As Israel and Iran inch dangerously closer to full-scale war, with airstrikes, missile barrages, and unprecedented military rhetoric dominating headlines, a small, almost forgotten Indian village—Kintoor in Uttar Pradesh—has emerged from obscurity. This is not just a story of genealogy or nostalgia. It is a geopolitical ghost resurrected—the birthplace of Iran’s revolutionary legacy, deeply embedded in the soil of India.
At the heart of this legacy lies Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, a Shia cleric born in Kintoor in the early 1800s. His migration to the Middle East led to the birth of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme architect of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Today, as the Middle East is engulfed in flames once again, his descendants in India are torn between ancestral pride and political grief—caught in a legacy that has now become a weaponised memory.
Kintoor, a sleepy village in Barabanki district near Lucknow, is steeped in history but absent from most textbooks. Once a flourishing center of Shia scholarship, it was home to clerics, imambargahs, madrasas, and an intellectual network that stretched from Delhi to Najaf and Karbala. It was here, in the first quarter of the 19th century, that Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi was born.
A descendant of Imam Musa al-Kazim, the seventh Imam in Twelver Shia Islam, Syed Ahmad’s erudition and piety soon clashed with the restrictions of British colonial India. By 1830, he had set off on a pilgrimage that would change the course of history first to Najaf in Iraq, then onward to Mashhad and eventually Khomein, Iran.
In defiance of forced assimilation, he adopted the suffix “Hindi” as an assertion of identity. This was not a random marker. It became a spiritual and ideological banner—one that his grandson, Ruhollah Khomeini, would carry all the way to Tehran’s revolutionary stronghold.
Born in 1902 in Khomein, Ruhollah Khomeini was raised on the theological foundations laid by his grandfather. His speeches—rigorous, fiery, and steeped in Islamic jurisprudence—mobilised millions. He stood against Western imperialism, the U.S.-backed Shah, and secularism. When the Islamic Revolution of 1979 succeeded, Khomeini became the Supreme Leader of Iran—a position that fused political power with divine authority.
Khomeini’s government implemented Velayat-e Faqih, the rule of the jurist, transforming Iran into a theocracy. The West called him a dictator. His supporters hailed him as the long-awaited savior of Shia Islam. But few knew—or acknowledged—that this ideological titan had his bloodline anchored in an Indian village.
Inside Khomeini’s home in Kintoor’s Mahal Mohalla, his descendants—Dr Rehan Kazmi, Adil Kazmi, and Nihal Kazmi—preserve his memory with reverence. Framed portraits of the Ayatollah adorn their modest walls. “He always carried ‘Hindi’ in his name, not just as heritage, but as a proclamation,” said Adil Kazmi. “When we went to Iran and introduced ourselves as his descendants, we were received as guests of honour. But today, we are watching that legacy be swallowed by missiles and headlines.”
As Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, intensifies his hardline stance against Israel in response to devastating airstrikes, a storm brews over his own lineage. Some Iranian sources and independent scholars claim that Khamenei’s father, Sayyid Jawad Khamenei, was also descended from Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, and therefore shares the same Kintoori ancestry as Khomeini.
But the Kazmi family in Kintoor dismisses these claims as misleading.
“Khamenei is a political heir, not a blood descendant,” said Dr Rehan Kazmi. “His father was from Mashhad. There is no record in our family or Iranian archives to link his bloodline to ours. It’s dangerous to rewrite genealogy for propaganda.”
However, Khamenei has avoided making any public clarification. In the midst of war, ancestral credibility is now a tool of soft power, and any association with Khomeini’s legacy can fortify religious legitimacy in Iran’s volatile succession politics.
The ongoing Israel-Iran escalation now dangerously close to triggering regional conflagration has reverberated even in Kintoor. Iran has launched 400 ballistic missiles and over 1,000 drones in retaliation to Israel’s targeted airstrikes on its military facilities. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ominous declaration that “no one is immune” even hinting at Ayatollah Khamenei—has raised global alarms.
For Khomeini’s Indian descendants, the war is both a political tragedy and a spiritual dissonance. “The attacks by Israel are inhumane. Iran is responding defensively,” said Dr Rehan Kazmi. “But my heart breaks when I see the name of our ancestor being used as a battle standard. He stood for justice, self-respect, and religious awakening not vengeance.”
Adil Kazmi added, “We do not condone war. Khomeini’s revolution was a resistance against oppression, not a call for endless bloodshed. His memory should inspire dialogue, not destruction.”
Despite its significance, Kintoor remains neglected. The imambargahs are crumbling. The ancestral homes are fading. Yet, traces of the past remain manuscripts, oral histories, grave sites—a living testimony to India’s once-vital contribution to Islamic theology and transnational Shia thought.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous Indian clerics traveled to Najaf and Karbala to study and settle. They carried with them not just religion but cultural diplomacy. The migration of Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi was part of this intellectual exodus from colonial India, forming a legacy that would later shape the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In the West, Khomeini is often reduced to a radical mullah. In Iran, he is revered as Imam. But in Kintoor, he remains a scholar first, a revolutionary second. And now, amid escalating war, his legacy is being weaponised by both sides—used by Iran for ideological fervor and cited by Israel to justify hard retaliation.
“We want to restore the memory of Khomeini as a thinker, not just a Supreme Leader,” said Adil Kazmi. “He studied Indian philosophy. He admired knowledge. He didn’t start out to make war his legacy.”
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