In June 1931, the British Consul in Mashhad, a city in northeastern Iran, received a plaintive letter from a resident of Lucknow. In the letter, Kishwar Jahan Begum complained that when she arrived in Mashhad with nine others, their belongings were confiscated by octroi officials and they were made to pay a hefty fine.
She appealed for the return of the belongings, which included silk cloth and handkerchiefs. She said these things were not for sale, as claimed by the octroi officials, but were gifts for relatives. “Moreover,” she added for good measure, “I wish to point out that I belong to a Royal family of Lucknow who always remained loyal to [the] British Govt.”
To the British consular authorities, Kishwar Jahan Begum’s complaint must not have been unique. Before the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, many Indian pilgrims travelled to Iran either overland from Balochistan or by steamship to Iraq and then overland to Mashhad. A number of them had the same complaint: harassment from Iranian officials.
These were the early days of the Pahlavi Dynasty in Iran (1925-1979). Corruption was rampant and Tehran’s writ did not run all over the country.
Families from as far as Bombay and Bengal would write to British consular authorities, seeking redress or justice for the harassment they faced from officials in Iran. A large number of these letters were addressed to the consul in Mashhad, a city popular with Indian pilgrims as home to the Imam Reza Shrine, the final resting place of the eighth Imam in Shia Islam, Ali al-Rida.
Not that the pleas worked. The consul in Mashhad, then spelt Meshed, took up pilgrims’ grievances with the local authorities but found it changed nothing.
At home, too, the pilgrims got no remedy. Upon their return, when they informed the press about their experiences, editors refused to run articles because the Press Act forbade “publication of matter detrimental to relations with a [friendly] foreign country”.
Businessman’s travails
In 1935, an eminent businessman wrote to the consul in Mashhad about experiencing repeated harassment in Iran. Mohammad Ali Habib, a partner in a company with a “turnover of Rs 2 crore”, said he was on a pilgrimage with six family members when “the Persian Customs officials at Khanaqin thoroughly examined our luggage and charged us 5 tomans duty on gramophone records and 2 bottles of rum which I am carrying with me for medicinal purposes”.
Habib’s travails did not end there. Despite producing the duty voucher from Khanaqin, he and his family were stopped by officials in Damghan and their belongings searched.
“The Customs officials at Damghan could not find anything except our personal effects, in spite of that, they took out all the embroidered silk saris, which were worned (sic) several times by the ladies,” Habib wrote. “The officers maybe had never seen a sari, which Indian ladies wear and they started taking all the saris that were in the four ladies bags. The officer only left absolutely dirty clothes and barring that he confiscated all the saris.”
The Customs officials, who held up the family for 24 hours and charged it 3,142 krans (a currency in use in Iran and Afghanistan), tried to make Habib sign statements in Persian. “I said that I did not know a word of Persian and that I could not sign a statement of which I had not the foggiest idea,” Habib wrote in his complaint. “One person was called who knew French and he explained to me in French that the statement was an inventory of the articles confiscated as contraband goods and that they belonged to me personally.”
The businessman tried to explain in “broken French” that those were not contraband goods and in fact belonged to his family members. He insisted on adding this disclaimer to the statement before signing it, but his request was denied and, under the threat of jail, he had to relent.
“I address you this long and tedious letter with the object that you will please move the Persian authorities at Damghan and Teharan and get from them the articles they have confiscated valued at about £100 plus 3142 Krans in cash,” Habib wrote to the British authorities.
His family was planning to return to Bombay from Iran via Delhi and Agra but abandoned the idea after their clothes were confiscated. During Partition, the Habib family moved their businesses to Pakistan and set up Habib Bank and the House of Habib, a large business group in the country.
British concerns
A Foreign Department file documented all sorts of cases of high-handed Customs officials in Iran seizing basic items from pilgrims. One entry from 1935 read: “A family of pilgrims consisting of 12 persons were deprived by the Customs of 8 cakes of Sunlight and 3 cakes of toilet soap – a very reasonable allowance for personal use on a long journey. They were also fined a sum of 52 rials on the ground that the soap was not declared on the frontier.”
The colonial authorities were incensed with Iran. Not only were Indian pilgrims facing harassment there, but even Indians resident in the country were put through difficulties.
Among those who complained of discrimination in Iran were Sikh truck drivers with transport businesses. Trucks imported to Bushehr by British Indian subjects were “suddenly commandeered and sent away to Jahrom to carry troops,” said the Foreign Department.
Even British oil executives faced problems. “A touring car containing three British employees of the Anglo Persian Oil Company was raided by Boir Ahmadi Sarhidis,” a report in the Foreign Department file said. “The raiders stripped the men and released them after making them walk for a considerable distance, bare feet and in scanty clothes.”
Taking note of the growing complaints, Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the head of the British Legation in Tehran, wrote to Indian Foreign Secretary HAF Metcalfe in March 1934:
“I have for some time past been somewhat exercised about the number of cases which come to my notice involving the ill-treatment, administrative baiting, malicious persecution and so on of Indian British subjects. The cases occur all over Persia, but more particularly in Khorasan, Sistan and Zahedan, partly because there are so many more Indians in those provinces than in others, partly because of the control of the ministries in Tehran over the administrative departments, at any rate in Sistan and Zahedan, is weaker than elsewhere.”
Knatchbull-Hugessen said that, in the past, Indians would directly approach consular authorities for help. “But unfortunately the Indians very quickly fell into the habit of bribing their way out of any difficulties and that of course was fatal. The Persian officials lost all respect for them and opened their mouths wider and wider. Today an Indian rarely brings his difficulties to the Consul until he has bribed every official in sight without success and hopelessly compromised his case from every point of view.”
Diplomatic manoeuvres
Lt Col Hugh Daly, who visited Iran to look into the problems faced by Indian pilgrims, suggested that Britain pressure Iran by restricting pilgrimages to Mashhad or stopping them altogether.
“The value of the weapon consists in the fact that with trade as bad as it is with at present the town of Meshed depends for its existence to a large extent on the pilgrim traffic,” Knatchbull-Hugessen, taking note of Daly’s suggestions, wrote in a letter to Metcalfe. “The Shrine itself, of course, has large revenues from its properties throughout Persia, but its income even, and indirectly that of the Shah, would be affected if the traffic dried up altogether.”
Metcalfe said that Iranians had “peculiar notions of nationalism”: whenever their diplomats were apprised of the harassment, they would defend their “sovereign right” to act as they pleased. He called their attitude “most unreasonable” and “diametrically opposed to the regard and consideration” shown to Iranians in India.
“For instance in 1930 the Consul General for Persia in India objected to the prosecution of Persian subjects under the Criminal Tribes Act and stated the the terms ‘Irani’ and ‘Persian Gypsies’ used by local governments in notifications issued under that Act were offensive to the Persian government,” Metcalfe said. “This shows that Persian subjects in India are not only given a fair deal but are also exempted from the operation of the law of the country when such a course is desirable to satisfy the susceptibilities of the Persian government.”
Metcalfe was not in favour of disallowing pilgrimages to Iran. He said the restriction would upset the Shia community and end up hurting Iraq as well since many pilgrims who crossed over from Baluchistan visited Karbala after Mashhad.
India’s Home Secretary Maurice Hallett agreed with Metcalfe, noting that any decision to stop pilgrimages to Iran would be regarded as “interference with religion, in spite of the fact that such action would be in the interests of the pilgrims themselves”.
Hallet instead suggested tit-for-tat action against Iran: “It seems to me that if the Persian Government does not treat British Indians decently, we should be permitted to deal with wandering Persian gangs under the Criminal Tribes Act. In deference to the wishes of the Persian Government, certain Local governments are now not allowed to use this Act even against persons whose claim to Persian nationality is questionable.”
The Home Secretary also recommended using the media to change public opinion among Shias. “If Persia is anything like as sensitive as is Afghanistan to what appears in the Indian press, I think the best way to meet this is by propaganda.”
Hallet wanted the government’s publicity officers to nudge Shia-run newspapers to “ventilate the grievances of Indian pilgrims” in Iran. “If it were generally known that these pilgrims were badly treated, their numbers (whatever they may be) are likely to be reduced. It will do no harm if Moslem newspapers urge the Government of India to make representations to Persia.”
If the government did use propaganda, it did not have as big an effect on Shias’ attitudes as word of mouth. Data collected from British India and the princely states put the number of Shia pilgrims travelling to Iran at around 2,000 at best. There was a small drop in the figure from 1935 until the outbreak of the Second World War. And yet, those visiting Iran continued to complain about ill-treatment by Customs officials.
The road access from India to Iran was cut off after Partition. From this point on, Indian Shia pilgrims mostly travelled by ship to Iraq and then overland to Iran. For Indian Shias, a pilgrimage to Iran still remains popular, although wars and political instability have made interruptions a regular feature.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
