The second part of this chapter concerns the fate of the shepherd in this pedagogical arrangement. Ilyas, like Thanvi, attempted to navigate a precarious liminal space between the careful guidance of the ‘ulama on the one hand, and independence from them on the other. In this sense, the Tablighis have represented another side of the delicate balance between books and bodies, between competing forces within Deobandi tradition that Tayyib and ‘Usmani also attempted to comprehend, if not control, as we just saw.
Born in 1885, Muhammad Ilyas went to Gangoh at the age of eleven or twelve to study with Rashid Ahmad Gangohi. After Gangohi died in 1905, Ilyas went to Deoband, where he began his formal studies, graduating from the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband in 1910. After finishing at Deoband, Ilyas went to Saharanpur, where he continued his studies under Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri and taught at Mazahir al-‘Ulum. It was his father, in fact, who had preached among the Meos long before Ilyas. His father came from a wealthy family, but renounced his inheritance to take up residence at a mosque in the Nizamuddin district of Delhi (so named because of the shrine of Nizam al-Din Awliya’ located there). When their father died in 1898, maintenance of the mosque fell to Ilyas’s brother, who continued his father’s work among the Meos. The mosque became associated with this mission in Mewat. Upon the death of his brother in 1917, Ilyas in turn took up residence at the mosque. The mosque would become, and remains, the global center (markaz) of the Tablighi Jama‘at.35
One of the debates among scholars of the Tablighi Jama‘at is whether and to what degree Sufism informed, and continues to inform, the movement. It is certainly the case that, today, a Tablighi need not be a Sufi, and vice versa. But there was considerable overlap between Ilyas’s efforts and those of other Deobandis to reform lay Muslim publics by encouraging Sufi initiations. Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri visited Mewat in 1925 to support Ilyas’s proselytization efforts, where his biographer claims he initiated hundreds of Meos into the four Sufi orders (Chishti, Qadiri, Suhrawardi, Naqshbandi) that predominate among Deobandis. In undertaking their pledge (bai‘at) to him, Khalil Ahmad asked the Meos to utter the Islamic testament of faith (kalima), repent for their sins, and say, “We pledge not to commit an act of unbelief [kufr] or polytheism [shirk] or innovation [bid‘a]. We will not steal, commit adultery, lie, or slander. . . . We will not commit major or minor sins, or if we do, we will repent immediately. We are being initiated into the Chishti, Naqshbandi, Qadiri, and Suhrawardi orders at the hands of Khalil Ahmad.”36
How much these mass initiations transformed those who underwent them is impossible to say. But the pledge itself speaks to a continuity not only between Deobandi reform and organized tabligh, but also organized tabligh and Deobandi Sufism. Regardless, Ilyas turned his revival efforts into a formal program, founding the Tablighi Jama‘at in 1927. From the beginning, his focus was on reinvigorating the piety of Muslims, especially those, like the Meos, whom he believed were weighed down by un-Islamic customs and beliefs. He developed a program that became known as the Six Points (che batein): first, correctly pronouncing and understanding the meaning of Islamic testament of faith (kalima tayyiba), which cultivates a “passion” (jazba) for fulfilling the commands of God; second, learning to pray (namaz) correctly and with reflection, which brings one’s “entire life” (puri zindagi) into conformity with the commands of religion; third, the pursuit of religious knowledge (‘ilm) and recollecting God (zikr) at all times; fourth, respect for other Muslims (ikram-i muslim); fifth, purification of intention (ikhlas-i niyyat)—that is, doing all things solely for the pleasure of God and desire for the afterlife; and sixth, freeing up one’s time (tafrigh-i waqt) for the task of reforming others.37 The methodology of the program centered on the preaching mission (gasht; lit., “going round”), which participants are called to do with a troop (jama‘at) one night a week, three nights a month, forty days a year, and for one hundred twenty days once in a lifetime.
For Ilyas, the question as to the fate of the shepherd in the narrative above points to an enduring ambivalence at the heart of the Tablighi mission, at least at its origins. How would this new movement position itself vis-à-vis the Deobandi ‘ulama from whose reformist project it emerged? Would these ‘ulama engage in tabligh alongside the untrained, unlettered masses? Would they merely advise? Or would they remain aloof entirely? Many scholars have assumed that the Tablighi Jama‘at emerged seamlessly from Deobandi discourses. It did emerge from them, to be sure, but it was hardly seamless. The tension I explore here came to a head when an array of ‘ulama decided that too many unqualified members had been permitted to give public speeches. The movement’s leader at the time, Ihtisham al-Hasan, was concerned upon reading, in 1967, that Qari Muhammad Tayyib had said that the “current form of tabligh at Nizamuddin,” headquarters of the movement, “is not in accord with the Qur’an and Hadith, nor in conformity with the maslak of the true ‘ulama.”38 We will see, at the end of this chapter, how Tayyib ultimately came around to being one of the movement’s most fervent supporters.
The latter part of this chapter argues, first, that Muhammad Ilyas sought to push the boundaries of what roles the ‘ulama should have among newly mobilized Muslim publics, which necessarily also became a rearticulation of ‘ulama authority and an expansion of the spaces where that authority staked its claims. It argues, second, focusing on Thanvi’s reactions to the movement, that initial misgivings among the ‘ulama about mass tabligh gave way to a more sanguine position that saw the task of moral reform outweigh concerns about the movement’s methodology. Thanvi saw lay preaching as an opportunity to advance a program of Islamic reform in public contexts. But I will argue, along the lines we have seen throughout this book, that in projecting their authority in lay venues, the ‘ulama compromised that authority in the very act of extending it. The ensuing debate coalesced around the management of this tension—namely, how to engage the masses in doing what traditionally only the ‘ulama did without undercutting the very reason for their existence. The Tablighi Jama‘at, then, is an embodiment of Deoband’s sociology of public knowledge: the masses should know just enough to fulfill their core Islamic ritual duties, but not so much that they publicly debate religious topics beyond the purview of their expertise.
To begin with Ilyas’s views on the ‘ulama, Ilyas advanced the view that the dual spaces of Deobandi reform—the madrasa and the khanqah, the seminary and the Sufi lodge—had become too insular, incapable of competing with other forms of newly mobilized public religiosity. An abiding dissatisfaction with the reach of both is part of his own self-narrative. As he describes it, he began teaching at Mazahir al-‘Ulum in Saharanpur but quickly grew disillusioned with the fact that his students became mere ‘ulama—invested in the vocation but not in its spirituality. “After they studied with me,” he said, “they would become ‘ulama and choose occupations like those that are common nowadays. Some would study medicine [tibb] and then open clinics, some would take a university examination and work in a school or college, some would remain in the madrasa for additional studies, and nothing else beyond this. Upon reflecting on this, my heart recoiled from madrasa teaching.”39 Having become dissatisfied with the madrasa as an institution for developing the ethical character of students, Ilyas then attempted to achieve this through Sufism. He relates how his disciples progressed rapidly on the Sufi path, but soon people began coming to him seeking amulets to ensure a pregnancy, or prayers for success in a court case, and so on. “Upon reflection, my attention turned from this as well,” he said. “I determined that the proper way to use the internal and external [batin aur zahir] capabilities that God has given us is to use them toward the work for which the Prophet used his own capabilities, and that work is to bring others toward God. . . . This is our movement.”40 But he added, “If this work is done, a thousand times more madrasas and a thousand times more khanqahs will be established, and every Muslim will in fact become an embodiment [mujassam] of a madrasa and khanqah.”41
What is he attempting to do here? Why
transcend the madrasa and khanqah only to return to them? Much like the Deobandi reformist project as a whole, Ilyas attempted to unite madrasa education and a disciplined Sufi ethics, orienting both around discourses of self-reform (islah). Ilyas saw Sufi ethics and Islamic law converge in the very bodies of individual Muslims. This is, of course, precisely why he made the acquisition of knowledge (‘ilm) and the typically Sufi practice of recollecting God (zikr) key components of his “Six Points” and saw them working in tandem.
It was, then, Ilyas’s vision literally to mobilize Deoband’s reformist project; not everyone, he says, can attend a madrasa or study at the feet of a Sufi master. The question then becomes how one can combine these two forms of disciplinary self-formation into a single body and render that body mobile. Ilyas saw the bodies of the ‘ulama as living instantiations of the knowledge transmitted from the Prophet—affect that can, in turn, be transmitted to the lay Muslims who spend time with the ‘ulama and then be transmitted to others, for, as he says of the ‘ulama, “their bodies [ajsam] carry forth prophetic knowledge [‘ulum-i nubuwwat].”42 In other words, the bodies of the ‘ulama link Deobandi tradition across space, just as their transmission of the Sunna binds them through time. For the Tablighis, the affectivity of bodies in motion becomes replicable through the process of revival itself. This is not unlike the relationship between self and world that J. Michelle Molina adroitly reconstructs in her study of early modern Jesuit missionaries, whose practices of disciplinary introspection compelled them to go into the world to replicate those experiences in others—a “devotional labor undertaken to control the passions [that] simultaneously activate[d] movement.”43
Other Deobandi scholars, Mahmud Hasan Gangohi (d. 1992) foremost among them, vigorously defended the notion that the Tablighi Jama‘at provided a service to the faith that the madrasa and khanqah alone were simply unequipped to provide. In the next chapter, Mahmud Hasan Gangohi will become crucial for understanding the spread of the Tablighi Jama‘at to South Africa. Born in 1907 in Gangoh, he graduated from Deoband in 1930, where he studied Hadith under Husain Ahmad Madani.44 He became interested in Sufism from reading Thanvi’s Qasd al-sabil (The purpose of the path; discussed in chapter 4), and became a Sufi disciple of Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlavi, who would later make Gangohi a khalifa (one authorized to initiate others).45 By 1964 he was appointed chief mufti at the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband,46 and in 1966 he became rector of Mazahir al-‘Ulum Saharanpur.47 Gangohi made numerous visits to South Africa for the purpose of lecturing and accepting Sufi initiations, making an extended stay from 1984 to 1986.48 His Sufi initiates have included major South African Deobandi scholars.49
Mahmud Hasan Gangohi was involved with the Tablighi Jama‘at from its inception, accompanying Muhammad Ilyas on some of his initial preaching expeditions in Mewat.50 Gangohi appealed to Qari Muhammad Tayyib when Tayyib was still skeptical of the group, eventually converting him to the movement and persuading Tayyib to speak before a Tablighi gathering in Saharanpur.51 He aligned the mission of the Tablighi Jama‘at in the same tradition of public engagement that Thanvi advocated for the ‘ulama, identifying the Tablighi gathering as a third site, after the madrasa and the khanqah, for disseminating religious knowledge and fashioning moral selves. Mahmud Hasan Gangohi saw the organization as providing reform to those who do not have the time or inclination to attend a seminary or sit with a Sufi master:
The fundamental point is that learning religion [din] is required of everyone. To this end, books are written and published, seminaries are established, a syllabus is formulated for them and its system of study is arranged, Sufi lodges are established, preachers are provided to lecture at gatherings, and libraries are founded. Various methods are chosen to make it easy to acquire religion, on the condition that none of them violates the Shari‘a. One of these is the Tabligh Jama‘at. Not every person is able to acquire the religion from a seminary, nor does every person have time to read through an entire syllabus, nor does every person even have the intellectual capacity to do so. The same situation applies to the Sufi lodge. Not every person is able to acquire religion through books. . . . Among the countless Muslims, how many are able to benefit from the seminaries and the Sufi lodges? And those who benefit from gatherings and sermons are even less in number. Irreligiousness [be dini] is so prevalent that it was necessary to find a method of promoting religion that could also be both prevalent and simple.52
At the same time—again, showing Thanvi’s imprint—Gangohi said the Tablighi Jama‘at cannot replace the ‘ulama, and in fact, “those involved in the tabligh parties have a responsibility to grant the utmost respect to the seminaries and the Sufi lodges and to consult with them in their own reform [islah].”53
But surely the model was based on something of a paradox: Ilyas made it clear that the movement was needed precisely because many people no longer had the time or initiative to attend a seminary or take initiation with a Sufi master. Yet somehow those participating in tabligh were meant to “embody” the madrasa and khanqah. Would he or she not then embody only an incomplete or attenuated form of those institutions? His solution to this problem, albeit a tenuous one, was to have participants visit the seminaries to seek guidance of the ‘ulama, even with the understanding that they might be turned away.54 Thus he admonishes, “Even if the ‘ulama do not show interest in the work of tabligh, do not cast suspicions on them, but realize that they have not yet fully grasped the nature of this work.”55
He seems, then, to have understood the epistemic limits of his organizational model. The core mission of tabligh, he said, would be to instill in individuals a zeal for religious knowledge, which would in turn compel them to seek out the ‘ulama. But the ‘ulama must be taught to anticipate these roving bands of pietists. Thus, he states, “the ‘ulama are to be told that this work attempts only to instill the desire for religion among the masses and prepare them to learn it. Only the ‘ulama and the reformers [sulaha’] can provide further instruction and training in it.”56 This effort would not only compel lay Muslims to seek out the ‘ulama, but would also persuade the ‘ulama to adopt a more public role, to emerge from what Ilyas saw as the confines of the madrasa and engage with the public directly.57 In some sense, then, Ilyas’s view was the mirror image of Thanvi’s: whereas Thanvi spent much of his career attempting to convince lay Muslims to take charge of their own salvation in seeking religious knowledge but to consult with the ‘ulama at every step, Ilyas spent much of his career attempting to convince the ‘ulama to take seriously his movement of lay piety, which must have appeared to many ‘ulama as dangerously, if not brazenly, independent of them.
As late as 1944, in a speech to a group of ‘ulama in Delhi, Ilyas still framed his work in terms of ‘ulama opposition, even at this comparatively late point in his career. Even though, as he puts it, “it has been my burning desire to explain my mission” to the ‘ulama, “this desire has so far remained unfulfilled.” The ‘ulama still prefer “to stand aloof.”58 The dominant rhetorical trope in this speech, as in others, is that this “religious work” is nothing new. He is, in fact, seeking to offset the novelty of this particular form of organized proselytization by declaring it a mere return to the prophetic pedagogy of the Prophet’s Companions. That is, what appears to be new is in fact very old indeed.
So far, we have explored how Ilyas viewed the ‘ulama generally. How did Ilyas view Thanvi? And how did Thanvi view Ilyas’s fledgling movement? Thanvi was, in fact, the one scholar whose blessing Ilyas desired more than any other. It was his “heart’s desire” for his movement that “the teachings be [Thanvi’s] and the method of tabligh be mine, so that thereby his teachings may become well known.”59 By this point, Thanvi was the most authoritative Deobandi scholar of the interwar period, and Ilyas knew that Thanvi’s imprimatur would give the movement the impetus it needed. Thanvi’s own reformist literature was used by llyas and others early in the movement, and indeed, we know from the biographies of scholars such as Masihullah Khan
Sherwani that numerous students read Thanvi’s reformist texts at the feet of Ilyas.60
Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi had been engaged in tabligh efforts of his own in the early 1920s. He came to Mewat in 1922, even provisionally encouraging celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday under the assumption that such practices would ease the transition into a more “orthodox” Islam.61 Thanvi soon thereafter published Islahi nisab (Reformist program), a series of short primers aimed partly at engaging the ‘ulama in teaching the masses and partly at engaging the masses toward acquiring religious knowledge. What is noteworthy about these efforts is that they are ‘ulama-led. He shared Ilyas’s view that the ‘ulama had to become more publicly engaged; where he differed, at least initially, was in how to involve lay Muslims in this project of reform. Thanvi believed that, for one, only the ‘ulama should engage in organized preaching. The Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband itself had, as of 1910, made this a part of its overall training of ‘ulama, establishing a department of preaching (tabligh) to counter Hindu proselytization, especially among the Arya Samaj.62 Thanvi’s initial response to rumors of organized tabligh was accordingly harsh; he called the efforts a “new fitna.” If they were not even ready to listen to the ‘ulama, he said, how could they possibly be ready to do the work of tabligh themselves?63 Ilyas later sent a group of Tablighis to Thana Bhawan to visit Thanvi and seek out his approval, and as numerous sources rather triumphantly report, Thanvi declared, “If one wanted to see the Companions of the Prophet, one should see these people [i.e., the Tablighis].”64 What prompted this change?
Revival From Below Page 22
