Guest Post: Jama’at e Islami and Religious Politics in 1950s
Understanding Pakistan Project Team July 23rd, 2007
By: Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr (Excerpt from: Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9j49p32d/)
Entering the Political Process, 1947–1958
After Mawdudi had unveiled the Jama‘at-i Islami’s political objectives in Pakistan for the first time in July 1947,[1] he collected his troops and moved to Lahore on a truck, escorted by units of the Pakistan army. His first contact with the leaders of the new state took place soon after through the Muslim League ministry in Punjab. While he was still living in a tent in Islamiyah Park, Mawdudi met with the Muslim League chief minister of the province, Nawwab Iftikhar Husain of Mamdot.[2] In that meeting Mawdudi asked for permission to begin work among the refugees, and he discussed the future of Kashmir.[3] Mawdudi impressed upon the nawwab Pakistan’s obligation immediately to take the offensive in Kashmir and secure control of strategic locations there, and asked the chief minister to relay a message to that effect to Prime Minister Liaqat ‘Ali Khan. (Figure: Maulana Abul Ala Maududi: The Founder of the Jama’at-i-Islami)
The Nawwab of Mamdot was a powerful member of the landed gentry of Punjab and was at the time embroiled in a struggle with Liaqat ‘Ali Khan and his chief ally in Punjab, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, over the control of that province.[4] The chief minister was eager to enlist the support of Islamic groups such as the Jama‘at to stave off Daultana’s challenge.[5] Mamdot, therefore, not only welcomed the Jama‘at’s offer to assist with relief work among the refugees, but invited Mawdudi to deliver a series of talks on Radio Pakistan.[6] All unwitting, Mawdudi had walked into the midst of a tug-of-war in Pakistani politics that was to determine relations between the Jama‘at and the central government.
Mawdudi quickly learned that, given the balance of power in Pakistani politics, the Islamic parties were bound to play the role of power brokers. Muslim League leaders, concluded Mawdudi, were not as inimical to sacralization of politics as their postindependence rhetoric may have indicated. In fact, as the central government in Karachi faced difficulties in exerting control over the new country’s wayward provinces during 1947–1948 and the crisis before the state grew, the legitimating role of Islam and the power of its spokesmen became more evident. Politicians who otherwise decried the political role of religion were under the circumstances not altogether indifferent to the entry of Islamic groups into the fray. The example set by Mamdot was followed elsewhere, in Lahore as well as in other provincial capitals. The relations between the Muslim League and the Jama‘at during the prepartition years were now expanded to encompass the relations between Islam and the state of Pakistan. The holy community found great strength in acting as a party.
Pakistan was founded in the name of Islam, but it had little else in the way of common national or cultural values around which to unite.
- 1955-1958 , Ideology , Maududi , Politics , Constitution , Religion , 1951-1954
- Comments(3)
Broadly speaking, there were three distinct groups that joined Pakistan. These were East Pakistanis, those who migrated from Hindu majority areas to West Pakistan, and the indigenous people of West Pakistan.
dominion. With the constituent assembly now gone, the question arose as to who was to carry forward the task of constitution-making in Pakistan? Could a new constituent assembly be legitimately elected to replace the older one? What would be the “ground-rules” for electing such an assembly? Who would set those rules and whether they would be acceptable to all parties?
n long years of important legislation was eliminated by a stroke of a pen. Forty-six Acts on the statute books became invalid thus putting the country in a legal vacuum making it almost impossible to govern. Days after the judgment, the Governor-General promulgated Emergency Powers Ordinance IX of 1955 that give him the power to:
The Constitution of 1956 was a lengthy document—containing over 234 Articles in 13 parts and 6 schedules. By contrast, the American Constitution has a 3-line preamble, 7 articles, and 27 amendments over the last 200 years of existence. The Indian Constitution, on the other hand, has 395 articles and 12 schedules (Wikipedia, 2007). Clearly, in Pakistani Constitution of 1956, but also later ones, the framers adopted an approach, somewhat analogous to India’s, that explicitly stated many of the things that are generally left to convention in most well-developed constitutions of the world. Hamid Khan identifies several reasons for the length of the constitution including, but not limited to, complicated relationship between the federation and the provinces, special provisions for tribal areas and the Islamic character of the Constitution, emergency provisions, bill of rights, issues of state languages, election commission, and directive principles of state policy etc. (Khan, 2001, p. 102).
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