Separatist group Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir banned under anti-terror law

Sumit Singh

New Delhi / Srinagar : In a major step towards controlling terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, the Government of India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued order declaring Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), Jammu and Kashmir, as an unlawful organisation.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued the order in this regard on Thursday. Officials said that its a step that will go a long way in containing radicalism in Kashmir and that it should have happened long ago.

The order states that the government is of opinion that JeI is in close touch with terror outfits and is supporting extremism and militancy in J&K.

Five days back several leaders of the organisation were arrested. On the intervening night of 22-23 February, police and other forces agencies launched mass arrest drive and raided many houses in the Valley wherein dozens of its central and district level leaders have been arrested.

Those detained including Ameer Jama’at Dr Abdul Hamid Fayaz, Advocate Zahid Ali (spokesperson), Ghulam Qadir Lone (former secretary general), Abdur Rouf (Ameer Zila Islamabad), Mudasir Ahmad (Ameer Tehsil Pahalgam), Abdul Salam (Dialgam), Bakhtawar Ahmad (Dialgam), Mohammad Hayat (Tral), Bilal Ahmad (Chadoora), Ghulam Mohammad Dar (Chak Sangran) and dozens more.

The Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir or Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (JIJK) is a cadre-based religio-political organisation in Jammu and Kashmir (J & K), distinct from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (the Indian branch of the Jamaat). The organisation’s stated position on the Kashmir conflict is that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory and the issue must be sorted as per UN or through tripartite talks between India and Pakistan and the real representatives of Jammu and Kashmir.

History

Jamaat activists, based in Srinagar, favoured the state to join Pakistan while at the time most Kashmiri Muslims appeared to have rallied around Sheikh Abdullah. The pro-Pakistan constituency provided a soild base of support for the Jamaat.

During this time an increasing number of educated youth and low and middle-ranking government servants came to be attracted to the Jamaat which established a number of schools between 1947-1952 and an expansion of its activities in the media and mosques.

In 1952 the Jama’at-i-Islami Hind decided to separate its Kashmir branch because of the disputed nature of Jammu and Kashmir. Under the leadership of two committed Jamaat members, Maulana Ahrar and Ghulam Rasul Abdullah, the Jamaat in Kashmir drafted its own Constitution which was passed and accepted in November 1953. In October 1954, at a special meeting held in Barzalla, Srinagar, Sa’aduddin was elected as the President of the organisation by a large majority. The Central Advisory Committee held its first meeting two months later.

Origins of the Jamaat-e Islami Kashmir

Jamaat e Islami Kashmir’s origins lay in the Islamic reformist and anti-Dogra movements in Kashmir. Its progenitors came from middle-class families associated with Sufism and were disillusioned with both the secular politics of the National Conference and the Muslim nationalism advocated by the Muslim Conference. They chose to work for Islam as advocated in the writings of Maulana Maududi.

The first amir of JIJK was Sa’aduddin Tarabali, who was from a family associated with the Sufi mystic of Srinagar, Ahmad Sahib Tarabali. Sa’aduddin Tarabali influenced many Kashmiri men in Shopian, then a political hub, and these men included Maulana Ghulam Ahmad Ahrar who was a member of the Islamic reformist group Majlis-i-Ahrar and also came from a family of Sufi connections and later went on to join Tarabali as one of JIJK’s earliest members. Hakim Ghulam Nabi of Pulwama, who came from a family of Pirs, was another of the earliest members of JIJK.

These men were dissatisfied with contemporary religious practices in Kashmir which they saw as un-Islamic and were also dissatisfied with secular Kashmiri leaders such as Sheikh Abdullah who would win over people’s hearts with Quran recitations but would not follow Quranic teachings themselves.

Jamia Masjid in Srinagar became the location of Jamaat’s weekly meetings as the group distributed Maududi’s literature. The Jamaat expanded its presence from Srinagar to other places in the Valley as Qari Saifuddin and Ghulam Rasul Abdullah undertaking travels to spread the Jamaat’s message. The Jamaat’s first large ijtema was organised in Srinagar in late 1945 which was attended by between seventy and a hundred people including government servants, youth and traders.

Elections and separatist movement

Although the JIJK questioned Indian control over the state it adopted a flexible attitude towards participating in the elections which were held under the framework of the Indian Constitution. This was a tactical compromise as JIJK wanted to employ democratic means to expand its influence and prepare for the gradual acquisition of the government machinery. JIJK justified its participation in the elections as a means to influence the Indian government to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

The JIJK fielded some of its members as independent candidates in the local panchayat elections. It also sponsored some candidates for the 1969 local panchayat elections, which were held on a non-party basis, and some of the sponsored contestants managed to be elected. The emergence of the JIJK as a serious oppositional force to the National Conference reflected increasing alienation of common Kashmiris from the National Conference due to its autocratism and the perception that it had collaborated with India to decrease Kashmir’s autonomy.

The JIJK participated in the 1971 general elections and expected to win some seats. But it failed to win any with charges of widespread rigging. The Central Advisory Committee then decided that JIJK would contest the 1972 elections to the State Assembly. It aimed, through participating in the elections, to challenge the notion that politics and religion are separate.[10] Initially JIJK wished to contest all the State Assembly seats but due to financial constraints contested only 22. Despite its expectation that it would do well it failed to get as many seats as it had hoped due to massive rigging. It won only five seats. The JIJK complained that some of its members were harassed after the elections.

The JIJK still saw its electoral participation in a positive light since it expanded their message to a wider audience and successful JIJK candidates took an active role in the State Assembly by opposing proposed un-Islamic laws, arguing in favour of Islamic alternatives and raising the question of Jammu and Kashmir’s disputed status, arguing that India had failed to conduct a plebiscite in Kashmir as it had promised. In 1975 the JIJK strongly opposed the Indira-Abdullah Accord and considered it a gross violation of UN Resolutions on the Kashmir issue. The group won only one seat in the 1977 election.

Although the 1970s proved to be a phase where the Jamaat’s political strength grew the organisation suffered in 1979. In April 1979 General Zia ul Haq seized power and hanged Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Common perception was that the Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan was behind this event. Consequently, there were massive anti-Jamaat agitations all over Kashmir. JIJK offices and its members’ houses came under attack.

These riots lasted three days and property worth 400 million rupees, belonging to the Jamaat and its members, were either destroyed or looted.

The Jamaat believed that behind these attacks on it were the leftists who were using Bhutto’s hanging to discredit the Jamaat in the Kashmiri society. The Jamaat also blamed some religious leaders opposed to the Jamaat of instigating people to attack it.

The Jamaat later contested the 1983 State Assembly election but failed to win a single of the 26 seats it had contested because of alleged massive rigging.

Increasing anti-Indian protests took place in Kashmir in the 1980s. The Soviet-Afghan jihad and the Islamic Revolution in Iran were becoming sources of inspiration for large numbers of Kashmiri Muslim youth. The state authorities responded with increasing use of brute force to simple economic demands. Both the pro-Independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and the pro-Pakistan Islamist groups including JIJK mobilised the fast growing anti-Indian sentiments among the Kashmiri population.

Although the Jamaat held the view that Kashmir was disputed territory it continued until the late 1980s to insist on using talks, rather than armed insurrection, to resolve the issue. In 1979 Qari Saifuddin said that the JIJK ‘has always desired that the Kashmir issue should be resolved through constitutional means and dialogue’.

In 1980 the Indian Supreme Court sentenced JKLF leader Maqbool Butt to death and large protests took place in Kashmir against this decision. While Butt came to be considered a hero by the Kashmiri masses the JIJK urged restraint. JIJK leaders believed that Butt should be allowed to defend himself but at the same time asserted that they were bound by the Constitution and wanted to resolve issues through democratic methods. The Jamaat disapproved of Maqbool’s resort to arms and did not call him a ‘shahid’ (martyr) although it did express reserved admiration for him.

In 1986 some members of the JKLF crossed over to Pakistan to receive arms training but the JIJK, which saw Kashmiri nationalism as contradicting Islamic universalism and its own desire for merging with Pakistan, did not support the JKLF movement. As late as that year, Jamaat member Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who later became a supporter of Kashmir’s armed revolt, urged that the solution for the Kashmir issue be arrived at through peaceful and democratic means.

The last time the Jamaat contested the elections was in 1987 as part of the Muslim United Front which was fought on the platform of advocating the establishment of rule by the Quran and Sunnah. These elections were rigged.

By 1990 the JIJK and many other Kashmiri groups had changed their position of advocating peaceful struggle and joined with JKLF in advocating the route of an armed anti-Indian revolt. Reasons for this included increasing repression by the Indian state and the realisation that if it did not join the armed struggle it could lose its popularity to the JKLF. The Jamaat was banned in 1990.[32] The Falah-e-Aam Trust was created in 1988 to run JEI schools following a ban on the JIK. Students from the schools were often recruited for arms training in Pakistan and “infiltrated back to carry on their subversive activity” (according to J&K Insights quoted by Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium[33]). In 1989 Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) was adopted as the group’s “militant wing” allegedly under the influence of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. In 1990 a chief commander of HM pronounced HM the “sword arm of the Jammat”.

By the mid 1990s Pakistani support to the JKLF ceased and the Pakistani support was increasingly given to pro-Pakistan Islamist groups including the Jamaat which sidelined the Kashmiri nationalist groups. The participation in the armed struggle proved costly for the Jamaat. The organisation lost hundreds, possibly thousands, of members in counter-insurgency operations by Indian security forces. Consequently, the Jamaat is calling for a political method to resolve the Kashmir issue.