The Markaz is just down the road from where I live in Nizamuddin. It always intrigued me because the area remained festive at all times. It is also perhaps the most cosmopolitan in nature with men and women of different nationalities sipping tea at the chai stalls or bargaining for cheap deals for their preparation for chillah.
Access was never easy and being a woman, I could not enter the men's section. So I kept asking around, trying to find someone who could get me inside the women's section. And finally I found Nida who took me there one morning and I managed to talk to some women before I was asked to leave by a woman who told me Tablighis are not allowed to talk to anyone during the jamaat period. We left.
The photographer, a young intern called mikma Lpcha, wasn't so lucky. While shooting the pictures of the Markaz from outside, he was called inside and they asked him to destroy all the pictures.
An edited version appeared in the Indian Express on August 23, 2009.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, August 21, 2009
For 40 days of the Chillah, the four Sri Lankan women will travel in the interiors of India, crisscrossing villages, staying for a couple of days each at a Tablighi’s house and preaching to the rural Muslim women the correct ways of Islam. They will hold sessions, recite the Suras and bring back the women to faithful adherence to Islamic teachings. And if language becomes a barrier, they will have a translator travel with them, too.
“This is for Allah, for our religious improvement,” Mohd. Refai, who hails from a tiny hamlet in Sri Lanka, said. “We will spread his message. We will tell them about the virtues, discuss how to rear children in an Islamic way and tell them why they should wear the purdah.”
Refai, who came Friday morning, tugged at the scarf on her head frequently, trying to hide any loose strands of hair that might just show, as she nervously glanced around the large hall that was bare except for a bed. Women walked in and out of the hall, nodding, smiling and inquiring about the prayer sessions throughout the day.
They came from different countries – Africa, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary revivalist Islamic movement founded in 1926 in India, and originally centred at men, has now spread to more than 80 countries. The movement has also recruited women who travel with their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers, and stay at a follower’s house while the men stay at the local mosque and
visit people’s homes helping them to interpret the meaning of Islam.
The women’s jamaat is called Masturat.
It was in the 1920s that Maulana Mohammad Ilyas Kandhalawi founded the Tablighi Jamaat in the Mewat province of India with the slogan ‘Aye Musalmano! Musalman bano’ (Come O Muslims! Become Muslims). Tabligh means “to convey” in Arabic and followers try to imitate the companions of the Prophet by going out and spreading the teachings of Islam as they did in the past.
Over the years, the movement spread, crossing over to other continents and bringing within its fold men and women from far-flung countries like the UK and the USA. From the Markaz in Nizamuddin, jamaats travel to different parts of India and abroad. Besides 40-day chillahs, there are four-month-long tours too. Recently, the thrust has been on rural India and jamaats have been assigned remote villages, a participant
said.
In Nizamuddin West, where the famous Sufi shrine of Nizamuddin Aulia exists, the people that crowd its narrow lanes, filtering in and out of cyber cafes tucked away in alleys behind the Markaz that towers over everything else, are as cosmopolitan as it can get. They step out of the Markaz gates, and chat in loud, animated tones with each other, as they flock to the biryani vendor in the mornings or in the evenings
after the Maghrib prayers, they crowd at Nasir Iqbal’s little store for firni and kheer.
But women never come out. They stay indoors. Often local women come to meet them. Before they leave for their destinations that are decided by the maulanas, they stay at the Markaz for three days preparing for the journey.
Maulana Ilyas is said to have been keen on women’s participation in the movement. The first women’s jamaat went to Mewat where the movement was born. At first women would confine themselves to meetings locally but then it spread. Ilyas had sought ulema’s opinion at involving women because he thought that the movement needed to enlist women. But ulemas recoiled at the idea and Ilyas kept at it.
The Biswa Ijtema, the annual Tablighi congregation in Bangladesh, attracts over three million devotees from around the world.
At least 500 people leave for various destinations in India as part of jamaats every day, according to a vendor.
“I see them coming and going. So many of them come, and so many leave,” he said.
In 40 days, the jamaat consisting of 8-12 people will visit 20 villages.
“No, it is not tough. It will be a pleasure. The worldly life is short and the afterlife is eternal. Our aim is to get to paradise. Through this, we will. Allah has chosen us for this. It is through his grace that we will go and tell people about him.”
Inside the women’s section, the floors were covered with mats, and the curtains kept out most of the outside light. This is where the women would gather and read out from the Koran, and wait for the Markaz to issue them instructions on where they would go. But Refai, 53, isn’t bothered. As long it is for the faith, she is prepared to bear any inconvenience. When she returns, she will write a report on her work like all other women and submit it at the Markaz, and go back to Puttalam, her village that is 80 miles north of Colombo, and tell others what she learned here.
“This is where they can learn the correct things,” Ahmed said.
Refai was 40 when she first went for a jamaat in Sri Lanka. That was for three days, she recalled.
“At the time, I didn’t know much. I saw others and imitated what they did,” she said.
Coming to India was a big decision. This is her first 40-day Chillah in a country that’s unfamiliar.
She applied to the markaz in Colombo and when her turn came, she packed her bags and accompanied her husband here. Only married women are allowed to participate in jamaats.
In Sri Lanka, women only started going for jamaats in the 1970s when a jamaat from India visited the island nation, she said.
Men and women of the Tablighi Jamaat remain aloof from discussions on political life and devote time to discussing the Koran and the teachings. Tours that are self-funded are the central feature of the movement and during the tour the participants break away from all familial and work hierarchies and that allows them to focus.
It is the journey that’s most important, Nida Ahmed, who is an alima or a Muslim woman scholar, said.
“Women were always part of the movement but in the last ten years more and more women have joined it. Recently, we see women from other countries coming often. I guess they want to learn more about Islam, their faith,” she said.
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