Jamiat in Jeopardy: Uncle-Nephew Strife Splits Leading Indian Deobandi 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 un-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.