Living Hadith in Tablighi Jamaat

Living Hadith in the Tablighi Jama`atAuthor(s): Barbara D. MetcalfSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Aug., 1993), pp. 584-608Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2058855Accessed: 10/05/2010 11:22

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Living Hadith in the Tablighl Jama' at

BARBARA D. METCALF

THE NORTH INDIAN MOVEMENT of spiritual renewal widely known as the Tablighi Jama'at dates from the 1920s and exists today throughout the world. The movement's fundamental goal has been tabl/gh: "conveying," specifically conveying shari'a-based guidance. To this end, it has consistently used vernacular works based on translations of the Qur'an and, especially, hadith in its quietistic work of inculcating correct and devoted religious practice among Muslims. In this use of the vernacular, primarily Urdu, the movement has been heir to over a century of translation and subsequent publication of religious works. These publications, often in inexpensive format, have been produced by the lithographic presses that became especially common in the late nineteenth century. ' As in the Indonesian cases considered in this symposium, the 1930s and early 1940s were a key period for translating and printing influential texts based largely on translation of hadith. In this period, the reformists' printed texts not only reached a larger number of people but were used in new settings as Tabligh institutions evolved. Texts were never meant to stand alone and have always been secondary to practice.

Printed texts in the Tabligh, as in all the cases considered here, not only communicated the teachings of the movements but shaped the organization and

Barbara D. Metcalf is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. I am grateful to many people, above all participants in the Tablighl Jama'at, for dis-

cussions that have contributed to this article. I was able to have many conversations about Tabligh in the course of trips to India in 1990 and to Pakistan and, on two occasions, to Britain in 1991. I have also benefited from three recent workshops: on the Tablighi Jama'at organized by the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies of the Social Science Research Council/ American Council of Learned Societies (convened by James Piscatori at the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, June 1990); "Making Space for Islam," also under the auspices of the Joint Committee (held at the Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University, November 1990); and "Local Interpretations of Islamic Scrip- ture in the Twentieth Century" (convened by John Bowen at Washington University, St. Louis, May 31-June 1, 1991). Thanks to Dr. Khalid Mas'ud for helpful conversations and encouragement throughout, as well as to anonymous readers forJAS.

'For a brief description of early translations, see Metcalf 1982:198-210. That Urdu emerged as a vernacular should not be taken for granted and is not unrelated to British government practices. For issues related to language change in a colonial context, see Fabian 1991.

The Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 3 (August 1993):584-608. C) 1993 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.

584

LIVING HADITH IN THE TABLIGHI JAMA'AT 585

experience of the movement as well.2 To speak of "living hadith," as my title suggests, has a double meaning. Followers attempt to live by hadith but in such a way that they aspire to internalize the written/heard texts to the point that they ideally become, in a sense, "living hadith."

In the texts considered in these articles, we see at least three processes at work. All the translations, particularly the translations or summaries of hadith, construct a framework for authoritative cultural critique and a concomitant generation of self- conscious choice, not only about religious style in some narrow sense but about a whole range of issues of loyalty and behavior in everyday life. Second, the texts are produced in a context of competing modes of cultural reproduction: all seek to drive out alternatives, not only alternative written texts but alternative oral performances, gatherings, and so forth. Third, all the texts, in their very deployment, contribute to constituting community: what, with whom, and when you read them all say a great deal about who you are. This article explores these issues in relation to a collection of pamphlets or tracts (risdla) particularly important for Tabligh, all written by Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhalawi (1898-1982) between 1928 and 1940.

The texts, published in collected volumes since the 1950s, came to be known as the Tablighi nisdb (The Tabligh Curriculum) or the Faza'il-i a'mal (The Merits/ Rewards of Actions).3 Maulana Zakariyya wrote these texts largely at the request of the founder of Tabligh, Mauland Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi (d. 1944), his paternal uncle. A graduate of the theological academy at Deoband and a disciple and successor as spiritual guide to Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (d. 1905), Maulana Zakariyya served as shaikh or head teacher of hadith at the important reformist academy, the Mazahiru'l-'ulium in Saharanpur. The study and dissemination of hadith have been hallmarks of the Deobandi reformers and those influenced by them (Metcalf 1982).

All but one of the books in the collection takes up the faza'il or merits of some practice of 'ibddat, "ritual" broadly construed to mean a range of acts of worship or service to God. The collected volume includes the tracts on the canonical prayer, reading of the Qur'an, repetition of the name of God or other pious formulas (zikr), the fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and charity/pious expenditure.4 Significantly, in

2For the Indian origins of the movement, see Haq 1972, which is based on Nadwi 1948. Troll 1985 provides references to important Urdu sources. Lokhandwala 1971 includes Ziya- ul Hasan Faruqi, "The Tablighi Jama'at" (pp. 60-69); Maulana Said Ahmad Akbarabadi, "Islam in India Today" (pp. 335-39); and Waheeduzzafar, "Muslim Socio-Religious Movements" (pp. 138-42).

3More work needs to be done on the history of publication and translation of these texts. The first collected edition was probably published in 1958. An edition in Urdu from the early 1960s is cited here as "Malik ed." Note that the volumes do not number pages consecutively; each risala begins with page one. Unless noted, English texts quoted are translated from this edition with references to an English edition ("Faizi ed.") given for convenience. The Faiz1 edition is based on a Delhi translation (published as Faza'il-i a'mdl (New Delhi: Idara Ishaat-e-dinyat, 1983) and Teachings of Islam: Tablighi Nisdb No. 1 (Delhi: Dini Book Depot, 1985). Recent editions appear to be replacing the original title, "The Tablighi Curriculum" in favor of the title Fazd'il-i a'mdl, "The Merits of Practice," in order to convey the central teaching that action is a source of blessing/reward. In addition to the writings of Maulana Zakariyya, current editions add such writings as "Six Fundamentals," "A Call to Muslims" (by Maulana Ilyas, 1944), and "Muslim Degeneration and its Only Remedy" (also by Maulana Ilyas): see, for example, the Delhi and New Delhi editions.

4The dates of writing are as follows: Fazd'il-i Qur'dn, 1929; Faza'il-i ramazan, 1930; Faza'il-i tabligh, 1931; Hikdydt-i Sahaba, 1938; Fazd'il-i namaz, 1939; Faza'il-i zikr, 1939. (Note that the English translation of the Fazd'il-i namdz gives the title as the Blessings of Salat. Thus namdz, originally a Persian word and the common term for the canonical prayer

586 BARBARA D. METCALF

addition, one of the pamphlets is devoted to the behavior par excellence of the movement, the transmitting of Islamic guidance known as tabligh: tabligh is thus included among the most fundamental obligations of 'ibadat. The remaining book, the most read and cherished of the texts, is a template for individual and group behavior, the Hikdydt-i sahdba, the Stories of the Companions. All are based on hadith. The Fazd'il-i Qur'dn, for example, is comprised of forty hadith, a number associated with a range of religious observances: in fact, many more hadith are adduced as each of the forty is discussed. In the Hikaydt the hadith-based stories are grouped topically, followed by comments, often signaled by the letter "fe" for fd'ida, the benefit or moral of the story. The sources for the hadith are sometimes cited, sometimes not. Arabic texts are often, but not always, reproduced along with the Urdu translation and the comment.

The importance of certain books, and the Faza'il in particular, to the worldwide work of Tabligh is brought home by the location of a major publisher, bookseller, and exporter directly opposite the primary markaz or center of Tabligh, the Banglewali Masjid, which adjoins the shrine of the great Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamu'd-din Auliya (d. 1325), located in a middle-class area of New Delhi. There, opposite the mosque and its new guesthouse, is the bookshop of the Idara Ishaat-e-Diniyat (Institute for the Dissemination of Works on Religion), opened in 1950; the Idara also has a branch in Bombay (illustration 1). As a recent catalogue explains in an introduction written by Munshi Anis Ahmad, "Being just in the vicinity of the Markaz Tablighi Jamaat, N. Delhi, and drawing everlasting inspiration from close association with its activities, the Idara has the honor of publishing hundreds of enlightening works of the torch-bearers of Tabligh which inspire and guide millions of people throughout the world." Visitors to the shop must work their way around parcels and shipping crates destined for Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other places around the world. The Idara oversees a substantial translation program, not only from Arabic into Urdu (and Hindi)5 but also from Arabic and Urdu into English; a recent catalogue lists a full 645 titles in English. Among these titles is the Tablighi

in Urdu, was translated in the English version by the Arabic term, saldt, considered a more universally known term for English speakers.)

The basic collected volume does not include Fazd'il-i hajj and Fazd'il-i sadaqdt, which describe the pilgrimage to Mecca and charity, presumably because of their length. They were written in part when Maulana Zakariyya had an enforced stay in the center of Tabligh, near the shrine of Hazrat Nizamu'd-din in Delhi, during the partition disturbances of 1946- 47. The work on sadaqdt, related to spending "in the path of Allah" was a response to Maulana Ilyas's request for books on the fazd'il of sadaqdt, and, interestingly, also on the faza'il-i tajdrat, trading, which, if pursued in accordance with divine injunctions, also merits reward. This is a reminder that many supporters of Tabligh have been engaged in trade. The work on hajj was stimulated by the increased activities of Tabligh in the Hijaz carried out by Maulana Yusuf, Maulana Ilyas's successor, following his death in 1944. See Muhammad Zakariyya (1969:136). Editions include Faza'il-i hajj (Karachi: Madina Publishing Company, 440 pp.), and, in English translation, Virtues of Charity and Haj, Tablighi Nisab No. 2, trans. Muhammad Masroor Khan Saroha and Yousuf Karaan, Delhi: Dini Book Depot, 1986, 312 pp.; and Faza'il-i sadaqat, trans. Abdul Karim and Malik Haq Nawaz, revised by Mazhar Mahmood Qurashi and Khawaja Ihsanul Haq (Karachi: Darul-ishaat, 1991, 719 pp.).

5Hindi and Urdu are linguistically identical but utilize different scripts, Sanskrit-derived and Arabo-Persian-derived, respectively; they also draw on the different languages, Sanskrit on the one side, and Arabic and Persian on the other, for some of their. vocabulary. Urdu had become by the 1930s associated with Muslim interests in the subcontinent; Hindi, with Hindu. Since Independence, Urdu has been a national language in Pakistan but has been eclipsed in most places in India. Many Muslim children in India cannot read the Urdu known to their parents. See Rai (1991).


Illustration 1. The bookshop, Idara Ishaat-e-Diniyat, located at the movement's center in New Delhi.

nisib, translated from Urdu into English, Hindi, Arabic and French.6 The Idara's books are also available in other shops.

Hadith as Cultural Critique

The Hikdydt-i sahdba, the Stories of the Companions, .invariably the first work in the collected volumes, sets the pattern of creating two paths of behavior, one describing the past, conveyed in tradition, and one describing the present, which has deviated so greatly from the standard offered by the first. The title page for the Hikdydt in the Urdu edition chooses a Qur'iinic verse to signal the critique: "Doubtless, for those of understanding, their stories are a great warning." A subtitle for the books underlines their authority: "True Stories" (sachchb kahdniyadn). The title page further describes the audience that should pay attention; these are stories of men, women, and children Companions, an indication that the stories are meant for everyone. What is taught is not only external behavior; the chapter titles resonate with the virtues cultivated above all by the Sufis: steadfastness, fear of Allaih, abstinence and self-denial, piety and scrupulousness, fidelity to the canonical prayer, salit, sympathy and self-sacrifice, heroism, zeal for knowledge, and devotion to the Prophet. Separate chapters focus on stories of women and children, respectively. The final chapter returns to the subject of love of the Prophet.

6Aogteohrtw ok vialei l orlngae r h ur s

n aln

Ab'.h.a.'. Ndw' lifeoMuamdIy


The theme of contrast evident in the presentation of hadith finds echoes as well in the Indonesian and, to a lesser extent, the Afghan texts discussed here. That theme takes the standard of authority set by the hadith and shows it to be an authority that is not of human devising and that is not subject to change. The model serves for all times, and it comments on present failure in order to invite change. Virtually every story leads to a contrast of then and now, so that the issue of authority is closely related to a vision of time and the relation of the present to the past, the contrast embodied in the very juxtaposition of the distinctive Arabic and vernacular scripts. Every story points to today's failures:

Huzu-r Aqdas (the most sacred Presence), on whom be the blessing and peace of Allah, and the noble Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, underwent such troubles and difficulties in spreading religion that-forget about undergoing them ourselves-even to think about doing them is hard for us.

(Malik ed., p. 9; Faizi ed., p. 15)

This is the character (akhldq) of that noble being whose name we take, but we break into such a passion over some small annoyance or from someone uttering an everyday insult that we seek revenge our whole life long, and keep engaging in excess (zulm) upon excess. And yet we make a claim of being Muhammad1 and following the Prophet. The noble Prophet, on whom be the peace and blessings of Allah, despite suffering such trouble and difficulty, uttered no curse and sought no revenge.


These people underwent such difficulties and troubles. Today we claim their name and say we follow them and think that we see such dreams of progress (taraqq[ycin) as those of the noble Companions in the chapter on progress. But if for a moment we pay a little attention, we are forced to think that those eminent people made such sacrifice while we, what have we done for the sake of religion (dtn), for the sake of Islam, for the sake of canons (mazhab)? Success is always in proportion to effort and exertion. We people want luxury and comfort, and we want to go neck and neck with the kdfirs in the pursuit of worldly things. Islamic progress depends on us; so how can this be? [As the Persian verse says] "I fear, 0 traveler, you will not reach the Ka'ba; the road you are travelling heads off to Turkestan."

(Malik ed., pp. 23-24; Faizi ed., p. 36)

Certainly we should place before ourselves the wish for obedience and desire so that there be less seeking after comfort and a lowering of sights, and, as fits this age, there be a moderation in the idea that we people at every moment should advance in the pleasures of the world. Everyone is always looking at those who excel in wealth and property and complaining out of envy that so and so has more resources than me.


Today among us folks if someone has two cents-forget about the work for other people of the house-she doesn't even take care of herself. The servant has to go put the ljtd in the toilet. ..

(Malik ed, 112; Faizi ed., p. 175)

Those in times past lived frugally and humbly, worked with their hands, made any sacrifice to fulfill divine commands and spread the faith. They were passionate in their quest for knowledge-knowledge defined, one might note, as remembering hadith. They did not compete for worldly gains. They did not define tarraqqi as it is defined today, as accumulation of worldly goods.


All the Tabligh texts emphasize the performance of enjoined practices, indeed, an impassioned pursuit of those practices. They avoid criticism of bad customary practices in favor of a kind of reverse Gresham's law of reform that good practices will of themselves drive out bad. In contrast to most Muslim movements in modern times, here we have no debate over interpretation, no stance on the sources of the law, no litmus test of style of prayer or participation in customary practices. Tablighis say they emphasize faza'il instead of (the rhyming) masa'il, the differing juridical opinions that can prove so contentious. Occasionally, a condemnation of specific practices creeps in, practices like those in the parallel stanzas of the Indonesian Gayo songs related to elaborate, status-driven ceremonies and celebrations. In emphasizing deviation from spending money rightfully and piously, for example, Maulana Zakariyya reminds people of where they go wrong:

Are we ready to just up and give our most beloved property as charity upon hearing half a sermon or reading or hearing a verse of the Qur'an? If we have the thought of creating a pious endowment, it is after despairing of life, or with the intention of disinheriting relatives we are angry with. And we spend year upon year thinking about some scheme whereby during our own life we can make use of the property, let come what after, come. Yes, if it is a point of name and reputation, like the festivities of the wedding celebration, then there is no reluctance even to take a loan on interest.


The emphasis is not, however, on error as much as on the comparison of what good works today's Muslim fails to do compared to the good works done by the great models of the past. The concern is less with bid'a (reprehensible innovation) than with laxity. This even allows for explicit criticism of the rulers of the day, as Maulana Zakariyya recalls the selfless service of the Caliph 'Umar:

Is there today any monarch, any ruler, any ordinary notable who treats his subject this kindly?


The answer, of course, is no. Despite these contrasts, the important message of the text is that while the

standard set in hadith is different from the behavior of society today, the past, while different, need not be distant. The ideals of hadith can, in fact, be relived. Thus, in writing about the contempt for wealth characteristic of the pious, Maulana Zakariyya recalls his own shaikh:

I have heard from reliable sources that it was the habit of the most holy eminence, Maulana Shah 'Abdu'r-rahlm [Raipturl) (may Allah's light be on his grave), that when he received some sum of gifts (nazrdna), he would distribute all of them after careful inquiries. . . . And I often saw my father (may Allah's mercy be on him) take whatever money he had after the sunset prayer and give it to some creditor . . . and say "I would not like to keep this source of trouble with me for the night. "

(Malik ed., p. 46; Faizi ed., p. 71)7

Returning to his father in regard to his passionate childhood learning of the Qur'an Maulana Zakariyya is explicit:

7Maulana Raipturl's birthdate is apparently unknown; he served as rector of the Mazahir- i'Uluim at the turn of the century and was, thus, a generation older than Maulana Zakariyya

(Azizu'r-rahman 1 95 8:291-301) .


Now this story is not of ancient times (purtind zamnan); it is an event of this century. It therefore cannot be said: Whence today courage and strength like that of the Companions?


The text, in fact, plays a trick. It purports to tell us about a wonderful past and a decadent present, but those hearing know, in a sense, a secret: that they have the potential of surmounting the dichotomy and aligning themselves with the standard set in hadith. The Arabic text signals distance, but it need not be, in the end, very far from people today.

The Tablighi hear that people among us have, in fact, embodied the teachings that set the standard. Today's readers/listeners can do the same. As discussed below in terms of the practice of the Tablighi Jama'at, its very program is understood to make the past live. The first line of the first story in the Hikayat, which reports the rejection of the Prophet in Ta'if, shouts that claim:

nabuwwat mil jane ke ba'd nau baras tak nabi akram salla'llahiu 'alaihi wa sallam makka mukarrima men tabligh farmate rahe aur qaum ki hidayat aur islah ki koshish farmate rahe-lekin th6Ri si jama'at ke siwa j6 musalman ho ga'i thi....

(Malik ed., p. 9)

After receiving the prophethood, for nine years the most bountiful Prophet (on whom God's blessings and peace) had been offering tabligh in noble Makka and trying to bring guidance (hiddyat) and reform to his people (qaum). Excepting a tiny jama'dt of those who had become Muslim . . .

The words italicized above are the key terms of what might be called the lexique technique of the Tablighis, the words used over and over to tell them who they are and what they do. The Prophet, a reader or hearer would register, was offering tabhlgh and hiddyat just as we do; he was concerned with his qaum; he, too, lived amongst a small Jama'dt of the faithful. The key term, tabligh, one might note, does not appear in the Qur'in at all but comes to be understood as equivalent to Qur'inic expressions like amr hi'l ma'rkf wa nahf an a! munkar (summoning to the good and forbidding evil) and d4awa (invitation)8 but it resonates throughout Maulani Zakariyyi's description of what the Companions did. Translation recreates a text; it does not merely reproduce it.

Emulation then recreates the text in fact. In this case, virtually every Tablighl has "his" Ta'if story, the setting of the story noted here, when the Prophet was oppressed in Ta'if but refused to seek revenge. In south Delhi, for example, a jama'at of university teachers and students were attacked in a mosque and several seriously wounded; despite the urgings of police officials, they were adamant in not pressing charges. "We came to give hidayat," one of them told me, "how could we press charges?" The hadith gives meaning to the believer's life and, in turn, his experience gives life to the text. The past is different from most of what happens in the present but it is understood, most emphatically, not to be different from what happens in the Tablighl Jama'it at its best.

Competing Texts, Competing Contexts

The Fazd'il texts, like all the texts discussed in this symposium, were produced in a context of rivalry for control of what might be called cultural reproduction.

8This point has been mzade by Khalid Mas'ud.


The rivals in that competition included not only written texts, but a range of individual and collective performances that offered alternate cultural ideals: in the Gayo songs, for example, we hear about sebuku wailing, longhouse didong, didong drumming. As in that case, the rivals of explicit concern to Tablighis were other Muslims, not Europeans or Hindus, and this concern has persisted to the present. The field in which Tabligh operates has changed markedly over its seventy-year history and the movement is no longer limited to north India but has spread virtually worldwide. Nonetheless, the context of competition in the early years is particularly significant and has had lasting influence on the movement.

At that time, rivals to Tabligh stories included folk tales, the majdlis (mourning assemblies) and ta'zia (the processions) of the Shi'a, and the new narratives of emerging political leaders. The printed book, one must note, was never meant to stand alone, to compete with what were in the other cases charged human settings. The books were always expected to be communicated in public settings and, indeed, to be acted out. Not surprisingly, when cassettes and videos appeared, Tablighis eschewed them out of their deep commitment to avoiding anything that would distract from their emphasis on the human embodiment of their cherished texts-as well, no doubt, from a sense that such media not only communicated material that was potentially distracting fronm Islamic teachings, but that they also created forms of consciousness less amenable to those teachings.9

The Hikdydt itself offers evidence of the three competing groups and ideals of the 1930s noted above. First, in the opening lines of the text, Maulana Zakariyya identified a prime audience for his text, women in their important role of nurturing children:

In 1353 [1938-391 there was a request from one of Allah's elect servants and my guardian and benefactor, that some stories, in Urdu, be written out concerning the noble Companions (may Allah be pleased with them), especially stressing the piety of youth and women. Thus those devoted to the stories, if they see these instead of meaningless little tales, will find a source of religious progress. And the women of the household, if at night instead of little stories for children, recount these, then there will be, along with respect and love for the Companions in the hearts of the children, an inclination for religious matters.

(Malik ed., p.7; Faizi ed., p. 12)

In the course of recording model stories about children, Maulana Zakariyya again underlines the importance of the use of storytelling to shape children's lives:

We people immerse children in meaningless, foolish matters and put confusion in their minds through false stories. If we seek out and recount the stories of the pious (Allogh wdle) and, instead of frightening them with stories of jinn and ghosts, instill awe and the importance of Allah's displeasure in their hearts, that will be useful to them both in this world and the hereafter. ...

(Malik ed., p. 164)

Clearly, however, women were not currently fulfilling this important role:

The truth is that if there be created among women a passion for religion and enthusiasm for good deeds, then there is a certain impact on children. In contrast

9Following thinkers like Jean-Louis Baudry and Jean-Louis Comolli in discussing cinema and television as fostering certain kinds of regression, Robert Stam, for example, speaks of television as encouraging "a kind of narcissistic voyeurism." See his "Mobilizing Fictions: The Gulf War, the Media and the Recruitment of the Spectator," Public Culture 4:2 (Spring 1992) 101-26, p. 101.


to this, in our times, children from the beginning are placed in such an atmosphere that an influence contrary to religion is felt, or, at best, an inattention to religion. When the beginning of life is spent in such an atmosphere, it is evident what kind of results occur.

(Malik ed., p. 111)

The goal of assimilating women into what were seen as normative Islamic standards had been evident in writings of the reformers for several decades, notably in their influential work, the BihishtT zewar, and was clearly a goal of Tabligh as well (Metcalf ed. 199 1).

In part, the inclusion of women could be seen as the continuation of the efforts of the reformers in reaching out to the "census category" of Muslims, a category that was reinforced at every turn by the organization and the rhetoric of the colonial state (Hardy 1972). More than that, however, the charged concern with including women in reformist teachings, true of groups other than Muslims in the colonial context, marked women and the home as a site of cultural self-assertion and resistance imagined as autonomous from the intrusions of the state and the outside world overall (Chatterjee 1989; Devji 1991). Explicit concern with the colonial culture was not, however, at stake in Tabligh writings: it was, rather, in the first place, the unreformed, the "pagan," that Maulana Zakariyya wished to exclude: the grandmothers' stories of jinn and bhzit that were to give way to the fathers' sachchF kahdniydn, the true and authentic tales.

The Hikayat were also clearly meant-even if not explicitly- to counter those attracted to Shi'a rituals. These teachings were communicated above all in the emotion- charged storytelling of the majalis, when the heart-rending stories and poems of the sufferings of Karbala were recounted, as well as in the physical enactments of the story in the ta'ziya processions held across north India. These stories engaged the hearers intensely in the lives of the Prophet's family and above all in devotion to Imam Husain. The thirties were a period of Sunni-Shi'a competition and conflict in which a key element was the Shi'a tabarra denunciations of the caliphs who were among the very Companions celebrated in the Hikdyat: the Shi'a regarded these caliphs as enemies of Imam 'All and his family. Lest the point be lost that it is with the other Companions that one ought to engage and whom one ought to venerate, an epilogue to the Hikdydt explicitly sets out the grounds for speaking respectfully of the Companions and for criticizing those who fail so to do:

Finally a warning on an extremely important matter is necessary, namely, that in this age of freedom (dzddi), in which there is a deficiency in religion and many other matters among us Muslims, there is a particularly marked deficiency in the respect and deference and recognition of what is due to the noble Companions, may Allah be pleased with them. Indeed, more than that, people who flaunt religion come to the point of insulting their dignity, although the noble Companions are the foundation of religion; they are the first propagators of religion.


The argument for revering the Companions was made not only in such explicit statements but was communicated in the text by its very style.

Just as John Bowen's article in this series stresses the importance of the evocation of grief in engaging the listeners to the Gayo songs, the stories of the Companions presented here-like the Shi'a stories of Karbala-are above all stories of hardship and grief. A central theme in the Hikayat is that life is enormously hard but that, for those who endure, there is reward. The stories are of stoning, mutilation, chains


and beating, suffering from thirst and branding, desertion in the desert, persecution, ostracism, and martyrdom. The Companions suffered all this, men, women, and children, because of their love for the Prophet and their devotion to fulfilling divine injunctions. The Companions lived in extraordinary poverty without complaint and parted readily, with generosity and humility, with whatever they had.

Nowadays Muslims commonly complain of their poverty, but there will hardly any group (jama'at) emerge who have to get by tying stones to their bellies or suffer hunger several days on end.


No detail is spared in telling these horrific stories, and they are made the more vivid because only in this book of the entire compendium are the stories retold, not simply translated from the hadith. In many cases, they are presented with direct speech: they become a drama, the story conveyed by dialogue. Thus, the story of the execution of Sa'id bin Jubair by the evil Hajjaj contains several pages in which Sa'id bests Hajjaj with apt and theologically sound retorts: Hajjaj also tries to be clever: "You are not the son of Jubair but Kusair [something brokeni." In the end he forces Sa'id to lie face down before he is beheaded, but even then Sa'id triumphs as an inexplicable flood of blood pours from his body, explained to Hajjaj by his doctors, the hadith tells us, as a result of tranquillity and composure at the time of death (Faizi ed., pp. 132-37).

The stories are meant to engage the listener-or reader-not only intellectually but emotionally as the good suffer and even children and women endure the worst of pain and anguish. Several episodes are parallel to Karbala stories, for example when a bridegroom goes from wedding to martyrdom, and the listener in either case vicariously experiences the transition from joy to anguish redeemed by faith. As in the Gayo songs, the depiction of loss and travail engages the emotions in facing the cultural critique communicated by the texts. Although the promise of paradise and reward is alluded to in the stories, it is the compelling accounts of heroic commitment at any cost that serve to communicate the truth and urgency of embracing the models that are held out.

In interpreting these models, Maulana Zakariyya and his fellows focused on the world of the home and the spiritual formation of individuals at the same time as they explicitly withdrew from the emerging public arena of elections and parties. Their stance was the more striking since it coincided with a time when others of the 'ulama' were drawn into both Congress and Moslem League politics to elaborate and assert the protection of Muslim interests. Such activity for Mauland Zakariyya was nothing less than the measure of how far today's Muslims had fallen from the model of their forebears:

We people want luxury and comfort, and we want to go neck and neck with the kafirs in the pursuit of worldly things.

(Malik ed., p. 23)

Maulana Zakariyya thus offers an alternative to those "leaders" (the English word used in Urdu) whose very raison d'etre was to reverse what was perceived as Muslim decline, under-representation in councils and universities, and so forth. His teachings encouraged quietism even while implicitly acknowledging the sufferings and trials felt by many at the time. For him the only history that mattered was the mythological or "typological" history, always potentially present, of recreating the past. His, and the Tabligh's, narrative simply opted out of the linear story being constituted in


his day that traced Muslim glory in the recent historical past, subsequent decline in the face of external conquest, and the current struggle for social and political reassertion. The Tabligh not only ignored the emerging historical narrative of the nationalist movement but has continued to ignore the versions of that narrative told in the new nation states. Not the state, but the home and the individual together were to be the target of Islamic action and Islamic teaching.

Mauland Zakariyya uses a Sufi idiom throughout the book, quoting apt Persian verses that contrast ephemeral worldly love with the real passion of love for the Divine. Iqbal and other publicists of this period had brought a new language and mentality to Muslim politics as understood among Urdu speakers, embodying political arguments in a Sufi language that called for an emotional group commitment (Gilmartin 1991). Mauland Zakariyya claimed that language for a different program. In a long section of his book on the Merits of the Qur'an, for example, he weaves verses of love poetry, celebrating the beauty of the beloved and the restless heart of the lover, in order to argue that all else pales next to love for the Qur'an:

If fervor (josh) for the nation presses heavily on you, if you love a Turkish cap only because it is the original Muslim dress for you, if you are especially drawn to nationalist slogans, if you promote them by all means possible, if you publish articles in the newspapers and pass "resolutions" in meetings [you should know that] God's prophet commands us to do our best to propagate the Holy Qur'an.

At this stage it will not be out of place to address the following complaint to our national leaders: What assistance have you given to the propagation of the holy Qur'an?

(Malik ed., Fazd'il-i Qur'dn, p. 62; Faizi ed., p. 104)

From his perspective, the national leaders had the wrong objects of passion and devotion.

As the Tablighis sought to be distant from those engaged in politics, they also sought to distinguish themselves from the worldly, cosmopolitan style often associated with such activities. In the section celebrating the Companions' fear of God, the Hikdydt disapproves of the "modern" attitudes of the disenchantment of the world and of religious moderation:

God's dearest and most beloved Prophet passes by the places of those subjected to punishment in fear and terror and, weeping, tells his devoted friends who give proof of their self sacrifice even in this difficult time to leave that place, lest they meet the same fate. As for us, if a village is struck with an earthquake, we make it a place of sightseeing. We visit the ruins for recreation. Weeping, let alone the thought of weeping, does not enter our minds.

(Malik ed., pp. 30-3 1, Faizi ed., p. 47)

. . . we people are at every moment sunk in sin, [yet], witnessing earthquakes and other kinds of punishments, rather than being affected by them and engaging in repentance, istighfar, prayer, etc., we engage in all kinds of frivolous investigations (tahqfqdt).. . Who remembers the mosque today, even at the time of the worst calamities?

(Mailik ed., p. 25; Faizi ed., pp. 38-39)

In fact, the Sahaba would sacrifice the whole world for their prayer (namaz) (Malik ed., p. 60)

We may dub it as "Fanaticism," or make . . . other remark[s. ... (Faizi ed., p. 92)

All of Tabligh teachings encourage a radical dependence on God and God alone, a


stance that, in this recent translation into English, could give Tablighis the sense of being considered embattled "fanatics."

This dependence on God entails individual responsibility. It is in the end up to each person to identify with the view from the hard rock of authentic tradition that holds today's behavior up to critical view. It is up to each person to respond with feeling to the emotional dramas that the stories play out. The individual in this view must transcend the narrow interests of family and relations. Over and over, Companions are praised for fidelity to Islam or to the Prophet:

. . . usually a person remembers his family at the end of his life. He wants to see their faces, wants to give a message and to send greetings. But if these eminent men [the Companions] want to give messages and send greetings, it will be to the Prophet


The women are especially notable as they abandon all the conventional restraints, so intimately linked to family honor, in order to travel, to bring aid on the battlefield, even, themselves, to fight.

Individuals must also, and most profoundly, be responsible for their own soul's achievements and not think that the intercession of someone else will lead to salvation. In answer to a Companion who asked to be present with the Prophet in paradise, he responded that she herself had to help him by being faithful in prayer:

This contains an admonition for us. We should not rely on supplication (du'a) alone, but [realize that] it also takes practical efforts [to gain our objects). Those people who depend on the prayers of this or that spiritual guide (pfr) or this or that pious man (buzurg) are badly mistaken. God has set this world in motion according to cause and effect. . . . It is astonishing that we do not rely solely on Providence and supplications and make fifty different kinds of efforts in worldly matters, but that, when religion is concerned, [belief in] Providence and [reliance on] supplication interfere [with our efforts]. There is no doubt that the supplication of pious people (Alldh wdle) is most important, but the Prophet instructed her to augment his supplication by her own frequent prayer (sijda).

(Malik ed., p. 64; Faizi ed., pp. 98-99)

This discussion recalls similar issues in the Indonesian cases on the intervention of other people in contrast to the importance of one's own good deeds in gaining divine reward. 1

Participants in Tabligh choose to identify with the models of hadith that distance them from the life of much of their society, identifying with the sorrows and passions of great Muslims of the past and of Muslims who live the past in the present even today. That choice can shape every aspect of daily life, of every expenditure of time and money, of family rituals and relationships, of the social groups with whom one identifies-and even of the bedtime stories-the true stories of the hadith-one tells to children.

The fact of choice is itself important, and is, again, like the emphasis on individual responsibility, a pervasive characteristic of modern life. Communication of alternatives through print, as is the case at least in part here, makes choice possible for more people and conveys a sense of autonomy to those who, to some extent, can encounter and assess such texts, and make self-conscious choices, on their own. The choices,

'?Thus, for example, the same hadith, "Three things accompany a person to his grave . "is cited in the Hik-yt (pp. 80-82) and is discussed at length in the Riyaz.


moreover, produce a realignment of social relations in which not only men, but women as well, identify with groups outside those defined by birth and inherited status alone.

Texts in Context

It is when we look at the way the Tabligh books are used and how the society of the Tablighi Jama'-at is constituted in dialogue with the texts that we get some sense of why this choice is so powerful for so many people. The movement's basic book, the Faza'il-i a'mal, claims authority by its very appearance and presentation.

A person using this book is marked as someone engaged with a text that is both weighty (literally, since it runs close to a 1,000 pages) and religious. The multi-colored cover page of the Malik Brothers Urdu edition sets the title in an oval medallion of green surrounded by a pointed band of red and a flowering wreath of yellow (illustration 2). A banner across the top bears the Qur'anic verse in Arabic and in Urdu translation: "Doubtless, well-being and success come to those who recite their namaz with humility," a Qur'anic sanction for the Tabligh's double theme of faithful practice and modest piety. The author is identified as hazrat, maul/na, al hdfiz, al hajj, al muhaddis, "the presence," the religious scholar who knows the Qur'an by heart, has made the hajj, and is a scholar of hadith. The cover also has a picture of the famous green-domed tomb of the Prophet in Medina, identifying the text with those who stress devotion to the Prophet as expressed by visiting his tomb (as some of the anti-Sufi reformers did not.) (The same title page is reproduced for each segment of the book except that a different Qur'anic verse is chosen in each case.) The Kutb Khana Faizi edition also uses the tomb as a logo, with an outline drawing of the building set in an open Qur'an on the title page. That edition is embossed in gold and has beautifully marbled edges. All the editions have ribbon page markers. While the -texts combined in these collected volumes have often been published separately as inexpensive pamphlets, "1 the larger volumes have become more commonly available since the 1950s. In size and presentation they recall the Qur'an, the Book par excellence, but offer a book meant to be used casually, albeit respectfully, and organized for ready consultation and guidance. A less important allusion in the presentation, also meant to carry authority (but now largely abandoned), is the very title nisdb, and indeed some editions do look more like textbooks than like the classic Arabic texts they more centrally emulate and replace (illustration 3).

The actual use of the text recalls the classic models in many ways. The Fazd'il, significantly, is not one book among a library of books for most participants. This is not a movement that encourages reading over all. To that extent, even compared with the Deobandi reformers of the late nineteenth century, whose heirs they are, Tablighis encourage a kind of narrowing and intensification of the use of texts. One recalls how a Deobandi like Mauland Ashraf 'All Thanawi, in his compendium for girls and women written at the turn of the century, reviewed a long list of publications in order to guide readers through the new proliferation of titles (Metcalf ed. 1991:374- 80). The little girls I saw, scampering home from religious school in Dewsbury (the European center of Tabligh located near Bradford, England), had copies of the Tablighi nisdb under their arms: this is presumably the text they will study over

1"Thus, "The Virtues of Salat" (Lyallpur: Malik Brothers, second ed., 1966), 111 pp., Rs. 3.50.


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and over. A Tablighi in Delhi, being asked to explain how the Tabligh functioned in Saudi Arabia since it was prevented from importing publications, shrugged and said the prohibition in the end was irrelevant: "people [presumably the core participantsl come to know most of the texts by heart anyway."

Also suggestive of earlier patterns of the use of texts, the Fazd'il is often used in public settings and often read out loud. The emphasis is not on private reading and study. This has been true of key texts of the reformist movements throughout, dating back to the first important Urdu reformist text, the TaqwFyatu'l-Fmcn of the jihad movement of the 1820s. The career of a single copy, passed hand to hand and read aloud to those unable to read themselves, is epitomized in an anecdote recalling the advent of the Taqwfyat in a town in north India:

In the town . . . there lived a very old man . . . [who] was barely able to see or hear. When the Taqwiyatu'l-iman was first published, copies came to his town. People engaged in extensive debates and discussions, some being for the book, some against. Finally the old man said, "I see you young men flourishing sheaves of pages around and talking incessantly. What is going on?" They explained that a new book had been published and, at his request, then proceeded to read him the entire work aloud, from the first page to the last. When he had heard it, he asked them to assemble the entire town to hear his [favorable] opinion.

(Zuh-uru'l-hasan Kas6li 1950:82; in Metcalf 1982:201)

One can imagine similar scenes transpiring repeatedly as vernacular books have been read out and discussed. Mauland Thanawl in the BihishtT zewar, written in the first decade or this century, gave directions for its use that encouraged the literate to gather other women of their family and neighborhood, and even the servant women, to hear the book read aloud, an exercise deemed of benefit to reader and listener both. 12

The repetitions and recapitulations of these books, as of the FazY'il, also suggest their affinity for oral use (Sweeney 1987). Not only are the books repetitive but, as noted above, their reading is to be repeated. The intense use of these texts in oral settings is a pattern common in South Asia. As A. K. Ramanujan has noted in the case of Kannada:

In India, literacy has always been restricted.... Written traditions live surrounded by oral ones and are even carried by oral means. . .. until recently to read meant to read aloud. . . . Writing was an aide memoir, a mnemonic device, for materials to be rendered oral again. Speech lies dormant in writing until it is awakened by one's own or another's voice . . .

(Ramanujan 1990:8)

The close link of text to oral use takes its pattern for Muslims, of course, in recitation of the Qur'an.

Maulana Zakariyya himself explicitly noted this advantage of the written text for oral performance in his introduction to the Hikdydt:

Another issue to be emphasized is that these materials, be they the sayings of the Prophet, depictions of the lives of saints, books concerning these issues, or the preachings and instructions of reputable Muslims, are not disposed of in one reading. Rather, one should read them repeatedly according to one's situation and talent. Abiu Sulaiman is a famous saint. He writes: "I attended the assembly of a preacher.

l2'fyou read this section aloud over and over to illiterate women, their hearts and habits will also be set right." Metcalf ed. 199 1:239.


His discourse affected me, but when the discourse ended the effect also ended. I attended his assembly again. The effect of this discourse lasted until the meeting was over and even on the way home. I attended a third time, and the effect stayed with me till I reached home . . ." This is also the case with religious books. Reading them only once in a cursory manner will have little effect. That is why one should keep reading them from time to time.

(Malik ed., p. 8; Faizi ed., pp. 13-14)

What the books tell-one might note-like the saint, conveys not only facts but charisma (baraka): thus Maulana Zakariyya began the stories of the Companions with a story of the Prophet in order to convey particular blessing quite apart from the intellectual content of the story. 13

Participants themselves describe this oral and repetitive use of the texts. One young woman, accompanying a missionary group (jama'at) including her husband, described to me the way her father, after he began Tabligh activities, would gather the family every night to read the Faza'il out loud. She recalled herself, as a "foolish" adolescent, trying to slip away as the family meal came to an end before the reading began; but her father would follow her and gently persuade her to return. Other women told me the story of a woman who initiated Tabligh activities in her family. Every night she would read aloud from the Faza'il while her husband ignored her, until one night she simply ceased. Her husband asked why she was not reading as usual; she, understandably, replied that she had stopped reading because he would not listen. Under those circumstances, the husband himself began to read out loud!14

Gilles Kepel has described Tablighis in Paris reading from the Riydz as-Sdlihin (Imam Nawawl, d. 1277), the influential hadith collection analyzed in this symposium by Mark Woodward in relation to Indonesia."5 As Tablighis in the subcontinent use the Fazd'il, Tablighis in France tend to use the Riyaz, Kepel explains, whether for local meetings or when they go on missionary rounds.

The Riyaz is similar to the Fazd'il in citing many of the same hadith and being informed throughout by the attention to spiritual virtues that dominated the Sufi milieu of the thirteenth century as it does so many Islamic contexts of the twentieth. The stress in both is on personal virtues. The Hikayat, as noted above, includes chapters on steadfastness, fear of Allah, abstinence and self-denial, piety and scrupulousness, devotion to prayer, sympathy and self-sacrifice, courage, and zeal and devotion to the Prophet. The Riydz includes chapters on sincerity, repentance, patience, truth, piety, steadfastness, and so forth. In inculcating these personal characteristics, these texts offer detailed guidance for every aspect of daily life. Kepel writes:

13This was also true for Maulana Thanawi's book on good women, also introduced by a sketch of the Prophet as a source of baraka. See Metcalf ed. 1991:241-43, 253-58.

14These stories were told to me by South African women of Gujerati origin. I am assuming that these patterns are universal among Tablighls and look forward to confirmation when more work appears. Two Indian researchers are currently engaged in fieldwork-based studies of the Tablighi Jama'at: Syed Zainuddin, Department of Sociology, Aligarh Muslim University, and Muhammad Talib, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia.

15In the opinion of a senior, full-time Tabligh worker in Pakistan, who has been on frequent missionary tours throughout the world, Arab-speaking Tablighi appear to prefer the Riydz because the Fazd'il speaks to some local concerns of subcontinental Muslims. Moreover, the Fazd'il includes, he argued, not only well-attested hadith but some that scholars classify as weak or even defective: this, too, may be of concern. (Maulana Zakariyya himself points out that scholars of hadith show great latitude in accepting as authentic those traditions that are related to blessings.) In any case, the Riyaz seems nowadays to be increasingly used among Tablighis in the subcontinent as well. It is now widely available in editions that include the Arabic text and either Urdu or English translation.


Thus to understand why the Tablighis dress as they do, it is necessary and sufficient to open [the book] at the page [on dress] (the book of clothing). The first section headed "White dress is recommended, red, green, yellow, and black are permitted; cotton, linen, horsehair, wool, and so forth are allowed-only silk is not" continues with two Quranic verses. . . . followed by hadith of the Prophet. . . . Another chapter provides legal disquisitions on the shirt, coat, the tail of the turban left hanging down the back, prohibition of taking pride in dress, etc. In short, The Garden of the Pious Believers [the Riydzj provides the Tablighl with an answer to all practical everyday questions and allows him to conduct himself as closely as possible in imitation of the Prophet. It is his code of conduct . . . abounding in injunctions (thus it indicates which prayer to recite when leaving on a trip, entering the house, belching at the table, etc.) as well as in prohibitions ranging from deviant religious practices (participation in the cult of tombs, for example) down to socialization of the most trivial bodily functions (prohibition of defecation on a path or urination in water that is not flowing). . . . Two characteristics made the Jama'at al Tabligh chose this collection: its method of thematic classification which allows its use as a manual and its abridged length (since each hadith is only preceded by the name of the first transmitter) so that it is an ideal vade-mecum for "missions."

Kepel describes how the book is both read aloud and consulted for guidance. Sermons focus on explication of the hadith and enjoin their guidance.

Kepel also observes the use of Maulana Zakariyya's Hikcydt-i sahcba, translated into French:

Before the evening prayer, they read accounts of the pious companions of the Prophet . . . and then, the canonical prayer completed, they eat together, recalling and applying the hadith which codify the table manners of Muhammad.

(Kepel 1987:202-5)

While Kepel's observations are based on observations of North African Tablighis in Paris, they confirm descriptions of the practices of subcontinental Tablighis as well.

As the description of the meal suggests, the Tablighl hadith texts serve as models for everyday life. They also provide what one might call a rhetoric of thought and words. One can almost speak of men as books in relation to the Tabligh, as individuals internalize written texts. Recent life histories of Tablighis elicited by Mohammad Talib, a Delhi-based anthropologist, show that endlessly retold explanations are readily invoked to describe human behavior and to justify life choices. 6

The Tablighis share a common language, a common pool of metaphors, a common mode of explanation. "The world is like an inn," one may begin, and everyone knows the elaboration that will follow: if one mistakes this inn for home, and becomes absorbed in furnishing it (with the temptations of this world) one will never reach one's real home (which is heaven). "Each act of good is a bank deposit for the afterlife": and again the story flows of investment in real and not fleeting worth. When I met a group of Tablighis, they talked so earnestly and volubly that the tea placed before them was left to grow cold until our host took it away, brought back fresh tea, and implored them to drink: we relived the habits of Maulana Yiusuf enshrined in oral and printed lore, who similarly would forget his tea when engrossed in Tabligh (Wahiduddin Khan 1986:35-36). For the Tablighis, books, and the lives of those who embodied those books, live.

16Talib 1990. The author emphasizes other themes in these life histories; I impute the fit between written text and individual behavior to his material.


They live in part as they literally say the words their predecessors said. The FazY'il texts are set up with sections that are meant to be memorized, organized as distilled lists of important hadith (Fazd'il-i Qur'dn, Faizi ed., pp. 19-21; FazY'il- i namcz, Faizi ed., pp. 27-30). Thus part of the education of Tabligh is the classic one of religious texts and poetic texts both: that an educated person not only is a repository of memorized texts, but is a person who knows the occasion to invoke the hadith juste (Eickelman 1978). Many Tabligh participants learn a rhetoric of speech and reasoning and develop an almost stereotypical personal style. Tablighis not only hear a vocabulary that describes their own life in the hadith but see the whole pattern of their lives as reliving, as they believe no one else has ever done, the model of the first and best followers of the Prophet, above all because of dedication to spreading the Prophetic message and cultivating steadfastness in adversity. This embracing of the Prophetic experience, as it was seen, had been lost, and now had to be renewed, not only in terms of following the practice (sunna) of the Prophet generally, but in the very specific mode of conducting campaigns to spread Islam. For Tabligh's founder, Mauland Ilyas, the critical Qur'anic teaching was that Muslims were "the best community" only in so far as they "enjoined the good and forbade evil," an enterprise he summed up as tabligh. What comes to seem transparently evident in hadith-that all Muslims and not just the 'ulama' are teachers-is, in fact, the novelty of the movement and a mark of its twentieth-century pattern: it recalls David Edwards's discussion of da'wa as a perpetual and universal obligation in the far different context of the Afghan revolution where participants respond to the Marxist concept of praxis.

For Tablighis, "jihad" has been understood as active preaching, not military action. Through that jihad, Muslims would regain their dynamism. Ilyas's model was above all that of the Prophet's community in Medina when the Companions ventured forth on excursions coupling jihad and tabligh, only now the mujchidFn would be preachers. Each leader was to be known as amTr, suggesting a military/ political leadership rather than an intellectual or spiritual one; the tours of the jama'at were to be termed gasht, patrols, or khurz7j, forays or excursions. Indeed the very movement to Medina was encapsulated in the importance given to leaving home and the notion that every gasht was in fact a hijra ("hegira"). Maulana Ilyas was explicit that the urgency of movement in this age was related to the decadence and corruption inherent in settled life, above all in urban life.

The mythic account of the conversion of Mewat, the area where the movement first flourished, is relevant here. 17 The story of the unlettered but sturdy Mewatis is told as the story of the Arab bedouins of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance (jchiliyya), whose lives were transformed through Islam. Even Maulana Maudiudl, whose Jama'at-i Islami was to emerge as a critic of the Tabligh because of its neglect of Islamic political and social organization, superimposed this "jahiliyya model" in enthusiastically describing the work of Mauland Ilyas in 1939. Maud-udi's description of the Mewatis with their Hindu names, their ignorance of prayer (so that they would gape at a namazi and worry that he had a stomach ache), their idols and

17Aggarwal 1971. Aggarwal argues that the influence of the Tabligh in his particular section of Mewat came only after the terrible dislocations of partition when many Meos were dispossessed of their land and there were forcible conversions to Hinduism. Imtiaz Ahmad (Jawaharlal Nehru University, oral communication 1990) has pushed the date of substantial Tabligh influence in Mewat (manifested particularly by a diminution in the importance of saintly shrines) to the new prosperity and new urban contacts that have come with roads built in the last twenty years, enabling a trade in milk to develop. This has encouraged an identification with more cosmopolitan religious styles and, at an individual level, religious patronage appropriate to upwardly mobile people. See also Wahiduddin Khan 1986.


tufts of hair, has been absorbed into Tabligh legend. "It seemed as if that very spirit, with which at the beginning of Islam the Arab bedouin rose up for the tabligh of the straight path, now had been born in these people." For the Tabligh to relive Medina, it had to have bedouins (Abu'l-a'la Maududi 1939:25). 18

The vision of the Prophetic model permeates discussion of the organization as well. The use of the mosque instead of a separate building is understood as reviving the multiple roles of the mosque as place of accommodation, seat of councils, and forum for organizing campaigns. The lack of a formal organization in favor of grass- roots jama'ats is meant to echo the mosque community. Maulana Muhammad Manzur Nu'mani, in a letter purportedly written to an official investigating the group, and particularly its lack of formal organization, cites the historic precedent, "You have studied history . . . did the founders of hindg dharm or Mahatma Gautam Buddh or Lord Jesus or the Prophet of Islam . . . form a 'party' or anjuman, were there members,' a chairman, a 'secretary'? Did they establish a 'fund' for subscriptions?" (Muhammad Manz-Ur Nu'mani 1980:17-18; the words in quotes are transliterated English.) Tabligh authenticity is taken as self-evident. Two critical differences, pointed to by opponents, are that there is no military component in the campaigns and that they are directed only toward Muslims. This de-emphasis of large-scale social and political activity has also, of course, been a critical aspect of the Tabligh capacity to flourish in multiple twentieth-century environments where there could be no question of military campaigns or political rule.

Beyond the model of early Muslim jihad, a second discourse permeating the Tabligh has been that of sufism, several of whose terms were given new meaning. Chilla in the Tabligh lexicon, for example, far from indicating the forty-day period of seclusion and absorption in sufi disciplines, now came to mean the length of the tour each Tablighi ideally undertook once a year. Although some workers may seek initiation from elders, Tabligh itself is not organized as a Sufi order. Just as the organization of tabligh means that each person, however modest his origins or limited his education, can become a preacher, in the same way each participant is understood to have virtually instant access to certain spiritual states granted travelers on the sufi path.

The activities and organization of the Tablighl Jama'at create a pattern of individual and organizational life radically unlike that of the larger society (Metcalf 1993). In this, the availability of printed texts has clearly played a role. In this movement, as in so many in the twentieth century, we see what David Edwards, in his article in this symposium, calls a move to "horizontal" instead of "vertical" relationships. Printed books make possible religious learning outside the theological schools and the privileged relationships of teachers and students: this movement explicitly proclaims that any Muslim can be a preacher, not only the 'ulama'. Similarly, no single shaikh was to be the source of absolute authority; authority, rather, was to be constituted in the body as a whole, acting in consultation and, at some level, functionally superseding the authority of any individual shaikh. This was a radical innovation in its investment of authority in Muslims who did not have either a classical Islamic education or the charisma of sanctified descent. The movement thus challenged the monopoly on religious guidance of the 'ulama' and the shaikhs, while proclaiming respect for them and engaging many of them in its work.

18See also Wahiduddin Khan 1986:8. British sources apparently referred to the Mewatis as "half-Hindu." The British classification of the Mewatis as criminal tribes fed into the Tablighi construction of Mewat history. Aggarwal (1971) reconsiders his uncritical acceptance of this label in his dissertation and ponders the motivation for this kind of colonial classification and its impact on the self-image and social treatment of those so labeled.


The text itself suggests criticism from those who questioned this diffusion of authority. Mauland Zakariyya, therefore, insisted throughout that there was a place for the 'ulama' and even cautioned participants about the limits of using translations:

. . . scholars instruct us that it constitutes ignorance to assume that one is a scholar of the Qur'an after having merely consulted literal translations.

(Malik ed., Fazd'il-i tabligh, p. 17)

[Some] people claim to be perfect scholars after having seen only some translations of the Holy Qur'an. The true meanings of the Holy Qur'an can be properly understood only by those who have looked deeply into its verses and are well-informed.

(Faizi ed., p. 24)

While himself contributing to the diffusion of religious learning through the medium of Urdu, he underlined the value of Arabic, especially in the Qur'an:

Every discourse carries the qualities and imprints of the speaker. It is obvious that reciting the poetry of immoral and wicked people has its [evil] effects, [while] the poetry of pious people brings forth their rewards. . . . For this very reason both Persian and English are equal as languages, but, because of the different imprints of the authors whose books are read, there are differences in the results. In effect, because a discourse always contains the imprint of its author, repeated recitation of the divine word will cause the qualities of its Originator to appear.

(Malik ed., Fazd'il-i Qur'dn, p. 35; Faizi ed., p. 59)

Knowledge and use of Arabic is prized, but the Tablighi Jama'at has still insisted on the capacity of every Muslim to teach and benefit others. The texts, and the choices they invite, in principle fall on all.

Printed texts do more than enhance access to information. As Benedict Anderson (1991) has argued, the very existence of printed texts disseminated throughout a population has served to constitute in imagination a sense of individuals, each engaged with common texts, sharing a cultural and, in some cases, a political space. The language used for the Fazd'il texts is interesting here. To my knowledge, they circulate primarily in Urdu and English, whereas an earlier reformist text, the Bihishtf Zewar, has circulated not only in these two languages but in a number of regional languages as well, among them Gujarati, Bengali, and Pashtu. Diaspora Muslims in Britain, for example, or at least their leaders, have unified around Urdu and English as shared languages for many activities, including Tabligh, even though Gujaratis and Bengalis play a pre-eminent role in the movement. Tabligh, using Urdu, English, Arabic, and French, is oriented today to a mobile and transnational society.

Today, the shared experience of the Tabligh and the shared texts have succeeded in producing people throughout the world who are characterized by a common cosmology and a common ethos. The person and the book overlap. Far from finding a "real world" apart from the descriptions of normative books, field investigations demonstrate that the books constitute a significant part of the reality. The Tablighis tell themselves stories from the core normative texts of Islam, but into these stories merge stories of their immediate forebears and stories of themselves. Muslims in Faisalabad, Dewsbury, Marseilles, or Toronto implicitly withdraw from the meta- narratives of nationalism or immigration into which others might inscribe them. They, rather, in a global society of intrusive competing cultures, choose to present themselves as subjects in a story they regard as both greater and truer than those other people may tell. That story takes its meaning and power from the intense


everyday experience of the jama'at when participants enjoy a radical commonality and purposefulness, confirmed in sacred text and unlike the social experiences they encounter in the larger world of everyday life and work.

Conclusion

In looking at hadith translations and their use we get some sense of how a historic religious tradition takes shape in a particular time and place. The "Islam" of the Tabligh texts is "Islam," plain and simple, to the participants: timeless, authentic, and sacred. But it is also a product of and, to be effective, attuned to, the larger world of which it is a part, initially in this case, the world of British colonialism, emergent nationalism and communalism, and physical and social mobility. It is misplaced to look for some wholly autonomous subaltern tradition: there is no Islam, as there is no other cultural tradition, apart from the specific contexts in which it is lived. Even though Tabligh texts are not derivative of colonial or Westernized discourses, they nonetheless speak to many of the same issues and contexts as do other ideologies of their time. 19 Mauland Ilyas's question-What is the cause of Muslim decline and how can Muslims again be great?-is in itself very much a question of the twentieth-century colonial world. In it he spoke out of and spoke to one of the "particular" domains being constituted in the India of his day, a domain neither "public" in an undifferentiated way, nor "private"/familial, but one defined in colonial sociology and shaped by Muslim participation (Gilmartin 1991). Answered in different ways, every Muslim leader asked the same question oriented to the same newly imagined, census based "Muslim community." Even the use of Urdu should not be taken as "natural," but seen, again, as constituted in a dialogue between colonial categories and indigenous activities (Fabian 1991).

The Tablighl Jama'at takes shape in a period of parties and movements, and, even if participants want to think of themselves as something other than a "party but rather a leaven throughout all institutions and all corners of society, the movement is, nonetheless, jama'at-like in offering participants a shared program and a voluntary group of like-minded people. It offers purposeful action and company, specifically noteworthy in this case for its explicit program of transcending the hierarchic chasms of the larger society in favor of a regime of humility and mutual service.20 Its emphasis on grass-roots recruitment and its particular ideology of nonconfrontation particularly resonate with the nationalist, and specifically Gandhian, movements of this period that were so effective in the areas of north India where the Jama'at also operated. Mauland Ilyas and other Tabligh writers of the 1930s, moreover, explicitly countered Christian activism in the area (Faizi ed., Fazco'il-i tabligh, p. 11), and responded as well to movements of "re-conversion" of the Hindu Arya Samaj, a movement that targeted the very Mewatis among whom Maulana Ilyas and other early Tablighis had their first success. Tabligh offers an equivalent to all these challenges.

Tabligh, however, was distinguished by its disengagement from the political domain. It did not oppose politics but ignored them, and by not entering into

'9For these issues of "sub-alternity" in the South Asian context, see in particular Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

201n Metcalf 1993, I describe at length the key Tablighl practices of mashwara and khidmat, as well as the general ethos, that encourage abandonment of issues of worldly status.


conversation, in significant ways did not participate in the creation of a shared discursive field. Most significantly, Tabligh asked no questions and offered no answers to defining the nature of the nation or state, or even of societal ideals.

Yet Tabligh is very much a modern movement. It creates a voluntary, transnational society, apart from the state. It helps constitute an ideology of individualism in its radical concern with personal salvation, made possible by faithful action and in its emphasis on individual choice, choice which is, in a way unusual in Muslim societies, seen as real conversion.21 Also characteristic of many modern movements is Tabligh self-consciousness about "authenticity," coupled with an ideology that is increasingly expressed as an alternative to "the West."

In all this, vernacular texts, communicated by print, play a significant role. The Tablighl Jama'at creates a society defined by shared cosmopolitan languages as people read Tabligh texts and imagine a worldwide community of individuals also reading them. Printed texts democratize knowledge and enhance voluntary, horizontal ties that change the status of the historic leadership. The printed texts encourage individuals to make what seem autonomous choices. Participants self-consciously opt for what is seen as an authentic standard of behavior represented in hadith that are read, re-read, and embodied, in contrast to a larger world that has strayed. Tablighis have insisted that texts can only be effective in lived experience, that alone they are dead. Particularly in the periods when they are abstracted from their normal lives to engage in missions, Tablighis live intensely their interpretation of the texts that they listen to and read.

Printed texts are used and spread in many different ways. The Tablighi Jama'at used and uses vernacular religious texts in two distinctive ways: a limited range of texts is read intensively and life in the jama'at is interpreted as life in the texts. The resultant pattern is above all a lived statement about history, that the past can be encountered in the present. Against this, the history that tells the stories of colonialism and nation states has, in mainstream Tabligh teachings, no appeal.

List of References

ABU'L-A'LA MAUDUDI, MAULANA. [19391. "Ihya-yi din ki jad o jahd ka sahih tarlqa aur ek qabil-i taqlid nam-una" (The right path of struggle for the revival of faith and an example worthy of imitation). Reprinted in Muhammad Manziur Nu'mani (1980):19-37.

AGGARWAL, PARTAP C. 1971. Caste, Religion and Power: An Indian Case Study. New Delhi: Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations.

ANDERSON, BENEDICT. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Second edition. London, New York: Verso.

'AZIZU'R-RAHMAN, MAULANA MUFTI. 1958. Tazkirat-i mushd'ikh-i dJbhand (A dictionary of the Shaikhs of Deoband). Bijnore: Madina Press.

CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. 1989. "Colonialism, Nationalism and Colonized Women: The Contest in India." American Ethnologist 16.4:622-33.

DEvJI, FAISAL FATEHALI. 1991. "Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement for Women's Reform in Muslim India." South Asia 14.1:141-54.

21Peacock (1983) argues that conversion narratives among Muslims are rare. Thus the Deoband movement, for example, unlike the Tabligh, does not produce the kind of stories of fallen and wayward, now transformed, sinners that are common in the Tablighl Jama'at.


EICKELMAN, DALE F. 1978. "The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and its Sociological Reproduction." Comparative Studies in Sociology and History 20.4 (October 1978):485-5 16.

FABIAN, JOHANNES. 1991 [19891. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgain Congo, 1880-1938. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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MUHYI'D-DIN AN-NAWAWI, IMAM. 1988 ed. Riyd das-sdlihTn, 2 vols. [Arabic and English]. Trans. Abdur Rehman Shad. Lahore: Kazi Publications.

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NADWI, S. ABUL HASAN ALI. [19481 1983. Life and Mission of Maulana Mohammad Ilyas. Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research and Publications.

. 1964 ed. [in Urdu]. Hazrat maulcdnd muhammad ilyds aur un kT dTnF da'wat (Hazrat Maulana Muhammad Ilyas and his call to faith). Lucknow: Tanwir Press.

PEACOCK, JAMES L. 1983. "Religion and Life History: An Exploration in Cultural Psychology." Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. In Edward M. Bruner, ed., Text, Play, and Story. Waveland Press, 1988:94-116.

RAI, AMRIT. 1990. A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi-Urdu. Delhi: Oxford University Press.


RAMANUJAN, A. K. 1990. "Who -Needs Folklore?: The Relevance of Oral Traditions to South Asian Studies." South Asia Occasional Paper Series, No. 1. Manoa: Center for South Asian Studies, University of Hawaii.

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TROLL, CHRISTIAN W. 1985. "Five Letters of Maulana Ilyas (1885-1944), the Founder of the Tablighi Jama'at, Translated, Annotated, and Introduced." In Christian W. Troll, ed., Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, 2: Religion and Religious Education. Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 138-76.

WAHIDUDDIN KHAN. 1986. Tabligh Movement. . 1988. MFwdt kd safar (Travel to Mewat). New Delhi: Matbu'at-e Islami

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Living Hadith in Tablighi Jamaat

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