6. Entering the Political Process, 1947–1958

After Mawdudi had unveiled the Jama‘at-i Islami’s political objectives in Pakistan for the first time in July 1947,^[1] he collected his troops and moved to Lahore on a truck, escorted by units of the Pakistan army. His first contact with the leaders of the new state took place soon after through the Muslim League ministry in Punjab. While he was still living in a tent in Islamiyah Park, Mawdudi met with the Muslim League chief minister of the province, Nawwab Iftikhar Husain of Mamdot.^[2] In that meeting Mawdudi asked for permission to begin work among the refugees, and he discussed the future of Kashmir.^[3] Mawdudi impressed upon the nawwab Pakistan’s obligation immediately to take the offensive in Kashmir and secure control of strategic locations there, and asked the chief minister to relay a message to that effect to Prime Minister Liaqat ‘Ali Khan.

The Nawwab of Mamdot was a powerful member of the landed gentry of Punjab and was at the time embroiled in a struggle with Liaqat ‘Ali Khan and his chief ally in Punjab, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, over the control of that province.^[4] The chief minister was eager to enlist the support of Islamic groups such as the Jama‘at to stave off Daultana’s challenge.^[5] Mamdot, therefore, not only welcomed the Jama‘at’s offer to assist with relief work among the refugees, but invited Mawdudi to deliver a series of talks on Radio Pakistan.^[6] All unwitting, Mawdudi had walked into the midst of a tug-of-war in Pakistani politics that was to determine relations between the Jama‘at and the central government.

Mawdudi quickly learned that, given the balance of power in Pakistani politics, the Islamic parties were bound to play the role of power brokers. Muslim League leaders, concluded Mawdudi, were not as inimical to sacralization of politics as their postindependence rhetoric may have indicated. In fact, as the central government in Karachi faced difficulties in exerting control over the new country’s wayward provinces during 1947–1948 and the crisis before the state grew, the legitimating role of Islam and the power of its spokesmen became more evident. Politicians who otherwise decried the political role of religion were under the circumstances not altogether indifferent to the entry of Islamic groups into the fray. The example set by Mamdot was followed elsewhere, in Lahore as well as in other provincial capitals. The relations between the Muslim League and the Jama‘at during the prepartition years were now expanded to encompass the relations between Islam and the state of Pakistan. The holy community found great strength in acting as a party.

Pakistan was founded in the name of Islam, but it had little else in the way of common national or cultural values around which to unite. Besieged with the threats posed by separatism and ethnic tensions—which were compounded by the problem of integrating autonomous princely states, such as Kalat and Bhawalpur, into Pakistan—and in the absence of a widely shared notion of nationhood, Islam became the only viable foundation on which to build unity. Although many Pakistani political leaders did not like it, faced with the gravity of the situation few could resist the temptation of appealing to Islam. It was the only course open for leaders who discouraged mass politics, failed to adopt meaningful political platforms, and avoided elections. In the words of one observer, “"an Islamic State,’ [became] a political motto to be used by the Muslims and, more particularly, by the Muslim League to continue indefinitely their predominant position in Pakistan politics.”^[7] The tendency to Islamize the national political discourse became even stronger when the League grew concerned over Communist activity. The Communist threat was taken seriously, especially after a plot with the backing of the left was uncovered in the army in 1951, which came to be known as the Rawalpindi conspiracy case.^[8] The alleged military plot was hatched in the Pakistan army by officers who favored a resumption of hostilities with India over Kashmir. It took its name from the garrison where the army headquarters were located. There is evidence that it may have had Communist backing and aimed at restructuring the political order of the country, especially after the leftist poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz was arrested for his part in the conspiracy, which led Liaqat ‘Ali Khan to tell the parliament that the objective of the coup was to install a Communist government.^[9] Islam, it was thought, was the one force capable of averting a Communist future for the country.^[10]

The appeal of Islam to a wide spectrum of Pakistani leaders was proof of the deeply entrenched loyalty Pakistanis had to Islam and their acceptance of its relevance to their concerns. Islam could not, however, be manipulated for political ends without the intercession and ultimately the interference of the Islamic parties, and herein lay the dilemma of waving the Islamic banner for political ends. Factors which also made Islam appealing to politicians, by making it easy for Islamic parties to go into politics, limited the ability of the same politicians to manage successfully the role of Islam in politics.

The conclusion the Jama‘at had reached from the Muslim League’s attempt to design a role for Islam in the future constitution of Pakistan in Lucknow in 1940 is instructive. The task of drawing up a constitution for Pakistan had begun there, in a session presided over by ulama, in which Mawdudi also participated, all at the behest of the Muslim League. In the Jama‘at’s eyes the Lucknow session was proof that Pakistan could not exist divorced from Islam. The Muslim League’s role in convening the session suggested to Mawdudi that even Jinnah and his lieutenants were aware of that fact. For the Jama‘at’s leaders little had changed in this regard since partition. Islam could not be divorced from Pakistani politics, just as it could not have been divorced from partition politics. To the chagrin of many in the Muslim League, the party was therefore caught in a situation where first it emphasized Pakistan’s Islamicity and then ridiculed and undermined those leaders and parties whose political fortunes were predicated upon Islamization.^[11] As early as 1948 the Muslim League began to appeal to Islamic symbols, though at the same time it still viewed parties such as the Jama‘at as inherently opposed to its vision of Pakistan.

The Jama‘at did little to assuage the Muslim League’s doubts. Not only was the party’s rhetoric and confrontational style generally unpalatable to the League, but also the Jama‘at reached its modus vivendi with the Pakistan state after a number of direct, although unsuccessful, challenges to it. Conflict between the Jama‘at and the Muslim League–controlled government predated the party’s decision to accept the legitimacy of the state and to participate in the political process.

In December 1947 the Jama‘at had already begun to demand greater Islamization with the specific objective of highlighting the duplicity of the Muslim League in their appeals to Islam.^[12] Amin Ahsan Islahi stated rather cavalierly that “Pakistan will deserve its name only if it becomes an Islamic state.”^[13] The Jama‘at felt that the League’s conception of Pakistan was merely territorial, opening the door for maneuvering by the “rear guard.” The Jama‘at, just as it had expected to lead the Pakistan movement, now saw its rise to power in the state to be imminent. Mawdudi saw the Jama‘at in its “Meccan” era, and expected it to enter a “Medinan” one shortly after partition,^[14] a reference to the flowering of the Islamic community following the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina. Mawdudi believed that Pakistan was built for the sole purpose of “demonstrating the efficacy of the Islamic way of life.”^[15] Using Jinnah’s metaphor of the “mosque,” Mawdudi asked, “Will the architects who are well-versed in building bars and cinemas spend their energies in erecting a mosque? If the answer is in the affirmative, it will indeed be a unique experiment of its kind in human history; godlessness fostering godliness to dethrone itself!”^[16]

Soon these sporadic outbursts gave way to an organized campaign. On January 6 and February 19, 1948, Mawdudi presented two lectures at the Law College in Lahore.^[17] In them he presented a coherent plan for the Islamization of Pakistan and set guidelines for drawing up an Islamic constitution. He emphasized the viability of such a constitution, to put pressure on members of the Constituent Assembly and to expose their “true intent.” Was Pakistan made in the name of Islam or not? And were they going to establish an Islamic state or not? After Mawdudi delivered these talks, he was challenged by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the renowned Pakistani literary figure, and by Muslim League leaders such as Raja Ghazanfar ‘Ali that his schemes were incongruous and inoperable. Mawdudi thenceforth was careful to emphasize the feasibility and practicality of his ideas.^[18]

The Lahore lectures were followed by a lecture tour of Pakistan in April and May 1948, during which Mawdudi continued to harp on the same themes. During this tour he made overtures to the ulama, hinting of a grand Islamic alliance, a suggestion the Muslim League viewed with considerable concern. In March, Mawdudi sent an emissary to Karachi to contact a number of Constituent Assembly members and press upon them the Jama‘at’s demands; he was to encourage them to pass a resolution which would confirm that Pakistan was an “ideological state.”^[19] The emissary failed to solicit the resolution. ‘Umar Hayat Malik, then the vice-chancellor of the University of Punjab, a man sympathetic to the Jama‘at’s position, advised Mawdudi to act directly. He argued that while members of the Constituent Assembly were not prepared to pass a resolution, they were not necessarily opposed to it either. They simply did not want to take a stand before the electorate.^[20] If the Jama‘at succeeded in mobilizing public opinion in favor of it, argued Malik, they would be more favorably disposed.^[21] Mawdudi took the advice, and the Jama‘at began a concerted public campaign for an Islamic constitution. Pakistani politicians did not take kindly to his attempt to force their hand, especially since his rhetoric was pleasing to the Muhajirs who also served as the Muslim League’s base of support. Muslim League leaders were particularly perturbed by Mawdudi’s threats that Islamization could not be left to the League and required direct action by devout Muslims themselves.^[22] Jama‘at members believe that as early as 1947 members of the cabinet had demanded action against their party. Jinnah had, however, opposed clamping down on the Jama‘at, or so Jama‘at leaders were told by Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali. With Jinnah out of the picture the cabinet debated the idea of placing restraints on the Jama‘at’s activities, and subsequently leading party members were placed under surveillance. The grant of a school in Lahore to Mawdudi in compensation for property he had lost in India was revoked on the direct orders of Liaqat ‘Ali Khan.^[23] The Jama‘at’s political naïveté and maverick style in the following months only further strained the Muslim League’s tolerance.

The 1947 Independence Act had stipulated that until a new constitution was promulgated Pakistan would remain a British domain, and oaths of allegiance by all government employees from the governor-general on down would be made in accordance with the provisions of the India Act of 1935. Early in 1948, Mawdudi was asked about swearing an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. In a private letter to the questioner, Mawdudi declared that such an oath would be “sinful,” arguing that a Muslim can, in clear conscience, swear his allegiance only to God. The letter soon found its way into the press, causing much consternation among the authorities, even in Punjab, where Nawwab of Mamdot’s ministry was favorably disposed to Mawdudi.

Soon thereafter the Jama‘at became embroiled in yet another controversy. In April 1948 India and Pakistan had reached an interim cease-fire agreement over who controlled Kashmir, the provisions of which among other things provided that the government of each country would desist from hostilities against the other and that the press in each country would refrain from publishing incendiary articles. Pakistan, however, had continued to struggle for the freedom of Kashmir, now mainly through covert means. In a letter to Mawlana Shabbir Ahmad ‘Uthmani, the doyen of Pakistani ulama at the time, Mawdudi argued that regardless of the merits of this agreement, now that it had been signed by the government its terms were binding on all Pakistani citizens. A Muslim government, and its citizenry were compelled by the shari‘ah to abide by the terms of agreements to which they were a party. Covert operations, it could be surmised from Mawdudi’s letter, for so long as the India-Pakistan agreement was standing, would be in violation of the shari‘ah and as such could attest to the “un-Islamic” nature of the Pakistani state.^[24]

Rumors regarding the contents of Mawdudi’s letter to ‘Uthmani began to circulate, and the letter was interpreted as a religious decree (fatwa) against jihad in Kashmir. In May 1948, during a speech in Peshawar, a province in which many of the volunteer Pathan tribal forces fighting the covert war in Kashmir were recruited, Mawdudi was asked by the director of information of Pakistan’s provisional Kashmir government to explain his position on the jihad. Mawdudi responded that so long as the government of Pakistan was bound by the terms of its cease-fire agreement with India, it could not declare a jihad in Kashmir, lest it violate the shari‘ah’s injunctions to abide by the terms of the agreement. Since jihad had to be declared by a proper governmental body, added Mawdudi, there was no possibility that any other source could declare one. Therefore Pakistanis could not wage jihad in Kashmir as long as their government was officially observing a cease-fire.

Mawdudi had thus tied the question of Kashmir to the Islamicity of the state. An Islamic state could not engage in covert operations, nor wage jihad through proxy, and since Pakistan could not forego Kashmir, it was best in Mawdudi’s opinion to resume hostilities against India, which is what Mawdudi had recommended to Mamdot in 1947. Mawdudi’s explanation only further complicated the matter for Pakistani authorities. The force of his argument was sufficiently provocative to bring the wrath of the government upon the Jama‘at. India, however, would provide even a better pretext for that.

The Srinagar and Kabul radio stations broadcast reports of Mawdudi’s challenge to the Pakistan government as a “decree against” war in Kashmir, hoping to dampen the resolve of Pakistan’s “freedom fighters.” The Pakistan government was not only incensed but also found the Jama‘at sufficiently liable on the charges of sedition being circulated by the authorities, along with tales of Mawdudi’s disloyalty to the Pakistan movement, to effectively silence this most outspoken of the Islamic parties. Undaunted, Mawdudi issued his rebuttals, while restating his arguments in simpler terms, all to his own detriment. The government, understandably, was not assuaged by Mawdudi’s remark that “it was sheer hypocrisy to sanction a jihad, stealthily declared, while Pakistan told the whole world that it was in a state of cease-fire with India”;^[25] Pakistan should either desist from jihad or, preferably, go to war. The government understood Mawdudi to be saying that only an Islamic government could declare jihad, which they believed to be more seditious than the argument that there could be no jihad during the cease-fire.^[26]

Unable satisfactorily to explain its ostensibly “unpatriotic” casuistry to Pakistanis, and especially to the all-important Muhajir community, which was then subject to “Indophobia” and obsessed with Kashmir, by August 1948 Mawdudi was compelled to alter his stand. Debating the logic of jihad in Kashmir gave way to solemn oaths of allegiance to Pakistan, denunciation of Indian policy in Kashmir, and declarations of support for Pakistan’s claims over Kashmir.^[27] He now argued that while the cease-fire agreement was binding on the government volunteers could still participate in the freedom movement in Kashmir. When in September the Pakistan government officially admitted to its involvement in the conflict in Kashmir, eager to demonstrate the logic of his position, Mawdudi lost no time in supporting a jihad.^[28] It was with the same thought in mind that in 1989, when Kashmir erupted in turmoil, the Jama‘at took the lead in the “jihad in Kashmir” campaign in Pakistan. But the party’s intellectualized approach to politics had overestimated the power of Islamic dicta and underestimated the appeal of nationalist and patriotic sentiments. The stand seriously damaged its image, and it never fully recovered.

The Kashmir episode had not yet fully died down when Mawdudi’s high-handed style landed the Jama‘at in yet another controversy. In August 1948, Mawdudi was again asked about the issue of swearing allegiance to the state. In an unnecessarily detailed response Mawdudi said again that the allegiance of a Muslim was to God alone, and therefore until Pakistan became an Islamic state ruled by the writ of the shari‘ah, a Muslim was forbidden to declare allegiance to it and, more to the point, to serve in a “non-Muslim,” i.e., the Pakistan, army.^[29] Undermining the army was not a trifling matter. Mawdudi’s attitude was increasingly seen to be deliberately subversive and dangerous. The editor of the pro–Muslim League newspaper, Nawa’-i Waqt, Hamid Nizami, began a series of articles in which Mawdudi was depicted as an Indian agent, a supporter of the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind, and a Congressite.^[30] Muslim League leaders, especially those in the civil service and the armed forces, who were generally less inclined to be religious, successfully argued that the Jama‘at’s menace had clearly outstripped its political utility;^[31] the party was doing more to undermine the state than to support it. This group, led by the senior Muslim Leaguer, Raja Ghazanfar ‘Ali, defense secretary General Iskandar Mirza, and possibly the ranking general and later commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Muhammad Ayub Khan, prevailed upon Liaqat ‘Ali Khan to clamp down on the Jama‘at. In October 1948, the Jama‘at’s publications, Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an,Kawthar,Tasnim, and Chiragh-i Rah were closed down, and Mawdudi, Islahi, Mian Tufayl, and editors of some of the Jama‘at’s newspapers were apprehended.^[32] The minister of the interior declared the Jama‘at to be a seditious party on a par with the Communists and proceeded to extend the civil service code that barred bureaucrats from joining Communist organizations to membership in the Jama‘at.

It then lost no time in strictly enforcing the code to eliminate the Jama‘at’s influence from the civil service.^[33] Twenty-five Jama‘at members and sympathizers were forced to resign from the civil service in October and November 1948.^[34] In December another ordinance was issued by the prime minister, this time forbidding government employees from reading Mawdudi’s works and Jama‘at literature. Between 1949 and 1951, the government further clamped down on the Jama‘at by arresting more of its leaders and by either closing more of its magazines or demanding new forbidding security deposits for allowing them to operate.^[35]

The Jama‘at was stunned by these developments. Mawdudi had never thought of his challenges to the legitimacy of the state as seditious or disloyal; “enjoining the good and forbidding the reprehensible” was after all incumbent on the holy community. He failed to appreciate the gravity with which the government had viewed his religious decrees. His first reaction had been to rejoice in the prominence the confrontation gave to the party.^[36] However, once in the Lyallpur (later Faisalabad) jail, he saw matters differently. He still saw no fault in himself, but decided the matter tested the government’s commitment to democracy. He concluded that the government had moved against the Jama‘at with such force only because Jinnah was no longer a restraining influence on the authority of Muslim League leaders. The Jama‘at now began to appreciate Jinnah for abiding by the promise he had given Qamaru’ddin Khan in Delhi to allow the Jama‘at to work toward Islamizing Pakistan and for his unbending adherence to principles of individual freedom and due process of law. In 1948, Mawdudi praised him for his democratic spirit.^[37] The Jama‘at has since then repeatedly appealed to Jinnah’s memory, more emphatically each time it has been persecuted under the provisions of the Public Safety Act or the Defense of Pakistan Rules. Mawdudi’s experiences gave the Jama‘at’s political thinking an acute awareness of the importance of civil liberties and thenceforth fused its clamor for Islamicity with demands for constitutional rights.

Mawdudi interpreted the government’s actions as a ruse to guarantee the secular nature of the state at a time when the constitutional debates were reaching a climax. The Jama‘at was silenced and Mawdudi was stowed away, relieving the Constituent Assembly of their constant pressure.^[38] The government, by casting the party in an unsavory light, had encouraged its radicalization. Its members, however, balked at the prospect of being a subversive party, a truly revolutionary force. Instead, Mawdudi chose to desist from questioning the legitimacy of the state and to concentrate on ensuring the virtue, efficacy, and Islamicity of its governments. The distinction between Pakistan and the Muslim League was once again emphasized. Opposition to the League was tantamount to questioning the authority of the state, and Mawdudi set out to do all in his power to reverse the impression that that was what he was doing. The demand for an Islamic state was redirected into a demand for an Islamic constitution. This way Islamicity could be combined with the party’s newly found dedication to constitutional rights and the Pakistan state.^[39]

From his prison cell, Mawdudi pushed for the resumption of the campaign for Islamization, but this time with the objective of confirming the Jama‘at’s commitment to the state. The government had failed to silence the Jama‘at, but it had compelled it to do away with its romantic idealism. The Jama‘at now reentered the fray, not as a distant observer—a “rear guard” waiting to benefit from the Muslim League’s failure—but as a participant in the political process. Although it still viewed itself as a holy community, its posture became that of a political party. Unable to interact directly with the government or as yet to mobilize the masses effectively, Mawdudi and the Jama‘at turned to the ulama as a convenient vehicle for realizing their aims.

The ulama at that time did not possess a clear agenda of their own, nor a clear idea of what their objectives in Pakistan were. However, under the leadership of Mawlana Shabbir Ahmad ‘Uthmani, a token convert to the Muslim League from the ranks of the eminent Deobandi ulama, they had a great deal of leverage with the government. Aware of their power, Mawdudi sent two Jama‘at leaders, ‘Abdu’l-Jabbar Ghazi and ‘Abdu’l-Ghaffar Hasan, to contact some of them, and especially ‘Uthmani, with a view to creating a united religious front against the government. The two were themselves members of the ulama, and were also serving as the Jama‘at’s provisional amirs while Mawdudi was in jail. The immediate aim of these contacts was to influence the content of the Objectives Resolution which the prime minister was going to present to the Constituent Assembly as a statement of the government’s intentions with regard to drafting of the constitution, and which was approved in March 1949. Ghazi and Hasan worked diligently to bring the various ulama groups into an alliance and were especially successful in influencing Mawlana ‘Uthmani, who was then a member of the Constituent Assembly and showed an interest in Mawdudi’s ideas, which were relayed to him from prison through Ghazi.

Mawdudi’s efforts from behind bars proved fruitful, and the alliance with ulama augured well for the Jama‘at. The demands he had voiced through ‘Uthmani did appear in the Objectives Resolution, and the ulama would be an effective medium for political action in the campaign for an Islamic constitution.^[40] The alliance also confronted the government with a new dilemma: their efforts to sideline the Jama‘at had instead resulted in a more formidable alliance for the cause of Islam. Breaking up this alliance would became a major concern of the government in the years to come.

The Jama‘at was quick to proclaim victory following the passage of the Objectives Resolution, letting its hand show through ‘Uthmani’s sleeve. Mawdudi’s own reaction was more guarded. For him this was not yet victory; the battle had just begun. The government should not be allowed to think that it had mollified the Islamic parties, nor should the ulama be allowed to relax their vigil. His first public statement on the passage of the resolution was therefore, to everyone’s surprise, far from enthusiastic: “This is a strange rain, before which there were no clouds rising, and after which no growth is visible.”^[41] He ordered the Jama‘at to begin educating the masses on the contents of the Objectives Resolution, lest the government manipulate their ignorance and interpret the resolution into extinction.^[42] The government retaliated by extending Mawdudi’s sentence.

Officially the party did not forego its moment of glory and declared the Objectives Resolution a victory for Islam and for the Jama‘at and a statement of the government’s good intentions. It was a commitment by the government to Islamization. This simultaneously gave the political order a new face and permitted the Jama‘at to accept its legitimacy. Mian Tufayl recollects that the resolution was described by the Jama‘at as a Muslim testimony of faith by an unbeliever, a symbolic but consequential act of conversion.^[43]

The Jama‘at’s stand was also, in part, motivated by the deterioration of the relations between Karachi and Dhaka. Throughout 1949 public opinion in East Pakistan had voiced its opposition to the policy directives from Karachi and the hegemony of the Punjabi and Muhajir elite. East Pakistan was threatening rebellion. The Jama‘at viewed the challenge to the authority of the central government with grave concern, and consequently sided with the state against East Pakistan, which provided the party with a pretext for gaining entry into the political system without compromising doctrine. The Bengali challenge to Pakistan’s federal arrangement may also have softened the state’s resolve to eliminate the Jama‘at, creating a climate that would be conducive to the Jama‘at’s political enfranchisement. With Mawdudi still in prison the Jama‘at’s shura’ declared that the party would participate in the Punjab provincial elections scheduled for March 1951, thereby consolidating the Jama‘at’s new orientation.^[44]

For the Jama‘at, accepting the state’s legitimacy after its promulgation of the Objectives Resolution meant that the task of Islamization would be carried out from within rather than from without, but even more important that it would be carried out. The resolution ensured that Pakistan had to evolve into an Islamic state if the government was compelled to carry through its promise as reflected in the resolution. Hence, in July 1950, the Jama‘at began its campaign in Punjab, using the election to disseminate its ideas, to “Islamize” the campaign, and to influence the composition of the future Punjab Assembly. Meanwhile, aware of the rapidly changing political environment and the need personally to oversee the Jama‘at’s transition to its new political existence, Mawdudi demanded his release. He had been imprisoned in October 1948 under the provisions of the Public Safety Act but had not been officially charged with any crime. Hence, soon after his jail term was extended, Mawdudi wrote to the chief secretary of the Punjab government, arguing that the government should either bring charges against him or release him. He quoted at length from Jinnah’s criticisms of the Public Safety Act before the central assembly of India in 1935 to make his point.^[45] The Jama‘at, meanwhile, organized a letter-writing campaign to the press and the government, lamenting the unconstitutional persecution of Mawdudi for “the crime of loyalty to God” at a time when the government itself had passed the Objective Resolution which placed national sovereignty in God.^[46]

The tactics were effective, but the fate of Mawdudi still rested with the judiciary, which has time and again defied the state to give the Jama‘at a new lease on life. In an earlier ruling, the Lahore High Court had declared that the terms of those jailed under the Public Safety Act could be extended only twice. Mawdudi’s jail term had already been extended on two occasions. Since he could no longer be held under the Public Safety Act, the court ordered his release in May 1950.^[47] Mawdudi was impressed by the independence of the judiciary, which was later reflected in his ideas of how the Islamic state should function.

No sooner had he taken off his prison garb than he launched a fresh campaign for the Islamic state, setting a new tone for the Jama‘at’s bid for power. He reiterated his declaration of prepartition days that the ruling establishment—whom he now referred to derisively as the “innovators” (ahl-i bid‘at)—were incapable of realizing the aims of the Objectives Resolution. Only those firmly rooted in Islamic learning, the followers of tradition (ahl-i sunnat), could be entrusted with realizing the task set before the state.^[48] This distinction had the added advantage of drawing a line between the government and the religious alliance as a whole; for a silent war between the Jama‘at and the government over the loyalty of the ulama was already afoot. As it began to act more like a party, the Jama‘at’s campaign against Liaqat ‘Ali Khan’s administration extended ever farther. The party would no longer challenge the government only over Islam alone, but over a range of issues that it deemed politic. For example, the Jama‘at opposed Liaqat ‘Ali Khan’s plans for a land-reform bill on the grounds that Islam protected the right to private property,^[49] although the Muhajir community which the Jama‘at was also courting at the time favored land reform.^[50] More frequently, however, the government came under fire for its autocracy, an attack that soon found a life of its own.

In October 1950, the Basic Principles Committee of the Constituent Assembly presented its interim report on the distribution of power in the future legislature. The Jama‘at criticized the report for its autocratic bent and unequal distribution of power among the provinces. Mawdudi especially objected to powers the report had vested in the presidency. He depicted the report, uncharitably, as a reiteration of the Government of India Act of 1935, and in violation of the spirit of the Objectives Resolution.^[51] Its government design was thoroughly secular, argued Mawdudi, and had no basis in the Islamic doctrines of governance and statecraft. The government, ever more sensitive to the Jama‘at’s carping, once again closed the party’s publications, Kawthar,Tasnim,Qasid and Jahan-i Naw, and jailed the editors of the first two.^[52]

The committee report had also come under fire from other quarters for its distribution of power between the provinces and the center. It was rejected by Bengalis of all political hues, creating the first serious crack in the edifice of the Pakistan state. The Jama‘at, true to its legitimating role, scurried to the support of the state, reiterating the preeminence of Islam and Urdu in the scheme for a united Muslim state.^[53] Bolstering the position of the state was not, however, tantamount to a vote of confidence for the government. Mawdudi astutely combined his support for the unity of Pakistan with his demand for a truly Islamic constitution, which, he argued, would underscore the two guarantors of the unity of Pakistan: Islam and an equitable distribution of power in a just and constitutional arrangement. The interim report, Mawdudi argued, was deficient on both counts.

The government, unable to withstand criticism from both the Bengalis and the Islamic parties, was compelled to withdraw the interim report, and it challenged the religious divines to present a viable substitute. The Jama‘at responded by initiating negotiations with leading Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam (Society of Ulama of Islam) leaders, Mawlanas Zafar Ahmad Thanwi, Ihtishamu’l-Haq Thanwi (‘Uthmani’s successor), and Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘, to devise a new report that would keep Islamization moving. These contacts eventually culminated in a major gathering of thirty-one ulama in Karachi in January 1951, under the aegis of the eminent divine Sayyid Sulaiman Nadwi, which demanded an Islamic state and proposed twenty-two principles to be submitted to the Constituent Assembly for consideration.^[54] Mawdudi’s imprint on this report was evident in its emphasis on an independent judiciary. The ulama convention, to the government’s chagrin, was yet another display of the alliance between the ulama and the Jama‘at, of which Mawdudi was openly proud. It was perhaps the success of this ulama convention that prompted the government to organize an anti-Jama‘at campaign in Indian religious circles in 1951. Numerous books, pamphlets, and religious decrees denouncing Mawdudi and his ideas were published, all with the hope of driving a wedge between the self-styled religious maverick and the conservative divines. The anti-Jama‘at campaign soon overflowed into Pakistan. It was spearheaded by Mawdudi’s old rivals in the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind, Brailwi ulama in both India and Pakistan, and those among the Indian ulama who had always viewed Mawdudi’s ideas as religiously suspect. It was supported by such prominent ulama as Husain Ahmad Madani and ‘Abdu’l-Majid Daryabadi. The scope of the campaign soon spread to all schools of Islamic thought in Pakistan. It remained focused on religious issues and sought to undermine Mawdudi’s claim to religious leadership. It accused Mawdudi of religious innovation, violating the sanctity of immutable religious doctrines and practices, messianic tendencies, and insulting the memory of the Prophet and his companions. Since much of the attacks were put forth in the form of religious decrees, they greatly damaged the Jama‘at’s popular standing and religious prestige. Moreover, in its own propaganda the government continuously associated the Jama‘at with the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind, hoping to provoke the Jama‘at into a renewed attack on the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind and thereby create trouble between the Jama‘at and the Deobandi establishment in Pakistan.^[55]

After the campaign against the interim report, the Jama‘at’s promotion of Islamization was intertwined with an effort to safeguard the constitutional rights and civil liberties of Pakistanis, which was tantamount to an “Islamic constitutionalist” platform. What began as a tactical consideration to protect the Jama‘at’s rights in a polity dominated by secular forces bent on consolidating power in the executive increasingly became doctrine. Constitutionalism presented the Jama‘at with a useful slogan and a political program with which to appeal to educated people. As politically opportune as this platform may have seemed, however, it was more than a mere ploy. It had its roots in Mawdudi’s experience with the Public Safety Act and the independent spirit of the Pakistani judiciary on the one hand and the desire to placate the secular opposition to Karachi’s policies on the other.

The Jama‘at’s political platform and role as a party were put to the test in the Punjab provincial elections of March 1951. The Jama‘at was not contesting any tickets; instead it took upon itself the role of judging the moral caliber and Islamicity of the candidates. It would assist those candidates whom it found morally upright, religiously committed, and favorably disposed to the intent and aims of the Objectives Resolution. This peculiar approach to elections reflected its continued adherence to the idea that it was still essentially a holy community and its cautious approach to party politics. Although the Jama‘at did not officially endorse any party, it is safe to assume that few, if any, of the candidates supported by Mian Mumtaz Daultana, the “progressive” chief minister of Punjab, were found virtuous (salih), and that many of the candidates put forth by Nawwab of Mamdot’s Jinnah Awami League (Jinnah People’s League) and Husain Shahid Suhrawardi’s Awami League, who had forged an electoral alliance, received the Jama‘at’s blessing and support. Mamdot had courted Mawdudi after he was ousted as chief minister of Punjab by Daultana. Mawdudi was receptive to those advances in part because Liaqat ‘Ali Khan and Daultana had also increased pressure on the Jama‘at. Suhrawardi, then leader of the Awami League, had made overtures to the Jama‘at in 1950 to form a joint front to defend Mamdot against the Liaqat-Daultana axis. Mawdudi’s initial response was favorable, and hence, on January 12, 1951, the Jama‘at participated in the Awami League and Azad Pakistan (Free Pakistan) party conference in Rawalpindi to object to Daultana’s strong-arm tactics in the election campaign. The cooperation between Suhrawardi and the Jama‘at continued until 1952, when Suhrawardi became prime minister.^[56] The Jama‘at began by organizing 1,390 voter councils (panchayat) in thirty-seven electoral districts across Punjab to determine the moral caliber of the various candidates,^[57] and ended up supporting fifty-two candidates in the race for the 192 seats of the Punjab Assembly.

Despite the Jama‘at’s efforts, however, the chosen candidates did not do well in the elections. The eight months and the Rs. 127,000 the party spent on the campaign had yielded only 50,000 signatures supporting its Islamization proposals and 217,859 votes for its chosen candidates out of the estimated total of 4,500,000 votes cast (24 percent of the province’s total population of 18,816,000 at the time).^[58] It had secured the election of only one “virtuous” candidate (see table 7).^[59]

This poor showing was due in part to the campaign having run afoul of Daultana’s ministry, which, along with the government in Karachi, had clamped down on the Jama‘at and greatly diminished its ability to wage an effective campaign. Mawdudi had come under attack by a flurry of religious decrees from the progovernment ulama; the Jama‘at’s newspapers in Punjab, Kawthar,Tasnim, and Qasid, were closed down, and the pro–Muslim League press attacked the Jama‘at and, as was usually was the case, had “exposed” its “anti-Pakistan” background. Government machinations also worked against the Jama‘at sufficiently to compel the disappointed and exhausted party not to participate in the North-West Frontier Province provincial elections scheduled for later that year, for Daultana’s strong-arm tactics would pale before those of the North-West Frontier Province chief minister, ‘Abdu’l-Qayyum Khan, who had always shown a penchant for outdoing the central government when it came to clamping down on religious activists. The Jama‘at initially put forward five candidates in those elections; after the papers of three were rejected, it decided to withdraw from the race.^[60]

7. Results of the 1951 Punjab Provincial Elections

	Seats Won	% of Vote
Source: Radio Pakistan News, quoted in U. S. Consulate General, Lahore, desp. #136, 4/9/1951, 790D.00/4-951, NA.
Muslim League	143	51.1
Jinnah Awami League / Awami League	32	22.7
Independents	16	23.7
Azad Pakistan Party	1	2.0
Islam League	0	0.4
Communists	0	0.1
Total	192[a]	100.0

There were also five special minorities seats, which bring the total size of the assembly to 197.

The balance in relations between the Jama‘at and the government, however, changed significantly in October 1951 when Liaqat ‘Ali Khan was assassinated. The prime minister’s death made Khwaja Nazimu’ddin, the Bengali Muslim League leader and the governor-general at the time, prime minister. He was known to be a pious man, as were a number of men he chose as his ministers: Mawdudi’s personal friend Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali became the minister of finance, and the pro-Jama‘at Ishtiaq Husain Quraishi was appointed minister of state for refugees and overseer of the ministry of information. Meanwhile, the consummate bureaucrat, Ghulam Muhammad, was appointed to the office of governor-general. Known for his secular ways, Ghulam Muhammad’s elevation was of less comfort to the Jama‘at.

Nazimu’ddin’s administration greatly encouraged religious activism because it led various Islamic parties to expect better returns for their activism. Mawdudi took advantage of the situation to formalize the party’s increasingly politicized agenda and to push for fundamental changes in the government apparatus. By 1952 his speeches had become centered on the virtues of democracy seasoned with Islamic precepts.^[61] In January, Mawdudi began to criticize severely the Public Safety Act—under the provisions of which he had been imprisoned—and the Public Representatives Disqualification Act. The latter act had originally been devised to discourage abuse of office among elected representatives by disqualifying those found guilty of corruption or illegal acts. It had, however, been widely used by Muslim Leaguers to control the provincial legislatures and to keep the opposition in line. The Jama‘at’s promotion of civil rights became so open that the American envoy in Lahore included Mawdudi in “the usual array of leftist talent” active in civil rights campaigns in his report to his superiors on the leadership of Pakistan’s Civil Liberties Union.^[62]

In May, in a speech in Karachi, Mawdudi presented his most lucid formulation yet of Islamic constitutionalism, intermeshing Islamization with a demand for a democratic constitution. In the following months this theme was repeated across Pakistan. Expecting a new report from the Basic Principles Committee that would set the agenda for the debates on the constitution, the Jama‘at’s activities on behalf of an Islamic constitution reached a fever pitch. The party celebrated a “constitution week” in November 1952, organizing demonstrations, the largest of them in Karachi, and dedicating an entire issue of the Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an to discussing the details of the Islamic constitution of Mawdudi, all in the hope of preventing the committee report from sidelining the idea.^[63] The committee, having caught a glimpse of the reaction which it could expect from the report, postponed its presentation, arguing that there was need for further consultation. It was not presented until December 22, 1952.

The final draft of the committee’s report made several concessions to the Islamic parties, which were duly acknowledged by Mawdudi, who attributed them to the efficacy of the Jama‘at’s organizational activity. Having smelled victory and sensed weakness in the government, Mawdudi now raised the stakes. He demanded that Pakistan be called the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” that the shari‘ah be made the supreme law in the land, and that ulama boards be set up to oversee the passage of laws in the country.^[64] In addition, he called for the further streamlining of electoral procedures, to be supervised by the supreme court of Pakistan, which would limit the government’s ability to manipulate future elections to the Jama‘at’s disadvantage. Finally, he demanded that Pakistan follow a nonaligned foreign policy—that is, maintain a greater distance from the West—which was then becoming an article of faith among Islamic groups across the Muslim world. His incessant demands backed by his Islamic constitutional platform and the increasingly rambunctious party activism on the streets were closely monitored by the government, especially the bureaucracy and the army, which determined their decisions regarding the fate of the Jama‘at after the government and Islamic parties became locked in combat yet again in 1953–1954.

The Jama‘at’s activism in the 1948–1953 period anchored the constitutional debate in Islam and introduced Islamic concepts to the national political discourse. The Jama‘at’s propaganda and maneuvering and Mawdudi’s untiring campaign for Islamization foiled the attempts both of Muslim Leaguers such as Raja Ghazanfar ‘Ali to extricate Islam from politics and of the government to manipulate Islam for its own ends. The Jama‘at mobilized the ulama and the masses, set the terms of the debate, and defined the role of Islam in the state. Throughout this period, the party supported the unity of Pakistan by underlining the primacy of Islam and Urdu in the national culture. At the same time, it was at odds with the government over virtually every issue, from war in Kashmir to the refugee problem to any center-province standoff, and the constitution. Conflict continued in relations between the two, even as the inseparable entanglement of Islam and Pakistan continued to keep the Jama‘at and the government in an uneasy symbiosis.

The Jama‘at itself also underwent change during this period. Opposition to the state was supplanted by maneuverings within the state system, and the party’s ideological proclamations and idealistic approach to politics gave way to an Islamic constitutionalist platform. Yet the Jama‘at’s political enfranchisement, as significant as it was in institutionalizing its ideological zeal, did not resolve the discord between the party and the government in Lahore and Karachi. Nor did it ease the tensions within the party between those who viewed it as a holy community and those who saw it as a political party. Although the Jama‘at made giant strides in transforming itself into a full-fledged party, just as it did in the 1940–1947 period, its use of Islam to gain political advantage deepened its commitment to the holy community.

The Anti-Ahmadi Controversy, 1952–1954

The status of minorities in Pakistan had long been of major concern to a number of the Islamic parties and to the ulama. Mawdudi, however, had never given much attention to what their place should be, believing that the question would be automatically resolved within the overall framework of an Islamic constitution. The other Islamic parties did not agree, particularly when it came to the Ahmadis, a sect which had emerged at the turn of the century in Punjab. The Ahmadis follow the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d. 1908), who claimed he had experienced divine revelation. The orthodox believe that the Ahmadis, also known as Qadiyanis or Mirza’is, stand outside the boundaries of Islam despite the Ahmadis’ insistence that they are Muslims. For Ghulam Ahmad’s claims are incompatible with the Muslim belief that Prophet Muhammad was the last of the prophets. The opposition of the ulama to the Ahmadis predated the partition, and the Deobandis had campaigned against them as early as the 1920s. Mawlana ‘Uthmani had written a book in refutation of the claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 1924.

The Ahmadi issue had been the favorite of the Majlis-i Ahrar-i Islam (Society of Free Muslims), a populist Islamic party created in 1930 that grew out of the Khilafat movement and that was best known for the impassioned style of its speakers. The Ahrar had vacillated between supporting the Congress and the Muslim League before partition and did not declare its allegiance to Pakistan until 1949. The one constant throughout its existence, aside from its socialism, had been its vehement opposition to the Ahmadis. The Ahrar had first expressed this opposition in 1934, when Shah ‘Ata’u’llah Bukhari, the party’s leader, had demanded the official exclusion of the Ahmadis from Islam and the dismissal of Sir Zafaru’llah Khan—the Ahmadi Muslim League leader and later Pakistan’s foreign minister—from the viceroy’s council.^[65] Following partition, the erstwhile pro-Congress Ahrar moved to Pakistan, and after losing a significant portion of its membership between 1947 and 1950, its new leader, Taju’ddin Ansari, joined hands with Daultana’s faction of the Muslim League in Punjab.

With the passage of the Objectives Resolution, the Ahrar decided to utilize the state’s professed loyalty to Islam to elicit a ruling on the Ahmadis. Throughout 1949 it incited passions in Punjab against them (they had meanwhile established their Pakistan headquarters in Rabwah, not far from Lahore). The Ahrar were once again demanding the ouster of Zafaru’llah Khan, this time from the cabinet, and to weaken his position went so far as to argue that two of the defendants in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case were Ahmadis.^[66] The anti-Ahmadi campaign soon found support among the ulama, and served as the foundation for a religious alliance comparable to the one forged earlier between the Jama‘at and the ulama.

The Ahrar found an unexpected ally in the putatively “progressive” chief minister of the Punjab, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, who had found the obstreperous Islamic party and the emerging anti-Ahmadi alliance a useful counterbalance to Mamdot and the Jama‘at in the election campaign. Mamdot had defected from the Muslim League earlier in that year and had formed the Jinnah Awami League. The resignation of the former chief minister had greatly damaged the Muslim League’s standing in Punjab, all the more so as Mamdot’s electoral strategy—forming alliances with the Awami League and the Jama‘at—was threatening Daultana’s position. Mamdot had been particularly effective in depicting Daultana and his allies in Karachi as “un-Islamic.”^[67] The struggling Muslim League, also aware of challenges by the Jama‘at on its right and Mian Iftikharu’ddin’s Azad Pakistan party on its left could hardly withstand charges of secularism. Daultana therefore decided to mobilize the Ahrar to shore up the religious legitimacy of his ministry.

The Punjab elections became a platform for the Ahrar’s anti-Ahmadi propaganda. Daultana, bogged down in the election campaign and eager to build a base of support among the religious electorate, turned a blind eye to these activities. Nor did he show any signs of discomfort with the Ahrar following his victory in the elections. The continued pressures exerted on the Muslim League by Mamdot, Suhrawardi, Mawdudi, and Mian Iftikharu’ddin made the Ahrar an indispensable asset. Further emboldened by Daultana’s sweep of Punjab, the Ahrar set out to turn the Ahmadi issue into a national debate.

The dire economic conditions in Punjab at the time—a rise in food prices and famine precipitated by the landowners—meanwhile provided fertile ground for the Ahrar’s agitations.^[68] The Islam League (formerly Tahrik-i Khaksar) had already done much to translate popular discontent into an Islamic movement. Throughout the summer of 1952, when food prices and the grain shortage reached their peak, Mawlana Mashriqi organized numerous anti-Muslim League demonstrations, demanding the amelioration of suffering and a greater Islamization of government. The economic situation in Punjab no doubt made local politics susceptible to religious activism. As social unrest spread, demonstrations led by religious activists in general and the Islam League in particular turned into riots. The Islam League’s penchant for violence convinced the government of the dangers of allowing the continued sacralization of politics and eventually led to Mashriqi’s arrest.

The Jama‘at had also tried to take advantage of popular discontent. It organized the February 24, 1952, demonstration at Machi Gate of Lahore to protest the hike in the price of wheat flour, a protest that soon turned into a riot, which was forcibly quelled by the police. Although the Islam League and the Communists were implicated by the authorities as the main culprits, the role of the Jama‘at in the whole affair did not go unnoticed.^[69] It was, however, the Ahrar, with its socialist leanings, that assumed the role of the Islam League after Mashriqi was arrested. The Ahrar continued to articulate economic grievances in Islamic terms, but with a new twist; it tied the demand for economic justice to the Islamicity of the state by questioning the status of the Ahmadis. Every harangue against government policy and demand for greater Islamicity were accompanied by complaints about the discrepancy between the wealth of the Ahmadi community and the poverty of the struggling Muslim masses: in the homeland of Muslims, it was the Ahmadis who reaped the benefits and the Muslims who suffered hunger and hardship. This strategy was by and large successful, though it was the Ahmadis themselves who set off the final conflict. Zafaru’llah Khan played directly into the Ahrar’s hands. On May 17, 1952, the foreign minister turned down Prime Minister Nazimu’ddin’s pleas of caution and addressed a public Ahmadi session in Karachi. By openly admitting his religion, Zafaru’llah Khan gave credence to the charge made by the Ahrar that the government was “controlled” by the Ahmadis. For the other Islamic groups and the ulama, who viewed the Ahmadis with opprobrium, the very presence of an Ahmadi minister in the cabinet was proof of the un-Islamicity of the state. The Ahrar and the ulama, infuriated by the foreign minister’s action, organized a protest march; the marchers clashed with the Ahmadis, and there was a riot.

On May 18, Sayyid Sulaiman Nadwi, Pakistan’s new spiritual leader, convened an ulama board to formulate an official policy. Shaikh Sultan Ahmad represented the Jama‘at on the board. The board demanded that the Ahmadis be declared a non-Muslim minority, that Zafaru’llah Khan be removed from his cabinet post, and that all key government jobs be cleansed of Ahmadis. The board also elected a majlis-i ‘amal (council of action) to implement its recommendations. Amin Ahsan Islahi became the vice-president of this majlis, and Malik Nasru’llah Khan ‘Aziz one of its members.

The Jama‘at’s shura’ considered the unfolding events: a number of the Jama‘at leaders, including Sultan Ahmad, Islahi, and Nasru’llah Khan ‘Aziz, favored the party’s wholehearted participation in the agitations as a policy natural for the holy community to support; Mawdudi, who was keen on formalizing the Jama‘at’s political role, was reluctant to approve. He argued that the Ahmadi issue would be resolved automatically once the country was Islamized and that in the meantime riots would only tarnish the image of the Islamic groups, lessen the appeal of an Islamic constitution, and, by playing into the hands of the opponents of Islamization, was bound to derail the whole campaign for an Islamic state. The holy community’s choice of policy could not be premised on religious considerations alone; it had to be examined in light of the party’s political aims. Mawdudi was, moreover, not keen on alliance with the Ahrar built around the Ahmadi issue or any other cause. He never subscribed to the kind of impassioned denunciations which characterized the ulama or the Ahrar’s encounters with them. Mawdudi had always believed that proper Islamization would “reconvert” the Ahmadis to Islam, and the Islamic state would find a political solution to their place in society.^[70] However, even among the Jama‘at’s members there was support for the riots. It was clear that they could open up contacts with the Punjabi masses, whose politics had thus far been dominated by landowners and pirs. Until then the Muhajirs had served as the Islamic parties’ main constituency; now the Islam League, Ahrar, and the anti-Ahmadi riots had opened Punjabi politics to the Islamic groups. Given its political objectives, the Jama‘at could not ignore the opportunity. The desire to sustain the momentum for an Islamic constitution had to be balanced against the opportunities the agitations presented.

The shura’, therefore, would not give its wholehearted endorsement to the majlis-i ‘amal, then dominated by the Ahrar; but in recognition of the preeminence of the Ahmadi issue, it incorporated the demands of the majlis-i ‘amal into its own constitutional proposals. The August 1952 issue of the Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an carried a lengthy denunciation of the Ahmadis written by Mawdudi, and promised to include the demand for their exclusion from Islam into the Jama‘at’s proposals for an Islamic constitution. The Jama‘at members who sat on the majlis-i ‘amal, in keeping with Mawdudi’s views, sought to temper the Ahrar’s violence, but when they failed, the Jama‘at officially dissociated itself from the majlis-i ‘amal on February 26, 1953.^[71]

Between July 1952 and January 1953, Mawdudi had lobbied the ulama against the agitations, hoping instead to keep their attention on the Islamic constitution and to preserve the alliance which had produced the Objectives Resolution, repeating the argument that the Islamic constitution would provide a solution to the Ahmadi issue along with a host of other problems. Mawdudi was increasingly worried about what effect the riots were having on the government of Nazimu’ddin, which the Jama‘at regarded as an asset, and about the distraction they presented from the constitutional cause. In June 1952, when the Ahrar were busy with their campaign against the Ahmadis, the Jama‘at launched a nationwide drive to collect signatures in support of the Islamic constitution. In July, as the agitations grew worse, the Jama‘at demanded that the government reveal the contents of the Basic Principles Committee report before the assembly convened in order to ascertain its Islamicity. There followed a joint declaration of the Jama‘at and other ulama parties to hold a “Constitution Day” in Karachi on December 19, 1952, which the American envoy called “the only effort in Karachi on behalf of the constitution.”^[72] Finally, in January 1953, when the Ahrar were engaged in fine-tuning their anti-Ahmadi campaign, the Jama‘at joined the Jinnah Awami League, the Awami League, and the Azad Pakistan party in opposing the Muslim League by objecting to the committee’s report.^[73] The Jama‘at, however, failed to redirect national attention away from the Ahmadi issue. The majlis-i ‘amal, dominated by the Ahrar, and nudged along by Daultana and the Punjab Muslim League,^[74] proved a more decisive force in determining the position of the ulama than Mawdudi’s cautions.

In July 1952 the Punjab government imposed Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code restricting public gatherings. On July 19 the Ahrar organized a large demonstration in Multan which culminated in clashes with the police and the deaths of six people. Fearful of further escalation, Daultana sought to reign the Ahrar in, though his approach remained conciliatory. On July 21, after securing from the Ahrar a promise to help restore order, the Punjab government lifted the Section 144 restrictions and the ban on the Ahrar’s paper, Azad. A week later, in a gesture of conciliation, upon the insistence of Daultana^[75] “the council of Punjab Muslim League…adopted a resolution by a vote of 264 against eight in support of the anti-Ahmediya agitation.”^[76] Given the Punjab government’s response, the Ahrar found more reason to push for a showdown. On July 27, despite the Muslim League’s endorsement of the Ahrar’s position, it demonstrated against the League in Punjab and assaulted its councilmen.^[77] Daultana ordered the arrest of some 137 people and put Punjab under heavy police protection.^[78] The breakdown in the constitutional effort, which Mawdudi had feared, soon followed.

After a brief lull in January 1953, the Ahrar resumed its campaign in full force, and by arguing that the Muslim League resolution was not definitive enough again mobilized the ulama. Sacrificing their greater interests in the Islamization of Pakistan, the ulama, including the Jama‘at leader, Sultan Ahmad, gave Nazimu’ddin an ultimatum: either sack Zafaru’llah Khan and declare the Ahmadis a non-Muslim minority within a month or face “direct action”—a euphemism for widescale riots.^[79]

Nazimu’ddin had initially tried to win over the agitators by expressing sympathy for the anti-Ahmadi cause. But he had refused to ask for Zafaru’llah Khan’s resignation, because in his view such a move would have upset the United States—which regarded Zafaru’llah Khan as an ally—and jeopardized the grain aid, which, given the gravity of food shortages in Punjab, was a risk he could not take.^[80] On August 14 he issued a decree which forbade those holding public office from proselytizing, an open reference to the Ahmadis and Zafaru’llah Khan, but this too failed to subdue the agitations, and he soon came under pressure to take a tougher stand. At this point he changed his strategy completely. He initiated a virulent attack against the ulama in the press that, given his reputation for piety, was a bolt out of the blue for the majlis-i ‘amal and a cause for remorse for Mawdudi. When his trip to Lahore on February 16 was marked by strikes and black-flag demonstrations and the agitators threatened to carry their protest to Karachi on the occasion of Zafaru’llah Khan’s return from abroad, the government reacted swiftly; on February 27 it ordered a number of ulama and Ahrar leaders to be rounded up and placed in protective custody.

Mawdudi was no longer able to remain aloof. The constitutional debates were set aside. The government and the Islamic parties were now clearly on opposite sides, and the loyalties of the Jama‘at naturally lay with the latter. The Ahrar’s meteoric rise to prominence and the direction public opinion was taking led the Jama‘at to reassess its own approach to the crisis. Mawdudi and Sultan Ahmad participated in an all-Muslim parties convention in January 1953, where they approved the declaration of the session which demanded the resignation of Nazimu’ddin.^[81] Mawdudi then joined the majlis-i ‘amal, but quickly withdrew.^[82] Mawdudi and the Jama‘at became entangled in the agitations, which between February and March spread throughout Punjab. On March 5, 1953, Mawdudi published the most systematic denunciation of the Ahmadis since the beginning of the crisis: Qadiyani Mas’alah (The Ahmadi Problem). It was designed to establish his primacy in the religious circles, to confirm his religious credentials before the ulama who had chastised him for not supporting the agitations, and to upstage the Ahrar. In doing so, the book placed Mawdudi squarely at the center of the controversy.^[83] True to form, Mawdudi, who was opposed to the agitations, now became their leading figure.

The federal cabinet, although disturbed by Daultana’s machinations, continued to vacillate. General Iskandar Mirza—the doyen of the bureaucracy and the defense secretary—was, however, sufficiently alarmed by the rising tide of agitations in Punjab, and especially by the Punjab government’s decision to endorse openly the demands of the agitators to act. On March 6, the Punjab government, in its capacity as the representative of the people of Punjab, dispatched a provincial minister to Karachi to put before the central government the demands of the agitators and push for the dismissal of Zafaru’llah Khan.^[84] Viewing Nazimu’ddin’s indecision and Daultana’s “flirtations with the mullahs as yet another example of the ineptitude and destructive potential of the politicians,” on March 6 General Mirza ordered General A‘zam Khan to place Punjab under martial law.^[85] Soon thereafter Daultana resigned, and Mawdudi, along with Mawlana ‘Abdu’ssattar Niyazi (the minister for religious affairs from 1990 to 1993) and a number of Ahrar leaders, was arrested.

Mawdudi was charged with violating martial-law regulations and “promoting feelings of enmity and hatred between different groups in Pakistan” by publishing the Qadiyani Mas’alah, as well as inflammatory articles in Tasnim.^[86] Some twelve Jama‘at leaders, including Islahi and Mian Tufayl, and twenty-eight workers, including the publisher of the Qadiyani Mas’alah, were also held on these charges; and Jama‘at’s newspapers, Kawthar and Tasnim, were closed down.^[87] The Jama‘at’s headquarters were raided, and its papers and funds were confiscated. Mawdudi, the editor of Tasnim, and the publisher of Qadiyani Mas’alah, would be tried on charges of sedition in May.

The anti-Ahmadi agitations, as Mawdudi had feared, proved to be the undoing of Nazimu’ddin, and a major setback for the Islamic constitution. With martial law in place in Punjab, and a climate of uncertainty and crisis reigning in the country, the governor-general, Ghulam Muhammad, found ample room for maneuvering and summarily dismissed Nazimu’ddin on April 17, 1953. In this he was backed by leaders such as General Mirza who had already taken issue with Nazimu’ddin’s “flirtations with the mullahs” and placed the entire responsibility for the crisis in Punjab on his shoulders.^[88]

The pious Nazimu’ddin was replaced by the more secular Muhammad ‘Ali Bugra. The change was immediately reflected in the constitutional debates. The Constituent Assembly played down the Islamic provisions of the Basic Principles Committee report, and the interim constitutional proposals of June 1953 did not even mention the hitherto agreed-upon provisions regarding the place of Islam in the constitution.^[89] A special court of inquiry was set up under the supervision of Muhammad Munir, the chief justice of the supreme court of Pakistan, to look into the roots of the agitation in Punjab and to roll back the gains made by Islamic groups. The power of religious activists was effectively reduced by the adroit Justice Munir, who depicted them as incompetent judges of how to run a modern state. The inability of the ulama and the lay religious activists to produce a unanimous response to such axiomatic queries as “the meaning of a Muslim” led to the conclusion that no such definition of Islam, let alone of an Islamic constitution, existed and that the religious experts were best advised to leave the constitution-making process alone and concentrate on putting their own house in order.

Munir’s incisive inquiry, known popularly as the “Munir Report,” was later singled out as the most celebrated “modernist” expression of backlash against Islamic activism and an indictment of religious activism, an act of bravado allowed by the change in the balance between the government and the Islamic parties. Munir’s inquiry continues to cast its shadow over the activities of the sundry Islamic parties in Pakistan to this day.

By blaming Pakistan’s developmental crisis on the “perfidious” meddling of the Islamic parties in politics, the Munir Report turned the central question before the Pakistan state on its head. Islam was depicted as an unwelcome intruder into the political arena and an impediment to national development. What the Munir Report failed to realize was that, as deficient as the program of the Islamic groups may have been, in the absence of representative institutions, national elections, national parties with a strong organizational apparatus and a meaningful political platform, and shared national values Islam was all Pakistanis had in the way of a cohesive force, and that was the very reason why politicians had continued to appeal to it. In a society with arrested political development and state formation and deeply divided along ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian lines, Islam had become the intermediary between state and society, the more so as the former had faltered and the latter grown unruly. Islam could not be selectively appealed to and then successfully manipulated. Forays into the domain of the ulama and the Islamic groups by politicians and the resultant sacralization of the political discourse could generate uncontrollable and undesirable outcomes. Costs and responsibilities had to be shouldered by Jinnah, Liaqat ‘Ali Khan, Nazimu’ddin, and Daultana, to name only a few of Pakistan’s political leaders of the time, as well as by those whom the Munir Report sought to implicate.^[90] By inviting Islam into the political arena, it was the politicians, and not the Islamic activists, who confirmed the centrality of Islam to the national political discourse.

The same motives that governed the politicians’ appealing to Islam now conditioned the role of Islam in the politics of the masses. Just as the politicians had opened the door to political activism by the Islamic parties, so had the masses. With no national elections in which to express their demands, nor any national parties to represent their interests rather than those of the elite, the masses, whose commitment to Islamization until that point was by no means certain, turned to Islamic slogans and Islamic parties to express their political demands and vent their frustrations. But as the Punjab crisis indicated, neither the ruling elite nor the masses were capable of controlling the flow of Islam into politics or the sacralization of the national political discourse. Munir had really focused on the symptoms rather than the causes of that sacralization. The lesson of the Punjab crisis might have eluded Munir but not the military and bureaucratic elite. From it they concluded that secularism was the handmaiden of political stability, and, moreover, only an apolitical polity could help bring about a secular society.

Politicians and Islamic activists alike agreed that what happened in Punjab was a testament to the emotive power of Islamic symbols. The ulama and Mawdudi may be ridiculed, but in the absence of nationally shared values or a viable state ideology they were bound to rise again. The Munir Report was the last attempt to extricate Islam from Pakistan’s politics; neither Munir nor Ghulam Muhammad, nor in later years, Ayub Khan, however, could find a substitute for its role. Islam held the state together. Whenever Pakistan fell into crisis in the years to follow, politicians and people alike appealed to Islam’s symbols and loyalties to construct political programs and social movements, thereby expanding the wedge through which Islamic groups entered the political arena. As Justice Munir was busy systematically rolling back the gains made by the Islamic parties, Nuru’l-Amin, the chief minister of East Pakistan, told Prime Minister Bugra that “Islam was the League’s one hope of warding off defeat in east Bengal”^[91] and keeping the wayward province under Karachi’s control. He then assured the public that the Muslim League was determined “to give the country a full-fledged Islamic Constitution within six months.”^[92]

Changes in the political climate in 1953 also proved to be a problem in the Jama‘at’s legal battles. In May the military tribunal convened to determine the fate of those arrested in Punjab. After a brief trial, on May 8 the tribunal found Mawlana ‘Abdu’ssattar Niyazi and on May 11, Mawdudi, guilty of sedition; both were sentenced to death. Many among Pakistan’s leaders were convinced that India was behind the Punjab disturbances, which made Mawdudi and Niyazi guilty not only of sedition but also of treason.^[93] This, however, does not explain why the harshest sentences were reserved for only these two religious leaders. The tribunal also sentenced the publishers of Tasnim and Qadiyani Mas’alah to three and nine years in jail, respectively. The sentences were unexpectedly harsh, and in the case of Mawdudi was thought by many to be incommensurate to his role in the entire affair, which was limited to having published the Qadiyani Mas’alah, and even that book had been published the day before martial law was declared. In effect, Mawdudi had been arrested for violating a martial law ordinance that had not yet existed when the book was published. Mawdudi’s writings were hardly as inflammatory as those of the Ahrar leaders, none of whom received as severe a punishment. Even more perplexing, the most active of the Jama‘at’s leaders, Sultan Ahmad, had not even been arrested, and Mawdudi had received the same sentence as Niyazi, whose incendiary speeches had directly incited violence and on one occasion had led to the murder of a policeman outside of the mosque where Niyazi was preaching. The American consul-general in Lahore reported that the chief of the intelligence directorate of Punjab told him that “there is no evidence "as yet’ that Jamaat-i-Islami as a party was involved in the riots. He stated the arrests had been made of individuals against whom there was some evidence of participation in the riots…. He was sure a good case would be made” (emphasis in the original).^[94]

The government was fully aware that the public regarded its case against Mawdudi to be weak. It had been hard-pressed even to explain his arrest. Four days before Mawdudi’s sentencing, Justice Munir told the consul that “he [had] already been getting many informal petitions and letters challenging the legal validity of actions taken under Martial Law and especially of cases tried under Courts Martial which in many cases meted out severe sentences.”^[95] If the army, Justice Munir, or the secularist elite had thought they could cleanse the politics of Islamic parties this way, they were wrong. Nazimu’ddin criticized the sentence, and even offered to sign a petition for mercy for Mawdudi.^[96] Prime Minister Bugra, too, was surprised with the sentence and remarked that Mawdudi could appeal, and should he do so would get a most sympathetic hearing.^[97] Martial law and the persecution of religious groups proved to be highly unpopular enterprises, which only made heroes of the accused.^[98] On May 13, Mawdudi’s sentence was reduced to fourteen years.

The Jama‘at, however, was not assuaged and continued to clamor for justice. On May 21 four Jama‘at leaders were arrested for protesting Mawdudi’s fourteen-year sentence, but they continued their campaign for his release and complained of government vindictiveness and strong-arm tactics toward their party. On June 18, 1954, for instance, Sultan Ahmad, the provisional amir of the Jama‘at, declared that Mawdudi’s arrest and sentence had nothing to do with the anti-Ahmadi agitations, and everything to do with his constitutional proposals.^[99] Echoing a general sentiment among the Islamic parties, Sultan Ahmad stated that the government’s reaction to the agitations was merely a pretext for eliminating stumbling blocks to the passage of a secular constitution.^[100] Justice Munir’s probing into the politics of Islamic activists under the pretext of determining the causes of the Punjab agitations had only added to their suspicions. Many religious leaders, including those in the Jama‘at, charged that the court of inquiry was better advised to look for the cause of agitation in economic injustice and the political maneuverings of Daultana.

Some in the military and the bureaucracy saw the Punjab agitations and the five-year campaign for an Islamic constitution as interrelated, and therefore believed that Mawdudi’s crime extended beyond his role in the Punjab agitations. Zafaru’llah Khan and Iskandar Mirza claimed that Mawdudi was “one of the most dangerous men in Pakistan,”^[101] guilty of generating a national crisis. Munir himself believed that the Jama‘at had as “its objective the replacement of the present form of Government by a Government of the Jamaat’s conception,”^[102] a point that was hardly new since the Jama‘at had openly advocated the establishment of a government to its liking since setting foot in Pakistan. But now the Jama‘at’s campaign for Islamization was depicted as a seditious undertaking whose result was the Punjab crisis. It followed that there existed no difference between Mawdudi’s apparently academic activities and Niyazi’s manipulation of the mob.

Mawdudi himself remained unapologetic. While he may have received assurances regarding the outcome of his case from Muslim League leaders,^[103] he forbade his followers from seeking clemency on his behalf. They did, however, stage a number of strikes and street demonstrations decrying the “injustice.” To the government’s dismay, Mawdudi was gradually becoming a hero.

Reacting to pressures from within, reluctant to carry out the sentences against Mawdudi and Niyazi,^[104] and dismayed by the Jama‘at’s success in arguing its case before the public, the government grew conciliatory. Mian Muhammad Sharif, a judge of the supreme court, was appointed by the government to review the tribunal’s judgment. Sharif recommended that the martial law administration commute the sentences. By the end of 1953 most of the Jama‘at’s workers had been freed, and in March 1954 Islahi was released. Mawdudi, however, was to be kept away for as long as the government could manage. The court, however, once again proved to be a boon for the Jama‘at. Following the ruling of the federal court on a petition of habeas corpus for two defendants in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case, Mawdudi and Niyazi filed a habeas corpus petition before the Lahore High Court in April. However, before the court could render a verdict, the government remitted Mawdudi and Niyazi’s sentences. After two years in prison, Mawdudi was released on April 29, 1955. Already a hero, he quickly became the spokesman for a religious alliance whose zeal he was determined to rekindle.^[105]

The Constitution of 1956

The Jama‘at’s experience with martial law in Punjab and its dismay at the ouster of Nazimu’ddin had only increased the party’s dedication to the preservation and promotion of civil liberties. In July 1953 the Jama‘at celebrated “Islamic Constitution Day.” In November of the same year it ordered its workers to join various civil liberties unions across Pakistan, and it contemplated forming a central civil liberties association.^[106] The Jama‘at’s Islamic constitution and its civil rights cause were given a boost when the secularist governor-general Ghulam Muhammad, in an attempt to resolve the political stalemate in Karachi, summarily dismissed the Constituent Assembly on October 24, 1954. With no constitution in place, the governor-general was theoretically responsible only to the British Crown. Although Mawdudi was then still in prison and conceivably at the mercy of Ghulam Muhammad’s good will, the party quickly organized demonstrations against the governor-general’s decision and in support of the petition challenging the dismissal filed before the Sind High Court by the speaker of the dismissed assembly, Maulvi Tamizu’ddin, on November 7, 1954.^[107] The Sind High Court ruled against the governor-general’s action. Ghulam Muhammad appealed the ruling before the Supreme Court, where Justice Munir reversed the Sind High Court.

The case presented not only a suitable cause célèbre around which to organize and to reinvigorate the languishing religious alliance, but an occasion to challenge both Ghulam Muhammad and Justice Munir. The dismissal of the assembly had also removed the only institutional avenue open to the religious alliance for influencing the constitutional process, which now lay fully in the hands of secularist leaders. The restoration of the assembly was, therefore, a matter of life and death for the Islamic constitution, and yet another proof that the fate of Islam was enmeshed with that of democracy in Pakistan. Under political pressure the government restored the assembly in May 1955. In August both Ghulam Muhammad and Bugra left office, to be replaced by General Iskandar Mirza and Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali, respectively. Given the resumption of constitutional debates, the Jama‘at redoubled its efforts on behalf of the Islamic constitution, though rather less zealously. It did not, for instance, put forth candidates to contest the elections to the Constituent Assembly of June 21, 1955. In light of the Munir Report’s debilitating criticisms and the government’s dismissal of the Constituent Assembly, the party now felt that it should avoid issues of substance and concentrate on obtaining any constitution at all. The pious Muslim Leaguer and civil servant Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali, whom Mawdudi had known since the 1930s, meanwhile received Mawdudi’s endorsement for the renewed constitution-making process after he relaxed government pressure on the Jama‘at and protected Mawdudi from further harassment. For instance, Muhammad ‘Ali personally intervened on Mawdudi’s behalf when the government had decided to prosecute him once again for his role in the anti-Ahmadi crisis by using a legal technicality.^[108] Pressure was brought to bear on the government to arrest Mawdudi and other martial law prisoners. The charges against Mawdudi and his codefendants were officially dropped eight days later.^[109]

The government took steps to bring the Jama‘at into the constitution-making process by pushing for greater Islamization.^[110] Thirty-four members of the Constituent Assembly signed a declaration at the Jama‘at’s behest in May 1955, pledging to retain in the new constitutional draft the Islamic and democratic provisions adopted by the old constituent assembly. Meanwhile, Sardar ‘Abdu’rrabb Nishtar, president of the Muslim League, and Mahmud Husain, minister of education, pressed to include in the Basic Principles Committee report a recommendation to establish an ulama board to advise the legislature.^[111]

On February 29, 1956, the Constituent Assembly formally ratified the draft constitution proposed by Muhammad ‘Ali. It was approved by the governor-general on March 2 and took effect on March 23. The constitution recognized some token demands of the Islamic parties—naming the state the “Islamic Republic” of Pakistan and subjecting all legislative undertakings to the veto of the “repugnancy clause.” This clause (number 205), argued that no laws could be passed that were repugnant to the teachings of the Qur’an and the hadith and that all laws passed to date could be examined in light of the religious authorities and, if need be, repealed. But none of the concessions were substantive ones. The recommendations made by the Board of Ta‘limat-i Islamiyah (Board of Islamic Teachings), the Objectives Resolution, and the reports of the Basic Principles Committee found no place in the constitution. Islam was not declared the official religion of Pakistan, nor was it stipulated that the speaker of the National Assembly, who could become president under special circumstances, must be a Muslim. Furthermore, the constitution of 1956 closely paralleled the India Act of 1935 and, hence, despite its prima facie adherence to the Westminster model, gave broad powers to the president to which the Jama‘at was opposed. The constitution had retained all those features of the earlier interim committee reports which Mawdudi had most vehemently denounced as authoritarian.

Mawdudi and the Jama‘at, however, quickly accepted the constitution as an “Islamic” constitution. The only serious criticism lodged by Mawdudi was to the “preventive detention” clause of the constitution, which given his recent experiences with the heavy-handed policies of the government, was derided as outright authoritarian.^[112] This decision was doctrinally suspect but politically prudent. Mawdudi no doubt wanted to support Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali and to make the best of a bad situation. Bengali discontent with Karachi’s political intrigues had increased markedly after 1954, when the Muslim League had been routed in East Pakistan’s provincial elections. Pakistan, Mawdudi decided, needed a working constitution, and debating over what it should be could only further divide the country. The political maneuverings of General Mirza, who was no less a threat to the Jama‘at’s interests than Ghulam Muhammad, added to the party’s anxiety. Since October 1954, when Ghulam Muhammad had dismissed the Constituent Assembly and forced Prime Minister Bugra to admit generals Mirza and Ayub Khan into the cabinet, the military had taken a more direct role in managing the affairs of the country. A prolonged constitutional deadlock could only have benefited General Mirza and his allies in the bureaucracy and the armed forces, who were impatient with Pakistani politics and were predisposed to dispense with the entire process. Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali, who generally sought to minimize resistance to the constitution, had no doubt been instrumental in helping Mawdudi come to these conclusions.^[113] So had the ransacking by the police of the party’s offices eleven days earlier and its promise to continue such harassment.^[114]

In addition, unless quickly promulgated, Muhammad ‘Ali’s constitutional draft was likely to be challenged by more secular versions. In 1955 the law minister, Isma‘il Ibrahim Chundrigar, had drafted a constitution with the help of Britain’s parliamentary counsel, Sir John Rowlatt.^[115] The “Chundrigar constitution,” as it was dubbed by a British diplomat, did not envision Pakistan as an “Islamic” Republic, and provided for no parliamentary body to determine whether or not legislation was repugnant to Islam. It referred to Islam only twice—when it stipulated the religion required of the president and when it suggested that oaths should be taken in the name of Allah.^[116] Chundrigar viewed Islamic legislation as a restriction on the sovereignty of the parliament and wished to do away with it. It is clear that the law minister’s initiative would have been particularly damaging to the Jama‘at’s cause. The party agreed to forego the hope of a constitution to its liking and to accept Muhammad ‘Ali’s formulation.

Soon thereafter, Muhammad ‘Ali’s power began to wane. Mawdudi’s efforts to mobilize support failed, and the architect of Pakistan’s first constitution was removed from office on September 12, 1956. He was replaced by the veteran Bengali politician Husain Shahid Suhrawardi, whose mix of Bengali nationalism and populism did not sit well with West Pakistan’s landed and bureaucratic elite. The Jama‘at did not approve of his secular outlook and populist inclinations. Once Suhrawardi, an ally of Mamdot, had taken over the Jinnah Awami League and secured a base in Punjab, he had moved steadily to the left and toward the Bengali nationalists, forming the United Front to expand his base of support in East Pakistan. Given all this, the Jama‘at was certain to resume its antigovernment agitations. The new government’s interpretation of the constitution would soon provide the necessary pretext.

The constitution of 1956 had left the question of the division of the electorates unresolved. Most West Pakistanis favored categorizing Muslims and non-Muslims as separate electorates. Suhrawardi and the East Pakistan Assembly had already voted in favor of joint electorates.^[117] Soon after Suhrawardi took office, the Jama‘at moved to oppose Suhrawardi over the joint electorate issue^[118] and launched a campaign which placed the issue at the center of Pakistani politics.^[119] The party argued that joint electorates would make a mockery of the state’s claims to be Islamic and open the elections to machinations by the “anti-Pakistan” Hindu voters who were still numerous in East Pakistan. The party found itself in the same camp with many of its erstwhile enemies and rivals—the Muslim League and the Republican party leaders, and the bureaucratic and military elite who opposed Suhrawardi and the Awami League on the electorates issue.^[120] The issue was largely symbolic, revealing the continued communalist outlook of the Pakistanis. Before the partition they had fought for separate electorates in India to establish their communal identity and protect the special interests of the Muslim minority. The force of their arguments was still echoing in Pakistan; they still reacted to the issue as if they represented a religious minority. They felt threatened by the Hindu electorate, whom they believed would use the joint electorates to promote Bengali nationalism at the expense of the Islamic, and by implication Pakistani, cause. The Jama‘at was motivated by anti-Hindu sentiments, since Hindus were the main beneficiaries of joint electorates in East Pakistan. The party’s idea of social organization was based on the Muslim/non-Muslim (zimmi) dichotomy and the overriding role of Islam in Pakistan’s politics. In this case the interests of many Pakistani leaders and the religious sensibilities of the Jama‘at had converged. The electorates issue was only the first of many examples of cooperation between the Muslim League and the Jama‘at. For instance, when in March 1958 the prime minister, Malik Firuz Khan Noon, severely criticized Western powers for abandoning Pakistan on Kashmir, and called for Pakistan to steer away from overreliance on the West, none welcomed his initiative more than the Jama‘at.

Hence once Suhrawardi and the Awami League were replaced by a Muslim League government, the Jama‘at found itself markedly closer to the government.^[121] Between 1957 and 1958, as the clamor for provincial autonomy among Bengalis came to dominate Pakistani politics, strikes and demands for economic justice grew, and as the hand of General Mirza in steering Pakistan toward military rule became more apparent, the Jama‘at joined in the political process more actively.^[122] To counter General Mirza’s growing strength, the government was compelled to woo the Islamic parties. When Prime Minister Noon called an “all-parties conference” in 1958, the Jama‘at was invited to attend,^[123] a move the Jama‘at regarded as propitious. The Jama‘at had concluded that the electorates issue, which threatened to destabilize the political order, would be decisive in any future general election. Believing that most Pakistanis shared the party’s enthusiasm for separate electorates, it expected to benefit in the anticipated elections from the anti–joint electorate tide. During a preelection rally in East Pakistan, Mawdudi declared rather cavalierly that “99% of West Pakistan’s population and 80 to 90% of East Pakistani Muslims are against the system of joint electorates.”^[124]

On April 28, 1958, the party contested twenty-three seats in the Karachi municipal elections and won nineteen of them. The elections to the ninety-six seats of the city corporation, ninety-one of which were open to Muslims, were closely contested and stirred great popular interest.^[125] The elections were used by most parties as a trial run for the general elections to gauge the popularity of the various parties.^[126] Although the Karachi electorate was by no means typical of Pakistan as a whole, the Jama‘at’s victory still gave it a considerable boost. The U. S. embassy reported to the secretary of state that the Jama‘at had done surprisingly well in the elections, “the most striking aspect of the election results.”^[127] The party had won a large proportion of the seats it had contested, coming second after the Muslim League with sixty-one seats.^[128] Taking the results as a sign of greater victories to follow, the Jama‘at began preparing for the national elections, to that end forging an alliance with Chaudhri Muhammad ‘Ali’s newly formed Nizam-i Islam (Islamic Order) party. Preparations ended abruptly when on October 7, 1958, generals Iskandar Mirza and Muhammad Ayub Khan staged a military coup, dismissed the civilian government, and shelved the constitution of 1956.

Between 1948 and 1958 the Jama‘at found its place in Pakistani politics. Following an uncertain start, and periodic confrontations with the government, it utilized its campaign for an Islamic constitution to replace its original ideological orientation with greater pragmatism, to articulate a political program, and generally to move along the path of becoming a full-fledged political party. It found a clear-cut political platform by amending its Islamic vision to include a commitment to democracy and constitutional rights. In the process it infused the political discourse with religious references and ideas whose language and symbols have left such an indelible mark on Pakistani politics. The Islamic parties came to constitute a distinct interest group with specific demands on the state. Although these parties, and the Jama‘at most notably among them, continued to fight the state, the symbiosis between Islam and the state was, nevertheless, strengthened.

Notes