2019 marks the century of the Khilafat movement as the Indian Muslims allied with the Indian nationalists, agitated against the British government to preserve the authority of the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph of Islam after World War I. While seemingly pan-Islamic, the movement was primarily a means of achieving pan-Indian Muslim political mobilization. The movement was started to make the British push-back against the Ottoman Empire and to preserve the authority of the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph of Islam following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad emerged as the most prominent Khilafat leader as the movement gained widespread support as Mahatma Gandhi offered his support to the Khilafat movement by starting the Non-Cooperation Movement against the British empire thereby, supporting Azad, a staunch and radical Islamist who later went on to become the first Education Minister of India.
The British government was fighting the Ottoman Empire and the latter was fighting a losing battle. The British Army consisted of Indian Muslims who were assured by the British that the Caliph would be treated with respect post the war – a promise the British never intended to keep. In a historic blunder, Mahatma Gandhi supported Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s Khilafat movement which resulted in 18,000 Indian Muslims traveling to Turkey to fight the British which also consisted of Indian Muslims. It is widely believed that Gandhi shouldn’t have meddled between the British and Ottoman Empire as it didn’t concern the Indian Independence movement.
Azad, at an age of 35, became the youngest person to serve as the President of the Indian National Congress, and post independence became the first education minister of the country. While he is widely celebrated as a proponent of secularism, his speeches, however, display a radical Islamic mindset who believed only in the cause of Muslims and little else.
Following are the excerpts from his speech to a rally in Kolkata on 27 October 1914, which totally defy his image of a modernist:- “One momin for another momin is like one brick assisting another brick in a wall. This biradri (community of Muslims) has been established by God…All relationships in the world can break down but this relationship can never be severed. It is possible a father turns against his son, not impossible that a mother separates her child from her lap, it is possible that one brother becomes the enemy of other brother…But the relationship that a Chinese Muslim has with an African Muslim, an Arab bedouin has with the Tatar shepherd, and which binds in one soul a neo-Muslim of India with the right-descendant Qureshi of Mecca, there is no power on earth to break it, to cut off this chain…”
“If even a grain of the soul of Islam is alive among its followers, then I should say that if a thorn gets stuck in a Turk’s sole in the battlefield of war, then I swear by the God of Islam, no Muslim of India can be a Muslim until he feels that prick in his heart instead of sole because the Millat-e-Islam (the global Muslim community) is a single body.”
“Then, if it is true that a sword is being sharpened to strike in the heart of Islam, then what hesitation that we be engaged in developing a shield. If the worship of Jesus has ancient enmity against the worship of God, and this is not a new Christian conspiracy, then the unity of brotherhood is not a new tactic of the followers of Tawheed (Islamic monotheism) to defend against the attack of polytheists.“
“Remember, today, for Islam, for Muslims, any national or local movement cannot be fruitful. In my beliefs, all of this is an act of magic by the presager-Satan who makes those asleep because it does not like those sleeping [ie Muslims] to rise up”.
The most important matter is that we have to build a university in Aligarh, have to collect Rs 30 lakh for this, it will serve as a kaaba of Aligarh. The day the university is established, wahi (revelation, of Quranic verse 5:3) … will land on the roof of the Strachey Hall (of AMU).” In verse 5:3, Allah says: “This day I have perfected for you your religion…”
How different is this speech from that of any recruiting agent for Islamist terror organizations today? How different is this from the similar toned speeches that Mohammad Ali Jinnah and HS Suhrawardy would make three decades later to initiate direct action day in the same city? This speech was a meticulously prepared one, and its speeches from the likes of him which played a major role in more than 18,000 Muslims from India going to Turkey to fight the jihad against the British , and women sending their jewellery for the same.
While its a fact that Maulana Azad became an enthusiastic supporter of Gandhi’s ideas of non-violent civil disobedience, and worked to organise the non-co-operation movement in protest of the 1919 Rowlatt Acts, it should not be forgotten that he came into prominence in a public life as one of the Leader of Khilafat movement (1919-22), which aimed at restoring the Ottoman Empire (the Ottoman Emperor was nominally the supreme religious and political leader of all Muslims across the world and aimed to build political unity amongst Muslims and use their influence to protect the caliphate.
In 1920 an alliance was made between Khilafat leaders and the Indian National Congress, with its leaders such as Dr. Ansari, Maulana Azad and Hakim Ajmal Khan grew personally close to Gandhi. At first this so called Hindu Muslim bonhomie was very successful, but it did not take long for the forces rallied for Khilafat to turn into an anti Hindu movement, the most horrific of which was seen in Malabar where over 10000 Hindus were done to death by Moplahs.
Others like Ali Brothers cast away Gandhi like a piece of crumpled paper after using him like a ladder. Abul Kalam Azad stayed on and was promoted for the cause of Hindu Muslim unity, but he remained a pan Islamist till his last day. Khilafat movment lost its reason to exist with the victory of Mustafa Kemal’s forces, who overthrew the Ottoman rule to establish a pro-Western, secular republic in independent Turkey. He abolished the role of Caliph and sought no help from Indians. But the damage to India was done. In the greed for political gains and self promotion, Gandhi and Co gave political legitimacy to a bunch of rabid fanatics which would lead to the vivisection of the country in less than three decades.
There is ample evidence now to prove that nationalist Muslims like Abul Kalam Azad and the then Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind president Ahmad Hussain Madani opposed Pakistan only because they felt that Partition would affect Muslim domination in the sub-continent and Muslims would heavily lose. Plus they tried to extract a heavy price from the Congress for their patriotism in the name of minority protection. Congress leaders have tried to hide the fact that as Congress president in 1945, Azad even went to the extent of agreeing to a proposal of rotating Indian headship. It meant India would have a Hindu and then a Muslim head of State and army chief by turns. So, eventually Gandhi and Nehru made Congress a hostage to ‘Hindu-Muslim unity at any cost’ which Jinnah skillfully exploited and got more concessions from the Congress to establish parity in numbers between Hindu and Muslim representation
While Maulana might have supported Gandhi’s non-violence movements, he had absolute utter disregard for peace and as he once argued that peace is useless and war is life. The word “peace” is frequently used by Jihadi groups, but in their parlance it means the peace of Islam, which protects non-Muslims if they agree to live under that peace in lieu of jizya (tax on non-Muslims). Maulana Azad added, “That hand is pious in which the flag of compromise flutters, but only that hand can be alive which has the blood-soaked sword in its grip. This is the source of the life of (the global Muslim) nation, means of the establishment of justice…”
He asked Muslims to bear in mind that at the time there was “only one sword in the defence of the religion of Allah” and that was in the hands of the falling Ottoman Caliph. He also criticised liberal Muslims who did not side with him in support of the Caliphate, saying that time has come to “discriminate between faith and kufr (non-belief)” and cited the Quranic verse 2:14: “These munafiqeen (hypocrites among Muslims), when they meet Muslims they say, we are Muslims. But when they visit alone their Satans (non-Muslims), then they say, we are with you by heart…”
To think that Azad, an open supporter of Jihad was the first Education Minister of India, is spine-chilling and one can only imagine the amount of damage that he has caused to India and its education system during his tenure.