Khilafat Movement: The previous hundred years - III
by Shreerang Godbole on 27 Jul 2020 12 Comments

The Khilafat Movement (1919-1924) was a scripturally ordained movement with a history in India that dates from the time when the first Islamic invader set foot on Indian soil. In modern times, the fixation for the Ottoman Khalifa amongst Sufis, ulama, middle-class Muslim intelligentsia, Muslim press and common Muslims started at least since the 1830s. The ideological underpinnings of the Khilafat Movement were established over the previous hundred years. The 1857 Uprising was a significant eruption of Islamism, but even so, its ideological foundations were laid in the eighteenth century.

 

While the 1857 Uprising has been hailed as a War of Independence against the British, what needs to be answered is: Who was to rule India once the War of Independence was won from the British? To the Muslims, the answer was obvious. British rule was Dar-ul-Harb (lit. abode of war; territory where Islam is not predominant), an irritating interlude in Dar-ul-Islam (lit. abode of Islam; territory where Islam is predominant) that was Islamic rule which spanned a millennium. Nothing but its restoration could satisfy the Muslims.

 

The jihadist character of the 1857 Uprising and its connection with the Khilafat Movement was summed up by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar thus: “The curious may examine the history of the Mutiny of 1857; and if he does, he will find that, in part, at any rate, it was really a Jihad proclaimed by the Muslims against the British, and that the Mutiny so far as the Muslims were concerned was a recrudescence of revolt which had been fostered by Sayyed Ahmad who preached to the Musalmans for several decades that owing to the occupation of India by the British the country had become a Dar-ul-Harb. The Mutiny was an attempt by the Muslims to reconvert India into a Dar-ul-Islam. A more recent instance was the invasion of India by Afghanistan in 1919. It was engineered by the Musalmans of India who, led by the Khilafatists’ antipathy to the British Government, sought the assistance of Afghanistan to emancipate India”. (Pakistan or the Partition of India, B.R. Ambedkar, Thacker and Company Limited, 1945, pp. 288)

 

Pan-Islamic movements before 1857

 

As dusk fell on Islamic rule in India, the one man who fanned pan-Islamism was Shah Waliullah (1703-62). He reiterated the doctrine of an elective Khilafat and laid special emphasis on the duty of jihad or holy war against the infidel. His works prepared a whole generation of Islamic scholars in the nineteenth century to defend Islam in India in a situation where Muslims were losing the physical power to do so. He suggested that the less they shared with their non-Muslim neighbours, the better servants of God Indian Muslims would be (The Muslims of British India, P. Hardy, Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 29, 30). It cannot be overemphasized that in taking the help of their Hindu neighbours, whether in the 1857 Uprising or in the Khilafat Movement, the Muslim leadership was guided by compulsion and not conviction.    

 

The other pioneer of pan-Islamism was Saiyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786-1831), an ex-Pindari freebooter who received the graces of various Sufi orders. He launched a jihad against Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1826. In January 1827, he was declared imam (Supreme Leader) and ba’iya (oath of allegiance, a practice started by Prophet Muhammad) was offered to him. He condemned pilgrimage to Hindu holy places, participation in Hindu holy festivals, consulting Brahmans, astrologers and fortune-tellers. The British correctly gauged that his followers intended the eventual overthrow of British rule (Hardy, ibid, pp. 53-54).

 

An essential ingredient of pan-Islamism is the exclusion of non-Muslims or their influence on Muslims. Contemporary with Saiyid Ahmad Barelvi, arose Hajji Shariat-Allah (1781-1840) who started the Faraizi movement in Bengal in 1821. The movement took its name from its emphasis on Quranic duties (faraiz). Rejection of kufr (infidelity) and bida’a (innovation) were among its cardinal principles. His son Dudu Miyan (1819-1862) organized a militant brotherhood of faraizis. Another violent Islamic revivalist movement in Bengal was led by Titu Mir (1782-1831) who enjoined his followers to grow beards and tie their dhotis in a distinctive fashion. The movement was put down by the British by sending native infantry (Hardy, ibid, pp.55-59). All these pan-Islamic or fundamentalist movements sought to purge Indian Muslims of their pre-Islamic Hindu practices that had survived despite centuries of forced conversion.

 

The British, for their part, had come to realize that the Muslims were a fanatical and irreconcilable community. The strain between the British and the Wahabi Muslims had begun in 1838 when the First Afghan War between the British East India Company and the Emirate of Afghanistan broke out. Not only were the Wahabis encamping in the north-west found to be fighting on the Afghan side, but they were also accused of  subverting the loyalty of some sepoys serving there (The Wahabis in the 1857 Revolt: A Brief Re-appraisal of their role, Iqtidar Alam Khan, Social Scientist, Vol. 41, May-June 2013, p.17)  

 

The Jihad of 1857

 

The differing views of Hindus, Muslims and the British vis-à-vis the 1857 Uprising are summarized by historian Thomas Metcalf thus, “The first sparks of disaffection it was generally agreed, were kindled among the Hindu sepoys who feared an attack upon their caste. But the Muslims then fanned the flames of discontent and placed themselves at the head of the movement, for they saw in these religious grievances the stepping stone to political power. In the British view, it was Muslim intrigue and Muslim leadership that converted a Sepoy Mutiny into a political conspiracy, aimed at the extinction of the British Raj”. (The Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857-1870, Princeton, 1965, p. 298)

 

The outbreak of revolts in May-June 1857, by units of the Bengal Army stationed at different places in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi were accompanied by armed jihadis who were drawn from the Muslim population of the towns. In some cases, as in the case of the Gwalior contingent, the leaders were Muslim sepoys. In Allahabad, Lucknow and Gwalior, the leaders of armed jihadis were not Wahabis but in fact Sufis. Some Wahabi leaders were hesitant in joining the 1857 Jihad because they were not convinced of the doctrinal validity of engaging the English in an armed conflict where Hindu chiefs and leaders of sepoys would be their allies and not clients (Iqtidar Alam Khan, ibid, pp.18, 19).

 

After the fall of Delhi to the mutineers, on May 11, 1857, the nominal Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar appointed Bakht Khan (d.1859) as Commander-in-Chief of the rebel forces. Bakht Khan had arrived in Delhi with 100 jihadis. Bakht Khan was the patron of the Ruhela Afghans who had arrived in Delhi from Hansi, Hissar, Bhopal and Tonk under their Amir-ul-Mujahidin Maulana Sarfraz Ali (Bakht Khan: A leading Sepoy General of 1857, Iqbal Hussain, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 46, 1985, pp. 376).

That the Muslims had no illusions of Hindu-Muslim unity is evident from Maulvi Mohammad Said’s representation to the Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar on May 20, 1857 that the “standard of Holy War had been erected for the purpose of inflaming the minds of the Mahomedans against the Hindus”. In a letter dated June 14, 1857, Major General T. Reed, writing from his camp in Delhi to Lawrence, the Chief Commissioner of Punjab says, “They are displaying the green flag in the city and bullying the Hindus”. In Varanasi, the official report dated June 4, 1857 stated that “news was received that some Mussulmans had determined to raise the Green Flag in the temple of Bishessur”. (The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857, R.C. Majumdar, Firma KLM, 1957, p 230)   

 

The pan-Islamic connection of the Muslim protagonists of the 1857 Jihad needs mention. Sayyid Fadl Alawi, Rahmatullah Kairanwi, Haji Imdadullah Makki, Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan, and Maulana Jafer Thanesri fled India to escape prosecution for their role in the 1857 Jihad. They used imperial networks - ports, travel routes and communications infrastructure - to build pan-Islamic connections. They sailed across the Indian Ocean to Mecca, Cairo, and Constantinople in the heartland of the Islamic world (Fugitive Mullahs and Outlawed Fanatics: Indian Muslims in nineteenth century trans-Asiatic Imperial Rivalries, Seema Alavi, Modern Asian Studies Vol. 45, November 2011, pp. 1337-1382; see also her Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire, Harvard University Press, 2015).

 

Rowlatt Sedition Committee Report

 

The British were naturally perturbed by the attempts to replace their rule with an Islamic dispensation. The Sedition Committee Report (1918), popularly known as the Rowlatt Committee Report, threw light on ‘the nature and extent of the criminal conspiracies connected with the revolutionary movement in India’. The 226-page report has a section on the ‘Muhammadan Current’. The relevant passages in the Report (pp.178-179) noted the following:

1. The sympathy of Indian Muslims with Turkey was noticeable as long ago as the Crimean War.

2. Among a small and vaguely defined group of fanatical Muhammadans, there has been a desire to substitute a new Islamic Empire for the present British rule in India.

3. A plot called ‘Silk Letters’ case was discovered. Its object was to destroy British rule by means of an attack on the North-West Frontier, supplemented by a Muhammadan uprising in this country.

4. A converted Sikh, Maulvi Obeidullah crossed the North-West Frontier early in August 1915 with three companions Abdulla, Fateh Muhammad and Muhammad Ali. He wished to spread over India a pan-Islamic and anti-British movement through the agency of Deobandi Maulvis.

5. Obeidullah met the members of a Turco-German mission. Maulvi Muhammad Mian Ansari returned in 1916 with a declaration of jihad from the hand of Ghalib Pasha, then Turkish Military Governor of Hedjaz (coastal region of Arabia that includes Mecca and Medina).

6. An army of God was to draw recruits from India and bring about an alliance of Islamic rulers. Its headquarters were to be in Medina and secondary headquarters under local generals were to be established at Constantinople, Teheran and Kabul.     

 

Role of overseas Indian Muslims

 

Indian Muslims residing abroad, especially in Britain, played no mean role in fanning pan-Islamic sentiment. As early as 1886, a pan-Islamic society called the Anjuman-i-Islam had been established in London with branches in India. In 1903, an Indian barrister, Abdulla al-Mamun Suhrawardy (1875-1935), revived this almost defunct society under the new name of ‘The Pan-Islamic Society of London’. The Society, apart from establishing direct contact with Turkey, rendered valuable service in focussing, especially through its journal Pan-Islam, the Muslim feelings on questions affecting Turkey and Islam.

 

When in September 1911, Italy, with the connivance of the British and the French, made a raid upon Ottoman Tripoli, the indignation of Muslim India was widespread. The London Muslim League even threatened to raise volunteers for the assistance of Turkey. In order to render financial assistance for the relief of the Tripolitan sufferers, a Red Crescent Society was established. From Lahore to Madras, Muslims both Sunnis and Shias donated to the fund. To return the favour, Sunnis joined Shias in condemning the Russian occupation of northern Persia and the bombardment of the shrine of Imam Ali Raza in Meshhed, Iran (The Khilafat Movement in India, 1919-1924, Muhammad Naeem Qureshi, dissertation submitted to University of London, 1973, p.19-23).

 

The rumblings begin

 

When in October 1912, the Balkan States launched a combined attack on Turkey, Indian Muslim indignation was spontaneous and bitter. The ulama patched up their differences. The poet-theologian Shibli Numani raised the cry of 'Islam in Danger' and his young protégé, Abul Kalam Azad, proclaimed that the time for jihad had come. Shaukat Ali (1875-1958), the U.P. journalist, issued an appeal in the Comrade to organise a volunteer corps. His brother, Mohamed Ali (1878-1951), the editor of Comrade, advocated that the funds collected for the Aligarh University should be loaned to Turkey. An all-India medical mission under Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari (1880-1956) reached Constantinople at the end of December 1912. The mission was able to establish contacts not only with Young Turk leaders but also with the Egyptian nationalists. A scheme for a rehabilitation colony in Anatolia for Muslim refugees from Macedonia, a university in Medina, an Islamic bank and a co-operative society was propounded. The project was actively supported by the Comrade which also encouraged Indian Muslims to purchase Turkish security bonds.

 

An important development of pan-Islamism in India was the foundation in May 1913 of a society called Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Kaaba (Society of the Servants of the Kaaba). Maulana Abdul Bari (1879-1926), the influential alim of Firangi Mahal seminary in Lucknow, was its President and M.H. Hosain Kidwai and the Ali brothers its other promoters. They decided on a two-fold plan, first, to organise Muslims to oppose any non-Muslim invasion, and, second, to strengthen Turkey as the one powerful Muslim power capable of maintaining ‘an independent and effective Muslim sovereignty over the sacred places of Islam’.

 

There were also suspicious cash-rich Turkish visitors who were reportedly sent to stir up trouble in India. The Turkish Government was reportedly negotiating with a German firm in Hamburg for the purchase of rifles to arm the Indian Muslims (Qureshi, ibid, pp. 22-29). Such was the situation in India in July 1914 when World War I erupted in the form of a conflict between Serbia and Austria. It was a powder keg waiting to explode!

 

(Continued on August 3, 2020)

  

See also:

1] Khilafat Movement:  Relevance and discourse – I

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=5461

2] Khilafat scriptural sanction and historical antecedents - II

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=5468

User Comments Post a Comment
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Vishambher chaturvedi
July 27, 2020
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Incorrigible! Looks like fundamentalism is the only sustaining force in Islam and it isn't going to change any soon, if it ever will.

This is indeed a series that would be of particular interest to students of history. For the layman, suffice to say that non-muslims beware!

Unfortunately, escalating islamic terrorism throughout the world hasn't driven any sense to their predecessors- the crusaders and perpetrators of inquisitions. Worse, they almost seem to be hand in hand in India and against the Hindus.

Finally, it also makes one shudder at the treachery committed on the gullible Hindus by Gandhi-Nehru-Mountbatten combine. Those who drafted our Constitution too cannot be absolved of their responsibility for toeing the lines of these 'icons'.
P M Ravindran
July 27, 2020
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@ P M Ravindran

Now you must be happy with the hindu terrorism going on in india by the "gullible" masoom hindus started by the 56" chested red eyed daiwta modi and cohorts.
The recent development in UN where they showed their concern about terroism emanating from india and indian sponsored terrorism coming to Pakistan via Afghanistan should open your eyes.
Tide is changing fast for india as their budmaashi with all the neighbors is coming to a screeching halt and recent being Bangladesh (yes the liberated ones) where the PM has refused to meet indian high commissioner in Bangladesh for the last 4 months to show their disgust on the citizen ship law .
A Bangladeshi minister recently scolded india on their Kashmir policy and told point blank that it caused the change of hearts in Bangladesh for india.
So stop this nonsense of calling names to Muslims or basically non hindus , first get your house in order if you want it to remain on world map!
observer
July 27, 2020
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Very true
Ajay
July 28, 2020
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Thankyou Shrirang Godbole for this thorough account. However, the chilling effect of the history of Islam in India is now overtaken by the wonderful return of Sri Rama to Ayodhya.

The reports indicate that the entire population, both Hindu and Muslim are overjoyed and excited at the prospect of the Ram Mandir and the PM's laying the foundation stone on August 5.
Dr. Vijaya Rajiva
July 28, 2020
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Stop lying vijaya , that's so low !
observer
July 28, 2020
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@ Shri PM Ravindran

I agree that it is murky history and our previous Congress led governments concealed these facts. It was refreshing to see that in Karnataka the text books for students are waking up. They have left out the chapter on Tippu. Here, I think it would have been better if they showed the tyrants depredations against Hindus, especially in Coorg (where it is still remembered) and in northern Kerala. It is important for Indians of all ages especially the young to know their history.

Having said that, this coming week is witnessing a momentous event, the laying of the foundation stone for the Ram Mandir. Interesting to see that artisans, stone workers, tailors, people in the garment industry(from both communities)who have been associated with this Mandir work for nearly4 generations, are now plying their trade once more.

All of Ayodhya is rejoicing. Jai Shri Ram !
Dr. Vijaya Rajiva
July 29, 2020
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It is not even the birth place of ram according to the Nepali P.M,get your facts right first then gloat , Vijaya!!
observer
July 30, 2020
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@Dr.Vijaya and observer

Rama was born in a place called Ayodhya,in Nepal. Thus spake the great historian, Ramayana scholar, Sanskritist and Seer of Nepal. So how can you Dr. Vijaya, a mere philosopher, question the authenticity of his proclamation. Shame on you, acknowledge your mistake and accept the great scholar's pronouncement as the Gospel truth. Only the ignoramuses in Hindustan believe the fake story of Ramayana and Ayodhya written by a highway robber .The magnificient Mosque built by the noble, Indian Emperor Babur was destroyed by the bonehead Hindus who believed the fake story. So apologize and accept the truth as declared by the sage of Nepal.

May it please the observer to provide a reference for the expression of concern by the UN for terror emanating from India.
Govindan
July 30, 2020
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@Govindan

I had a good laugh at your comment ! Indeed who can deny the sage from Nepal or his acolytes from here in Bharat itself ?

However, I am beginning to wonder if Observer is for real. He might just be a fake poster who comes on Vijayvani just for the heck of it.

And he has not even quoted the source of his info !

Apart from well known people like Oaisi and ofcourse the Left/Liberal' Congress front, the reports are that most of the Muslims especially in Ayodhya are happy at the building of the Ram temple.

A friend and I discussed the question of whether the Partition should have happened at all. I remember reading Girilal Jain who said that it was a good thing, because otherwise the way things were going they would stay behind and create a lot of problems for the Indian Parliament and for the country in general.

But my friend quoted Ambedkar who had suggested a transfer of populations.

It is possible that if our Observer is a genuine poster he would have been happy to have availed himself of the transfer of population.

As it is he is stuck in his identity crisis, angry that the Hindus are finally getting justice and that the days of the Caliphate are numbered etc. and that the civilisational continuity of Bharat will endure.

Unfortunate. But the country will be rejoicing and it won't just be grandmothers who will watch the ceremony on television. The entire country and indeed many abroad will be watching.

Jai Shri Ram !
Dr. Vijaya Rajiva
July 30, 2020
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@ Observer.
No use digging up a lost case.The SC on the basis of scientific analysis of archeological evidence, given the verdict in favour of Ram janma bhoomi . You can be representative of Oli and submit evidence of Ram's birth in Nepal. Although it is not worth debating with a fake like you, I have been kind enough to respond in as few words as possible , to your idiotic fantasies . Rather than picking faults in hindutva ,try to spend your time in reforming Islamic fanatics .
Panikkath Krishnanunni
July 30, 2020
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@Shri Panikkath Krishnanunni

Your tongue in cheek request to Observer to be Oli's representative !

His mention of Oli makes me wonder whether he is actually a Leftie, or at least a Muslim with leftist leanings.

I have come to the conclusion that he is a Muslim, living somewhere in India and not a Pakistani. I have mentioned elsewhere that he himself had said a few years ago on Vijayvani that he is a non practising Muslim with possible Hindu ancestry (his words, not mine).

Now if he were a fake poster he would have used a Muslim name to deliberately provoke readers.

I am glad you did not waste your own time in a lengthy reply to him.

For me, it raises the question of why a Muslim in Bharat should not identify with its civilisational history. Could it be that the memories of the Islamic Occupation are still too strong for some at least in the community ?

Afterall, many from the community in Ayodhya itself are teaming up with their Hindu colleagues to celebrate that the 500 year dispute is over and that Sri Rama is back at his birthplace.

If I remember correctly, was it not Iqbal who called Sri Rama the Imam of Hind ?

Why is Observer having such a hard time with these concepts and statements ?
Dr. Vijaya Rajiva
July 30, 2020
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