Lucknow: Imam Husain as dear to him as Shivji or Durga

The embers under his feet were smouldering hot but there was not even a tingling sensation he could feel that would move him from his determined self. What was in his heart came on his lips as he eloquently chanted “Ya Husain”.
As 23-year-old Shivam Agnihotri marched barefoot on burning coal on the sixth of Muharram, Lucknow witnessed another page of communal history it has long been witness to.
Scores of people had come to watch this Hindu azadar of Imam Husain (Prophet Mohammad’s grandson) perform the ‘aag ka matam’ at the over 200-year-old Bada Imambara.
Dressed in black with a traditional green cloth ritualistically covering it as a sign of those who are to perform aag ka matam, Shivam walked on the fire with ease. It was not his first time. The young boy had performed the matam last year at Bada Imambara and has been beating his chest remembering the tragedy of Karbala for eight years now.
“Maula hain wo mere, meri aqeedat hai. (Imam Husain is my leader and I believe in him). He is as dear to me as is Shivji and Ma Durga” says Shivam.
His association with Imam Husain that dates back to the time Shivam’s mother tied rakhi to a Shia man. It has since been a tradition with the family—Shivam, his mother and elder sister—to commemorate the tragedy of Karbala and what befell Imam Husain and his 72 companions in Iraq of 680 AD.
Asked where he gets his strength from, Shivam says, “When I walk on the fire, and not run like a lot of people do, I am reminded of the hot burning sand of Karbala’s desert that Imam Husain had to walk on, the pain his feet would have felt and the tragedy that still shakes up humanity.”
He adds, “When I saw the coal for the first time, I was apprehensive, but I remembered what the cleric tells us in Muharram sermons, recalled the tragedy and just took Imam Husain’s name and walked.”
A devout Hindu, for Shivam, there are no religious boundaries between people. On the sixth of Muharram, when the loudspeaker at Bada Imambara blared his name, reactions started pouring in. While Muslims waited in anticipation of watching a Hindu walk the fire for Imam Husain, it was a police personnel guarding the monument who asked him “a peculiar question”.
He recalls, “He held my hand and asked me why I was going to do the aag ka matam when I am a Hindu. I just looked back at him and told him that my religion does not teach me to divide people and that it does not make me a lesser Hindu if I have faith in Imam Husain.”
The young devotee added, “Muharram and Imam Husain are not limited to one community. If majlis is a means to reach him, why shy away from it. When I first started developing an interest in Karbala in my childhood, I researched on the internet, saw documentaries and heard nauhe (poetic renditions on Karbala), all of which soaked me in further.”
After the sojourn at Bada Imambara, Shivam says he also visited Mankameshwar temple, where he is a regular visitor, to pray.
“Over the years, my family’s faith in Imam Husain has only grown. In 2010, for three days, I had gone missing and my mother prayed for me and my return at Dariyawali Masjid and at Dargah Hazrat Abbas. My neighbour had kidnapped me, but I came back fine in three days,” says Shivam.
Fondly recalling how he had been berated by his mother when he was in class VIII for going to witness aag ka matam, Shivam says, “Now, I just have to tell my mother that I would be late and she sends me off happily.”