In the Battle of Karbala, the chivalrous Hussain and his followers were surrounded on all sides, just as the Pandava prince Abhimanyu was surrounded by the Kauravas in the Battle of Kurukshetra, in the circular military formation called the
chakravyuh
.
Six thousand enemy soldiers cut off Hussain's water supply from the river Euphrates. Thirty thousand of Yazid's soldiers fell on Hussain's small group of two hundred, which included women and seventy-two of Hussain's relatives. They were butchered mercilessly in their defenceless state on account of their lineage and the values they represented, which threatened the authority of Yazid. By sunset on Ashura day, the tenth of Moharram, Hussain and his companions were all dead, including a four-year-old girl, Sakina, and a six-month-old baby, Ali Asghar.
This battle led to the permanent split between the followers of Ali, called the Shias, and their opponents, the Sunnis. Though both were Muslims, the devotees of el-Lah, the one Arab god of many chosen by the Prophet of Islam as the deity of his new religion in the seventh century, they were divided forever within fifty years of the Prophet's death—according to which human being they followed.
In the physically unequal Battle of Karbala, remembered ever after as the moral victory of the Shias, a Brahmin of the
gotra
, or ancestral line, of Rishi Bharadwaja—the father of Dronacharya and grandfather of Ashvatthama in the
Mahabharata
—fought for Hussain. This was Rahab Siddha Datt, from the furthest Hindu settlement to the north-west of India, who sacrificed his seven sons at Karbala in defence of Hussain, the Prophet's grandson. He had already been entrusted with public funds by Hussain's saintly father, Ali, at the Battle of Jamal, fought earlier at Basra. The Mohyal Brahmins fought for the Prophet's own family—for the early Muslim leaders, Ali and Hussain, whom they revered as good men. This happened a few decades before the first conquest of Hindu land by Muslims in 712 CE in Sindh.
Rahab Datt came of old fighting stock from the ancient tradition of Hindu warrior-priests dedicated to fighting on the side of dharma, or righteousness. They cared about character. In every age, they looked for the noblest person of their time to ally with—win or lose—in the spirit of
Yatho Dharmastatho Jaya
, 'Where there is dharma (righteousness), there is moral victory', as the
Bhagavad Gita
says in the
Mahabharata
. The phrase occurs thirteen times in the Mahabharata.
Accordingly, Rahab Datt is believed to have been greatly attached to the Prophet's son-in-law, Ali, for his nobility of character. He rallied his troops, although it was too late to save Hussain, and by combining forces with another follower of Ali, captured and razed Kufa. The tyrant Yazid did not rule for longer than forty days. Rahab Datt's family came back to India from Iraq and became known thereafter as 'Hussaini Brahmins' for having spilt their blood in Hussain's cause and helped win a moral victory. They belonged to an endogamous sect of Brahmins called 'Mohyal', which had seven clan names—Bali, Bhimwal, Chibber, Datt, Lau, Mohan and Vaid.
Centuries after the Battle of Karbala, Bhai Mati Das and Bhai Sati Das, two Chibber brothers who were devoted to the Sikh Gurus as the noblest men of their era, were tortured and executed in Delhi in November 1675. They were killed with their spiritual leader, Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru, by order of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, for steadfastly refusing to forsake their faith.
Generations of Mohyals became Sikhs in medieval times, for it was the custom of the Hindus of the north-west to give their eldest sons to the Sikh Gurus in order to steadily build civil resistance and, inevitably, military resistance against successive Mughal rulers. Respect for individual nobility of character ran like a red thread through their affiliations.
Earlier, it was Jehangir who ordered the torture of Guru Arjan Dev at Lahore, which the Guru bore with immense moral strength and stoic endurance. He died on 30 May 1606, and the Sikhs commemorated his passing ever after with
Chabeel
.
Chabeel
means a place where you can get water. Even today, the Sikhs, wherever they may be, courteously offer all passers-by a cool, sweet drink in summer in remembrance of Guru Arjan Dev—repaying the brutality done to him with public service in a magnificent message about how not to be.
Today, 'Drona's descendants', the Mohyal Brahmins, are dedicated to the cause of the Indian republic. This clan's military tradition continues, with any number of Mohyals serving in the Indian armed forces, particularly the Air Force. Along with this old clan, the ideal it chose to live by lives on too—in the emblem of the Supreme Court, which says
Yatho Dharmastatho Jaya
.
Renuka Narayanan | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
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