Uncover the Shocking Truth: Was Mahatma Gandhi Secretly Biased Against Hindus? The Untold Story of the Khilafat Movement Will Leave You Speechless!

Introduction

• I hope all of you are having a very good and relaxing holiday in mid of the week and you all are thanking the “Mahatma” for his contribution to the independence movement.
• We have stared this series “Indic consciousness” where will see history as decolonial viewpoint.
• Mohandas has done what other couldn’t, he was successful in finding the pulse of common people and utilized that. People were worshipping him like a messiah.
• In all these exaggeration by Nehruvian historians we fail to understand that he was also an aspiring Politian just like others.

Myth of Hindu Muslim Unity before Khilafat movement:

• Before arrival of Mohandas into Bhartiya freedom struggle, there was already a lot going on in British Bharat on religious lines.
• Lokmanya Tilak was trying to build a Hindu unity in Bharat with successful organisation of Ganesh and Shivaji Festivals.
• He was successful in creating a huge impact on all Bhartiya Hindus. On the other side there were lot of movements happened and some on going to re-establish Islamic rule once British are gone in Bharat.
• Starting from Dehlawi moment it went it went on to create Deoband movement, Wahabi Movement, Barevli movement, Aligarh movement.
• All these movement were related to each other to re-establish Islam dominance in Bharat. The names are different but the basic idea remained the same.
• All these movement lead to Khilfat movement that proved a significant for the reasons we will see later in this article.
• Readers are not piqued by the Khilafat movement, which is portrayed in Indian school textbooks as the first pan-Indian uprising against British authority, led by Muslims and Hindus working together.
• But upon closer inspection, with all of its subtleties, one discovers that this movement either sowed or hatched the seeds of significant historical events like the birth of Pakistan, the partition of India on religious grounds, and the origins of Hindutva, the ideology that defines Hindu nationalism.
• There are a lot of unsolved questions. Politian who was not supporting this movement were being portrayed as non-secular by bhaktas of Mahatma.
• As we discussed above way for Khilfat movement started, “Islamic reformist” have been trying their best to covert Bharat to “Dar-al-Islam(It refers to a region where Muslims are the majority and the rulers practice Islam)” from “Dar-al-Harb(It refers to a region where Muslims are in the minority and rules are governed based on Shariat).”

Rise of the Caliph

• The Islamic empire eventually split up into various kingdoms, and after the Ottoman conquest in 1517, the Caliph’s seat moved from Baghdad to Egypt and finally Istanbul.
• In the Muslim world, the Caliph held influence, albeit not having the same authority as the Pope in Catholicism.
• The Ottoman Sultan, who ruled over the empire for nearly five centuries and was the guardian of the holy sites of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, was regarded as the Caliph even though the Mughal emperors of India called themselves the Caliphs of India.
• After the fall of Mughal rule, the dependence of elites among Indian Muslims on the Ottoman Sultan for political and religious support increased.
• Sultan Abdul Hameed II (1842-1918) propagated the idea of Caliphate or Khilafat to keep the Ottoman Empire intact from European aggression and dismemberment.
• He sent Jamaluddin Afghani as his emissary to India. Afghani influenced Muslim Umrao (noble) and Ulema (clerics) who wielded influence over Muslim masses in India.

How it Started – Khilafat Movement

• In 1914, the world saw its first war. In opposition to the Allied Powers, the Ottoman Empire allied with Germany, Austria, and Hungary, or the Central Powers.
• The British government made the decision to mobilize Indian soldiers into the war after suffering significant losses at the start of the conflict on the Western Front.
• The war council determined that reinforcements would be dispatched to the European front lines in the form of four Indian divisions. 
• Indian national congress and Indian Muslim league both supported British government thinking British will give independence to India once it’s over (hahaha..!!).
• As the end of 1918, it was become evident that Turkey empire will be split and shadow sultan will be placed to rule ottoman empire, roots of Khilafat movement started taking place.
• The first meeting in this regard was held in Kolkata on February 9, 1919. The first Khilafat Day was observed on October 17, 1919.
• From this conference came leaders like as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Dr. Ali, Hasrat Mohani, and the brothers Mohammed and Shaukat Ali.
• At a widely reported joint Hindu-Muslim assembly on November 24, Mahatma Gandhi declared that Muslims and Hindus were united in their grievances regarding the Caliphate because it was a just cause.  
• The leaders of the Congress did not get their wish that India would gain independence from the British after the war. Conversely, in March 1919 the government enforced the harsh Rowlatt Act.
• This statute extended detention without charge or trial and judicial review, as well as preventive indefinite detention, indefinitely. India saw widespread demonstrations against this repressive law.
• Motilal Nehru even write the letter to president on 27^th December saying “It is impossible for one part of the nation to stand aloof while the other part is suffering from a serious grievance”.
• In XV resolution on Khilfat, congress had pressed the British India government to “settle the Turkish question in accordance with the just and legitimate sentiments of Indian Mussalmans and the solemn pledges of the Prime Minister without which there will be no real contentment among the people of India”
• To Quote Babasaheb Ambedkar on Khilafat and Swaraj relevance, “the non-cooperation had its origin in the Khilafat agitation and not in the Congress movement for Swaraj: that it was started by the Khilafatists to help Turkey and adopted by the Congress to help Khilafatists: that Swaraj (self-rule) was not their primary object, but its primary object was Khilafat and that Swaraj was added as a secondary object to induce the Hindus to join it”.
• The support to Khilafat movement by congress and Mohandas was simply and opportunity to gain political ground and hope that once British leaves India they will form the government.
• But what congress could not see that roots of separate dal-al-Islam was so strong that they needed to bow down to creation of separate country Pakistan.
• Irony is not dying here, while Pakistan was created on religious lines, Bharat needs to be remained secular (Read Cristian secular).
• We had our first education minister maulana abdul Kalam Azad and see our history books. You can take a easy guess what happened there.
• Why there no mention of what really happened in these movements to reform Islam in Bharat and make Bharat as Dar-Al-Islam.