A Hindu Warrior's Forgotten Sacrifice in Karbala

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.

- RENUKA NARAYANAN

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.