09/02/2022
DID Muslims Contribute to Indian Freedom Movement. Compiled
By Praveen Dwivedi.
ROOTS OF THE FRACTURE ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY
The failure of the Revolt of 1857 saw the end of the Mughal empire and the succession of the British. The Muslim society during the post mutiny period was in a deteriorating state. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan found the Muslim society to be educationally, socially and culturally backward. He blamed the prevailing education system for the degrading state of the Muslim society. This led Sir Syed to initiate a movement for the intellectual, educational, social and cultural regeneration of the Muslim society. This movement came to be known as the Aligarh movement after Sir Syed established his school at Aligarh which later became the centre of the movement.
When the First War of Independence, commonly called as the Sepoy Mutiny, failed to defeat the British East India Company Rule in 1857, the administration was transferred to the British crown. A large section of Indian Muslims remained under the illusion that the British rule will go away in a few years, and Muslims would return to power soon. As a community, Muslims were slow to adopt social reforms, English language, university education, and government jobs. To give an example, out of 88 graduates from the University of Mumbai in 1868, the number of Muslims was zero. The first generation of Indians studied in the British established universities, started newspapers, schools, colleges and labour unions. Their passive approach widened the economic and social gap between Muslims and Hindus. A section of Muslim leaders was alarmed foreseeing a Hindu rule in the future as a result of India becoming a democracy driven by the representative system. That meant that Muslims who ruled India for centuries would be thrown out of power. This fear sowed the seeds of two nations theory, i.e. Muslims are separate people and a nation. In the Muslim community, people like Sir Syed Ahmed tried to compete with Hindus by setting up an Aligarh Muslim University and exhibiting their allegiance to Britain; it was no match.
The Aligarh Movement was the push to establish a modern system of Western–style scientific education for the Muslim population of British India, during the later decades of the 19th century. The movement's name derives from the fact that its core and origins lay in the city of Aligarh in Northern India and, in particular, with the foundation of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875. The founder of the oriental college, and the other educational institutions that developed from it, was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He became the leading light of the wider Aligarh Movement. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his association left the old style of writing in the Urdu language, which was rhetorical and academic, and started a simple style which helped Muslims to understand the main purpose of the movement. Sir Syed Ahmed was the central figure behind this awakening.
The education reform established a base, and an impetus, for the wider Movement: an Indian Muslim renaissance that had profound implications for the religion, the politics, the culture and society of the Indian sub-continent.
Aligarh Muslim University or the AMU as it is popularly known recently paid tributes to its founder Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who was also one of the earliest proponents of the divisive two-nation theory that led to India’s partition and the creation of Pakistan on the basis of Islam, by launching a book eulogising him and his work.
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice-chancellor Prof Tariq Mansoor on Thursday released a book glorifying the controversial figure. The book, ‘Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: Reason, Religion and Nation’ authored by Professor M Shafey Kidwai is billed as a “comprehensive” account of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s life.
“This book gives a comprehensible, intelligible and lucid narrative on AMU founder, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s life and his invaluable contribution to the democratic consciousness in India,” Mansoor said during the launch of the book.
Published by Routledge, the book is claimed to have been based on archival research and works of Sir Syed, including his writings, speeches, and addresses.
Besides the vice-chancellor, the event was attended by AMU Registrar Abdul Hamid, IPS; Prof A R Kidwai (Director, UGC HRD Centre), Prof Mohammad Asim Siddiqui (Department of English), Prof Mohammad Sajjad (Department of History), Prof Pitabas Pradhan (Chairman, Department of Mass Communication) and Mr Ajay Bisaria (Department of Hindi).
Controversial statements made by AMU founder Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
While the Aligarh Muslim University eulogised its founder, it is worth noting what he stood for and his controversial antecedents. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had stated that it was the duty of Muslims to be loyal to the British empire. He even called the Revolt of 1857 an act of ‘haramzadgi’. He further asserted that being subjects of the British Empire which was Christian was preferable to being that of Hindus as the former were ‘people of the book’.
And most importantly, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was the first true proponent of the Two-Nation Theory. He had even asserted that it was ‘impossible and inconceivable’ for Hindus and Muslims to coexist peacefully and it was necessary for one to vanquish the other. Akbar Ahmed also considers Haji Shariatullah (1781–1840) and Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) to be the forerunners of the Pakistan movement, because of their purist and militant reformist movements targeting the Muslim masses, saying that "reformers like Waliullah, Barelvi and Shariatullah were not demanding a Pakistan in the modern sense of nationhood. They were, however, instrumental in creating an awareness of the crisis looming for the Muslims and the need to create their own political organization. What Sir Sayyed did was to provide a modern idiom in which to express the quest for Islamic identity."
Thus, many Pakistanis describe modernist and reformist scholar Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) as the architect of the two-nation theory. For instance, Sir Syed, in a January 1883 speech in Patna, talked of two different nations, even if his own approach was conciliatory:
The two-nation theory is an ideology of religious nationalism which significantly influenced the Indian subcontinent following its independence from the British Empire. According to this theory, Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus are two separate nations, with their own customs, religion, and traditions; therefore, from social and moral points of view, Muslims should be able to have their own separate homeland outside of Hindu-majority India, one in which Islam is the dominant religion, and be segregated from Hindus and other non-Muslims. The two-nation theory advocated by the All India Muslim League is the founding principle of the Pakistan Movement (i.e. the ideology of Pakistan as a Muslim nation-state in the northwestern and eastern regions of India) through the partition of India in 1947. The ideology that religion is the determining factor in defining the nationality of Indian Muslims was undertaken by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who termed it as the awakening of Muslims for the creation of Pakistan. The portrait of Pakistan’s founder M.A. Jinnah that has been hanging in the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Students’ Union office since 1938.
AMU’s dominant ethos and ideology were largely defined by the legacy of its founder Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who eyed democracy and its political culture with great suspicion. Addressing a public meeting in 1888, he said that as a sincere Muslim, he has to follow the Quran that had ordained Muslims and Christians to be friends. “Therefore,” he said, “we should cultivate friendships with them and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India.” He made it clear that he was opposed to any representative democratic government in which Hindus with their numerical superiority would have an upper hand. “We do not want to become the subjects of the Hindus instead of the people of the Book (Christians),” he declared. He also opined that democracy was not good for India as it was the least fitted being the least homogenous.
The role of AMU students in the Pakistan movement has been well documented. If one reads Rahi Masoom Raza’s celebrated novel Aadhaa Gaon (Half Village), one finds AMU students reaching a distant village in Ghazipur district and converting simple villagers into their separatist ideology.
From the partition of the state of Bengal along religious lines in 1905, the issues related to nationalism and religion came to the fore. Strong opposition from Indian leaders prevented the partition. In 1916, Congress led by Lokmanya Tilak, and Muslim League led by Barrister Mohammad Ali Jinnah demonstrated Hindu-Muslim unity by signing the Lucknow pact. Under this agreement, the leaders of the Muslim League agreed to support the Congress on the issue of autonomy in exchange for one-third representation for Muslims in the Provincial Legislature, excluding Punjab and Bengal. But within three years the project of Hindu-Muslim unity faced a second and more difficult test in the form of Khilafat movement.
In 1906, two important events took place. In October, a delegation led by Aga Khan presented a memorial, signed by 35 prominent Muslims most of whom belonged to the landed gentry, to Viceroy Lord Minto who welcomed the delegation members as “the descendants of a conquering and ruling race,” and approvingly said: “You justly claim that your position should be estimated not merely on your numerical strength, but in respect to the political importance of your community, and the service it has rendered to the Empire (emphasis added).”
After this, the Muslim leadership always maintained that the community must be represented in every democratic institution in accordance with its importance and prestige, and not on the basis of its numerical strength. It was the fear of democracy that fuelled the fires of separatism. If one reads famous Urdu poet Josh Malihabadi’s autobiography Yaadon Ki Baaraat, it becomes clear that he was persuaded to migrate to Pakistan as late as in 1958, despite his close friendship with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, because of the fear of losing his Muslim identity in a Hindu-majority country.
The second important event took place in December 1906, when a young and brilliant barrister, M.A. Jinnah, acting as secretary to the ‘Grand Old Man’ Dadabhai Naoroji, who had come from England to preside over the Calcutta session of the Congress, moved an amendment to a resolution on self-government and declared, “The foundation upon which the Indian National Congress is based is that we are all equal, that there should be no reservation for any class or any community”.
He himself mobilised the Muslim masses on the plank of Islam and took full help of the Muslim clerics, pirs and other religious leaders to influence them. He himself chose a Parsi girl, who was the daughter of one of his close friends and was less than half his age, to marry but did not allow the same freedom to his daughter Dina. After her marriage to a Parsi-turned-Christian Neville Wadia, he severed all relations with her and addressed her as “Mrs Wadia” in a few letters that he wrote in reply to hers.
Jinnah addressed the Karachi Bar Association after a few months on the Prophet’s birthday on January 25, 1948 and said that people were making mischief when they rejected the idea of an Islamic state. “Islamic principles,” he said, “today are as applicable to life as they were 1300 years ago.” He also announced that the constitution of Pakistan would be made on the basis of Sharia. A few weeks later, he said, “Let us lay the foundations of our democracy on the basis of truly Islamic ideals and principles.”
The Start of WW1
The first world war broke out in 1914. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers i.e. Germany, Austria and Hungary against the Allied Powers. With heavy setbacks at the beginning of the war, on the Western Front, the British government decided to mobilise Indian soldiers for the war. The war council decided that four Indian divisions, which formed Indian Expeditionary Force A, would be sent to the battlefields of Europe as reinforcement.
The Indian National Congress pledged its support to the Allied forces, thinking that India would be granted independence in return. The Indian Muslim League and several Princely states also responded generously. More than one million Indian soldiers fought in the war. There was more than 4 lakh Muslims in the army. Indian soldiers played a vital role in the defeat of Ottoman Turkey. As the war progressed, the fears about the Muslim world (Ummah) uniting against the Allied Forces proved overstated.
In many places, Arabs and Muslim communities helped Britain and France in the war to break away from Turkey after the war. A study estimates that 2.5 million Muslims contributed to the allied cause either as soldiers or labourers. In the middle of the war, there was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Soviet Russia, because of its revolutionary expansionist policies and its proximity, became a looming threat to the British interests in oil-rich Persia and the Indian subcontinent. As a result, Britain and France decided to partition the Ottoman Empire. A number of countries and mandates were created by drawing lines in the desert of West Asia.
While this was going on, Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s campaigns prevented dismembering present-day Turkey into pieces and imposing a powerless Sultan on it. Thus, towards the end of the war, the British were least bothered about the wishes of a group of Indian Muslim leaders about the Ottoman Empire. As the dismemberment of the empire became evident by the end of 1918, the Khilafat movement – for restoring the Caliph – started taking roots.
The first meeting in this regard was held in Kolkata on February 9, 1919. The first Khilafat Day was observed on October 17, 1919. The first Khilafat Conference was held in Delhi on November 22-24, 1919. More than half the delegates in this conference were from today’s Uttar Pradesh. In this conference, resolutions were passed to stay away from victory celebrations, boycott British goods and sending a delegation to England to find a just solution to the Khilafat.
Leaders like Mohammed and Shaukat Ali brothers, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Dr Ali, Hasrat Mohani emerged from this conference. The Congress Leaders’ hope that the British will give independence to India after the war did not materialise. On the contrary, the government imposed the oppressive Rowlatt Act in March 1919. This act indefinitely extended wartime emergency measures such as preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without trial and judicial review. Large protests erupted across India to oppose this oppressive act.
In one such protest march against this act at the Jallianwala Baug in Amritsar on 13th April 1919, General Dyer ordered indiscriminate firing on unarmed protesters. Hundreds of innocent people died. Many more were injured by bullets and in the stampede. This massacre created a massive outrage across the country. That year, the Congress organised its annual session in Amritsar in December 1919.
On 24th November1919, Mahatma Gandhi, at a well-publicised joint Hindu-Muslim conference, Mahatma Gandhi announced that Hindus were united with Muslims in their grievances over the Caliphate because it was a just cause. In Resolution XV on the issue of Khilafat, the Congress urged his Majesty’s 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. Hypocritical as it may sound today, the Congress while demanding the solution of the Turkish question in accordance with Indian Muslims, also passed a resolution safeguarding free and unrestricted emigration from India to East Africa and the full civic and political rights of ·the Indian settlers in East Africa including the East African territory conquered from Germany.
Motilal Nehru, in his presidential address on 27th December, strongly condemned the massacre and partition of the Ottoman Empire. He said, “It is impossible for one part of the nation to stand aloof while the other part is suffering from a serious grievance.” At the session, a resolution was passed to suspend General Dyer and Sir Michael O’Dwyer for being responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. However, Congress refrained from initiating a nation-wide agitation on this issue.
Had Indian National Congress, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, not thrown its weight behind the movement to reinstate an Islamic state, thousands of miles away from India, could it have saved lives of thousands of Hindus, who were killed or targeted in the Moplah revolt. The decision to support the Khilafat agitation with the non-cooperation movement exposed sharp differences within the Congress, and among the stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle. 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.
It was in 1919 at Amritsar that Mahatma Gandhi insisted on thanks for Mr. Montagu and using Reforms, working them sincerely for the betterment of “the Government of the country and it was he who about 8 months after that launched the non-cooperation movement.
On August 10, 1920, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was officially sealed under the Treaty of Sevres in France. Mahatma Gandhi saw this as an opportunity to unite Hindus Muslims in the Khilafat movement and thus bringing Muslims in the national movement. This would have strengthened his grip in the party. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar who opined that ‘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’.
At the Nagpur session on December 1920, the Congress gave the British a deadline of one year to meet its demands on Jallianwala Baug massacre and the Khilafat and warned of a nationwide non-cooperation movement. Mahatma Gandhi assured that civil disobedience with adherence to non-violence, withdrawal of children from government schools, a boycott of foreign goods, withdrawal from British courts and other such measures will bring Swaraj within one year.
Many Hindus supporting the Khilafat were ignorant of Islam and its political ideology. On the other hand, the Khilafat movement sowed the seeds of dual nationality among Muslims. Supporting the Khilafat movement was in a way recognizing that for Indian Muslims’ desire to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Turkey was as important or more important than the independence of their ancestral homeland.
it left important questions such as whether it is permissible to request the help of Muslim countries for India’s independence; whether India should be a constitutional democracy based on the representation of people or a Hindu majority country to be ruled by Muslims as desired by these leaders; unanswered. Similarly, Islam doesn’t advocate non-violence (Ahimsa) advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, as an essential element of the non-cooperation movement.
At the annual session of the Congress in 1920 in Nagpur, the Khilafat leaders read Quranic verses that call for Jihad and support the killing of Kafirs (non-believers). When it was pointed out to Mahatma Gandhi, he smiled and said: “They are alluding to the British bureaucracy”. As a result, the Khilafat movement started losing its direction from the beginning.
Some Khilafat leaders looked at India under the British Raj as Dar-ul-Harb or the land of war. In the summer of the 1920s, some local committees representing the Central Khilafat organisation urged Indian Muslims to sell their land and belongings and immigrate Dar-ul-Islam (a Muslim country). Accordingly, thousands of Muslims in Sindh, Punjab and central India set out to go to neighbouring Afghanistan. In August 1920, 30000 people immigrated to Afghanistan. As their numbers started growing, Afghanistan closed its doors on the immigrants. Many of them had to return to India in a state of disrepair. Mohammad Ali allegedly sent a telegram to the Amir of Afghanistan, inviting him to invade India and urging him to not make peace with the British. Ali Brothers gave calls to violence as part of the non-cooperation movement.
Malabar Massacre
Malabar province in Kerala had a large number of Muslims. These people, known as Moplah or Mappila, worked mainly with Hindu landlords as day labourers. Poor and uneducated, they believe that they are descendants of Prophet Mohammad. Influenced by the speeches of Khilafat leaders, Mohammed and Shaukat Ali, a religious teacher Ali Musliar rose to prominence as Khilafat leader.
He made people believe that the end of the British rule is near and a Muslim army would invade India soon. Calls were given to mobilise Moplahs; weapons were arranged for the revolt. Their agitation against the British rule soon became a religious uprising and was directed against non-Muslims in the region. Ali Musliar declared himself as the king and Ernad and Valuvnad as Islamic State. When the British sent troops to stamp out the uprising, the Moplahs started slaughtering people.
In August 1921, as per estimates, close to ten thousand Hindus were massacred. A large number of women were r***d, temples were vandalized, people’s homes were burnt and they were banished. There were many incidents of burning people alive, peeling their skins, people were asked to dig graves for themselves and were buried in them.
Leading political and social leaders such as Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Swami Shraddhanand and Dr Annie Basent condemned these events. In her report, Dr Annie Basent described the heartbreaking experiences in the refugee camps. But Mahatma Gandhi, obsessed with his dream of Hindu-Muslim unity, chose to ignore this criticism. Initially, he praised Moplahs for the love of their religion. He also held Hindus partially responsible for the riots. He advised them to build up their courage to face this difficult situation.
In November 1921, the Congress Working Committee appointed a committee headed by Faiz Tyabji to investigate the atrocities committed by Moplahs and also by the British forces against Moplah agitators. The three-member committee had two Muslims and one Hindu.
In a few months’ time, the committee was disbanded without doing an investigation. At the Congress National session held in Ahmedabad in December 1921, acting president Hakim Ajmal Khan expressed regret over these “scandalous events” but Hasrat Mohani opposed the resolution to condemn the Moplah violence. In the 36th annual session of the Congress in Ahmedabad, its leaders shrugged off responsibility for the massacre and tried to pass the blame on the British, stating that the Congress leaders and activists were not permitted to travel to the Malabar region and teach principles of non-violence to the people. At the same session, the Congress condemned the British for spreading rumours of violence and for their high-handedness against Moplahs.
On February 7, 1922, at Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh, the non-cooperation movement took a violent turn. When the police used force against unarmed agitators, an angry mob locked down the police station and set it on fire. 22 policemen and 3 protesters died in the incident. Mahatma Gandhi condemned the violence and halted the nationwide non-cooperation movement without consulting other leaders. Leaders of the Khilafat movement and the Muslim league felt betrayed by Mahatma Gandhi’s erratic decision. They developed a grudge that Gandhi has abandoned the cause of Khilafat. It increased their alienation from the Indian national movement.
Around the same time, events in Turkey put a lid on the Khilafat movement. In 1919, Mustafa Kamal Pasha assumed leadership of the Turkish War of Independence. In April 1920, he challenged Britain and the Sultan by convening the National Legislative Assembly in Ankara. In August 1921, Mustafa Kamel’s troops defeated Greeks in the battle of Sakarya. In September 1922, he regained Anatolia. On November 7, 1922, the Turkish National Legislature separated the Khalifa from the state. In March 1924, an Indian Muslim delegation, led by Aga Khan and Amir Ali, met with Turkish Prime Minister Ismat Pasha and requested him that the Khalifa not be obstructed from performing his duties towards Muslim people. In response, the Turkish parliament dismantled the caliphate.
The Khilafat movement propelled the religious-national sentiments among Indian Muslims who until then largely stayed away from the mainstream political activity. it brought out the beast of religious fanaticism out of a cage. Later, Mohammad Ali Jinnah took control and succeeded in creating Pakistan. According to Sir Shafat Ahmad Khan – who left the Muslim League and became a member of Pandit Nehru’s interim cabinet in 1946 – the objectives of the Khilafat and non-cooperation movement were very different. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who used to eat pork, consume alcohol and married a Parsi woman, had to don traditional Muslim attire to lead the Pakistan movement.
The Khilafat movement, the Moplah revolt and the confused response by Congress deeply impacted Hindu nationalist leaders. Veer Savarkar, who was serving two life sentences in the Andamans and Ratnagiri when these events unfolded, called Khilafat as Afat. He penned a fiction “Mala Kay Tyache Arthat Moplyanche Band’ (The Moplah Revolt: I don’t care) in Marathi and Essentials of Hindutva, which is considered as the first attempt to theorize political Hindudom.
