Meo Muslims Were More Or Less Hindu In Custom And Culture Until The Beginning Of The 20th Century When Tablighi Jama'at intervened
By Priyadarshi Dutta
06 November
2020
Fresh sociological studies should be conducted
to ascertain how far the Islamic prohibitions on certain issues have kept the
Meo Muslims backward
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Tauseef
Ahmed and his accomplice Rehan were arrested by the Haryana police from the
Mewat region (Nuh district) for the murder of teenager Nikita Tomar in broad
daylight in Ballabhgarh (Faridabad district). Tauseef was, allegedly,
compelling Nikita to marry him and convert to Islam. In a separate development,
a group of lawyers and a social worker have filed a plea in the Supreme Court
seeking formation of a special investigating team (SIT) to probe alleged
forceful conversions of Hindus in Nuh. The petition, filed through Advocate
Vishnu Shankar Jain, argues that the district administration and the Haryana
police have failed to exercise their due powers.
Nuh is
different from the rest of Haryana because of its religious demography. While
Muslims constitute 7.06 per cent of the State’s population (as per Census,
2011), they constitute 75 per cent of the district. As per the 1971 census, the
Muslims constituted 62 per cent of the population in the five tehsils that now
form Nuh. This reversal of the majority-minority relationship has had its
consequences, particularly in the polarised context prevailing in the rest of
the country. That’s why Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar declared that his
Government would bring a law against forced conversions and set up a board to
protect Hindu properties.
The Mewat
district was renamed as Nuh in 2016. Earlier in 2001, Mewat (1,507 sq km) was
carved out from Gurgaon district. Nuh has been in the news for the wrong
reasons. Mewati gangs are notorious for cattle smuggling, automobile thefts and
highway robberies. Jails in Gurugram and Faridabad districts have a
disproportionate number of Mewati inmates. Terror suspects have been arrested
from Nuh. There have been reports of communal disturbances.
Yet things
need not have played out like this. The Meo Muslims were a different lot; they
were more or less Hindu in custom and culture until the beginning of the 20th
century. Their syncretism could have been an example for the rest of the
Muslims of the subcontinent. Major Percy William Powlett wrote about the Meos
of Alwar (then a princely State) in Alwar Gazetteer (1878). He said: “The Meos
are half-Hindu by their habits. Mosques are rarely to be seen in their villages.
There are only eight mosques in the 50 villages of the tehsil of Tijarah.
Leaving aside the temples, the places of worship of the Meos are very much
similar to those of Hindu neighbours. They are known, for instance, as Paanch
Peera, Baisa and Chahand.”
Mewat, as a
historical region, extends into Alwar and Bharatpur districts of Rajasthan and
Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh beyond its heartland, that is Nuh. One has to
cross the region while going to either Agra or Jaipur from Delhi. It lies at the
heart of the “golden triangle” tourist circuit comprising Delhi, Agra and
Jaipur.
It is
barely known to the outsiders how this region, merely 70-80 km away from Delhi,
acted as the laboratory of Islamic alienation over the last century. Maulana
Mohammad Ilyas (1885-1944), who started the itinerant Tabligh movement
(Tablighi Jama’at), chose Mewat as its nursery in the 1920s. The movement has
been run from its headquarters in the Banglewali Masjid in the Nizamuddin area
of Delhi. Since Maulana Ilyas was a product of Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband (in
fact, a pet student of its co-founder Ahmed Rashid Gangohi), the imprint of its
orthodoxy is evident in the Tabligh movement.
Tabligh is
an outreach movement by Muslim missionaries to take authentic Islam to the doorsteps
of the believers. It encourages nominal Muslims (Momin) to become true Muslims
(Ihsaan/Muhsin). The process involves
disavowal of all “Kafiresque” (that is not sanctioned by Islam) practices,
which might be the legacy of the pre-Islamic past. The recital of six Kalimas
(six verses of Quran) and performing Namaz form the foundation of Tablighi
practices. The six Kalimas are
avowals that there is “no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of
Allah.” The sixth Kalima is especially a rejection of disbelief and polytheism.
The Kalimas constitute disavowal of associating Allah with any other divine
authority. Naturally, syncretism is not merely out of place, but sinful, to be
practised alongside Islam.
Way back in
1970, Hashim Amir Ali, Director, Rural Institute, Jamia Millia Islamia, had, by
examining the features of the movement, stated that the “institution of Tabligh
has begun to blow a wind of change for the worse in the hitherto tranquil and
uniquely syncretic culture of the Meos” (The Meos of Mewat: Old Neighbours of
New Delhi, P.41). Ali feared that orthodoxy, championed by Tabligh, would be
ruinous for the economic life of the Meos. The religious injunction against
interest might discourage them from accepting loans from banks, opening bank
accounts or even joining cooperative societies. It might be remembered that
Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband has pronounced several fatwas against any kind of
borrowing/lending which involves payment of interest. It is high time that
fresh sociological studies are undertaken to ascertain how far the Islamic
prohibitions on certain issues (like interest on lending/borrowing and family
planning methods) have kept the Muslim community backward and impoverished.
The result
of the Tabligh movement manifested during the tumultuous times of 1946-47 when
a popular demand for a separate “Meostan” was raised. Interestingly, it was
pitched by the Communist leader Kunwar Mohammed Ashraf. Its boundaries were
envisaged as extending from Mehrauli in Delhi to Bandikui in Dausa district of
Rajasthan. The Meos of Alwar and Bharatpur had formed the Rajputana Muslim
League. One of its sections was determined to achieve Meostan, envisaged as
adjacent to Pakistan, by the power of guns. This naturally culminated in a
riotous situation where Meos suffered heavy losses due to the Hindu backlash.
Narayan Bhaskar Khare, the Congressman who was then the Dewan of the Alwar
State, had described the situation in detail in his memoirs (My Political
Memoirs or Autobiography, 1959).
However,
Lord Mountbatten’s Partition declaration, dated June 3, 1947, which stipulated
the division of both Punjab and Bengal, knocked out the plan for a Meostan.
Beleaguered, a large number of Meos fled to Pakistan but only to be invited
back to India by the Jawaharlal Nehru Government. Stopping them from migrating
to Pakistan also became an article of faith for Mahatma Gandhi. Khare,
therefore, was not certain that permanent peace had returned to Mewat. He was
apprehensive that communalism could still rear its ugly head. Time has
vindicated Khare as the discontent continues to simmer.
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Priyadarshi Dutta is an author and independent
researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed here are personal.
Original Headline: Nuh still a cauldron
Source: The Daily Pioneer
URl: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/meo-muslims-were-more-less/d/123391
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