Keeping the Faith, How the Jama’at-e-Islami chronicles the failure of mainstream politics in Kashmir

The Caravan

April 06, 2019

Shortly before midnight on 17 March, Rizwan Pandit, a 29-year-old school principal and resident of Awantipora, a town around thirty-five kilometres south of Srinagar, was picked up from his house by security officials accompanied by the local police. Two days later, the Jammu and Kashmir police issued a statement announcing that Rizwan had “died in police custody” and that he had been taken into custody in connection with a “terror case.” The police have since revealed little information about the circumstances surrounding his detention and subsequent death, but they posthumously registered a case against him for “trying to escape from custody.” According to news reports, a preliminary post mortem report states that “profuse bleeding resulting from multiple injuries” could have caused his death. Rizwan was a known sympathiser of an Islamist organisation called the Jama’at-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, of which his father, Asadullah Pandit, is a member.

The Indian state’s persecution and repression of the Jama’at-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, its members and sympathisers has a long history. Over the course of more than six decades, the Jama’at has adopted dual functions—of a socio-religious organisation running schools and mosques, and of a political organisation advocating the creation of an autonomous state of Kashmir governed by Islamic law. On 28 February, a couple of weeks before Rizwan was picked up, the Indian government banned the Jama’at, marking the organisation’s third ban in its history. But despite its vocal opposition to India’s secular democratic setup, the National Conference and the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party—both mainstream political parties in Kashmir—immediately condemned the ban on the Jama’at. Indeed, it is a complex task to place the Jama’at within Kashmir’s political landscape.

The history of the Jama’at-e-Islami is a story weaved into Kashmir’s history, and inextricably linked with the political parties that have ruled over the region. All three bans on the Jama’at came when pro-India mainstream political parties in Kashmir were at their weakest and the Indian government was confronted with an upsurge in the Kashmiri resistance movement. Five days before the ban this year, over 150 Jama’at members were arrested in a series of night raids across Kashmir. The police also arrested Yasin Malik, a prominent separatist leader who heads the Kashmiri nationalist group Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front. In the following month, the JKLF was also banned. With the Jama’at’s third ban, memories of detentions, executions and disappearances from a brutal armed-forces campaign against rising militancy during the 1990s have returned to haunt the members and sympathisers of the Jama’at.

The Jama’at-e-Islami was founded in the early 1940s by an Islamic theologian and philosopher Syed Abul ‘Ala Maududi, who believed that Islam serves as a code of life to govern all aspects of the individual and collective existence of Muslims. The Jama’at, as envisioned by Maududi, seeks to establish an Islamic state governed by the law of God, and argue against a political order founded on democracy and secularism. After Partition, Maududi settled in Pakistan and the Jama’at split into two—the Jama’at-e-Islami Pakistan and the Jama’at-e-Islami Hind. In 1952, a distinct branch was officially set up in Kashmir, separated from the Indian branch, known as the Jama’at-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir.

In Kashmir, the Jama’at’s ideology challenged the prevailing Sufi traditions in the valley, which were credited with enabling an atmosphere of coexistence of different religions, by asserting political Islam. The Sufi traditions continue to be often represented by the Indian state through a narrative of Kashmiriyat—a supposed confluence of Sufi and Shaivite Hindu practices. This narrative was also frequently invoked to deny political Islam—represented in Kashmir primarily by the Jama’at—any space or participation in public life.

Several Kashmiri academics, such as Hameeda Nayeem, have argued that the Indian government used the narrative of Kashmiriyat to depoliticise the Sufi identity and subsume the Kashmiri nationalist movement within its own version of secularism. Central to the projection of this narrative was the National Conference, one of Kashmir’s oldest political parties, and its leader, Sheikh Abdullah. It is against this backdrop that the Jama’at-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir gained ground in Kashmir. Understanding the role that it has played in the valley requires revisiting the region’s complex political history.

The Kashmiriyat narrative was frequently invoked to deny political Islam—represented in Kashmir primarily by the Jama’at—any space or participation in public life.

In the first elections held in Kashmir, in 1951, the National Conference aligned with the Congress party, which held power in New Delhi, and contested assembly elections. Only two of 75 assembly constituencies went to polls—opposition parties were not allowed to file nominations in the rest—and Abdullah was appointed the prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir, as the head of the state was identified at the time.

Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference played a major role in the reification of Kashmiriyat and suppression of political Islam in the valley—as such, the party has always been at loggerheads with the Jama’at. In fact, the Jama’at’s opposition to NC was so deep-rooted that they even opposed landmark land reforms proposed by the Abdullah government, which imposed a ceiling on land ownership in Kashmir and redistributed the rest among sharecroppers and landless labourers without compensating the land owner. The land reforms fundamentally changed the socio-economic status of its peasantry, and yet, the Jama’at called the forcible distribution of the land un-Islamic.

One explanation for the Jama’at’s opposition is that they feared Kashmiris would support Abdullah if a plebiscite were to be conducted. The Jama’at, striving for a state governed by Islamic law, was keen on joining Pakistan, and Abdullah’s opposition to it was well known. But the Indian government never conducted a plebiscite, and in 1953, Abdullah was arrested for advocating freedom for Kashmir. He remained in prison for much of the next two decades. Kashmir witnessed a series of National Conference regimes, installed at the behest of the Congress, until 1964, following which Jawaharlal Nehru did away with the pretence of National Conference functioning as a separate party, and it was merged with the Congress.

During this time, the Jama’at began making inroads into the Kashmiri social and religious ethos. The organisation set up schools that incorporated Islamic theology into the modern education curriculum, began producing its own textbooks, and routinely held massive religious congregations, known as ijtimas, which introduced Kashmiris to new socio-religious thinking. Abdullah’s arrest and the autocratic rule of the National Conference and Congress drove large numbers of Kashmiri youth to become sympathisers of the Jama’at. The Jama’at also took advantage of the spread of literacy in the state—which stood at abysmally low levels during the Dogra rule that prevailed in Kashmir before the entry of popular politics—and published books, tracts and dailies in Urdu.

By the 1970s, the Jama’at-run schools were offering education to thousands across Kashmir, following which the organisation decided to bring them together under the Falah-e-Aam—which translates to “welfare for all”—Trust. In 1972, the trust was registered as a “non-political” body dedicated to “education and service to mankind.” The Jama’at’s schools and social activities played a large role in its acceptance and popularity in Kashmiri society.

The Jama’at’s organisational structure is highly institutionalised and hierarchical. It is headed by a president, or amir-i-jama’at, and includes multiple levels of affiliation with the organisation. Induction into the Jama’at as a rukun, or member, happens only after years of training in social and religious services. As such, the Jama’at has always had a limited number of members. In his memoir, Curfewed Night, Basharat Peer, the Kashmiri writer and journalist, identifies the Jama’at as a “minority in Kashmir.” Indeed, if one considers its membership, then Peer’s description is accurate—but if judged on the support that its political objectives receive, then Jama’at’s popularity supersedes that of any political group in Kashmir today.

The Jama’at first entered electoral politics by fielding some of its members as independent candidates in panchayati elections held in 1963, and again in 1969. The organisation came under heavy criticism for moving away from its socio-religious identity at the time. But the Jama’at responded to its critics, noting that the organisation could spread the message of its mission more effectively through positions of power, such as public office. Qari Saifuddin, the organisation’s secretary-general in the early 1970s, defended the decision to contest elections, noting, “If through constitutional and democratic means it is possible to bring about any sort of reform in the system of governance, the Jama’at-e-Islami cannot ignore them.”

If judged on the support that its political objectives receive, the Jama’at-e-Islami’s popularity supersedes that of any political group in Kashmir today.

But it was never able to make significant inroads into the assembly. In 1971, the Jama’at participated in the Lok Sabha elections and lost all the seats it contested. The next year, it secured five out of the 22 seats it contested in assembly elections—its highest tally ever. The Jama’at continued to fight elections for close to two decades, till 1987. According to Abdul Ghani Bhat, a separatist and former MUF leader, contesting elections was a means to spread the Jama’at’s message. “Our motive was to educate and engage youth,” Bhat told the weekly magazine Kashmir Life. “That I guess we did. We never wanted to form a government.”

The changing political landscape of India in the 1970s significantly impacted the Jama’at. After India’s war with Pakistan, in 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, the two heads of state, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi, signed what came to be known as the Shimla Agreement, deciding to “settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.” In effect, the dispute over Kashmir, too, was reduced to bilateral negotiations and “other peaceful means” were never properly explored. In the years that followed, India claimed that Kashmir was an internal problem that does not concern Pakistan.

Reference:-https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/how-jamaat-e-islami-chronicles-failure-mainstream-politics-kashmir