Mounting trouble

Tablighi Jamaat’s negligence has cost India dearly in the fight against Covid-19, but the government is equally at fault for failing to notice it

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

AS A TEENAGER, Masoom Muradabadi went to the Ghalib Academy adjacent to the Nizamuddin Markaz, the international headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi, to learn Urdu calligraphy. He could not help but notice men and women thronging the Markaz, leaving the comforts of their homes to devote themselves to learn how to be a good Muslim. Masoom’s uncle, Mohammad Abdul Malik Jamaee, was a founding member of the Jamaat and a close associate of its founder, Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi.

Started in 1927 as an offshoot of the Deobandi brand of the Hanafi Sunni school, the Tablighi Jamaat expanded from local to national to an international movement, but kept its headquarters at the Nizamuddin Markaz. Today, its largest chapter is in Bangladesh, followed by Pakistan. It has more than five crore followers in India. The Jamaat denies affiliation to any particular school of Sunni Islam and says it focuses on the Quran and the Hadith.

Masoom’s life has been shaped by the Markaz, and he still remembers the day he first met Maulana Muhammad Saad Kandhlawi, the current head of the Jamaat. Maulana Saad, the great-grandson of the Jamaat founder, is now in the eye of a storm, and is facing criminal charges of flouting norms of social distancing and leaving thousands of people infected with the coronavirus. When the government declared a nationwide lockdown on March 24 to contain the spread of COVID-19, the Markaz was hosting some 4,000 people, including foreign nationals from a dozen countries. After the three-day exercise of performing namaz at the masjid five times a day, attending lectures, studying verses and the literature of the Markaz, and participating in community eating and living, these missionaries were tasked to fan out to the target areas and pass on the teachings to the faithful.