Introducing The Jamaat E Islami Hind

The book examines the dynamics from the formation of Islamist politics for the struggle for hegemony to failure to become a hegemonic force in Bangladesh. The contradiction between Islamic universalism/Islamist populism, on one hand, and a politics of Muslim particularism in India, on the other, is revealed in this study.

This work provides an immense insight into the ideology and working of Indian Jamat-e-Islami, that was separated from the original Jamat after bifurcation of the Indian Sub-continent into two sovereign political units, viz., India and Pakistan. It became an important organisation of Muslim minorities in Hindu dominated Inida. Nevertheless, no serious attempt has been made so far to study such an important organisation from a scholastic outlook, while numerous studies, by western as well as Indian scholars, have been done on its Pakistani counterpart,

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is the most influential Islamist organization in India today. Founded in 1941 by Syed Abul Ala Maududi with the aim of spreading Islamic values in the subcontinent, Jamaat and its young offshoot, the Student Islamic Movement of India or SIMI, have been watched closely by Indian security services since September 11. In particular, SIMI has been accused of being behind terrorist bombings. This book is the first in-depth examination of India's Jamaat-e-Islami and SIMI, exploring political Islam's complex relationship with democracy and providing a rare window into the Islamist trajectory in a Muslim-minority context. Irfan Ahmad conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork at a school in the town of Aligarh, among student activists at Aligarh Muslim University, at a madrasa in Azamgarh, and during Jamaat's participation in elections in 2002. He deftly traces Jamaat's changing position in relation to India's secular democracy and the group's gradual ideological shift toward religious pluralism and tolerance. Ahmad demonstrates how the rise of militant Hindu nationalism since the 1980s--evident in the destruction of the Babri mosque and widespread violence against Muslims--led to SIMI's radicalization, its rejection of pluralism, and its call for jihad. Islamism and Democracy in India argues that when secular democracy is responsive to the traditions and aspirations of its Muslim citizens, Muslims in turn embrace pluralism and democracy. But when democracy becomes majoritarian and exclusionary, Muslims turn radical.