ABSTRACT
The political movements that Mawdudi involved himself in should not just be seen as a reaction against British rule, but also an attempt at self-preservation for a Muslim minority that had enjoyed years of elitist self-cultivation. As Hindu political activity and involvement increased, the need was felt that Muslim political action was also required to maintain any kind of legitimacy. The British Raj identified the Muslims as a separate religious community and, by the Indian Councils Act of 1909, the existence of two separate communal electorates (Hindu and Muslim) was given legal and political status. While this was all part of the British liberal tradition and was well intentioned, it also underlined the differences in language and religion between Muslims and Hindus and gave them the right to petition for grievances, elect their own representatives, and so on. The creation of a Muslim community in India was somewhat artificial because Muslims were by no means united in any kind of communal way at that time, divided as they were by tribal, family, region, class and other factional sections. The fact was, Muslims were incapable of sharing a common identity, and so it was up to the Muslim radicals to invent effectively a new political body: the Muslims of India. This was a movement towards mass politics that at first was somewhat piecemeal and symbolic. One example of this is the Kanpur mosque episode in 1913 when the British wanted to move the washing facilities of the mosque so as to make way for the building of a road. This resulted in local committees being set up to defend the mosque and even in small-scale riots. The significance of the event is that it presented a religious symbol as articulating Muslim identity, whereas previously such an event would hardly have raised an eyebrow. Other riots in Calcutta in 1918, and in Bombay in 1929 (and, in fact, again in Kanpur in 1931) were significant, certainly, but factionalized. It was not until the Khilafat movement that India witnessed its first mass Muslim political action. Mawdudi’s involvement in the Khilafat movement was due to his association
with the journalist and poet Mawlana Muhammad Ali Jouhar (1878-1931). Muhammad Ali was a student of Ahmad Khan’s Anglo-Oriental College and went on to study history at Oxford University. He wrote for a number of major English and Indian newspapers and set up his own paper, the Urdu weekly
Hamdard, in 1911. Aside from his involvement in helping the development of Ahmad Khan’s college, he also set up his own university in Delhi, the Jamia Millia Islamia in Aligarh in 1920 with himself as the first Vice Chancellor. For a short while he was also President of the All India Muslim League (1918). In 1919 Ali travelled to England as part of a delegation to persuade the British government to influence Mustafa Kemal into not deposing the Sultan (and, hence, Caliph) of Turkey. Britain rejected this call and consequently a Khilafat Conference was held calling for the restoration of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the setting up of the Jami’at al-’Ulama’-i Hind to fight for Muslim interests and the preservation of the Caliphate.1 How this Congress was meant to preserve the Caliphate was somewhat unclear, however, and the movement seemed to concentrate more on overthrowing British rule in India. When the Sultanate was abolished this seemed to remove the actual rationale of the movement and it soon collapsed. However, one consequence of the movement was that it did bring together many of the Muslim Indian intellectuals in a common cause, as well as a realization of the importance of the media as a sounding board for discontent. To this end, Ali had invited Mawdudi to work with him on Hamdard in 1924, but Mawdudi chose instead to become editor of another paper, the Urdu daily Al-Jamji’at. Previous to this friendship with Muhammad Ali and subsequent editorship
of Al-Jamji’at, however, Mawdudi had a series of journalist jobs. In 1919, together with his brother, he edited a pro-Congress weekly newspaper called Taj in Jubalpur in the Central Provinces, but this closed down soon after they took over. His brother, Abu’l-Khayr, decided to give up on journalism and in time became an Islamic scholar at Uthmaniya University. Mawdudi persisted, however, and with the relaunch of Taj he became once more its editor. An important city at the time, Jubalpur was also a centre for Khilafat activism, and Mawdudi became involved in such activity himself, delivering a number of public speeches and writing articles in Taj which criticized the British government. This criticism led again to the closure of the newspaper in the same year Mawdudi had become its editor. At this time, ‘I sensed that there existed some hidden power within me which would rise and assist me in time of need. Thence forth I never shunned or hesitated to accept responsibility.’2 Mawdudi was now becoming a recognized figure, and with a growing reputation he felt a new-found confidence in his abilities, as well as a mission. Back in Delhi, he became more politically active, joining various groups such as the short-lived Tahrik-i Hijrat (Migration Movement) which campaigned for Muslims to migrate en masse to Afghanistan. Also at this time, Mawdudi worked on his English which not only allowed him to communicate better with the British rulers, but also exposed him to a much greater variety of western thought. Mawdudi’s childhood education meant that he was throughout his life an avid reader. In 1921, he became editor of the newspaper Muslim, which lasted until 1923 when this paper too stopped publication. Muslim was run by the Jami’at al-’Ulama’-i Hind mentioned earlier. Aside from his writing and editing duties, this allowed Mawdudi to
meet at first-hand some of the great Muslim intellectuals of the time and, having not gone to university himself, Mawdudi felt he needed to improve his formal education. He came under the tutelage of the Islamic scholar Mawlana ’Abdu’ssalam Niyazi (d.1966) to take a course known as dars-i nizami. On successful completion of the entire course, Mawdudi would gain an ijaza, which meant that he would become a competent Imam and scholar (alim) of Islamic sciences. Achieving such a status would put Mawdudi into the cultural elite as a true guardian of Islam for many Muslims, although the title of alim can also bring with it certain disadvantages, as the ulama were considered by a number of the Muslim intellectuals – for which Mawdudi would quite rightly count himself – as representing traditional, static Islam which is opposed to reform. With the perceived threat of British dominance in India, many of the ulama either adopted a passive attitude to this western encroachment or became more conservative in their stance in an attempt to protect the Islamic tradition. However, Mawdudi’s intent in taking the dars was no doubt his belief that if one wishes to reform Islam it is important to understand it fully. The course itself originated in the Middle East in the twelfth century and was brought over to India in the seventeenth century where it now dominates in the madrasas. Topics studied include Arabic, jurisprudence, Qur’anic exegesis, logic, philosophy, theology and literature as well as emphasizing the students’ moral and religious commitment and their development within the community. However, because Muslim ceased publication in 1923, Mawdudi left without completing his dars with Niyazi and spent the next year and a half completing his studies in Bhopal. The move to Bhopal is significant in one particular respect: this was a city
where the Ahl-i Hadith were particularly strong and Mawdudi would undoubtedly have been affected by their ideas. The Ahl-i Hadith tended to be associated with the salafis and, therefore, look to restore Islam to what is considered to be its original teachings and practices as existed during Muhammad and the Rashidun. The name ‘salafiyya’ derives from the phrase salaf as-salihin (‘the pious ancestors’) and seeks to reform Islam by referring to the lives and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions as the primary source for guidance. Mawdudi’s writings are very much representative of this view. They see much of Islamic practice as a deviation from the purity of Islam. They also believed that the survival of Islam required the abandonment of taqlid; the blind imitation of the medieval interpreters of the Qur’an. An important scholar here is the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) whose approach to salafi was to call for the dissolution of the four legal schools altogether and instead to use the ‘pious ancestors’ (that is, the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions primarily) as the ‘beacon’ for guidance, but in line with man’s rational capacity. He stressed that while those laws that governed worship such as prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage were unchangeable, the huge majority of legislation, such as regulation on family law and the penal codes were open to change according to the social and
cultural traditions of the time. In theory, then, a salafi approach to Islam should allow for independent reasoning, although there is always the danger that – in the same way some Muslim scholars have been reluctant to contradict the rulings of traditional legal scholars – the ‘fundamentalist’ or conservative element could be unwilling to adopt anything other than a literal approach to the ‘pious ancestors’ and the Qur’an.3
