ADIL HUSSAIN KHANa1
a1 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Email: adilkhan@illinois.edu
Abstract
This
paper looks at Jama'at-i Ahmadiyya's political involvement in the
Kashmir crisis of the 1930s under its second and most influential khalīfat al-masīh,
Mirza Bashir al-Din Mahmud Ahmad, who took over the movement in 1914,
six years after the death of his father, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Communal
tensions springing from the Kashmir riots of 1931 provided Mirza Mahmud
Ahmad with an opportunity to display the ability of his Jama'at to
manage an international crisis and to lead the Muslim mainstream towards
independence from Britain. Mahmud Ahmad's relations with influential
Muslim community leaders, such as Iqbal, Fazl-i Husain, Zafrulla Khan,
and Sheikh Abdullah (Sher-i Kashmīr), enabled him to further
both his religious and political objectives in the subcontinent. This
paper examines Jama'at-i Ahmadiyya's role in establishing a major
political lobby, the All-India Kashmir Committee. It also shows how the
political involvement of Jama'at-i Ahmadiyya in Kashmir during the 1930s
left Ahmadis susceptible to criticism from opposition groups, like the
Majlis-i Ahrar, amongst others, in later years. Ultimately, this paper
will demonstrate how Mahmud Ahmad's skilful use of religion, publicity,
and political activism during the Kashmir crisis instantly legitimized a
political platform for Jama'at-i Ahmadiyya's entrance into the
mainstream political framework of modern South Asia, which thereby has
facilitated the development of the Ahmadi controversy since India's
partition.
(Online publication February 29 2012)
Footnotes
*
I would like to thank Christopher Shackle, Avril A. Powell, and Ian
Talbot for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The research
for this paper was supported by grants from the University of London
Central Research Fund and the Additional Award for Fieldwork from the
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
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