SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to examine the ferment among Indian Muslims consequent to the threatened dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, which for six years dominated the political scene of the Sub-continent. It essentially analyses the various cross-ourrents which converged to make the Khilafat movement so turbulent. The Introductory Chapter discusses, in the light of contemporary events, the gradual involvement of Indo-Muslim sentiment with the Ottoman Khilafat and with the ideal of pan-Islamism until the Armistice of December I918. Chapter II (December 1918-July I920) studies the demand for the preservation of status quo ante bellum for Turkey as the Allied Powers begin to re-draw her map, the formation of the Central Khilafat Committee, the approaches to the Indian and the Allied Governments, and the search for an effective formula in concert with the Hindus resulting in the scheme of non-co-operation. Chapter III (May 1920-November I920) discusses the voluntary withdrawal (hijrat) in the classical Islamic tradition of between fifty and sixty thousand Muslims from India to neighbouring Afghanistan. Chapter IV (August 1920-March 1922) examines the course and failure of the non-co-operation experiment, together with other attempts to force a revision of the stringent Treaty of Sevres. Chapter V (February 1922-June 1923) deals with the aftermath of non-co-operation, the break-up of Hindu-Muslim entente and the effects on the Khilafat movement of the developments in the Near and the Middle East. Lastly, Chapter VI (July 1923-December 1924) discusses the weakening of the movement after the conclusion of the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923, and its final collapse as a result of the abolition of the Khilafat and the expulsion of the Sultan from Turkey in March 1924. It also examines the re-emergence of the All-India Muslim League as a force in Muslim politics and briefly looks into the phase when the movement, at the time of the Hedjaz crisis, begins to acquire an increasingly academic character which lingers on into the 1930s.