Horse of Karbala is a study of Muharram rituals and interfaith relations in three locations in India: Ladakh, Darjeeling, and Hyderabad. These rituals commemorate an event of vital importance to Shia Muslims: the seventh-century death of the Imam Husain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battlefield of Karbala in Iraq. Pinault examines three different forms of ritual commemoration of Husain's death - poetry-recital and self-flagellation in Hyderabad; stick-fighting in Darjeeling; and the 'Horse of Karbala' procession, in which a stallion representing the mount ridden in battle by Husain is made the center of a public parade in Ladakh and other Indian localities. The book looks at how publicly staged rituals serve to mediate communal relations: in Hyderabad and Darjeeling, between Muslim and Hindu populations; in Ladakh, between Muslims and Buddhists. Attention is also given to controversies within Muslim communities over issues related to Muharram such as the belief in intercession by the Karbala Martyrs on behalf of individual believers.

Horses are not indigenous to India. They had to be imported, making them expensive and elite animals. How then did Indian villagers—who could not afford horses and often had never even seen a horse—create such wonderful horse stories and brilliant visual images of horses? In Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares, Wendy Doniger, called "the greatest living mythologist," examines the horse’s significance throughout Indian history from the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, followed by the people who became the Mughals (who imported Arabian horses) and the British (who imported thoroughbreds and Walers). Along the way, we encounter the tensions between Hindu stallion and Arab mare traditions, the imposition of European standards on Indian breeds, the reasons why men ride mares to weddings, the motivations for murdering Dalits who ride horses, and the enduring myth of foreign horses who emerge from the ocean to fertilize native mares.

Unique study which offers new perspectives on contemporary Islamic iconography And The use of imageries in ritual contexts.

Explores the terms, concepts, personalities, historical events, and institutions that helped shape the history of this religion and the way it is practiced today.

This study is about a popular manifestation of Islamic devotion that embraces a pluralist setting, keeping itself in a dynamic dialogue with non-Muslim practices. With evidence from various public devotional narratives and ritual practices, the author argues that even universal understanding of living Islam remains incomplete if we do not consider this locally produced pluralised devotional setting that surrounds it. He seeks to address various aspects of local and localised Islam through an examination of Gugudu's local and popular transformation of normative Islam, giving particular focus to the various devotional rituals that blend Muslim and Hindu practices in the public event of Muharram.