Jamiat in Jeopardy: Uncle-Nephew Strife Splits Leading
Indian Ulema Body
Yoginder Sikand
The recent split in the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, the
leading body of the Indian Deobandi ulema, has
received considerable coverage in the Urdu press. Most
of those who have written on the subjected have
lamented the split and have called it entirely
avoidable. Many commentators have labeled it simply as
a fall-out of a nasty struggle for power between the
President of the Jamiat, Maulana Arshad Madani, and
his nephew and the Jamiat's General-Secretary, Maulana
Mahmud Madani, both of whom have traded heated charges
against each other of being allegedly engaged in
anti-Jamiat activities.
'If God forbid, the Jamiat has split, then its
consequences would be no less hurtful for the Muslims
of India than the partition of the country', writes
Aziz Burney, editor of the Urdu "Rashtriya Sahara",
obviously somewhat exaggeratedly. Another noted
commentator on Muslim affairs, Shahid ul-Islam,
comments that, 'The split in this great 90 year-old
organisaton bodes ill for the Muslims and is a matter
of great shame for them'. 'The message that goes out
to the public from this', he says, 'is that Muslim
leaders do not care at all for Muslim unity, and that
too, at a time when Muslims all over are under attack
and thus need to be united'. Likewise, writing in the
Urdu "Hindustan Express", Shahabuddin Saqib notes that
"While the Jamiat seemed to be promoting Muslim unity,
inside personal rivalries have divided the
organisation'. In an equally caustic lament, Mufti
Mukarram Ahmad of the Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi,
opines that the split in the Jamiat suggests that
'Division and strife have become the special feature
of this [Muslim] community. None is willing to
cooperate with others honestly and with good
intentions'. Critiquing those who were quick to
suspect an 'external' or non-Muslim hand behind the
split in the Jamiat, the Mufti firmly asserted, 'This
is simply a fight for power and pelf'.
The split in the Jamiat, lamentable though it is, is
not entirely unexpected. Nor is it something novel.
Strife began brewing between Arshad Madani and Mahmood
Madani soon after the death of the President of the
Jamiat, Asad Madani, last year, with each of them
contending to take his post. But this is not the first
split in the Jamiat, it should not noted. The first
division in Jamiat ranks occurred way back in the
1960s. This centred around two Maulanas contending for
the post of President of the organisation: Mufti Atiq
ur-Rahman Usmani and Maulana Fakhruddin, the Shaikh
ul-Hadith of the Dar ul-Uloom Deoband. At that time,
Asad Madani (brother of Arshad Madani and father of
Mahmood Madani) was the President of the Uttar Pradesh
unit of the Jamiat. It is said that he backed
Fakhruddin in the presidential election and played a
key role in defeating Atiq ur-Rahman. In turn, Atiq
ur-Rahman claimed that the elections were not fair. He
pointed out that the Majlis-e Muntazima or
Administrative Council of the Jamiat had appointed him
as Acting President, although he had declined this.
Consequently, he refused to accept defeat. It is said
that a large section of Jamiat leaders were actually
in his favour. Following this, Asad Madani took over
the Jamiat's office, forcing Atiq ur-Rahman to form
his own separate Jamiat. He appointed one Mufti Zia
ul-Haq as President, who later migrated to Pakistan
and settled there, and soon his wing of the Jamiat was
rendered defunct.
This tussle is also said to have been one of the
reasons for the growing differences between Qari
Muhammad Tayyeb, then rector of the Deoband madrasa,
and Asad Madani. Qari Tayyeb is said to have supported
Mufti Atiq's candidature, perhaps one reason being
that he was related to him. Following this, Qari
Tayyeb sacked Asad from his teaching post at Deoband.
Mutual acrimony between these two senior Deobandi
leaders finally led to the split in the Deoband
madrasa itself in 1980, when Asad Madani's supporters
managed to shunt Qari Tayyeb out of the madrasa (with
police and Congress help, so it is said), forcing him
to set up a parallel madrasa in Deoband, headed by his
son Maulana Salam Qasmi.
The Jamiat split again in 1988, when Asad Madani, who
by then had become the President of the organization,
dismissed Maulana Sayyed Ahmad Hashmi from the post of
General- Secretary. The reason, some say, was that
Asad Madani was allegedly apprehensive of Hashmi's
growing popularity. Another reason was that Hashmi had
also become a Member of Parliament, which Asad Madani
already was, having been nominated to the Rajya Sabha
by the Congress. Asad Madani argued that the Jamiat
could not have two Members of Parliament from two
different political parties. Consequently, Hashmi was
removed from the Working Committee of the Jamiat,
following which he formed his own Milli Jamiat
ul-Ulema-e Hind, which proved to be simply a
letter-head organization. The Jamiat split yet again
soon after, in the early 1990s, when a senior Jamiat
leader, Maulana Fuzail Ahmad Qasmi, founded his own
self-styled Markazi Jamiat-e Ulama-e Hind after he was
accused of embezzlement of funds allegedly got from
abroad.
That the Jamiat has split yet again should thus come
as no major surprise, simply because it is no novel
development. Numerous ulema-led groups in India have
witnessed such splits, and these have been primarily
over questions of struggle for power, pelf and
leadership and not over ideology. Despite the emphasis
on consultation (shura) in normative Islam, many
ulema-led organizations are dictatorially-run, with
power and access to resources concentrated in the
hands of a single supreme leader and his coterie, who
often include his close relatives. Succession to the
post of leadership is often decided by this small
coterie, not democratically, and this has given rise
to what critics who condemn as the n-Islamic practice
of hereditary succession. This is certainly the case
with the Jamiat today, with leadership of the
organization being sought to be restricted to the
narrow circle of the Madani family. In this, of
course, the Jamiat is hardly unique. The same
principal may be seen to be at work in succession to
numerous madrasas as well, although these are meant to
be community-institutions and not private concerns,
being funded by money donated by members of the
community.
As long as power and resources remain concentrated in
the hands of a single supremo and his small circle of
family and supporters, accountability to the
rank-and-file or the community at large is given short
shrift, succession is limited within a certain
'ruling' family and the principle of shura is given
mere lip-sympathy to, the personality cult or, as it
is called in Urdu, 'shaksiyat parasti' (literally
'personality worship') that is so characteristic of
many Muslim religious organizations cannot be
contained. And, inevitably, splits and dissensions
will continue to occur unabated, as the Jamiat case so
tragically illustrates.
--
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
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