Nadvi on Maududi: The Contested Terrain of ‘Islamist Politics’

Yoginder Sikand

The phenomenon of what is known as ‘Islamism’ is premised on the notion of what is termed as the ‘Islamic state’. This state is seen as being charged with the responsibility of implementing ‘God’s rule on earth’, through imposition of the laws of the historical shariah. Islamist ideologues see the establishment of the ‘Islamic state’ as the principal purpose of Islam. Islam is thus converted to a political ideology or programme.

One of the most forceful proponents of the theory of the ‘Islamic state’ was Sayyed Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-i Islami, an influential South Asian Islamist movement. While critiques by ‘modernist’ Muslim scholars of the politics and political agenda of the Jamaat-i Islami have received considerable attention, the fact that numerous ‘traditionalist’ ulama have also engaged in such critique, often on other grounds than the ‘modernists’, is not well-known.

One of the most incisive scholarly critiques of the Jamaat-i Islami was developed by the late Sayyed Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, a leading Indian scholar, recognized in Muslim circles worldwide for his scholarship and his dedication to the cause of Islamic revival. Born in 1913, Nadvi was the son of Sayyed Abdul Hai Hasani, rector of the famous Nadwat ul- ‘Ulama madrasa in Lucknow for many years. Nadvi was appointed to the same post in 1961, which he occupied till his death in 1999. He was a prolific writer and was associated with several Indian as well as international Islamic organizations.

Nadvi’s critique of the Jamaat-i Islami emerged from his personal involvement in his younger days with the movement. In 1940, impressed with what he called Maududi’s ‘bold rebuttal of the attacks and conspiracy of Western writers, Jews and Christians, against Islam’, he joined the Jamaat-i Islami, being put in-charge of its activities in Lucknow. This relationship proved short-lived, however, and he left the Jamaat-i Islami in 1943. In his multi-volume autobiography Karavan-e Zindagi (‘The Caravan of Life’), he wrote that he was disillusioned by the perception that many members of the Jamaat-i Islami were going to ‘extremes’ in adoring and glorifying Maududi as almost infallible. He remarked that he saw this as bordering on ‘personality worship’.

It is likely that the Jamaat-i Islami’s understanding of the Islamic mission in the Indian context, based as it was on the primacy of the political struggle to establish an ‘Islamic state’, was also a crucial factor for Nadvi’s parting of ways with Maududi. It appears that while Nadvi shared much the same understanding of Islam as an all-comprehensive way of life, with the Islamic political order a necessary and indispensable pillar, he differed from the Jamaat-i Islami on the crucial question of strategy, seeing its approach as unrealistic in the Indian context, where Muslims were a relatively small minority. This opposition to the Jamaat-i Islami’s approach continued even after India ‘s Partition in 1947, although Nadvi maintained cordial relations with Maududi, and never failed to meet him whenever he visited Pakistan , where Maududi had migrated after having consistently opposed its creation.

Nadvi’s critique of the Jamaat-i Islami comes out clearly in his book ‘Asr-i Hazir Mai Din Ki Tahfim-o-Tashrih (‘Understanding and Explaining Religion in the Contemporary Age’) which he penned in 1978, which won him, so he says in his introduction to its second edition published in 1980, fierce condemnation from leading members of the Jamaat-i Islami. Here, Nadvi takes Maududi to task for having allegedly misinterpreted central Islamic beliefs in order to suit his own political agenda, presenting Islam, he says, as little more than a political programme. Thus, he accuses Maududi of equating the Islamic duty of ‘establishing religion’ (iqamat-i din) with the setting up of an Islamic state with God as Sovereign and Law Maker. At Maududi’s hands, he says, ‘God’, ‘The Sustainer’, ‘Religion’ and ‘Worship’ (‘ibadat) have all been reduced to political concepts, suggesting that Islam is simply about political power and that the relationship between God and human beings is only that between an All-Powerful King and His subjects. However, Nadvi says, this relationship is also one of ‘love’ and ‘realisation of the Truth’, which is far more comprehensive than what Maududi envisages.

Linked to Nadvi’s critique of Maududi for having allegedly reduced Islam to a political project was his concern that not only was such an approach a distortion of the actual import of the Quran but also that it was impractical, if not dangerous, in the Indian context. Thus, he argued, Maududi’s insistence that to accept the commands of anyone other than God was tantamount to shirk, the crime of associating others with God, as this was allegedly akin to ‘worship’, was not in keeping with the teachings of Islam. God, Nadvi wrote, had, in His wisdom, left several areas of life free for people to decide how they could govern them, within the broad limits set by the shariah, and guided by a concern for social welfare. Further, Nadvi wrote that Maududi’s argument that God had sent prophets to the world charged with the mission of establishing an ‘Islamic state’ was a misreading of the Islamic concept of prophethood. The principal work of the prophets, Nadvi argued, was to preach the worship of the one God and to exhort others to do good deeds. Not all prophets were rulers. In fact, only a few of them were granted that status. Nadvi faulted Maududi for, as he put it, ‘debasing’ the ‘lofty’ Islamic understanding of worship to mean simply ‘training’ people as willing subjects of the ‘Islamic state’. In Maududi’s understanding of Islam, he wrote, prayer and remembrance of God (zikr) are seen as simply the means to an end, the establishment of an ‘Islamic state’, whereas, Nadvi argued, the converse is true. The goal of the ‘Islamic state’ is to ensure worship of God, and not the other way round. If at all worship can be said to be a means, it is a means for securing the ‘will of God’ and ‘closeness to Him.

If the ‘Islamic state’ is then simply a means for the ‘establishment of religion’ and not the ‘total religion (kul din)’ or the ‘primary objective (maqsad-i avvalin)’ of Islam, Nadvi suggested, it opens up the possibility of pursuing the same goals through other means in a contexts where setting up an ‘Islamic state’ is not an immediate possibility, as is the case in contemporary India. Nadvi referred to this when he says that the objective of ‘establishment of religion’ needs to be pursued along with hikmat-i din (‘wisdom of the faith’), using constructive, as opposed to destructive, means. Eschewing ‘total opposition’, Muslims striving for the ‘establishment of the faith’ should, he wrote, unhesitatingly adopt peaceful means such as ‘understanding and reform’, ‘consultation’ and ‘wisdom’. Critiquing the use of violence directed against innocents by certain groups calling themselves ‘Islamic’, Nadvi stressed the need for ‘obedience’, ‘love’ and ‘faith’ and struggle against the ‘base self’. Muslims should, he wrote, make use of all available legitimate spaces to pursue the cause of the ‘establishment of religion’, such as propagating their message through literature, public discussions, training volunteers, winning others over with the force of one’s own personality and establishing contacts with governments, exhorting them to abide by the shariah, seeking to convince them of the superiority of the solutions to worldly problems that Islam provides. It is clear that such spaces are available even in Muslim minority contexts, and Nadvi suggests that Muslims in India, too, should seek to take advantage of these to carry on with the mission of the ‘establishment of the faith’, even in the absence of realistic possibilities for the immediate setting up of an ‘Islamic state’ in the country.

Although Nadvi agreed with Maududi in arguing for the necessity of an ‘Islamic state’, he insisted that ‘wisdom’ demanded that the strategies for attaining the goal be formulated in accordance with existing social conditions. Thus, he noted, it was not necessary for a political party to directly launch a movement for the cause, especially if the odds were heavily weighed against it. A more realistic approach would be, he said, to ‘prepare people’s minds’ for ‘Islamic government’ through a ‘silent revolution’. Although these remarks seem to have been directed at Islamist groups working in Muslim majority countries, Nadvi clearly saw this pragmatic approach as the only feasible way to carry on with the mission of ‘establishing the faith’ in the Indian context.

In short, then, while Nadvi remained, at heart, a conservative, he was also a realist, somewhat less idealistic and possibly more attuned to empirical reality than Maududi seemed to have been. As Nadvi’s critique of Maududi’s politics suggests, the terrain of Islamist politics is a sharply contested one, which should make observers guard against making facile generalizations about the phenomenon