Khilafat Movement

• 1. Introduction

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  The Khilafat Movement was a political campaign launched by South Asian Muslims in British India between 1919 and 1922, aimed at reversing Allied policy toward the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Its opening question was stark: would the British, who had promised to protect the Ottoman sultan's status as caliph of all Sunni Muslims, keep that promise? They did not. What followed was one of the most remarkable episodes of Hindu-Muslim cooperation in Indian history, drawing in Mahatma Gandhi, the Ali brothers, Abul Kalam Azad, and tens of thousands of ordinary protesters. How a religious dispute in the heart of the dying Ottoman Empire became the spark for mass civil disobedience across the Indian subcontinent is a story that shaped the fate of South Asia for generations to come.

• 2. The Caliphate at Stake

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  Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II, who lived from 1842 to 1918, had spent decades trying to use the office of caliph as a shield against European encroachment. As the nominal supreme religious and political leader of Sunni Muslims worldwide, he sent the emissary Jamaluddin Afghani to India in the late nineteenth century, hoping to build sympathy across the Muslim world. That outreach landed in fertile soil. Muslim religious leader Maulana Mehmud Hasan went further, attempting to organise a national war of independence in India with Ottoman backing.

  Abdul Hamid II was eventually forced to restore constitutional monarchy by the Young Turk Revolution, which ushered in the Second Constitutional Era. His brother Mehmed V, who lived from 1844 to 1918, succeeded him, but real power had passed to the Young Turks. When the Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers in World War I and suffered defeat, the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 stripped away much of its territory and influence. Allied leaders had promised to protect the sultan's role as caliph, yet under the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq were severed from the empire entirely.

  Within Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk led the Turkish national movement through a war of independence lasting from 1919 to 1923. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 replaced the hated Treaty of Sevres. Then, pursuant to Ataturk's reforms, the Republic of Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924. Ataturk offered the title to Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi on the condition that he reside outside Turkey; Senussi declined and confirmed support for Abdulmejid. Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and leader of the Arab Revolt, then claimed the caliphate, but his kingdom was defeated and absorbed by Ibn Saud in 1925.

• 3. Organising the Movement

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  Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar, a prominent Oxford-educated Muslim journalist, had already served four years in prison for advocating resistance to colonial rule before the movement reached its peak. His brother Maulana Shaukat Ali joined him, alongside leaders including Pir Ghulam Mujaddid Sarhandi, Sheikh Shaukat Ali Siddiqui, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Barrister Jan Muhammad Junejo, Hasrat Mohani, Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, Mohammad Farooq Chishti, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and Dr. Hakim Ajmal Khan. Together they formed the All India Khilafat Committee, based in Lucknow at Hathe Shaukat Ali, the compound of Landlord Shaukat Ali Siddiqui.

  In 1920 the committee published the Khilafat Manifesto, calling on the British government to protect the caliphate and urging Indian Muslims to hold Britain accountable. The founding leadership was clear on one point: to them, the Khilafat was not a religious movement but a show of solidarity with fellow Muslims in Turkey. In Bengal, the committee's ranks included Mohmmad Akram Khan, Manruzzaman Islamabadi, Mujibur Rahman Khan, and Chittaranjan Das, reflecting the broad geographic reach of the organising effort.

  A committee was also launched to send funds to the Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal, and Indians contributed donations to support the cause. The Conference of London in February 1920 took up the movement as a topic, though nationalist Arabs viewed the campaign with suspicion, seeing it as a threat to continuation of Turkish dominance over Arab lands.

• 4. Gandhi and Non-Cooperation

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  In 1920 the All India Khilafat Committee forged an alliance with the Indian National Congress, then the largest political party in the nationalist movement. Mahatma Gandhi and the Khilafat leaders pledged to work together for both Khilafat and Swaraj, the goal of self-rule. Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and other Congress figures lent their weight to the campaign, linking the religious grievances of Indian Muslims to the broader struggle against British colonialism.

  The non-cooperation movement that followed was nationwide in scope. It began with boycotts of legislative councils, government schools, colleges, and foreign goods, plus the surrender of titles and distinctions awarded by the colonial government. Massive protests, strikes, and acts of civil disobedience spread across India, with Hindus and Muslims joining forces. Gandhi, the Ali brothers, and other leaders were swiftly arrested by colonial authorities.

  Under the flag of Tehrik-e-Khilafat, a Punjab Khilafat deputation led by Moulana Manzoor Ahmed and Moulana Lutfullah Khan Dankauri played a leading role throughout India, concentrating particularly in the Punjab, including Sirsa, Lahore, and Haryana. People from villages such as Aujla Khurd were among the main contributors to the effort. Some protesters went further still, joining a protest emigration from the North-West Frontier Province to Afghanistan under Amanullah Khan.

• 5. Sindh and British Control

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  Up to the turn of the twentieth century, British political control in Sindh had been largely effective. The Khilafat movement changed that. For the first time, a major number of Sindhi pirs came together on a common platform to oppose British policy, an event that had no prior parallel in the province.

  These pirs were drawn in by the rising pan-Islamic sentiment of the years leading up to 1919, and by a growing awareness of the shifting position of Muslims across South Asia. The gradual erosion of barriers that had long isolated Sindh from broader developments elsewhere in the Muslim world accelerated that process. Their participation in the agitation severely threatened to undermine British colonial authority in the region.

  The British system of control was strained but ultimately held. The colonial administration managed to reduce the threat to proportions it could handle, though the scale of pir involvement demonstrated how far pan-Islamic concerns had penetrated even relatively isolated corners of India.

• 6. Fracture and Aftermath

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  The movement weakened as it progressed. Muslims found themselves pulled in several directions at once: toward the Congress, toward the Khilafat cause itself, and toward the Muslim League. The non-cooperation movement formally ended in 1922, and the Khilafat movement ended with it.

  Leadership fragmentation followed political lines. Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari broke away to create Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam with support from Chaudhry Afzal Haq. Dr. Ansari, Maulana Azad, and Hakim Ajmal Khan remained loyal to Gandhi and the Congress. The Ali brothers moved to the Muslim League.

  The years 1919-1922 are widely described as the high point of Hindu-Muslim unity. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk thanked the Congress for its sympathy and expressed hope that India would soon gain Swaraj. Critics argued that the movement's religious rhetoric concealed an uncertain religious agenda rather than a nationalist or anti-imperialist programme.

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had been a force for Hindu-Muslim unity after the 1916 Lucknow Pact, left the Congress over the Khilafat entanglement. He had cautioned against binding the secular independence movement to religious goals; when those warnings went unheeded, he departed. Jinnah later became the central figure of the Pakistan Movement. Writing for the Turkish outlet Daily Sabah, Omair Anas observed that it is impossible to recall Turkey's anti-colonial struggle without mentioning Gandhi's support for the unity and integrity of the then-crumbling Ottoman Empire.