Hussaini Brahmins

Sunil Dutt the late Indian actor and his cousin, writer, publisher and poet Sabir Dutt were both Hussaini Brahmins. Earlier I had posted these two links on Baithak:

Hussaini Brahmins Participate in Muharram and a column by Intezar Hussain - Brahmans in Karbala - Intezar Hussain

Today I came across another blog post by Ruchira Paul – When Hindus mourned a Muslim martyr courtesy of Abbs Raza of 3quarksdaily

Here is an excerpt is from Ruchira Paul:

The student population of my school in New Delhi was composed of girls from practically every part of India belonging to several different linguistic groups and religions. Nearly fifty percent of the Punjabi and Bengali students came from families who had lost their ancestral homes in the partition of India in 1947, my own being among them. In middle school, a class mate whose folks had moved to India from the Pakistani city of Lahore, once casually commented that her father's family used to observe Muharram in their hometown before the partition. At the time I didn't think much of what my friend had said. We were young and many of us had heard interesting pre-partition tales from our parents. It is only now, on thinking back, that her story acquires a special meaning and given the subsequent deterioration in Hindu-Muslim relations in general and between India and Pakistan in particular, also a certain amount of poignancy. You see, the remarkable thing about my friend's Muharram story was that she was not a Muslim, but a Hindu Brahmin.

My class mate belonged to the Punjabi community of Dutts, in more communally harmonious times also known as the Hussaini Brahmins. They, along with their Shia Muslim friends and neighbors, used to commemorate and grieve the deaths of Imam Hussain and his disciples in the bloody battle of Karbala during the 7th century power struggle among early Muslims. Of the Dutts was said the following:

Wah Dutt Sultan,
Hindu ka Dharam
Musalman ka Iman,

Wah Dutt Sultan
Adha Hindu Adha Musalman

[Oh, Dutt the king,
follows the religion of the Hindu
And the faith of the Muslim.

Oh, Dutt the king,
He is half Hindu, half Muslim.]

And this blog led to this post from Milli Gazette Hindu followers of Muslim imam by Yoginder Sikand that shed a little more on the Hussaini Brahmins:

What is particularly striking about the observances of the month of Muharram in large parts of India is the prominent participation of Hindus in the ritual mourning. In several towns and villages, Hindus join Muslims in lamenting the death of Hussain, by sponsoring or taking part in lamentation rituals and tazia processions. In Lucknow, seat of the Shia nawabs of Awadh, prominent Hindu noblemen like Raja Tikait Rai and Raja Bilas Rai built Imambaras to house alams, standards representing the Karbala event. The Hindu Lambadi community in Andhra Pradesh have their own genre of Muharram lamentation songs in Telugu. Among certain Hindu castes in Rajasthan, the Karbala battle is recounted by staging plays in which the death of Imam Hussain is enacted, after which the women of the village come out in a procession, crying and cursing Yazid for his cruelty. In large parts of rural India, Hindus believe that if barren women slip under a Moharrum alam they would be blessed with a child.

Perhaps the most intriguing case of Hindu veneration of Imam