Schism and Purge after 1957

The Machchi Goth affair by no means resolved the party’s problems, nor did it render the party invulnerable to the ethical pitfalls of pragmatic politics. In fact, it exposed the increasing discrepancy between its religious facade and the pragmatic political reality of its program. Because of that, other Machchi Goths were likely to occur.

While Mawdudi was in prison following a government crackdown on the Jama‘at in 1963, the party joined the Combined Opposition Parties, a group that had organized to resist Ayub Khan’s rule. The alliance decided to challenge Ayub Khan in the presidential elections of January 1965 and proposed to run Fatimah Jinnah (d. 1967) as its candidate for president. The Jama‘at endorsed this choice, a decision which flew in the face of Mawdudi’s oft-repeated arguments against any public role for women.^[46] It was a monumental doctrinal compromise which, given the national attention focused on it, could not be easily justified. The Jama‘at appeared to have abandoned its ideological mainstay and declared itself a political machine through and through, one which recognized no ethical or religious limits to its pragmatism.

Mawdudi responded to the resulting clamor by arguing that the decision was made by the whole party and not by himself. He then went on to justify the decision as an evil warranted by the necessity of combating yet a greater evil, Ayub Khan and his martial-law regime.^[47] Mawdudi’s explanation did not convince those outside the Jama‘at and led to dissension within the party as well. Kawthar Niyazi, then the amir of Lahore and an ardent defender of Mawdudi during the Machchi Goth affair, began in the pro-Jama‘at journal Shahab openly to question the wisdom of his position.^[48] Niyazi argued against supporting a woman candidate and claimed that the Jama‘at had gone too far in compromising its principles; as a result it had ceased altogether to be a religious entity. In a deft maneuver against Mawdudi, Niyazi then digressed from the Jinnah candidacy to widen the debate to include Mawdudi’s other doctrinal compromises in accommodating the Jama‘at’s political interests. He repeated all Mawdudi’s arguments against elections in earlier times, juxtaposing them with the Jama‘at’s policy of putting up candidates since 1951. Inferring duplicity on the part of Mawdudi, Niyazi sought to put both Mawdudi and Jama‘at’s political agenda on trial yet again.

This time it did not work. Unlike Islahi, Niyazi had no following of his own within the party, and some even disliked his bureaucratic style in the party’s secretariat. The Jama‘at had changed significantly since 1957. It was now more centralized, and, as Niyazi charged, had more members on the payroll, which hampered their ability to express their ideas, let alone voice dissent.^[49] By airing the problem in his journal, Niyazi infuriated his fellow members, who accused him of doing the bidding of the government by trying to paralyze the Jama‘at before the elections. Mawdudi responded by asking Niyazi to resign from the party.^[50]

Although Niyazi’s challenge to Mawdudi showed that the conflict between ideology and pragmatic politics continued to hound the party, the response also suggested the changes had enabled them to contend with internal differences.^[51] The party had become sufficiently pragmatic not to be shocked by Mawdudi’s inconsistency in supporting Fatimah Jinnah. The other leaders of the party had already endorsed Miss Jinnah while Mawdudi was still in jail and were therefore fully prepared to defend his decision.

In the coming years the Jama‘at continued to suffer from tensions arising from its slide toward pragmatic politics, showing less tolerance for dissent and a greater ability to maintain unity.^[52] The purge of dissenting members became more frequent until it was a routine mechanism for resolving disputes. As a result, a diverse movement built upon a tradition of discussion, debate, consensus, and a shared vision of the ideal Islamic order turned into a party in which policies were so pragmatic that its original purpose and intellectual vitality were destroyed and ideological roots weakened. Perhaps that is the fate of any holy community that ventures into politics. The Machchi Goth affair gave the party a new lease on life, but the price was that it evolved along lines neither anticipated nor necessarily desired by its founders, and it became a full-fledged political party. Mawdudi’s initial enthusiasm for politics may have clouded his vision, or perhaps he was simply unable to control the forces he had let loose. He could ride the tide of politicization, as he did in 1956–1957, but he, and later his successors, were hard-pressed to contain it. Politicization became a consuming passion that drowned out ethical considerations, intellectual vitality, pious works, and worship.

From the mid-1960s onward Mawdudi constantly referred to incidents of violence involving the Jama‘at and emphasized organizational discipline, showing his growing concern with what political pragmatism had done to his party.^[53] His farewell address to the Jama‘at in 1972 following the election of Mian Tufayl to the office of amir centered on the need to reestablish a balance between ideological imperatives and pragmatic concerns.^[54] Especially after the Jama‘at was routed at the polls in 1970, Mawdudi turned back to the idea of holy community, as the election results did not justify the sacrifices made nor the damage incurred by purges and compromises. His colleagues were, however, no longer willing to heed his advice. Mawdudi was at odds with his party, and after he stepped down as amir in 1972, he found his influence limited. In a clear departure from his attitude at Machchi Goth, he concluded that the party had given away too much to politics without gaining enough in return.^[55] In 1972 he lamented to his wife that the party “was no longer up to his standards…. If he had the stamina he would have started all over again.”^[56] “I hope this will not be the case,” he told a friend, “but when historians write of the Jama‘at, they will say it was yet another revival (tajdid) movement that rose and fell.”^[57] Finally, he advised the shura’ in 1975 to move the Jama‘at away from politics and to revive the holy community; for elections had proved not only to be a dead end but also debilitating. His advice was largely ignored.^[58]

Today the Jama‘at is an important political party in Pakistan, but Islamic revivalism in Pakistan has been passed on to other movements,^[59] many of which were founded by former Jama‘at members, such as Israr Ahmad and Javid Ahmadu’l-Ghamidi.^[60] The outcome may have saddened Mawdudi, but it was unavoidable and for some not unwelcome. What the party’s history shows is that the relation between ideology and social action in Islamic revivalism is neither as harmonious and spontaneous nor as permanent and immutable as is often believed. Mawdudi’s revivalism, as powerful as its synthesis between religious idealism and political action may seem, in reality produced an inherently contradictory attitude toward social action and spiritual salvation. To resolve the conflicts innate in Mawdudi’s program, ideological zeal gave way to greater pragmatism and transformed the movement from holy community to political party.