Islamic Revivalism Casts a Long Shadow from Khilafat to Waqf

WEST BENGAL ERUPTED days after Parlia­ment passed the Waqf legislation. Muslim mobs on the rampage rekindled memories of Direct Action Day. Lest we forget, Pakistan was wrested not militarily but through street vio­lence unleashed by a premier who claimed his descent from the Suhrawardy Sufi sect.

But Direct Action Day was the acme of a phenomenon that began after Aurangzeb died. Its progenitor was an Islamic theologian named Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703-62), revered as a mujaddid or revivalist. A historical line directly connects Waliullah, Syed Ahmad Barelvi, Titu Mian, Syed Ahmed Khan, Allama Iqbal, Muhammad Ilyas, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy—this is a timeline beginning in the mid-18th century and culminating in the mid-20th century with the cre­ation of Pakistan. But Pakistan wasn’t a climax but a pause.

Two landmarks symbolise this two-century history of Islamic revivalism in Undivided India: the so-called Aligarh Movement and the Khilafat blow-up. Both were inseparably joined; the for­mer provided the intellectual foundation, ideological legitimacy and apologetics for the latter. Some of the major players in both were the same people. There is a minor point of difference though: while the Aligarh camp sought to revive Muslim political power in India through English education and institution-building, the Khilafat was a pan-Islamic cause since its inception to its apogee. They prove Vladimir Nabokov’s warning against “treating the past as a parody of the present.”

The widespread notion that the Khilafat agitation originated in the destruction of the tottering Ottoman Caliphate in 1918-19 needs a more nuanced examination. The extinction of the Caliph­ate was the final nail, not the root cause.

The Ottoman Empire had already disintegrated over the course of three defensive wars it had fought in 1911-13. The Italo-Turkish War (1911- 12) saw Turkey losing Libya to Italy. But before it could recover, Turkey was battered again in the two Balkan Wars (1912-13). It barely managed to save face in the 1913 war against Bulgaria.

What was common to all three wars was that Turkey had man­aged to transform these into a pan-Islamic, or transnational, cause worth dying for. The familiar alarm that Islam was in danger echoed through all nations that had a significant Muslim popu­lation. It naturally echoed in India as well, and India was a rather singular case. From the beginning of the so-called Delhi Sultan­ate, almost every Muslim ruler harboured special reverence for and sent handsome gifts to the Ottoman sultan or the Khalifa, who played a dual role as theological keeper and protector of the Islamic faith in the temporal realm. Their legitimacy to rule in Hindustan derived from the Khalifa’s imprimatur.

In the early 20th century, there was no sultan in India but there was an influential section of the Ashrafs (Muslim elite) which regarded itself as the legatee of the former monarchical power of Islam.

Thus, when the Caliph’s 20th-century wars with European powers were branded as Christendom’s age-old project to wipe out Islam, the Ashrafs swung into action and spread the message here. The clergy and the Urdu press were deployed with devas­tating effectiveness. Financial and other support materialised on a national scale—from a cousin of the Hyderabad Nizam to a wealthy timber merchant in Mumbai to richly endowed Islamic institutions throughout North India and assorted Muslim aristo­crats of Bengal. Hundreds of the Islamic faithful travelled to the Balkan region to serve in this holy war.

The first grassroots eruption occurred on August 3, 1913 in Kanpur. The pretext was the demolition of a lavatory at­tached to a nondescript mosque in Machli Bazar. The same day, James Meston, lieutenant governor of the United Provinces, wrote an anxious telegram to Viceroy Hardinge who was then holidaying in Shimla: “Much regret to report occurrence of serious riot at Cawnpore this forenoon… Mass meeting of Muhammadans held at Eedgah this morning. On conclusion marched with black flags… to mosque and commenced rebuild­ing demolished portion and throwing stones at kotwal and other police present. Magistrate and Superintendent of Police arrived about half past ten with police force and were met by volleys of stones and brickbats. Magistrate ordered police to fire. Failing to prevent mob advancing, Superintendent, Police and kotwal led charge of mounted police and forced rioters back. Armed police then cleared surroundings of mosque. All quiet before noon. Po­lice casualties one killed, several wounded.”

The incident has been forgotten but it was the preface to the violence that followed during the so-called Khilafat ‘movement’ eight years later. It also made the career of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, the prime architect of the Khilafat agitation.

The late Spencer Lavan, a professor at Tufts University, has made perhaps the most exhaustive academic study of the episode in his ‘The Kanpur Mosque Incident of 1913’ (1974).

The Machli Bazar mosque was typi­cal of the thousands of indistinctive mosques that proliferate in India. It was neither built on Waqf land nor had any historical significance. Meston, who vis­ited it several times, describes it: “[It is] a small plain building… in one of the most congested parts of Cawnpore city… On its west side was the triple-arched and roofed place of prayer. On its south side was the anteroom, used for the storage of mosque furniture and also as the pas­sage to the main entrance. On part of its north side was a deepish masonry drain, dis­charging into the lane below; I did not ascertain its purpose, but from the smell of it when I visited it, it seemed to have been used as a urinal. On its east side the courtyard ended partly at the wall of an adjoin­ing house, and partly at the dalan [hallway]… used both for ablutions and as a privy.”

Meston had visited it as part of his inspection tours to supervise a road widening project in the locality. The civic ad­ministration of Kanpur had finalised the project in 1908, four years before he took charge. Ironically, the mosque still stands on the road named after him. As part of the road widening, two Hindu temples were also identified for demolition. As Meston notes in his 50-page ‘Minute’ (dated August 26, 1913), he was not aware that a mosque even existed in the area—further proof of its triviality. Even so, the mosque wasn’t to be demolished in toto but just its lavatory.

After prolonged negotiations between Meston, the mosque au­thorities and the Ulema, an understanding was reached and the in­evitable occurred on July 1, 1913. There was some protest by Muslim mobs but it soon died down. District Magistrate Tyler noted in his report on July 12: “…things have been settling down quietly.” Things had indeed quietened. But Meston and Tyler were unaware that more than a week earlier, the pot had already been stirred elsewhere.

In a call to action, Muhammad Ali Jauhar urged the Muslim League to put boots on the ground in his article dated July 5 in The Comrade, a paper he edited and published from Delhi. It spoke of the “intense indignation and dismay” felt in “Moslem India”.

This politically ambitious Oxford returnee had opted for journalism in­stead of an academic career. He spot­ted promise in this seemingly trivial matter. Lavan notes: “Any historian of these events cannot help but observe… especially the work of Muhammad Ali in raising the Kanpur Mosque Incident to an event of national proportions.”

The Urdu press was quick to pick up Muhammad Ali’s cue and began broad­casting inflammatory articles warning the British government. It simultane­ously threatened Muslims with dire consequences on the Day of Judgement if they did not act in defence of their faith.

Two days after Magistrate Tyler’s all-is-quiet report, Zulfikar Ali Khan, editor and publisher of The Zamindar from Lahore, made an admission. The real issue was not the Kanpur mosque; it wasn’t even in India; it was in the Balkans: “The ruin of Turkey and atrocities in the Balkans have undoubtedly wounded our hearts, but the demolition of the mosque by Sir James Meston… has inflicted a wound compared with which that caused by the Balkan atrocities is insignificant.”

It does not take a lot of intelligence to see through the game in Zulfikar Ali’s editorial.

Among others, the British government cited a Bengal-based Urdu newspaper, al-Hilal, which had “to a great extent fermented this excitement.” Its editor was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, free India’s first education minister.

The correspondence among British bureaucrats underscored this pan-Islamic theme that used the Kanpur mosque incident for a more sinister purpose. In a letter written by a bureaucrat to his colleague about the “present state of Muhammadan feel­ing,” he mentions how the “Balkan war was a cause of great pro-Turkish sympathy among Indian Muslims.” Then we have the letter from “the Hon’ble Mr. J.G. Cumming” to “the Hon’ble Mr. H. Wheeler”—both officers of the Home Department, Politi­cal—which leave no room for ambiguity. This is his analysis of the Kanpur mosque incident: “…the feelings of thinking Muham­madans were further irritated regarding repatriation of pilgrims from Hedjaz which they took in light of interference with their religious practices; and they began condemning the action of the United Provinces Government regarding the partial demolition of the mosque at Cawnpore.”

Hejaz, which encompasses both Mecca and Medina, had fallen into Bulgarian and Serbian hands in March 1913 and the British had absolutely no role in it. But in India they were blamed for it, for a simple reason—the British were Christians first and every­thing else next.

Viceroy Hardinge closed the curtains on the Kanpur turmoil by using a device that has become the standard for all secular politicians since 1947. He reprimanded Meston and dropped all charges against the rioters; he went a step further by granting generous donations to the “widows and orphans” of the rioters killed in police action; then he gloated about it in his autobiogra­phy, My Indian Years. In a public meeting, this is what he told the rioters: “I am your father and you are my children. When children do wrong it is the duty of their father while inspired by the most kindly feeling, to admonish them so that they may learn wisdom and not err again… I have come to Cawnpore to give peace, [and] I also wish to show mercy [sic].”

This speech was widely condemned by almost every main­stream newspaper. The Calcutta-based Nayak mocked Hardinge’s hypocrisy, pointing out that “the father-child analogy applied somehow only in situations where a Western nation ruled an Eastern one but never in the West itself.”

Muhammad Ali Jauhar was the biggest beneficiary of the Kan­pur road-widening project, which he transformed into a riot by the power of his pen. By 1920, he had acquired unchallengeable power in the Muslim League which appointed him its advocate for the restoration of the Caliphate, which had been irreversibly shattered by then.

When Muhammad Ali Jauhar’s delegation in London met with failure that year, he took Gandhi’s support and a year later unleashed a series of anti-Hindu riots throughout India which culminated in the genocide of Malabar Hindus at the hands of the Moplahs—their own neighbours and workers.

HS SuhrawardyIslamic revivalismKhilafat MovementMuhammad Ali JauharWaqf Act