Bangladesh lifted the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami in 2024 as an offshoot of the party, founded in British India, fielded independent candidates in Jammu and Kashmir, turning the spotlight on the group that opposed Pakistan’s creation and whose Afghan chapter has been an ally of India
By Sameer Arshad Khatlani
Jamaat-e-Islami, a party founded in British India in 1941 and now split into separate entities across countries, hit the headlines in August 2024. The caretaker government formed after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster following student-led protests revoked the ban on Jamaat on August 28, saying it was wrongly accused of involvement in terrorist activities.
The Jamaat, which was accused of collaborating with the Pakistan Army during the 1971 war that led to Bangladesh’s creation, denied the allegation and maintained the ban was illegal, extrajudicial, and unconstitutional. In June 2025, the Bangladeshi Supreme Court restored its registration to allow it to contest elections. A court in 2013 cancelled Jamaat’s registration, saying it conflicted with the country’s secular constitution.
Much of the hysteria in India over Hasina’s removal related to Jamaat-e-Islami, even though the party maintained it sought harmonious and stable ties with New Delhi while rejecting the perception that it was anti-India as mistaken. Shafiqur Rahman, the Jamaat-e-Islami chief in Bangladesh, alleged that a senior Indian diplomat visited Dhaka and dictated who should participate and who should be barred in the 2014 Bangladesh elections.
The Return
In Jammu and Kashmir, Jamaat-backed independent candidates contested the first assembly elections in the region in 10 years. The Jamaat in May 2024 announced its participation in the polls if the Indian government revoked the five-year ban imposed on it in 2019 for promoting separatism. Jamaat-e-Islami participated in elections in the Himalayan region until 1987, when the most compromised poll in the history of fraudulent elections sparked armed insurrection in Kashmir. The ballot stuffing followed the torture and imprisonment of the functionaries of the opposition Muslim United Front, which included the Jamaat.
Syed Salahuddin, a Jamaat member who contested the 1987 election, founded the Pakistan-backed Hizbul Mujahideen and spearheaded the insurrection. In 1998, the Jamaat dissociated itself from militancy. The Jamaat in Kashmir is a separate entity from Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, the Indian offshoot of the party that split into separate organisations in India and Pakistan in 1947, and Bangladesh in 1971.
India’s Afghan Ally
In Afghanistan, Jamaat-e-Islami has been India’s close ally against Pakistan. India backed Burhanuddin Rabbani, who founded the Afghan Jamaat in 1972, his aide Ahmad Shah Massoud, and their allies when they formed the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, or Northern Alliance, to fight the Taliban that captured power for the first time in 1996. Pluralist Afghanistan is among the avowed goals of the Afghan Jamaat.
India became a key player in Afghanistan when the Northern Alliance leaders gained key positions following the Taliban’s ouster from power in 2001. It became Afghanistan’s biggest regional development partner, committing nearly US$3 billion (S$4.08 billion) for rebuilding governance capacity and infrastructure.
India provided secret military assistance via Tajikistan to the Massoud-led Northern Alliance operating from the Panjshir Valley until he was assassinated in 2001. There was no Indian presence in Afghanistan after the Pakistan-backed Taliban takeover. The Indian embassy staff took the last plane out of the country after the Taliban took over Kabul, and hung former President Najibullah’s body from a lamp post.
Secret Assistance
Muthu Kumar, the Indian diplomat who coordinated secret military assistance to Massoud, told The Hindu in 2019 that Massoud was battling someone India should have been battling. He underlined that when Massoud was fighting the Taliban, he was fighting Pakistan. In 2007, a road near the Afghan embassy in New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri was named after Massoud.
The Hindu reported India provided the Northern Alliance uniforms, mortars, small armaments, refurbished Kalashnikovs seized in Kashmir, combat and winter clothes, packaged food, medicines, and funds through Massoud’s brother in London, Wali Massoud. India also helped the Northern Alliance maintain 10 helicopters with spares and service. It provided the alliance with two Mi-8 helicopters between 1996 and 1999. India shifted a hospital in Tajikistan, where Massoud’s wounded fighters were treated, to Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s removal from power.
Complicated History
In the Indian subcontinent, the Jamaat has faced repeated ups and downs over its eight-decade-long complicated history. Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the Jamaat founder, opposed the idea of Pakistan before settling there in 1947. His critique of Pakistan was rooted in his understanding of Islam. Maududi (1903–1979) was an Islamic scholar, unlike Pakistan’s founders, who were not particularly known to be religious. Incidentally, most observant Muslim leaders of the 1940s across the length and breadth of the subcontinent—from Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan to Sheikh Abdullah, Maulana Azad, Maulana Hussain Madni, etc—opposed Pakistan’s creation.
Maulana Madani of the Deoband Seminary challenged poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal‘s idea of territorial nationalism in the 1930s, holding his own against the Cambridge University alumnus. The two had an informed debate on nationhood with Madani citing Islamic sources to argue for composite nationalism and a united India. Muhammad Ali Jinnah would overshadow people such as Madani and Maududi with his rise in the 1940s.
The Oversight
The 2017 Cambridge University Press anthology, Muslims Against Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan (Eds Ali Usman Qasmi and Megan Eaton Robb) addresses the oversight of Muslim leaders and organisations that opposed Jinnah’s demand. The anthology focuses on the Muslim criticism of Pakistan’s founding and varied narratives about Muslim identity formation in the context of debates about partition.
Muslims Against Muslim League historicizes narratives in the light of the larger political milieu of the 1940s. It focuses on the critiques of the Muslim League, its concept of the Muslim nation, and the political settlement demanded on its behalf. The book shows how the Pakistan movement triggered contentious conversations on the definition of the Muslim nation by shedding light on leaders such as Maududi, who remained at loggerheads with the powers that be in Pakistan. Maududi was sentenced to death for sedition in Pakistan in 1953, before the sentence was commuted to 14 years. He was eventually released in 1955.
Exception Among Contemporaries
In his essay on Maududi, Ali Usman Qasmi, an assistant professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, writes that the Jamaat founder was an exception among his contemporaries. Born in the princely state of Hyderabad to a family with roots in Delhi’s aristocracy, Maududi was not formally trained at a seminary. Qasmi writes that Maududi showed a remarkable understanding of classical Islamic tradition and contemporary Western political thought.
Maududi was not associated with a mosque or a seminary. He began his career in journalism. Qasmi writes this gave him a unique style of writing through which he could use commonly understood language to explain complex ideas, giving him a broader understanding of debates in India on issues such as the future Indian Constitution, the share of Muslims in power, and the possible outcomes of majoritarian rule after the British departure.
Maududi founded the journal Tarjuman-ul-Quran in Hyderabad in 1933 after editing Al-Jamiat, a weekly of the pro-Congress Muslim clerical organisation Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind. The Tarjuman focused on Muslim participation and power sharing against the backdrop of the introduction of self-government in 1935.
A visit to Delhi in 1937, after seven years, was a turning point for Maududi as he noticed a major transformation. He found Delhi was losing much of its Muslim character and that Hindus had made substantial gains under the new constitutional scheme. Maududi feared Muslims would lose their identity, culture, and religion, prompting him to form Jamaat-e-Islami.
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is a journalist and an author
