Maulana Jamaluddin Abdul Wahhab of Farangi Mahall, commonly known as Jamal Mian, died on 14th November 2012 aged 93. Jamal Mian was the last surviving member of the Muslim League High Command which campaigned for the creation of Pakistan. For over forty years he has been one of Pakistan's representatives on the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami. Throughout his life he stood for his distinctive family religious tradition, which predated the reforming movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This comprised a balance of the revealed and rational sciences in scholarship, and a similar balance of shariat and tariqat in religious understanding. With his passing we lose the last of the major figures of the politics of mid-twentieth century South Asia, who knew personally most of the leading politicians of the age.
According to the family history, the Farangi Mahalli family of ulama and Sufis are descended from Ayyub Ansari, the Prophet's standard-bearer and host at Medina. Their line passed down through the eleventh-century mystic, Shaikh Abdullah Ansari of Heart, and their ancestors migrated to India where they settled in the early years of the Delhi Sultanate. One area of settlement was Panipat, north of Delhi, a second was Sihali in Awadh. Documentary evidence for the family's existence begins with the Emperor Akbar's first known farman, making a grant to Mulla Hafiz in 1559. There is continuous documentary evidence from this point showing, for instance: how the Emperor Aurangzeb granted Jamal Mian's ancestors haveli Farangi Mahall in Lucknow in the 1690s, after Mulla Qutbuddin was killed in Sihali in a quarrel over land; how the family took the lead in scholarship in early-eighteenth century Awadh, spreading all over India with their dars-i nizami curriculum; and how from the mid-nineteenth century some became increasingly assertive in protecting Islam in the context of colonial rule. The most prominent of these was Jamal Mian's father, Maulana Abdul Bari (1878-1926), who in the last two decades of his life was a major leader in Indo-Muslim politics, driving forward protest over pan-Islamic issues, helping to found the Khilafat organisation, and driving it both towards an alliance with the Indian National Congress and towards non-co-operation with the British.
Jamal Mian was born in Farangi Mahall on 5 December 1919. His mother came from the Hyderabadi branch of the family. He was educated in the family madrasa, becoming Hafiz aged nine. Among the family members who taught him were: Maulanas Inayatullah, Abdul Baqi and Sibghatullah, and Mufti Abdul Qadir. On completing the course of Maulana he went to Lucknow University where he obtained a degree in Urdu (Dabir-e Kamil). At the same time as his formal education he was also being exposed to politics. Several members of the family were involved in the activities of the 1920s and 1930s, some going to jail. Jamal Mian remembered his father's fatal heart attack in January 1926, as the news came through that Mohamed Ali Jauhar had rejected his spiritual leadership and that Abdul Aziz ibn Saud had declared himself King of Arabia. In 1930 his relatives took him out as a mascot to lead the Lucknow protest in sympathy with Gandhi's salt march. In April 1936, Jawaharlal Nehru came to Farangi Mahall, inviting Jamal Mian to join him on the platform where he was to preside over the Lucknow session of the Congress.
At the Lucknow session of the All-India Muslim League in October 1937, Jinnah was so impressed by Jamal Mian's oratory that he asked him to join him in electioneering. He was further impressed and encouraged the young man to develop a political career. 'But', he said, 'do not make politics your profession. You must have another source of income.' Soon after this M.A. Ispahani offered Jamal Mian a tea agency in Lucknow, which would enable him to support his family while he toured India on behalf of the League. Only much later did Jamal Mian learn that Ispahani's offer had come at the Quaid's behest.
From 1937 to independence Jamal Mian devoted much of his time to the service of the League. In April 1943 he was made Honorary Assistant Secretary of the League and was an active presence at League sessions, supporting and proposing motions, among them one in April 1942 that Jinnah should have full discretion to act on behalf of the League and another in July 1946 that all members of the League Council should resign from the various legislative assemblies and councils in protest at the attitude of the Cabinet Mission. He travelled across India frequently in the League's service, as for instance in the 1946 elections when he led a delegation of ulama and pirs to canvass for the League in the Punjab. In the 1940s he bought the Hamdam newspaper of Lucknow, which he made to serve the League's interest. In 1946 he successfully contested the Bara Banki seat in the UP Legislative Assembly elections. Jamal Mian defeated Jamilur Rahman Qidwai. In doing so he was supported by Jamilur Rahman's father, who was a murid of Jamal Mian's father.
Jamal Mian was deeply saddened by the partition of British India which accompanied independence, and the loss of life it entailed. In later life he would blame the British for wanting to leave too quickly, but also the intransigence of the Congress, a judgement which received powerful support when the unexpurgated version of Maulana Azad's India Wins Freedom was published in 1988. In August 1947 Jamal Mian attended Pakistan's independence celebrations in Karachi, but clearly suspected that the new country's leadership, when it used the term 'Muslim' in relation to Pakistan, had no intention of giving that term substance in the life of the state. This led to his proposed amendment at the Muslim League Council meeting in Karachi in December 1947 that 'the word "Muslim" whenever it appeared in the resolution in the phrase "Pakistan a Muslim state" should be deleted' because he found many un-Islamic things in the state. He withdrew the amendment when the Quaid assured the Council that Pakistan was going to be a Muslim state based on Islamic ideals.
Gandhi met Jamal Mian's father for the first time in 1916 when he came to Lucknow to attend the Congress session. From 1919 Gandhi would stay in Farangi Mahall; the Lucknow family still point out the room in the mahalsera where the Congress leader would stay, a goat tethered to a papaya tree outside. In January 1948 Jamal Mian met Gandhi in Delhi two days before he was assassinated, and used to recall the following exchange after he asked the Mahatma why he had not visited Pakistan as he had planned to do: 'I am waiting for an invitation from the Pakistan government', Gandhi replied. 'You did not wait for an invitation from Government when you launched the Quit India Movement', declared Jamal Mian. Gandhi replied; 'I wanted to bring down the British Indian government. That is not my intention vis a vis the Pakistan government.' After Gandhi's death Jamal Mian was amongst those who spoke in tribute on All-India Radio.
Jamal Mian never intended to migrate to Pakistan. He was a member of the UP Legislative Assembly; he had family and spiritual commitments which tied him to India. Nevertheless, family and other commitments in Dhaka led him to travel frequently between India and East Pakistan. In the process he naturally kept up with his former League colleagues who were now the leaders of Pakistan. Some elements in the Indian establishment did not approve. The instruction was given to impound Jamal Mian's Indian passport when he was in Dhaka. Events forced Jamal Mian to seek Pakistani nationality. When he did so, as Maulana Azad's published correspondence reveals [can you confirm that this is the case; I have not seen the correspondence], Azad, on Nehru's instruction, wrote to Jamal Mian asking him to return to India and have his passport restored. Jamal Mian declined.
Once based in Dhaka, Jamal Mian avoided politics, immersing himself, along with the Ispahanis, in the jute business. He returned regularly to India to see his mother, who still lived in Farangi Mahall, and to attend the Urs at Ajmer Sharif. He also travelled frequently to West Pakistan, where for instance he would meet his old friend, Raja Amir Ahmad Khan of Mahmudabad.
In 1962, after the foundation of the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami in Saudi Arabia, he became one of Pakistan's two representatives, remaining a member of its Constituent Council until his death. In this capacity he participated in delegations on behalf of the Rabita to: Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and various Muslim countries. Thus, he substantially extended his family's range of contacts in the Muslim world which in his father's time had included: Sharif Husain of Mecca, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, the Young Turk, Enver Pasha, and Hafiz Wahba, who was to become a prominent Saudi ambassador to London in the 1930s.
The emergence of Bangladesh meant that it was no longer possible for Jamal Mian to live in Dhaka. On 14 April 1971 he moved to Karachi, where he stayed briefly with M.A.H. Ispahani and the family of Kamal Azfar until he was able to buy a property in Clifton. For the remainder of his life he continued to steer clear of politics, devoting himself to his work for the Rabita, and enjoying the respect of many in Karachi and in Pakistan as a whole.
A man of charm and personal warmth, Jamal Mian's acquaintance and friendship touched many of the greatest figures of South Asian life in the twentieth century. This said, two particular friendships were, in a sense, bequeathed to him by his father. Abdul Bari had been a close friend and political collaborator of the Raja Muhammad Ali Muhammad of Mahmudabad. It was almost destined that Jinnah should link the young Jamal Mian and the Raja's son, Amir Ahmad Khan, when at the League's Lucknow 1937 session he described them as the 'two young hopes' of the League. The two men remained in regular contact, Jamal Mian referring to the Raja as 'Bhai Sahib' until the latter's early death. Their descendants maintain the connection.
The second notable friendship was with the poet and politician Hasrat Mohani. Hasrat had been a murid of Jamal Mian's grandfather, Abdul Wahhab, and wrote poems of devotion to him and Abdul Wahhab's father, Abdul Razzaq. He also came to include Abdul Bari and Jamal Mian in his devotion. Jamal Mian and Hasrat performed Hajj together. They were both members of the UP Legislative Assembly, Hasrat staying at Farangi Mahall when the Assembly was in session. Hasrat's last illness in 1951 was spent at Farangi Mahall and at his request he was buried in Bagh Maulana Anwar, the family graveyard of the Farangi Mahallis. Jamal Mian edited a selection of Hasrat's poetry, Kulliyat-e Hasrat.
Jamal Mian had a fierce intelligence, was blessed with extraordinary powers of recall, doubtless cultivated by madrasa education, and enjoyed great public-speaking skills. A devout Muslim, who maintained the powerful Sufi understandings of his family, he was curious, open-minded and socially progressive. A man of literary taste, and a poet, he was also businesslike; his affairs were meticulously ordered. For his contributions to Islamic scholarship he was awarded the Kifalatul Fikriya by King Hassan II of Morocco in 1968. In 1999 he was appointed Nishan-e Imtiaz by the government of Pakistan.
Jamal Mian married the daughter of Shah Hayat Ahmad, Sajjada Nashin of Rudauli Sharif, being amongst the first Farangi Mahallis to marry outside the family. She died on 31 December 2009. The marriage produced seven children, three daughters and four sons. They reflect the modern diaspora of their class: one lives in Kuala Lumpur, one in Karachi, three in London, and two in North America.
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