The Origins of the Jama‘at-i Islami, 1932–1938

Mawdudi often said that the idea for establishing the Jama‘at-i Islami came to him as he reflected on the problems the Muslims of India faced on the eve of partition.^[21] The solution to those problems, he had concluded, would require the services of a political party that could initiate radical changes in Muslim society and at the same time safeguard its interests in India. If the Islamic state was to solve any problem, it could do so only if Muslims were organized and worked for it; they should not expect a miracle to produce a solution.^[22] Twenty-two years of observation, reminisced Mawdudi in later years, had led him to believe that no Muslim party was likely to succeed unless it followed high ethical and religious standards and enjoined Muslims to be morally upright and to adhere without compromise to the values of their religion: “I was of the opinion that the importance [of a party] lies not in numbers of its members, but in the dependability of their thoughts and actions.”^[23] This conviction had its roots in how Mawdudi had read early Islamic history.^[24] Mawdudi was greatly impressed by the way the Prophet organized the first Muslims in Mecca and later Medina shortly after the revelation of Islam and harnessed their energies to project the power of Islam across Arabia. For Mawdudi the success of the Prophet’s mission could not be explained simply by the power of his message, nor did it owe its fulfillment to the will of God; rather it reflected the Prophet’s organizational genius: “Within thirteen years the Prophet was able to gather around him a small but devoted group of courageous and selfless people.”^[25] Mawdudi thought the Jama‘at could do the same: “All those persons who thus surrender themselves are welded into a community and that is how the "Muslim society’ comes into being.”^[26]

Mawdudi felt that an important aspect of the Prophet’s organization had been segregating his community from its larger social context. This enabled the Prophet to give his organization a distinct identity and permitted the nascent Muslim community to resist dissolution into the larger pagan Arab culture. Instead they were able to pull the adversary into the ambit of Islam. For Mawdudi the Jama‘at, much like the Prophetic community, had to be the paragon for the Muslim community of India. It would have to stand apart from the crowd and still draw the Muslim community into the pale of Mawdudi’s Islam. The Jama‘at was, therefore, at its inception a “holy” community (ummah) and a missionary (da‘wah) movement.^[27]

Indian history also provided more immediate and tangible examples for Mawdudi. Since the nineteenth century, when the Fara’izi movement of Haji Shari‘atu’llah (d. 1840) in Bengal had introduced its elaborate hierarchical structure of authority to Indian Muslims, organization had a central place in their politics. The penchant for organization building reached its apogee with Abu’l-Kalam Azad (1888–1958). Azad, for the first time, tied the fortunes of the Muslim community of India to finding a definitive organizational solution. In the second decade of the twentieth century he promoted in his journal Al-Hilal the Hizbu’llah (Party of God), an organization which he charged with the revival of Muslim religious consciousness while safe-guarding Muslim political interests. Although the Hizbu’llah never amounted to much, its raison d’être and the way it worked were outlined in detail and with the customary force and passion of Azad’s pen. This scheme left an indelible mark on a whole generation of Muslim intellectuals and political activists across India, among them Mawdudi, who read Al-Hilal avidly in his youth.^[28]

In 1920, Azad proposed yet another organizational scheme. At the height of the Muslim struggle during World War I, Azad, along with a number of Indian ulama, proposed that the Muslims choose an amir-i shari‘at (leader of holy law) in each Indian province, to be aided by a council of ulama to oversee the religious affairs of Muslims.^[29] These provincial amirs would in turn elect an amir-i hind (leader [of the Muslims] of India), a coveted title on which Azad had set his own eyes. While this scheme also came to naught, Azad proceeded to launch an independent campaign for securing the title of amir-i hind for himself. He instructed a few close associates who had sworn allegiance (bai‘ah) to him to travel across India, argue for Azad’s claim to the title, and take additional bai‘ahs on his behalf. One such emissary was Mistri Muhammad Siddiq, a close companion of Mawdudi in the 1930s who influenced Mawdudi’s thinking on organization greatly and helped found the Jama‘at.^[30] The notion of an omnipotent amir-i hind—a single leader for the Muslims of India—enjoying the unwavering allegiance of his disciples later found an echo in the organizational structure of the Jama‘at and in Mawdudi’s conception of the role and powers of its amir (president or executive).

Despite Azad’s widely publicized and popular clamor for an organizational solution, Muslims did not actually initiate one until the Khilafat movement in 1919–1924,^[31] which, for the first time, mobilized the Muslim community under a single political banner. Although the Khilafat movement eventually lost its aim and collapsed following the abrogation of the Muslim caliphate by the Turkish government in 1924, its appeal and indefatigable organizational work captured the imagination of Muslims and anchored their politics in the search for an effective organization. As a young journalist at the Taj newspaper in Jubalpur, Central Provinces (1920), and later as the editor of the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind’s newspaper, Muslim, in Delhi (1921–1923), Mawdudi had been active in the Khilafat movement and organized Muslims to support it.^[32]

The Khilafat movement’s decline left a vacuum in Muslim politics. The experience had aroused the Muslims’ political consciousness and heightened their sense of communal identity, but it had also left those it had mobilized frustrated and disappointed. Still its considerable success in organizing Muslims did not go unnoticed by those who continued to struggle for the Muslim cause. The Muslim community began to organize and call for unity to face the challenges to Islam. Keen observer as he was, Mawdudi took note of the success of some of these organizations such as the Tahrik-i Khaksar (movement of the devoted; created in 1931) or the Muslim League.^[33] In fact, the Khaksar, under the leadership of ‘Inayatu’llah Mashriqi (1888–1963), who was renowned for his organizational talent, had grown to be a major force in Punjab at the time. Equally instructive was Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah’s organization of the Muslim League. Values which formed the basis of the Jama‘at in later years echoed Jinnah’s emphasis on solidarity, organization, morality, and perseverance: “Organize yourselves, establish your solidarity and complete unity. Equip yourselves as trained and disciplined soldiers…. [W]ork loyally, honestly for the cause of your people…. There are forces which may bully you, tyrannize over you and intimidate you…. But it is by going through the crucible of fire of persecution which may be levelled against you,…it is by resisting…and maintaining your true convictions and loyalty, that a nation will emerge, worthy of its past glory and history…. [A]s a well-knit, solid, organized, united force [the Musalmans] can face any danger, and withstand any opposition.”^[34]

Sufism also influenced the Jama‘at’s organization. The Sufi order (tariqah)—which governs the practice of Sufism—facilitates the spiritual ascension of the Sufis.^[35] It organizes Sufi members into a set of hierarchically arranged concentric circles, each of which is supervised by a Sufi of higher spiritual rank. The circles eventually culminate in a pyramidal structure, at the pinnacle of which sits the Sufi master (shaikh,pir, or murshid). This pyramidal organizational structure of the Sufi order is symbolic of the spiritual journey of the Sufis from novice to master. It not only governs the practice of Sufism but also creates clear doctrinal and intellectual boundaries around the Sufis, sequestering them from the society at large. The spiritual seclusion of the Sufi community eliminates outside influences and promotes concentration, learning, and character. To join the Sufi order, a novice must undergo initiation and submit to a form of “conversion”—declare his commitment to the spiritual path and surrender his soul to the guidance of the Sufi master—which is popularly known as the sarsipurdagi (literally, placing one’s head on the master’s lap). The initiation into Sufism involves an allegiance (bai‘ah), which symbolizes and confirms the Sufi’s commitment to his master. The allegiance demands of a Sufi total submission and obedience to the master, for he commands the Sufi’s soul, guiding it through the maze of spiritual experiences and mundane travails to the realization of the Absolute Truth which is God.^[36] A Sufi order is often centered in a hospice (khanaqah), where many Sufis take up residence in order to be close to their master.

Committed to reforming Islam, Mawdudi had little tolerance for what he believed to be the latitudinarian tendencies of Sufism. But, despite his ambivalence toward the esoteric dimension of Islam, in the Sufi order he saw a valuable organizational model:

Sufis in Islam have a special form of organization…known as khanaqah. Today this has a bad image…. But the truth is that it is the best institution in Islam…. [I]t is necessary that this institution be revived in India, and in various places small khanaqahs be established. Therein novices can read the most valuable religious sources, and live in a pure environment. This institution encompasses the functions of club, library and ashram [Hindu place of worship]…. [The] entire scheme rests on selection of the shaikh [master]…. [A]t least I do not know of someone with all the qualifications…. [I]f this task is to be undertaken, India should be searched for the right person.^[37]

Many elements of this laudatory description were featured in the Jama‘at’s original plans and governed the party’s early stages of development at Pathankot between 1942 and 1947.

The Sufi order’s emphasis on the central role of the Sufi master and total submission to his example and ideas was akin to Mawdudi’s conception of the role of the amir in the Jama‘at. In a letter dated March 1941, some four months before the formation of the Jama‘at, Mawdudi compared membership in an “Islamic party” with the Sufi’s giving allegiance (bai‘ah) to the master, and emphasized the primacy of the overseer of such a party in its functioning.^[38] Mawdudi, however, made a distinction between his views and those of the Sufis by proclaiming that allegiance in the Jama‘at was to the office of the amir, and not to himself personally.^[39] Many Jama‘at leaders have since lamented that as a consequence of this attitude, from its inception Mawdudi exceeded the managerial duties the amir was supposed to perform, because he looked upon his relation with the Jama‘at members as that of a master (murshid) with his disciples (murids).^[40] In fact, for some the prospects of giving allegiance, albeit not openly, to Mawdudi was a compelling enough reason not to join the Jama‘at.

Despite its roots in the Islamic tradition, the Jama‘at-i Islami is a modern party. Its structure, procedural methods, and pattern of growth reflect modern ideas and attest to a successful accommodation of modernization within an Islamic milieu. It has managed to escape the decay that has, for instance, reduced the Congress party, the Muslim League, and the Pakistan People’s Party to patrimonial and dynastic political institutions, and in the case of the last two led to debilitating factionalism. The Jama‘at has rather created mechanisms, bureaucratic structures, and management that have thus far withstood the pressures of the fractious and patrimonial system in which it operates. This organizational strength owes much to the European models on display in the 1930s—fascism and, even more, communism.^[41] Mawdudi had avidly studied these models. As a result, the Jama‘at was never a “party” in the liberal democratic sense of the term—translating popular interests into policy positions; it is, rather, an “organizational weapon”^[42] in the Leninist tradition, devised to project the power of an ideological perspective into the political arena. While Mawdudi differed with Lenin in seeking to utilize this “weapon” within a constitutional order, its structure and functioning closely paralleled those of bolshevism.

Smith writes that Lenin replaced the working class with the party, as the vanguard without which the working class would be unable to gain political consciousness and become a revolutionary movement.^[43] Lenin’s party worked on the principle of “democratic centralism, [wherein] rank-and-file members [were] strictly subordinate to the leadership….decision making was to be "central’ in formulation, with rank-and-file members copying out orders received, but that higher bodies were to be "democratically’ accountable to the membership at periodic meetings.”^[44] Propaganda, while designed to further the cause of the revolution, also acted to reinforce group solidarity within the party, forming the basis of a well-knit administrative party and network of cadres.^[45]

For Lenin the vanguard was won over by the doctrine and then charged with the task of maneuvering the masses into position for the struggle against the economic and political order.^[46] The Jama‘at fulfilled the same function with the difference that it focused its attention not so much on organizing the masses as on maneuvering the leaders of society. This was a significant departure from the Leninist model and one that muddled the meaning of revolution in Jama‘at’s ideology. Mawdudi defined revolution as an irenic process, one which would occur once the leaders of the society were Islamized. Although he used the term “revolution” to impress upon his audience the progressive image of his discourse, he did not view it as a process of cataclysmic social change. Rather, he used revolution as a way of gauging the extent of differences between an Islamized society and the one that preceded it.^[47] As a result, Mawdudi’s “organizational weapon” was never as lucidly defined as Lenin’s was. For Mawdudi, the Jama‘at was both a “virtuous community” and a political party. It would bring about change by expanding its own boundaries and waging a struggle against the established order, but with the aim of winning over leaders rather than the toiling masses. The mechanisms and working of the process of change therefore remained less clearly defined, reducing its strength considerably. What the role of the party in realizing the ideology should be was, however, essentially the same.

The similarity between the two movements is not just conjectural. Mawdudi was familiar with Communist literature,^[48] and true to his style, he learned from it, and from the Communist movement in India, especially in Hyderabad, in the 1930s and in the 1940s, when the Communist-inspired Telangana movement seriously challenged the nizam’s regime. Mian Tufayl Muhammad, Jama‘at’s amir between 1972 and 1987, recollects a conversation in which Mawdudi commented: “no more than 1/100,000 of Indians are Communists, and yet see how they fight to rule India; if Muslims who are one-third of India be shown the way, it will not be so difficult for them to be victorious.”^[49] In later years former Communists joined the ranks of the Jama‘at, bringing with them additional expertise in the structure and operation of Communist parties.

That the Jama‘at’s and Lenin’s ideas about the “organizational weapon” were similar confirms that the relation of ideology to social action in Mawdudi’s works closely followed the Leninist example. Mawdudi argued that in order for his interpretation of Islam to grow roots and support an Islamic movement he had to form a tightly knit party. An organizational weapon was therefore the prerequisite to making Islam into an ideology and using religion as an agent for change. “No particular event prompted the creation of the Jama‘at,” recollects the senior Jama‘at leader, Fazlu’rrahman Na‘im Siddiqi; “it was the culmination of the ideas which Mawdudi advocated and the agenda which he had set before himself since 1932.”^[50]

Mawdudi first proposed an organizational solution to the political predicaments of Indian Muslims in 1934: “The erection, endurance and success of a social order requires two things: one, that a jama‘at [party or society] be founded on that order’s principles…and second, that there be patience and obedience to that jama‘at.”^[51] His notion of a jama‘at was not clear at this stage; its boundaries were vague for the most part. It reflected Mawdudi’s desire to invigorate the Islamic faith and re-create a rigorous, virtuous community (ummah) as a force for change and a bulwark against the political marginalization of Indian Muslims. It could not remain abstract for long. The definition of the jama‘at had to be narrowed from an amorphous community to a concrete entity. Although Mawdudi knew this, he failed to appreciate the need to draw a clear line between holy community and political party. Consequently, the Jama‘at has since its inception remained committed to both its avowedly religious and its essentially sociopolitical functions.

This division first became manifest as Mawdudi became more and more involved in Indian politics from 1937 onward. When politics led him to depend on an organizational solution to the quandary before the Muslim community, his agenda and plan of action became increasingly confused. Political exigencies blurred the distinction between a revived ummah, defined in terms of greater religious observance, and a communally conscious political party dedicated to social action. It was not clear whether Muslims were supposed to take refuge in the spiritual promise of the holy community and withdraw from Indian society, or whether they were to immerse themselves in social action with the hope of reversing the fortunes of their beleaguered community. For Mawdudi the dichotomy between social action and spirituality, between the party and the ummah, was unimportant: the two would eventually be one and the same. A party would be a vehicle for harnessing the political power of the Muslims, not only by virtue of its organizational structure but also by the power of its moral rectitude. The strength of the party would emanate as much from its structure as from its embodiment of the Islamic ideal. In Mawdudi’s eyes, just as safeguarding Muslim political concerns required turning to Islam, so enacting the dicta of Islam would ipso facto lead to political action. Religion had no meaning without politics, and politics no luster if divorced from religion. Mawdudi saw the connection between Islam and politics not as a hindrance but as an ingenious idea, an intellectual breakthrough, of using Islamic ideals to reshape the sociopolitical order.

Integrating Islam and politics was of course not a new idea, but it had thus far found no institutional manifestation in Islamic history.^[52] Throughout the ages, Muslims were even aware that the two were inherently incompatible. They paid lip service to the political directives of the Islamic revelation, but more often than not they separated religious institutions from political ones, lest politics corrupt the faith. Political leaders had sought to mobilize Islam in the service of the state, but rarely sought to extend the purview of their faith to include politics. For Muslims, the integration of religious and political authority in the person of Prophet Muhammad, like every aspect of the Prophet’s mission, was a unique and metahistorical event. The Medina community was not institutionalized in the structure of Islamic thought, nor in the body politic of the Islamicate.^[53] It rather remained a normative ideal, one which has surfaced time and again, in the form of Muslim chiliasm and atavistic yearning. The historical development of Islam—into what has been termed “traditional” Islam—was, therefore, predicated upon a de facto delineation of the boundary between religion and politics and a sober understanding of the relative weight of normative ideals and the imperatives of exigent realities in the life of man. The historical reality of Islam was even canonized in Islamic political doctrine, in lieu of the normative ideal of a holistic view of Islam. Muslim theorists from al-Mawardi (d. 1058) to al-Ghazzali (d. 1111) implicitly sanctioned the separation of religion and politics using the largely symbolic institution of the caliphate. Insisting upon the continuity between religion and politics is, therefore, an innovation of modern Islamic political thought.

The lesson of Islamic history and the logic of the traditional Islamic perspective clearly eluded Mawdudi, who like most revivalist thinkers was driven by faith and the promise of a utopia modeled after the Prophet’s community. Contemporary revivalists, Shaikh writes, have “approached the notion of [political] power not as a quantity that is intrinsically corrupting, apropos say of Christian doctrine, but as God’s most eminent instrument for Man in the service of Divine justice,…a legitimate pursuit without forfeiting morality.”^[54]

The political circumstances of the prepartition years and the frustration Mawdudi shared with his coreligionists only added to his inability to see the inconsistency in combining religion and politics, holy community and political party. Organization, he believed, would harmonize spirituality and politics, and would provide a panacea for Muslims. This conclusion further underscored the Janus face of the jama‘at, as an exemplary community which would be the repository of Muslim values, and as a party which was to spearhead their drive for power. This contradiction tore the Jama‘at between the conflicting requirements of its claim to pristine virtuosity and the exigencies of social action. The inability to resolve this confusion satisfactorily has been the single most important source of tension in the Jama‘at, and hence the impetus for continuous clarification of the party’s religious role, social function, and political aims.