When Pakistan was created in the summer of 1947, the Muslim League and the Jama‘at were at loggerheads, though instances of cooperation continued both before and after. The convergence of objectives of these two communalist programs, and Jama‘at’s hostility to the Congress party, in 1937–1939 had established a common ground. Mawdudi began his forays into politics by asserting Muslim communal consciousness against Congress’s secular nationalist platform in 1937, two years before he even took notice of the Muslim League in his proclamations or written works. His program was first articulated in a series of articles in the Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an and later published in Musalman Awr Mawjudah Siyasi Kashmakash (1938–1940) (Muslims and the Current Political Struggle) and Mas’alah-i Qaumiyat (1947) (Question of Nationality), where he attacked his erstwhile mentors among Congress supporters, ‘Ubaidu’llah Sindhi, Abu’l-Kalam Azad, and the leaders of the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind.^[1] In these works Mawdudi depicted the Congress as a convenient front for the Hindu drive for power and as a secular and, worse yet, socialist party, whose views were incompatible with Muslim values.^[2] He therefore challenged the wisdom of siding with the Congress, asserting: “There are no common grounds between our movements [Muslim and the Hindu]; our death is their life, and their death our life.”^[3] Nor was Mawdudi persuaded by the anti-imperialist rhetoric and logic of the Muslim supporters of the Congress. Combating the evil of imperialism, Mawdudi argued, did not justify sacrificing Islam.^[4]

The fight against imperialism…and expulsion of the British has meaning for us only in the context of la ilaha ila’llah [there is no god but God];…otherwise there is no difference between imperialism and idol-worshipping democracy [the Congress’s position]. Lot goes and Manat [Qur’anic terms referring to evil and pagan forces] replaces it.^[5]

Although Mawdudi’s line of attack was directed against pro-Congress Muslims as a whole, his most acid remarks were reserved for Mawlana Husain Ahmad Madani (1879–1957), the head of the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Hind at the time, and one of the most outspoken and ardent supporters of the Congress party among Indian ulama. Madani was vehemently anti-British and dedicated to the nationalist cause; he was instrumental in establishing a base of support for the Congress among Muslims. In 1939 Madani had presented his views and the Jami‘at-i Ulama’s political platform in a pamphlet entitled Mutahhidah Qaumiyat Awr Islam (United/Composite Nationalism and Islam). The small tract soon became the basis for the Congress party’s Muslim policy, and hence the focus of Mawdudi’s most caustic invective. Mawdudi censured Madani’s thesis and challenged his political and ultimately religious authority, accusing him of sacrificing Islam at the altar of his anti-British sentiments. Mawdudi couched his arguments in religious terms, which not only undermined the Jami‘at-i Ulama’s political platform but also weakened its religious justification, hindering the ulama’s efforts to accommodate Indian nationalism within the framework of Muslim orthodoxy. So forceful was Mawdudi’s charge against Madani and the Jami‘at-i Ulama that Mufti Kifayatu’llah, a senior Jami‘at-i Ulama stalwart, advised his colleagues not to engage Mawdudi in embarrassing debates.^[6] These debates had already prompted Muhammad Iqbal to remark, “Mawdudi will teach a lesson to these Congressite Muslims,”^[7] and had led some enthusiastic Muslim League workers to refer to Mawdudi as “our Abu’l-Kalam [Azad].”^[8]

Desperate to attract some support for its two-nation platform from the religious quarter, the Muslim League developed a keen interest in Mawdudi’s anti-Jami‘at-i Ulama crusade, which gave it a religious justification for rejecting the Congress’s plea for a united stand against colonial rule. Muslim League speakers borrowed such terms as hukumat-i ilahiyah (divine government) and khilafat-i rabbani (divine caliphate) from Mawdudi’s repertory, and his contribution to the Muslim League’s political agenda was often cited and acknowledged in private along with those of Iqbal and Mawlana Hasrat Muhani.^[9]

Mawdudi’s writings were widely distributed in Muslim League sessions between 1937 and 1939.^[10] League workers found this effort especially productive in Amritsar in 1939, when scores of copies of the Musalman Awr Mawjudah Siyasi Kashmakash were distributed.^[11] A similar attitude was evident in the League’s central committee, which authorized the widespread circulation of Mawdudi’s religious decrees against the Jami‘at-i Ulama leaders in 1939.^[12] Mawdudi’s usefulness to the League, however unintended, was nevertheless significant.^[13] One Muslim League leader wrote of Mawdudi in retrospect that “the venerable Mawlana [Mawdudi]’s writings in Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an greatly furthered the League’s religious and national demands.”^[14] The Jama‘at’s contribution to the League’s enterprise is perhaps the best example of an aspect of the growth of support for Pakistan in north and northwest India that has not thus far received its due attention.

So favorable was the impression that the Muslim League had of Mawdudi in 1939 that Mawlana Zafar Ahmad Ansari, then the secretary of the central parliamentary board of the Muslim League, who was at the time advocating the party’s cause before the senior ulama, took it upon himself to approach Mawdudi with a view to officially enlisting his support for the Muslim League. Mawdudi, not unexpectedly, turned down his offer, for he saw his contribution to the League and his success in stemming the tide of Muslim religious fervor for the Congress as a sign not of the confluence of his views and those of the Muslim League, but of the fundamentally religious nature of the Pakistan movement, his own inherent qualities as a leader, and his ultimate destiny to lead that movement. The nature of relations between the Jama‘at and the Muslim League was not decided by Mawdudi’s opposition to the Congress alone, but involved the competition between the two for power.