Tablighi Jamaat in Mewat-4 Partition, Mewat, Islamisation and the Tabligh
By Yoginder Sikand
Partition, Mewat and the Tablighi Jamaat
In 1944, when Ilyas
lay on his death-bed, he called a group of six close disciples and asked
them to choose his successor from among several names he suggested.
After much discussion they decided upon Ilyas' son, Maulana Muhammad
Yusuf, as his successor, even though there were more capable and
experienced people available and despite the fact that Yusuf had shown
very little interest in his father's work, preferring scholarly pursuits
to active involvement in the Tablighi Jamaat. Yusuf, it is said, was
'hesitant, or rather averse, to meeting people who did not conform to
the Shari’ah', such as were most Meos, and that because of this 'he did
not appear to be the proper man to succeed Ilyas' (S.A. Haq 1972:158).
Yet, he was chosen as the next Amir of the Tablighi Jamaat because Ilyas
finally intervened to say that, 'Yusuf can attract far larger number of
Mewatis than anyone else can' (Hasni 1989:205). The leadership question
thus came to be decided not on the basis of personal qualities or
merit, but because, being llyas' own son, Yusuf would be seen by the
Meos as the rightful inheritor of the post of Amir.
After having been
installed as the new Amir of the Tablighi Jamaatin 1944, Yusuf resumed
the work of his father and began touring the Mewati countryside in an
effort to further galvanise the movement. Such tours soon became a
regular feature, and Yusuf now made it a rule that all those who came to
Banglewali Masjid In Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin in New Delhi for Tabligh
should spend a few days doing missionary work in Mewat. In several of
his own tours of Mewat, mass initiation ceremonies were conducted at
which large numbers of Meo men, clutching Yusuf s spread-out turban,
solemnly undertook to accept their new leader. The reportedly
enthusiastic participation of many Meos in these ceremonies cannot be
attributed simply to a sudden change in their religious beliefs. Rather,
association with a charismatic leader like Yusuf, and participation in a
movement like the Tablighi Jamaat, was valuable because of the crucial
social functions that they served. Thus, for instance, at the village of
Churgadhi in Bharatput, when, during a mass initiation ceremony, Yusuf
asked the Meos to repeat after him that they would renounce stealing,
they all at once dropped the turban-cloth from their hands, exclaiming,
'But that is our profession!' (W. Khan 1988:72-73)
Crisis of 1947
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