The Khilafat Movement (1919-1924) was a movement amongst the Muslims of British India (the largest single Muslim community in one geo-political entity at the time) to ensure that the British, victors of World War I, kept a promise made at the Versailles. The promise was that the Caliphate, then claimed by the Ottoman emperor, would not be abolished. The British Raj is an informal term for the period of British rule of most of the Indian subcontinent, or present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (previously known as Ceylon). ... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ... Woodrow Wilson with the American Peace Commissioners The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 is the peace treaty created as a result of six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which put an official end to World War I between the Allies and Central Powers. ... Caliph is the term or title for the Islamic leader of the Ummah, or community of Islam. ... The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power Imperial motto El Muzaffer Daima The Ever Victorious (as written in tugra) Official language Ottoman Turkish Capital İstanbul ( Constantinople/Asitane/Konstantiniyye ) Sovereigns Sultans of the Osmanli Dynasty Population ca 40 million Area 12+ million km² Establishment 1299 Dissolution October 29, 1923...

Ottoman emperor Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909) had launched his Pan-Islamic program in a bid to protect the Ottoman empire from Western attack and dismemberment, and to crush the Westernizing democratic opposition in Turkey. He sent an emissary, Jamaluddin Afghani, to India in the late nineteenth century. Some Indian Muslim leaders endorsed his efforts. One Muslim journalist, Maulana Muhammad Ali, spent four years in prison (1911-1915) for preaching resistance to the British and support for the Ottoman caliph. Sultan Abdul Hamid II Abd-ul-Hamid II also Abdulhamid, Abdülhemit, Abdul Hamid, Abd al-Hamid II, or Abdul-Hamid (September 21, 1842 – February 10, 1918) was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from August 31, 1876 – April 27, 1909. ... Pan-Islamism is the loose unification of all Islamic countries and peoples. ... Maulana Muhammad Ali 1874-1951 Amir (1914-1951) Muhammad Ali was born in 1874 in Punjab (India). ...

In September 1919, Muhammad Ali and his brother Shawkat Ali, together with Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, Dr. M.A. Ansari, and Hasrat Mohani, started a new organization, the Khilafat Movement. Their avowed aim was to use whatever leverage they had with the British, as residents of a British colony, to protect the Caliphate. They organized Khilafat Conferences in several northern Indian cities. In 1920 they published the Khilafat Manifesto.

The Ali brothers then made a strategic alliance. They convinced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to join a Hindu-Muslim alliance for self-rule (Indian independence, or swaraj). Gandhi's followers would support the Khilafat Movement if the Muslims would support Gandhi's efforts for swaraj. Gandhi became a member of the Central Khilafat Committee and at the Nagpur session (1920) of the Indian National Congress Gandhi proposed a non-cooperation campaign, of non-violent satyagraha, in support of swaraj and khilafat. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) (Devanagari: मोहनदास करमचन्द गांधी, Gujarati મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી), called Mahatma Gandhi, was the charismatic leader who brought the cause of Indias independence from British colonial rule to world attention. ... Indian National Congress (also known as the Congress Party) is the largest subscription-based organisation in the world. ... Satyagraha (Sanskrit: truth + grasp/hold) is the philosophy of non-violent resistance most famously employed by Mahatma Gandhi in forcing an end to the British Raj and also against apartheid in South Africa. ...

The non-cooperation campaign was at first successful. However, the Hindu-Muslim alliance soon dissolved in communal violence.

• In 1920, some 18,000 Muslim peasants, mostly from Sind and the North Western Provinces, voluntarily emigrated to Afghanistan. They believed that India was Dar-el-Harb, a non-Islamic land, and wished to live in Dar-el-Islam, an Islamic polity. Afghanistan could not support this vast influx of poor refugees and there was great suffering.

• In August 1921, the poor Muslim peasants of Malabar (now part of Kerala state) erupted in the Moplah rebellion. After a pitched battle with British troops -- which the rebels lost with thousands killed and wounded -- the peasants attacked their predominantly Hindu, upper-caste landlords. Some three thousand Hindus are said to have been killed. There were numerous rapes and attempts to forcibly convert Hindus to Islam.

The Moplah rebellion is still a subject of historical dispute. Hindutva writers stress the religious aims of the rebels, and see the bloody rebellion as proof that Muslims are a threat to Hindus. Marxist writers view the rebellion as class-based: peasants rose against their oppressive landlords. While deploring the excesses of the rebels, the Marxists see the rebellion as justified.

• In February 1922, a violent mob in Chauri-Chaura set fire to a police station, killing twenty-two policemen.

Gandhi's attempt at mass non-violence had ended in massacre. Soon after the Chauri-Chaura incident, Gandhi called off the non-cooperation movement. Bekal Fort Beach Malabar is a region along the southwest coast of the Indian peninsula, which forms the northern part of present-day Kerala state. ... ... Hindutva (Hinduness, a word coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1923 pamphlet entitled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? ) is used to describe movements advocating Hindu nationalism. ...

The Ali brothers had been arrested; Gandhi had withdrawn from the movement. The final blow to the movement was Kemal Atatürk's overthrow of the Ottoman Sultan. In 1924, the new, secular, Turkish state relinquished any claims to a universal caliphate. There was now no caliph to support. The Khilafat movement died. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–November 10, 1938), Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist statesman, was the founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey. ...

The caliphate

Caliph means "successor," that is, successor to the prophet Muhammad. It was adopted as a title, rather than description, by the Ummayad and then by the Abbasid caliphs, as well as by the Fatimid caliphs of North Africa, the Almohad caliphs of North Africa and Spain, and the Ottoman Turks. Caliphs claimed spiritual and temporal authority over all Muslims. No caliphs since the first century of Islam actually exercised this authority over all Muslims; there were always rival dynasties, breakaway states, and de facto independent rulers. Moreover, the Muslim clergy, the ulema, and the various Sufi orders exercised more religious influence than the caliph. Yet the idea of a unified ummah or Muslim community was extremely attractive, and otherwise independent rulers were usually willing to offer a token submission to the ruling caliph. The Umayyad Dynasty (Arabic الأمويون / بنو أمية umawiyy; in Turkish, Emevi) was the first dynasty of caliphs of the Prophet Muhammad who were not closely related to Muhammad himself, though they were of the same Meccan tribe, the Quraish. ... Abbasid provinces during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid Abbasid (Arabic: العبّاسدين ) was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Muslim empire, that overthrew the Umayyid caliphs. ... The Fatimid or Fatimid Caliphate is the Ismaili Shiite dynasty that ruled North Africa from A.D. 909 to 1171. ... North Africa is a region generally considered to include: Algeria Egypt Libya Mauritania Morocco Sudan Tunisia Western Sahara The Canary Islands, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Azores and Madeira are sometimes considered to be a part of North Africa, though they do not share a common culture with North Africa. ... The Almohad Dynasty (From Arabic الموحدون al-Muwahhidun, i. ... North Africa is a region generally considered to include: Algeria Egypt Libya Mauritania Morocco Sudan Tunisia Western Sahara The Canary Islands, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Azores and Madeira are sometimes considered to be a part of North Africa, though they do not share a common culture with North Africa. ... The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power Imperial motto El Muzaffer Daima The Ever Victorious (as written in tugra) Official language Ottoman Turkish Capital İstanbul ( Constantinople/Asitane/Konstantiniyye ) Sovereigns Sultans of the Osmanli Dynasty Population ca 40 million Area 12+ million km² Establishment 1299 Dissolution October 29, 1923... Ulema (Arabic: علماء) is the community of legal scholars of Islam and the Sharia. ... Sufism (Arabic تصوف taṣawwuf) is a system of esoteric philosophy commonly associated with Islam. ... Ummah (أمة) is an Arabic and Islamic word that means community or nation. ...

Altruism or political opportunism

Were the Khilafat supporters simply pious Muslims who venerated the caliph? That is what they claimed to be, and many historians have repeated their rhetoric. Contemporary scholar Gail Minault argues that the movement was concerned with power, not piety. Communalist politicians looked to rally Muslim masses to the symbol of the caliphate, and in the process gain a following that they could use for their own, political, ends.

See also

Minault, Gail The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.