In an era of religious and political transition dating back to the eighteenth century, Muslim South Asia has witnessed the emergence of reform movements that have called for the revival of a pristine Islam. Religion in what became an era of colonial modernity was predicated on the text; hence, Islam came to be ‘re-invented’ by a wave of reformers in the light of new epistemic realities.Footnote 1 This version of Islam not only sustained itself but gained strength within the region over the course of the first half of the twentieth century. Textual Islam was considerably further entrenched after Pakistan was established in 1947. Religious discourse as well as the kind of religious practice that took root in Pakistan at the time of its birth had a tangible tilt towards ‘puritanism’, emphasising particular performative aspects of Islam.Footnote 2 Maulana Allahyar, a reformist with Deobandi leanings whose impact is the focus of this article, infused this religious practice with a spiritual dimension without reducing its ritualistic aspect. Accordingly, a modernist version of Islam combined with traditional spirituality proved be the hallmark of his movement, which emerged and attracted adherents during the second half of the twentieth century.
But before exploring Allahyar's movement more closely, it needs to be located within the wider attempt at Islamic reform and revival that was taking place in different Muslim societies at the same time. Islam as a complete system of governance and its compatibility with modernity was being highlighted by thinkers and activists such as Hasan al-Banna, founder of Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan-al-Muslimun), and Syed Qutab in Egypt, Hasan al-Turabi in Sudan, and Rashid al-Ghannoushi in Tunisia. Al-Ikhwan-al-Muslimun, founded in 1928, for instance, had quickly spread its influence beyond Egypt's borders. Hasan al-Banna played a major role in shaping the movement's discourse in Sudan, which secured its independence in 1956 when the two largest Muslim religio-political organisations there, Khatmiyyah Tariqa and Ansar, came to power.Footnote 3 Meanwhile, Libya was established as an independent state and the head of Sanusiyyah Sufi order became its king,Footnote 4 while Wahabi Islam dominated the Arabian Peninsula after the Saud dynasty—ardent followers of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab—had been established there. And in South Asia Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami in India in 1941,Footnote 5 achieved prominence through his publications, which in due course came to be viewed by many as the testament of political Islam. Hence, Islam operated as an identity marker and symbol of cohesion among otherwise diverse groupings of Muslims in different parts of the world. Indeed, the period of decolonisation following the Second World War provided added impetus to an ideology that was fast becoming popular among sections of the Muslim literati.
The establishment of Pakistan has been projected in some quarters as an Islamic project. Certainly, the Muslim League mobilised mass support for an independent Muslim state in which religion would play a decisive role in its future political development. During the initial phase of Pakistan's history, however, its ‘westernised’ ruling groups and its religious ‘clergy’, steeped in tradition, seemed to draw apart.Footnote 6 By 1949, the political elite had accepted a political role for Islamic forces within the country, even though this meant compromising their original conception of Pakistan as a secular state. But the aim of producing, and professing, a singular Islam was confronted in practice by conflicting reformist religious articulations. In this process of re-identification, the concept of ‘Islam’ came to be redefined by many Pakistanis to exclude all supposedly ‘deviant’ and, according to them, un-Islamic elements. In this context, the passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949 with its exclusionary logic as far as the country's religious minorities were concerned is viewed by many as the first step that divided Pakistani citizens into ‘Muslims’ and ‘non-Muslims’.Footnote 7 The issue of the relationship between religion and national identity emerged more strongly still in constitutional debates in 1953. The anti-Ahmadiyya protests of that year pushed Pakistan decisively in the direction becoming a nation-state based on what the majority deemed to be Islamic principles of governance. Indeed, it was because of the 1953 anti-Ahmadiyya agitation that religious exclusion arguably became the central plank within Pakistani nationalism.Footnote 8 The search for ‘correct’ ways to define ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ in the context of Pakistan then led to the development of exclusionary political discourses, which, in turn, further excluded minority groups, particularly Ahmadis and sometimes Shias too, who were denounced as kafirs (non-believers) with impunity.
It is against this broader backdrop that the following discussion focuses on a Sufi-inspired reformist movement that emerged in Pakistan during this period in response to the preaching and proselytising activities of Shia and Ahmadi missionaries. The movement in question was spearheaded by Maulana Allahyar ChakralwiFootnote 9 (1904–84) in Chakrala,Footnote 10 a small town in Mianwali district, located in the south-west of Pakistan's Punjab province, during 1950s and 1960s. Allahyar's puritanical Deobandi approach generated religious conflict, which took the form of sectarian antagonism capped by theological debate. Ironically, the movement, which espoused the congruence of sharia (religious law) and tariqa (Sufi order) had the exclusion of minority groups (Shias and Ahmadis) as its defining feature, something that represented a key contradiction. This exclusion set in motion a process of ‘othering’, creating new sectarian divisions within Chakrala's longstanding syncretic religious ethos. In many ways, this pattern replicated the wider Pakistani national narrative, in which emphasis on sharia-oriented Islam led to increased religiosity by hardening religious boundaries, and syncretic hybrid traditions came to be replaced by exclusionary tendencies based on sectarian differences.
Maulana Allahyar's reformist movement carried out its preaching through the medium of Sufi circles or halqa-e-dhikr (lit. Circle of Divine Remembrance)Footnote 11 together with the establishment of a tablighi jamaat (missionary movement). Moreover, the expansion of Allahyar's following within the Pakistani armed forces under General Ayub Khan (1958–69) represented an important dimension of his proselytising endeavours. The resulting interface between army and Islam, which arguably found its clearest expression in the Gaya prisoner-of-war camp (Bihar, India) in 1971, will also be explored here.
Maulana Allahyar Chakralwi and his Jamaat seemed to draw inspiration from the broader Pakistani environment in which religious/sectarian exclusion operated as the most widely circulated discourse. With regard to the growth of sectarianism, most scholars connect the increased radicalisation of sectarian identities to General Zia-ul-Haq's Islamisation programme, the conflict in Afghanistan, the proliferation of Deobandi madaris (pl. madrassah), and the 1979 Iranian Revolution.Footnote 12 Vali Nasr, for instance, has argued that the increased participation of ulama (pl. of alim, Islamic scholars) in society and politics together with the changing role of religious education sparked an increase in sectarianism. Qasim Zaman has shown how, in the second half of the twentieth century, the configuration of social, political and religious factors at national and transnational levels articulated religious identities.Footnote 13 Other scholars have explored the relationship between the military and politics and likewise the military's dominant role in decision-making within the post-colonial Pakistani state structure. Ayesha Jalal, Stephen Cohen and Aqil Shah, for instance, have discussed how the military acquired such a dominant role in decision making in Pakistan: both Jalal and Cohen have analysed the military's intervention in relation to how the interplay of regional and international factors influenced domestic politics and the economy, distorting relations between the centre and the provinces and likewise the dialectic between state construction and political processes,Footnote 14 while Shah has argued that geo-political insecurity constructed the military's ideas regarding political intervention and its authoritarian role in state and society.Footnote 15 Ayesha Siddiqa too has investigated the political economy of military influence, how military capital has been used for the personal benefit of the officer cadre and the ways in which the armed forces have been used as a tool for institutional and personal economic influence.Footnote 16
While none of these aforementioned scholars have focused on the army's role and patronage with respect to religion and the interface between Islam and the army, the army's use of Islam has been of interest to others, spawning multiple perspectives and interpretations. Katherine Ewing, Yasmin Saikia, Vali Nasser and Hussain Haqqani, among others, highlight the extent to which General Ayub Khan deployed Islam as a tool for nation building. Ewing and Nasser likewise demonstrate that when Ayub was unable to extricate Islam from politics, he decided instead to make religion compatible with his national goals of development and modernisation, seeking to incorporate Islam within state discourses on socio-political change at the same time as restricting the role of Islam in the country's broader political process. To generate a more ‘liberal’ vision of Islam, Ayub wanted religion to be controlled and guided by the military rather than by clerics.Footnote 17 But, as Saikia argues, Ayub's state version of Pakistani identity based on a singular homogenised Islamic identity together with the army's image as the “true protector” of religion and nationalism lost ground with the dismemberment of Pakistan and the establishment of the separate state of Bangladesh.Footnote 18 Haqqani further proposes that after the 1971 war, Islam acquired greater significance in creating national cohesion between Pakistan's remaining diverse ethnic and linguistic groups, but that ‘Islam’ became militant as a result of an alliance between ‘mosque’ and ‘military’.Footnote 19 Farzana Shaikh, meanwhile, has introduced a different perspective by arguing that the military looked to Islam to strengthen the ‘communal’ narrative that defined Pakistan's identity in opposition to India, and kept this alive by extending Pakistan's regional interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan.Footnote 20
This article accordingly seeks to contribute to these ongoing debates by highlighting the religious proselytisation taking place within the Pakistani armed forces during Ayub Khan's era thanks to the activities of Allahyar's jamaat of dhakirin (lit. ‘those who remember Allah’). In particular, it underlines the extent to which the influential military constituency constructed by Allahyar helped to anchor his religious authority. While his Jamaat found its strongest expression in the form of halqa-e-dhikr in a post-1971 prisoner-of-war camp in India, this article suggests that the shared performance of mystical practices created a sense of solidarity and cohesive moral community among Pakistani prisoners there. The research that underpins it is based on vernacular sources, including previously unused hagiographical literature, such as Dalail-ul-Saluk, a detailed account of the Naqshbandia Awaisia silsila (Sufi order), a biographical account of Allahyar Ahmed-ud-Din's Hayat-e-Tayaba, and Major Ghulam Muhammad's Murshid Jaisa Na Dekha Koi that provides detailed information about how Allahyar's Jamaat penetrated the Pakistani armed forces. In addition, Halat-i-Aseeri Main Ahl-e-Allah Ki Suhbat together with a collection of letters provide valuable insights into the Gaya prisoner-of-war camp. However, these sources do have limitations. Most of them are memory based, compiled and published much more recently, with missing chronologies and a limited range of perceptions and comprehension; as such they generally reflect the frailty of their authors. Furthermore, these sources are inevitably moulded by the opinions, prejudices and cultural standpoints of their authors and so lack objectivity. However, traditional archives and academic writings on the Pakistan armed forces with respect to the 1971 war only provide details of the conflict and accounts of the traumatic experience of being imprisoned. Hence, this article's exploration of the process of Islam penetrating an extensive disciple constituency present within the Pakistani military, and the formation of halqa-e-dhikr and religious practices in a prisoner-of-war camp, contributes new insights to what is an significant period in Pakistan's history.
Contextualising Chakrala as a site of sectarian difference
Prior to Partition in 1947, the small town of Chakrala presented a ‘mosaic’ wherein ethnic, tribal and religious groups existed as independent cultural units. Chakrala—the oldest (and largest) urban settlement in the district—had many inhabitants belonging to Punjab's Hindu community, called ‘Chikar’ (surname Chakraborty). As secondary sources are not available on Chakrala's history, however, we must rely on primary sources, but even so these only provide very scanty information about its religious landscape. Chakrala's first encounter with Islam seems to have taken place in the thirteenth century, when it was conquered by local Muslims with the help of tribesmen from the North West.Footnote 21 But Islam in Chakrala was popularised and sustained by Sufi pirs, whose shrines in time became important sites of religious veneration in the locality. Indeed, the local spread of Islam was largely a result of long-term interaction between Sufis professing Islam, pre-existing religious beliefs steeped in ideas about evil spirits, multifarious methods of dispelling the effect of such evil influences, witchcraft and magic, and the immediate environment. An ordinary Muslim's understanding of Islam was usually mediated through the agency of a Sufi or pir.Footnote 22 But while Hindus and Muslims may have existed as distinct religious groups in Chakrala, they also tended to mingle at the same shrines. A large number of non-Muslim devotees, both Hindus and Sikhs, for instance, were initiated into the Chishtia and Naqshbandia Sufi orders, and visited local shrines without converting to Islam.Footnote 23 Thus, shrines symbolised plurality, and Islam in Chakrala was closely associated with the syncretic socio-religious values embodied in the shrine-based culture of the region.
From a demographic perspective, Chakrala was populated predominantly by Awan tribes, who were landowners and exercised considerable influence in the town.Footnote 24 The essentially ‘tribal’ profile of the region meant that animosities between tribes often led to conflicts, rivalries and killings. In Chakrala and surrounding regions of Potwar and the valley of Saun Skesar, Shias and Ahmadis lived as affluent minority groups as compared with Chakrala's Sunnis. They too were landowners and extended patronage as chiefs of their tribes.Footnote 25 Local Ahmadis seem to have aimed at making Puchnad (a centrally-placed town in Chakrala district) into an Ahmadi base from which to secure a foothold in the surrounding districts of Attok, Chakwal, Talagang, Mianwali and Khushab.Footnote 26 For this purpose, some Ahmadis purchased agricultural lands in the vicinity of towns of Thamey Aali and Puchnad, and from there embarked upon their missionary activities, which were organised and financed with the backing of rich landowners who had converted to the Ahmadi faith. Indeed, these new converts extended moral and financial support by establishing a school, a charity hospital and separate training centres for men and women.
Religious controversies between Ahmadis and Sunnis, or more often between Sunnis and Shias, were played out through theological disputation or munazaras. These munazaras were arranged and funded by local Shia zamindars on an annual basis, and became occasions on which Shia dhakirs (preachers) were invited from surrounding areas including Talagang, Chakrala, Sargodha, Toba Tek Singh, Chakwal and Ali Pur Chattha.Footnote 27 According to Shia sources, thousands of Sunnis were supposedly converted to Shi'ism as a result of munazaras held the Punjab in the period up to the late 1950s.Footnote 28 Munazaras also involved the prestige of contesting tribes, and during them large numbers of people from surrounding villages assembled to support their tribal representatives.Footnote 29 Thus, religion was closely entwined with tribal, social and political relations and accompanying internecine conflicts.Footnote 30 The same interplay of tribal, social structures and regional economic imperatives, however, helped in the development of Shi'ism.Footnote 31
Hence, in this spatial context, Allahyar's focus was primarily directed towards the local Shia minority, whom he denounced as the greatest enemy of Islam. He conducted debates in remote smaller towns, such as Khandway and Kot Miana, as well as in the bigger cities of Multan, Jhelum and Sargodha, and his efforts also took him to the borders of Sindh and Kashmir. He challenged Shias in munazaras when, in his view, they sought to assert their authority by allegedly mis-representing tradition as well as the Quranic verses. Allahyar, thus, used the ritual sphere as a domain for exercising authority by regulating and controlling access to it. He instructed Shias and Sunnis to hold their majlis and assemblies separately during the month of Muharram, advising them to contest tabarraFootnote 32 by reciting madh-e-sahaba (praise of the first three Caliphs). Action was likewise taken to deter Sunnis from joining Muharram processions despite the fact that these processions held significance for them.Footnote 33 Sunni bids to restrict azadari (mourning processions) and tabarra agitation orchestrated by Shias sparked conflict, creating a general atmosphere of social estrangement between the two communities in the town. This sectarian antagonism could manifest itself in violent clashes when freedom to observe their rituals was restricted.
In 1956 Allahyar established a training institution, the Dar-ul-Mubalighin, following the model of the Sunni school set up for the training of mubaligh and munazir in Lucknow in the early 1930s.Footnote 34 To produce and distribute Sunni-Shia polemical tracts, treatises and literature against azadari on a wider scale, he also set up a publishing house at the Dar-ul-Huda Chokeera Madrassah (in Sargodha district) in the same year under the patronage of Syed Ahmed Shah Bokhari.Footnote 35 Separate pamphlets and other forms of polemical literature helped to construct exclusivist sectarian identities (emphasising differences between Shias and Sunnis). Indeed, Sunnism was defined in terms of anti-Shi'ism.
Sectarianism, thus, emerged in and around Chakwal as a manifestation of fractured identities, caused by the efforts of people belonging to the majority Sunni community who sought to establish their religious authority over local Shias through tribal pressure or by using force.Footnote 36 With this marginalisation of Shias, an aggressive Sunni identity was forged in the countryside of this part of Pakistani Punjab, and identity came to embedded in a literalist version of the sharia that, in turn, crystallised a sectarian exclusionary discourse. It was in this context that Shia proselytisation so alarmed Allahyar that he founded a reform movement with a tangible Sufi orientation.
The Jamaat of Allah's friends: Maulana Allahyar's reformist movement
Theologically Allahyar with his Deobandi leanings maintained strict adherence to the Quran and the Hadith. His reforming streak was demonstrated in the denigration of hereditary Sufi leaders, the sajjada nishins, and he opposed prostration at tombs, the kindling of lamps to predict future, ecstasy, dance, trance, music and the holding of ‘urs. Instead, his reformist Sufi orientation grew out of deep concerns for identity and normative Islam shared by other twentieth-century Muslim reformers. Like them he stressed the importance of individual Muslim conduct, the need to purify Muslim society of bida (innovation from the path of Muhammad), and the urgency of constructing a true Islamic community.Footnote 37 But in a Barelwi-dominated region, Allahyar also had to take tasawwuf (Sufi mysticism) into account in order to propagate his reformist ideas. He influenced people by communicating a firm belief in karamat (miracles), and cultivated his image as a charismatic figure, in direct communication to God and the Prophet. At the heart of his order lay its most distinctive feature, namely spiritual conversation with mashaikh (saints) in the barzakh (celestial world) and seeking guidance from them.Footnote 38 This transcendental dimension of Allahyar's cult, which was defined by the power to contact the sacred, cemented his religious authority and endowed it with an exclusive identity among his followers.
His order was organised internally in the form of halqa-e-dhikr, in which Allahyar shared his personal experience with the power of the sacred with his followers. The halqa-e-dhikr was concerned with the mutual power relationship between a group of dhakirin Footnote 39 and the larger society to which it belonged. In this way, a link was formed between sacred experience and the daily problems of his disciples. Their belief in Allahyar's miraculous powers gave them security and empowerment. In 1960 these halqa-e-dhikrs took a formal shape as a jamaat of dhakirin, named the Jamaat Akhuwat-ul Salikeen. From then onwards, this format became the main instrument for the dissemination of his reformist ideas,Footnote 40 often in response to Shia missionary activities. It was quite similar to the better-known Tablighi Jamaat launched by Maulana Ilyas (1885–1944) in the wake of Shuddhi movement in 1920.Footnote 41 However, Allahyar asserted that he was motivated by the guidance of divinely inspired dreams and visions.Footnote 42 It was a belief in the Naqshbandia Awaisia silsila Footnote 43 that all decisions were made in the barzakh by the Prophet Muhammad and the mashaikh. The preaching (tabligh) and the organisation of his jamaat of dhakirin was, therefore, portrayed as a divine inspiration, with Allahyar claiming that the Prophet had instructed him to form it. Hence, he also called it a Jamaat of Allah's friends—indeed, the last jamaat of Auliya (Allah's blessed people)—and he claimed that the people belonging to it would continue to exist until the time of the Imam Mehdi.Footnote 44 This idea of millennialism, his order's consistent interest in the end of this world, the Mehdi and the ‘sign of the hour’ are closely associated with the Awaisia silsila.Footnote 45 In doctrinal terms Allahyar's Jamaat (like that of Maulana Ilyas) represented Hanafi Sunni Islam; however, it was open to all schools of fiqh (jurisprudence). It propagated the same message of puritan reformist Islam as the Darul-Ulum Deoband, along with tasawwuf rituals. As Reetz has argued, “Barelwis aggressively deny the tablighis, their Sufi antecedents and brand them as Deobandi or even Wahhabi outfits”.Footnote 46 He goes on to maintain that tablighi leaders in Pakistan, acting as shaikhs, initiated their disciples in their favourite silsila (order).Footnote 47
Unlike Ilyas's Tablighi Jamaat, Allahyar identified himself with the Naqshbandia Awaisia silsila, but he never gave a mass baiat Footnote 48 in the congregation; only a selected few were to swear allegiance before the Prophet in this way.Footnote 49 Nor, unlike other tablighi activists, did his Jamaat perform gasht or patrolling (exhorting people to join the tablighi project). Rather the idea that was unique to his Jamaat's teaching programme was its organisation of small groups of followers to establish halqa-e-dhikr. Sufi discipline was enforced in the Jamaat through halqa-e-dhikr rather than in a Sufi hospice, which was something that he never maintained. Allahyar himself believed dhikr to be “the most effective source of guidance”.Footnote 50 Just as Chakrala's Ahmadi and Shia missionaries had particularly targetted local women folk, these preaching groups included female sections for the instruction of rural women in the proper modes of Muslim religious practice.
Allahyar's Jamaat, thus, marked the formal expansion of the Naqshbandia Awaisia silsila, with halqa-e-dhikr emerging across the country, linked to the original centre founded at Manara (Jhelum district) in 1960.Footnote 51 The first halqa-e-dhikr was established in Chakwal district and Manara, and the first women's halqa-e-dhikr—composed of one hundred female dhakir—was set up in Mohra Kor Chashm in Chakrala in 1962–3.Footnote 52 The Jamaat's constituency was mainly professionals, including religious teachers in madaris, imams and qaris in mosques, professors in local colleges, and ulama. Hafiz Abdur Razzaq, Maulvi Suleiman, Maulvi Fazal Hussain and Buniyad Hussain Shah were some of the prominent ideologues associated with the Jamaat in its initial stages, when its support base remained limited.Footnote 53 The order then spread out as far afield as Baluchistan, mainly through khateeb (the person who delivers the khutbah or sermon) and imam (prayer leader) networks. Maulana Abdul Qadir Dairvi and Qari Yar Muhammad, for instance, established the first halqa-e-dhikr in their respective mosques—Chiltan Market Mosque in Quetta and Dairy Farm Mosque—in 1966.Footnote 54 The Jamaat further expanded with halqa-e-dhikr being set up in Mardan, Peshawar, Gilgit and Azad Kashmir. However, it was unable to ensure active participation from among the rural masses. When a disciple and main financier of the Jamaat Akram Awan donated land in Manara (Jhelum district), the centre of its activities shifted there from Chakrala, and by 1977 Manara contained a permanent base, the Dar-ul-Irfan, for its proselytising activities.Footnote 55 The Jamaat with meager economic resources of its own, however, continued to rely mainly on the financial support of disciples who would pay their zakat (obligatory charity payments) and sadqat (non-obligatory charity donations) into the Jamaat's fund. Importantly, Allahyar refused to accept donations from anyone outside the movement on the grounds that their source of income was not known.Footnote 56 Dhakirin and the female members of their households also provided their services to the Jamaat. In many ways, the entire Jamaat was the manifestation of what Victor Turner has called “communitas”, providing an arena of close brotherhood in a common spiritual quest.Footnote 57
One consequence of the growing popularity of Allahyar's movement was increased awareness not just among ulama but also ordinary people of the need to strive for Islamic reform through halqa-e-dhikr. Efforts at systematic preaching and halqa-e-dhikr owed their immediate origins to the fallout from proselytising activities. The year 1964 proved to be the turning point in the Jamaat's missionary work, which expanded exponentially when Allahyar's book Dalail-ul-Suluk on tasawwuf was published and became an instant success. Translated into English in 1967 under the title ‘An Objective Appraisal of the sublime Sufi path’,Footnote 58 it developed into a significant means of attracting adherents in the Pakistan armed forces to the Naqshbandia Awaisia silsila. Footnote 59 Reformed Sufism, it would seem, held a tremendous appeal for educated senior officers and subalterns alike.
Allahyar's silsila and halqa-e-dhikr penetrate the armed forces
The religiosity preached by Allahyar, which stressed the protection provided by his miraculous powers, underpinned his relationship with members of the armed forces. He claimed to have access to an esoteric knowledge of the divine through muraqaba and to be able to access God through intercession provided by the Prophet and Sufi saints (mashaikh). This knowledge was believed by his murids (followers) to give him spiritual authority and proximity to God, enabling him to intercede on their behalf. His followers in return gave him their unquestioning loyalty.Footnote 60 Indeed, it was in recognition of this reciprocity that the social ties linking him with his followers were formed.
Allahyar's silsila first took root within the Pakistani armed forces in 1962, during the period of Ayub Khan's military rule. His vision of a Sufi as an alim who guides his adherents regarding the tenets of Islam in conformity with the sharia was very much in line with Ayub's own identification with Sufism. As Yasmin Saikia maintains, “Ayub Khan wanted to transform men in the barracks into heroes, who upheld Islamic identity, so imbuing the army with an unquestionable legitimacy”.Footnote 61 The influence of religious authorities (ulama who were also Sufis) was considerably enhanced by their growing connection with Pakistan's most powerful state institution, the military. The development and expansion of Allahyar's military-based constituency was, therefore, one outcome of the state's policy towards religion. Under Ayub the government sought to control Islam through the military, and by introducing a ‘modern’ vision of Islam in the barracks it was helped to spread more widely among the ranks of the armed forces. This institutional support from above linked Allahyar's silsila to the main centre of power within Pakistan.
At the same time, there were also developments taking place ‘from below’. Chakrala is situated in the Pothowar region and adjacent to the Salt Range, a belt comprising districts whose terrain and climate have proved conducive to the production of eligible military recruits.Footnote 62 For decades, agricultural underdevelopment combined with abject poverty had drawn the people of this area to military service. At the same time, the rough and tumble of military life combined with problems at the personal, familial and societal level, meant that these men turned towards Sufism for the spiritual resolution of their problems.
Initially Allahyar's silsila was introduced among non-commissioned officers from towns such as Chakrala and Talagang, and their surroundings. Hafiz Ghulam Qadri from Chakwal was the first non-commissioned officer to join the halqa-e-dhikr, established the Pakistan army's first halqa-e-dhikr in the mosque belonging to 502 Workshop at Rawalpindi. Dhakirin in the armed forces, together with halqa-e-dhikr, thus spread from one cantonment to another. Dhakirin from 502 Workshop, for instance, were posted to Karachi, where they established centres that extended the halqa-e-dhikr to various cities in Sindh, including Badin, helping to widen the constituency of disciples, among whom Hawaldar Muhammad Saddiq and Sher Ali were prominent. Later on, they established halqa-e-dhikr at the Infantry School in Quetta in 1968.Footnote 63 Allahyar gave sermons at Juma (Friday congregational) prayers at the mosque of PNS Himalya during his visit to Karachi, and established the first halqa-e-dhikr in the Pakistan navy. With a considerable number of officers from East Pakistan were also included in this halqa-e-dhikr, Allahyar appointed as his khalifa an officer Muzamil Haq who later moved to Bangladesh in 1972.Footnote 64 Furthermore, while the integration of people from rural and urban locations became possible once officers had been initiated in the silsila, it was through rural soldiers (mostly non-commissioned) that Allahyar's textual and reformist version of Islam reached the countryside. Nile Green has identified the challenges faced by colonial-era Indian soldiers often rooted in the rural world of customary Islam and miracles as they adapted a more urban military life.Footnote 65 As opposed to this, in the town of Chakrala, soldiers, whose background was in rural customary Islam, accepted Allahyar's Sufi-inspired reformist message in large part because it was compatible with the then military government's agenda of reformulating a composite identity.Footnote 66 For army personnel under Ayub, class, ethnicity, clan affiliation, education and personal connections had a marked significance for career development.Footnote 67 Their association with the silsila and the miracle-working Sufi transformed their lives, which became structured around the reading and discussion circles of Hadith, dhikr and the invocation of divine names, rather than being focused on material things. Disciplining the self was now the primary concern, and so through these rituals the self of the devotee was being disciplined.
The network of military cantonments played a vital role in the dissemination of reformist ideas within the army, air force and navy alike. Allahyar's silsila extended deeper into the officer class thanks to the work of Lt. Ahsan Baig and Captain Muhammad Hanif, who first joined the halqa-e-dhikr in 1968. Both officers were posted to Risalpur the following year, where they established halqa-e-dhikr in the Pakistan air force. Allahyar's influence was particularly strong among younger officers; a few of those who joined in the early stages were Hadi Hussain Shah, Major Zain-ul-Abideen (East Pakistan), Lt. Ghulam Muhammad, Captain Muhammad Ghaus, Captain Muhammad Rafique and Captain Muhammad Umer. Through them halqa-e-dhikr were established in cantonments in Kakul, Bhimber and Kharian, Gujranwala, Okara and Jehlum.Footnote 68 Allahyar personally visited and stayed in these cantonments, held majalis (sittings) there and addressed Juma prayers.Footnote 69 His fame as Sufi consequently extended far and wide through his military clientele whose periodic redeployment took it to different cantonments within Pakistan. And, hence, the stories of miraculous rescues and unexpected fortune broadcast by his followers gained currency through that same military network.
Moral community and social solidarity: halqa-e-dhikr in the 1971 Gaya war camp
In 1971 the Pakistani army was engaged in fighting during the Bangladesh liberation war. After the fall of Dhaka, some 93,000 Pakistani soldiers were famously imprisoned in Indian prisoner-of-war camps, one of which was Camp No. 93 in Gaya (Bihar).Footnote 70 The camp was guarded by Indian soldiers belonging to Hindu Jat, Sikh and Gorkha regiments. Available sources do not provide much information on how many prisoners of war were housed in the Gaya camp, nor how was it managed. Clearly, however, prisoners kept there remained traumatised by the Pakistani army's recent humiliating defeat and the loss of East Pakistan, something that is clearly reflected in existing hagiographic narratives. Since many Pakistani soldiers in Gaya were already followers of Allahyar, he nominated one of his khalifas, Major Ahsan Baig (b. 1944),Footnote 71 as their mentor and spiritual leader, responsible for organising dhikr sessions in the camp.Footnote 72 Accordingly, a halqa-e-dhikr consisting of both officials and rank-and-file soldiers was established in Camp No. 93. Allahyar termed this halqa-e-dhikr as ‘jamaat Akhuwat-ul-salkeen’, intended to forge brotherhood among its members in their hour of distress.Footnote 73 He maintained a connection with his imprisoned disciples through letters and other correspondence, and assured them that only dhikr and training in suluk and muraqaba (spiritual communion) could provide them with salvation. As a result, the lives of these soldiers in the camp came to be structured around prayers, intensive ascetic exercise through dhikr and muraqaba, and invoking the memory of earlier pious personalities. Dhikr majalis (sittings) also helped these traumatised soldiers to mitigate the harshness of their tough and boring camp life, not to mention the recent unpleasant experience of war itself.Footnote 74 Put another way, a symbiosis took place between the physical training of a soldier and that of an ascetic; the former generated outer powers through making muscles and body, while the latter cultivated inner powers through enervating the flesh. It was this fusion of inner and outer that united an ascetic and a soldier.Footnote 75
The interface between army and religion, thus, found its expression among soldiers in the prisoner-of-war camp at Gaya. Allahyar's Sufi order with its centre in Chakrala (Pakistan) was now extended to Gaya (India). Initially spiritual practices in the halqa-e-dhikr were resisted by the camp's Indian guards: the camp commander Lt. Col. K.D. Parbhakar, for instance, declared it a violation of the Geneva Convention to assemble near the barbed wired area for dhikr. Later, soldiers moved their dhikr session inside the camp, where—considering it to be a harmless religious activity—the camp commander allowed them to continue it.Footnote 76 This activity, however, was not without its problems for the devotees. One was the paradoxical situation that emerged in the camp with respect to Ahsan Baig's religious authority as mentor. Some senior officers questioned his walay (spiritual status) and balked at accepting his religious authority as he was junior to them. Allahyar in response in his letters made it clear that they “should not entertain any doubt in the perfection of spiritual authority of a person, who had the ability to make you visit the barzakh and present you in the court of Prophet through spiritual communion [muraqaba]”.Footnote 77 His instruction that, irrespective of military status, they had to accept the superiority of those who were spiritually elevated, indicated that Allahyar gave precedence to religiously-based spiritual authority over the worldly hierarchy associated with a soldier's rank. The question that arose was about the defining new standards for the exercise of the religious authority over material hierarchy of ranks in military.
To reconcile religious authority (which Ahsan Baig derived from his status as khalifa in the local religious context) with the hierarchical ranks of military became quite vexed, and when his religious authority manifested itself within the camp, the question of defining his suitability for religious leadership emerged. Spiritual transformation demands submission and the elimination of vanity and pride, which Muhammad Ajmal has termed as “defensive armour of the ego”.Footnote 78 Allahyar's message was to abstain from material desires such as rank and position, and he referred to practicing chastity and refraining from anything that was in contradiction to the sharia. He looked upon worldly engagements with considerable distaste, and did not consider din (religion) and dunya (worldly concerns) mutually exclusive, making the spiritual as well as this-worldly life in accordance with the laws of din.Footnote 79 In this sense, what he was proposing was a dualistic sociological model of ‘renouncer’ versus ‘man in the world’.Footnote 80
This approach clearly underlined how far the characteristics of Islam in this context were patronal and hierarchical. The Gaya prisoner-of-war camp was not a world of men who were equal among themselves but rather a hierarchical and segmented social unit in which religious authority took precedence over military sub-divisions of regiments and ranks. The main characteristic that emerged from this military environment, and which proved vital in shaping Islam in the camp, was vertical in character with patronage dispersed both up and down a clear chain of authority.Footnote 81 At another level, however, the Jamaat's spiritual activities under the mentorship of Major Ahsan Baig created a basis for solidarity and organisation among its members, since it presented a wholly different hierarchy and logic for unity and cohesion to that derived from membership and rank in the Pakistan Army. After all, Ayub Khan's perception of the army as the true protector of Islam and the nation, and the upholder of Islamic identity, had been badly damaged by defeat in the 1971 war since this exposed the failure of religion to construct an homogenised ‘Pakistani’ identity within pre-1971 Pakistan. In the wake of these developments, the idea of a singular Islamic identity was replaced by a renewed commitment to create a humanistic moral community of Pakistanis,Footnote 82 something that was also reflected in the prisoner-of-war camp. A mutual sense of loss and grief in combination with shared mystical practices helped prisoners there to forge a moral community based on social solidarity that transcended official military hierarchies.
The sepoy world, however, was a limited social environment, with soldiers restricted to their barracks or, in this case, a prisoner-of-war camp. Their inclination to Islam under these circumstances was not externally triggered. Instead, it stemmed largely from their own insecurities and anxieties at their imprisonment. Soldiers would communicate to Allahyar their stress and apprehensions at the uncertain length of imprisonment that faced them. In return, he tried to reassure his followers that he could mediate between the divine and the earthly realms, claiming that he had been guaranteed by (Sultan-ul-Hind) Moin-ud-din Chishti Ajmeri that “the entire jamaat was his own and would remain under his protection; also the jamaat of mashaikh in barzakh would pray for the safety of the soldiers”.Footnote 83 This Islam, which promised miraculous aid to soldiers via their holy men, helped to address apprehensions. Religion, it would seem, allowed soldiers to endure ‘situations of emotional stress’ and provided them with a spiritual escape from their predicament.
The sacralising of space and supernatural protection
It could be argued, therefore, that the Chakrala Sufi order spread within the Gaya camp as part of a process termed by Werbner as religious spatial “conquest”; it achieved this by sacralising the space, transforming the camp into the space of Allah.Footnote 84 This idea of the sacralisation of space (earth or land) is an essential element within Sufi cosmology and, hence, an integral feature of Sufi practices. Sufis, in effect, sacralise the space when they arrive in a new place, establish their lodges there, and perform dhikr. Through a process of enchantment, in effect, they not only purify their own heart and soul, but also sacralise and ‘Islamicise’ the land. Accordingly, Sufi Islam is not simply a journey within the body towards God but also a journey through space. The divine blessings of the Sufi purify his surroundings (spatial dominion), and this is regarded as an act of human empowerment on the part of a Sufi. In this process, Sufis create new centres, linked to the founding centre and establish new regional cults.Footnote 85
In the case of the Gaya camp, prisoners of war there derived religious identity from their connection to a chain of saints whom they accessed through Ahsan Baig and Allahyar, and as a result they were located in a sacred spatial network that stretched all the way from Chakrala to Gaya. Ahsan Baig's own religious authority also came to be embedded in this sacralised space; he too was regarded as blessed with baraka (charisma) and the capacity to change the order of nature as well as human society. Muslims (both officers and soldiers) rooted their religious identity in a new and hostile locality and embodied the moral right of their community to be ‘in’ this new environment. Though a saint retained the unquestioning devotion of his closest disciples, in the end it was the demonstration of his miraculous qualities that embodied his saintliness for them.Footnote 86 The halqa-e-dhikr established in the Gaya camp was also attended by some Hindu and Sikh guards (appointed on duty), enabling Baig to spread his reputation as Allahyar’ representative among non-Muslims, operating as a spiritual guide and worker of miracles who could mysteriously cure the sick and supernaturally ward off demons.
Non-Muslim soldiers and local civilian residents—both Hindus and Sikhs—who searched for the solution to their multiple problems in the form of protective taweez (amulets) or dum (exhalation of breath on water to transfer baraka) and the offering of wazaif (prayers), flocked to the perimeters of the camp.Footnote 87 Bachan Lal, a Hindu guard commander, for instance, had lost his money along with his pay book, and was afraid of being penalised. Baig through muraqaba informed him that his belongings were buried behind his tent, from where he duly recovered them. Prem Das, a section commander in a Jat regiment, had lost the blanket officially issued to him by his unit. Baig, again through muraqaba, revealed the name and the army number of the thief.Footnote 88 Inside the halqa-e-dhikr, the religious practices occurred within the framework of the sharia, whereas outside it his miracle-making holy man's image benefitted all, and blurred the religious distinctions between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Baig translated his spiritual ability in to a practical power to help people; hence, the resulting relationship was based on the cognitive framework of illness and healing.Footnote 89 Farina Mir has termed the drawing of a mutual beneficence from a Sufi by Muslims and non-Muslims as “shared piety”.Footnote 90 As she has argued, this “shared piety” did not conflict with the individual's distinctive religious identities but rather constructed a religious domain cutting across religious divisions.Footnote 91 Tulsi Ram, an Indian border security naik, got his wives cured of their ailments by taking water ‘breathed upon’ by Baig. Ruldu, a Hindu soldier belonging to a Jat regiment, requested Baig to drive evil away from his wife and children. Gopal Singh, a soldier from a Sikh regiment, was said to have embraced Islam as he was impressed by how Baig's amulets (containing Quranic verses) had resolved a protracted conflict between his wife and mother.Footnote 92
Some of these claims may now seem far-fetched, but what was important was that at the time Allahyar's followers believed them. In effect, the supernatural protection on offer became a marketable service. The relationship between the Sufi and his devotees—whether rural peasants, soldiers or local townsfolk—was so widespread that it not only reached extended families but spanned the generations. From the prisoner-of-war camp, his spiritual power moved into the domestic sphere of the soldiers’ women folk, and from there spread widely through networks of relatives, responsible for the maintenance of female and family life.Footnote 93 Ahsan Baig acted also as a guarantor of material prosperity and proved himself to be a crucial mediator in terms of social relations. This further reinforced his social prominence in the camp, which in turn reconfigured the Sufi-disciple relationship, with a concomitant transformative effect on the social life of surrounding villages. Hence, the regional cult cut across boundaries—it created its own sacred topography by sacralising a new centre linked to the founding centre, and in the process reinforced and expanded its temporal coordinates.Footnote 94
Relationship with the military clientele
The relationship between a devotee and Sufi, like other relationships, is based on a pragmatic model of reciprocity and exchange.Footnote 95 With his links to a customary Islam of miracle working holy-men and to the saintly networks of Sufi affiliation that surrounded them, it is important to explain the nature of the ‘service industry’ that Allahyar controlled and the character of his relationship with the soldiers. Patron-client bonds assured the spread of Sufi affiliations. After all, as Pnina Werbner has underlined, the Sufi was looked upon as a practical person, someone whose saintly charisma meant that he got mundane things done.Footnote 96 On the other hand, a soldier's life required his religion to protect him from dangers of travel, safeguarding him on long route marches, ensuring career promotion, satisfying his desire for children, and assuaging any fears of losing his job. All this was central in shaping the Sufi ‘service industry’.Footnote 97 Allahyar's visit to Quetta during the Staff College course held in 1975 and likewise the tactics course at the Infantry School proved very significant since many of his disciples there turned to him for miraculous intervention to help them pass competitive examinations that were essential for promotion. After the hectic routine of the day, they held halqa-e-dhikr at night. His assurance that they were successful because they were the members of a jamaat comprised of pious people made them confident of victory.Footnote 98 In one case, a follower of Allahyar, Squadron Leader Mohsin Khan, faced having to land his aircraft on the runway without the landing gear extended. The wheels had failed to come out because of a technical fault. His best chance of rescue, he had believed, was to call upon his Sufi protector; having done so, Khan safely landed with his help. The aircraft, filled with fuel, did not explode, despite grinding along the length of the runway.Footnote 99 Such ‘miracles’ pointed to the Sufi's ability to protect his disciples from a distance, something that Shahzad Bashir has termed as the “hyper corporeality of Sufi body”, according to which the Sufi's body could extend itself beyond the confines of his skin and spread through time and space.Footnote 100 A substantial number of officers belonging to the Pakistan Navy, particularly those in East Pakistan, were members of Allahyar's Jamaat. The most prominent were Saeed Bangali and Captain Zain-ul-Abideen. Allahyar promised naval officers that they would receive miraculous support against cannon fire in war if they recited ‘dua-e-hizb-ul-bahr’ (a prayer to solve all problems).Footnote 101
Following the 1971 Pakistan-India war, many soldiers were concerned about the possibility of future conflict. In 1975, Allahyar made startling predictions about the future 1979 Soviet-Afghanistan war and also the disintegration of Soviet Union when visiting the Staff College at Quetta. In muraqaba he saw two armed horsemen heading towards Pakistan from the right and left of Prophet's pulpit (minbar). Suddenly a wall was erected between Pakistan and Afghanistan, against which Russian tanks collided and retreated. Allahyar accordingly predicted the Prophet's spiritual help and Pakistan's victory. On hearing this, Major Ghaus put up a big poster in the Staff College, with the following statement: “Third World War 1979 Russia takes over Afghanistan, World unites to fight Russia, Russia Breaks”. American and British officers were amused at seeing this, curious about how he knew about a future war. Allahyar provided further news of future victory to his soldier disciples when he referred to a forthcoming Ghazwa-e-Hind (battle with India), which he predicted would be the biggest war since that of 1971. According to him, the Pakistan army would defeat India, Kashmir and Delhi would then be conquered, but the general leading the Pakistani forces would not live to see his victory.Footnote 102 Some over-excited officers then formed an armed wing of soldiers known as Al-Ikhwan, led by Major Dr. Azmat Iqbal Butter, whose purpose was to prepare young men for this impending clash. Al-Ikhwan was initially registered under the Political Parties Act, but thanks to its misuse by politicians it was subsequently dissolved.Footnote 103
Well-respected, well-paid and well-fed soldiers constituted an influential Muslim religious group and a prestigious clientele. The devotion of soldiers and officers combined with their social standing could elevate the status of a saint,Footnote 104 with the army serving as an influential institution that brokered exchange between soldiers (disciples) and their Sufi patron.Footnote 105 The military had also long offered a source of employment, pride, prestige and identity for people, and a regular salary that shaped the lives of many of its dependents.Footnote 106 Military influence and privileges were also channelled into Allahyar's khanqah. Substantial sums of money provided by military personnel in the form of zakat and sadqat were donated for the construction of madrassahs and to cover other financial aspects of the Jamaat's activities. When he was unwell, Allahyar was helped by his military followers, who flew him from his native town to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in a military helicopter.Footnote 107 By using their influence his officer disciples also arranged sea voyages and air travel to Saudi Arab when he undertook Hajj.
Conclusion
This article has explored the unfolding of a reform movement that moved from its original immediate surroundings to encompass a following that stretched very widely. Maulana Allahyar, a product of Deoband, was initially stirred into action in response to proselytisation carried out by Shias and Ahmadis in the locality of Chakrala. But Deobandis entertained an exclusionary streak from the very outset, with both Shias and Ahmadis the subject(s) of their condemnation. Allahyar's Dar-ul-Irfan at Manara in time, therefore, became an epicentre of scriptural Islam, which incorporated spiritual practices that attracted local Sunnis into its fold. The primacy of sharia was ardently professed, and no practices or actions were permitted that contravened sharia edicts. A strict division between Muslim and non-Muslim exacerbated the sectarian tendency, which was the main outcome of Allahyar's reformism thanks to his rejection of the ideologies and epistemologies of other religious groups, within which Shias were the most prominent. The tablighi jamaat launched by Allahyar attained ascendancy during the regime of Ayub Khan who was himself keen to cultivate Islamic identity among the ranks of the Pakistan Army. Ayub sought to portray Islam as a progressive force and used it to justify his socio-economic development programme. The military's construction of singular homogenised Islamic identity, with the army as its main protector and upholder, helped Islam to penetrate the world of the barracks. With the army as an influential client community, Allahyar's silsila was linked to existing power structures in Pakistan. His Jamaat's message reached military districts such as Chakwal, Jhelum and Mianwali. Army men from the martial belt (Allahyar's own home region) were influenced by it and helped to expand its influence in cantonments across Pakistan. The halqa-i-dhikr was the most prominent of the silsila's performative acts, and, through it, the influence of his movement grew enormously.
At the same time, however, the secession of East Pakistan in 1971 dealt a blow to the notion of singular Islamic identity that could be imposed on the country's diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. The halqa-e-dhikr spread to the Gaya prisoner-of-war through the efforts of Major Ahsan Baig, where religious practices in these religious gatherings helped soldiers to recuperate from the traumatic experience of war and loss and consolidated them into a symbiotic coterie. The Jamaat then continued to thrive in post-1971 Pakistan as Islam assumed an increasingly central place in the process of national (re-)integration.
But though the synthesis of sharia and tariqa marked the distinctive feature of Allahyar's movement, we cannot overlook the fact that the context in which his Jamaat emerged was deeply antagonistic. The local missionary milieu wherein his activities took shape proved crucial; the social fallout of his movement undoubtedly drove a new sectarian wedge into a society that previously had been largely syncretic in its character. Since syncretism usually challenged existing religious leadership,Footnote 108 Allahyar sought to eradicate all symptoms of plurality and difference within the broader Muslim community. His goal, in other words, was to draw a clear ‘frontier’ or zone of demarcation between Islam and its constitutive ‘other’. This mixture of missionary style, mystical substance and exclusionary emphasis made his movement complex, if not contradictory, since its appeal to ordinary Muslims was often based on its Sufi ethos, at the same time as generating a discourse that excluded others. This said, Allahyar—whether in small towns in south-west Punjab, in the Gaya prisoner-of-war camp or in military cantonments located across Pakistan—positioned Sufism's cultural sensitivity and pluralism against essentialist and purifying logics of Islamic reformism, and in the process built a jamaat of devoted followers.Footnote 109
