Introduction
The issue of minority rights and status in Pakistan has become a major focus both of academics and human rights groups as a result of state-sponsored Islamization and social activism.Footnote 2 Most scholars, with just a few notable exceptions,Footnote 3 have focused on the exclusionist discourses of Sunni sectarian groups, which trace their roots to the Zia-ul Haq era, and to regional political developments centred on Afghanistan and Iran.Footnote 4 This article argues, however, that exclusionist discourses can be traced beyond the early years of the Pakistani state, to the Islamic activism in colonial Punjab. The divisive rhetoric of the Khatam-e-Nubuwwat movement, it suggests, is an important precursor of later exclusionary discourses. Besides, Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, far from being a matter largely confined to theologians, assumed remarkably charged political overtones in 1949. This article will argue that this switch—from the theological to the political—began with the emergence of Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam in 1929–1930, and culminated in a powerful religio-political movement after the passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949.
While most literature on anti-Ahmadi polemic and mobilization has focused on the post-1953 period, much less has been written about the movement before that year, and still less on the institutional and ideological continuities that have bound this discourse together for more than a century. Admittedly, Asad Ahmed has provided some of the pre-history of Ahmadiya exclusion, but only as a background to contextualizing his core theme of blasphemy.Footnote 5 The theme of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat figures only tangentially in his otherwise quite insightful analysis. Similarly, Sadia Saeed brings into focus the interface between the Pakistani state and the Ahmadiya community, and traces the evolution of the state's policies—from accommodation in 1953, to exclusion in 1974, and to criminalization in the 1980s.Footnote 6 Since the focus of her inquiry is into the nation state and the peculiarities of Pakistani nationalism, Khatam-e-Nubuwwat as an instrument of exclusion appears in her work only obliquely, leaving a tangible vacuum that this study intends to fill. While other scholars, including Mariam Abu Zhab, Qasim Zaman, and Vali Nasr have delved deeply into sectarianism, they have not shed light on the exclusion of the Ahmadiya, and the pre-histories of this exclusionary discourse is absent from their otherwise insightful studies.Footnote 7
The institutions and campaigns generated by Khatam-e-Nubuwwat provided the training ground for activists who were later to turn their attention from its main target—the Ahmadiya community—to other minority communities. The ‘pre-history’ of sectarian exclusionism is thus bound up to a much greater extent with Khatam-e-Nubuwwat than has been previously considered.
The concept of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat (the Finality of the Prophethood) is one of the five fundamentals on which the theological edifice of the Islamic faith rests. It derives validity not only from the Quran and Hadith (tradition of the Prophet) but also from ijmah (consensus of the Islamic scholars, ulema). The tenuous relations between Ahmadis and other Muslim sects relate to the status of Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), the founder of the Ahmadiya community. He claimed to be a prophet (nabi) and this claim, according to some Muslims, puts him completely outside the Islamic fold. A generally accepted Hadith states that the number of prophets sent by God for the guidance of humanity is one lac (100,000) and 24,000, and the Prophet Muhammad is believed by Muslims to have been the last of the prophets. The doctrine of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat is based on the belief that prophethood (nubuwwat) ceased with the death of the Holy Prophet and that no new prophets will appear thereafter.Footnote 8 None other than Muhammad Iqbal endorses this view in no uncertain terms when he says, ‘No revelation, the denial of which entails heresy, is possible after Muhammad. He who claims such a revelation is a traitor to Islam.’Footnote 9
The last few decades have witnessed a huge corpus of literature on Khatam-e-Nubuwwat being produced in Pakistan. Devoted anti-Ahmadi polemicists and activists like Yousaf Ludhianvi, Tahir Abdul Razzaq, Allah Wasaya, and Mateen Khalid, who belong to a new generation of scholars, published extensively on Khatam-e-Nubuwwat in the 1990s and 2000s. Allah Wasaya's voluminous work Tehreek-i-Khatam-i-Nubuwwat merits particular acclaim and recognition. Shorish Kashmiri, a devout anti-Ahmadi activist, orator, and literary stylist has also put together a history of the movement (with the same title), which is a worthwhile contribution. Some of the noted Deobandi ulema from the old guard, such Ashraf Ali Thanvi (1863–1943), Shabbir Ahmed Uthmani (1889–1949), and Muhammad Shafi (1897–1976), also put pen to paper in support of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat. The impetus to produce anti-Ahmadi disquisitions came from the stoning to death of an Ahmadi, Ne’matullah Khan, on 31 August 1924 and the subsequent executions of Abdul Haleem and Nur Ali for the same reason, in Kabul on 12 February 1925.Footnote 10 These incidents stirred a debate in India on the punishment of apostasy. To justify the execution of the Ahmadis in Kabul, Uthmani wrote a pamphlet ‘As Shahab lr Rijam al Khatif al Martab’, initially published in 1926, which later on became the principal document for the operatives of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat.Footnote 11 While underscoring the primacy of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, these treatises, without exception, disdainfully dissected, fiercely critiqued, and denunciated the Ahmadiya community, accusing it of flouting that central tenet of Islamic faith, thus branding its members kafirs (infidels).
In addition, the weekly magazine, Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, and the monthly, Laulak, are regularly issued from Hazuri Bagh Multan and serve as effective instruments to exhort Muslims regarding the finality of prophethood and, concomitantly, to vehemently deprecate the Ahmadiya faction. Most pithy and profound is the tract by Muhammad Iqbal, Islam and Ahmadism. He explicates the concept of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat in a scholarly fashion. All of these sources as well as the Tarjman ul Quran and the monthly Naqeeb-e-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat will be used extensively in this article.
Some sources used in this study that are favourably disposed to the Ahmadiya faction are Yohanan Friedmann's Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmedi Religious Thoughts and its Medieval Background and Spencer Lavan's The Ahmadiyah Movement: A History and Perspective, which have become classic accounts of the Ahmadiya. The works of Antonio Gualtieri and Simon Ross Valentine also form an important part of the source material, used to make sense of Ahmadiya exclusion in Pakistan. In addition, the voluminous Tarikh-i-Ahmadiyyat by Dost Muhammad Shahid and Swaneh Fazl-i-Umer by Abdul Basit Shahid are extremely important sources that have scarcely been employed.Footnote 12
Despite numerous counter-narratives from its detractors, the Munir Report remains the most authoritative source for the Ahrar–Ahmadiya clash.Footnote 13 Therefore, it is extensively cited in the section that deals with the 1953 Anti-Ahmadiya Movement. In the early part of this article, the emergence of the Ahmadiya Movement is analysed, followed by the response of Ulema-i-Ludhiana and other Deobandi scholars. However, to provide a proper perspective to the narrative, it is necessary first to give a brief overview of the climacteric situation in post-1857 India.
Background: nineteenth-century exegetical controversies and the advent of the Ahmadiya
The catastrophic denouement of the Mutiny in 1857 led the Muslim intelligentsia to the vexed question of how their co-religionists could be steered out of a ‘fatal shroud of complacent self-esteem’Footnote 14 that threatened to engulf them in a new political dispensation. Two contrasting responses emerged, which may be termed ‘traditionalist’ and ‘modernist’. Both of them worked for what Christopher Bayly terms an ‘ameliorative change’ among the Muslims in their own respective ways.Footnote 15 Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1818–1898) was in the vanguard of the modernists.Footnote 16 He worked hard to persuade his co-religionists to forsake the oppressive ‘edifice that centuries of “sterile” scholasticism’, ‘blind’ imitation’ of earlier authorities, and the ‘intransigence’ of the religious specialists (ulema) had built. The establishment of the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh in 1877 was an attempt on his part to enable them to engage with the British, not through confrontation but cooperation.Footnote 17 He ventured to reinterpret the foundational texts of Islam in the light of liberal rationality, and his exegesis of the Quran—‘Tafsir ul Quran’—is a case in point.Footnote 18 Other Muslim bridge-builders, as Peter Hardy calls them, were Abd al-Latif (1828–1893), Syed Amir Ali (1849–1928) in Bengal, and Chiragh Ali (1844–1895) who worked to bring about a rapprochement between Islam and ‘the nineteenth-century Western-dominated world’.Footnote 19
The response from the traditionalists, trained at the Dar ul Ulum Deoband, established in 1867 in Deoband, a town in Saharanpur district, by Qasim Nanotvi and Rashid Ahmed Gangohi,Footnote 20 was antithetical to what Sayyid Ahmed Khan subscribed to. They resorted to a more literal exegesis of the religious text, thus establishing the primacy of religious tradition, steeped in the thoughts of Shah Walliullah (1703–1762) and Shah Abdul Aziz (1746–1824). The literalists—Deobandis and Ahl-i-Hadith—professed the revival of Islam in its pristine form through the means of what Barbara Metcalf terms ‘tajdid’—‘the process of renewal and specifically commitment to the ways of Prophet’.Footnote 21 They required the elimination of deviationist accretions that had engulfed their belief system; only then, they believed, could the past glory of the Muslims be restored. That was the hermeneutic setting in which a third viewpoint became manifest. This was suffused with a tangibly different, yet, according to Antonio Gualtieri, ‘highly conservative’Footnote 22 representation of Islamic faith.
The new exegesis propounded by Ghulam Ahmad marked an extraordinary deviation from the accepted belief system of the Muslim umma. Francis Robinson epitomizes the major difference between Ghulam Ahmad and other ‘Sunni’ Muslims in three points: Ghulam Ahmad’ s insistence that ‘the only appropriate Jihad was not war but missionary work’; his claim to be ‘the resurrected Jesus’ in contravention of the New Testament and the Quran; and his repudiation of the finality of prophethood.Footnote 23 The last of his claims was deemed, as Leonard Binder states, not ‘merely heresy, but [as] an insult to Muhammad’.Footnote 24 The Ahmadiya creed, in the words of Cantwell Smith:
arose as a protest against Christianity and the success of Christian proselytization; a protest also against Sir Sayyid Ahmad's rationalism and westernization; and at the same time as a protest against the decadence of the prevailing Islam. It combined a purifying spirit of orthodox reform, a tinge of the new liberalism, a mystic irrationalism, and the authoritarianism of a new revelation.Footnote 25
This theological episteme, imbued with questionable claims and proclamations, generated a scathing reaction, initially from the ulema of all hues. The most offensive of all was Ahmad's claim to be a prophet. Paradoxically, he also claimed to have reposed his solemn faith in Muhammad as the seal of the prophets. To lend authenticity to that claim, he reinterpreted the Quran as follows: ‘Muhammad would have two manifestations: one of majesty in the name Muhammad and a second of beauty through a reflection of him in the name of Ahmad.’Footnote 26 In addition, he differentiated between the Prophet as lawgiver (Rasul) and prophets as revivers of religion (nabi), who would continue to appear, and whom Asad Ahmed calls ‘derivative prophet[s] in the sense that [their] prophetic attributes were derived from the Prophet Muhammed’.Footnote 27 Thus the chain of prophets will never cease. Zafarullah Khan, while giving the term ‘finality’ an Hegelian twist, maintains that ‘(Finality) in the sense that the term is used in the Quran refers to the perfect manifestation of an object, that is, its final form. Therefore, in no way can Ghulam Ahmad's claim be seen as constituting a threat to Khatam-e-Nubuwwat.’Footnote 28 The claim of being Jesus or the promised Messiah, the Mahdi and the prophet, at the same time, triggered a controversy that ascribed centrality to the Khatam-e-Nubuwwat in the Muslim oeuvre, which is our core concern here. The eschatological difference regarding the advent of Mahdi, as professed by Ghulam Ahmad, provoked Ulema-i-Ludhiana Muhammad and Muhammad Abdullah to issue a fatwa (a verdict by religious scholars) denouncing Ghulam Ahmad as a heretic. This ruling was published as Fatwa-i-Qadirya.Footnote 29
The Deobandi writer, Mujahid Hussaini, stated that, according to one of the Prophet's traditions, the ‘re-incarnation of Messih (Jesus Christ or Hazrat Issah) would come to pass at a place by the name of Ludh’. Hence, Ghulam Ahmad chose Ludhiana for the final announcement of his being Messih ul Maud. The first oath of allegiance also took place there in 1889.Footnote 30 On the first day of the commencement of the Ahmadiya movement in Ludhiana, 12 people pledged their allegiance to Ghulam Ahmad, including Hakim Nur ud Din, the first caliph.Footnote 31 Because of Ludhiana’s proximity to Qadian, the birthplace of Ghulam Ahmad, Ulema-i-Ludhiana learned of Ghulam Ahmad's controversial claims earlier than anyone else, and they responded with verve and gusto. Muhammad Hussain from Batala, a known Ahl-i-Hadith scholar issued a similar fatwa against Ahmadis in 1902.Footnote 32 Ahmad Riza Khan Bareilvi too denunciated Ghulam Ahmad and his followers in Husam al-Haramain ala Manhar al-Kufr wa’l Main (The Sword of the Haramain at the Throat of Kufr and Falsehood) as kafir in 1902, primarily because of Ahmad's claim to be a ‘shadowy’ (zilli) prophet.Footnote 33 Ahmadis could not find favour with the saints or Sajjada Nishins either. Mehr Ali Shah of Golra, Rawalpindi, a prominent Sufi from the Chishti Order, was very conspicuous in condemning Ghulam Ahmad. Usha Sanyal mentions that in 1899 Mehr Ali Shah pronounced Ghulam Ahmad to be an ‘imposter’ in his books Shams-ul-Hidday Fi Isbat-e-Hayatul Masih and Saif-e-Chistiya.Footnote 34 These fatwas formed the basis of unanimity among the leading sects, which forged an alliance many years afterwards by the name of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat (the Association for the Safety of the Finality of the Prophethood).
The emerging controversies surrounding Ghulam Ahmad must be placed in the wider context of late nineteenth-century, colonial Punjab’s ‘cauldron of change’. The region was steeped in religious controversy and polemic. Christian missionary activity by both Capuchins and evangelical Protestants flourished as nowhere else in northern India.Footnote 35 Sikh and Hindu reformist movements, namely the Singh Sabha and Arya Samaj,Footnote 36 sprang up in Punjab to offset the impact of aggressive proselytizing by the Christian missionaries,Footnote 37 who successfully converted a sizeable number of the lower caste and untouchable Hindus. Fears of a community in decline were intensified by the decennial census reports from 1871.Footnote 38 The Arya Samaj launched Shuddhi Footnote 39 as their ritual of conversion.Footnote 40 In fact, all of these revivalist/reformist movements put their energies into becoming a countervailing force against the Christian missionaries to ward off their proselytizing zeal. As Farina Mir argues, although Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim reform programmes varied, all of them had a common objective: ‘to produce a modern religious subject whose identity and religious practices were completely distinct from those of any other religion’.Footnote 41 Similarly, Bob van der Linden sees the pervasive impact of the Pax Britannica on the Punjabi mind as moulding the Islamic, Sikh, and Hindu traditions through modern institutions and practices to redefine themselves into self-contained, mutually exclusive, and, at times, antithetical entities. That exclusivity, in the case of Muslims, had an intra-community dimension which was exacerbated very clearly by the takfeeri (denouncing as apostate) politics of the ulema. The lines, therefore, were clearly drawn between—and also within—the three communities during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
The atmosphere, however, became particularly acerbic when the spectrum of Arya proselytism and conversion through Shuddhi was substantially widened during the 1890s, and other religious communities, particularly the Muslims, felt increasingly challenged. Pandit Lekh Ram's vitriolic engagement with Islam led him into conflict with Ghulam Ahmad from 1885 until his assassination some 12 years later.Footnote 42 The Ahmadiya community was also locked in a conflict with the Christian missionaries and sections of the orthodox ulema.Footnote 43 Ahmad's message was dispersed through two newspapers: the Review of Religions in English and Al Hakam in Urdu. Ghulam Ahmad also wrote tracts, challenged Muslims from the mainstream to munazaras, and toured the provinces delivering lectures and holding debates.Footnote 44
Asad Ahmed, however, suggests that Ahmadi theology and the particular ‘emphasis on proselytization’ was shaped by its encounter with Christian missionaries and their separate enumeration as ‘a distinct Muslim sect was enabled by the census’.Footnote 45 At the time of the 1901 census, Ghulam Ahmad campaigned for his followers to be enumerated separately, as the Ahmadiya sect, claiming that he had 30,000 followers. The government acceded to his wish, even though the number of his adherents was a mere 1,139 in Punjab.Footnote 46 In the next decade, numbers of people of the Ahmadiya faith soared to 18,695, comprising 10,116 males and 8,579 females.Footnote 47 By 1921 the Ahmadi population had increased significantly to 28,816, and by 1931, it had almost doubled to 55,908. However, despite a 94 per cent increase in its followers, the proportion of Ahmadis against the total number of Muslims in Punjab was a paltry 0.4 per cent.Footnote 48 The introduction of religion as a category in the decennial census resulted in the transformation of Indian society from a ‘fuzzy’ social world into an enumerated one, ‘with significantly sharper contours of differentiation’.Footnote 49
The emergent liberal public sphere in Punjab in the last quarter of the nineteenth century thus spawned an atmosphere that reeked of ‘growing fervour, impatience, militancy and turbulence’.Footnote 50 The acrimony impinged on intra-community as well as inter-community relations. Then, on 23 March 1889, Ghulam Ahmad laid the foundation of a distinct community by accepting the oath of allegiance; hence a brotherhood was established on the condition of obeying him unequivocally.Footnote 51 Immediately thereafter, many eyebrows were raised among Muslims in general, primarily because of the Ahmadiya's exclusiveness. This included their refusal to pray in non-Ahmadi mosques, to attend non-Ahmadi funerals, or to marry outside of the community. Thus their ‘internal cohesion’ and ‘extreme self-consciousness as a community’ resulted in ‘deliberately cutting themselves off from the general Muslim community and its problems’.Footnote 52 Hence, more than exegetical differences, the Ahmadis’ social aloofness became the biggest source of antagonism between them and other Muslims.Footnote 53 Another factor that was an irritant between Ahmadis and their detractors was the former's penchant for preaching with the aim of conversion (tabligh). By doing this, Ahmadis were considered to be waging jihad-i-Akbar to bring about a spiritual awakening within others.Footnote 54
Dissension among self-conscious Ahmadiya
Despite the efforts of such leading figures as Muhammad Ali Lahori, the first editor of the Review of Religions (from 1908–1914), and Khawja Kamal ud Din, the Ahmadiya community maintained its insularity from other Muslim sects and factions after the death of Ghulam Ahmed in 1908. These two men presented the teachings of Ghulam Ahmad in a liberal and rational manner. Lahori, in particular, considered Ghulam Ahmad's vision to be in no way contrary to the concept of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, and believed he was ‘but a reflector-prophet’.Footnote 55 Kamal ud Din, one-time imam of Woking mosque, too strived hard to achieve rapprochement between the Ahmadiya and other Muslim sects by asserting that the two communities did not differ in any cardinal principle. The sole difference was that ‘the Ahmadiya had accepted Ghulam Ahmad as the fulfillment of Muhammad's prophecy concerning the appearance of the returned Messiah’.Footnote 56
Only a handful of Ahmadi faithful adhered to the school of thought that subsequently became known as Ahmediya Anjuman-i-Ishaat-i-Islam Lahore, and they were generally referred to as the ‘Lahori’ group. With the death of the first caliph, Hakim Nur ud Din, in 1914, the Ahmadiya community was perpetually divided. The main body of Ahmadis swore allegiance to Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed (1889–1965), the second caliph, as their spiritual leader. He was the son of Ghulam Ahmed, the founder of the Ahmadiya faction, and son-in-law of Hakim Nur ud Din, the first caliph.Footnote 57 The overwhelming majority stuck with the view that ‘Ghulam Ahmad was more than a reflector-prophet’.Footnote 58 Both factions had their respective papers: Paygham-i-Sulh represented Lahoris, while Al-Fazl served as a mouthpiece to Qadianis.Footnote 59 For the next 16 years, there was peace among the Ahmadis and their detractors, primarily because the First World War and the Khilafat Movement were undoubtedly far bigger issues for the ulema than the ‘deviant’ Ahmadis. During these years the latter invested all their energies in community building and proselytizing their creed. The Ahmadiya leader, Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed's 52-year-long tenure served to ‘codify and formalize’ the Ahmadi doctrine.Footnote 60
Ahrar–Ahmadi confrontation (1931–1934)
The era of quiescence drew to a close when a new Muslim movement emerged in Punjab in 1929. Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam believed in agitational politics and was active in the campaign against the maharaja of Kashmir. The other prominent plank of their ideology was their move to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Indeed, as we shall see below, Ahmadi involvement in the movement for Muslim rights in Kashmir intensified the Ahrar's opposition to the Ahmadiya community. The roots of the Ahrar movement can be traced to the abortive Khilafat campaign, when some Punjabi members severed their links with the Central Khilafat Committee and set up a separate organization.Footnote 61 Shorish Kashmiri says, ‘Ahrars were the outcome of [the] Khilafat Movement, ideas of Al Hilal and the pen of Zamindar put together. It was a combination of Anti-British outlook, Love for Islam, Patriotism, hatred for capitalism, enmity with superstition, love for sacrifice . . . Ambition to bring about revolution and enthusiasm for conducting Jihad.’Footnote 62 Animosity towards the Ahmadis provided the glue for a movement that otherwise might have rapidly disintegrated. The main Ahrar figures were such Deobandi ulema as Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, but the organization drew its strength from the lower middle class, urban Muslim population of Punjab. With the advent of Ahrar, the anti-Ahmadiya movement moved from the theological to the political phase.
The first instance of Ahrar–Ahmadiya confrontation started when a Mubahila conference was convened on 19–20 October 1931 in Qadian by ‘some disaffected Ahmadis’: Abdul Kareem and his father, Fazl Kareem. They were allegedly incited by Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam.Footnote 63 These two men brought out a paper with the title ‘Mubahila’, which was unstintingly committed to maligning Ahmadis. The dissension within the Ahmadi ranks was seized on by the Ahrar. Shorish Kashmiri reveals that an organization—the Shan ul Muslimeen in Batala, Gurdaspur District—was established, which took on the Ahmadiya and led to violent clashes,Footnote 64 thus affording a favourable environment for Ahrar to challenge the Ahmadis.
Developments in Kashmir provided the setting for the intensification of conflict. The region figured prominently in the community's traditions, for example, Ghulam Ahmad had claimed in his work, Jesus in India, that Jesus had escaped to Kashmir and died there. According to Ahmad, he had a tomb—Roza bal, at Khaniyar Street—which became ‘a revered site to Ahmadi faithful’, and Kashmir became a centre for missionary activity for Ahmadis.Footnote 65 Long-standing tensions between the Hindu Dogra ruler, Hari Singh, and the Kashmiri Muslim population, which Victoria Schofield describes as ‘the proverbial powder keg’,Footnote 66 exploded in 1931 following the demolition of a mosque in the Jammu town of Riasi, and after ‘the Holy Quran had been found discarded in a public latrine’ at another place.Footnote 67 Denunciations from mosque pulpits, processions, and public meetings ensued, resulting in the killing of 21 people. ‘In terms of casualties and damage to property,’ concludes Ian Copland, ‘it was possibly the most serious communal outbreak in India between the Moplah rebellion of 1921 and the Calcutta riots of 1946.’Footnote 68
The Ahmadiya leader, Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed placed himself at the forefront of the Kashmiri movement as ‘he hoped to put this goodwill to work in his campaign for converts’.Footnote 69 After successfully securing the cooperation of the Muslim notables of different hues like Dr Muhammad Iqbal, Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Khan, Mohsin Shah, and Khawaja Hassan Nizami, the All India Kashmir Committee was constituted on 25 July 1931 at the behest of a Lahore-based lobby group founded by Fazli-i-Hussain. Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed himself became its president and his personal assistant, Abdur Rahim Dard, was its secretary. Mehmud also possessed some important local contacts in Srinagar—notably Jamal-ud-Din, the director of Public Instruction, and Sheikh Abdullah, the emerging Kashmiri leader.Footnote 70 Qadian was made headquarters of ‘the freedom movement’ for Kashmiri Muslims. This was too much for the Ahrars, who were determined that the Ahmadis would not steal a march on them. They organized Jathas (bands of Ahrar volunteers) with the aim of entering Kashmir from Sialkot on 6 October 1931 onwards. The Jathas were detained by the Darbari police. Nevertheless ‘the stream of volunteers kept flowing—2,376 had crossed the border by the beginning of November’.Footnote 71 David Gilmartin notes that the agitation expanded so rapidly that ‘the sheer number of those arrested embarrassed the jail department and forced the opening of special camp jails’.Footnote 72 The Ahrar combined sacrifices for the Kashmiri Muslim cause with a vitriolic exchange of accusations and counter-accusations against the Ahmadis. As a consequence, the latter were forced to withdraw from the forefront of Kashmir politics. On top of it all, Mehmud lost the support of the British on the issue of Kashmir—Ahmadis were deemed ‘inimical to British interests’.Footnote 73 The deportation of two prominent Ahmadis—Zain-ul-Abedin and Bashir Ahmed—at the behest of the British was a clear illustration of the rift between the British and the Ahmadis. Succumbing to this pressure, the Mehmud resigned from the chairmanship of the All India Kashmir Committee in 1932.Footnote 74 The All India Kashmir Committee was reconvened and reconstituted a year later, with Dr Iqbal as its chairman, and this time it was completely devoid of Ahmadi influence.
This development led to a shift in the site of Ahrar–Ahmadiya confrontation. Subsequently Qadian, the Ahmadi headquarters, became the prime focus of the Ahrar's assault. The Ahrar leadership had already instituted the Dawat-o-Irshad on 4 March 1933 with the purpose of raising funds as well as a volunteer corps of 100,000 men to combat the growing influence of the Ahmadiya.Footnote 75 While this grandiose scheme never came to fruition, the Ahrar persisted in their anti-Ahmadiya activities, driven by the latter community's exclusionist course, as exemplified by the setting up of such institutions as Idara-i-Faujdari (Ahmadiya courts). On 22 October 1934 the Ahrar paraded on the streets of Lahore, chanting anti-Ahmadi slogans and appealing to Muslims to boycott the Ahmadi community. Following successful conferences in Batala and Gurdaspur, the Ahrar held a tabligh conference on the outskirts of Qadian at Ragada in the playground of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic High School, in September 1934. The Ahrars not only emphasized the importance of the finality of the prophethood, but also the difficulties faced by Sunni Muslims living in Qadian. Lengthy and eloquent addresses were delivered, including a five-hour tour de force by the Ahrar leader, Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari. He, however, overstepped the mark in expressing his hatred of the Ahmadis,Footnote 76 and his subsequent arrest and conviction generated a wave of popular sympathy for the Ahmadiya community.
In 1935, the populist appeal of the Ahrar waned as fast as it had waxed. The movement lost support because of its unpopular stance at the time of the Masjid Shahid Ganj controversy in Lahore.Footnote 77 That dispute flared up between Muslims and Sikhs over the demolition of the mosque at a time when the Ahrar leadership was preparing for the forthcoming provincial elections. Therefore it did not want to ‘risk imprisonment by joining in an agitation which they rightly believed was doomed to failure’.Footnote 78 Zafar Ali Khan (1873–1956), editor of the influential Urdu newspaper, Zamindar, who once was a central leader of the Ahrar, founded his own organization, Majlis-i-Ittehad-i-Millat, and effectively undermined the Ahrar's political credentials, mostly through the power of his pen.Footnote 79 Despite a few petty frictions, like a controversy over the burial of Ahmadis in the Qadian cemetery in 1936 or, the year after, the Ahrar's campaign to have the Punjab Legislative Assembly declare Ahmadhis non-Muslims,Footnote 80 nothing of any consequence happened between the two groups for quite a some time.
It was not until 1953, and in the very different circumstances of post-Partition Pakistan, that the Ahrar–Ahmadiya controversy re-emerged yet again. Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat began to wage a campaign to have the Ahmadiya faction excluded from the Islamic fold, which was politically motivated, with hardly any call for religious disputation. Partition had triggered mass migrations across the Punjab region. The arrival in Lahore of ulema from both East Punjab and the United Provinces was critically important in pushing the Ahmadi controversy to the centre stage of national politics. The migrants included the top leadership of both the Ahrar and Ahmadiya movements. The latter had moved its headquarters from Qadian to Rabwah,Footnote 81 a small Ahmadi settlement in Jhang District, Pakistan. Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, Taj ud Din Ansari, and Sheikh Hissam ud Din migrated to Khangarh, Muzzafargarh District; Faisalabad; and Lahore respectively. This saw future battle lines redrawn in which the position of the Ahmadiya community would form a focus for the growing attempts by the ulema to Islamicize the new state of Pakistan. However, the Ahrar's opposition to the Pakistan movement meant that they lost their leadership role within the wider Islamic movement and had to renounce politics. From 1949 onwards, the Ahrar were divided into political and proselytizing groups, with the latter focused entirely on Khatam-e-Nubuwwat. At this point it is imperative to delineate the developments leading to the Ahrar's political decline subsequent to Congress and Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind jettisoning it in the political scenario of the 1940s, a subject that will be dealt with in the next section.
The fall of the Ahrar and rise of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat
The Ahrar decline, according to Shorish Kashmiri, began as early as 1931, with the desertion of its founding members such as Zafar Ali Khan and Ghazi Abdul Rehman. It was, however, the Masjid Shahid Ganj affair which began the rot and which was completed by the changes in all-India politics in the 1940s. The demand for Pakistan in Punjab, as elsewhere in India, changed the terms of political discourse.Footnote 82 The Ahrar not only opposed the demand for Pakistan but also became estranged from Congress and Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind. Footnote 83 It tried hard to bounce back to the political mainstream by passing the Hakumat-i-Ilahiyya resolution, but no gains accrued.Footnote 84 That resolution entailed the promulgation of the Islamic system, as ordained by Allah and his Prophet. Hakumat-i-Ilahiyya deprecated any geographical or ethnic solution to the communal problem with which India was presented at that time.Footnote 85 The resolution widened the gulf between Congress and the Ahrar because the latter propounded it instead of lending support to the Quit India Movement in 1942. Languishing in such dire straits, the Ahrar leadership geared up to take a different political strategy after a thorough drubbing in the 1946 elections, which is contextualized in the following paragraphs.
Ahrar opposition to the Muslim League's struggle for Pakistan further marginalized the movement politically. This was demonstrated by its candidates’ poor showing in the 1945–1946 elections. They all lost miserably at the polls. The League's strategy of winning over Deobandi ulema like Shabbir Ahmed Uthmani and Zafar Ahmad Ansari helped it to placate the religious right, usually deemed to be the Ahrar's constituency. On 26 October 1945, the All India Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam was founded in Calcutta,Footnote 86 with an avowed aim to counterbalance the pro-Congress Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, the erstwhile political and doctrinal progenitor of the Ahrar. Shabbir Ahmed Uthmani was its founding president and Sayyid Muhammad Quraysh was elected as its nazim (administrator). Thus a sizeable contingent of Deobandi ulema coalesced around the Muslim League's standpoint.Footnote 87 Idris Kandhalwi, Zafar Ahmad Thanwi, Jamil Ahmad Thanwi, Khair Muhammad Jullundari, and particularly Muhammad Shafi, the grand mufti (jurist) of Deoband, issued fatwa against composite nationalism.Footnote 88 What specifically needs to be underscored here—contrary to the general perception nursed by many, including Hamza Alavi—Footnote 89is that a strong group of Deobandi ulema lent support to the demand for Pakistan.Footnote 90Ulema, though completely devoid of ‘a clear agenda of their own’, nevertheless, under the leadership of Uthmani, had ‘a great deal of leverage with the government’, maintains Vali Nasr.Footnote 91 Through their propaganda, these ulema subsequently became an anchoring force for Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat in its bid against state policy.
Nasr also emphasizes the role of ulema, particularly Uthmani and Maududi, in influencing the content of the Objectives Resolution which was approved by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in March 1949.Footnote 92 The Objectives Resolution also served to offset any possible impact of Jinnah's two speeches, delivered at the Constituent Assembly on 11 August and on the eve of independence on 14 August 1947. The text of the two speeches clearly envisaged a Westminster model of parliamentary democracy for the newly founded state. The Objectives Resolution, as Dieter Conrad maintains, ‘With the benefit of hindsight, today is considered a decisive first step from the ideal of a Muslim national state towards an Islamic state.’Footnote 93 That resolution was purported to bridge the differences between Islamic traditionalists, fundamentalists, and modernists, but it had a tangible exclusionary overtone for the minorities, duly articulated by the Hindu representatives in the Constituent Assembly.Footnote 94 It is important here to draw attention to the fact that the Objectives Resolution was strongly supported by none other than Zafarullah Khan (1893–1985), the first foreign minister of Pakistan and an Ahmadi by faith. He not only voted for it, but vehemently defended its passing into virtually becoming a directive principle of state policy. Concurrently, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan formed the Basic Principle's Committee and it also appointed the Talimat-i Islamia (Islamic Teachings Board)Footnote 95 ‘to advise on matters arising out of Objectives Resolution’.Footnote 96 Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (1884–1953), a known Islamic scholar, was especially invited from Lucknow, India, to head the Board. Thus although ‘a visible public role’ was given to ulema, they had little real power. The eventual fate of the Board might have led Hamza Alavi to conclude that the Board was ‘a façade for the new found religious rhetoric of politicians’,Footnote 97 but future events proved exactly the opposite. The ulema were not at all ready to take a back seat as far as decision-making was concerned.
In these concerns of the ulema about the nature of the constitution, the Ahrar did not figure at all. The newly founded Pakistan came to them as a ‘shock, disillusioned them of their ideology and finished them as a political party’.Footnote 98 In that discomfiting scenario, the Ahrar leadership was busy soul-searching in a bid to draw up a new strategy. Several meetings were convened and, finally, on the occasion of the Ahrar Defense Conference, held in Lahore from 12 to 14 January 1949, Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari announced that the Ahrar was to be bisected into a political party and a religious group with tabligh (preaching Islam) being its singular objective. Bukhari maintained that he was following the wish of his teacher, Anwar Shah Kashmiri, in advocating a non-political, proselytizing body.Footnote 99 Thus Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat came into existence, with Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari as it amir (president) and Muhammad Ali Jullundri as its nazim-i-alla (secretary); Qazi Ehsan Shujabadi, Lal Hussain Akhter, Muhammad Hayat, and Taj Mehmud were other important members.Footnote 100 Taj ud Din Ansari and Sheikh Hissam ud Din were entrusted with the task of managing Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam. The political workers were directed to follow the Muslim League. Thus, as Ayesha Jalal argues, the Ahrars were merely seeking ‘to restore a public image marred by their outspoken opposition to the Pakistan demand’.Footnote 101 Ahrar subsequently canvassed for the Muslim League in the provincial elections which were held in March 1951. Ahrar leaders, however, were visibly incensed over the nomination of three Ahmadis as Muslim League candidates. The situation was salvaged because all three Ahmadis lost in the elections and Ahrar celebrated that day as Yaum-i-Tashakkur (a day of thanks).Footnote 102
The Anti-Ahmadiya Movement of 1953
After delineating the future course for itself, a series of tabligh conferences were held in almost all the major cities of Punjab under the auspices of the erstwhile Ahrar.Footnote 103 On 1 May 1949 at Rawalpindi, and then at Pind Dadan Khan, Ahrar speakers made their first public demand that Ahmadis be declared a non-Muslim minority. As well as distributing anti-Ahmadi literature, ridiculing Ghulam Ahmad and Zafarullah Khan became a permanent feature of these conferences. Shabbir Ahmed Uthmani's scathing pamphlet, As Shahab,Footnote 104 was distributed at the public meetings. The social dislocation in 1953 and leading Punjab Muslim leaders’ attempts to distract attention away from the gathering economic and political gloom provided the ideal circumstances for the Ahrar to regain the limelight and once again spearhead an anti-Ahmadi movement.
The collapse of the Korean War boom had brought widespread suffering and discontent.Footnote 105 Hamza Alavi and Amir Khusro reveal that the overall shortfall of wheat was in the region of 1.5 million tons at the beginning of 1953.Footnote 106 The contentious nature of the relationship between Prime Minister Khwaja Nazim ud Din who, according to Talbot, was ‘a pious but vacillating and indolent figure’ and Punjab's premier, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, provided the immediate circumstances for the Ahrar to stage a political comeback. Alavi's contention that the ‘religious zealots’ were used by ‘cynical political forces’, led by Daultana, to destabilize Nazim ud Din's government at the centre cannot be overruled outright.Footnote 107 In his autobiography, Feroze Khan Noon, the prime minister before the 1958 coup d’état, also places the blame squarely on Daultana because he ‘wanted to get into power in the Centre’.Footnote 108 Ayesha Jalal also underscores that Daultana's ‘Machiavellian calculations’ were implicit in the dramatic policy turns, aimed at ousting Nazim ud Din.Footnote 109 Hence during 1952–1953, the Ahrar, in the guise of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, remained in the spotlight, with one ‘constant’ aim: ‘vehement opposition to the Ahmadis’.Footnote 110 The anti-Ahmadi diatribe conjured up certain stereotypes, which subsequently gained wider currency and virtually helped to establish the Ahmadis as the ‘diabolical other’ among the rest of Pakistani Muslims. Only their levels of indecency and obscenity, as Ayesha Jalal has noted, distinguished one orator from the other. The attacks of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat on the Ahmadiya had five main objectives.
First, Ahmadis were branded as the Khud-Kashta Pauda of the British (that is, a plant) to undermine Muslims.Footnote 111 Ahmadis were portrayed as the product of imperial machinations to carry out its anti-Muslim designs thus making them condemnable. Ghulam Ahmad's rescinding of jihad was held out as a stark demonstration of British-Ahmadi conspiracy against Muslims. The title of Bashir Ahmed's condemnatory book Ahmadiya Movement: British-Jewish Connections is a self-explanatory illustration of such a tendency.
Second, Ahmadis were alleged by the proponents of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat to be Indian agents and hence extremely detrimental to the interests of Pakistan.Footnote 112 This allegation featured constantly in Bukhari's speeches. One of Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed's statements was said to have predicted the annulment of Partition and the eventual merger of India and Pakistan. He purportedly emphasized to the Boundary Commission, in a separate memorandum, that Ahmadis were a distinct entity and therefore they would decide for themselves whether to join India or Pakistan.Footnote 113 They also wanted Qadian to be an open city, like the Vatican. Ironically, these allegations were being levelled by the very Ahrar leadership that had been a trenchant opponent of Pakistan's creation before 1947.
Third, Zafarullah Khan, the first foreign minister of Pakistan, was the central focus of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat's diatribe. He was branded as the lackey of Western powers, who worked incessantly for the advancement of their imperial interests. It was also insinuated that he subjected the entire foreign office establishment to the will of the Khalifa, Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed. Zafarullah was also criticized for purposely not joining in Jinnah's funeral prayer in 1948.Footnote 114 Ahmadis were allegedly being recruited into the Foreign Service with little regard for merit.Footnote 115 Mock funerals of Zafarullah Khan ‘topped the list of local entertainment’.Footnote 116 It was also maintained that Ahmadi officers propagated their religion at their workplaces. Zafarullah Khan, in his rejoinder to this accusation, which was reported in Tarikh-i-Ahmadiyyat, accepted the ‘allegation’ but in an indirect manner.Footnote 117 In light of this, Ahrar leaders urged that Zafarullah Khan be removed as foreign minister and that Ahmadis like Abdullah Khan (Zafarullah's brother) and Muzaffar Ahmad, generally known as M. M. Ahmad, a Pakistani civil servant and a high profile member of the Ahmadiya community, in particular, be removed from key posts.Footnote 118
Fourth, the Ahmadi's desire for Baluchistan to become an Ahmadi province was another point that Ahrar leaders constantly highlighted in their speeches against the former. Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed's address in Quetta on 23 July 1948 was quoted as a testimony of an Ahmadi plan to convert Baluchistan into an Ahmadi province, which was supposed to act as a ‘base’ for further proselytizing of Ahmadism.Footnote 119
Finally, the establishment of Rabwah (established after Partition in 1948) in the Jhang District, Punjab, as the new Ahmadi centre,Footnote 120 was yet another contentious issue which formed a focus for Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat leaders in tabligh conferences. They alleged that Rabwah was handed over to the Ahmadi as a result of a shady deal. Rabwah is a tiny settlement of Ahmadis; spread over 1,034 acres of land, it was purchased by the community for a nominal amount from the government in 1947. Situated on Sargodha Road, five miles from Chiniot on the river Chenab, it is hedged by small, arid hills on three sides. Because of salty water under the surface, this tract of land is not conducive to agriculture. Ahmadi sources attribute the low purchase price for the Rabwah land to this fact.Footnote 121 The lease agreement was ‘hurriedly concluded to afford an opportunity to Qadianis to settle earlier’.Footnote 122 All this was done, it was alleged, at the behest of Sir Francis Mudie, the then governor of Punjab, who was favourably inclined towards the Ahmadiya community.Footnote 123
Inflammatory speeches laid the seeds for violence. Until 1953, there were isolated incidents, but these took on an increasingly brutal character. On 3 October 1950, for example, in Okara, Montgomery District (Sahiwal), 19-year-old Muhammad Ashraf was provoked to such an extent by Ahrar speeches that he murdered an Ahmadi schoolteacher, Ghulam Muhammad. Similarly, in the same month, another Ahmadi, Badar ud Din, was shot dead by Wilayat Khan in Bagh Gowalmandi at Rawalpindi.Footnote 124 Mention is also made in both Ahmadi and non-Ahmadi sources of an army officer, Major Mehmud, who was killed in a singularly brutal manner by a mob in Quetta, which evoked a clamorous response from the Ahmadi community.Footnote 125 Pro-Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat narratives accused Major Mehmud of spying at a public meeting organized by the Muslim Railway Employees Association about Khatam-e-Nubuwwat on 11 August 1948.Footnote 126
Violence became more widespread and political in character. Serious rioting followed the annual meeting of the Ahmadiya Anjuman in Jehangir Park, Karachi, on 17 and 18 May 1952. Indeed, in his autobiography, Zafarullah Khan refers to this particular event as marking the beginning of a state versus Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat confrontation, with dire and lasting consequences for the Ahmadiya community. Khan contends that the event in question brought ulema of divergent sectarian persuasions together—the demonstration of such unanimity on the part of ulema was undoubtedly unprecedented. In that annual meeting, Zafarullah Khan was one of the speakers, despite the prime minister's attempt to dissuade him. His speech was scheduled for 18 May, and special arrangements for the preservation of order were made. His speech was a ‘learned’ discourse on ‘Islam as a live religion’ (Islam Zinda Mazhab Hai). In his speech he underscored the importance of tajdid-i-din (renovation of the original religion) ‘with the view to preserving its purity and originality’. Such a renovator, according to him, was Ghulam Ahmad.Footnote 127 Zafarullah Khan thus sought to bring into the open the debate about the Ahmadiya community's theological position, which had encouraged so much of the character assassination against him. His courage, in the words of Leonard Binder, ‘was matched by the indignation of the Karachi populace. Rioting and destruction of Ahmadi property resulted.’Footnote 128 Rioters were led by a known Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat zealot, Lal Hussain Akhter (died 1972),Footnote 129 and the Shezan Hotel and the showroom of Shahnawaz Motors, both of them Ahmadi concerns, were ransacked. But of lasting importance was an All-Pakistan Muslim Parties Conference held on 2 June 1952 in the Theosophical Hall, Karachi. The invitation for that event was sent by the ulema of all major sects, which in itself had great symbolic importance.Footnote 130 Salman Nadvi presided over the conference. For the first time, three demands were put forward from this platform: that Ahmadis (Qadianis) be declared a non-Muslim minority, that Zafarullah Khan be sacked from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that Ahmadi (Qadiani) officers be removed from all important positions of power.
To achieve the aforementioned objectives, it was decided that an All-Pakistan Muslim Parties Convention would be held. In addition, a Board was also constituted, consisting of 11 members, to make arrangements for the next meeting of the Convention.Footnote 131 That Board met on 13 July at Hashim Gazdar's house and a decision was finally made to invite 14 religious parties to the Convention.Footnote 132 The dates fixed for the Convention were 16 and 17 August.Footnote 133 In the meantime, a Committee for Action/Majlis-i-Amal was set up in Lahore in July, which had 20 members. Abul Hasna'at Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, from Jamiatul-Ulema-i-Pakistan, and Amin Ahsan Islahi, from Jama’at-i-Islami, were its president and vice-president respectively.Footnote 134 The composition of the members of Majlis-i-Amal reveals the emergence of a formidable adversary to state authority, which could count on representation from all the leading schools of ulema.
The question as to why the Ahrar handed over the leadership of Majlis-i-Amal to someone from a Barelwi denomination is quite intriguing.Footnote 135 In one of the issues of the monthly, Laulak, Muhammad Ali Jullundri hints at the strategy whereby not only the support of the majority sect (Barelwis) was secured, but Qadri's efforts were instrumental in seeking cooperation from Mashaikhs and Sajjada Nishins. Footnote 136 In a meeting held on 13 July 1953 in Lahore at Barkat Ali Hall, Sajjada Nishins from Sial Sharif, Golra Sharif, and Pakpattan participated in the persuasion of Qadri. The political clout and the following of Mashaikhs in the rural areas proved vital in spreading the cause of Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, particularly beyond the limits of big cities like Lahore and Karachi. It was only through the Barelwis that Mashaikhs and Sajjada Nishins could be catapulted into action against the ‘impermeable’ Nazim ud Din and his government. Therefore, it was indeed an extremely sagacious move on the part of Ahrar/Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat to hand over the reins of Majlis-i-Amal to a Barelwi stalwart.Footnote 137
To secure acceptance of their demands, Majlis-i-Amal decided to meet with Nazim ud Din on 21 February in order ‘to convince him of the justice of the demands’.Footnote 138 However, despite several meetings, the outcome was distinctly disappointing for the member of Majlis-i-Amal. Nazim ud Din remained steadfast and said:
. . . the question [of] whether Ahmadis should be declared a non-Muslim minority was for the Constituent Assembly and that he was not willing to make any move in that direction. Chaudhary Zafrullah Khan, he said, had been appointed by the Quaid-i-Azam himself and therefore he would not remove him. As regards the removal of Ahmadi officers from key posts, he pointed out that the deputationists will have to make out a case on the merits.Footnote 139
Mortified by the outcome of their meeting with Nazim ud Din, Majlis-i-Amal decided to chart a course which inevitably culminated in confrontation with the state. In the meeting of the central Majlis-i-Amal, held in Karachi on 26 February 1953, the decision to hold peaceful rast iqdam (direct action) was unanimous.Footnote 140 The strategy devised for the direct action was that five volunteers, holding placards with demands written on them, would go to the prime minister's residence, and if they were arrested, Majlis-i-Amal would send another batch of five volunteers, and ‘this was to continue till the demands were accepted’.Footnote 141 The governor-general's house was also to be picketed to dispel any impression that the prime minister from East Bengal was being targeted. It is pertinent to mention here that Jama’at-i-Islami held a divergent view on launching the direct action, as it was a potentially violent method of pressurizing the government. Maududi maintained that the Ahmadi issue would be resolved once the country was Islamized, and resorting to violence would only tarnish the image of Islamic groups and strengthen the opponents of Islamization. The Jama’at members who sat on Majlis-i-Amal sought to temper the Ahrar's violence but when they failed, the Jama’at dissociated itself from Majlis-i-Amal on 26 February.Footnote 142
The news of impending direct action was viewed with alarm by the central government. The figures obtained by the Punjab police—that ‘more than 55,000 volunteers had been enrolled in the province’Footnote 143—added substantially to its worries. The last thing it wanted was disorder in the leading province of West Pakistan. Nazim ud Din decided to convene a cabinet meeting on 26 February 1953 to which he also invited the governor, Khawja Shahab ud-Din, and chief minister, Khan Abdul Qaiyum Khan, of the North West Frontier Province. Inexplicably however, I. I. Chundrigar, Punjab's governor, and the premier, Mumtaz Daultana, did not show up, and in their stead, Muhammad Hussain Chattha, the revenue minister, as well as the home secretary and inspector-general of police came from Lahore to attend the meeting. Eventually, after a hard round of deliberations, spanning two days, the following decisions were taken:
• to arrest all prominent leaders of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat, including Akhter Ali Khan, editor of the Zamindar
• to ban the Zamindar, the Azad (the Ahrar's representative paper), and the Al-Fazl
• to warn Bashir ud Din Mehmud Ahmed to stay put in Rabwah and to abstain from any action that might provoke a reaction or cause excitement
• to stop the movement of volunteers to Karachi by taking action at the stations of embarkation.
In compliance with these decisions, several ulema were detained under section 3 of the Public Safety Act between 27 and 28 February and the batches of volunteers who had set out for Karachi were ‘detrained’. Similarly the Punjab provincial administration tried hard to prevent Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat zealots from reaching Lahore. These pre-emptive measures, and particularly the arrest of the members of Majlis-i-Amal, ‘generated a wave of resentment and lawlessness throughout the province, more specifically in Lahore and the district towns of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Lyallpur and Montgomery.’Footnote 145 The situation vitiated considerably from 2 March onwards as Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat zealots transformed Masjid Wazir Khan into their redoubt, which, at one point, was beyond ‘the pale of law and order’.Footnote 146 As the mosque virtually became the ‘very nerve-centre of activity’ and a ‘bugbear to Government’, the situation was ‘crying for action from 28th February onwards’.Footnote 147 Abdul Sattar Khan Niazi and Abdul Hasna'at Qadri were enthroned on the pulpit and started making inflammatory speeches. On 28 February, Niazi issued a statement, in which he referred to the Khatam-e-Nubuwwat as the essence of Pakistan's ideology and said its violation would amount to betrayal.Footnote 148 In one of his interviews, he divulged that he had a mole in Karachi, who held an important portfolio in the food department and who kept him informed about the moves of government at the capital.Footnote 149 So, at some level, collusion between government officials and Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat leadership did exist. In Karachi, Masjid Aram Bagh was the epicentre of turbulence, and Mufti Umar Naeemi played a similar role to Niazi in Lahore.Footnote 150
The tumult came to a head on 4 March when the Lahore deputy superintendent of police, Firdous Shah, was stabbed to death by a mob and his two junior colleagues were injured. With the situation rapidly deteriorating, the district administration started weighing its options, one of which was to hand the city over to the military. However, on 6 March, a delegation headed by Khalifa Shuja ud Din and Begum Salma Tassaduq Hussain was sent to Masjid Wazir Khan to placate the pro-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat band of clerics who had sought refuge there. But the discussions yielded no results. Instead, Baha ul Haq Qasmi reprimanded Salma Tassaduq Hussain for not wearing a headscarf while entering the mosque, and she was provided with burqa when she returned.Footnote 151
On the night of 6 March, Lahore was placed under the martial law of General Azam Khan, general officer commanding, Lahore. This began the history of military intervention which has been the hallmark of independent Pakistan's development. Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat did not confront the Army and the resistance petered out. Important leaders like Abu Ala Maududi, Abdul Sattar Khan Niazi, and Mian Khalil Ahmad Qadri were apprehended and a military summary court tried the three of them. On 7 May, they were handed down the death sentence on the charges of treason and inciting violence.Footnote 152 The death sentences were subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. Later on, their imprisonment was reduced to just two years. Aziz Ahmed, drawing on Asad Gilani's statement, argues that Nazim ud Din and Chaudhri Muhammad Ali used their influence to prevent Maududi's execution.Footnote 153 Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari and Master Taj ud Din Ansari too were released on 5 February 1954.Footnote 154 The last Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat activist was Hafiz Haider Ali, who was also acquitted on 18 February 1954.Footnote 155 The important fallout of that movement was the dismissal of Mumtaz Daultana and also of Nazim ud Din's ministry on 17 April. Subsequently, the Khatam-e-Nubuwwat Movement was suppressed, but it remained alive at the subterranean level until 1974 when Ahmadis were finally declared non-Muslims when article 260 was included in the 1973 constitution.
Conclusion
Khatam-e-Nubuwwat began to be shaped in the 1880s in the context of the takfeeri fatwas and munazaras between the three major communities of Punjab, including Christian missionaries. Their mutual exclusivity coincided with intra-community dissension among the Muslims, which, as this article has shown, intensified with the passage of time. The issue of representation on the Kashmir Committee created a flashpoint for the conflict between the Ahrar and the Ahmadis. Although the hostility between them simmered down, it never completely evaporated in the late colonial period. With the creation of Pakistan, tensions came to the boil again. That was when Khatam-e-Nubuwwat began to acquire a new salience as a popular discourse, particularly in the urban centres of divided Punjab. The Ahrar leadership used Khatam-e-Nubuwwat as an instrument to regain political legitimacy which it feared it had lost by opposing the Muslim League in the 1946 elections. Thus, Khatam-e-Nubuwwat became a slogan that was used to stir public sentiment to the benefit of Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam. The passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949 not only provided a space for Khatam-e-Nubuwwat in the political arena, but also legitimized Ahrar leaders who invoked it constantly in their militant condemnation of the Ahmadis. The Anti-Ahmadi movement, with Khatam-e-Nubuwwat as its central ideology, reached its apogee in 1953 and almost brought the state to its knees. It was only military intervention that eventually saved the day.
The conventional conclusion drawn from the 1953 Anti-Ahmadi movement, based largely on the findings of the Munir Report, is that it revealed a weakening of the power of the ulema. This, as Kennedy contends, undermined opposition to the adoption of a secular constitution.Footnote 156 Leonard Binder mentions that such personalities as Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman and the new chief minister of the North West Frontier Province, Sardar Abdur Rashid, openly espoused ‘a secular [rather] than a theocratic state in Pakistan’.Footnote 157 Further evidence for the failure of the Khatam-e-Nubuwwat movement is seen in the removal of ministers sympathetic to ulema such as Abdur Rab Nishter and Fazl ur Rehman, and the retention of Zafarullah Khan in the reconstituted cabinet.Footnote 158
However, a careful perusal of the events, and of the Khatam-e-Nubuwwat movement's history, does not fully support this argument. The new policy of ‘accommodation’ towards the Ahmadi community by the state came at a price. Nazim ud Din's ministry fell as a consequence, and Mumtaz Daultana's government in Punjab also met the same fate. But, more importantly, as Farzana Shaikh argues, the events of 1953 ‘set a precedent that significantly enhanced the power of Sunni groups pressing for a sectarian construction of “the Pakistani”’.Footnote 159 Vali Nasr gives Shaikh's assertion added emphasis by stating that the events of 1953 gave extraordinary strength to the various groups and factions of Sunni persuasion, including Jama’at-i-Islami, and, in the process, radicalized them too. Hence they began to exert pressure on the state to acquiesce to ever narrower definitions of being Muslim. In consequence, constitutional rights were reserved for Pakistanis of Sunni denomination only.Footnote 160
The controversy around the contested status of Ahmadis as Muslims remained alive until 1974, and, moreover, as Kennedy argues, they (the Ahmadis) had been put on the defensive by the movement. The Ahamdis, he argues, remained ‘curiously passive throughout’ and ‘that passivity continues to this day’.Footnote 161 Besides, Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat bounced back with renewed vigour (Naqsh-i-Sani, second birth) on 13 September 1954 in Multan as a regular political party, with the ageing Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari as its amir, and Muhammad Ali Jullundri as its nazim-i-Ala.Footnote 162 Immediately thereafter, Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat leaders started demonstrating their prowess in oratory at public rallies across the country. The rally held at Toba Tek Singh right after Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat's second birth was a clear indication that the movement was still alive and kicking.Footnote 163 The establishment of Dar ul Mubaligheen (a school for training preachers) in Chiniot on 27 June 1964Footnote 164 was yet another milestone in the history of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat. All these developments testified to the burgeoning scope of Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat as a highly effective pressure group. In the post-1953 era, the political role and influence of the ulema continued to grow steadily. Not only did they ensure that Ahmadis were excluded from the fold of Islam in 1974, but, subsequently, the legitimacy of sects such as the Zikris, Shias, and Ismalis also became suspect, as they too did not fit into the narrow paradigm of faith inflected by Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat ideology.
