Ahmadiyya movement

The Ahmadiyya movement, also styled Qadianism after its birthplace Qadian in Gurdaspur district of Punjab, was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (c. 1835–1908). It emerged during the late nineteenth-century ferment of Islamic revivalism in British India, paralleling the Aligarh, Deoband and Ahl-i-Hadith currents. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed in his 1889 announcement to receive divine revelation and later proclaimed himself the mujaddid (renewer), the promised Mahdi, and the metaphorical second coming of Jesus (the Masih-i-Maud or Promised Messiah). His magnum opus, Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya (begun 1880), and his doctrine that Jesus survived the crucifixion and died a natural death in Kashmir, marked sharp departures from mainstream Sunni belief. The movement combined rationalist apologetics against Christian missionaries and Arya Samaj polemicists with an emphasis on a peaceful, non-violent jihad of the pen.

Doctrinally, the movement's most contested feature is its interpretation of khatm-i-nubuwwat (the finality of prophethood). While orthodox Islam holds Prophet Muhammad to be the last prophet, Ahmadis regard Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a subordinate, non-law-bearing prophet, a position majority Muslims deem heretical. After the founder's death in 1908, leadership passed to a Khalifa; in 1914 the movement split into the larger Qadiani group, which retained Qadian and accepts Ghulam Ahmad's prophethood, and the Lahori group (Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha'at-i-Islam), led by Maulana Muhammad Ali, which regards him only as a reformer. The Ahmadiyya built a strong tradition of missionary outreach, translation of the Quran into European languages, and educational institutions, and produced figures such as Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, independent Pakistan's first foreign minister.

After the 1947 Partition, the headquarters shifted from Qadian to Rabwah in Pakistan, while a sacred remnant stayed in Qadian, India. The movement faced sustained persecution in Pakistan: the 1953 Lahore anti-Ahmadiyya agitation led by the Majlis-i-Ahrar prompted the first imposition of martial law in a Pakistani city, and the Munir-Kayani Report of 1954 examined the disturbances. In 1974, a constitutional amendment under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared Ahmadis non-Muslims for legal purposes, and Ordinance XX of 1984 under General Zia-ul-Haq criminalised their use of Islamic terminology and self-identification as Muslims. The present spiritual head from 2003 is Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the fifth Khalifatul Masih, headquartered in London at the Fazl Mosque since the community's relocation.

For UPSC, the Ahmadiyya movement appears in the Modern History segment of GS Paper I, within the cluster of nineteenth-century socio-religious reform movements among Indian Muslims, frequently tested alongside the Aligarh and Deoband movements through match-the-founder, place-of-origin (Qadian, 1889), and founder (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad) factual questions in Prelims. Aspirants should distinguish the Ahmadiyya's rationalist and reformist character from revivalist movements, note its modern educational and missionary work, and—for CSS/FSOT candidates—command its contemporary legal status in Pakistan under the 1974 amendment and Ordinance XX of 1984.