Many remember the past from what they read in religious and other texts and hear from their leaders. Historical memory has an important role in determining people’s current attitudes and, more importantly, actions.
The IS movement has proclaimed a Caliphate based on their interpretation of Koranic injunctions to extend the rule of Islam all over the world. It is waging a war of terror in Syria and Iraq. Yet, we in India are aware of an earlier Khilafat agitation, which is part of the history of our national movement for Independence. We need to know what that was all about and where it got us.
Francis Robinson’s book Separatism among Indian Muslims helps us understand the Khilafat movement. World War I resulted in the defeat of the Turkish Ottoman Empire by the Allied Powers in 1919. Under British leadership, the Indian Army deployed 7,00,000 men to fight and defeat the Turks. After the defeat, the Indian Ulema entered the field to preserve the Turkish Sultanate and the Khilafat and an Ulema-led Muslim leadership formed the All-India Central Khilafat Committee.
Gandhi was beginning to build his political base since his return to India in 1915. He cultivated Maulana Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal, who was the leading light of the Khilafat agitation. By March 1919, Gandhi needed Abdul Bari’s support for his Rowlatt agitation and agreed to support the Khilafat movement in return. Maulana Abdul Bari then made a statement in his journal Akhuwat expressing his “‘great regard and respect for Mr Gandhi’; his entire agreement with his views, and urged Muslims to follow the Mahatma’s example”. Once the Rowlatt Satyagraha was called off, it was Abdul Bari’s turn to cultivate Gandhi.
As Robinson says: “Throughout the summer of 1919, he (Bari) bombarded the Mahatma with suggestions for the release of the Ali brothers, a scheme for Hindu-Muslim unity and pleas that Gandhi should adopt Satyagraha for Muslim grievances. In return, he promised Gandhi that he would stop Muslims sacrificing cows”. By September 1919, Abdul Bari declared: “I have made Mahatma Gandhi to follow us in the Khilafat question while I have accepted his support in getting our aims fulfilled and for that purpose I think it is necessary to follow his advice”.
By November 1919, the All India Khilafat Conference and a Hindu–Muslim Conference were held in Delhi. Gandhi was the only Hindu invited to both Conferences and was told that they would discuss and settle the cow slaughter issue. The Khilafat conference resolved to “progressively withhold all cooperation from the British government.”
Gandhi supported the resolution, coining the phrase ‘non-cooperation’. As Robinson notes: “But it should be noted that, despite this and all Gandhi’s past and future association with the techniques of non-cooperation, the idea on this occasion stemmed from the Muslims and the Mahatma was merely following their lead”.
At the Bengal Provincial Khilafat Conference in Calcutta in March 1920, Abdul Bari declared that: “They (Muslims) could sacrifice every Christian’s life and property; they could burn them, and even if they stole their property he would give them a Fatwa in justification… He declared that had cannon and guns been at his disposal he would have declared war and would have burnt Christians after saturating them with kerosene oil….”
Gandhi had witnessed Abdul Bari’s fury. Such a man was Gandhi’s chief collaborator — they were an unlikely duo. “A week after the conference he (Gandhi) issued a manifesto on the Khilafat agitation. He stressed that there should be no violence, no boycott of British goods and no confusion of the Khilafat with other questions…. What mattered was that he had shown his willingness to keep up with the extremists.”
By June 30, to bring in the Congress, Gandhi linked the Khilafat issue with the Hunter Report on the Punjab troubles. This was something he had refused to do only three months previously! Gandhi persuaded the Indian National Congress to call a Special Congress in September 1920 at Calcutta.
Gandhi had travelled all over the country canvassing for support and Muslim supporters lobbied vigorously. Khilafat Special trains were run from Bombay and Madras and free trips to Calcutta were offered to Ulema who wished to attend it. The newspaper Leader reckoned that over 2,000 of the 5,500 delegates were Muslims. The Central Khilafat Committee issued a call to Muslims not to slaughter cows on Bakrid which fell a few days before the Special Congress.
All this ensured that the resolution got through the Subjects Committee by a narrow majority of 148 to 133 against. Only one leading Congressman, Motilal Nehru, supported Gandhi. In the Congress, the resolution passed by 1885 to 883 votes. This amazing victory was due to the ability of the sponsors to pack the Subjects Committee — for once approved there, the rest was a show of tame hands in the Congress.
As Robinson says: “The Muslims were the core of Gandhi’s party, but his victory was narrow enough to make every source of support important…. By persuading the Congress to join the Central Khilafat Committee in non-cooperation he had gone some way towards achieving Hindu-Muslim unity and proving the efficacy of Satyagraha as a means of obtaining justice. But Gandhi, for all his political shrewdness, was idealist. In crude political terms, it was a greater victory for the Khilafatists. For months they had been trying to win Hindu support to strengthen their Khilafat protest. For months the Congress chiefs had resisted them. Now they had with Gandhi’s aid tossed them to one side, and as Lajpat Rai put it “tacked the Congress on to the Khilafat Committee.”
Robinson concludes: “The Muslims, however, who made the Khilafatist victory, were the Ulema. They tried to push the movement in a radical direction ….they originated the idea of non-cooperation and put constant pressure of the Central Khilafat Committee to adopt it and practice it.. It was not surprising that they lay at the heart of its organisation.”
The agitation gained ground without any response from the British. In India, with most of the top leaders arrested, many local leaders began to ‘do their own thing’. It culminated in the Chauri-Chaura incident in February 1922 where police firing killed three agitators and the mob burnt 23 policemen alive in their thana. Gandhi called off the agitation a week later. This was seen by the Ulema as a betrayal. It laid the foundation for Muslim distrust of Hindu political leaders, eventually leading to Partition. The Khilafat movement turned out to be another of Gandhi’s “Himalayan Blunders’.
For all the trouble taken by the Indian Ulema and Gandhi, Kemal Attaturk abolished the Turkish Sultanate in November 1922 and expelled the Khalif in 1924 . Thereafter the Turkish Republic followed a robust and aggressive secular policy aimed at marginalising the Ulema and removing the role of Islam from politics, thus creating a modern State.
However, after 90 years a Caliphate has been proclaimed by IS, which is waging a brutal war in Syria and Iraq. Nearly 30 countries including Muslim nations have become involved in that war which has destroyed Syria and caused the displacement and enslavement of millions of innocent people.
We do not know how it will end. It may end as did the 1804 Sokoto Caliphate of Usman dan Fodio in northern Nigeria or as did the 1882 Khalifat of the Mahdi in the Sudan. The former was defeated after a rule of 100 years by armies led by General Frederick Lugard in 1903 and converted into the British Protectorate of the Sultanate of Sokoto, while the latter was utterly extinguished after 16 years of its existence by an Anglo-Egyptian force led by Lord Kitchener, much to the acclamation of the Islamic world.
The Khilafat agitation showed that the Indian Muslim Ulema and many of their followers had transnational political commitments based solely on their religion, which had nothing to do with the domestic politics or needs of the Muslim population. Fortunately, after 68 years of democratic and secular governance, today Indian Muslims seem to be more interested in advancing their domestic welfare than in embracing 7th Century ideas of global governance.
The author is former Dean of Research and Consultancy, Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad
E-mail: gautam.pingle@gmail.com