As a teenager, Masoom Muradabadi went to the Ghalib Academy adjacent to the Nizamuddin Markaz, the international headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi, to learn Urdu calligraphy. He could not help but notice men and women thronging the Markaz, leaving the comforts of their homes to devote themselves to learn how to be a good Muslim. Masoom’s uncle, Mohammad Abdul Malik Jamaee, was a founding member of the Jamaat and a close associate of its founder, Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi.
Started in 1927 as an offshoot of the Deobandi brand of the Hanafi Sunni school, the Tablighi Jamaat expanded from local to national to an international movement, but kept its headquarters at the Nizamuddin Markaz. Today, its largest chapter is in Bangladesh, followed by Pakistan. It has more than five crore followers in India. The Jamaat denies affiliation to any particular school of Sunni Islam and says it focuses on the Quran and the Hadith.
Masoom’s life has been shaped by the Markaz, and he still remembers the day he first met Maulana Muhammad Saad Kandhlawi, the current head of the Jamaat. Maulana Saad, the great-grandson of the Jamaat founder, is now in the eye of a storm, and is facing criminal charges of flouting norms of social distancing and leaving thousands of people infected with the coronavirus. When the government declared a nationwide lockdown on March 24 to contain the spread of Covid-19, the Markaz was hosting some 4,000 people, including foreign nationals from a dozen countries. After the three-day exercise of performing namaz at the masjid five times a day, attending lectures, studying verses and the literature of the Markaz, and participating in community eating and living, these missionaries were tasked to fan out to the target areas and pass on the teachings to the faithful.
On any given day, there are around 3,000 people at the Markaz, which has the capacity to house 7,000 in the main, six-storey building. Behind the main building is a single-storey building for women which can house 300. Children and unmarried women are not allowed into the complex. Though more and more women are getting associated with the Jamaat, men still vastly outnumber them.
Those who come to the Markaz bring their own money, ration and bedding. “Activities like sharing food from the same plate are meant to spread love and reduce conflict. For example, if ten people have to eat, there will be only five plates,” said Fardin Maz, teacher at Jamia Millia Islamia and a Jamaat follower. “There is nothing hidden. All activities are in the open.”
Maulana Nur ul Hasan, a relative of Maulana Saad, said the aim of the Jamaat gatherings was to bring humanity together. “The Tablighi Jamaat does not have a membership nor does it take donation,” he said. “These activities have been going on for decades. The Markaz shares its boundary wall with the Nizamuddin police station. It is learnt that the Intelligence Bureau and local sleuths keep a watch on who is coming and going. But they have not found anything suspicious.”
Apart from the missionary bands that travel to various places exhorting people to give up vices and pay regular visits to the local mosques, there are other followers who do not travel but perform the same duties—doctors, engineers, sportspersons, politicians, lawyers and so on. Taking time off their jobs, they talk to their neighbours, targeting the young and the wayward, asking them to visit the mosque regularly. “Once people are drawn there, they are reformed,” said Hasan.
But many Muslim organisations in the country do not approve of the methods of the Jamaat. And even those who have little idea of what it does now treat it with suspicion as images of its followers being chased by the police across states are being widely circulated. The government has filed a case against Maulana Saad and the Markaz administration. The international members are being booked for flouting visa norms. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies are tracing and quarantining them before they can be deported.
“The biggest disservice the Tablighi Jamaat has done to people is spreading fear and trauma not only among the local shopkeepers, workers and visitors in Nizamuddin but also the entire country and across nations,” said Sufi Ajmal Nizami, trustee of the Nizamuddin Dargah, the mausoleum of the Sufi saint Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. “If the government finds sufficient proof of their negligence, then it must take action. The safety and security of the nation comes first.”
For decades, Nizamuddin, and the dargah especially, has been the nerve centre of Sufi culture in India. Nizami said the dargah also had visitors from different parts of the world, but it started following the government orders from March 12 and vacated the premises. “This is where the ideology comes in,” Nizami said. “We differ with the Tablighi Jamaat ideology, which says Muslims should live like the prophet. What about the law of the land? They overlook the fact that 1,400 year-old practices cannot be followed today.”
After shutting down the Markaz, the police have been tracing the Tablighi missionaries all over the country. In Uttar Pradesh alone, 179 foreign Tablighi followers have been found. As many as 24 first information reports have been registered under various sections of the Foreigners Act, the Epidemic Diseases Act and the Disaster Management Act. Prashant Kumar, additional director general of police (Meerut zone), told THE WEEK that most Tablighi followers in Uttar Pradesh came through the porous Nepal border.
There have been reports of Tablighi followers trying to escape from quarantine facilities and misbehaving with health care providers. Kumar said certain behavioural disorders were identified. “But these could be because so many restrictions have been imposed suddenly which can lead to anxiety. Whether it is intentional or due to fear psychosis is difficult to say,” he said. “No arms and ammunition has been recovered from them. Certain fake videos and messages are doing the rounds, and we should not believe them.”
Some followers of the Jamaat had warned Maulana Saad about going ahead with the congregation. Zafar Sareshwala, former chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, told THE WEEK that he had requested Maulana Saad not to have the congregation. He had given similar advice to a breakaway group of the Jamaat led by Maulana Ibrahim Devla and Maulana Ahmed Laat. Though there was no malice involved, there was a grave error of judgment, Sareshwala said.
Followers like Masoom felt that Maulana Saad should be given a fair hearing. “It is obvious that the Tablighi Jamaat head and its managing committee did not take early measures to contain the spread of this disease among its members who came for the congregation. But if they are guilty of this then the police and other agencies of the Delhi government are equally responsible. A thorough inquiry is needed under the supervision of a Delhi High Court judge and whosoever is found guilty must be punished accordingly,” he said.
The inquiries have already begun. The Delhi Police have asked the Markaz administration to explain the functioning of the Jamaat headquarters, its funding and it activities. Intelligence officials in Delhi said that despite the Jamaat’s ban in some countries and the alleged terror links, none of the countries have approached the United Nations to proscribe the outfit as a terrorist organisation. “There is no concrete evidence or proposal to ban the outfit,” said an official.
Also, for the Indian intelligence agencies, the Jamaat’s Delhi headquarters is a peephole to its activities worldwide. It is felt that a crackdown on the Markaz may force the Jamaat to shift its base to Pakistan. “This is a worry,” said the official. “If this happens, then we will lose an asset for gathering intelligence and push the movement towards getting radicalised.”
The episode has thrown an opportunity to the law enforcement agencies. To understand the Tablighis is not difficult, said Maz. He recalled how Maulana Ilyas used to say that “on the platform of Tabligh, we shall discuss the happenings either under the land or above the blue sky”. Probably that is why the Covid-19 pandemic escaped the eye.