The Debate Over Opening The Party

Since its creation in 1941, the Jama‘at has adhered to a set of rules and criteria that have seemed to restrict its membership (see tables 5 and 6). As Mawdudi explained, “so I concluded that I wanted Jama‘at-i Islami’s discipline to be very strict and firm, whether some stay or leave…I would not permit compromise on the organization.”^[39] Discipline, moral rectitude, and strong organizational bonds were the foundation stones of a holy community and essential to the pursuit of the goals of “Islamic revolution” and an “Islamic state.” But, as the Jama‘at began to put its fortunes in Pakistani politics beginning in 1951, the relevance of a vanguard—a holy community and an “organizational weapon”—in the revolutionary sense of the term, as floated by Lenin and adopted by Mawdudi, became suspect.

Taking its cue from Mawdudi, the Jama‘at’s leadership long remained unclear about the exact nature of its decision to turn to politics and the implications of this change in strategy. They were reluctant to undertake any substantial reforms in the party’s organizational structure. Although aware that the Jama‘at’s cadre of workers and party’s base of support needed to be expanded, in 1951 the leaders decided to introduce the new category of affiliate to act as a convenient buffer between the Jama‘at and Pakistani society, a stop-gap measure that permitted the Jama‘at to expand its organizational network without compromising the principles and criteria of its organizational structure. The affiliate category both reflected and confirmed the ambivalent nature of the Jama‘at’s purposes and the tensions produced by its efforts to balance ideological fidelity with utilitarian politics.

The affiliates were composed of those who favored the Jama‘at’s goals and ideas, but were not ready to abide by its organizational discipline, a group through which the party’s rigid organizational structure could interact with the society at large. In November 1951, during the party’s convention in Karachi, the Jama‘at decided to recruit and organize at least 12,000 affiliates.^[40] Thenceforth, as their interest in electoral politics increased, the affiliates became the Jama‘at’s political lifeline and permitted the party to evade the question of more fundamental structural changes. A positive correlation was thus established between greater political activity—and the resulting electoral defeats—on the one hand, and emphasis upon the affiliates, on the other. The humiliating defeat in the Punjab elections of 1951 generated no discussion regarding Jama‘at’s membership criteria, but it did lead to a more aggressive policy of recruiting and organizing affiliates.^[41] In 1955, with an eye on national elections, the Jama‘at’s leaders directed the organization to recruit 40,000 affiliates in a three-year period.^[42]

Although there were no elections in Pakistan until 1970, the Jama‘at continued to expand its organizational networks through the affiliates. The Machchi Goth affair helped, since the declaration of the shura’ in November-December 1956 that Mawdudi’s writings were no longer binding on the party was used to attract followers from other schools of Islamic thought. These new recruits were often Deobandi or Ahl-i Hadith, or were followers of other self-styled religious movements, but they sympathized with the Jama‘at’s goals. Their entry into the Jama‘at transformed the terms under which the affiliates allied themselves with the party. They were no longer restricted to those attracted by Jama‘at’s message but who hesitated to submit to its rigorous discipline; they were increasingly those who sympathized with the Jama‘at’s political program but remained attached to other schools of Islamic thought.

While useful in expanding the organizational horizons of the Jama‘at, the affiliate category proved inadequate for satisfying the party’s rapidly rising political expectations (see table 5). The party’s defeat in the elections of 1970 left little room for its leaders to remain sanguine about the affiliates as a source of political power. Mawdudi came under increasing pressure to relax the criteria for membership, and expand its organizational reach. Aware that the move would have implications he did not like, Mawdudi balked at the idea, and by blaming the defeat on the machinations of foreign powers he diverted attention from the need for fundamental organizational reforms.^[43] His vision for the Jama‘at still encompassed not a party, but a holy community—an embryonic ummah—and a vanguard. If success in electoral politics required changing structure and ethos, then Mawdudi preferred to opt out of the electoral process altogether. Although no longer at the helm, between 1972 and his death in 1979, Mawdudi used his considerable powers of persuasion to convince the new leaders of the wisdom of his course, but he was not entirely successful. At the shura’ in 1975, he declared that the Jama‘at should reevaluate its agenda and its future course of action, and possibly abandon electoral politics altogether in the interests of ideological purity.^[44] The new leaders were not convinced; they wanted to break the political impasse, but not totally to replace politics with purely religious concerns. The Jama‘at had evolved into a consummate political party, and its commitment to electoral politics had gone too far to allow them simply to walk away from it. No clear decisions were taken regarding Mawdudi’s counsel, and with the future of the party in doubt, tensions continued to mount in the ranks. In 1978 for example a suggestion by ‘Abdu’l-Ghafur Ahmad that the Jama‘at as a political party should ally itself more closely, even blend in, with other Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) parties provoked public censure from Mawdudi.^[45]

For as long as Mawdudi lived, his inflexibility staved off any attempt to open up the Jama‘at’s membership. The party, instead, resorted to other ways of expanding its base, such as organizing students, women, the labor force, and the peasants. The popularity the party enjoyed in the 1970s as a result of its firm opposition to the Bhutto government and success in mobilizing the masses around single causes, such as the non-recognition of Bangladesh, to the leaders’ relief somewhat obfuscated the issues that had given rise to the debate over membership, but did not solve the problem of expanding the Jama‘at’s base of support nor the anomaly inherent in utilizing a rigid organizational structure in electoral politics. Since 1985, lackluster electoral results have once again raised questions about the fate and objectives of the Jama‘at, and the loss of support among the Muhajirs has underlined its deficiencies. With Mawdudi out of the picture, these developments have led to impassioned debates over its membership criteria both in and outside the party. A group of Mawdudi loyalists—those who continue to see the Jama‘at as essentially a holy community, as well as those who advocate an “Islamic revolution” of some form—resist change. They argue that the Jama‘at’s raison d’être is its ideological vision, which could be diluted or, worse yet, manipulated if it is revamped by members who do not have firm loyalties to the party’s ethos and world view. The newcomers could use their vote to destroy the Jama‘at from within, and to do what successive governments have failed to do. The Jama‘at, they argue, owes its continuity to its strong ideological foundations and to the moral fiber and loyalty that are protected and perpetuated by its strict membership criteria. Their position has been bolstered by the fact that no one in the Jama‘at wishes to compromise the discipline which underlies the existing political power of the party. In a country where political parties are hopelessly divided into factions and autonomous wings, the Jama‘at leaders pride themselves in the unity of thought and action of their members, which they attribute to their membership standards.

The more politically motivated Jama‘at leaders and workers, however, favor some opening up. In the Jama‘at opinions vary from opening the party’s membership to the few, to creating new intermediary criteria between member and affiliate, to providing mechanisms for greater participation by affiliates in decision-making, to separating the party’s religious and political functions—vesting the first in a closed organization and second in an open one.^[46] To engineer and manipulate “political participation” the Jama‘at must become a full-fledged party. “Revolution has no meaning without popular support,”^[47] as one leader put it. It must open its ranks to the many Pakistanis who are allied with the party ideologically and politically, and yet are kept from joining it ranks by the forbidding membership criteria. The holy community, as an ideal as well as a reality, has over the years become an anachronism and a constraint on the party’s political progress.

While the Jama‘at has done much to create the “Islamic vote bank” in Pakistan, denying membership to its own group of voters has kept it from consolidating this same base of support, and therefore it cannot benefit from the fruits of its own toil. It cannot count on affiliates and sympathetic voters, because to ensure their loyalty, it must have some organizational control over them. The great ease and rapidity with which the Muhajirs abandoned the Jama‘at attests to the weakness of its ties. Those hardest hit by the loss of the Muhajir vote—the members of Jama‘at-i Islami in Sind—argue that, had the Muhajirs been able to express their views in the party and seen more of their interests reflected in its policies, they might not have been compelled to look elsewhere for solutions.

The strict criteria for membership have so reduced the interactions between the Jama‘at and the society in which it operates that the party has developed an elitist and patronizing outlook which one erstwhile Jama‘at votary calls “a kinship” (‘asabiyyah).^[48] The abstract, pedantic, and mostly apolitical discourse of the Jama‘at—telling Pakistanis what they should think and demand rather than representing their aspirations—and the distinct physical and sartorial appearance of its members—long sherwani coats, caracul caps, and long beards—has distinguished them from the general population, who refer to them as “Jama‘ati” (of the Jama‘at). Opening up the Jama‘at would not only be a concession to outsiders, but also the means by which the party can become sensitive and responsive to the sociopolitical imperatives and dynamics that determine the course of politics in Pakistan. As the party’s fear of annihilation subsided over the years so did the pressures for segregating the Jama‘at from the society at large.

Demand for change has been voiced from different quarters. The party’s Muhajir members,^[49] and those to whom the Jama‘at has made overtures in order to avoid opening its ranks, including the members of its various unions, have also favored opening the party. Jama‘at’s efforts in the 1970s and the 1980s to find a base of support among the labor force, peasants, and white-collar professionals have only created new demands for greater say in the affairs of the party. The more these new groups support the Jama‘at, the more the party has felt the pressure for change, lest it fail to sustain its rapport with its new found allies and supporters. The proliferation of semi-autonomous institutions such as those enrolling the labor, peasants, teachers, and lawyers threatens the Jama‘at’s organizational structure directly by creating centrifugal tendencies within the party. If these expanding groups are not successfully incorporated into the Jama‘at, the party will lose control over them.

In 1990 Qazi Husain Ahmad finally took the first step, not by reforming the membership criteria, but by adding yet another semi-autonomous organization to Jama‘at’s family. This was the Pasban (Protector), which draws support mainly from among the urban youth, former IJT members, and the right-of-center activists in the lower middle classes. The new organization, which is not officially affiliated with the Jama‘at, has no membership criteria and, to the chagrin of the Jama‘at old guard, does not demand adherence to a code of social conduct, not even wearing a beard. The aim is to organize those who sympathize with the Jama‘at, even if their support is limited to politics, in order to provide the party with a broader base. The Pasban was also charged with the task of popularizing the Jama‘at’s message through plays and festivals, thus somewhat alleviating the problem of the Jama‘at’s distance from the masses. No sooner was it created, however, than it became a bone of contention in the Jama‘at. While Qazi Husain and his supporters viewed the new organization with hope, the purists decried its lax discipline and even denied that it was useful.

Organizational reform and membership criteria continue to preoccupy the Jama‘at’s leadership, reflecting its continuing struggle with tensions born of applying its ideological perspective to the pursuit of its political goals. The outcome of this process and the ultimate shape which the Jama‘at’s greater political activism is likely to take have in good part, however, been controlled and conditioned by the party’s interactions with other political actors and the various Pakistani regimes.