The Reality of Khilafat Movement

All the history text books in truncated India, glorify the ‘Khilafat’ Movement as one of the first nationalistic and anti colonial movements by M. K. Gandhi and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. It is supposed to be one of the movements by him which was very successful and bonded the Hindu and Muslims of the nation. As we will see, it was neither a nationalistic not anti colonial movement, nor resulted in Hindu Muslim unity and it was neither a success. 

The nationalistic perspective. 

The movement was the brainchild of the Ali brothers namely Shaukat Ali, Mohammad Ali, Maulana Abul kalam Azad, Dr. Ansari and a few others. In terms of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the aim of the movement was to liberate the Caliph (Khalifa) of Turkey from the clutches of British. In his own words: 

‘It is an Islamic Shar’i law that in every age Muslims must have one [ék] Khalifa and Imam. By Khalifa we mean such an independent Muslim king or ruler of government and country who possesses full powers to protect Muslims and the territory that they inhabit  and to promulgate and enforce Shar’i laws and is powerful enough to confront the enemies of Islam.’

Azad, Abul Kalam 1974 Khutbaat-e-Azad, edited by Malik Ram (Urdu) Delhi

It is clear that Khalifa and Khilafat had nothing to do with nationalism. More important is the term, ‘territory that they (muslims) inhabit’. Those uninitiated to the theology of Islam should know that Islam divides entire earth into two categories, ‘Darul Islam’ and ‘Darul Harb’. The land possessed by Islam and the land possessed by infidels respectively. Thus it had everything to do with Islamic fundamentalism. According to the tenets of Islam, it is the duty of every faithful muslim to try and convert Darul Harb into Darul Islam.

The Sultan of Turkey, it was held by the Indian Khilafatists, was such a Muslim ruler and Caliph and it was to him that Muslims of India should pay allegiance.In 1920, they published the Khilafat Manifesto, in which called upon the British to protect the caliphate and for Indian Muslims to unite and hold the British accountable for this purpose.

Now, let us look at the justification given by Gandhi for his support to such a movement. In his words: 

To the Musalmans Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question. ... It is impossible not to sympathise with this attitude. ... I would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance the interest of the Khilafat.

So, the Swaraj, the ideology of his predecessors Bal Ganga Dhar Tilak was merely an activity and postponed for the sake of an institution for which, as we will see, even the Muslims elsewhere were not very enthusiastic.

The most respected Historian of India, R.C.Majumdar, has commented on it as:

If a hundred million Muslims are more vitally interested in the fate of Turkey and other Muslim states outside India than they are in the fate of India, they can hardly be regarded as a unit of Indian nation. By his own admission that the Khilafat question was a vital one for the Indian Muslims, Gandhi himself in a way admitted that they formed a separate nation; they were in India, but not of India. 

One sad outcome of this movement was that the intellectual, secular and moderate Muslims were sidelined from the national politics and prominence was given to Mullahs and Maulavis, which resulted in partition of India. 

The anti colonial movement

 In early 1920, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari led a Khilafat delegation to meet the current viceroy, Lord Chelmsford. The delegation returned with the assurance to the effect that all assistance will be provided to them by the government. Immediately afterwards, in his letter addressed to a government official named Mr. Maffey, private secretary to viceroy, dated 20/01/1920, Shaukat Ali requests the government of India to provide five return tickets for Khilafat delegation to England and Paris.  The aim: to plead the Khilafat cause before the British parliament and public & to attend the Peace conference in Paris. And guess what, the tickets were to be first class.

Maqalat-e-Sir Syed Vol. 1 

The response from Government of India; the secretary of Home department immediately cabled to Bombay asking them to arrange the passages because of the political importance of the sojourn. So much for the ‘anti colonial movement’.

Husain, Mahmud 1957a A History of the Freedom Movement, Karachi 

The devil, as they say, lies in the details. The Ali brothers who were in jail for requesting to the Amir of Afghanistan to invade India were released by the British at a time when the Khilafat movement was gaining movement. 

The release of the Ali brothers towards the end of December 1919 gave a great fillip to the Khilafat movement.Do we need any further proof that the government of the day was not against this movement by the revolutionaries (sic), but even encouraged it. In fact, the caliphate was in the interest of the British as the Caliph was an ally of the British, if not exactly a puppet. 

British and the Caliph 

Britain and Ottoman (turkey) empire had been allies for a long time preceding the movement. It was a marriage of convenience, so to speak. The Tsarist Russia was always hostile to Ottoman empire because the southward conquests of Russia would have given it access to the seas, which had acquired significance as a result the rise of maritime activities. The alliance between Ottoman and Britain saved the former from invasion of Russia and the latter had a convenient barrier from Russians. Due to this strategic importance, the caliph was preferred by the British. This friendship of Caliph with the British was known to the Indian Muslims courtesy the Urdu newspapers which had become affordable to the Indian Muslims.Another more useful role that the caliph played in favor of the British was that he could use his influence on the Indian muslims in favor of British. Two instances should suffice. 

In 1789, the caliph would have been pleasantly delighted, when Tipu sultan, offered allegiance to him. Tipu’s interest was that by his act, he wanted to portray himself as a devout Muslim. At the same time, it was an act of defiance to the Moghuls, who were on their last legs under the Maratha onslaught. The British were quick to realize the importance of caliph in influencing the Indian muslims. They started propaganda in his favor and the caliph also reciprocated. 

In 1798, he sent a letter to Tipu through lord Wellesly, who was fighting against Tipu. In the letter, the caliph asked Tipu to stop fighting the British forces as they were friends of caliph. Tipu refused to act accordingly by informing the caliph that the caliph was not aware of the realities of India from that distance.In fact, when the caliph visited England in 1867, he was given a royal treatment by the british government. Ironically the bill of this extravagant visit was paid from the revenue generated from India. The reason given was ‘that cordial relations with the Sultan contributed towards the good government of India. The sultan as head of the Muslim religion, would propitiate Indian Muslims’. Incidentally, this caliph was referred to as tyrant Sultan Abdul Aziz in those days for his autocratic rule.

Husain, Mahmud 1957a A History of the Freedom Movement, Karachi 

During the ‘war for independence’ of 1857, the caliph ‘Abdul Majid’ condemned the revolutionaries and exhorted the muslims to help the British as ‘they (British) were defenders of islam’.This statement along with the calls from the other major sects in mecca was to create a change of relations between Indian Muslims and British.

Jihad against the British changes to ‘Jee Huzuri’

  

So far, the feeling in the Islamic world was that the vast land of Bharatvarsh was Darul Harb and hence a constant Jihad had to be waged till it gets converted into complete Muslim rule, i.e. Darul Islam. 

The vestiges of the bygone Moghul era compared this land to the likes of Egypt, which had been totally decimated by the Islamic sword. The original inhabitants of those lands had been converted to Islam and had forgotten that the new rule of Islam had been established on the bodies of their forefathers and civilization. 

In fact, what had saved Bharatvarsh from being over run by the Islamic marauders was the heroic resistance offered by the Hindus over the last about thousand years spread over the entire land mass. But for the efforts of these heroes, India would have been converted into an Islamic wasteland. 

Ever since the arrival of the British on Indian soil, till 1857, an Islamic Jihad had been declared on the British by these remnants of bygone Islamic invaders. A regular and tragic feature of all these Jihads was that they started as anti British but ended up being anti Hindu. Since the Christian kafirs were too strong and organized, the anger of failure was turned on to the Hindu kafirs. In the list of such jihadis were bigots like Syed Ahmed Barelwi, Titu mian and Dudhu mian.

Legacy of Muslim Rule in India by K.S.Lal

Although these bigots could not make the slightest of difference to the british Raj, the British were quick to identify the potential of mischief that they could cause to the Hindus of the land, who were on a revival after a struggle of more then one thousand years of Islamic onslaught.After the condemnation from the caliph in 1857, the relation between the Muslims and British was to undergo an about turn. 

British divide and Rule (?) 

If we trust our text books, we would believe that Hindu and Muslims were always at peace with each other and it was the wily british, who formulated the policy of ‘divide and rule’. The latter part of the sentence might be true because for a foreign invader, devising such policies is a matter of maintaining or extending the rule. So, the British were doing which was in their interest. It is the first part which needs to be critically examined.

The terror which had been unleashed by the Islamic invaders on the native Hindu population in order to convert them to Islam had embittered the tolerant natives against Muslims. There was a brief period of reprieve during the reign of Akbar, otherwise it had been about thousand years of oppression. It has been probably the longest battle for independence which has been brushed under the carpet by the Marxist historians of truncated India.

Syed Ahmed Khan was the kind of man the British were looking for to convert Muslims from irritants to stooges. Soon after the failed war of 1857, in which he had sided with the British, he came out with a book titled ‘The loyal Mohammedans of India’. This book tries to convey that the Muslims are and will remain loyal to the queen. In one of his letters that he wrote to a friend in India during his visit to England, he writes, 

“Without flattering the English, I can truly say that the natives of India, high and low, merchants and petty shopkeepers, educated and illiterate, when contrasted with the English in education, manners and uprightness, are as like them as a dirty animal is to an able and handsome man. Do you look upon an animal as a thing to be honoured? Do you think it necessary to treat an animal courteously, or the reverse? We have no right to courteous treatment. The English have reason for believing us in India to be imbecile brutes.” 

Cited by G.F.L. Graham, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, London, 1885, Pp. 183-184.

When a nation has been dominated, a lot of natives acquire an inferiority complex. Syed Ahmed Khan was probably such a person. His successor Viqar ul mulk also echoed views similar to those of Syed. He wrote to ‘The Pioneer’ of Lucknow, 

“We start with the firm conviction and seek to implant it in the mind of every Indian Musalman that our destiny is now bound up with the presence and permanence of British rule in this country, and that in the government of the day we have got our best and surest friend.”

 From M.R.A. Baig, The Muslim Dilemma in India, Delhi, 1974, p. 52. 

Three months after the formation of Muslim league in 1906, Viqar – ul – mulk addressed students of Aligarh saying

“God forbid, if the British rule disappears from India. Hindus will lord over it, and we will be in constant danger of our life, property and honour. The only way for the Muslims to escape this danger is to help in the continuance of the British rule. If the Muslims are heartily with the British, then that rule is bound to endure. Let the Muslims consider themselves as a British army ready to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives for the British Crown… Wherever you are, whether in the football field or in the tennis lawn, you have to consider yourselves as soldiers of a British regiment. You have to defend the British Empire, and to give the enemy [Hindus] a fight in doing so. If you bear it in mind and act accordingly, you will have done that and your name will be written in letters of gold in the British Indian history. The future generations will be grateful to you.”

From Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Delhi, 1975, p. 13 

In short, with the help of Caliph, the British had been able to tame the bigots. The role of these Muslims had been smartly manipulated from mischief mongers to lick spittles. The British also reciprocated by keeping them in good humor by pampering them.Thus by the time, first World War started, these Indian Muslim leaders were having a cozy relation with the Brits. This relation was to continue till the partition or Bharatvarsh. The short duration of Khilafat movement was a brief break in this relationship. 

Who was befooling who?

 The Ali brothers delivered many fiery speeches that exhorted Muslims to participate in the movement. Swami Shraddananda narrates one such incident at the Khilafat Conference at Nagpur. “The verses of the Koran recited by the Maulanas on that occasion contained frequent references to jehad and the killing of kafirs. But when I drew attention to this phase of the Khilafat movement, Gandhi smiled and said they are alluding to the British bureaucracy.

In reply I said it was subversive to the idea of non-violence and when the feeling of revulsion came, the Muslims would not refrain from using these verses against the Hindus”.

In this swami shraddhanand proved to be a prophet.  

The Murders and Rape of Hindu women

On 1st August, 1921, the Muslims of Moplah community in Malabar, Kerala started what is now known as Moplah outbreak. Ironically, exactly one year earlier, Gandhi had declared that the Khilafat movement will acquire self rule in a time frame of one year. The moplahs killed a handful of britishers they could find and then their frenzy turned on to the hapless Hindus. The worst sufferers of the riots, like earlier Muslim attacks, were Hindu women. For the truth, we have to study the statements of the contemporaries. Here are some of them.

A statement signed by the Secretary and Treasurer of the Kerala Provincial Congress Committee and Secretary Ernad Khilafat Committee and K.V.Gopala Menon refers to the misdeeds of the Moplahs.

“Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting of their houses in Ernad etc, the forcible conversion of Hindus in the beginning of the rebellion and the wholesale conversion of those who stuck to their homes in later stages, the brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus without the slightest reason except that they are Kafirs or belonged to the same religion as the policemen, who entered their Tangals or entered their mosques, burning of Hindu temples, the outrage on Hindu woman and their forcible conversion and marriage by the Moplahs”.

A report dated Calicut, 7/9/1921 published in the Times of India and another dated 6/12/1921 published in the New India, give detailed accounts of the most horrible outrages on women which cannot be reproduced for the sake of decency.

Sankaran Nair refers to cases of men who were skinned alive or made to dig their graves before being slaughtered. To read more about the atrocities go to page 362 of the History and Culture of the Indian People published by the Bharitya Vidya Bhavan vol 10.

According to the Report of the Enquiry Committee of the Servants of India, the number of Hindus murdered was 1500, the number forcibly converted 20,000 and property looted Rs 3 crs.

In a heart-rending petition to Lady Reading, wife of the Viceroy, the Hindu woman of Malabar stated 

“Your ladyship is doubtless aware that even though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the last one hundred years, the present rebellion is unexampled in magnitude as well as unprecedented in ferocity, pregnant woman cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles. We remember how driven out of our native hamlets we wandered, starving and naked, the jungles and forests”.

If we think that the apostle of non violence would have condemned these attacks and rapes of Hindu women, we will be wrong. Here is what he said. 

“The moplahs are a brave God-fearing people who were fighting for what they considered as religion, and in a manner, which they considered as religious”.

Such dastardly comments from Gandhi even enraged Annie Besant, the fearless journalist. Here is what she said; 

'Words fail to express my feelings of indignation and abhorrence which I experienced when I came to know of an instance of rape, committed by the rebels under Chembrasseri Thangal. A respectable Nair lady at Melathur was stripped naked by the rebels in the presence of her husband and brothers who were made to stand close by with their hands tied behind. When they shut their eyes in abhorrence, they were compelled at the point of a sword to open their eyes and witness the rape committed by the brute in their presence. I loathe even to write of such a mean action. This instance of rape was communicated to me by one of her brothers confidentially. There are several instances of such mean atrocities which are not revealed by people....

''Malabar has taught us what Islamic rule still means, and we do not want to see another specimen of the Khilafat Raj in India. How sympathy with the Moplahs is felt by the Muslims outside Malabar has been proved by the defence raised by them for their fellow believers and by Mr. Gandhi himself who has stated that the Moplah rebels had acted as they believed that their religion taught them to act. I feel that this is true; but there is no place in a civilized land for people who drive away out of the country those like Hindus who refuse to apostatize for their time honoured and ancestral faiths.'

The movement failed when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, took control of Turkey. Another irony is that had the Caliph been able to stop Ataturk from taking the center stage, Turkey also would have become an Islamic country. Today, Turkey is the only Muslim majority country which is secular. The citizens of Turkey deserve all praise for this. 

After the madness; Still more madness 

Swami shraddhanand started ‘Shuddhi movement’, with the aim of salvaging those who had been forcibly converted to Islam. Men and Women. The campaign was carried out by Arya samaj and succeeding in salvaging about 2000 Hindus. This so enraged some of the Muslims that they killed Swami shraddhanand in his sick bed. The murderer was a man named Abdul Rashid who shot him in the bed.

And what did the apostle of non violence do, Pattabhi Sitaramayya writes 

“At the Gauhati Congress Session of 1926, Gandhi expounded what true religion was and explained the causes that led to the murder. Now you will perhaps recall why I have called Abdul Rashid (the murderer) my brother and I repeat it. I do not hold him guilty but Guilty are those who excited feelings of hatred against one another”

In short, due to this utter stupidity (or shrewdness) of the leaders, a large number of Hindus were killed, their women raped and properties looted. But the apostle of the so called non violence lived another 28 eight years to see many more riots which repeated Moplah rebellion and finally the mother of all such outbreaks, the partition of our motherland. And they call him father of nation instead of calling him 'divider of the nation'. If he has to be called the father of the nation, then that nation is Pakistan.
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Are we waiting for the third partition

Petition of Malabar Ladies to Lady Reading

This is one of the most heart rending letters written by victims on their helplessness. This letter was written by the women of Malabar about five months after the moplah riots had started by the muslim moplah community of Malabar, Kerala. These riots started on 1st of August, 1921, exactly one year after the death of Sh. Bal Gangadhar Tilak. After his death, M.K. Gandhi had acquired prominence in Congress and along with the notorious Ali brothers had started what is known as Khilafat movement. One of the promises made at the start of the movement was 'self rule' in one year. And exactly after one year, these riots broke out. To know why this movement was anti national, pro British, anti muslims and anti Hindu, read about the reality of the khilafat movement.

The moplah muslims, according to the contemporary news reports, started an orgy of loot, murder and rapine on Hindus. What is ironic is that the word 'moplah' means son-in-law in Malayalam. The reason for the name of the community is that the muslim traders came from Arab in eighth century and settled in Kerala. With time, they married the local women and became permanent settlers there. Hence the name. For them self rule meant rule of Islam and for Islam all those who are not muslims are kafir. They are either to be killed or converted to Islam. Their wives, children and properties belong to the killer of 'kafirs'.

It was in this background, the terrible riots took place. Here is the petition which the women of Malabar sent to the 'countess of reading'.

To

Her Gracious Excellency

THE COUNTESS OF READING,

Delhi.

The humble memorial of the bereaved and sorrow-
stricken women of Malabar.

May it please your gracious and compassionate ladyship.

We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour.

2. Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last one hundred years, the present rebellion is unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is
possible that your ladyship is not fully appraised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels ; of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers;

of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles, with the unborn babe protruding from the mangled corpse ;

of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes

and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive ;

of our hapless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hell-hounds could conceive of ;

of thousands of our homesteads reduced to cinder- mounds out of sheer savagery and a wanton spirit of destruction ;

of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed

and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie.

or else smashed to pieces ;

of the wholesale looting of hard earned wealth of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a piece or two in the streets of Calicut, to buy salt or chilly or betel-leaf — rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies. These are not fables.

The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our places of worship — these are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till death brings us peace. We remember how driven out of our native hamlets we wandered starving and naked in the jungles and forests. We remember how we choked and stifled our babies' cries lest the sound should betray our hiding places to our relentless pursuers.

We still vividly realise the moral and spiritual agony that thousand of us passed through when we were forcibly converted into the faith professed by these blood thirsty miscreants ; we still have before us the sight of the unendurable and life long misery of those — fortunately few —of our most unhappy sisters who born and brought up in respectable families have been forcibly converted and then married to convict coolies. For five long months not a day has passed without its dread tale of horror to unfold.

3. Your gracious Ladyship's distracted memorialists have endeavoured without exaggeration, without setting down aught in malice to convey at least some idea of the indescribably terrible agonies which they and thousands more of their sisters have been enduring for over five months now through this reign of inhuman (rightfulness inaugurated and carried on in the name of the Khilafat. We have briefly referred without going into their harrowing details to our heart rending tale of dishonour, outrage, rapine, and desolation. But if the past has been one of pain and anguish, the future is full of dread and gloom. We have to return to a ruined and desolated land. Our houses have been
burnt or destroyed ; may of our breadwinners killed ; all our property looted ; our cattle slaughtered. Repatriation without compensation means for us ruin, beggary, starvation. Will not the benign Government come to our aid and give us something to help us to begin life anew? We are now asked to settle down as paupers in the midst of the execrable Sends who robbed, insulted and murdered our loved ones — veritable demons such as hell itself could not let loose. Many of us shrink from the idea of going back to what there is left of our homes; for though the armed bands and rebels have been dispersed the rebellion cannot be said to be entirely quelled. It is like a venomous serpent whose spine has been partly broken, but whose poison fangs are still intact and whose striking power, if diminished, has not been destroyed. A few thousands of rebels have been killed and a few more thousands have been imprisoned, but as the Government are only too well aware many more thousands of rebels, looters, savagely militant evangelists and other inhuman monsters yet remain at large, a few in concealment, but most, moving about with arrogance openly threatening reprisals on all non-moslims who dare to return and resume possession of their property. Many refugees who went back have paid for their temerity with their lives. In fact, repatriation, if it is not to be a leap from the frying pan into the fire, must mean for the vast bulk of your Ladyship's impoverished and helpless memorialists and their families a hard inexorable problem
of financial help, and adequate protection against renewed hellish outrages from which immunity would be utterly impossible as long as thousands of men and even wom6n and children of this semi-savage and fanatical race in whom the worst instinct of earth hunger, blood-lust and rapine have been awakened to fierce activity- are free to prey upon their peaceable and inoffensive neighbours who — let it be most respectfully emphasized — because of their implicit trust in the power an I the will of a just and benign Government to protect them, had suffered their own art and capacity for self defence to emasculate and decay.

4. We, Your Ladyship's humble and sorrow-stricken memorialists do not seek vengeance. Our misery will not be rendered less by inflicting similar misery upon this barbarous and savage race; our dead will not return to us if these slayers are slaughtered. We would not be human, however, if we could ever forget the cruel and shameful outrages and indignities perpetrated upon us by a race to whom we have always endeavoured to be friendly and neigbourly! we would be hypocritical if, robbed of all our possessions we did not plead for some measure of compensation to help us out of the pauperism now forced upon us; we would be imbecile, if knowing the ungovernable, anti-social propensities and the deadly religious fanaticism of the raoplah race v.e did not entreat the just and powerful government to protect the lives and honour of our humble sisters who have to live in the rebel-ravaged zone. Our ambition after all is low enough ; sufficient compensation to save us and our children from starvation, and enough military protection
against massacre and outrage are all that we want. We beseech Your Compassionate Ladyship to exercise all the benevolent influence that you possess with the government to see that our humble prayers are granted. But if the benign Government does not consider it possible to compensate us and to protect us in our native land we would most fervently pray that free grants of land may be assigned to us in some neighbouring region which though less blessed with the lavish gifts of nature may also be less cursed by the cruelty and brutality of man.

We beg to remain. Your Ladyship's most humble and obedient servants,