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Deobandi Patriarchy: A Partial Explanation

Yoginder Sikand

Through its gendered vision, Dar ul-Uloom, Deoband, provides a partial explanation of the stridently patriarchal interpretations of Islam that are projected by its clerics as normative and binding. But these interpretations are ercely contested by many other Muslims, including prominent Indian Muslim womens groups, as both unjust and un-Islamic. This study focuses on such an interpretation by a well-respected cleric Ashraf Ali Thanvi (1863-1943) in Nikah [Marriage] in Islam, which deals specically with issues related to Muslim women in the context of various rules concerning Muslim marriage.

Yoginder Sikand (ysikand@gmail.com) is with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.
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he Dar ul-Uloom at Deoband, a town not far from Delhi, is Indias largest and inuential madrasa. It is also the nerve centre of the current global Deobandi movement. Literally, thousands of madrasas representing what has, over the decades, crystallised into the distinct Deobandi school of thought exist all across India and abroad, mainly in other south Asian countries and among diasporic south Asian communities. For millions of Muslims associated with the Deobandi tradition, the Dar ul-Uloom at Deoband is the umm ul-madaris or the mother of all madrasas. Despite its global salience, relatively little scholarly work has been done on the Deoband madrasa. The only full-length academic study of the madrasa till date, by the American scholar Barbara Metcalf, deals with the early, founding period of the madrasa (Metcalf 1982). The signicant changes in the madrasa and in the Deobandi movement in India, more generally in the subsequent period, particularly following the Partition and Indian independence, have been almost totally ignored by scholars. On the other hand, journalists have written much about the Deoband madrasa, particularly in the last two decades. Journalistic accounts of the madrasa have generally focused on two major issues or concerns: allegations (almost all unfounded) levelled against the madrasa itself or at least some of its student movements of being supposedly involved in terrorism, particularly in the wake of the rise of militant Deobandi activism in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan; and a continuous slew of fatwas issued by the madrasas dar ul-ifta or fatwa department, as well as writings and pronouncements by senior clerics who teach at the madrasa that clearly target Muslim womens autonomy, agency, and rights. This paper deals with one aspect of the gendered vision of the Dar ul-Uloom,

Deoband, through which it seeks to provide a partial explanation of the stridently patriarchal interpretations of Islam that are projected by the clerics of Deoband as normative and binding, but which are ercely contested by many other Muslims, including prominent Indian Muslim womens groups, as both unjust and un-Islamic. The focus of this paper is somewhat modest. It does not seek to analyse, interrogate or critique the fatwas or other writings of clerics of the Deoband madrasa from the perspective of gender justice, although this is an important task that sorely needs to be undertaken. Rather, by focusing on a single signicant Deobandi text it seeks to partially explain the persistence of the Deoband madrasas perceived hostility to Muslim womens autonomy and rights, even if such autonomy and rights are conceived of within the broader framework of the Islamic shariah or divine path, as a range of contemporary Muslim womens activists perceive and project it.

Thanvis Marriage in Islam

Although traditionalist and orthodox in terms of theological interpretation (kalam) and jurisprudence (qh), the men who man the Deoband madrasa are not, contrary to what some might believe, wholly anti-modern. They willingly embrace, for instance, modern technology, which they press into the service of propagating their particular version of Islam. Thus, the madrasa has an impressive, trilingual website1, which hosts hundreds of articles and thousands of fatwas, dozens of photographs, and a couple of books. Six booklets can be downloaded from the English section of the website, all written by senior Deobandi scholars.2 Presumably, these were written originally in Urdu and then translated into English. Of these, three are penned by the widely-known, and in Deobandi circles, highly respected, cleric Ashraf Ali Thanvi (1863-1943) (Zaman 2007). Among these three, one, titled Nikah [Marriage] in Islam,3 deals specically with issues related to Muslim women in the context of various rules concerning Muslim marriage. Ashraf Ali Thanvi was one of the rst graduates of the Deoband madrasa, having

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completed his course of studies there in 1884. He went on to become a prolic writer, authoring almost a thousand books on a vast range of subjects. Some of these related specically to Muslim women, most notably his Bahishti Zevar (Metcalf 1990), wherein he formulated what he regarded as appropriate Islamic rules of behaviour for Muslim women. Thanvi continues to be widely revered by Deobandis, who refer to him with the honoric title of hakim ul-ummat or the sage of the Muslim community. Nikah [Marriage] in Islam is a short document in which Thanvi discusses what he, as a Deobandi scholar, regards as the normative rules that must regulate marriage or nikah according to Islam. No details of the original Urdu version are provided on the website where this booklet is hosted. Hence, we do not know the original title of the booklet, when it was written and rst published, and whether or not it was an independent booklet or part of a larger volume from which it has been extracted. Since the booklet is hosted on the ofcial website of the Deoband madrasa, one may take it to represent the authoritative Deobandi interpretation of Islamic rules and practices related to Muslim marriage. This assumption is further fortied given the immense regard Thanvi enjoys in Deobandi circles, being regarded therein as an accomplished Islamic scholar as well as an acclaimed Su. Since the authorities of the Deobandi madrasa assume, and fervently believe, that their interpretation of Islam is the sole authentic one, they do not feel compelled to qualify the title of Thanvis booklet as being a particular, Deobandi, interpretation of Islamic marriage rules. In this way, they conate the particular Deobandi version of Islam with Islam itself. An examination of Thanvis booklet is instructive for providing valuable insights into how the Deobandis imagine the institution of marriage, some of the many rules related to it that they consider as binding, and notions related to the normative status of Muslim women. Such an examination can throw much-needed light on, and at least partially, explain, the Deobandis overall approach to issues related to Muslim womens rights and legal status. In particular, it can assist in the task of understanding the logic that informs Deobandi patriarchy

and the continued opposition of the clerics of the Deoband madrasa to Muslim womens autonomy, agency and rights even when these are conceived of within the broad framework of a gender-egalitarian understanding of the shariah or the divine path. In this way, such an exploration can also provide valuable explanations of the urry of anti-women fatwas that routinely issue forth from the portals of the Dar ul-Uloom.

Contents of the Booklet

In the booklet, Thanvi discusses various rules and conditions that he believes must govern marriage among Muslims, and classies them into the following sections: (1) The Conduct of the Marriage. (2) Persons with Whom Marriage Is Forbidden. (3) The Wali or Legal Guardian. (4) The Question of Compatibility or Kufu (5) Mahr or Dower. (6) Marriages of the Indels or Kuffar. (7) Equality among Wives in a Polygamous Marriage. (8) The Virtues of Marriage. The rules that Thanvi sets out are presented in the form of short points, each limited to a paragraph or two. Since Thanvis intention is perhaps to provide only a summary of these various rules, he omits mentioning the sources of these rules, whether they be Quranic verses, hadith reports or the writings of past Muslim jurisprudents or fuqaha. This greatly limits the value of the booklet while also leaving it open to the charge that many of its prescriptions, particularly those that appear deeply patriarchal and highly sexist, might possibly be based on Thanvis own personal opinions, medieval qh or juridical rules, weak or fabricated ahadith or statements reportedly about or by the Prophet Muhammad, and faulty, literalist and non-contextual understandings of the Quran and authentic ahadith, and so on, which are the bases of much of the perceived misogyny in the writings of many traditionalist Muslim scholars on womens issues such as Thanvi. The overall structure and system of Muslim marriage that Thanvi outlines corresponds to that prescribed by the medieval fuqaha or Muslim jurists of the Hana tradition. This is hardly surprising, given the fact that Thanvi, like other Deobandis, was an ardent defender and
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proponent of the Hana school of qh, insisting that Muslims of this school (who form the majority among the south Asian Muslims) must strictly abide by taqlid, or what is sometimes translated as blind following, of the rules devised by the medieval Hana jurists. Islamic scholars who are critical of the Deobandis for their insistence on taqlid point out that this doctrine is sometimes deployed to prefer the opinion of a medieval jurist over the explicit commandment of the Quran or what is considered an authentic saying of the prophet. This, they argue, is Islamically unacceptable. Moreover, they contend, the doctrine of taqlid acts as a powerful deterrent to ijtihad, creative individual juristic reasoning, a practice sanctioned by the prophet but which defenders of taqlid are, in practice, if not in theory, hostile to. In this way, they contend, defenders of rigid taqlid reinforce the stagnation of Muslim jurisprudence and its inability to change in response to new contexts and challenges, including that of contemporary demands for gender justice and equality. With regard to womens rights, it is routinely argued by genderfriendly progressive Muslim scholars that the Deobandis stern opposition to ijtihad and their insistence on taqlid leads them to insist on literalist understandings of scriptural prescriptions and medieval qhbased rules that impact harshly on Muslim womens status and rights, while also violating the spirit of justice and equality that they see as pervading the Quran. That this is so clearly evident in Thanvis discussion of marriage rules in the booklet discussed here which reects a literalist approach to texts as well as stern taqlid of medieval Hana qh provisions. Thanvis description of the rules and norms that he argues must govern Muslim marriage clearly indicates that he conceives it to be a patriarchal institution based on a series of hierarchies: men above women; husbands over wives; Muslims of real or putative Arab origin over Muslims of non-Arab or Ajami origin; and upper caste Muslims over lower caste Muslims.

Marriage and Male Dominance

As Thanvi describes it in the booklet, a marriage can be envisaged as an exchange between two men, the father or other
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male guardian of the bride, on the one hand, and the groom, on the other, the former being the giver of the woman and the latter the receiver. In this exchange, the bride need not play any active role at all, and can remain entirely silenced and invisibilised. Thus, he says:
A marriage can be executed by just two words, e g, a person says the following words in the presence of witnesses: I give my daughter to you in marriage. The person who is addressed replies: I accept her in marriage. In so doing, the marriage is valid and both of them are lawful husband and wife.

Various rules that Thanvi lays down for the marriage ceremony are also heavily gendered, clearly indicating deep-rooted biases against women. Many of these rules, it is interesting to note, are not mentioned in the Quran. For a Muslim marriage to be valid, Thanvi contends, without providing textual evidence, it must be witnessed either by at least two male witnesses or one male and two females. In this way he seems to suggest that the legal worth of a woman is half that of a man, a notion that is completely alien to the Quran, so Islamic feminists would argue. This equating one male witness with two female witnesses probably follows from his transposing the commandment contained in another Quranic verse, one that pertains to loans (2: 282) to the completely different context of marriage, something which modernist Muslim scholars might probably nd deeply problematic. Thanvi goes on to add, but again, without providing any Quranic support, that, If there are no males present, but only females, the nikah will not be valid even if there are ten females present. Together with two females, one male has to be present.

that privileging males over females, including a childs mother, as guardian is patently sexist and unfair. Moreover, they point out, the powers that the traditional qh schools provide to guardians, can as is often the case, be deployed by them to force their wards, particularly girls, into marriages against their will, often even before they reach the age of puberty or maturity. Yet, Thanvi (and the Deobandis generally) insist that the Hana prescriptions on the issue are valid and binding even today. Thanvi goes so far as to insist that a very distant male relative, such as a grandfathers uncles great grandson, has a greater right to be the guardian of a Muslim child, and in that capacity, to play the role required of a guardian in the childs marriage, than the childs own mother. Thus, he elaborates:
The rst wali of a boy or girl is their father. If the father is not present, the grandfather becomes their wali. If he is not present, then the great grandfather. If none of them are present, the blood-brother becomes their wali. If he is not present, then the step-brother, i e, brothers from one father. Thereafter, the nephew, thereafter the nephews son; and thereafter, the nephews grand-son. If none of them are present, the blood uncle becomes their wali. If he is not present, then the step-uncle, i e, the step-brother of their father. Thereafter, the son of the blood uncle and thereafter his grand-son. Thereafter, the son of the step-uncle and thereafter his grand-son. If none of them are present, the fathers uncle becomes their wali; and thereafter his children. If the fathers uncle, his children and grand-children are not present; then the grand-fathers uncle becomes their wali. Thereafter, his children, grand-children, and great grand-children. If none of them are present, the mother will be their wali.

Role of the Wali or Guardian

Reecting the structure of medieval societies, in the medieval Muslim qh schools, including the Hana, males are considered the preferred guardians (singular: wali) of children. As guardians, they are supposed to play a major role in deciding the spouses of those under their care. This provision has been strongly countered by Islamic modernists and Islamic feminists, who point out that the social context, including relations between the genders, has today undergone such a radical transformation
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The role of a guardian in a marriage differs, Thanvi lays down, depending on whether or not the would-be spouses are mature (with maturity or adulthood in the case of girls being recognised once they begin to menstruate) and on whether or not they are of equal social status. A mature girl, Thanvi says, has the choice to marry or not to marry. She can marry whomsoever she wishes, provided the man is of her equivalent social standing for purposes of marriage or kufu. If she marries such a person on her own, the marriage will be valid irrespective of whether the wali is informed or not, and

irrespective of whether the wali gives his consent or not. This process appears remarkably egalitarian. All that the couple have to do is to arrange for two witnesses, and then one of the would-be spouses must say: I am making my nikah with you, and the other must reply, I accept. In so doing, the marriage is sealed. The rules are different, so Thanvi argues, for a mature woman who does not marry a person who is of the same social standing as her, and instead, marries a person who is of a lower social status than her family. If her wali is not happy about this marriage, the marriage will not be valid. In this regard, the wali has a central role in ensuring that social hierarchies are not undermined by a hypogamous marriage, one that entails a woman marrying a man who, although a fellow Muslim, is considered of lower social standing than her. This sort of marriage is looked down upon in the Hana qh tradition probably because it inverts what is considered to be the normal relationship between the spouses, with the man meant to be superior in status to the woman. This rule against hypogamy, which Muslim critics would argue, violates the egalitarian ethics of the Quran, is related to the notion of kafaat or kufu, which will be discussed below, and which forms the basis of a caste-like system among the Muslims of south Asia. On the basis of their reading of the Quran, progressive Islamic authors argue that marriage in Islam must be based on the willing consent of both partners. The two cannot be married against their will or be forced, no matter how very subtly, into a marriage they do not approve of. However, according to Thanvi, a wali can marry off a mature girl without asking her or without seeking her consent. The validity of such a marriage will be dependent on her permission and consent. If she grants her permission, he writes, the marriage will be valid. If she does not grant her permission or is not happy with the marriage, the marriage will not be valid. That might seem somewhat fair enough, but when Thanvi writes that if a wali informs a young virgin girl that he has already, and without having informed her, married her off to a man, and on hearing this, she either remains silent,

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starts smiling, or begins to cry, this response of hers would be considered to be her permission and consent to the marriage, it completely undermines the freedom of a woman to refuse such a marriage. After all, commonsense would suggest that if she cries on hearing the news of her being married off without her having been informed of it, it is more likely that she would do so in sorrow than in joy, indicating her opposition to the marriage rather than her acceptance of it. Similarly, if she remains silent, perhaps out of embarrassment, fear, or reluctance to displease her wali by protesting against his having married her off without even informing her, her silence need not necessarily be construed, as Thanvi seems to do, as heart-felt acceptance of the marriage. In this way, these rules appear to wholly undermine the freedom, agency and autonomy that the Quran grants women in choosing their spouses. Thanvi, like other medieval Muslim (and other) jurists, even sanctions childmarriage, that is marriage of minors who have not attained the age of sexual maturity, although there is nothing in the Quran that validates this practice. Walis can, he writes, arrange for the marriage of immature children under their guardianship even without their consent. This is the case even though such children denitely do not have the capacity to make an informed decision about their own marriages. The wali has full rights over such a boy or girl. He can get them married to whoever he wishes and refuse whoever he wishes. Immature girls and immature boys cannot reject such a nikah at that time, Thanvi insists. If the wali of a boy or girl is his or her own father or grandfather, and he marries off an immature girl or boy, the latter, Thanvi claims, does not have the right to reject or repudiate this marriage even after he or she becomes mature. In short, the child, now an adult, is thus trapped into a marriage he did not approve of in the rst place. Here, too, caution must be taken, Thanvi writes, that such marriages do not disturb the existing pattern of social hierarchy and inequality. Thus, he says, if the wali of an immature girl performs her marriage with a person of a lower social standing, the nikah will not be valid from the very outset.

If a minor girl is married off by a wali who is other than the father or grandfather, the rules are somewhat different. If the child in question is a minor girl and she has knowledge of the marriage, and if she does not have sex with her husband until she attains maturity, she can, in some cases, have the marriage annulled. In such a case, Thanvi writes, the moment she becomes mature, she must mention her discontent, but this must be said in front of a Muslim judge, who, in turn, would annul the marriage. Yet, even this possibility is not as widely and easily available as one might hope, for Thanvi adds the impossibly impractical rider, Once she becomes mature and allows even a moment to pass in which she does not mention her discontent, she will not have the choice of having her nikah annulled. Other convoluted rules apply in the case of a minor girl who is married off by a wali other than a father or paternal grandfather, and whose husband has sexual intercourse with her before she attains maturity. Thanvi does discuss this possibility, in the process unabashedly sanctioning marriage that involves sex with a minor girl.

Civilising Mission
From the various rules of marriage that he describes, it is clear that Thanvi, like his fellow Deobandis, considers women as subordinate to men. This subordination is reinforced by what comes across as a very deep-rooted understanding that women are biologically and congenitally decient as compared to men, and hence, in supposed need of being both taught and controlled by the latter. It is as if men are charged with a civilising mission with regard to their women. Thanvi advises Muslim men thus:
You should continue teaching your womenfolk and inculcate respect and good manners in them. Do not allow them to become impudent and disrespectful. The intellect of women is decient; it is therefore, incumbent to take special measures in reforming them.

writings as a form of economic security that can, or should, help a woman tie over her economic difculties in case of divorce. However, Thanvi effectively rules out the possibility of mahr playing this role because although he insists that in Islam there is no limit to the maximum amount of mahr and that the bride can stipulate as much as she wishes, he suggests that it is not good to stipulate a very high gure. The best wife, he says, is one whose mahr is very simple. That is, it is very easy for the man to full her mahr. These days, there is the habit of specifying a very high mahr. People should abstain from this. As long as the mahr is not paid, Thanvi concedes, a woman cannot be stopped by her husband from travelling out of the marital home. However, once he gives her the amount he owes by way of mahr, her freedom of movement out of their home, Thanvi indicates, must be completely curtailed. Henceforth, he writes, she now depends entirely on her husbands consent to travel out of the home, having to seek his permission even to visit her own parents. It is as if by accepting the mahr from him, the woman completely forfeits her freedom of movement. Thus, Thanvi writes, after the husband gives his wife her mahr it is not permissible for her to go anywhere without his consent. As for the husband, he adds, he can take her wherever he wishes. It is not permissible for her to refuse him.

Dissolution of Marriage
Since Thanvis booklet purports to discuss various Islamic rules of marriage, it does not refer in any detail to the dissolution of marriage. The only references to the issue that it makes are in connection with two hypothetical cases of incest. In both the cases that Thanvi describes, the female victim is penalised for the misdemeanour of the man by having her marriage automatically dissolved. Why a perfectly innocent woman must be punished in this way for the actions of another person is left entirely unexplained. Thanvi provides no Quranic support for these absurd rules, which also is completely antithetical to the Quranic dictum that a person cannot be punished for the misdeeds of someone else. Presumably, these rulings are recorded
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Mahr
The mahr or dower that the groom pays or promises to pay the bride, which is an essential condition of a Muslim marriage, is often described in modern Muslim
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in the classical compendia of Hana qh that Thanvi feels bound to uphold as normative and binding. Let Thanvi speak for himself in describing these cases and the bizarre rulings that he lays down with regard to them:
In the middle of the night, a man decided to awaken his wife. However, he mistakenly touched his daughter or his mother-in-law. Thinking them to be his wife, he touched them with the passions of youth. Now, this man will become haram (forbidden) on his wife forever. There is no way in which she can become permissible for him. It will be necessary for him to divorce his wife. If a boy touches his step-mother with an evil intention, she will become haram on her husband.4 There is no way in which she can be halal (legitimate) for him. If the stepmother touches her step-son with an evil intention, the same rule will apply.

Equality in Marriage or Kufu

The Quran speaks of the ontological equality of all human beings, as well as of the fraternity of Muslims. Exemplifying this socially egalitarian Quranic ethics, a number of early Muslims are known to have married out of their clans and socioeconomic classes, engaging in both hypergamous and hypogamous marriages. Yet, over time, with the establishment and expansion of the Muslim empire, the relatively egalitarian Muslim communities in Mecca and Medina gave way to a sternly hierarchical social system, governed by elites who jealously guarded their privileges. Rules governing marriage also underwent a corresponding change. No longer was it considered possible or permissible for Muslims of different classes and ethnicities to freely inter-marry, for that would have directly undermined the new social hierarchies that had come into being. Instead, complicated rules were evolved, in the name of kafaat/kufu or social compatibility that laid down who a person of a particular social class and ethnic group could be permitted to marry. One could, it was argued, marry only someone of the same kufu. Very detailed rules of kufu were evolved by medieval Muslim jurists and formed an integral part of the teachings and formulations of the qh schools, including the Hana. According to the Hana school, as understood by the south Asian Deobandis, kufu is to be decided, among other
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factors, by birth in a particular social group based on lineage (nasab). In the south Asian case, this corresponds to caste. Violating the Quranic equality of all believers, Hana jurists claimed that Arabs were of a superior lineage than nonArabs or Ajamis, a view that the Deobandis continue to echo. On this basis, they forbade the marriage of an Arab woman or a woman from a family that claimed Arab descent (Syeds, or putative descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shaikhs, in the Indian context) with a man from a family that was not of Arab origin, for that, in their eyes, would have meant a forbidden hypogamous relationship. But the restrictions on marriage did not stop there. By taking birth in a particular caste or occupational group to be a dening factor in kufu, the Deobandi Hanas argued for an almost complete ban on marriage between high and low caste/class Muslims, being particularly harsh on hypogamous marriages, that is marriages between high caste/class women and low caste/class men. In this way, the Hana conception of kufu, based, among other factors, on lineage, was deployed to justify caste, caste endogamy and castebased hierarchy among the Hana Muslims, who form the vast majority of Muslims in south Asia. As ardent Hanas, who insist on rigid taqlid of the prescriptions of Hana jurisprudents, even if these appear antithetical to the Quran, the Deobandis insist that Muslims must follow the conventional caste-based qh rules related to kufu in deciding marital partners. Thanvi devotes much of his booklet to a defence of the doctrine of caste-based kufu, which, without providing any evidence or textual backing whatsoever, he claims is precisely what is mandated by the shariah or what Muslims believe to be the divine path. Thanvi, thus, warns his readers not to perform the nikah of a girl with a man who is not equal to her in status or who is of no match to her. In other words, he suggests, the bride and the groom must be from the same kufu. Echoing the standard Hana position in this regard, he insists that kufu is to be decided on the basis of ve factors: lineage, length of time the family has been Muslim, piety, wealth and profession or occupation. If the prospective

bride and groom are not equal with regard to one or more of these factors, he indicates, it is inappropriate for them to marry. As will be easily appreciated, these rules, put together, form a powerful basis for reinforcing and sustaining existing socioeconomic hierarchies and inequalities in any society.

Justifying Caste
Thanvi devotes much attention to the issue of equality in lineage in shaping kufu, in the process very clearly highlighting how the notion of the superiority of Muslims who claim Arab descent over other Muslims, as well as caste differences and hierarchies (all of which have no Quranic mandate) have come to be legitimised in the Hana qh tradition, which the Deobandis erroneously equate with the notion of the divine shariah. In line with the standard Hana prescriptions, Thanvi considers Muslims who claim Arab origin, who, in the Indian context, are Syeds and Shaikhs, to be the kufu of each other, while being superior to other Muslims. Thus, he argues, it is permissible for Syeds and Shaikhs (to which caste Thanvi, like most other pioneers of Deoband, belonged) to marry among themselves. As he puts it:
Equality in lineage is that the Shaykh [and] Sayyid [...] are [...] equal to each other. In other words, although the status of a Sayyid is more than the others, if the daughter of a Sayyid marries a Shaykh boy, it will not be said that she did not marry someone who is of her family relations. Instead, it will also be regarded as if she has married one of her relatives.

Besides Syeds and Shaikhs, two other largely endogamous groups exist among the south Asian Muslims who also claim foreign, and therefore, superior social status: Mughals and Pathans. Thanvi insists that these groups are lower than Syeds and Shaikhs, presumably because they are not of Arab origin. Thus, he writes:
The Moghuls and Pathans are regarded as one nation and are not of the same class as that of the Sayyids and Shaykhs.

Because the Mughals and Pathans are in his view lower than the Syeds and Shaikhs, Thanvi contends that if the daughter of a Syed or Shaikh marries a Mughal or Pathan man, she would be marrying out of her kufu, to a person of

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what he calls a lower social standing. Such a marriage is not regarded as permissible in Hana qh in most cases. It is certainly not considered to be preferable, Thanvi indicates. Curiously, while discussing qh-based kufu rules linked to lineage, Thanvi talks only of the various upper caste or so-called ashraf or noble-born Indian Muslim groups, but does not care to even mention the many other Muslim caste-like groups, who are of indigenous, mainly low caste, origin, and who, taken together, form the vast majority of the Indian Muslim population. This clearly indicates that the leading lights of the Deobandi movement (as in the case of many other such south Asian Muslim movements), who were almost all from the high castes, paid scant attention to the low caste Muslim majority, even treating them with utter scorn.5 Although, contrary to his stance on the upper castes, Thanvi does not specically name the low castes, while discussing kufu based on lineage, he does refer to them indirectly while discussing kufu rules with regard to equality of occupation as a necessary basis for marriage. Repeating the traditional Hana prescriptions in this regard, he argues that only spouses who come from equal occupational groups (which, in south Asia, correspond to caste groups) can marry each other. If they come from unequal occupational groups, marriage is ruled out, he suggests. This hierarchical ranking of occupations is, needless to add, completely alien to the Quran, and reects, besides the inuence of medieval feudal Muslim culture, the impact of the Hindu or, more specically, brahminical, prejudices and conceptions. Yet, although this notion has no Quranic backing whatsoever, Thanvi unabashedly insists:
Equality in occupation is that, for example, weavers are not regarded as equal to tailors and are accorded a status that is lower than that of tailors. Similarly, barbers, washermen, etc, are not regarded as being equal to tailors, but are regarded as being lower than tailors.

family has been Muslim in deciding kufu with regard to a potential couple. Here, too, considerations of caste and ethnicity come into play. Thus, Thanvi writes that this rule of equality in being Muslim for a certain number of generations does not apply to Arab Muslims or those who claim Arab descent, that is to say, Shaikhs, Syeds, Alavis (descendants of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, through wives other than Fatima, daughter of the Prophet), and Ansaris (descendants of the Ansars or the Medinese helpers of the Prophet). On the other hand, he species that this rule applies to all nonArab Muslim groups, including Mughals and Pathans.

This rule effectively debars male converts to Islam from marrying women from established Muslim families, thus, posing major hurdles for converts and also, presumably, for Islamic missionary work. Thanvi lays down, without citing any Quranic evidence whatsoever, that, A man who accepts Islam and his father was a kar cannot be on par or equal to a woman who is a Muslim and her father was also a Muslim. Since the man in question is thus considered lower in status than the woman, marriage between the two is not, Thanvi appears to suggest, advisable. Thanvi gives another example. A Muslim man whose father is also a Muslim, but whose grandfather was a

V.V. Giri National Labour Institute

(An autonomous body of Ministry of Labour & Employment, Govt. of India) Jeso t;rs Sector-24, Noida-201301 Advertisement for Applications / Nominations for V.V. Giri Memorial Award 2010 in Labour and Employment
V.V. Giri National Labour Institute (VVGNLI) is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India. This is a premier national level Institute mandated to further the cause of labour welfare through training, research and education. Since its inception in 1974, the Institute has been engaged in research, training, education and publication activities to reach all those who are concerned with various aspects of labour, both in the organized and unorganized sectors. In furtherance to the mandated objectives of this Institute, it has been decided to confer a special award - V.V. Giri Memorial Award 2010 in Labour and Employment. This award was instituted in the year 2008. The award for 2010 would be presented to the author of outstanding research and training work in the area of labour. The award will carry a cash prize of Rs.1 lakh and a citation. The theme of the Award for the year 2010 is Research and Training in Labour Administration and Industrial Relations. Scholars and labour practitioners are all invited to apply for consideration for this Award. Interested applicants should provide complete details of their research and training work in the identified area, which is to be considered for this Award, along with copies of the published work and an abstract of not more than 500 words elaborating upon the conclusions in the particular research and training work and its wider applicability in the labour administration and industrial relations. The Institute also welcomes nominations from persons other than the authors of the research work being considered for the Award. In such cases, the proposal should furnish details as specified above. Signed applications/nominations along with full contact details may be forwarded so as to reach the Director, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Sector-24, NOIDA, Distt. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) and also by e-mail to directorvvgnli@gmail.com by June 10, 2011. The Institute, the General Council and the Jury reserve the right to accept applications/nominations or reject the same, if found incomplete in any respect. They also hold the right to consider any nomination other than those received through this advertisement. Further, the Institute also holds the right to consider the life-time contribution of experts, if it is found appropriate.
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Since Thanvi, like other Deobandis, champions blind adherence to Hana qh, he also insists on the validity of the Hana regard for the length of time a persons

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non-Muslim cannot be equal, so he claims, to a woman whose family has been Muslim for three generations. In other words, so Thanvi argues, this man cannot marry such a woman.

Conclusion
All of us are creatures of our own times and of the social worlds that we inhabit. Thanvi was, of course, no exception to this rule. His understanding of Islam was indelibly shaped by the particular context in which he was born, reared and worked. This context played a major role in shaping his ideas of what he regarded as normative or Islamic rules for Muslim marriage. It was a context characterised by stern patriarchy and womens subordination, as well as the virtually unchallenged supremacy of the so-called ashraf or noble-born Muslims of foreign descent over the vast majority of low caste Muslims of indigenous Indian origin. The role of these contextual factors in shaping some of the rules that Thanvi developed in his booklet for Muslim marriages is very denite and obvious. However, the underlying basis of the detailed set of rules that Thanvi insisted must govern Muslim marriages remained the Hana qh tradition. As a result of his insistence on taqlid of the Hana tradition, as we have seen, Thanvi argued for a range of rules and restrictions that are, very obviously, at variance with Quranic teachings, seeking to justify male supremacy, womens degradation, child marriages, forced marriages and caste-based hierarchies and distinctions. To a large extent, one may safely posit, the insistence of the Deobandis on rigid taqlid of jurisprudential precedent within the framework of the Hana school of qh something which Thanvi so strikingly illustrates in the booklet this paper has discussed explains the particular, deeply patriarchal and male supremacist Deobandi vision. The rules corresponding to this vision, some of which are discussed here by Thanvi, are presented as unambiguously Islamic, although a range of progressive Muslim scholars would vehemently disagree with this contention. These rules reect a marked tendency among the Deobandis (though not exclusive to them) of conating medieval qh
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prescriptions, in this case those associated with the Hana school, with the notion of the shariah or divine path. Progressive Islamic scholars would stridently oppose this conation, pointing out that while qh is a human and historical product, the result of human effort to struggle to understand the divine intent, and hence, open to error, the shariah, as conceived of in the Quran, is divine and, therefore, is infallible. Thus, they would insist and here they would vehemently oppose the Deobandis and other proponents of taqlid qh-based rules can change in order to respond to new contexts in order to uphold the basic values of the Quran. In contrast, the Deobandis, Thanvi included, would seem to insist that the Hana qh prescriptions remain valid and binding even when the social context has been widely transformed and when, so it appears to others, these prescriptions no longer seem to reect core Quranic values such as justice, as is very obvious in the case of a number of Hana qh rules related to women, some of which Thanvi elaborates on in his booklet. From our examination of Thanvis booklet another reason for the very obviously patriarchal and deeply sexist pronouncements of the clerics of Deoband comes to light. This is the marked tendency among the Deobandis of an exaggerated veneration of what they regard as their pious elders (buzurgan) to the point of regarding them almost as virtually beyond error. This opens the Deobandis to the charge, levelled by their detractors from other Muslim schools of thought, of being hopelessly wedded to the doctrine of worship of [their] elders, or what is called buzurg parasti in Urdu, clearly something not sanctioned in Islam, where worship is reserved for god alone. This tendency is not, however, exclusive to the Deobandis alone among the various Muslim sectarian groups. Like many other Muslim groups, the Deobandis regard certain iconic gures associated with their particular tradition as being exalted Islamic scholars, almost beyond criticism. They go to the extent of considering many of them to have been divinely guided. Thanvi occupies a prominent position among these Deobandi icons. The pious elders of the past, including Thanvi, are regarded by most Deobandis as having been in close

communion with god, and hence, believed to be almost beyond reproach. Accordingly, their sayings and writings are regarded as having a particularly sacred character, as being of continuous and permanent relevance, providing guidance in every age, even in times long after their own. This explains why Thanvis views on marriage, relations between the spouses, and womens statuses, as expressed in the booklet this article examines, continue to be regarded by the clerics of Deoband as normative and binding even three-quarters of a century after Thanvis death so that his writings now occupy a prominent place on the madrasas website. Notwithstanding the enormous changes that have occurred in Indian Muslim society over the decades after Thanvis demise, his prescriptions, moulded by his own vastly different sociohistorical context and even more so by his insistence on taqlid of medieval Hana qh rules, are thus, still considered by the authorities of the Deoband madrasa as a source of guidance and instruction for Muslims today. In other words, as the contents of Thanvis booklet as well as the status they are accorded today by the authorities of the Deoband madrasa clearly suggest, exaggerated reverence for the buzurgan of the Deobandi tradition partly explains their overall sexist and deeply patriarchal approach to womens issues. This attitude, then, cannot be attributed solely to a supposed deep-rooted patriarchy innate to these men, as is invariably argued in journalistic accounts of Deobandi patriarchy.
Notes
1 2 3 4 www.darululoom-deoband.com. http://www.darululoom-deoband.com/english/ books/index.htm. http://www.darululoom-deoband.com/english/ books/nikah.htm. For details, see Masood Alam Falahi, Hindustan Mai Zat-Pat Aur Musalman (Caste-Based Discrimination in India and Muslims), Mumbai: Ideal Foundation, 2009. In other words, the womans marriage stands automatically dissolved.

References
Metcalf, Barbara Daly (1982): Islamic Revival in British India Deoband, 1860-1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). (1990): Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawis Bihishti Zewar (trans) (Berkeley: University of California Press). Zaman, Muhammad Qasim (2007): Ashraf Ali Thanawi: Islam in Modern South Asia (Oxford: Oneworld Publications).

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