RELUCTANT DEMOCRATS
Although forced by circumstances to tread the
democratic path,
the JIH’s vision is still clouded by the spectre of Maududi
BY JAVED ANAND
Meet Irfan Ahmad. Having started his educational jour-ney
from a madrassa in North India, he is today assistant
professor of politics in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at
Monash University, Australia, and leads the country’s Centre for Islam
and the Modern World. What got him there, quite possibly, is his book
Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of
Jamaat-e-Islami, published in 2010 by Permanent Black. The book
forms part of ‘The Indian Century’, a series of select books on
India’s recent past. It has also been published by the Princeton
University Press in the USA. "This is the most important book written
on Muslims in India in the last three decades," says Dale F. Eickelman,
a renowned US-based professor of anthropology and a scholar of Islam
and Muslim societies.
No mean achievement for a first venture, an outcome of
Ahmad’s PhD thesis on the subject from the University of Amsterdam.
"You’ve come a long way, baby," one might say to him in appreciation.
That, in short summary, is also what Ahmad has to say to/about the
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) in his book. Without quarrelling with
Ahmad’s conclusion based on meticulous research, the fact remains that
his conclusion, though not incorrect, is incomplete. A complete
sentence about the JIH should read: You’ve come a long way, baby, but
you’ve still got a long way to go. Though the JIH has in practice
moved far away from its ideological moorings, it has yet to cut the
umbilical cord that still ties it to the lethal ideology of Sayyid
Abul Ala Maududi, the Jamaat’s founder.
That there is a movement within the Jamaat movement in
India is true and that’s a welcome thing. But there is a limit to the
extent you can play with ideas, how far you can go with verbal
jugglery. How long can you "interpret" and "reinterpret" Maududi to
legitimise a course of action which would have been absolute heresy
for the good maulana? All that you achieve in the process is to stand
Maududism on its head. What is needed is a clean break, a decent
burial of the Maududian world view, but as of now the JIH is nowhere
close to getting there. Ahmad’s otherwise engaging book fails to
satisfactorily address the disjoint between Maududism – the bedrock of
Jamaat politics – and its otherwise welcome departure – in the
secular, democratic direction. Given this dislocation, to many Indian
Muslims, the JIH looks in many respects like the mirror image, the
Muslim version of the Hindu right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The Lenin of Islamism
To Maududi, the Lenin of Islamism, goes the dubious
credit of "discovering" (Sayyid Qutb of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was
later to toe the same line and stretch it even further) that unlike
other religions, Islam is not just faith and rituals, Kalima, namaaz,
roza, Haj, zakaat. Above all, Islam is a
"revolutionary ideology" whose goal is the capture of state power. To
be a Muslim is to be a revolutionary whose entire being is dedicated
to dismantling and overthrowing all man-made ideas, institutions,
laws, isms – capitalism, communism, fascism – and grabbing political
power to establish hukumat-e-ilahiya (Allah’s kingdom) and
Shariah laws. Since there is no place for nation and nationalism in
Islam, it is the bounden duty of a Muslim to strive through all means
possible to establish Allah’s kingdom and Shariah rule throughout the
globe: from Japan and China to Iceland and America. If Islam is the
revolutionary ideology and Muslims the revolutionaries, for Maududi,
the Jamaat and Jamaatis are its vanguard.
In short, here is Lenin’s famous "What is to Done?"
thesis Islamised. Replace Marxism with Islam, communists with Muslims
and the Bolshevik party with the Jamaat and there you have the
complete blueprint for a totalitarian Islamic state.
For Maududi, the bloody partition of India was a great
leap forward, since it had given birth to a dar ul-Islam, an
abode of Islam (Pakistan). Admittedly, there was a little anomaly
here, a little twist in the tale. The creator of the "dar ul-Islam",
it so happened, was a beardless man whose commitment to Islam was
suspect and whose avowal of secularism and democracy threatened to
turn Pakistan into a Paap-istan (land of sin). But Maududi was
confident that his Jamaat would ensure course correction and soon
usher hukumat-e-ilahiya in Pakistan. The subsequent trajectory
of the Jamaat and the fate of its agenda for Pakistan (and Bangladesh)
lies outside the scope of this article, since the focus here is on the
Indian version of the Jamaat.
Jamaat in dar ul-kufr
If a part of the partitioned country was dar ul-Islam,
the other part – greater in size and larger in numbers – was "dar
ul-kufr (an abode of infidels)" as Maududi saw it. The agenda of
the Jamaat in the predominantly Muslim dar ul-Islam appeared
simple enough. But what was the Jamaat’s rump – with all of 240
arkan (members) in 1948 – left behind in Hindu-majority India to
do? Not much of a problem there, the maulana believed. If the
transition of Pakistan into an Islamic state was a certainty, Maududi
was also confident that there was "at least a 60 per cent chance for
Islam’s success" in India too. 1
If you believed there was "at least a 60 per cent chance of success"
in whatever you seek to achieve, wouldn’t you "go for it"? So the JIH
"went for it"; took up the challenge of transforming infidel India
into a dar ul-Islam.
If you find this idea bizarre, hilarious, ridiculous
or whatever, many Indian Muslims thought so too, even then. In his
book, Ahmad narrates the account of a retired professor from Aligarh
Muslim University who, as a student of the same university in the
1960s, had attended a lecture addressed by Syed Hamid Husain, then a
prominent Jamaat leader. Formerly a communist, the highly westernised
Husain had later embraced Maududism. During his lecture Husain
attacked the ideas of secularism, nationalism and democracy, offering
Islam as the only real alternative before India. Ahmad’s interviewee
challenged Husain, arguing that it was "foolish" and "reactionary" to
fantasise about an Islamic system in Hindu-predominant India. But an
unfazed Husain asserted: "Yes, it is possible." Asked if Hindus needed
to convert to Islam for the miracle to happen, his answer was no.
Husain was simply reiterating the Jamaat line that just as a secular,
democratic system remained un-Islamic irrespective of whether an
Abdullah or a Ram Prasad presided over the affairs of state, so long
as an "Islamic system" was established, it did not matter who was at
the helm!
Maududi’s and the JIH’s conviction that India could be
Islamised rested on three assumptions:
Assumption one: A very large section of Hindus who
are victims of caste oppression can easily be won over to the fold of
Islam. Why would lower-caste Hindus who did not convert to Islam
through centuries of "Muslim rule" in India do so under the new
secular, democratic dispensation? Because there was no Maududi and his
Jamaat on the scene earlier, might well have been the response.
Assumption two: As the Jamaat’s monthly Urdu
organ, Zindagi, argued in 1955: "If we consider the population
of the whole world… we can say that every sixth man is a Muslim
whereas out of 300 men, there is only one member of the Communist
party. Despite their small number however, communism has captured
one-fourth of the planet and is one of the two leading powers." 2
(Yet another example of the Jamaat’s love-hate relationship with
communists?) Numbers apparently did not matter; what did was the
determination and sacrifices of the vanguard.
Assumption three: Since Hinduism did not have a
"permanent world view", Hindus had no choice but to look to others for
a system of governance. That is why they ended up adopting the "evil
principles" of secularism, nationalism and democracy from the West.
The task before the JIH was therefore straightforward: to tell the
Hindu leaders of the Congress: "It is your duty (farz) to
recognise, assess and examine… the Islamic principles and display the
same objectivity you have adopted towards European democracy and
Russian communism. We are sure that if you examine that then you would
realise that in reality only the Islamic system is the guarantee of
your and the world’s welfare." 3
Jamaat’s recipe for India: Hindu state
Based on such comforting assumptions, the strategy
proposed by Maududi and adopted by the JIH was simple: Goad the Hindu
leaders of the Congress party to ditch the ideals of secularism and
democracy, establish a "Hindu state". In short, the Jamaatis preferred
that Indian Muslims live under a Hindu state rather than a secular
state.
While deposing before the Justice Munir Commission
(appointed to probe the vicious and violent anti-Ahmadiyya agitation
in Pakistan in 1953), Maududi had stated: "I should have no objection
even if the Muslims of India are treated… as Shudras and Mlecchas [the
lowest castes and barbarians] and Manu’s laws are applied to them,
depriving them of all share in the government and the rights of a
citizen." 4
Embarrassed by such a statement from their leader, Maududi’s followers
continue to claim that the good maulana was misquoted by Justice Munir.
But then, here is the 1950 statement of Maulana Abullais Islahi Nadwi,
the first amir (president) of the JIH: "I request… the Hindu
leaders to adopt only those principles and based on them, establish
whatever way of life exists among them. We would prefer that (Hindu
state) to the secular systems of Europe. In the (Hindu) system, if
there is a provision of death for Muslims like us, we are agreed even
to that."5
"For a Muslim, it is not even legitimate to breathe in
a secular society unless he strove to convert it into a dar ul-Islam,"
said Maududi. However, his and JIH’s preference for a Hindu state
seems to have been purely ‘tactical’. It was believed that a ‘Hindu
state’ (to be installed with full encouragement from Muslims) cannot
last long because Hinduism lacked a "permanent world view" and was
cursed with the caste hierarchy. A "Hindu state" was sure to collapse
and the JIH (Islam’s Bolsheviks) would quickly step in to seize the
moment. As simple as that.
The commandments
Equipped with such an impressive theological arsenal,
the 240-member army of the JIH enthusiastically launched its Islamist
project in post-independence India. In the beginning the JIH chose to
float an island of its own in the sea of kufr so that Jamaatis
may lead an uncontaminated Islamic life. The organisation’s purist
agenda included the following:
Ø
Jamaat workers were prohibited from participating in any way in the
electoral process. No standing for elections, no voting, since Maududi
believed it meant participation in the taghuti nizam
(idolatrous system).
Ø
Staying away from elections was not enough. Every other component of
the state apparatus, part of the system that propped up the un-Islamic
system, was to be shunned.
Ø
Government service, particularly in the Indian army and judiciary, and
the banking system were an absolute no-no. (Muslims inspired by
Maududism resigned from their government jobs before joining the
Jamaat.)
Ø
Joining the legal profession and practising as a lawyer was
prohibited; taking cases to the courts was not permitted either except
in extreme situations.
Ø
Leave alone government educational institutions, even studying in a
Muslim-managed educational institution like the Aligarh Muslim
University was out, since Maududi had called such institutions
"slaughterhouses" for Muslims. Madrassas run by various Muslim outfits
too were "slaughterhouses" although of a different kind. So were
Muslims to stay illiterate? Not at all; the JIH would open darsgahs
(schools) and saani darsgahs (institutions of higher education)
which would impart true Islamic education and nurture future Jamaatis.
Girls’ education was fine but co-education was out.
Ø
The JIH would have nothing to do with other Muslim organisations
because they lacked the "fundamental perspective of Islam" (read did
not subscribe to Maududi’s Islam).
Ø
Any dealing with banks, savings or pension accounts, educational or
business loans, all were haram because interest equals usury which
Islam prohibits.
Ø
Sinful practices such as listening to music, watching films, etc were
all haram.
Ø
Birth control measures were un-Islamic and for women, the burkha was a
must.
How on earth was the Jamaat going to transform
anything with such self-imposed isolation? Daawah (invitation,
propagation) is the answer. For starters, the JIH issued a daawah
to top Indian leaders, including the then president of India, Rajendra
Prasad, and prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Sadly for Maududi’s
followers, the response, if any, was not encouraging. In order to
convert the aam aadmi (common man) to its cause, it published
books and periodicals in several Indian languages. But here again, the
progress was far from soul-stirring. According to the JIH’s own
figures, as against 240 members in 1948, it had grown to only 981
members in 1960 when the total Muslim population in India then was
around 42 million. It was not a very encouraging picture.
The vanguard behind the masses
As was only to be expected, the JIH found itself
running into hurdles every step of the way. India’s secular,
democratic polity and more so the Indian Muslims’ near total
indifference to its agenda soon forced the organisation to rethink or
be reduced to irrelevance. As it turned out, the demands of survival
won over the dictates of ideology. Maududi had envisaged the Jamaat as
the vanguard of the ummah (the global Muslim community). But if it has
any presence on the Indian landscape today it is only because it
chose, willy-nilly, to be led by the Muslim masses. Slowly but surely,
the body that had set out to transform India was itself transformed.
That this transformation was not uniform but zigzag and patchy is
another matter.
The Jamaat’s step-by-step ideological retreat is best
illustrated through its shifting stance towards the political,
electoral process.
Ø
Soon after independence, the JIH switched from its original
hukumat-e-ilahiya mission to that of iqaamat-e-deen
(establishing religion). It’s just a change of terminology, both mean
the same thing, the cadre was told. In that case, why change? The
realisation, presumably, that harping on "Allah’s kingdom" would not
only not go down too well with the Hindu majority, even Muslims might
scoff at the absurdity of the proposition.
Ø
In the first two general elections of independent India – 1952, 1957 –
Muslims were warned that taking part in the taghuti nizam was
totally un-Islamic, haram. Indian Muslims however totally ignored the
Jamaat and participated actively both as voters and as candidates.
Finding itself totally isolated, the JIH was forced to revisit Maududi.
Ø
In a dramatic U-turn on the eve of the 1962 elections, the JIH
mass-distributed a pamphlet in Urdu under a title in Persian: ‘Pas
che bayad kard (What is to be done?)’. Lenin again! The pamphlet,
penned by the JIH’s amir Nadwi, pleaded with Muslims to
participate in elections, for not to do so would be "tantamount to
suicide".6
Muslims had in any case been actively participating since 1952!
Ø
The ground for the shift had been prepared in 1961 when circumstances
forced a new realisation on the Jamaat’s shura (highest
decision-making body): "if the path of elections could be used for the
goal of iqaamat-e-deen", participating in the "ungodly system"
was acceptable, it decided. Interestingly however, in the resolutions
passed by the shura, the phrase iqaamat-e-deen was given
a quiet burial. Participation in the elections was now okay because it
was "in the interest of Islam and Muslims". But conditions applied: a
Muslim wanting to contest elections must shun non-Islamic parties; it
was okay for a Jamaati to vote only "under some conditions"; votes
must only go to a candidate who is "not from a non-Islamic party". For
all practical purposes however, the JIH stayed away from the 1962
polls.
Ø
Until the early 1960s, the JIH would have nothing to do with other
Muslim organisations because, as mentioned earlier, they lacked the
"fundamental perspective of Islam". But eager to be part of a new
political formation in North India in 1964 – the All India Muslim
Majlis-e-Mushawarat – Nadwi assured its leader Syed Mahmood through
the Jamaat’s mouthpiece, Radiance, that the JIH had full faith
in the Indian Constitution and in a secular state. However, it
remained opposed to sharing a platform with Hindus. All said and done,
in the 1967 polls too, JIH members did not contest elections and the
ban on its workers from voting remained in place.
Ø
In the aftermath of the emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi – during
which period the JIH was banned and many of its top leaders jailed –
the organisation took no official stand on the 1977 elections which
dislodged Mrs Gandhi from power.
JIH in defence of secularism
Fast-forward to 1985. Though matters reached a
flashpoint and the organisation seemed on the verge of a vertical
split, the leadership at long last pushed through its resolve allowing
Jamaat workers to vote. After nearly four decades of organisational
twists and torments over the issue, Jamaat members were at last free
to vote: for Muslim or even non-Muslim candidates. The only condition
now was that the candidates be of good moral character, sympathetic to
Muslim concerns and not affiliated to any party whose ideology is
"clearly against Islam and Muslims".
The JIH which began as a staunch opponent of India’s
secular, democratic polity (idolatrous system) had now turned into its
active participant some 40 years later. Marking this shift, the phrase
iqaamat-e-deen disappeared from the mastheads of the Jamaat’s
publications. What’s more, with the rise of virulent Hindutva in
Indian politics from the mid-1980s onwards, the JIH turned from mere
participant into an ardent defender of democracy and secularism. In
the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, it even
floated a platform, Forum for Democracy and Communal Harmony, wooing
practising Hindus, communists and avowed atheists to jointly combat
"communalism and fascism". Invited to the Jamaat’s ijtima
(gathering) of 2002 were several Hindu high priests (shankaracharyas).
One of them even blew a conch on the occasion and chanted: "Om, Om!"
Had he been alive, what would Maududi think or say?
Along with the radical shift of the JIH on the
electoral front, some other foundational Maududian myths also came
into question. Maududi’s neat delineation of the world into dar ul-Islam
and dar ul-kufr was one of them. Some Jamaat leaders now found
democracy to be "an unexpected divine boon". Others claimed that India
is neither dar ul-Islam nor dar ul-kufr but a dar
ul-daawah. But for the devoted followers of Maududi, all this is
heresy of the highest order.
In his book, Ahmad well captures the disgust of a
Jamaat member from Delhi who was among many who quit the organisation
when the ban on voting was lifted: "How on earth could Islam allow
voting for taghut (idolatrous parliamentary system)? When I
joined the Jamaat, we were told to eliminate taghut,
secularism, democracy… everything against the Koran… We joined for
iqaamat-e-deen. Now the Jamaat is fighting for iqaamat-e-secular
democracy. Do you know about the Forum for Democracy and Communal
Harmony?... What is it doing? It is fighting for the glory of
secularism and democracy. You have also read Maududi. Tell me, what
has secularism got to do with Islam? Where is the original ideology?"
Ahmad’s field research in India, conducted between
2001 and 2004, covered the cities of Delhi, Aligarh, Rampur and
Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh and Patna in Bihar. As we shall see later,
had he extended his work to cover the southern state of Kerala (where
Muslims are around 24 per cent of the total population), especially
post-2002, he would have found that the JIH had moved even further
down the road to secularism and democracy.
In 2003 the Kerala unit of the Jamaat set up the
Solidarity Youth Movement (SYM) which has since been involved "in
generating mass awareness on a range of social issues as well as
leading and participating in social movements against anti-people
government policies, fascism, imperialism, terrorism and environmental
degradation". Particularly noteworthy is the fact that: "We work
closely with non-Muslim groups in Kerala, particularly leftists, who
are concerned about similar social causes".7
The SYM has organised several statewide rallies to which it regularly
invites nationally respected non-Muslim activists, most of whom are
avowed atheists.
In the last two years the JIH has been fluttering its
eyelids at communists who were once seen as its biggest ideological
foes. In the 2011 assembly polls in Kerala, the JIH officially backed
the communist-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), leading to the protest
resignation of the organisation’s former political secretary, Hameed
Vanimel, among some others. But the JIH stuck to its support of the
communists’ front.
And in what some might see as a big leap forward, in
April 2011 the JIH launched its own political party, the Welfare Party
of India (WPI), which will henceforth participate actively in India’s
"idolatrous system".
But this is where the good news ends. While Ahmad
greets the gradual transformation of the JIH with an unqualified
welcome, the JIH’s politics remain suspect in the eyes of many
Indians, Muslims included. A clear indicator of this is the sharp
response of many Muslims to the launch of the Welfare party.
Here, for example, are the comments of Sahil Khan:
"The floating of the new political party by the Jamaat… represents a
shift in terms of the Indian Jamaat’s strategy in the face of a
transformed political context. Yet this does not necessarily mean a
transformation of its overall ideology. Given the Jamaat’s particular
understanding of Islam, which many other Muslims do not accept, it is
not surprising that the move has provoked considerable debate,
including visceral opposition, in Muslim circles."8
The core of the dilemma before the JIH continues to be
this: because the organisation merely seeks to explain away this or
that departure from Maududism or, at best, resorts to a
‘we-don’t-agree-with-everything-the-Maulana-said’ approach, it invites
suspicion and sharp criticism from the left and the right. To the
ardent followers of Maududi, the organisation is deviating from "true
Islam". As for those (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) who consider
Maududism to be a recipe for a totalitarian state (some even call it
"fascist"), its movement towards secularism and democracy is seen more
as an opportunistic, temporary, tactical move. For them therefore, the
JIH is not very different from the Hindu right-wing Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh. Secular Indians view the sangh parivar (the
RSS, including its affiliates such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP,
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, VHP, the Bajrang Dal, etc) as neo-fascist,
proto-fascist or simply fascist. Ironically, the JIH also considers
the sangh parivar to be fascist. But the fact is that there are
striking similarities between the two. Before we examine the
similarities, let’s take a quick look at the background of the RSS and
the sangh parivar.
Islamic state vs Hindu Rashtra
The RSS was founded in 1925 by a Maharashtrian Brahmin
named Keshav Baliram Hedgewar who was heavily influenced by the
writings of a fellow Maharashtrian Brahmin, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
(1883-1966), who championed the cause of a "Hindu nation (Hindu
Rashtra)". If for Maududi, being a Muslim did not mean just namaaz,
roza…, for Savarkar, being a Hindu had nothing to do with
puja-paath (ritual worship). As elaborated in his ideological
treatise, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu, India belonged only to
those who considered it to be both a punyabhoomi (holy
land) and pitrubhoomi (fatherland). Muslims and Christians were
foreigners, since their holy lands lay outside India, and had no place
in Savarkar’s Hindu Rashtra. (Though it could not be proved in court,
many historians maintain that he was the mastermind of the conspiracy
which culminated in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram
Godse, a former RSS worker. The RSS was banned following the
assassination.)
The head of the RSS is referred to as the
sarsanghchalak. Before his death in 1940, Hedgewar had, in a
sealed envelope, named another Maharashtrian Brahmin, Madhav Sadashiv
Golwalkar (1906-1973), as his successor. For his followers, Golwalkar,
who was the sarsanghchalak from 1940-1973, remains their most
revered chief, respectfully referred to as ‘Pujaniya Guruji’ or as
‘Guru Golwalkar’. Critics of the RSS world view refer to him as the
‘Guru of Hate’.
Here is what Golwalkar wrote in praise of Nazism in
his book, We or Our Nationhood Defined, first published in
1938: "German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To
keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the
world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews.
National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has
also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures
having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one
united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit
by."9
Golwalkar’s message for India’s religious minorities
was clear: "From this standpoint sanctioned by the experience of
shrewd old nations, the non-Hindu people [read Muslims, Christians,
Parsis] in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language,
must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no
idea but the glorification of the Hindu nation i.e. they must not only
give up their attitude of intolerance and ingratitude towards this
land and its age-long traditions but must also cultivate the positive
attitude of love and devotion instead; in one word, they must cease to
be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the
Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any
preferential treatment, not even citizens’ rights."10
RSS: JIH’s mirror image
To return to the similarities between the Jamaat and
the RSS:
Ø If
Maududi fantasised about an Islamic state, for Golwalkar, the RSS and
the Hindu Mahasabha, "Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation, Hindu rule)" was/is
the goal. If Islam meant "revolutionary ideology" for the former, the
catchphrase for the ideologues of the Hindu right was ‘Hindutva’. (Had
Hindus heeded the sage advice of Maududi and the JIH, instead of a
secular, democratic republic, India, post-independence, would have
gone the way of a Hindu Rashtra.)
Ø The RSS claims it is merely a ‘cultural’
organisation engaged in ‘character building and inculcating
patriotism’; the Jamaat too pretends to be a religio-cultural body.
That the RSS claim is a sham is an open secret, for it tightly
controls the politics of its affiliate, the BJP. For secular Indians,
the RSS is in fact the political party and the BJP its ‘parliamentary
wing’. Having launched the Welfare party last year, the Jamaat too is
at great pains to convince people that the WPI is an independent
entity. Not many take this claim seriously, since, apart from anything
else, the leading lights of the party are also top-level
office-bearers of the Jamaat.
Ø The sangh parivar’s ideal of a Hindu Rashtra
is the polar opposite of a secular, democratic polity. That however
does not stop the RSS from active participation in the country’s
democratic polity through its proxy, the BJP. In fact, swearing by
democracy, the RSS/BJP uses every opportunity to remind Indians that
it fought for the return of democracy while it was the Congress under
Indira Gandhi that tried to dismantle it by imposing emergency rule in
the 1970s. The ‘Islamic state’ ideal is also completely at odds with
the idea of a secular, democratic state. But the "transformed" Jamaat,
as we have seen above, is a keen defender of secularism and democracy.
Ø It is
clear from the literature put out by both organisations that just as
the RSS embodies social conservatism of the Hindu middle class, the
Jamaat embodies social conservatism of the Muslim middle class. Both
are archetypal patriarchal outfits, Male Clubs with their ‘women’s
wing’ for adornment. Their views of an "ideal woman" are remarkably
similar too: conveyor belts to transmit culture from generation to
generation.
Whose Maududi is he anyway?
If there are many similarities, there is also a sharp,
situationally defined difference between the two. The RSS sees in
Hindu-majority India a favourable "natural climate" for its sustenance
just as Pakistan is for the Jamaat. Some wonder whether the Jamaat in
India is adopting a more benign posture only because it is compelled
to buy time, given the rather "hostile milieu", unlike in Pakistan,
Bangladesh or Jammu and Kashmir where the Jamaat shows its "true
colours".
If there is scepticism about the Jamaat’s real motives
from without, there is scathing criticism of the organisation from
within the Maududian camp by those who accuse it of betraying the
pristine ideals of "true Islam" out of cowardice or sheer opportunism.
Apart from those who’ve left the organisation in sheer disgust, there
are also those who are still within the Jamaat, perhaps dreaming of an
opportune time to reverse the clock. But the most consistent and the
sharpest critique of the JIH comes from the Students Islamic Movement
of India (SIMI). It is an organisation which emerged from the womb of
the Jamaat to launch itself in the 1970s and which, since the 1990s,
has, rightly or otherwise, been accused of involvement in numerous
terrorist activities across the country.
Though the subtitle of his book might suggest
otherwise, an examination of the Students Islamic Movement of India is
an integral and critical component of Ahmad’s thesis on the JIH. It is
by contrasting the radicalisation of SIMI – an offspring of the Jamaat
– in response to the upsurge of virulent Hindutva from the 1980s
onwards that Ahmad seeks to bring the transformation of the Jamaat
into sharp relief.
India: From riots to crimes against
humanity
Those familiar with the recent history of
India will be aware of the growing communalisation of India’s polity
since the mid-1980s thanks to the meteoric rise of Hindutva
culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the Shiv
Sena-led anti-Muslim pogrom in Mumbai in December 1992-January 1993
and the genocidal targeting of Gujarat’s Muslims by the Narendra Modi-led
BJP government in 2002.
Since the 1980s onwards, from an era of
"riots", India moved on to an era of one-sided, state-condoned and
even state-sponsored carnage and pogroms targeting India’s religious
minorities. In this post-riots scenario, the role of the state is no
longer limited to its earlier partisan conduct. In the past three
decades it has been an active accomplice, prime instigator, even chief
sponsor of mass crimes. Nellie, Assam, 1983 (target Muslims); Delhi
1984 (target Sikhs); Bhagalpur 1989 (target Muslims); Mumbai 1992-93
(target Muslims); Gujarat 2002 (target Muslims); Kandhamal, Orissa,
2008 (target Christians) are the most gruesome reminders of this ugly
reality.
Were we to go by the definition adopted by
the UN’s 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide, the Indian state emerges with the dubious distinction of
having subjected its religious minorities – Muslims, Sikhs, Christians
– to genocidal targeting six times in 25 years. It is a record that
even many dictatorships would find tough to match. Thanks to this
prevailing culture of impunity, in each case, the masterminds of the
mass killings have gone unpunished while the police officers
responsible for shocking dereliction of duty received promotion after
promotion.
Given this backdrop, for well over a decade
now not only secular activists but highly respected establishment
figures – retired top-level police officers and civil servants – have
repeatedly made two assertions: one, no communal carnage can last
beyond 24 hours unless the state wants it to; two, "by its failure to
protect the life and property of a section of citizens, the state sows
the seeds of extremism". 11
Prem Shankar Jha, a veteran journalist and
columnist, writes regularly for the national and international media.
In the midst of the 2002 Gujarat carnage, in an article he wrote for
the Hindustan Times, he lamented: "For every one person
who has been killed [Gujarat 2002] there are 10 whose property has
been destroyed, breadwinner taken and the family rendered destitute.
Not the centre, not the state, not a single political party, not a
single industry association has even thought of setting up a relief
fund to which concerned citizens can contribute to facilitate their
rehabilitation. With such callousness at home, we will soon not need
Pakistan or Kashmir to breed our terrorists for us."12
In another article written around the same time, he repeated the
warning: "Would it be surprising if some of them [Muslims] are asking
themselves whether Hindus will ever let them prosper in India and
whether it would not be better to go out in a blaze of terrorist
revenge?"13
Much the same thing was said in a different
context by Antonio Cassese, the first court president of the 11-member
bench of judges appointed to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal to
try the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and others for genocide,
crimes against humanity and war crimes: "How could a woman who had
been raped… or a civilian whose parents or children had been killed in
cold blood quell their desire for vengeance if they knew that the
authors of these crimes were left unpunished…? The only civilised
alternative to this desire for revenge is to render justice."14
Indian democracy has been sadly lax in
providing such civilised alternatives with regard to the delivery of
justice in the context of post-independence communal violence. What we
have seen instead is an undeclared culture of impunity for the
perpetrators and masterminds of communal carnage and for police
officers who are constitutionally obliged to impartially enforce the
rule of law. The reports of various judicial commissions – appointed
by different governments from time to time to probe incidents of
communal violence, fix responsibilities and make recommendations –
have two conclusions in common. One, the violence was never
spontaneous but the result of meticulous planning, organisation and
implementation by Hindu communal bodies. Two, the police and the
administration showed anti-minority bias. Repeated recommendations by
commission after commission on the imperative measures to pre-empt
violence and to punish the perpetrators and derelict police officers
have gone unheeded. It is in this climate of permissiveness that the
culture of impunity has grown, with no accountability mechanisms in
place.
As many peace-loving and justice-minded Indians have repeatedly
emphasised in recent years, if the perpetrators of 1984 had been
prosecuted and punished, the 1992-93 anti-Muslim pogrom in Mumbai may
have been prevented; and if the perpetrators of 1992-93 had been
punished, the 2002 genocide in Gujarat may have been pre-empted.
SIMI turns to jihad, khilafat
You do not have to be an al-Qaeda supporter to point out that the
absence of justice creates the climate for the birth of extremism. Two
months before India’s "26/11" (the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai),
in his Field Marshal KM Cariappa Memorial Lecture in Delhi, the then
union finance minister P. Chidambaram foresaw "new waves of terror" in
India. "Out of the hopelessness and despair of the Muslim community –
and if not addressed firmly, the Christian tribal communities too [Kandhamal]
– will rise new waves of terror," he warned. The national media chose
to ignore the alarm bells rung by their favourite finance minister, or
relegated this to a few paragraphs on the inside pages. Soon after he
was made the union home minister in the aftermath of 26/11,
Chidambaram spoke again: "We cannot fight terrorism effectively unless
we fight communalism with equal determination."15
If the 1984 massacre of innocent Sikhs produced "Sikh extremism",
the demolition of the Babri Masjid (December 1992), the anti-Muslim
pogrom in Mumbai (1992-93) and the genocidal targeting of Gujarat’s
Muslims (2002) sowed the seeds of "Muslim extremism". Terrorism is not
the monopoly of any one religion. Discrimination and injustice saw the
birth of extremism among the Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka and the
Catholics in Ireland. But when an extremism brought into existence by
force of circumstances finds anchor in a pre-existing ideology of
terror, a closer look at the phenomenon becomes necessary.
Enter SIMI. When it was launched with the JIH’s blessings in 1977,
SIMI’s declared objective was "character building" to fight against
the perceived twin evils of communism and capitalist consumerism with
its "degenerate morality". In less than a decade however, this
self-styled moral brigade had metamorphosed into crusaders for Islam,
claiming for itself the mantle of "the real inheritor" of Maududism.
In the mid-1980s SIMI had widely distributed eye-catching stickers
proclaiming: "Secularism, NO; Democracy, NO; Nationalism, NO;
Polytheism, NO; Only Islam". The stickers adorned numerous Muslim
homes and shops throughout India. From then on, Hindutva’s
belligerence was matched by a rapid radicalisation of SIMI.
In December 1991, at an all-India conference held in Bombay (now
Mumbai), SIMI issued its call for jihad. As Ahmad spells out in his
book, "By jihad it did not mean a battle against temptation of the
self; SIMI stated that it meant killing the enemy."16
In SIMI’s analysis, the agenda of the Hindutva forces was not limited
to demolishing mosques and killing Muslims; its real goal was to wipe
out Islam from India. The task before the jihadis was therefore to
"attack the root: polytheism". In other words, SIMI proposed to wipe
out idol worship from India. Having taken to jihad in 1991, in 1996
SIMI added the re-establishment of the khilafat (caliphate) to
its agenda.
Ahmad writes: "Now jihad was not only for the defence of Muslims
under attack from the sangh parivar and the police but was also
for the establishment of the caliphate."
Without jihad, opined SIMI’s mouthpiece, Islamic Movement,
"a revival of the caliphate is not possible". In keeping with
Maududi’s internationalism, if not stated in so many words, SIMI
clearly implied that since Muslims and Islam were being targeted not
only in India but elsewhere in the world too, its own jihad was part
of a global jihad with caliphate as its goal. Further, in an argument
that Maududi would heartily endorse, SIMI proclaimed that if Prophet
Muhammad was a "mercy upon mankind" (rahmat al il alamin), he
was also "a prophet of wars". Once jihad, shahadat (martyrdom)
and khilafat had become its catch-all, SIMI embraced the Muslim
Brotherhood’s epigram: "Allah is Our Lord, Muhammad is our Commander,
Koran is our Constitution, Jihad is our path, Shahadat is our
desire."
"SIMI’s declaration of jihad," says Ahmad, "did not stem from its
members reading the Koran but from Hindutva’s violent mass
mobilisation against Muslims through its campaign to build the Ram
temple. Second, the SIMI became radical because the Indian state
failed to practise secularism." 17
Agreed that the anti-Muslim hysteria generated by Hindutva and the
reluctance, or refusal, of the Indian state to impartially enforce the
rule of law created the political climate in which SIMI’s militant
idiom could find some resonance among a section of Indian Muslims. But
surely it is one thing to talk about a hounded, targeted group being
pushed towards extremist thinking and quite another to dress up your
resistance to injustice in the theologically loaded idioms of jihad,
shahadat and khilafat? Why would SIMI quote Maududi back
to the Jamaat except to indicate where it got its inspiration from:
Maududism, certainly, with a sprinkling perhaps of Qutbism. And who
else but the JIH introduced SIMI to the Maududian world view?
Credibility in question
Yes, faced with the reality of secular, democratic
India, the JIH was forced to depart from the core ideas of Maududi.
But it contented itself by explaining away its departure from these
ideas through re-interpretation or seeming disagreements with
Maududism here and there while maintaining a facade of overall
ideological fidelity. Such pragmatism, or opportunism, was bound to
create problems for the JIH. If, on the one hand, those opposed to
Maududi’s Islamism found its equivocation suspect, Maududi’s devoted
followers were bound to be outraged by such treachery. And in this
they clearly had the good maulana on their side: "After all, what is
the worth of that Islam which can be followed only in a specific
context and, when the circumstances change, then it is abandoned and a
different ideology is adopted according to convenience?"18
You cannot continue to swear by Maududi, for whom
secularism, democracy, nationalism, were "evil principles", and
simultaneously be ardent defenders of those very ideals without
putting your credibility into question. There is more than credibility
at stake here. If the JIH’s embrace of secular democracy et al was
sincere, the Jamaat owed it to itself as much as to others to
undertake a searching critique of Maududi, to pinpoint the fallacies
of his core theses, to give Maududism a decent burial, dissolve the
JIH and found for itself a new name in tune with its new politics.
This the JIH has never attempted. As a result, the ghost of Maududi
still inhabits the Jamaati universe and Maududian cobwebs continue to
cloud its edifice.
A friendly encounter
Here’s a personal example. In response to an article I
wrote for an Indian daily some five years ago, I received a polite
call from the secretary of the public relations department of the
Maharashtra state unit of the JIH. The JIH, I was told, had some
issues with what I had written about the organisation and was keen to
discuss this. I readily agreed and we had a three-hour conversation at
the Mumbai office of the JIH, Maharashtra, where four senior
office-bearers were present.
Here are a few examples from our friendly encounter:
Me: In the global marketplace of ideas, the Jamaat
invites Muslims and non-Muslims alike to the Maududian ideal of a
Shariah-driven Islamic state. The best case scenario for a non-Muslim
in your dream state is the status of second-class citizenship. Why on
earth should any sane non-Muslim be enthused by this offer?
Response: My hosts question my contention that in
the Islamic state envisaged by Maududi, a non-Muslim would be
consigned to second-class citizenship.
Me: I quote certain passages from ‘Jihad fi
Sabilillah (Jihad for Allah’s sake)’, a booklet based on a 1939
lecture by Maududi, and from the Munir Commission report.
Response: "Are you sure you are not misquoting?"
Me: I produce the booklet (in Urdu and in English)
along with photocopied pages from the Munir Commission report.
Response: "In any case, we don’t agree with
everything that Maulana Maududi said," I am then told.
Me: If you don’t agree with some or all of the
contents of ‘Jihad fi Sabilillah’, why should
you be publishing and distributing it? Shouldn’t the JIH at least
preface the booklet, explaining clearly to readers its disagreements
with the booklet’s contents and with an explanation as to why you are
circulating such a problematic text?
Response: To the credit of my hosts, they agree
that I may have a point here.
Me: I gently point out how putting such booklets
into circulation would, if anything, be counterproductive for the JIH.
Were a non-Muslim to read such a pamphlet, won’t he or she be put off
Islam forever? If a young Muslim with an impressionable mind read such
material, wouldn’t he or she be rendered a total misfit in a secular,
democratic society like India? Having been influenced by such ideas,
wouldn’t such Muslim youth find SIMI more attractive than the JIH?"
Response: There is some disagreement, arguments
and then an awkward silence.
Me: Non-Muslims accuse Muslims of double
standards. They say that wherever Muslims are in a majority, they want
Shariah law and an Islamic state; they only want democracy and
secularism wherever they are in a minority. Isn’t that your view too:
an Islamic state for Saudi Arabia and Iran, secularism and democracy
for India? Does that sound consistent?
Response: What’s wrong with that? The Islamic
state is far better than a secular, democratic state.
Me: Better for whom and by what criteria? Shall we
return to ‘Jihad fi Sabilillah’?
Response: There are some smiles but no coherent
response.
Me: Your dream of an Islamic state in India makes
no sense to me.
Response: None of my hosts retort that this was in
the past, that the JIH is now in favour of a secular state. Instead,
one of my hosts remarks: "If the communists can dream of a Marxist
state, why can’t we talk about an Islamic state so long as we go about
it in a totally peaceful manner?" Ah, communists never seem to be far
from the Jamaati’s mind.
Me: So you are still dreaming of an Islamic state
in India?
Response: Why not? The day we are able to convince
enough Indians about our vision…
It is getting late. I am treated to lunch. We part
company, agreeing to revert to these questions another day. (This has
not happened yet.) I am left with the distinct impression that at
least for my hosts – four senior office-bearers of the JIH in
Maharashtra – an Islamic state and Shariah law in India are still not
a closed chapter.
JIH’s telltale Constitution
Could it be that the Maharashtra unit has yet to internalise the
JIH’s transformation? The organisation’s Constitution, which can be
easily accessed on its website, is quite an eye-opener.19 Ahmad, it
seems, never visited the official website. Or perhaps he did not see
much merit in pointing to the gulf between what the JIH still preaches
and what it practises.
We learn from Ahmad’s book about the welcome shifts in the JIH
towards embracing secularism and democracy, inter- and intra-religious
pluralism, etc. That this is so is empirically demonstrated by Ahmad
through numerous practical examples. But let’s take a look at its
Constitution:
Iqaamat-e-deen: Ahmad points out that from the mid-1980s
onwards, the expression iqaamat-e-deen disappeared from the
mastheads of JIH organs as also from its public discourse. But Article
4 of its Constitution states: "The objective of the Jamaat-e-Islami
Hind is Iqaamat-e-Deen, the real motive of which is solely the
achievement of divine pleasure and success in the hereafter…There is
not even a single aspect of human life ranging from beliefs, rituals
and morals to economic, social and political aspects which may be
beyond its pale… Iqaamat of this Deen means that it, in
its entirety and without exercising any discrimination or division,
should be sincerely followed and followed single-mindedly. It should
be so enforced and given effect to in all aspects of human life,
individual as well as corporate, that the development of the
individual, the reconstruction of society and the formation of state
should all conform to this very Deen."
Pluralism: Article 6 states: "Every citizen of the Indian
union, whether male or female, and irrespective of the community or
race to which he/she belongs, is eligible to the membership of the
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind provided that he/she… bears witness, after
understanding the creed, La Ilaha Illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah,
with its explanation (mentioned in Article 3), that the same is
his/her creed…" In other words, only Muslims are welcome and for that,
reciting the Kalima itself is not enough. The JIH must satisfy itself
that the aspirant has internalised its import. Article 9 further
stipulates that "every member of the Jamaat shall have to endeavour
that he/she should sever contacts of affection and friendship but not…
general human relations with transgressors as well as iniquitous and
god-neglecting people and should establish contact and connection with
righteous and god-fearing people…" In other words, any relationship of
"affection and friendship" with idol-worshippers and atheists is out
of the question.
Idolatrous system: Along with lifting the ban on voting in the
mid-1980s, the JIH is also said to have relaxed its requirement that a
member of the Jamaat must not hold a government job or approach the
courts. But Article 8 states: "It shall be incumbent on every member
that he or she should… relinquish any key post which he/she holds
under an ungodly governmental system, or the membership of its
legislature or a judicial office under its judicial system." Article 9
has two further stipulations: "Every member of the Jamaat shall have
to endeavour that he/she should… in case of being part of any ungodly
governmental system or being instrumental in giving effect to its
laws, should readily part with that means of sustenance… [and] not go
to un-Islamic law courts for settlement of matters except under
compelling necessity."
Islamic state, Shariah laws: More important than all of the
above is the "Ideology of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind" section on the JIH’s
website where the Maududian world view may be revisited in its
undiluted splendour: "Jamaat believes that this world and everything
that is in it has been created by the one god. He alone is the creator
and sustainer of life in all its forms. Not only this; He is the ruler
and the sovereign, and omniscient, possesses the sole prerogative,
absolute privilege and unfettered right of giving laws to mankind,
through prophets, to regulate the entire mundane activity of man… It
is thus the duty of man, who is the vicegerent of god on earth, that
he should not only worship god but also live his whole life according
to His law and render allegiance to Him, the lord and the sovereign."
The challenge from Kerala
India’s southern state of Kerala has an unusual demographic mix.
While Hindus constitute around 56 per cent of the state’s population,
Muslims make up for about 24 per cent and 19 per cent are Christians.
Thus Muslims and Christians – the two religious communities in India
which have been at the receiving end of militant Hindutva in the last
two decades – add up to nearly half the state’s population. In the
case of Muslims, apart from the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and
Kashmir, only Assam in the North-east has a higher percentage of
Muslims (28.43 per cent according to official estimates) while the
proportion of Muslims in Kerala and West Bengal is roughly the same.
But it is only in Kerala that a Muslim party has since independence
gained a firm foothold and has frequently been part of the ruling
coalition. Even today it is part of the Congress-led United Democratic
Front government with several of its ministers in the state cabinet.
Surprising though it may sound, the name of the party is the Muslim
League (its full name being the Indian Union Muslim League – IUML).
This is the same party, remember, that spearheaded the demand for the
creation of Pakistan.
Following partition, the IUML became a purely Indian entity
although some of its leaders still refer to Mohammad Ali Jinnah as "hamare
Qaid-e-Azam (our great leader)" along with the honorific "Rahmatullah
alaihe". While a party with a name like the Muslim League, its
leadership exclusively Muslim and its support base overwhelmingly
Muslim, remains problematic in a secular democracy, one thing seems
clear: though aligned to a particular religious community, the IUML
has from the beginning echoed Jinnah’s secular agenda for Pakistan
just as the JIH remained committed to Maududi’s Islamic state ideal.
The aims and objectives adopted by the IUML at its inception in 1948
were:
Ø "To uphold, defend,
maintain, and assist in upholding, defending and maintaining the
independence, freedom and honour of the Indian union and to work for
and contribute towards the ever increasing strength, prosperity and
happiness of the people.
Ø "To secure and protect the rights and interests of the Muslims
and other minorities in the state; and
Ø "To promote mutual understanding, goodwill, amity, cordiality,
harmony and unity between the Muslims and every other community of
India."
"The IUML has been working since its inception true to its
objectives and upholds the ideals of secular democracy and social
justice. It has a vision of safeguarding the cultural identity of the
Muslims, making them capable of their share [in] nation building and
to equip them to face the challenges of changing times with religious
commitment and [a] national outlook." This is how the party recounts
its history on its official website.20
Contrast this with the Constitution of the Jamaat and its
programmes in the initial years post-independence. The radical
difference in the outlook of the IUML and the Jamaat accounts for
their radically different trajectories since 1947. The IUML has been
represented in the Indian Parliament since the very first elections in
1952 and as mentioned above, it has been part of coalition governments
in Kerala on several occasions. What’s more, as chief minister, the
charismatic IUML leader CH Mohammed Koya led a coalition government in
1979 with support from the Congress party.
In comparison, until the boom in the petro-economy in the 1970s
which drew a large number of Keralites to jobs in the Gulf countries,
the influence of the JIH in Kerala was limited to a few pockets. Alive
to new possibilities, the JIH piggybacked on the resulting prosperity
in Kerala and today it has perhaps its strongest presence in this
southern state, more than anywhere else in the country.
In an article titled ‘Socially Engaged Islam: A View from Kerala’,
Yoginder Sikand showers praise upon the state unit of the JIH that
would mesh well with Ahmad’s views on the progressive transformation
of the Jamaat in India. Sikand writes: "Unlike much of the rest of
India, Islamic organisations in Kerala are heavily involved in various
forms of social activism, not limiting themselves simply to religious
education and preaching or to petitioning the government for sops.
This is one of the major reasons for the remarkable social, economic
and educational progress that Kerala’s Muslims, who account for around
a fourth of the state’s population, have witnessed in recent decades.
Among the major Islamic movements in Kerala is the Jamaat-e-Islami."
Sikand proceeds to elaborate on how, through the institution of
several forums and activities – the Dialogue Centre (for promoting
intercommunity dialogue and understanding), Dharma Dhara (the
communications wing of JIH, Kerala), Jana Sevanam (microfinance
schemes for helping the poor), Majlisu Taaleemil Islami (the banner
under which it runs 150 schools, some 200 part-time madrassas and
about a dozen Arabic colleges for Islamic higher studies) and the
Solidarity Youth Movement (launched in 2003 for engaging with all
sections of society to generate mass awareness on a range of social
issues) – the JIH has established an impressive presence in Kerala.
Launched in 1987, the Malayali daily, Madhyamam, which
shares the Jamaati world view but is not its mouthpiece, has today an
impressive circulation of some 2,00,000 copies. JIH, Kerala, is
clearly a well-oiled machine and funds do not seem to be a constraint.
As Sikand observes in his article, "The Kerala JI’s
headquarters are located at the Hira Centre, an imposing multi-storey
building in the heart of Calicut (Kozhikode), a town which for
centuries has been a major Muslim centre. Enter the building and the
stark contrast with North Indian Muslim organisations – even with the
JI’s units in the north – is immediately evident. The building is
sparkling clean and well maintained and it has separate offices for
its different wings, which are staffed by a team of professionally
qualified activists (and not just maulanas)."21
Ironically, the state with the strongest JIH presence
also happens to be the state which has seen the strongest challenge to
Maududism in recent years. The story of the JIH and the fate of
Maududism is perhaps best concluded with an account of this mass
campaign.
If the petrodollars repatriated by Kerala’s Muslims
employed in the Gulf were helpful in the JIH’s growing muscle, a
number of developments in the late 1980s and early 1990s gave the JIH
an opportunity to propel itself. The pro-JIH daily Madhyamam
played a significant role, fishing in troubled waters, discrediting
existing Muslim leaders and organisations. The newspaper’s launch in
1987 preceded a major split in the Samastha Kerala Sunni movement in
1989. This presented Madhyamam with an opportunity to highlight
the opportunism of the existing leadership and its lack of commitment
to the community.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid, which came as a
rude jolt to Muslims across India, created a major tumult within the
IUML in Kerala. Many within and outside the party wanted the IUML to
sever its links with the Congress party which was in power in Delhi
but had failed to prevent the demolition. The IUML’s reluctance to do
so resulted in a split within the party and disenchantment with it
among a large section of Muslims in the state. A little later, the
Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen, among the most powerful Muslim bodies in
the state, also split.
In this climate of growing disenchantment among
Kerala’s Muslims, the JIH saw a big opportunity for itself. However,
it was soon to face major competition from a different quarter.
As discussed above, the resurgence of virulent
Hindutva from the mid-1980s onwards and the unchecked demonisation of
Muslims and Islam resulted among other things in the radicalisation of
a section of Indian Muslims. SIMI was one manifestation of this
phenomenon. In 1989 Kerala saw the birth of the Islamic Sevak Sangh (ISS),
pitting its name and its politics against the sangh parivar’s
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The ISS was among the several Hindu
and Muslim organisations that were banned in the immediate aftermath
of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Following the ban, the ISS
leader Abdul Nasir Maudany floated another organisation, the People’s
Democratic Party (PDP). Though he has never been convicted in a court
of law, Maudany was jailed for long years for his alleged involvement
in terrorist activities. In 2010 he was arrested once again, this time
by the Karnataka police, for alleged involvement with some Muslim
extremist groups. While the PDP has lost much steam in the process,
other extremist groups influenced by Maududism have surfaced to create
problems for the JIH as well as the IUML.
The ban on the ISS in December 1992 and on SIMI in
2001 (soon after the 9/11 attacks in the USA) saw the mushrooming of
several district-level organisations of Muslim youth in Kerala, with
charitable and welfare activities as their ostensibly limited goals:
the Malappuram Young Muslim Association, the Wayanad Young Muslim
Association, the Kozhikode Young Muslim Association, etc.22 Soon
however, these organisations came together to form the National
Development Front (NDF). In 2006 the NDF from Kerala, the Karnataka
Forum for Dignity from Karnataka and the Manitha Neethi Pasarai from
Tamil Nadu merged to form the Popular Front of India (PFI). In turn,
the PFI announced the formation of a political party, the Social
Democratic Party of India (SDPI), in mid-2009.
Judging by the names of these organisations, their
pronouncements and the information posted on their websites, one would
imagine them to be bona fide organisations fighting for democracy,
human dignity and fundamental rights for all. But as many Muslims from
these southern states will tell you, the PFI and its constituents are
far from democratic outfits. According to these Muslims and not just
the intelligence agencies and the police, the PFI and its predecessor,
the NDF, are nothing but SIMI reincarnated.
Never mind the others, even the JIH’s Kerala unit was
forced to go public and distance itself from the NDF/PFI just as it
had done earlier with SIMI. In April 2008 the JIH mouthpiece in
Malayali, Prabodhanam, published a hard-hitting article titled
‘Jihad Unlimited’ blasting the NDF for "ridiculously imitating" Hamas
and the Chechen Mujahideen. It charged the NDF with moral policing and
wrongly interpreting jihad, which was bound to spoil the lives of
"gullible youth". 23
Here in Kerala, we have a replay of the Jamaat-SIMI
feud elsewhere in the country, which has been dealt with above. The
significant thing about Kerala however is that many Muslim
organisations recognised this as an intra-Maududian feud and decided
to launch a massive statewide campaign targeting Maududism itself.
That the three-year-plus campaign between 2008 and 2011 was no flash
in the pan is evident from the fact that it was spearheaded by mass
organisations like the youth wing of the IUML, which claims a
membership of over six lakhs, and both factions of the Nadvathul
Mujahideen.
Why were these mass organisations so perturbed? Some
might argue that the IUML was merely protecting its electoral base but
this misses the larger point. It must be pointed out that although the
sangh parivar has long had a strong presence in the state, the
BJP in Kerala has so far failed to win a single seat in the state
assembly, let alone one in the national Parliament. The reasoning of
the Muslim organisations involved in the campaign was simple: It is to
the credit of Kerala’s Hindus that they have shunned the sangh
parivar’s communal politics. If nothing else, it was the
reciprocal duty of Kerala’s Muslims to oppose communal and extremist
Muslim bodies. The failure to do so would implicate the state’s
Muslims in opening the doors to communalisation of the state.
For KM Shaji, the dynamic president of the IUML’s
Youth League (and now a member of the state assembly) who held
countless public meetings across the state challenging Maududism,
there is a world of difference between the politics of the Muslim
League and the Jamaat. According to him, being in the IUML, it is
possible for a Muslim to remain true to his faith as well as to his
country and its secular, democratic polity: there is no contradiction,
no tension between the two. But if you subscribe to Maududi’s
ideology, you are trapped in an ethical morass, compelled to live the
life of a hypocrite or a misfit as a citizen, apologetic about your ‘Indianness’.
Interestingly, if the Youth League and the Nadvathul Mujahideen
provided the numbers for the campaign, the ideological thrust was
provided by an ex-Jamaati, CT Abdurahiman, head of the Dayapuram
Educational and Cultural Centre in Calicut since its inception in
1984. According to NP Ashley, a young teacher and activist associated
with Dayapuram, ‘CT Sir’, who is well versed in Islamic texts and
Islamic history, wrote a critique of Maududi in Malayalam titled ‘The
Roots of Muslim Terrorism’ during the campaign. Over 1,000
copies of the booklet were sold in Calicut city within four
days. When I met him at Dayapuram in 2008, ‘CT Sir’ told me that
ideologically speaking, Maududism, Nazism and Stalinism have much in
common.
That this mass campaign was highly successful is evident from the
results of the assembly polls in Kerala in May 2011. Clearly, the
Jamaat as well as the NDF/PFI/SDPI failed to leave an impress. "The
very impressive performance of the IUML in the elections only means
that Kerala’s Muslims have said an emphatic no to communal, extremist
politics in Islam’s name," says Ashley.
It remains to be seen whether the Jamaat-floated Welfare Party of
India is a non-starter. As mentioned earlier, the party’s launch
itself was greeted by widespread scepticism and criticism. To those
wedded to the Maududian world view, this was final proof of the JIH’s
betrayal of its founder. Those opposed to it voiced the concern that
if it were to take off, the WPI would achieve little more than fanning
Hindu communalism.
The Kerala example shows that until it snips its umbilical tie with
Maududi, the JIH will continue to find itself squeezed from both ends:
between anti-Maududi Muslim organisations such as the IUML on one side
and radical outfits like SIMI/NDF/PFI, with their claims of being the
real inheritors of Maududism, on the other.
Notes
1 Irfan Ahmad, Islamism
and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami,
2010, Permanent Black, India (for sale in South Asia only), and
Princeton University Press, New York (for sale in the USA).
2 Quote in Ahmad’s book.
3 Quoted in Ahmad’s book.
4 Report of The Court of Inquiry constituted under Punjab Act II of
1954 to inquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (popularly
referred to as the Munir Commission report). The report can be
accessed from the website of Muslims for Secular Democracy (India):
http://mfsd.org/maududi.htm
5 Quoted in Ahmad’s book.
6 Quoted in Ahmad’s book.
7 Yoginder Sikand, ‘Socially Engaged Islam: A View from Kerala’;
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13135170/Yoginder-Sikand-About-JIH
8 Sahil Khan, ‘Indian Jamaat-e-Islami finally discards its
long-standing pretence of being a benign religio-cultural
organisation’;
http://newageislam.comNewAgeIslamIslamAndSpiritualism_1.aspx?
ArticleID=4500
9 Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined,
1938, p. 37.
10 Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, ibid, p. 52.
11 Teesta Setalvad, ‘Who is to blame?’, Cover story, Communalism
Combat, March 1998;
http://www.sabrang.com/cc/comold/march98/page1a.htm
12 Prem Shankar Jha, ‘Separating fact from fiction’, Hindustan
Times, March 13, 2002;
http://www.premshankarjha.com/index.php?/article/view/SEPARATING%20FACT%20FROM%20FICTION
13 Prem Shankar Jha, ‘Why Narendra Modi has to go’, Hindustan Times,
April 10, 2002; http://www.premshankarjha.com/index.php?/article/view
WHY%20NARENDRA%20MODI%20HAS%20TO%20GO
14 Chris Stephen, Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic,
Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2005, p. 98;
http://www.icty.org/x/file/About/Reports%20and%20Publications/AnnualReports/annual_report_1994_en.pdf
15http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=42889 and Javed Anand,
‘Seize the moment’, Seminar,
http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/593/593_javed_anand.htm
16 Ahmad, ibid.
17 Ahmad, ibid.
18 Quoted in Ahmad’s book.
19
http://www.jamaateislamihind.org
20
http://indianunionmuslimleague.in/history-indian-union-muslim-league-iuml
21 Yoginder Sikand, ibid.
22 NP Ashley, through email to this writer.
23 MP Prashanth, The New Indian Express; http://islamicterrorism.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/jama%E2%80%99at-e-islami-hits-hard-at-extremist-islamic-ndf-in-kerala/
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