| Sumario: | Muḥarram rituals have been constantly reinvented in Mumbai during the last two centuries. The format of Muḥarram commemoration, as practiced today, is the result of intensive negotiations and tensions between diverse ethnoreligious groups that have settled in Mumbai. This article examines how over the last two centuries Muḥarram has produced a space for social negotiations and particularly looks at a new social fold in such space, where a Wahhabi counter-ritual is manifested. The Wahhabi community is a relatively new social group, mainly constituted by Indian Muslim workers who returned from Arab countries. While seemingly Wahhabi counter-ritual is aimed at challenging the commemoration of the Karbala martyrs, the Wahhabi community employs Muḥarram to negotiate its social position within Mumbai's dynamic urban society. With such a focus, this article describes "Mumbai Muḥarram" as an "urban ritual" that produces a space for intensive "urban negotiation." The idea is to explore Mumbai Muḥarram beyond its religious connotations, showing its social complexity that constitutes not only Shi'i Muḥarram but also its counter-ritual. Mumbai Muharram is a grand urban ritual that should be seen as a part of the cosmopolitan process of this city. This article highlights the fact that urban dynamics cannot be fully articulated by the conventional idea of "class struggle" and "urban everyday life," and that social negotiations throughout the liminal time of rituals, based on "community struggle," play a central part in urban processes and dynamics.
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