Gandhi and the Ali Brothers: Biography of a Friendship 9788132111252

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
1 - The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi
2 - The History
3 - The Characters: The Ali Brothers
4 - ‘Love at First Sight’
5 - Troubled Alliance
6 - Journey Downhill
7 - End of the Road
8 - Conclusion
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Gandhi and the Ali Brothers Biography of a Friendship

Rakhahari Chatterji

Copyright © Rakhahari Chatterji, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2013 by Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in Sage Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA Sage Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom Sage Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in 10.5/14 pt Minion by Diligent Typesetter, Delhi, and printed at De-Unique, New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chatterji, Rakhahari.   Gandhi and the Ali brothers : biography of a friendship / Rakhahari Chatterji.    pages cm  Includes bibliographical references and index.   1. India—Politics and government—1919–1947.  2. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869– 1948  3. Ali, Shaukat, 1873–  4. Ali, Mohamed, 1878–1931.  5. Khilafat movement.  I. Title. DS480.45.C4573   954.03'50922—dc23   2013   [B]   2013015130 ISBN: 978-81-321-1125-2 (HB) The SAGE Team: Rudra Narayan, Shreya Chakraborti, Rajib Chatterjee and Dally Verghese

Dedicated to Professors Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph who taught me to read Gandhi, and to Professor Sankari Prasad Basu—my friend, philosopher and guide for half a century.

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Contents Preface  ix 1 The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  1 2 The History  24 3 The Characters: The Ali Brothers  52 4 ‘Love at First Sight’  79 5 Troubled Alliance  113 6 Journey Downhill  148 7 End of the Road  176 8 Conclusion: Multiculturalism before Its Time  208 Index  224 About THE Author  229

Preface The Khilafat Movement happens to be a well-known event in early twentieth-century India. Although it was concerned with the fate of the Caliph in the faraway Ottoman Empire, it assumed significance in the history of contemporary India as it got entwined with the emerging mass-based struggle for freedom against British rule. The outstanding leaders of the Khilafat Movement were the Ali brothers— Mohamed and Shaukat. The close personal as well as political collaboration between the Ali brothers on the one hand and Gandhi on the other during the early 1920s is well known to historians. Gandhi’s expectation from this relationship was very high as he, at least for a time, considered it foundational for Hindu-Muslim unity in India. However, it did not survive even a decade and by the end of the 1920s it withered. This book is an attempt to unravel the way in which this intense relationship, indeed rare in India between the leaders of the two major communities, was forged and how it came to a dead end so soon. The present work is less interpretative than descriptive. I have attempted to trace a micro history of the relationship as it was formed around 1919, flourished through the early 1920s and foundered by the end of that decade. The political history of these years has been treated as the foil on which the micro description stands. In my description, I have allowed the characters, namely, Gandhi and the Ali brothers, to speak for themselves as much as possible. I believe the description would suggest the events and forces which might have ix

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been causal to the tragic end of the relationship. Hence, the subtitle of the book, ‘Biography of a Friendship’. Gandhi has been described as a multiculturalist by a number of contemporary political thinkers. Indeed, Gandhi’s approach to the Muslim community (with which the present work is concerned) resembles many of the strands of contemporary communitarian and multicultural positions just as the problems he had encountered in working out his approach on the ground anticipate the shortcomings of these positions. In view of this, I have felt tempted to begin with a consideration of these issues as also to briefly revert to them at the end. The evidence for the facts presented in the following chapters is sourced on the personal papers of Gandhi, Mohamed Ali, Shaukat Ali, Motilal Nehru, Abdul Bari, Raja of Mahmudabad and Jawaharlal Nehru; the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi; select writings, speeches and letters of Mohamed Ali and Shaukat Ali; autobiographies of Gandhi and Mohamed Ali; the Pioneer files, reports in Indian newspapers and periodicals (native papers), Government of India’s Home Department files and some published materials. My dedication of the book to Lloyd I. Rudolph, Susanne H. Rudolph and Sankari Prasad Basu is in acknowledgement of my profound indebtedness to them, all of whom have been my teachers at different stages of my life. Late Professor Amlan Dutta had always been a neverfailing source of intellectual stimulation, a source which is lost forever. Douglas Wilson of the International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello; Surya Narain Misra of Utkal University, Bhubaneswar; Radharaman Chakraborty of Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture (Gol Park), Kolkata; Tarun Banerjee of Vidyasagar University, Midnapur; Manas Chakraborty of North Bengal University, Siliguri, and K. P. Aleaz of Bishop’s College offered me opportunities for discussing my views on Gandhi with colleagues and students. Lloyd I. Rudolph, despite his age and numerous engagements, generously agreed to read and comment on parts of my manuscript. Professor Hiren Chakraborty profoundly obliged me by reading and improving

Preface  /  xi

the whole manuscript. Needless to say, I am solely responsible if I have failed to fully utilize their advice. I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Rajani Ranjan Jha of Banaras Hindu University, John Echeverri-Gent of Virgina University at Charlottesville, Susmita Sen and Shaheen Parveen of Shri Shikshayatan College, Kolkata, and Jaytilak Guha Roy of the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi. My research has been greatly facilitated by Dr Deepa Bhatnagar of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. I am especially thankful to Asmukhbhai Shah of Gandhi Library at Sabarmati; librarian and staff of the National Gandhi Museum at Rajghat; National Archives and Library, New Delhi, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and National Library at Esplanade, Kolkata, for their kind cooperation and assistance. The research for this book has been variously supported over the years by Fulbright American Fellowship, a grant from Calcutta University’s Department of Political Science and UGC Emeritus Fellowship.

1

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi I How does a political society or a state, which is composed of people belonging to multiple cultural/religious majority and minority communities, hold the people together? This question is haunting many states and their leaders and peoples at the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, oftentimes with tragic consequences. Exclusionary and regressive nationalism, identity politics, communal consolidation and mobilization, communal riots, ethnic cleansing, civil strife, collapse of regimes and states, terrorism and international conflicts have easily followed the failure in binding together the culturally diverse people living within a territorial entity. Indisputably, the matter has emerged with particular virulence at the end of the twentieth century and issues like cultural rights of the minorities, rights of the indigenes, recognition of cultural identities/differences of minority groups and communities and the nature and power of communitarian encumbrances have forcefully captured a significant space within contemporary political discourse and action. 1

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Although political scientist Arend Lijphart has shown that some form of consociational arrangement for sharing power among contending religious and economic groups was being experimented with in the Netherlands as early as 1917,1 generally speaking, the question of the political location of cultural/religious minorities did not attract much sympathetic attention until the end of the first half of the last century. Nineteenth-century political thought—whether in its liberal or Marxist variant—did not show sensitivity to the rights of minorities. The liberal individualist tradition of the nineteenth century, perhaps best represented by John Stuart Mill, paid no recognition to intermediary groups between the individual and the state in matters of distribution of rights. If there were cultural minorities, they should assimilate with the majorities representing superior culture. Mill was of the view that it was indeed better for the cultural minorities in France such as ‘a Breton or a Basque of French Navarre’ to get admitted to the highly civilized and superior French citizenship than ‘to sulk on his own rocks…revolving in his own little mental orbit’. The same was his advice to the Welshman or the Scottish Highlander with regard to the British nation. Marxism or socialism was similarly hostile to the rights of cultural minorities. Engels, referring to cultural minorities or smaller nationalities within ‘great nations’, spoke of those ‘relics of nations’ or the ‘ethnic trash’ which ‘always become fanatical standard bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character’. 2 As Kymlicka says, ‘Mill and Marx did not reject all group identities between the individual and the state. Rather they privileged a particular sort of group—the “great nation”—and…insisted that progress and civilization required assimilating “backward” minorities to “energetic” majorities.’3 In the first half of the twentieth century, English liberal pluralist thinkers like Figgis, Laski, Cole, Maitland or Ernest Barker indeed spoke of groups but their primary reference was to those aggregations of individuals based on collective promotion of individual interests

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  /  3

which had cropped up in England and other West European countries in consequence of the industrial revolution and urbanization. Of course, it would be somewhat uncharitable and an example of reading history backward to single out and criticize Mill or Marx for their phlegmatic view of national minorities, for such a view was widely held in the West down to the mid-twentieth century. To encourage and welcome national minorities to assimilate with the national mainstream represented by the majority was the rule; to differentiate was to discriminate. Thus, Gunnar Myrdal, in his An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944),4 assumed assimilation as the ideal. He and his collaborators believed racial and ethnic differences would be replaced by class consciousness, bringing together whites and blacks along class lines.5 If a group fails to assimilate, it is consigned to ‘benign neglect’ at best and coercive treatment at the worst. It was also true that such a view was shared as well by the cultural minorities themselves in Europe and North America; the ideology of the ‘white man’s burden’ was so firmly established in colonial territories that even the majorities there accepted the appropriateness of becoming the mirror image of the ‘civilized’ cultures ruling over them. In this sense, there was no ‘claim’ for rights by cultural minorities or colonized peoples and since right depends on claiming it, they became complicit in denying themselves their right.

II In this historical context, Gandhi’s movement in South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century was truly exceptional. For, he was leading the Indian immigrant community there to make claims for certain rights, minimal though they might be. It was the first major movement for the rights of a cultural minority in the twentieth century. It was also an example of the praxis of his critique of modernity, for modernity implied the submission of the ‘uninstructed’ to the civilizing project of the ‘great nation’. His entire political career in India, which followed his sojourn in South Africa, was informed by

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a never-failing sensitivity to the cultural/religious rights of minorities. The first and the most important lesson he learnt in South Africa was that Hindu-Muslim unity was essential for any movement for rights in India. He expected that South African Indians would be an example of communal unity for India. Once in India and coming to lead the movement for Swaraj, he identified ‘four pillars on which the structure of swaraj would ever rest’: the unbreakable alliance between Hindus and Muslims; wiping out untouchability; accepting non-violence and promotion of spinning and khadi.6 Of these four, of course, Hindu-Muslim unity got priority even over untouchability, at least during the 1920s, as Joseph Lellyveld has shown.7 He defined his task in India as transformation of Indians into a nation composed of different cultural/religious communities, primarily Hindus and Muslims, each respecting the other’s communal selves. There would be ‘no death-like sameness in the nation’, as Gandhi reassured Tagore in response to Tagore’s fear of nationalism as destructive of individual freedom.8 Romain Rolland, with his sensitive mind and his experience of the dangerous nationalisms raising their ugly heads in Europe, could sense Gandhi’s struggle right: he was struggling for unity, not for assimilation. As Rolland said, ‘Gandhi devoted himself to bringing about the two races [Hindus and the Muslims] into harmonious collaboration, and without advocating or desiring an impossible fusion between the two peoples, he tried to unite them in friendship.’9 Seen in this light, much of the criticism of Gandhi by the communists and the left in India appear misplaced. M. N. Roy, a communist during the 1920s–30s who turned a ‘radical humanist’ in the 1940s, had criticized Gandhi for preaching social harmony and not class conflict as his goal. He even, quite without foundation, found nationalism preached by Gandhi as intolerant.10 He debated with Lenin on whether Gandhi could be considered a ‘revolutionary’ and differing from him, concluded that in appearance he might be a revolutionary, but in essence, he was a religious and cultural revivalist. Roy did admit that it was Gandhi who through hartal and non-violence had mobilized

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the masses for struggle but fancied that once mobilized, the masses anyway would continue to remain engaged in struggle even if Gandhi had now changed his method and goal and had appeared in the new incarnation of a proletarian revolutionary. Roy and the leftists, generally, failed to understand the deeper significance of Gandhi’s use of the religious idiom in politics which, as historian Ravinder Kumar has argued, ‘was the result of a perceptive insight into the social loyalties of the individual and into the manner in which these loyalties could be invoked in political action’. Gandhi strongly believed that community and religion rather than class and professions constituted the dominant loyalties in India.11 Apart from such large issues as whether there really was an Indian proletariat ready for revolution, what the revolution would seek to achieve at that point of time or how proletarian mobilization would relate to communal mobilization, it was not even questioned by Roy what right one had to ask Gandhi, who considered class war as ‘foreign to the essential genius of India’, for moving from his moral convictions and commitment to peace and unity over to conflict and violence. Post-Independence Indian Marxist historians, such as Bipan Chandra, have claimed that Gandhi’s purpose was to build a ‘class front’ by mobilizing large strata of the people, but with the bourgeoisie in the lead.12 Partha Chatterjee of the Subaltern Studies group has put it differently. He finds ‘the entire story of the Gandhian intervention in India’s nationalist politics as the moment of manoeuvre in the “passive revolution of capital” in India’. In this ‘passive revolution’ ‘the largest popular element of the nation—the peasantry—could be appropriated…the peasantry were meant to become willing participants in a struggle wholly conceived and directed by others’.13 A similar point had already been made by Barrington Moore Jr when he refused to accept that ‘caste or other distinctive traits of Indian peasant society’ constituted ‘an effective barrier to insurrection… There is a revolutionary potential among the Indian peasants’ which had been dampened by the ‘quietist twist’ imparted to it by British

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occupation and ‘the character of nationalist leaders’. Yet he also found the whole record of peasant uprisings ‘quite unimpressive in comparison with China’. In some areas the communists could work through utilizing linguistic and regional loyalties or caste disputes but then Moore warned that ‘revolutions come with panhuman ideals, not trivial regional ones’. Finally, Moore alerted us to the danger, which Partha Chatterjee apparently did not take into account, that ‘religious warfare may have been a substitute for revolution’.14 The leftist critique thus imputes motives to Gandhi: that underlying his overt activities was a secret mission of putting the bourgeoisie in power and to subjugate the largest segment of the Indian population, that is, the peasantry, to the bourgeoisie. Markovits has argued that such a view ‘ignores the equally ample evidence that the relationship between Gandhi and the Indian capitalists was characterized by a high degree of ambiguity’.15 Besides, the story of Gandhi’s entire life makes such an argument quite implausible. Gandhi’s priorities were clear: before anything else, the main fault line in Indian society, that is, the communal divide between the Hindus and the Muslims, must be attended to. Otherwise, peasant or any other revolution, even if such a beast was ever to appear on the horizons of India, was bound to falter. Hence, communal collaboration and national unity were at the top of his agenda, especially in the 1920s. The Marxist critics would have him alter his priorities without providing enough evidence to substantiate their point of view.

III Although Gandhi described himself as a sanatani (true or pure) Hindu, he had nothing in common with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which believed in equating Hindu interests with Indian interests. As Rajmohan Gandhi says, on the ‘crucial questions of Indian nationhood—Hindu–Muslim relations, militarization, the use of violence, and an Indian flag—the RSS ideology was…fundamentally opposed to Gandhi’s’.16 Gandhi was a great enthusiast for cow

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protection and would preside over many campaign meetings of the Cow Protection Society; yet he refused to use cow protection as a bargaining chip for his support to the Khilafat Movement. He had a long-time and respectful personal relationship with Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai and Swami Shraddhananda—the chief spokesmen of Hindu interests and the main forces behind shuddhi (purification) and sangathan (consolidation) movements among the Hindus and a ‘partial ideological rapport’ with them.17 He had described Malaviya as ‘a great leader of India’ and ‘the patriarch of Hinduism’. Gandhi had attended the inaugural meeting of the Hindu Mahasabha in Hardwar in 1915, and he maintained contacts with the Arya Samaj and its educational organization, the Gurukuls. Quite understandably, he wanted to carefully nurture a base for himself within Hindu organizations.18 Yet, while he went a great length with them, he could not go the whole length. Gandhi had his own view of Hinduism which was founded on an amalgam of reason and belief within which the former was more prominent than the latter. It was not always in tune with orthodox Hindu leaders and organizations. Whether speaking at Gurukul organizations or at cow protection meetings, Gandhi would often strike a critical and discordant note. He believed and pointed out that Gurukul education was deficient in many respects and advised the Arya Samajists to introduce training in agriculture, handicrafts and sanitation.19 On cow protection, which was dear to his heart, he was quite candid in accusing the Hindus of hypocrisy, for while they condemned cow slaughter by the Muslims and were ready to go to any length for stopping this, they often maltreated their cattle and sold them to the Muslims. He disagreed with Malaviya and others on the question of shuddhi and sangathan, for he did not believe that ‘the Indian National Congress, despite Hindu majority, could not be taken to protect Hindu interests, and therefore, separate communal organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha and Sangathan are absolutely necessary’.20 In his efforts to court Hindu leaders and organizations,

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his goal was to make them more malleable and accommodative to the Muslims and to encourage them to develop a tolerant, non-violent and inclusive approach to public issues and questions rather than to give in to their stance.

IV The European concept of nationhood was mono-cultural. Eugen Weber at the end of his classic study of national integration in France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries quotes Marcel Mauss pondering, just after the end of the First World War, on the difference between ‘peoples’ and ‘nations’. Mauss said if a ‘people’ or an empire was a loosely integrated and governed unit, a ‘nation’, by contrast, was ‘a materially and morally integrated society’ characterized by the ‘relative moral, mental, and cultural unity of its inhabitants’. For Karl Deutsch, a nation was a ‘community of complementary habits’.21 Deutsch further wrote, ‘Group assimilation can only be further accelerated by reducing or destroying the competing information from the unassimilated past, and by reducing or repressing the unassimilated responses to which it would give rise in the present.’22 Such a model of the nation could not obviously preclude the use of violence or conquest as a ‘necessary stage on the road to nationalism’, wrote Georges Vale’rie in 1901.23 This European model of nation-building was closer to what the RSS would want to implement in India but it was far from what Gandhi had in mind. Gandhi’s idea of the nation would as much admit community rights as individual freedom. His idea of the nation did not assume that it would be based on one religion or one culture. ‘The need of the moment,’ he declared in 1924, ‘is not one religion but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions.’ He advised that before the Hindus and the Muslims ‘dare to think of freedom [political independence] they must be brave enough to love one another, to tolerate one another’s religion, even prejudices and superstitions and to trust one another’.24 He expected both Hinduism and

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Islam to have enough strength to become ‘purged of illiberalism and intolerance’. In view of this, late-twentieth-century Western political discourse on communitarianism and multiculturalism seems to have greater affinity with Gandhi’s idea of the nation than nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European concept of nationalism.

V The crisis of legitimacy and the problem of governability of the late 1960s and the early 1970s in the West led many people to rediscover the community as a natural and vibrant receptacle for holding people together. The community could be the end product of a lived-together, shared and valued tradition; it could be the source of a natural collective identity and a morally meaningful life for all of its members. The communitarian thinkers often go a great length in celebrating the community as a ‘natural entity’ based on some kind of ‘organic unity’, as the source of morality, justice and rights.25 In this view, community is an entity that individuals are born into and that imposes constraints or encumbrances on the individual, which is not easy for the individual to ignore or defy. The community provides the individual with an identity which is constitutive of her self. This view of the community is too constraining for the individual, leaving little room for her to negotiate with the outside world. Gandhi indeed accepted the distinct communal identity of the Hindus and the Muslims in India and their separate communal selves. He could easily agree with Michael Sandel’s proposition: ‘Why should our political identities not express the moral and religious and communal convictions we affirm in our personal lives?’26 He would however disagree with Sandel if it was assumed that such communal identity transfixes the individual and imprisons her into a hole of a given identity. Gandhi’s concept of the community did not deny the individual member of her capacity to make choices based on reason or to alter the inherited ways and values of the community or to accept new responsibilities imposed by larger entities like the society,

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the nation or the world. In this sense, Gandhi’s ideas are better represented by those communitarians who argue that the community can be conceptualized in different ways depending on the assumed degrees of homogeneity, that no one community can encapsulate the whole of the individual, that ‘people live in overlapping communities’ or in a ‘community of communities’.27 Contemporary anthropologist Ernest Gellner has pointed out that ‘human beings are not genetically programmed to be members of this or that social order’. There are of course genetic constraints but ‘these constraints are far wider than the constraints imposed by any one society. Each society narrows them down for itself.’ This implies that the fantastic range of genetically possible conduct keeps the culturally transmitted limits open to change.28 As Gandhi believed, human beings are not fixed points; they are malleable, open to change and capable of exercising their choice. Not everything that a religious community habitually believes or indulges in is a necessity and, therefore, unchangeable or unchallengeable: ‘A religious necessity must therefore be clearly established. Every semblance of irritation must be avoided. A mutual understanding should be seriously sought…every trifle [like playing music before mosques] must not be dignified into a principle.’29 As Amartya Sen has said, even encumbered individuals can make choices: ‘the ability to doubt and to question is not beyond our reach’; not everything is ‘drowned in a single-minded celebration only of community’.30 Communitarianism does raise the very vital issue of how far in actual practice and in historical situations community loyalty and identity politics emerging out of it will leave space for individual autonomy and rational political discourse, or whether the ‘encumbered’ individual will have enough initiative and courage to grapple with larger political problems holding community loyalty in place. Rephrasing Sandel, it might be asked if social cooperation would be considered so compelling as to make people willing to marginalize moral or religious view of the community, or whether the latter would ‘burst and outweigh practical interest in political and social cooperation’?31

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These indeed were the questions with which Gandhi had to struggle throughout his life and especially during the 1920s.

VI Like communitarianism, multiculturalism is also a recent theme in political discourse. In consequence of the deepening of democratic awareness across the globe towards the end of the last century, claims for rights among the unassimilated indigenous peoples, cultural minorities and immigrants in the Western liberal democracies have acquired a new degree of audibility such that these could no longer be driven under the carpet in the name of a culturally homogeneous community called the nation. Multiculturalism has emerged primarily as a policy response to smoothen the triangular relationship of the nation state with the cultural majority on the one hand, and minority groups on the other—something similar to what Gandhi had taken upon himself to do in relation to the national freedom movement instead of a ‘nation state’ in the early decades of the last century. Gandhi’s ideas and praxis in dealing with the minority question in India clearly anticipate the fundamental tenets of the late-twentiethcentury multicultural approach to nation building; but more than that, his experience alerts us to the limits to which multiculturalism can go in resolving the question of minority rights. According to Charles Taylor’s formulation of a ‘politics of recognition’, multiculturalism or multicultural citizenship is a way of reconciling the claims of dignity with those of authenticity or self-identity: if dignity implies all are equal (for everybody’s dignity has to be equally respected), self-identity implies that everybody or every cultural group/community is unique. If common citizenship rights for all can ensure dignity, recognizing minority rights becomes necessary for ensuring identity.32 If politics of recognition was meant to transform the culture-blind citizenship of liberal nation states in the Western world into a culturesensitive one at the end of the last century, Gandhi’s task early in that

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century was more complex. He was dealing not only with a communally divided society where religious/cultural identities were sharply defined and well grounded, but also with a government which became uncomfortable at the slightest hint of inter-communal understanding. It was a society where colonial rule had completely drained the individuals of their sense of dignity. Gandhi’s task was to restore dignity to the individual Indians and, at the same time, to blunt the sharpness of the communal divide so that inter-communal dialogue towards discovering a common ground would become possible. Beginning with his broadside against Western civilization in the Hind Swaraj (1909), to his definition of Swaraj in terms of political as much as moral and economic self-sufficiency, his comprehensive projection of spinning and khadi as the panacea for every ill in the society, his fight for the abolition of untouchability and his call for ‘heart unity’ between the Hindus and the Muslims as the precondition for political independence, he was engaged all the while in a battle for restoring the dignity of individual Indians. Throwing politics open to the masses across caste, community and class was his way of transforming Indians into a nation of equally dignified individuals. At the same time, adopting the Khilafat cause of the Indian Muslims as his own was a way of recognizing the identity of the Muslims as a community and declaring that community identity was no bar to national unity. But then, a community in the name of protecting its identity may coerce its individual members to fall in line against their wishes. That is, the multiculturalist alchemy of individual dignity and individual autonomy on the one hand and cultural/communal identity on the other, contained within itself an implicit source of conflict between the two. Besides, certain community practices may be considered repugnant by the majority or the larger society and the latter may want to change or rectify such practices through intervention, if necessary. Liberal multiculturalist Will Kymlicka, in trying to resolve such issues as these, came to admit that there could be conflict between group rights and individual autonomy, for often minority groups would

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want to be treated as homogeneous entities speaking for all its members in one voice and brooking no outside intervention in its internal matters. He grants that individual autonomy of the members of a group or a cultural community may occasionally have to be curbed but at the same time, admits the majority’s right to intervene to protect liberal individual rights. He concludes that ultimately there might be no clear-cut way out of this dilemma, except for engaging in constructive dialogue between members of the majority and minority communities to arrive at a national consensus for finding a way of living together.33 Bhiku Parekh, a multiculturalist and a Gandhi scholar, considers Gandhi a multiculturalist and has rather briefly mentioned him as an ‘example of intercultural experimentation’.34 In answering the question, ‘how multicultural societies can be held together, develop a common sense of belonging, reconcile political unity and cultural diversity’, he, like Kymlicka, finds the indispensability of the dialogic path.35 For integration at the cultural and political levels, he recommends the dialogic path with slightly different emphases. For the cultural level, he recommends strengthening of the civil society with its cross-cutting relationships, accepting multiple identities within the overarching national identity and achieving a dialogical consensus through constant conversation.36 For the political level, he suggests the attainment of a consensual set of constitutional, legal and civic values, which he labels as ‘operative public values’. This would allow for a shared life across communities while, at the same time, admitting individual autonomy by leaving personal life to each member.37 Dialogue was central to Gandhi’s political praxis. He would never allow critical events, deeply disturbing communal relations (for example, the assassination of Swami Shraddhananda by a fanatic Muslim or the Kohat riots) to close the door to talks. On Swami Shraddhananda’s tragic death, he warned the Hindus that they must not ‘ascribe the crime of an individual to a whole community’ and ‘harbour the spirit of retaliation’.38 He knew that trust deficit was the

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biggest problem for the dialogic process to operate and did everything to generate and nurture mutual trust.39 Being a pragmatic idealist, he did not rule out the possibility of a felt wrong done by either community. But, as he said, [T]he conception of Hindu-Muslim unity does not presuppose a total absence, for all time, of wrong done by any of the parties. On the contrary, it assumes that our loyalty to the unity will survive shocks…that in every such case we shall not blame the whole body of the followers but seek relief against individuals by way of arbitration and not by reprisal.40

That is to say, the community and its individual members were not coextensive. Whether doing right or doing wrong, the individual member of a community might go her own way, irrespective of what the community would think. Yet, how a community would manage its internal affairs or shape or regulate the conduct of its members is largely a matter for the community to decide, not for the majority community to intervene and settle. Gandhi did not hesitate to advise individual untouchables about how they could change their ways to make themselves more acceptable to the caste-Hindus because Gandhi claimed himself to be one of the untouchables. The matter was indeed very touchy but Gandhi expressed what he felt he must because he considered himself to be an insider.41 With regard to the Muslims, however, Gandhi’s stance was different. He claimed to know the Hindu mind because the ‘Hindu mind is myself…every fibre of my being is Hindu’, but he could not claim the same for the Muslims. For working among the Muslims, he needed Muslim friends, such as the Ali brothers.42 Regarding the personal conduct of individual Muslims, he would not go beyond asking them to abjure violence and urging them (like he urged the Hindus) to apply their individual reasoning faculty to judge what in fact was their true religion.43 But at the same time, he thought there should be no difficulty if the majority community expressed its expectations or set a standard which it might expect the minority community to

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  /  15

deliberate and voluntarily accept as a condition for peacefully living together. Hence, while Gandhi supported the cause of cow protection, he never wished to impose it on the Muslims and advised to leave it to their voluntary acceptance on grounds of mutual love. Meanwhile, the majority community must be patient: [T]he surest way of defeating our object [cow protection] is to rush Mussalmans. I do not know that Mussalman honour has ever been found wanting…we have got enlightened Muslim opinion with us. It must take time for it to react upon the Mussalman masses. The Hindus must therefore be patient.44

Thus, Gandhi apparently went beyond even contemporary multiculturalists in dealing with this complicated issue of the majority community’s right to impose its standards on the minority community’s collective as well as individual conduct. The critics of multiculturalism have often found fault with the idea of a ‘politics of recognition’, for recognition implies, according to these critics, an over-valorization of the minority at the cost of the majority, that the majority has the responsibility to ‘recognize’ without the minority having any corresponding responsibility. Some critics prefer ‘tolerance’ to recognition, for they find that the former includes mutuality and reciprocity, which the latter term does not.45 Gandhi could be in agreement with the multiculturalists here in believing that the majority indeed had a much greater responsibility in generating confidence among the minorities, in having ‘the courage to trust the minorities’.46 Gandhi was never very interested in ‘constitutional mechanics’—even though he firmly rejected separate electorates47 and argued that the Hindus should be more accommodating with regard to questions of representation: the ‘Hindus must leave to the Mussalmans and the other minorities the question of representation on elected bodies and gracefully and whole-heartedly give effect to the findings of such a referee’.48 Yet he found, as in the case of the Nehru Report, that there were limits on the ground regarding the extent to which he

16  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

could persuade the majority community to accommodate or the minority to cooperate. In a moment of exasperation, Gandhi said, ‘You say I am partial to the Mussalmans. So be it, though the Mussalmans do not admit it…there was amongst you a mad Gandhi who was not only just to the Mussalmans, but even went out of his way in giving them more than their due.’49 Gandhi had strong faith in the role of the leaders in promoting inter-communal understanding. He believed that if there was a bunch of good leaders strongly committed to communal harmony, their wishes and efforts must permeate the masses. He said, ‘As members of a family, we shall sometimes fight, but we shall have leaders who will compose our differences and keep us under check.’50 Leaders were supposed to act as agents of their respective communities and speak for their communities. The multiculturalist dialogue presumes the presence of leaders, for after all, whole communities cannot enter into dialogue with other whole communities. Yet, as Gandhi found within a few years, there could be real difficulties on the ground. Leaders representing a community may not speak in one voice, for every community is internally heterogeneous and polyvocal. Leaders may prevaricate, followers may defect, leaders may become prisoners of their own followers. In such cases, dialogue may be prolonged and fruitless, promises made may turn out be non-deliverable, forcing one to appeal to the reasonableness of the masses over the supposed charisma of leaders. Apprehensions (and experiences) such as these possibly forced Gandhi to relocate his hopes: ‘[F]ortunately, Hindu-Muslim unity does not depend upon religious or political leaders. It depends on the enlightened selfishness of the masses belonging to both the communities. They cannot be misled for all time.’51 But it did not take him long to find out that there was no easily available multiculturalist tune to which the masses could dance and be enlightened.52 Gandhi probably hit the limits of multiculturalist approach when he admitted the Muslim community’s right of self-determination in

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  /  17

post-Independence India. Both Kymlicka and Parekh have left open the choice of self-determination as a possibility of the last resort for minority groups if even a federal solution fails to hold the nation together.53 During the confusing years immediately preceding Partition, Gandhi opened talks with Jinnah on 9 September 1944, promising to go by Rajagopalachari’s formula that once independent, federal India could hold a plebiscite to decide the future of Muslim-majority districts of north-west and east of India. But Jinnah remained unimpressed, fearing that it was Gandhi’s ‘game’ to take the wind out of his sail and torpedo his Pakistan project, which had gained momentum by then and insisted that he ‘wants Pakistan now, not after independence’.54 After decades of zealously pursuing Hindu-Muslim fraternity through the recognition of Muslim religious/communal identity under the rubric of the projected multicultural nationhood, Gandhi found that he had failed to discover common ground. Much earlier, poet Mohammad Iqbal’s rejection of the nationalist discourse was enough to suggest Gandhi the emerging scenario. While in prison again at Yeravda in Poona early in the 1930s, he told Mahadev Desai: ‘Other Muslims too share Iqbal’s anti-nationalism; only they do not give expression to their sentiments. The Poet now disowns his song Hindustan Hamara (India is ours).’ Defending late Mohamed Ali as a reconciler of panIslamism and Indianness, he said, ‘The present Muslim leadership do not understand “I am a Muslim first” in the old sense [of Mohamed Ali]. Nowadays to be a Muslim is not to be a nationalist.’55 He was rational enough to see that neither community alone was at fault; nor would the British, the third and the most important actor in the given situation, leave India united.56 India’s partition was as inevitable as it was sordid. But then, if multiculturalism fails to hold a multicultural nation together, if it has to concede secession, doesn’t it self-destruct itself? Gandhi played a pioneering role in the early twentieth century in adopting the multicultural approach to the minorities’ problem in India, but he also was a victim of its limitations.

18  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

VII The history of the Khilafat Movement is well known as it is also well known that the Ali brothers—Mohamed and Shaukat—were the frontline leaders of the movement and that they acted in close collaboration with Gandhi during the early 1920s. It is also known that after the collapse of the Khilafat–Non-cooperation Movement, the relationship between them came under strain and the Ali brothers gradually moved away from Gandhi. But what is often not so well known is that the intensity and promise of the relationship when it was forged were astounding, and especially for Gandhi personally it meant a lot because he took it as the key to the solution of the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity, which was fundamental to India’s independence. Therefore, it behoves us to explore how and why the relationship came to be considered so valuable by the Ali brothers as well as by Gandhi around 1919 and, more so, how and why the relationship had to come to a tragic end by 1928–29. After his return from South Africa and entry into Indian politics, his involvement in the Khilafat agitation happened to be Gandhi’s first direct intervention in an exclusively Muslims’ question for turning it into a national question. This was Gandhi’s way of bringing the Muslims out of their community cocoons into the mainstream of India’s national politics and in this adventure, he looked upon the Ali brothers as the main props. As his relationship with the brothers broke down, this turned out to be also his last such intervention. Consequently, the issue of Muslim participation remained unsettled till the Partition. Hence, the breakdown of the relationship deserves closer attention than historians have so far given. The present work is less interpretative than descriptive. In the following pages, I have attempted to trace a micro history of the relationship between Gandhi and the Ali brothers as it was formed around 1919, flourished through the early 1920s and foundered by end of that decade. The political history of these years has been treated as the foil on which the micro description stands. In my description, I have allowed the characters, namely, Gandhi and the Ali brothers, to

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  /  19

speak for themselves as much as possible. I believe the description would suggest the events and forces which might have been causal to the tragic end of the relationship. The second chapter presents the historical background of the Khilafat Movement in India. Tracing the history of the Indian Muslims from the time of Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, the chapter shows how during the First World War a younger generation of mostly Aligarh-trained Muslim graduates raised a banner of revolt against Sir Sayyid’s line of alliance with the British and established an alternative path of alliance with the Hindus for struggling for a common Swaraj through Khilafat and Non-cooperation. The third chapter introduces the main characters, namely, Mohamed Ali and his elder brother, Shaukat Ali—the jewels of the Khilafat Movement—and traces their background and rise as the prime movers of the movement and the main architects, with Gandhi, of the wouldbe Hindu-Muslim united front against the British empire in India. The next four chapters, from four to seven, attempts a blow-byblow account of the friendship between the Ali brothers and Gandhi— its germination, growth and its withering during the 10 years, from 1919–20 to 1928–29. The concluding chapter attempts an explanation of the collapse of the friendship. However, it is necessary to remember that the work does not seek to propose or test any theory. It claims to be a description of a unique relationship between three inevitable actors on the political scene at a pregnant moment of modern Indian history. The purpose of the present chapter is to suggest that perhaps Gandhi’s approach to the Muslim question during the 1920s can best be viewed from the communitarian–multiculturalist perspective.

Notes and References   1. Arend Lijphart, Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).   2. Cited in Will Kymlicka, ed., The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5.   3. Ibid., 6.

20  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers   4. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper, 1944).   5. Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 117.   6. Joseph Lellyveld, Great Soul (Noida: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011), 142.   7. Ibid., Chapter 7.   8. Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 75.   9. Romain Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 2007), 89–90. 10. Dalton, 80–88; also, M. N. Roy, India in Transition (Geneva: J. B. Target, 1922). 11. Ravinder Kumar, ed., Essays in Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 12ff. 12. For a summary of post-Independence Marxist view of Gandhi, see Claude Markovits, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 137–39. 13. Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Moment of Manoeuvre: Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society’, in A. Raghuramaraju, ed., Debating Gandhi—A Reader (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 108, 121. This essay was earlier published as ‘Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society’, in R. Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies III (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984). 14. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 378–85. 15. Markovits, 137. Also his Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931–39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 16. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006), 295. 17. Ibid. 18. David Hardiman, Gandhi: In His Time and Ours (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 162–69. 19. Ibid., 163. 20. Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, 2 April 1925, in M. K. Gandhi, Communal Unity, ed., Bharatan Kumarappa (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1949), 110–11. 21. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 485–86. 22. Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, cited in Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 486, fn. 23. Georges Vale’rie, Notes sur le nationalisme francais, cited in Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 486. 24. Gandhi, Communal Unity, 98–100. 25. Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), x–xi. 26. Ibid., 193ff.

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  /  21 27. Henry Tam, Communitarianism: A New Agenda for Politics and Citizenship (London: Macmillan, 1998), 7; Amitai Etzioni, ‘Old Chestnuts in New Spurs’, in Etzioni, ed., New Communitarian Thinking (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 16–34; Andrew Vincent, Nationalism and Particularity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 28. Ernest Gellner, Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in the Sacred Grove (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 29–31. Gellner writes, ‘You can take an infant human being and place it into any kind of culture, any kind of social order, and it will function acceptably.’ Gandhi would argue that it is possible even for human adults, maybe to a different extent. 29. Gandhi, Communal Unity, 120. 30. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 32–39. 31. Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 19. 32. Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in Collin Farrely, ed., Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader (London: SAGE Publications, 2004), Chapter 23. Also, Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 33. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12 and 165–71. For a different take on the issue of intervention, see Bhiku Parekh, ‘Redistribution or Recognition? A Misguided Debate’, in May, Modood and Squires, eds, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter 9. Within a few years, however, Kymlicka reported, somewhat prematurely, that a process of ‘desecuritization’ (meaning the disappearance of the belief that the national minority would join the enemy and threaten security of the state) and the emergence of ‘liberal-democratic consensus’ produced by multiculturalism have led to the solution of the problem of minority rights and sub-state nationalisms (Will Kymlicka, ‘Liberal Multiculturalsim: Western Models, Global Trends and Asian Debates’, in Kymlicka and Baogang He, eds, Multiculturalism in Asia [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 1–46). Christian Jopke, however, found a counter trend of a retreat of multicultural policies in much of Western Europe (Christian Jopke, ‘The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy’, The British Journal of Sociology 55, no. 2 [2004]). Even in Britain, under David Cameron’s Conservative–Liberal coalition, multiculturalism has come to be reviled as ‘multi-culti’ of which Britain has had enough (Daniel Hannan, ‘Cameron’s Crusade’, Newsweek, 21 February 2011, 39). See also, John Rawls, The Law of Peoples with ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999) and Michael Kenny, Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).

22  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 34. Bhiku Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 370–72. 35. Ibid., 12–14. 36. Ibid., 219–66. 37. Ibid., 269–70, 363. 38. Gandhi, Young India, 30 December 1926 in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 131. 39. Gandhi’s effort to create a new model of civil society was also his way of creating space for all kinds of Indians to come together and communicate so that there could be more understanding and less mistrust. Rudolph and Rudolph have shown how the Habermasian ‘public sphere’ of bourgeois, literate men of class and status marking the sphere of the civil society was turned upside down by Gandhi in his ‘ashram model’ of civil society wherein the plebian and the non-literate were engaged in a similar communicative process. ‘Gandhi created a public sphere among largely non-literate populations by amplifying the ashram as an exemplary community and by challenging racism, economic exploitation and untouchability through satyagraha campaigns’ (Lloyd I. and Susanne H. Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006], 161). Yet it is necessary to remember that the ashramites failed in the long run to place themselves into the general stream of life of Indians and remained as an isolated group whom people revered from a distance. 40. Gandhi, Young India, 29 September 1921 in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 19. 41. Meeting a group of untouchables (Pulayas) at Vykom (Kerala), he frankly said:

Many Hindus consider it a sin to touch you. I claim to be Hindu myself, but I regard it as a sin to say and think that it is a sin to touch you…But I do want to tell you how to command respect of every one. They [casteHindus upholding untouchability] justify their not-touching on the ground of your being or remaining dirty, on your drinking, or taking the flesh of dead animals, eating beef. I know it is even then wrong to justify untouchability, for there are many caste-Hindus who are very dirty, who drink, and eat beef, and in many other respects do much coarser things than eating beef and drinking wine…Such is the injustice which man does to man. But I want you to so conduct yourselves that there may be no justification whatsoever for grounds I have mentioned. (Mahadev Desai, Day-To-Day with Gandhi, vol. 6 [Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970], 114–15)

42. Gandhi, Young India, 29 May 1924 in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 60, 85–88. 43. Ibid., 85–88. 44. Young India, 8 June 1921, in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 12. 45. This point has been made by Giovani Sartori in Pluralismo, multiculturalismo e estranei (Milan: Rizzoli, 2000). For a discussion of Sartori’s position on this

The Theory: Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi  /  23 and related issues, see Christian Jopke, ‘The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State’, The British Journal of Sociology 55, no. 5, (2004): 242–43. 46. Gandhi, Communal Unity, 60. 47. Ibid., 108. 48. Ibid., 64. 49. ‘The Sholapur Speech’ (10 March 1927), in Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims (Karachi: Anand T. Hingorani, 1942), 263–64. 50. Gandhi, Young India, 29 September 1921 in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 20–21. 51. Gandhi, Young India, 29 January 1925, in Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 203. 52. For instance, despite all his endeavours, he saw how easily the Muslim masses could be communally mobilized by community leaders or how despicably ordinary Muslims could react to his presence in Noakhali to douse the communal fire. Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 284–85; Joseph Lellyveld, 293–320. 53. Kymlicka, ‘Justice and Security in the Accommodation of Minority Nationalism’, in May, Modood and Squires, eds, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights, Chapter 7; Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism, 195. 54. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 78: 88–89, cited in Wolpert, 230– 31ff. See also Lellyveld, 289–90. 55. Mahadev Desai, The Diary of Mahadev Desai, vol. 1 (1932) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1953), 33. 56. On the Congress-League coalition at the Centre in 1946, Sir Norman P. A. Smith, the British director of central intelligence, sent a most ‘cynical’ report to the Viceroy, Lord Wavell:

[T]he game so far has been well played…both the Congress and the League have been brought into the Central Government…The Indian problem has been thereby thrust into its appropriate plane of communalism…Grave communal disorder must not disturb us into action… The former is a natural, if ghastly, process tending in its own way to the solution of the Indian problem. (N. Mansergh, Transfer of Power, vol. 9 [24 January 1947], 542–43, cited in Wolpert, Jinnah, 307)

2

The History The Khilafat Movement, as it began, unfolded and ended, was a critical event in shaping Hindu–Muslim relations for the next quarter century in the sense that it had indicated many possibilities as well as closures. The question where to locate the beginning of the end of India as a united entity founded on territorial and multicultural nationhood or what made Partition inevitable is not so relevant. Reading history backwards is always a privilege for later generations but that does not necessarily yield the truth beyond any question. It is quite possible to trace the source of the Partition in the Khilafat Movement as it is also possible to find its roots in the ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmed. The fact is that step-by-step Hindu–Muslim relation was so conceived that intentionally or unintentionally a gridlock came to be created such that the difference between choice and necessity disappeared.

Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan: Community as the Qaum The year 1857 was the watershed year in British–Muslim relations in India. If there was the need for avenging Muslim violence against the British, it was prudent to keep it confined to the locality and to individuals. At the macro level, there was the need for understanding the situation of the Muslims and to develop channels to communicate empathy towards them. W. W. Hunter’s The Indian Mussalmans 24

The History  /  25

stands as probably the best testimony to such British feelings. It was probably true that, as B. R. Nanda said, the pressure from the educated Hindu elite was already becoming palpable which was driving the British towards looking for friends and allies among the princes, landlords and Muslims.1 But there was nothing inherently anti-Hindu or pro-Muslim in it; rather, such a policy was inferred from the needs of survival of the empire which made it imperative after 1857 that in no circumstance the British could suffer unity among the natives in any form. If such were the British feelings, Muslim feelings were probably best expressed and articulated by Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, the pioneering modernizer among the Muslims in late-nineteenthcentury India. He had no particular love for the British, but his intuition and foresight told him that the British could not be removed from India soon and, therefore, it was absolutely essential for the Muslims to utilize their presence rather than to engage them in futile wars.2 Hence, he cancelled his contemplated migration to Egypt post 1857 and engaged himself in the task of reconciliation of Muslim relationship with the British. Soon he came to be recognized as the ‘foremost loyal Mohammedan’ and was rewarded with largesse so he could establish the Muslim Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh to impart modern education to new generations of Muslims. Sir Sayyid’s personal attitude to religion was liberal: he believed individual Muslims were entitled to independent judgement with regard to religion. Yet, he did not impose his liberal views on the students of MAO College and let the ulama (person learned in Islamic legal and religious studies) teach traditional religion. His concern was the fate of the Muslim community in India. The community was qaum (nation or a people) for him, not the ummah (community of Islamic peoples) of faith.3 He had no animus against the Hindus; rather, he believed the two communities could and should live together peacefully as religious communities. At the same time, he also believed that there was no possibility that these two communities could unitedly constitute an overarching nation. How far his belief in the impossibility of political

26  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

unity between the Hindus and the Muslims was the product of the influence of Theodore Beck, the young British principal of MAO College, remains controversial. But there is no doubt that Sayyid Ahmed considered Muslim relation with the Raj as of utmost importance, and that Hindu-Muslim unity would be prejudicial to it without doing any good for the Muslims. That was why he argued that Muslims should keep away from the Indian National Congress. The Hindus and the Muslims could not have a common political destiny. He believed that the interests of the Muslim community would suffer if universal franchise was adopted. ‘One man one vote’ was inappropriate for multi-religious India. Some form of separate electorate was essential for these two communities, for ‘how can the Mohammadan guard his interests’ when ‘there will be four votes of the Hindu to every one vote for the Mohammadan’?4 No matter how reductionist these arguments were—for they reduced an entire community to an individual—he was able to convince Lord Ripon that Muslims should have separate nomination for local self-government bodies.5 Sir Sayyid’s belief in the autonomy of the Indian Muslim community also led him to reject the idea that the Khalifa’s authority extended to the Indian Muslims. His position was, therefore, clearly a modernist communitarian one: the Community had to be recovered through alliance with the British as much as through modern education, development of scientific temper and claims to rights of minority protection. In his view, there was a fundamental clash between Hindu and Muslim interests such that there was no political common ground between these communities, which was why the presence of the British was so essential. The Muslims in India would have to recover their community within India, not resorting to any form of pan-Islamism or appeals to ummah or by looking towards the Ottoman Caliphate for psychological succour, for that might lead them into problems with the British. It is indeed true that Sir Sayyid’s modernist communitarian approach to the Muslim problem in the last decades of the nineteenth

The History  /  27

century provided a new perspective for the Muslims in India for reassessing their position in post-Mutiny India and to relocate themselves in relation to the two other forces, namely, the British and the Hindus. It was indeed less anti-Hindu than pro-British. Yet it is also true that such communitarianism suffered from all the confusion that communitarian thought contained. By looking upon the community as an end in itself and ruling out the possibility of internal heterogeneity or polyvocality on the one hand and by leaving out any possibility of its transcendence into something larger, it subordinates the individual to the community while, at the same time, it leaves open the space for transcribing the community itself into a nation at an opportune moment and by deft hands. Although in the years immediately following his death (1898), his ideas came to be sidetracked, as we will see below, it must be admitted that he was able to provide an unshakable core to the construction of the self-image of the vast majority of Muslims in India till 1947.

Alternative Imaginings Powerful Muslim rulers of India never looked towards the Khalifa either as a source of religious guidance or of political legitimacy. In fact, the Mughal emperors claimed the status of the Khalifa for themselves, and there was no question of subservience to the Ottoman Turks. Yet, by the time the Caliphate was in crisis during the second decade of the twentieth century, large sections of the Indian Muslim community unlike any other Muslims outside of India felt impelled to join their destiny with that of the Khalifa.6 With the fall of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of British rule, many Muslims in India, depending upon their geographical and social location and on the local configuration of inter-community relations, lost power, status and economic resources or became apprehensive that such losses might happen to them soon.7 For them British rule represented expansion of Christian power at the cost of Islam, creating confusion and loss of self-esteem among the Muslims

28  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

in India. It became both meaningful and psychologically compensatory for them to identify themselves with the remaining great seat of Islamic power, namely, the Caliphate in Ottoman Turkey. Therefore, running parallel to Sir Sayyid’s modernist communitarian approach to the Muslim problem in India, another line of defence was building up within the Muslim community, which was to go beyond the borders of India and to think of Indian Muslims as part and parcel of a pan-Islamic community with the Khalifa at its head. The presence of this line of thinking made many Muslims question Sir Sayyid’s strategy of unalloyed loyalty to the British from the beginning. Yet the conflict between these two approaches to the construction of Muslim communal self did not come to a head, nor did the British feel threatened by pan-Islamic tendencies because these two parallel lines were joined by the British policy of friendliness towards Turkey until the close of the nineteenth century. Rather, early on, during their imperial conflicts with the French in India or even at the time of the Mutiny, the British were in the habit of looking towards the Khalifa for utilizing Indian Muslims’ deference for him by asking him to advise the Muslims in India to remain loyal and friendly to the British. Raising funds by the Muslims in India to help Turkey in her wars with European powers and the British policy of giving importance to Turkey and keeping the Ottoman empire floating to hold Tsarist expansionism in check were mutually consistent. Therefore, such pan-Islamic feelings among Muslims in India did not conflict with British interests. The source of a more consistently anti-British pan-Islamism was Jamaluddin al-Asadabadi ‘al-Afghani’ who was in India between 1857 and 1865 and who again visited India in 1879 for three years. His panIslamism was of a more civilizational sort, arguing that Indian Muslims were an essential part of Dar al-Islam with the Turkish Caliphate as its centre. Deriding Sir Sayyid’s pro-British stance as servitude to colonial power, he insisted on reassertion of Muslim identity and solidarity for recovering political and cultural independence.8 While he did influence a number of first-rate Muslim leaders in the late nineteenth

The History  /  29

and early twentieth centuries, like Maulana Shibli Nu’mani, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Mohamed Ali, Mohammad Iqbal, Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, etc., his ideas were considerably eclectic. While he advocated civilizational mobilization of the Muslims against Christian Europe, he also advised Indian Muslims to draw inspiration from India’s ancient past; if he appealed to pan-Islamic sentiments based on Muslim identity and the ‘mystery of the hadith [a collection of traditions containing the sayings or the actions of the Prophet]’, he also kept open the possibility of Muslim collaboration with the Hindus for national consolidation based on territorial identity for the purpose of removing foreign (Christian/European) domination. For many, in the immediate future, Afghani’s ideas constituted the political agenda of the Khilafat Movement in India.9 Two major centres of Islamic scholarship in India, the Deoband and the Firangi Mahal, occupied a sort of middle ground between Sir Sayyid’s Westernized Islamic communitarianism on the one hand and pan-Islamic religiosity of ‘al-Afghani’ on the other. Both of these schools were emphatic about guiding the Muslims in India at a time of confusion and drift by restoring their lost pride through revitalization of their religious core. Although Firangi Mahal traced its origins back to the time of the Prophet, its present incarnation in India began with Aurangzeb’s grant of a haveli in Lucknow belonging to a French merchant; hence called Firangi Mahal. It has been mainly a family enterprise, although in the twentieth century Abdul Bari introduced some formal structures into it, and its unique contribution has been to provide the basic Islamic curriculum for teaching in madrasas throughout India, called the dars-e-nizamiya. Historically, it combined Sunni and Sufi traditions and also remained open for a long time to Hindu mythologies and practices. Towards the end of the nineteenth century with the Ottoman Empire in trouble, leaders of Firangi Mahal began to visualize an apocalyptic clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity. With the beginning of the twentieth century, however, it redirected itself to conceptualize India as a battleground

30  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

between the Hindus and the Muslims, and some among the Firangi Mahalis found in Sir Sayyid’s initiative the true course for the Muslims in India. Whether it was Abd al-Khaliq or Abdul Bari, Firangi Mahal’s vision was captured as much by pan-Islamism as by demonization of the Hindus.10 The Dar al-Ulum Deoband founded in 1867 in the north-western part of UP was based on the tradition of Shah Waliullah (1703–62), the founder of the Delhi madrasa which was destroyed during the Mutiny. It was committed to the reform of the traditional curriculum and reinvigoration of the Islamic social order. It rejected the other Waliullahi tradition of violent opposition to infidel rule.11 As an academic institution, it was open-minded and adopted many features of English institutions. At the same time, it avoided government patronage to remain independent. While Deoband had no principled objection to cooperation with the Hindus, in fact like Aligarh, it decided not to participate in Congress affairs. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, differences developed between Maulana Hafiz Muhammad Ahmad and Mahmud al-Hasan aka Shaikh al-Hind. While the former wanted the Deoband to remain a scholarly institution concentrating on Islamic theology and the hadith, the latter insisted on reviving the more militant Waliullahi tradition. This ultimately led al-Hasan during the War to conspire for Turkish aid and Afghan invasion for a rather immature attempt to end Christian rule in India.12 Briefly then, despite differences of opinion and approach within each of them, both Firangi Mahal and the Deoband generally believed that an autonomous Indian Muslim community could be built on the ground of universal Islamic teaching: that is, Sayyidian goal to be achieved through al-Afghani’s means. The Deobandis also believed that such a religiously grounded community of Muslims could indeed join hands with the Hindus for achieving common political goals. A prominent line in Deobandi thinking was to conceptualize the Muslims in India as constituting a millat (faith or a nation) within the Indian qaum.

The History  /  31

While these four major streams of thinking as well as minor ones represented by the likes of the Barelwis or the Nadwat al-‘ulama for the rejuvenation of the Muslims in India crisscrossed each other, their novelty lay in that all of them were agreed on one point: that the Muslims must be thought of as a distinct community founded on their confessional identity. If for Sir Sayyid it was mainly dictated by political reasons, for the others it was necessary from both the cultural and religious points of view. And the ulama here had a special role to play. Through preaching and teaching and the establishment of madrasas, and through issuing of fatwas, the ulama of different schools began to spread themselves wider and deeper into the Indo-Muslim society. In spreading their activities and influence, the ulama was ironically aided by the fact that the removal of revenue-free grants by the British compelled them to offer some services to the society so that the society, instead of the government, could subsidize the ulama. Francis Robinson has shown how the ulama began to police the boundaries of behaviour of all Muslims so that their community could remain distinctly different from the world of their Christian rulers and, at the same time, could ‘champion community interests against Hindus’.13 On the foundation of the Nadwat al-‘ulama, Shibli Nu’mani of Aligarh fame declared his wish to see that the entire ulama join the Nadwa which ‘would then be so powerful that the entire Muslim community will be governed by its injunctions’.14 And when the Jam’yat al‘ulama-yi Hind was founded in 1919, its declared aim was ‘to organize the Muslim community and launch a programme for its moral and social reform’.15 While all these led to the growth of a very fortified community consciousness among the Muslims, there was no consensus regarding the strategy to be adopted for realizing their communal aspirations. If the Aligarhis advocated joining hands with the British, numerous others were urging the Muslims to fall back on the ummah of faith against Christian imperialism; if the Deobandis were agreeable to working with the Hindus on political issues, the Aligarhis were permissive of Hindu–Muslim cooperation only in social matters but

32  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

not on political issues; the Barelwis and the Firangi Mahalis of Abdul Bari’s ilk, on the other hand, would not allow any joint endeavour with the Hindus. Looked at in this way, the growth of community consciousness among the Muslims was not so much the work of the census or official statistics as of the perceived ground realities defined by imperial presence of the British and the modernization of the Hindus. With the onset of the twentieth century, a new group of leaders emerged among the Muslims who had to respond to these issues in a fast-changing context. If there was some promise of a more unified and well-thought-out leadership taking control of the issues on occasions, ultimately the issues overtook the leaders and the mutually conflicting nature of the issues rent the leadership into smithereens. The heating up of Hindu–Muslim relations in the 1890s due to the Hindi-Urdu controversy (arising out of the UP government’s decision to recognize Hindi along with Urdu as a judicial language in the United Provinces) and the cow slaughter riots somewhat abated by the turn of the century and with the developments in the Near East, it gradually started to be replaced by increasing tension between the Muslims and the British. But nothing was a unilinear development. If the Bengal Partition of 190516 had pleased the Muslims, they became uncomfortable with the rise of the anti-Partition movement. Further, in Morley’s budget speech in 1906, there were hints that the government could be more accommodative towards Congress desires. In Aligarh, Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Sir Sayyid’s successor as honorary secretary of the Aligarh College, was pressing upon MAO Principal, Mr Archbold, to do something for the Muslims to prevent the younger generation from joining the Congress wholesale. There was also the vital need to safeguard Muslim interests in the upcoming political reforms. The result was the Simla deputation to the Viceroy, Lord Minto. Minto’s response to the deputation was reassuring: he said, ‘The Mohammedan community may rest assured that their political rights and interests as a community will be safeguarded by any administrative organization with which I am concerned.’ Within three months the Muslim League was born. This development was conditional upon

The History  /  33

an explicit Muslim commitment to the government that the League would not do anything without government approval and that it would strengthen the feeling of loyalty among the Muslims to the British. At its first meeting in December 1906, the Muslim League proclaimed as one of its objectives, ‘to promote among the Mussalmans of India, feelings of loyalty to the British Government, and to remove any misconceptions that may arise as to the intentions of the Government with regard to any of its measures.’17 To Mohsin-ul-Mulk and men of his thinking, this was nothing but carrying forward the ideas of Sir Sayyid who firmly believed that Muslim political interest was different from those of the Hindus and it could be best protected through collaboration with the British. But very soon there emerged a group of radical leaders, many of whom were products of Aligarh and yet they came to believe Aligarh produced Muslim youths good for government jobs only.18 Within a few years of the League’s foundation, on a note of loyalty to the British, such leaders as these took control of the Muslim League. They included men like the Raja of Mahmudabad, Wazir Hasan, Mazhurul Huq, Salimullah Beg and Mohamed Ali. They thought they were Indians first and Muslims second. They were enthusiastic about joining hands with the Congress for political action. And Congressman Mohammed Ali Jinnah, not a Muslim League member till then, also agreed to join the League when the League adopted in 1912 as its goal ‘self-government suitable to India’.19 For a time these youthful leaders thought they would be able to effectively control the League’s rudder and to navigate it safely side by side with the Congress to achieve a common political goal. But that was not to be, for, as the international situation became more complicated, they had less opportunity for following a clear-cut pronationalist course.

Separate Electorates The Indian National Congress, having become emaciated by the split with the ‘Extremists’ at Surat in 1907, started to warm up to the Muslim League from around 1909. The nationalists within the League

34  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

were similarly working towards a rapprochement with the Congress. Wazir Hassan, taking the lead, argued for a change in the League’s objectives and Jinnah, attending the League Council meeting in 1912 at Bankipur, strongly supported it. In the face of opposition from the conservative Muslims (around this time the younger leaders like Mohamed Ali pressurized pro-British leaders like Aga Khan to give up his lifelong presidency of the League and Amir Ali, another pro-British leader, to resign his secretary-ship of the Red Crescent in London),20 the new and the younger generation of leaders persuaded the League Council to adopt the ‘attainment of self-government’ resolution and in 1913, in the annual session of the League, this was passed. Jinnah, though not a League member till then, played a crucial role in these developments and subsequently, being sponsored by Mohamed Ali and Wazir Hasan, joined the League with the expressed purpose of building a bridge between the League and the Congress. The Congress, on its part, expressed ‘warm appreciation’ of the League’s commitment to self-government in its 1913 session in Karachi and ‘most heartily’ welcomed ‘the hope expressed by the League that leaders of different communities will make every endeavour to find a modus operandi for joint and concerted action on all questions of national good’.21 At issue was the question of separate electorate for the Muslims introduced by the Morley–Minto Reforms of 1909 (originally the reforms had proposed reservation of Muslim seats with a system of proportional representation but it had to be replaced by separate electorates scheme under pressure from the Muslim League) and the Congress’ opposition to it. Jinnah was opposed to the idea of reservation for the Muslims in principle and thought that if qualified Muslims were available, they could have adequate share automatically; yet he conceded that if mixed electorates that he advocated were unacceptable to the Muslim community, ‘we must resort to communal representation’.22 At the same time, it must have been clear to the Muslim leadership that for its smooth implementation, it was necessary that separate electorate scheme was made agreeable to the Congress.

The History  /  35

Historians often argue that one of the important reasons why the Muslim League moved towards unity with the Congress at this time was Muslim disappointment with the Raj for the latter’s revocation of the Bengal Partition in December 1911, which for many Muslims was an indication of the victory of Hindu agitational politics. But it does not make sense that this ‘Hindu victory’, which was seen to be at the cost of the Muslims, would lead the Muslims towards joining hands with the victors. Certainly, Partition revocation had antagonized the Muslims towards the government, but it was unlikely that, given the issue, the Muslims would be led to endear the Congress. It is more reasonable to see this rapprochement as being born out of the need for a common stand felt by both the Muslim League and the Congress on the issue of separate electorates which, it was supposed, could produce a platform for united political action. In fact, Jinnah’s closeness to Gokhale at this time (‘disciple–teacher relationship’, as Wells calls it23) probably was an important factor influencing Gokhale to issue a public statement, within a month-and-a-half of Jinnah’s, commending separate electorate scheme: Supplementary elections should be held for minorities which numerically or otherwise are important enough to need special representation, and these should be confined to members of the minorities only…unless the feeling of soreness in the minds of minorities is removed…advance towards a real union will be retarded rather than promoted.24

Thereafter, the only task left for Jinnah was to convince the conservative Muslim League leaders about the need for rapprochement with the Congress and for Gokhale to push the Congress towards buying separate electorates scheme. It does not mean that Jinnah or other ‘nationalist’ Muslim leaders were insincere in their approach. They most likely were hoping for a long-term and ultimate gain for the Indian movement for freedom out of this communal unity; yet the immediate (separate electorate) was no less important than the ultimate (communal unity) for these leaders.

36  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Jinnah had to spend a lot of energy between 1913 and 1915 to bring the Muslim League and the Congress together. He, along with Wazir Hasan and other younger leaders of the Muslim League, was trying to convince the older leaders of Sir Sayyid’s tradition that working with the Congress need not be harmful to Muslim interests and that the two organizations should meet in the same city to facilitate unity. As the Congress decided to have its annual session in Bombay in 1915, Jinnah, with the help of Wazir Hasan, who was the League secretary at the time, wanted to have the Muslim League session in Bombay as well. Indeed, Jinnah succeeded in the end and Mazhar-ul-Haque, the president of the League session, acknowledged that without Jinnah’s ‘exertions’, they could not have met in Bombay.25 The backdrop of this achievement was a compromise between the older and the younger Muslim leaders by which the Muslim League agreed to pass a resolution of loyalty to the government. With the help of Lord Willingdon, the Governor of Bombay, some patchwork compromise was thus arrived at between the older and the younger leaders of the Muslim League and the League session was finally held in Bombay at the same time as the Congress meet. Yet, the compromise was too thin and lacked sincerity and a schism could not be avoided during the League sessions. The older leaders, unconvinced about the virtue of bringing the Muslim League and the Congress together on a common political platform, boycotted the meet, and only the younger leaders were left to take care of the unity in question.26 Throughout 1916, negotiations took place between the Congress and the League on the issue of separate electorates. Jinnah appealed to the ‘Hindu brethren’ to try ‘to win the confidence and trust of the Mohammedans who are, after all, in the minority in the country’ and said, if they insisted on separate electorates, ‘no resistance should be shown to their demand’. He even conceded that this could be only a temporary arrangement to be ultimately replaced by joint electorate.27 Within the Congress, the lead for compromise was given by Motilal Nehru and Tej Bahadur Sapru and with support from Annie Besant, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (who came back to the Congress after Gokhale’s

The History  /  37

death in 1915, committing himself to work within the framework of constitutional politics) and Bhupendranath Basu, they prevailed over the more circumspect Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya to get the separate electorate proposal accepted.28 Consequently, the Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League was born. However, whether the Lucknow Pact (by which the Congress accepted the provision for separate electorate for the Muslims) could provide a strong basis for united political action remained an open question. Doubts about the efficacy of the separate electorate arrangement for national unity remained in the minds of many Congress leaders. On the part of the Muslim League, several contradictory steps were taken to achieve this agreement in the name of communal unity. For instance, the self-government goal earlier adopted by the League or the newfound ‘nationalist’ position of bringing the Muslims away from the British, as distinguished from the position of Sir Sayyid, became compromised when in 1915 the younger ‘nationalist’ Muslim leadership agreed to adopt the resolution on loyalty to the government. Second, it was unclear whether the Muslim League or the Muslim leaders sincerely believed that the separate electorate scheme was temporary and that in future, as Jinnah had indicated, they would make a genuine attempt to impress upon their rank and file to accept joint electorate. Finally, the break between the young and old leaders of the Muslim League remained intact so much so that the Lucknow Pact amounted to be ‘an agreement between a relatively small group of Muslims who controlled the Muslim League in 1915 and 1916 and the Congress leadership’.29 Soon after the Lucknow Pact, the leadership of this small group of young Muslims was aborted by the older traditional leaders.30 In 1919, Wazir Hasan and the Raja of Mahmudabad resigned from the League and the League’s role in Muslim politics came to be drastically reduced.31 The separate electorate scheme, accepted by both the Congress and the Muslim League through the Lucknow Pact, rather than creating a granite foundation for communal unity was left to facilitate permanent political disunity between these two communities.

38  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Growth of the Khilafat Movement From the end of the First World War to the middle of the decade of the 1920s, the main thrust of Muslim political activity was around the Khilafat Movement. Although the Khilafat agitation was about restoring Islamic Holy Lands under the Caliph and therefore it had pan-Islamic concerns at its heart, much more importantly, it turned out to be a movement of the Indian Muslims for founding their identity as a community on the bedrock of grass-roots support from the Muslim masses and to help them relate themselves as such a community to the Hindus, primarily, and to the British. That is to say, the movement was based on a peculiar mix of religion and politics in which the ulama had played an important role. As the eminent Khilafat historian Gail Minault said, ‘The Khilafat movement was primarily a campaign by a particular group of Indian Muslim leaders to unite their community politically by means of religious and cultural symbols meaningful to all strata of that community.’32 We have been talking about the development of the Muslims in India as a community and of projecting them on to Indian politics with a set of exclusive interests and rights. It is true, as widely pointed out, that the loss of political power and being placed under colonial rule and the fact of gradually trailing behind the Hindus with respect to temporal attainments gave the Muslims bitter feelings. But it is not so readily understandable why such feelings came to be targeted towards the Hindus. One could agree with Afzal Iqbal when he says, ‘the dropping of Persian as the official language in 1835…rendered, as it were, a whole nation illiterate’33 if one thinks of literacy as linguistic fitness for government jobs. But the language policy obviously followed Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education’, which was no more friendly to Sanskrit or other Indian vernaculars than to Persian. Neither could the Hindus be faulted for taking advantage of the new education policy and the fruits it offered. ‘When Hindu clerks were promoted to posts in which they could give orders, when even policemen were chosen because they were good at their

The History  /  39

books, it was clearly time for Muslims to reconsider their attitude to the new education’, says Afzal Iqbal.34 This was a good point, but to consider such developments as these as an offence on the part of the Hindus towards the Muslims is to work on the assumption that the Hindus as a community should forever remain under the Muslims as a community. Perhaps such an understanding of the intercommunity relation was not shared by the Muslim masses till the eighteenth century. As Francis Robinson says, ‘That Muslim identity would become a prime theatre of activity did not seem likely in the eighteenth century.’35 Therefore, it would be interesting to look into the trajectory of the growth of community consciousness among the Muslims in India which, by the twentieth century, became strong enough to communalize politics. The history of the growth of community consciousness among the Muslims in India is a very interesting subject. A brief sojourn to that history may not be out of place here. Richard Eaton shows, for instance, that whether it was medieval Deccan or Bengal, while the religious identities remained intact between the Hindus and the Muslims, they did not automatically lead to political community construction or communalization of intercommunity relations. Eaton refuses to accept that a ‘Maginot Line’ divided the Vijaynagar and the Bahmani kingdoms in the south and the north of the Deccan plateau. Such ideas were part of a rhetoric created by Persian chroniclers which later on ‘took on a life of its own and hardened into the Maginot Line that today continues to divide Deccani historiography into a “Hindu” south and a “Muslim” north…’ and ‘has prevented more recent generations from appreciating the degree to which both Vijaynagar and its northern neighbours were integrated into a multi-ethnic, trans-regional universe knit together by shared political norms, cultural values and aesthetic tastes.’ Regarding Bengal, he says: Islam in Bengal absorbed so much local culture and became so profoundly identified with the delta’s long-term process of agrarian expansion that the cultivating classes never seem to have regarded it as ‘foreign’—even though some Muslim and Hindu literati and foreign observers did, and still do.36

40  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Francis Robinson seems to be agreeing to this when he says that even though the ideal was that ‘Muslims should form a distinct religio-political community…almost from the time that Muslims first entered India it had not been possible for them to live as true members of the umma.’ He says medieval Muslim regimes in India could not survive without Hindu support in the form of taxes, manpower and political authority, making the problem of reconciling ideal with fact very hard: the ‘ideal was distorted greatly beneath the weighty logic of power’.37 It is difficult and indeed impractical to try to look at Hindu–Muslim relations in India over a thousand years in terms of any fixed type. It would be trivial to say that the relationship was complex and variegated over time and across regions. But an important fact that stands out is that while there was a consistent pressure from the ulama to define India in terms of the communal divide for state policy, the Muslim state under different dynasties had equally consistently resisted such efforts as unrealistic and probably dangerous too. The holders of state power had no misconception about the conditions and constraints of maintaining a Muslim state in an overwhelmingly Hindu India. Historian Satish Chandra has made this point very succinctly. When a set of orthodox theologians approached Iltutmish to impress upon him that since the Hindus had no revealed book, their only choice was between Islam and death, the Sultan had argued back that the number of Muslims in India was too small, ‘like salt in a dish of food’. If such a policy is followed, they may unite and rise in revolt and ‘we will be too few to suppress it’. To console them, the Sultan had added that such a policy could be tried only in the future if and when the number of Muslims grows. Iltutmish also cited the fact that even Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, considered a hero of Islam, did not follow such a policy.38 Chandra cites several examples, more or less well known, of close Hindu association with the Muslim state in India, both under the Sultanate and the Mughals. We need not go into them. But Chandra makes a number of important points in this connection. First, for

The History  /  41

instance, is the fact that as the realm expanded, there was need for more men at both the lower and intermediate levels of administration, for which there was no more satisfactory solution, as both the Khaljis and the Tughlaks under the Sultanate and the Mughal Emperor Akbar found out, than associating the Hindus in large numbers. Second, as both Ziauddin Barani, the leading historian and ideologue of the Sultanate in India and Abul Fazl in Akbar’s court show, the idea of a hierarchical society was accepted and supported in Muslim India which led the sultans and the emperors to have greater trust in highborn Hindus than in low-born (na-asal) Muslims. Despite exceptions, this was broadly the case. This explains why the Rajputs found greater acceptance in Mughal courts than Shivaji and his folks. Third, there was no confusion about the relative importance of the political ruler on the one hand and the ulama or the theologians on the other, regarding the conduct of the state. As Chandra says, ‘Political theory regarding the state which developed in West Asia following the disintegration of the Abbasid Caliphate steadily raised the position of the Sultan.’39 The initial distinction between the political and the spiritual authorities of the king and the Khalifa, respectively, gave way to upholding the authority of the ruler to enforce the sharia. Chandra refers to alGhazali (d. 1111) who had adopted the Aristotelian idea of the worthy king as one who possessed ‘knowledge, forebearance, compassion, clemency, generosity and the like’. Later writers put greater weight on political expediency and admitted the right of the ruler to make laws not sanctioned by sharia. Delhi Sultans were familiar with such ideas which claimed that political rule was about the possible as much as about justice in the secular realm and Alauddin Khalji was well known for asserting them in relation to the clerics. Such ideas were resplendent in the thought of Abul Fazl as also in the Akhlaq Namas of the period. They emphasized the key role of the ruler in preventing sectarian strife and in assuming the role of the true representative of God on earth having the undisturbed authority for management of his people.40

42  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Fourth, Chandra points out the status and power of the theologians in this context. We have already mentioned Iltutmish’s efforts to keep the theologians at bay, for their advice was a sure way to political ruin and, therefore, totally unacceptable. In fact, the theologians, as Chandra informs us, not only were not considered to be ‘partners in the kingdom’ but even if they had some advisory role, in popular perception they were no more than ‘hangers on’. In Balban’s words, they were ‘greedy rogues’, and the poet Amir Khusrau ‘considered them corrupt, arrogant and vain, and time-servers’. A similar assessment of the theologians continued down to the times of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. When Aurangzeb began to provide greater access to the ulama in the affairs of the state, it was opposed by a section of the nobility. Mahabat Khan, a trusted noble, had the guts to write to the Emperor expressing shock at the fact that experienced and able officers of the state are deprived of all trust and confidence while firm reliance is placed on the hypocritical mystics and emptyheaded ulama, to rely upon them is neither in accordance with the sharia, nor suited to the ways of the world.41

Such negative views of the nobility and the ideologues about the clerics largely insulated the political decision-making apparatus from their interference. Orthodox saints like Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi failed to generate support among the Mughal nobility, which remained committed to secular ethos.42 The historical evidence cited above goes to show, then, that while at the popular level the two communities were interacting closely giving rise to a culture and value mix of different proportions, at the level of politics and the state, a very conscious effort was made by the holders of political power to dissociate themselves from the ulama’s views regarding intercommunity relations and Islamization of the Indian polity. The inference that can be drawn from such evidence is that it was very frustrating for the theologians that despite nearly one thousand years of Muslim rule in India, they failed to implement their political

The History  /  43

agenda. And it so happened because they were confined to a corner by the Muslim rulers themselves who valued their own political future more, which lay in maintaining social stability and religious amity, than the ulamas’ communal commitment. This background is very important for understanding the role of the ulama in India in the nineteenth century and beyond. As the nineteenth century dawned, it was pretty much clear that the Muslim state in India was a thing of the past. While it was bad news, it was not entirely bad news for the ulama, for they reasoned that the Muslims failed to hold on to state power because they did not live like Muslims. Now the ulama had a free hand, at least not constrained by the temporal demands of Muslim rulers, to set things right for the Muslims in Hindu-dominated India. This led to a century-and-a-half period of what Francis Robinson has labelled ‘great creativity in developing new ideas and in fashioning new institutional frameworks’. Robinson has deftly shown43 that through institutions such as the Firangi Mahal, the Deoband, Ahl-i Hadith and their associates on the one hand and the use of the printing press and journalism and the establishment of madrasas on the other, the ulama was successful in ‘gaining a major constituency in Indo-Muslim society’ such that by the beginning of the twentieth century, they emerged as the ‘community champions’ taking upon themselves the responsibility of advocating ‘Islamic causes in the public sphere’. Whether protesting against the government for demolition of a part of the surrounding area of Kanpur Mosque in 1913 or addressing the Secretary of State Edwin Montague in 1917 on the proposed reforms, or protesting the role of the Hindus in the Shahabad riots, the ulama patently made their influence clear. Such also was the case with the Khilafat issue. The growth of the Khilafat Movement was tied to the Muslim uneasiness vis-à-vis the British rule in India which had been fuelled by the Sepoy Mutiny and its aftermath during the middle of the nineteenth century. This uneasiness cannot be claimed to have been equally felt universally by the Muslims in India, yet its most frequent articulators

44  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

were the ulama. For them, to compensate for the loss of power in India, it was necessary that Indian Muslims should connect them with some larger Islamic issue and undertake some commitment to promote a true Islamic cause. The developments in the Near East provided them with an opportunity. The ulama of the Firangi Mahal were the most enthusiastic in taking the lead. Abdul Bari’s role in the Khilafat Movement is well known. But much before Bari, his grandfather, Maulana Abdur Razzak, took a great interest in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, which he found gave an opportunity to the Indian Muslims to expiate their shortcomings and for living as good Muslims: The weakness displayed by the Muslims in the Mutiny resulted in the calamities that followed. If you want to compensate for these and to be rescued from these calamities, you should help Islam and an Islamic country. Thus it is possible that Allah will forgive your past mistakes.44

With Ottoman Turkey in trouble, there was an opportunity at hand. Razzak founded the Majlis Muid ul-Islam for generating support for Turkey in terms of men and money. His grandson Abdul Bari thus imbibed from his family a strong feeling for Turkey and for the Caliphate. With the beginning of the Balkan wars, Bari became active in collecting funds for Turkey and for sending a medical mission there. Such activities brought him in contact with Westernized (that is, English-educated and exposed to Western culture and manners) Muslims, like the Ali brothers, Mohamed and Shaukat, who would become iconic figures for the Khilafat Movement later. Around this time, Mohamed Ali, probably on his own, was also becoming agitated about the developments in the Near East. For, as he confesses in his Autobiography, he was contemplating suicide in the ‘autumn of 1912’ when he heard the Bulgarians were advancing upon Turkey.45 A little later, in December 1912, Bari was introduced to the Alis.46 The association between them would be long and an intense one.

The History  /  45

The Ali brothers were not particularly religious till then; but Maulana Abdul Bari impressed them so much that soon they would become his religious disciples. Very soon, in 1913, Abdul Bari founded a new organization for the ‘strictly religious’ purpose of protecting the Holy places of Islam, the Anjuman-e-Khuddam-e-Ka’aba, and got the Ali brothers involved in it. Other big names in this organization included Dr Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari and Hakim Ajmal Khan. The Anjuman was not only Abdul Bari’s big success for as long as it was active, it in fact was the most important organizational step led and guided by the ulama of the Firangi Mahal towards the Khilafat. Despite their unease regarding British rule in India, the ulama’s position was not inherently anti-British. Even if some among them would think that under a Christian power, India had become Dar ul-harb (house of war), generally speaking, the ulama were more concerned about creating a strong community identity among all strata of the Muslims in India. Whether it was the fate of Turkey as the last Islamic bastion or the future of the Caliph as the head of the Faith, the ulama’s hope was that these would sufficiently motivate all Muslims in India to come together and to ponder over their own future as part of the ummah or, more immediately, as a community in India vis-à-vis the majority Hindus. In this sense, there lurked a convergence between what the ulama had in mind and the community consciousness that Sir Sayyid Ahmad tried to promote, though by different means. A new band of ‘Westernized’ Muslim leaders like Mohamed Ali had considerable sympathy for Turkey, independently of the ulama. But they also found the strategy of the ulama—using religious symbols and language—as more effective means for appealing to the Muslim masses than the method of modern education advocated by Sir Sayyid. Therefore, when in the early part of the second decade of the twentieth century, the Alis were ‘capturing’ Aligarh,47 they in fact were not fighting Sir Sayyid’s ideology of the community, but only trying to expand their own base of support.

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By the first-decade-and-a-half of the twentieth century, Aligarh had produced a generation of young, educated, informed and ambitious Muslims, many of whom were capable of leadership. Mohamed Ali himself was Oxford-trained while Abul Kalam Azad was born and educated in Mecca and then came under the influence of Professor Shibli Numani of Aligarh. Many like Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, Shuaib Qureshi and Syed Mahmud were Aligarh graduates and lawyers. Similarly, Wilayat Ali and Hasrat Mohani were also Aligarh graduates and the former a satirist.48 For these people, bursting with energy and ideas, capable of emotionally mobilizing people through speeches and through founding and editing newspapers with large circulations, Sir Sayyid’s prescription of the ‘Aligarh path’ of loyalty to and cooperation with the British could not have much appeal. The events around them like the language controversy in the United Provinces (placing the Devnagari script on an equal footing with Urdu by the United Provinces’ Lt Governor, Anthony MacDonnell) or the government’s negative stance towards the demand for a Muslim university in Aligarh or developments in the Near East were not propitious either for making such a strategy palatable to them. Mushirul Hasan has elaborately discussed the myriad influences operating on them and the varieties of issues their attention was being directed to.49 They were faced with many contradictory questions: should they move towards the Congress and take the Muslim League along to take a nationalist stand or should they move with the ulama and share their pan-Islamist enthusiasm? Should they try to build bridges with the Hindus and promote intercommunal unity for a common political future or should they keep the British option open as Sir Sayyid had so insistently advised? Should they consider themselves as Indians first or should they prioritize the interest of their community and consider themselves as Muslim first? The problem was that their enthusiasm for action was not always matched by their maturity of reflection. They were not very clear in their minds as to what course would be the best. Hence, they ended up doing all of these and allowed themselves to be buffeted by events.

The History  /  47

Mohamed Ali was the most remarkable among them and also the most volatile. He valued reason, yet preferred to make a strong emotional appeal to his audience. He had strong anti-colonial traits in his thinking, yet could not productively work them out. He, along with his mentor, Maulana Abdul Bari, had developed strong attachment for Turkey and antipathy towards the British policy of Turkey, yet they shied away from taking a consistently anti-British position in the matter. Not only did he and Dr Ansari send a cable to the Turks in August 1914, telling them that they should not join anti-British coalition and remain neutral in the War but got the text of their message approved by the British Indian government. And Mohamed Ali influenced his mentor Abdul Bari to send a similar cable to the Caliph as well on 31 August 1914, urging him ‘either to support Britain or to keep neutral in this War’.50 He was aggrieved by the annulment of Bengal Partition, yet advised the Muslims to accept it. He accepted separate electorate, but considered it, like Jinnah, as temporary. Despite his anti-colonialism, Mohamed Ali was deeply anglophile and Westernized; yet in order to show their religious allegiance, both brothers changed from Savile Row suits to flowing robes with crescent badge of the Anjuman, to growing beards and appreciating being called ‘Maulanas’.51 As the War began and Britain attacked Turkey by the end of 1914, she also felt it prudent to declare that this attack had nothing to do with religion and the Holy places of Islam would not be touched. The declaration had its desired effect: both the Muslim public and the ulama in large numbers pleaded fidelity to the Raj and the latter began issuing fatwas of loyalty.52 Under the circumstance, the government found it too risky to keep the volatile Alis, who (as also their mentor, Abdul Bari) were not entirely convinced by the British proclamation on the non-religious character of the War, free and hence they interned the Ali brothers under the Defence of India Act, confining them to Chhindwara in the Central Provinces. The stage was set for the Khilafat Movement after the War.

48  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Notes and References 1. B. R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1989), 64. 2. It could be interesting to read Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath written around the same time as a mirror Hindu representation of Sir Sayyid’s ideas. 3. Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding the Muslim Mind (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1987), 26. 4. Cited in Afzal Iqbal, Life and Times of Mohamed Ali—An Analysis of the Hopes, Fears and Aspirations of Muslims in India from 1778 to 1931 (Delhi: Idarah-I-Adabizat-I-Delhi, 1978), 11. 5. Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding the Muslim Mind, 36. 6. The fact that the Khalifa came to occupy a quite different place in the Muslim mind in India only during the early twentieth century is also evident from the fact that W. S. Blunt was told on the eve of his visit to India that ‘he should not say anything against the sultan of Turkey because his name was now venerated in India as it has not formerly been’ (emphasis mine). Cited in Mushirul Hasan, Islam in the Sub-continent (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), n2, 112. 7. Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1885–1930 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 5ff. As Hasan says, ‘Most Muslims had no cause to be enthused by the glory of the Mughal era or to mourn its end.’ That is to say, there was no ‘generalized’ or ‘undifferentiated’ Muslim response to the decline of Muslim power in India (Mushirul Hasan, Islam in the Sub-Continent, 40). At the same time, a psychological backsliding was probably felt more widely and intensely among the Muslims. Barbara Metcalf refers to C. A. Bayly’s oral comment that the ‘decline of the quasbah left its mark not only on the material situation of many Muslim families but also on their outlook; they feared for the fate of their class and culture’ (Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002], 91). 8. Ibid., 115ff. 9. Ibid., 116. 10. Francis Robinson, Islam, South Asia and the West (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 151–52 and ff. Also, Gail Minault,The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 32–33. 11. As Metcalf points out, ‘A fundamental tenet of his (Waliullah) work, however, had been the hope that Muslim political leadership would be restored’ (Metcalf, Islamic Revival, 46). 12. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 31.

The History  /  49 13. Robinson, Islam, South Asia, 78–79. 14. Ibid., 61. 15. Ibid., 62. 16. Bengal, with a population of 78 million, had become ‘administratively unwieldy’, yet the true motive behind partitioning Bengal was political. As Risley, the Home Secretary to the Government of India, said on 6 December 1904:

Bengal united is power. Bengal divided, will pull several different ways. That is what the Congress leaders feel: their apprehensions are perfectly correct and they form one of the great merits of the scheme…in this scheme…one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule. (Cited in Bipan Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence [New Delhi: Penguin, 1988], 125)

17. Cited in Ian Bryant Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity: Jinnah’s Early Politics (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005), 27. 18. Akbar Allahabadi’s satire reflected the hopes and aspirations of Aligarh students:

What marvels have our friends achieved, They graduated, joined Service, earned pension and passed away! (Cited in Afzal Iqbal, Life and Times of Mohamed Ali, 29)

19. Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, 29. 20. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 49–50. Soon Raja of Mahmudabad was elected president of the League. 21. Cited in Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, 31. 22. Ibid., 35. 23. Ibid., 36. 24. Cited in Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, 35–36. This statement was made in the press on 29 March 1909. Jinnah’s was made on 10 February 1909. 25. S. M. Burke and Salim Al-Din Quraishi, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: His Personality and His Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 102. 26. Ibid., 52. 27. Ibid., 53–54. 28. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya remained opposed to separate electorate and wrote to the Viceroy expressing his opposition. ‘Separate electorate, double vote and weighted representation granted to the Muslims rankled in Malaviya’s mind and affected his politics almost throughout his life’. This is claimed to be the reason why he chose to found the Hindu Mahasabha (Parmanand, Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya: A Historical Biography [Varanasi: Malaviya Adhayan Samsthan, BHU,1985], 159; U. D. Tiwari, ed., Inspiring Episodes

50  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers on Mahamana Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya, Part 1 [Varanasi: Mahamana Malaviya Foundation, 2002], 24). 29. Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, 58. 30. B. R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 101–02. 31. Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, 116. 32. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 2. 33. Afzal Iqbal, Life and Times of Mohamed Ali, 3. 34. Ibid., 4. 35. Francis Robinson, Islam, South Asia and the West (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 124. Mushirul Hasan says, ‘By the end of the nineteenth century, there was no sign of Hindus and Muslims going their separate ways’. The question, however, is not whether at a particular time (century or year or day) the two communities decided to go their separate ways; but rather whether forces were emerging and operating which could gradually catch the imagination of most Muslims to produce a particular outcome. As Hasan himself shows, by the end of the nineteenth century, Sir Sayyid insistently repeated that the Congress was no good either for India or for the Muslims and ‘significant gatherings of Muslims in Bombay endorsed’ his views. Sir Sayyid’s insistence was matched by frustration on the part of men like Badruddin Tyabji who advocated Hindu–Muslim joint political action through the Congress (Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 45, 51). That is to say that communal fault lines were already emerging in Indian society in the nineteenth century and the ulama generally were contributing to these. 36. Richard Eaton, Essays on Islam and Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 175, 274. 37. Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 186–87. 38. Satish Chandra, State, Pluralism and the Indian Historical Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 34. 39. Ibid., 36. 40. Ibid., 46. 41. Ibid., 48. 42. A similar point has been made by Satish Saberwal when he says, ‘neither the Sultanate nor the Mughals worked anything like a theocratic state’. He refers to Muzaffar Alam who says,

Both Hindus and Muslims had learnt to tolerate, if not to appreciate each other’s beliefs and practices. They had common experience in many secular activities in public, even though in private they were completely segregated, almost opposed to each other. The medieval political authorities played a crucial role in generating and promoting the process of co-existence (Satish Saberwal, ‘The Long Road to Partition’, South Asian Survey 8, no. 2 [2001]: 242, 245)

The History  /  51 43. Robinson, ‘Ulama of South Asia from 1800 to the Mid-twentieth Century’, in Islam, South Asia, 59–98. 44. Cited in Robinson, Islam and Muslim History, 152. 45. Maulana Mohamed Ali, My Life: A Fragment, edited and annotated by Mushirul Hasan (Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 76. 46. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 35. 47. Ibid., 45–46. 48. Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 62–64. 49. Ibid., Chapter 3. 50. Cited in Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, Green and Company, 1961), 28; also in Gopal Krishna, The Khilafat Movement in India: The First Phase (London: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1968), 1, fn 1; Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 37, 51. 51. Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding the Muslim Mind, 87–92; Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 50. 52. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 52.

3

The Characters: The Ali Brothers The most striking fact about the Khilafat Movement was the Hindu– Muslim beradari (brotherhood) that was evident during its course. The architects of this beradari were three characters, the Ali brothers, Mohamed and Shaukat and Mahatma Gandhi. Of the two brothers, the more mercurial was the younger Ali, Mohamed.

Mohamed Ali: Aligarh to Comrade Mohamed Ali (b. 10 December 1878) was the youngest of three brothers, Zulfiqar, Shaukat and himself. Their grandfather, Sheikh Ali Baksh, was a petty official in the Court of Rampur, a small princely state in western UP. Ali Baksh became prosperous with improvement in his fortunes when in 1859 he received a jagir (land given by the government as reward for service rendered or for other governmental purposes) with an annual income of 13,000 rupees for helping the British during the Mutiny. The Alis’ father, Abdul Ali, enjoyed the patronage of the Nawab of Rampur, but dying young he left his young widow, Abadi Bano Begum, with the responsibility of raising his children. In contrast to their father’s family, the maternal family of the Alis’ lost whatever they had acquired through the generosity of the Mughals as 52

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  53

they were involved in the jihad against the British during the Mutiny and the British confiscated their estate. Thus, the Alis had to inherit the twin legacy of collaboration and conflict with the Raj. Abadi Bano, unlike most of her kind at that time, was a woman of courage and determination. Talking about his mother, Mohamed Ali wrote: I must rigorously restrain myself, otherwise there is no knowing to what lengths I may not digress when I am on that ever congenial topic—our mother. Suffice it to say that although she was practically illiterate, as I shall presently explain, I have, in all my experience of men of all sorts of types, come across none that I could call wiser and certainly that was more truly godly and spiritual than our mother.1

Her native intelligence and wisdom told her that despite unpopularity of the action among her near ones or within her community, she must send her children to good schools to have a good education. The obvious destination was Aligarh and so Abadi Bano finally sent all her children to the school attached to the MAO College at Aligarh, despite risks of turning them into infidels. We do not know what exactly Mohamed Ali felt while he was in school. But as he remembered his school days, he was particularly sensitive about the question of religious instruction. While writing his autobiography (in 1923, while in prison in Karachi) at a mature age, he thought it necessary to express his felt resentment at the ‘godless education of the West’ he was exposed to in his earlier schools in Rampur and Bareilly. His urge for the soothing touch of his Faith was so strong that he, along with other Musalman students, despite being in the minority, was ‘consciously impelled to maintain the old pride of faith for all pleasant relations with the majority of our schoolfellows who were Hindus’.2 With regard to teaching of Faith, Mohamed Ali had a conflicting assessment of Aligarh. While he truly believed that despite his notoriety as a ‘Naturee’ (having respect for the natural sciences) Musalman, Sir Sayyid Ahmad was genuinely committed to creating ‘for young

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Musalmans a centre with true Islamic atmosphere, so that its alumni would not merely be educated and cultured men, but educated and cultured Musalmans’. At the same time, he felt that the sense of Islamic identity or communal consciousness and pride that Aligarh forged was ‘more secular than religious’ while the students, when they discussed politics at all, were ‘far more concerned with the claims of the contending communities of India than with claims of the Indian people against the British Government’.3 He did not hesitate to confess that Aligarh ‘furnished them with precious little equipment in the matter of knowledge of their faith’. He happily remembered his luck in finding out Professor Shibli Numani, the ‘one bright spot in all this Cimmerian darkness’, whose brilliant exegesis on the Quran happened to provide him with the much needed succour for his life at Aligarh.4 Be that as it may, he continued to enjoy the predominant ethos of the college, modelled after Oxford and Cambridge, cultivating English habits and tastes and nurturing the best of terms with the authorities of the college, including the principal, Theodore Beck, and sharing with his peers the limited ambition of a subordinate government job.5 But that was not to be. His ‘unexpected success’ in the B.A. examination held under Allahabad University surprised everybody including Mohamed Ali himself and convinced brother Shaukat as well as their mother that every effort must be expended to send him to England so he could get into the most coveted service in the world, the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Mohamed Ali reached England in September 1898, enrolled himself in Lincoln College at Oxford for a degree in Modern History and began trying for the ICS. But ‘an English spring and a young man’s more or less foolish fancy’ (the details of which remain unexplained) stood between him and the ICS. So he had to return to India four years later with a degree in Modern History alright, but missing the ICS. At Oxford, he had kept up his sensitivity towards his Faith. His honours course on Modern History gave him, in his words, ‘an excellent opportunity of acquainting myself with a portion of the

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  55

history of my co-religionists’ as the period chosen by him ‘covered the rise and growth of the Muslim power and included most of the earlier Crusades’. His love for the Quran was also expressed in his proudly securing an Urdu version of it and ‘fired by my own religious zeal and financed by the affections of a generous brother, I had the Quran bound most sumptuously in calf by the book binder of the Bodeleian.’6 Oxford had a strong impact on Mohamed Ali, as indeed it must. As Professor Mujib wrote, by nature Mohamed Ali ‘was altogether the man for the people, impetuous, dashing, irrepressible, demanding sympathy by laying his heart open, crying and raising laughter, and believing in God and God’s mercy with an intensity that made him at times completely irresponsible’. Now with Aligarh and Oxford behind him, ‘Mohamed Ali received just that type of education which would make an Indian Muslim of his day self-satisfied’.7 It gave him supreme self-confidence, bordering on conceit and probably his self-satisfaction led to some complacency as well. But more on the positive side, he was also living an active social and intellectual life at Oxford, making a large number of friends, participating in debates and writing essays. Another interesting and pregnant development was his coming in contact with the Muslim Students Association in London, which later became the Pan-Islamic Society. Apparently, he had some exposure to pan-Islamism here and seemed ‘susceptible to Pan-Islamic ideas which were in the air at that time’. 8 Despite all these achievements, Mohamed Ali could not be happy on missing the ICS; nor was Shaukat. However, as many of his British tutors had consoled him saying his training made him appropriately equipped for a job in the educational service, he, on his return to India, began looking for such a job. But on this too there could be no happiness, for he was denied the chance of joining his alma mater by his teacher and the then principal, Theodore Morison, maybe on the promptings of the honourary secretary of MAO College, Mohsin-ul Mulk.9 The fact that he was refused a job at Aligarh despite his Oxford

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degree and despite reportedly even cultivating Theodore Morison to the extent of supporting the principal’s decision to suspend Hasrat Mohani—the Secretary of the Anjuman-i-Moalla—on charges of reciting obscene poetry,10 probably indicates that both Mohsin-ul-Mulk and Morison had some disliking of him as a person. So he decided to join the Education Department of his own state, Rampur. But soon after joining, he apparently became the target of ‘petty intrigue’ by old-fashioned officials when he hurriedly started reforms in education ‘to thrust western education down eastern throats’. Despite advice from an English friend ‘not to be too impetuous…As you grow older you will learn patience, and see things more in their proportion’, his mind was set and he resigned shortly in 1902.11 From there he moved on to a job in the Opium Department of the State of Baroda. While in this job, he was also active in the Muslim League, delivered lectures in Allahabad and produced a book compiling the proceedings of the League, titled ‘Green Book No. 1’. While he continued to hold on to this job for nearly a decade, his performance in the Opium Department became controversial as he was accused (later cleared of the accusation, according to his own testimony) to be responsible for decline in opium cultivation in the state. On the other hand, his political activities, especially writing articles of a communal nature in the Times of India were disliked by the eminent historian and littérateur Romesh Chandra Dutt, the retired ICS, who was then the Dewan in the Baroda Durbar. Dutt eventually had to issue an advisory asking government servants not to contribute articles which might create communal animosity.12 It should be noted that like the positive sentiments towards his Faith, another important aspect of his beliefs also found an early expression. He believed that in India society was marked by religious rather than territorial cleavage and this fact could not be glossed over. Hence, the proposal for mixed electorates incorporated originally in the Morley–Minto Reforms was vehemently opposed by Mohamed Ali in the Amritsar session of the Muslim League in December 1908.

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  57

To him it appeared that the Hindus, more than the British, were at fault on this. Even earlier than the League session, in February 1908, he had written to Gokhale, ‘I am sorry that my Hindu friends have opposed hitherto the desire of the Musalmans to secure independent representation. To talk of unity in this connection is absurd…’, for territorial loyalty might appeal to the Hindus, but it would be ‘unfair to demand the same intensity and fervour in their territorial patriotism from Mosalmans who are and have been for 13 centuries “a nation without a country”’.13 In fact, after the formation of the Muslim League, he undertook a tour of the United Provinces in early 1907 and delivered two lectures at Allahabad on the ‘The Present Political Situation’ and ‘The Muhammadan Programme’. In these lectures he ‘advised his co-religionists to work for unity, but not to join the Congress’. In the manner of Sir Sayyid Ahmed, he ‘compared the Congress of the Hindus and the League of the Mussalmans to two trees growing on either side of the road. Their trunks stood apart, but their roots were fixed in the same soil, drawing nourishment from the same source.’14 The complications that he had come to be surrounded by in his Baroda job obviously made Mohamed Ali fed up with the state of Baroda and tired of the job. He finally gave up his job in 1910, hoping that his friends and well-wishers within the white bureaucracy in India would help him get a lateral entry into the bureaucracy as assistant secretary to the Government of Bombay or to the Home Department or the Intelligence Branch of the Government of India. The promises of help that he had received from the high and the mighty like Dunlop Smith, Private Secretary to the Governor General of India; Harold Stuart, the Home Member and G. S. Clark, the Governor of Bombay, ultimately came to nothing as these people had to confess that the posts aspired for by Mohamed Ali either were still reserved only for the whites or that he did not have enough experience for them.15 He, of course, received the ‘forcible backing’ of Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of Punjab, for a minister’s post in the Central Indian state of Jaora, but when the ‘pressing offer’ came, Mohamed

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Ali politely refused.16 Deciding not to approach his English friends and well-wishers for a job any more, Mohamed Ali came to launch a journal of his own which could truly enable him to articulate his political views and would be of service to his community, providing, at the same time, some means for his livelihood. As he himself said: The reason which so irresistibly impelled me to take up journalism was that the affairs of my community just at that juncture made it the only avenue through which I could hope to reach a place in which I could prove of any appreciable use to it, while still earning a livelihood. But even now it was a religious call that dictated this sudden, and as it proved, momentous change from the career in which I had comfortably settled down. It was more the secular affairs of my community that seemed to require this alteration in my plans.17

Thus, the Comrade was launched on 14 January 1911 from Calcutta which was still the seat of British India’s capital. And despite compromises it made on journalistic quality, it soon became ‘the main spokesman of the angry and restless Muslim intelligentsia’.18

Shaukat Ali Shaukat Ali (1873–1938), Mohamed Ali’s elder brother, was also a student at Aligarh, but cricket and debate interested him more than studies. With a huge frame (Gandhi used to call him a wall and Charles Andrews, a close associate of both Tagore and Gandhi, described him as seven by five!) Shaukat was famous for his unconventional behaviour, low regard for college rules and regulations and also for occasional uncontrollable fits of rage.19 Not a person with high ambitions for career, he had settled for a subordinate position in the Opium Department in the Government of UP after his education. His undiluted affection for brother Mohamed and absolute conviction in the latter’s intellectual abilities led him to strain every effort for his advancement. He had full faith in his brother’s political sagacity and that was why he took Mohamed as his political guide. Needless to say, the two brothers acted in unison and had a common political trajectory.

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  59

Immediately prior to his internment along with brother Mohamed by the British Indian government in May 1915, Shaukat, as secretary of the Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Kaaba (also a co-founder along with Abdul Bari), was engaged in arranging safe and cheaper passage of his co-religionists to Jeddah as hajj pilgrims. This job of the ‘Pilgrims’ Broker’, as Mohamed Ali described it, brought Shaukat to Bombay and led him to float, with Turkish help, an entirely Muslim shipping company for the purpose. Mohamed Ali claimed: This was all the ‘Politics’ that attracted my brother even on retirement from service under the Government. He was in the thick of the Pilgrimage season when the War broke out and practically put a stop to the pilgrimage and consequently to the activities of my brother at Bombay. Long before the next pilgrimage season arrived, this quaint ‘Pilgrims’ Broker’ was sharing internment and exile with myself.20

But, in fact, that was not ‘all the Politics’ of Shaukat Ali. There was more to it. With his brother Mohamed, Shaukat participated in and became a founder-member of the All-India Muslim League (AIML) in 1906. He, like Mohamed Ali, was actively engaged in the internal politics of the MAO College at Aligarh. He ran the Old Boys’ Association and its Urdu magazine, the Old Boy. In 1907, the Alis organized an Old Boys’ Reform League to establish their control over the Association against other groups in Aligarh College. They also proposed to reform the constitution of the board of trustees of the college to replace the life tenure system by five-year elected terms and to broad-base its constituency so that the Old Boys’ Association, which the Ali brothers controlled, could have a stronger representation in the board. In these, they were trying to go beyond the existing power centres constituted by the wealthy landlord classes to mobilize the entire Muslim community. As Minault says, ‘the Ali brothers’ approach to power in the college was through communitywide politics.21 In 1911, Shaukat played a leading role in the Muslim University project in Aligarh, and with the help of Aga Khan, he zealously tried to mobilize funds for it. On the question of who would have

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the decisive control over the proposed University, both Shaukat and Mohamed were trying to navigate between the idea of government control on the one hand, and control by any small local clique of Aligarh on the other. They proved to be agreeable to some form of government supervision, provided the university was not under control of any local clique of Aligarh. They took the position that ‘the university must be controlled democratically by the entire Muslim community through the formation of electoral colleges representing all regions, donors, Muslim graduates, and the Muslim masses’.22 However, as the government took a hard stance on the issues of control and affiliation, the idea of a Muslim university in Aligarh could not fructify at that point of time. Shaukat was a big help when Mohamed Ali, with the shift of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, shifted the office of the Comrade to Delhi. With the beginning of the Balkan conflicts in the Near East, Shaukat, as much as brother Mohamed, ‘devoted a large part of their seemingly boundless energy’ to Turkish relief and when after the beginning of the War England attacked Turkey, the Ali brothers took their stand in support of Turkey. Therefore, politics was not quite alien to Shaukat Ali and probably Nanda was not far wrong when he said that Shaukat took to politics ‘like a duck to water’.23 Hence, it could not be entirely unexpected, unlike what Mohamed Ali seems to convey in his autobiography, that when the government decided on Mohamed Ali’s internment, it would not find any good reason to discriminate against Shaukat.

Ali Brothers: Early Politics Mushirul Hasan has described Mohamed Ali as endowed with ‘a many-faceted mind’.24 Probably his frustrating experience in obtaining the right kind of job for himself after his return from England with an Oxford degree and a somewhat overblown self-image contributed to this ‘many-facetedness’. His tremendous self-confidence bordering on conceit was compelling him to break out of the confines

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  61

of the jobs he got and to make his presence felt on a bigger platform— so much so that as his well-wisher, Dunlop Smith had to remind him that he (Smith) understood that his ‘surroundings were not always congenial’, ‘but after all whose are in every respect’.25 And the felt urgency of this compulsion pushed him towards multiple directions, not always mutually consistent, or well thought out. In 1906, with the possibility of a fresh instalment of reforms, Mr Archbold, the Principal of MAO College at Aligarh, alerted Mohsin-ulMulk that he should lead a Deputation to the Viceroy to present the Muslim point of view. Archbold also advised him, after consulting Dunlop Smith, the Private Secretary to the Viceroy, that the Deputation, while expressing loyalty to the Crown, should also demand Muslim representation on the basis of religion.26 Soon after, Aga Khan called upon the Muslims to establish a political organization of their own to buttress the point of view expressed by Mohsin-ul-Mulk’s Deputation.27 In December of that year, under the presidentship of Viqar-ul-Mulk, the Muslim League was founded in Dacca which swore by the promise of promoting loyalty to the Raj. However, in this Dacca gathering, the Ali brothers were present, and became foundermembers of the League. This probably marked the beginning of their political activity.28 Around the same time things began to happen in Aligarh which during Sir Sayyid’s lifetime was the seat of Muslim loyalty to the British. Agitation against the Nagri resolution of the UP government was led by Mohsin-ul-Mulk himself.29 Very soon the waves of the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal reached Aligarh and the student union there overwhelmingly supported the Bengal movement. These obviously had warned Principal Archbold and led him to think about Muslim representation on the basis of religion under the proposed reforms as a possible coolant. In order to provide some institutional scaffolding to hold on to Muslim loyalty on a more stable basis, Archbold found it convenient to encourage the foundation of the Muslim League as a loyal and legitimate platform for the younger generation

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of Aligarh students and of Muslims in general. But the foundation of the League did not quite satisfy Archbold’s immediate hopes, for in February 1907, a student strike took place in Aligarh. The strike, triggered by some insignificant incidents on the campus, was really an expression of the students’ long-standing grievances against the British professors who, the students felt, ‘were acting rather as agents of the Government than as professors of the College’. The Ali brothers were quick to involve themselves in this agitation (they might even have instigated it) and encouraged further disaffection to the British among the students. They also expressed themselves vigorously against the soft stance taken by Mohsin-ul-Mulk on the British staff of the college ‘in a language and tone’ which was probably less than desirable.30 W. S. Marris, the Collector of Aligarh, did not fail to see the demagogic streak in Mohamed and Shaukat Ali in these activities.31 Interestingly, in January of the same year, Mohamed Ali sent a copy of his ‘Thoughts on the Present Discontent’, based on his articles in the Times of India and the Indian Spectator, to the Viceroy hoping that [t]his little booklet in which a conscientious effort is made to express…the true state of feelings of His Majesty’s subjects in India would meet with the sympathy and encouragement which India has learnt to associate now with the name of Edward the Peace-Maker just as she had so long associated it with the name of our late lamented sovereign Lady Victoria.32

Quite contrary to his agitational activity on the campus within a month’s time, in these articles, Mohamed Ali had presented himself as a paragon of loyalty. Not only did he speak about Sir Sayyid Ahmed as a man of rare foresight who ‘led away his community from the path of political discontent after the Mutiny’ and ‘worked to divert the energies of the Muslims to the more peaceful pursuit of letters and science, so that they could fit themselves for the struggle of life’. He chided the Hindus for not showing the courage to come forward and say ‘that of all the Indian population the Muslims were not—as they

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were always represented to be—the only enemies of Government’. He reported with satisfaction that ‘[t]o-day there is no political discontent among them’. He expressed the situation of the Muslims in words that would be honey to British ears: The community has its own grievances, its own aspirations. It too wants room for expansion…The action of the Government in time to come, no less than the sympathetic control of its own leaders, will settle the future path of the community and decide its destiny…When practically every educated community shows signs of political discontent, it is the task of statesmanship to save the one segregated community from the present infection.33

Mushirul Hasan reports that the Viceroy was obviously pleased, expressing his ‘hearty agreement with much that you put forward’ and wishing ‘the book the wide circulation it deserves’. Mohamed Ali’s launching of the Comrade happened at the most turbulent time, especially for the Muslims in India. In the same year, in 1911, at the Coronation Durbar, the Partition of Bengal was annulled as a concession to the mass nationalist upsurge in Bengal. Towards the end the year, in November, the Balkan Wars broke out when Italy attacked Tripoli, and the British disallowed Turkey to move troops through Egypt to meet the Italian forces. In the following year, the Muslim University project was vetoed by the government. And soon after, in 1913, the Kanpur Mosque incident took place when the Kanpur municipality demolished the washing place of the Mosque to make way for a new road in a congested area. The Muslims considered this an act of desecration of the Mosque and a threat to their religion. All these three incidents agitated the Muslim mind with long-lasting consequence. The hands of the editor of the Comrade had enough fuel to burn. The Comrade began with a pro-government and anti-Hindu bias, much to the delight of the high officials in the bureaucracy who finally could spot a Muslim editor who was more than a match for his Hindu counterparts.34 The security deposit required under the Press Act was

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also waived for the Comrade in Calcutta as also in Delhi, when it had migrated there. As Mohamed Ali says: Indian Musalmans whose politics had long been preponderantly favourable to Government and in fact but too often savoured of sycophancy according to the more forward sister communities in India, were believed to be quite innocuous when I commenced my journalistic career in 1911 and my British printers were accordingly exempted from the deposit of a security.

In Delhi, when he had become the keeper of the press himself and ‘was already something of a suspect’, he had ‘to see several high officials’ to get the exemption continued. For despite being a suspect, he had also earned credit for serving ‘a period of apprenticeship’ in ‘respectability’ (read loyalty).35 But the congestion of the events mentioned above and the sharp reaction they created among the Muslims soon made Mohamed Ali lose this ‘respectability’ and the Comrade was imposed with the maximum security the government could ask for before being closed down. The revocation of Bengal Partition in 1911 generated conflicting feelings about the Hindus and their political activism in the Muslim mind. Earlier promised to be irrevocable, the government’s revocation of Bengal Partition left even Nawab Viqar-ul Mulk, successor to Mohsin-ul Milk as the Secretary of MAO College at Aligarh, very jittery. He declared, ‘The policy of the Government is like a canon which passed over the dead bodies of Muslims without any feeling whether amongst them there was anyone alive and whether he would receive any painful sensation from the action of theirs.’36 Mohamed Ali, who had earlier labelled the Partition as ‘a well-deserved though wholly unexpected blessing for the Muslims in Bengal’,37 now expressed himself in the Comrade thus: If the legitimate facilities afforded to the Musalmans can be taken away and solemn pledges broken at the bidding of a few demagogues with hysterical followings, there is no knowing that the general political status of the community may suffer the same fate. Such are the fears that have begun to assail

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  65 the minds of even the most temperate and politically conservative sections of the Musalmans.38

The Muslims were angry with the Hindus because through reuniting Bengal, they had deprived the Muslims of the benefits that had accrued to them as a result of the government’s decision for Partition. But they were also bitter about the British as the latter had succumbed to agitation and preferred to discount Muslim loyalty and cooperation. ‘Agitate and you will get what you want; remain calm and you will have your heads chopped off. This is the moral we are given’, wrote a correspondent of the Mussalman from Calcutta.39 Mohamed Ali felt agitated, but advised Muslims to accept the revocation of the Partition. At the same time, he tried to seek compensatory concessions for the Muslims in Bengal by promising steadfast loyalty to the British. He wrote several articles in the Comrade during December 1911, discussing the procedure as well as the substance of the revocation decision and asking for ‘various concessions and “some security” for the Muslims of Bengal in the Provincial and Imperial Legislatures and for all government posts’. He wrote to F. H. Lucas, asking him to draw the attention of the Secretary of State for India to these pieces in the Comrade and further added: It will be superfluous to discuss here the position of the Muslims of Bengal, but I may add that while other interests have either wholly gained, or gained as well as lost, no attempt has been made in the published Despatches to show that the Muslims of Bengal gain anything from the proposals of the Government…It is impossible to disguise the fact that for obvious reasons Muslim feeling in India is far from normal today…I would therefore respectfully suggest that the presence of His Majesty in India at this juncture should be fully utilized to restore its equilibrium to that feeling, and to bind still more firmly the seventy million Muslims of India to the Throne and Person of His Majesty.40

The annulment of the Partition had strained the ‘Entente Cordiale’ between the Muslims and the British which had been carefully built by Sir Sayyid and highly valued by the Ali brothers and others like

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them, but the failure of the Muslim University project (1912) and the Kanpur Mosque affair (1913) had really shaken the boat and compelled the Muslim leaders towards innovative thinking. Such new thinking came not from the old aristocratic elites among the Muslims, but from the men of the Nai Raushani or the New Light, represented by the young Western-educated men like Mohamed Ali, Mazharul Haq, Wazir Hasan, Wilayat Ali Bambooque and the Raja of Mahmudabad—people who, because of their Westernized education and more communal than religious views, were ironically ‘encouraged by the Government itself to take a more assertive part in politics’.41 While some of them were already airing views pointing out that their mode of thinking had closeness with the aims and ideals of the Congress, the outbreak of conflict in the Balkans in November 1911 and British stiffness towards Turkey further pushed them towards this line of thinking. An alliance with the Hindus and the Congress began to appear as a pragmatic and possible strategy. Deviating from his earlier stance, Mohamed Ali now began to emphasize the need for Hindu–Muslim cooperation. He observed: It is our firm belief that if the Muslims or the Hindus attempt to achieve success in opposition to or even without cooperation of one another, they will not only fail but fail ignominiously.42

Mohamed Ali set forth his belief that a marriage of convenience (with the Hindus) ‘honourably contracted and honourably maintained, is not to be despised’. Without lowering his guards against what he called Hindu ‘communal patriotism’ and arguing that the practical issues of the day so divide the Hindus and the Muslims ‘that communal representation has become a cardinal feature in the political evolution of the country’, he wrote in February 1912 that the ‘Muslim is getting a little too clannish, that he is only dimly aware of what it means to feel a generous enthusiasm for such great secular causes as self-government and nationality’. He felt ‘the responsibility of the Hindus is much greater in the matter because they are

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more powerful…the Muslims stand aloof because they are afraid of being completely swallowed up’. Therefore, ‘any true patriot of India working for the evolution of Indian nationality will have to accept the communal individuality of the Muslims as the basis of his constructive effort. This is the irreducible factor of the situation’. Yet he was hopeful: ‘None, however, need despair, as the influences of education, and the leveling, liberalizing tendencies of the times are bound to succeed in creating a political individuality out of the diversity of creed and race.’43 In other words, he was making a modern liberal argument in a rudimentary form that although there were ‘comprehensive differences’ between the Muslims and the Hindus, unity at the ‘procedural and political arena’ was still possible. The outbreak of the Balkan War followed by the First World War created an altogether new situation and led the Ali brothers to a frenzy of activity. The Ali brothers were already actively engaged in the affairs of the MAO College at Aligarh and maintained frequent contacts with the students. With the beginning of the Tripolitan War, Mohamed Ali’s Comrade, which strongly supported the Muslim cause and was still issued from Calcutta, became widely popular among the students in Aligarh. In this, the Comrade was soon followed by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s Al-Hilal (Calcutta) and Maulana Zafar Ali’s Zamindar (Lahore).44 While launching the Comrade, Mohamed Ali was primarily targeted towards the secular interests of his community. As he himself had asserted, he was particularly anxious to help his community to understand that [w]hile endeavouring to satisfy the pressing needs of the present which may inevitably bring it now and then into conflict with other elements in the body politic, it should never lose sight of the prospects of the future when ultimately all communal interests had to be adjusted in order to harmonise with the paramount interests of India…The Comrade—‘comrade of all and partisan of none’—was to be the organ…to…prepare the Musalmans to make their proper contribution to territorial patriotism without abating a jot of the fervour of their extra-territorial sympathies which is the quintessence of Islam.45

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In other words, he began with the idea of keeping a perfect balance between the claims upon Indian Muslims of territorial patriotism as Indians and of pan-Islamism as Muslims. But the Balkan War and the First World War tilted this balance towards his old love, pan-Islam. In a vitriolic attack on the Oxford Arabic professor Margoliouth’s discourse on pan-Islam, Mohamed Ali wrote in the Comrade that ‘we consider pan-Islamism only as a force for purposes of defence, not of defiance’. Pointing out that ‘no one would contemplate retirement to Turkey to-day’, he reminded his readers that to our mind Islam and pan-Islamism are one and neither is aggressive and provoking…So far as India is concerned, we have no faith in conventional passive loyalty, and shall ever work for an active devotion to a king that is the Sovereign Lord of seventy million Muslims of India no less than of the forty-five million Christians of Great Britain and Ireland.46

Although in this article, he claimed to agree with Sir Sayyid’s assertion that ‘the attitude of the Muslims of India towards their British rulers would depend wholly and solely on the treatment meted out to them in this country’, the future held otherwise. The events that pushed the Ali brothers towards the Indian National Congress and the Hindus with a promise to build national unity beyond communal identities also simultaneously drove them towards greater assertion of a borderless Muslimness.47 Disaster for Turkey in the Balkan War had so greatly affected Mohamed Ali that once he even contemplated suicide.48 In those unsettling moments, he found the source of stability and solace in religion: ‘Both my brother and I now turned more and more to the Quran and found in it the consolation and contentment that was denied to us outside its pages.’49 Europe’s temporal aggression against Turkey appeared as an ‘ultimatum’ and forced Mohamed Ali to face the question: ‘Was Islam only a label for the Indian Muslims or had it a real living concern with worldly life?’50 It was at this time that Mohamed Ali began to think of world history in terms of an aggressive western Christendom versus a defensive Islam, although he did

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  69

not want his thinking to be tinted with ‘any fanatical and irrational revulsion against everything Western’.51 But the Ali brothers were too energetic to remain confined to a reading of the Quran and contemplation on the spiritual strengths of Islam during those turbulent times. Mohamed Ali, who had already moved the Comrade to Delhi, soon issued an appeal to the Muslims to contribute to a fund for organizing and sending a medical mission to Turkey which was to be headed by Dr Ansari. The appeal had a particularly strong impact on the students of Aligarh. They not only raised money but also recruited some amongst them to go to Turkey as members of the Medical Mission.52 During the Balkan wars, Mohamed Ali maintained close links with the college and tried in every way to keep the students alive to the dangers falling upon Islam and to make them agitate against the British. The Viceroy became alarmed that the college was turning into ‘a hot-bed of sedition’ and looked upon Mohamed Ali as the prime source for it: ‘I regard Mohamed Ali as a dangerous malcontent who must always be reckoned with as an element of strife’, he wrote to Sir James Meston, the lieutenant governor of UP.53 Yet, the Ali brothers and others while organizing the Red Crescent Medical Mission to Turkey were careful to clear the Mission with the government. The government also proved to be helpful, permitting Mohamed Ali to collect and advance a loan to Turkey and apparently gave its blessings to the Medical Mission. As Khaliquzzaman reports, ‘Before our departure to Bombay we were received by the Viceroy, Lord Harding(e), who shook hands with all of us.’54 It bears repetition to say that Mohamed Ali, even while making anti-British propaganda, was not only careful to maintain a cordial and warm relationship with high-ranking British officials, but lost no opportunity to express his profound loyalty to the government and reaffirm his support to its policies. In November 1913, he wrote to James LaTouche to express ‘our sense of appreciation of the manifold blessings of the British rule in India’.55 In his controversial Comrade article, ‘The Choice of the

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Turks’, while he was outspoken about the grievances of Turkey against the British, he also expressed the hope that Turkey would remain neutral in the War. The First World War broke out on 4 August 1914 and Turkey joined the War three months later as an ally of Germany against Britain on 4 November. As the War began and there was a general apprehension among the Muslims in India that Turkey would most likely join Germany in the War, the Muslim leaders felt uncomfortable, for it would make their relationship with the British still more complicated and difficult. Interestingly, even before the outbreak of the War, Mohamed Ali on his way to England in 1913 gave a speech in Cairo in which he had stated that England would not rule India for long and that Germany was the coming power.56 Also, the Muslim League at its Agra session in 1913, at the initiative of the Nai Raushani leaders, declared that ‘India is our motherland’ and that foreign rule, however beneficial, must come to an end, and adopted the resolution on ‘self-government in India’ as its goal. In early 1914, Mohamed Ali in a speech in Delhi declared that the (Muslim) ‘community would be loyal to the Government provided that such loyalty did not involve disloyalty to their own religion’.57 Thus, several steps had already been taken before the War by the Ali brothers and others of their ilk that widened the chasm between the Muslims and the government in India. Yet, as hostilities between Britain and Turkey began and the British government promised not to interfere with the Holy places of Islam or with hajj pilgrimage, the ulama and the Muslim leaders began through fatwas and public meetings to express pledges of loyalty to the Raj at its moment of crisis.58 The Ali brothers, apprehending such developments, had already decided to do something to restrain Turkey. With that in view, Mohamed Ali wired to Abdul Bari to communicate, as the president of the Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Kaaba, to Turkey that it should avoid joining the enemies of Britain. On 31 August 1914, Maulana Abdul Bari sent the following telegram to the Sultan: ‘Placing our faith and

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  71

confidence, which we the Indian Muslims have in the Khilafat, we respectfully urge upon your Majesty either to support Britain or to keep neutral in this war.’59 But attesting to the volatility of his mind, Mohamed Ali, shortly after this telegram was sent, wrote an article in the Comrade, titled ‘Choice of the Turks’, in which although he argued for Turkish neutrality and even assured the British of Muslim loyalty, he left enough scope to be understood differently.60 Khaliquzzaman called this article ‘one of his masterpieces’ which was warmly received by the Muslims in general and by Aligarh in particular.61 But to the government it came as the ‘last straw’. A high official of the government, in a note submitted to the Legislative Department on 6 October 1914, wrote: I do not see how anyone can read the article except as a direct incitement to Turkey to go to war…England is particularly threatened and Germany is extolled. If this is not attacking our allies and siding with our enemies it is difficult to know what it is.62

The government’s patience was exhausted and it no longer felt safe to keep the Ali brothers free. On 15 May 1915, it interned the brothers. The Comrade was closed down and the security deposit of Mohamed Ali’s Urdu companion paper, Hamdard, was forfeited compelling it to close down too.63 It was probably not the Comrade article alone that led to the internment of the Ali brothers. The government at this time was also disturbed by intelligence reports about Turko-German conspiracy to incite the Muslims in India by telling them that the Allies were the enemies of Islam and whoever helped them was an infidel. It had information that the Egyptian pan-Islamist Abdul Aziz was specially appointed to contact Mohamed Ali and a few others so that antiBritish schemes could be executed. Afghanistan was also implicated, as an influential newspaper of Kabul, Shiraz-ul-Akhbar, described India as Dar-ul-Harb.64 The government also charged the Ali brothers of involvement in conspiracy against the government.

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On the internment of the Ali brothers, P. C. Bamford, deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau, did not specifically mention the charge of conspiracy. He simply said, ‘The campaign against Government carried on by the Ali Brothers resulted in their internment in May, 1915.’65 However, Mohamed Ali himself reports that ‘the most important and definite’ charge against them was that they ‘had written to the His Majesty the late Amir of Afghanistan a letter urging him to attack India which His Majesty had, of course, forwarded to the Government of India’ through a special envoy and that ‘my brother had written during our internment a letter to our spiritual advisor [Maulana Abdul Bari] telling him that it was now necessary to resort to violence and to organize an armed rebellion against the British Government’. Mohamed Ali also reports that neither the committee, appointed by the Viceroy (at the instance of Gandhi) to examine the question of their release, nor subsequently the government forwarded these letters to the Ali brothers who had challenged them as forgeries and wanted to see them. Rather, the government suggested that they had been misinformed about these letters and ultimately it did not persist on that charge.66 Khaliquzzaman’s testimony on the question is somewhat different. Khaliquzzaman, who was a student at Aligarh at that time, tells us: One night in December [1914] the Ali Brothers entered my room in Sahib Bagh, Aligarh, and whispered to me that it was time that we started sounding our strength to defy the British should they ever intend to finish Turkey and the Khilafat, and suggested that we should find some way to explore the condition of the arms factories in the Tribal Area and what would be their maximum production at any given time.

With the help of some contacts, Khaliquzzaman was able to reach the Tribal Area, to make inspection of the manufacturing of forged British Enfield Rifles and to dine with Sir Abdul Qayyum Khan, who, later in 1937, became the first chief minister of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Even the Ali brothers went to fraternize with ‘ferociouslooking Pathans’, but being surrounded by the Criminal Investigation

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  73

Department (CID) all the time, they could make no headway.67 The Ali brothers along with Dr Ansari and Hakim Ajmal Khan were also in touch with Maulana Obeidullah Sindhi, a jihadist, and together they were speculating on the possibility of a German attack on India with the help and cooperation of the King of Afghanistan. Such a possibility would afford ‘an opportunity to Muslims to revolt openly and finish the British raj’. The whole scheme had so many holes that ‘it could be dubbed a chimerical day dream, but we at that time refused to discern in it any flaws or insurmountable difficulties’.68 If Khaliquzzaman’s story is true, then it can be said that possibly some conspiratorial activities inspired by pan-Islamist and jihadi ideas were taking place and the Ali brothers were in the thick of it even though it could be that they did not write any letter to the Amir of Afghanistan. The Ali brothers were interned first in Mehrauli village near Delhi; later, they were shifted to Chhindwara in the Central Provinces. After the end of the War, they were awaiting their release. In 1918, the government instituted a commission to go into the question of their release and the commission also recommended favourably for the brothers. But still the government decided to put it off as peace negotiations were on and anti-government feelings were running high among both the Hindus and the Muslims for the Rowlatt bills and the Turkish question. Such postponement left the Ali brothers defiant and they declared that they would no longer be constrained by the terms of the internment. This led the government to put them in jail in Betul for the last six months before finally releasing them in December 1919. Nearly five years of confinement, first as internees and then as prisoners, left a deep impression on the Ali brothers. As Mushirul Hasan says, the imprisonment had turned Mohamed Ali ‘into a bitter critic of the Raj’. Despite all his past British connections and confessions of loyalty, he now came to identify British rule as an ‘evil’.69 But more important than that was the deep religiosity that came to suffuse Mohamed Ali’s mind during the period of confinement. As

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we have earlier mentioned, Mohamed Ali already felt an existential interest in the book during the depressing days of the Balkan wars. Now that turned into a torrent. Both brothers started reading the Book at a snail’s pace which they felt was the most appropriate for understanding the inner meaning of the ‘Quranic revelations’ and conversed between themselves on the meanings of words and passages. And Mohamed Ali came to realize now why the ‘first Muslims fully understood that it was no use carrying any part of the Quran in their heads unless they could carry it in their hearts as well, and translate it into action in their everyday life’.70 His secular communitarian interest in the life and problems of Muslims was now transformed into a ‘religious calling’. Going beyond an understanding of the dogmas and the ethical codes of his religion, he could realize why Muslims all over the world were bound together and the ‘need for Indian Muslims to identify themselves with the declining fortunes of their brother Muslims everywhere in the world’. He wrote to Gandhi later, Whatever else my internment may or may not have done, it has I believe set the soul free…I now realize…the whole aim and end of life is to serve God and obey His commandments…I confess I had never before grasped this truth in all its fullness…Internment made us seek refuge in the Holy Quran, and for the first time, I have to confess it, I read it through and with new eyes.71

Without doubt, this new exposure to the Holy Quran reinforced Mohamed Ali’s pan-Islamism and incidentally prepared him for the role he was to play in the Khilafat Movement.

Notes and References   1. Mohamed Ali, My Life: A Fragment (Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 57.   2. Ibid., 61.   3. Ibid., 65.   4. Ibid., 65ff.   5. Mushirul Hasan, Mohamed Ali: Ideology and Politics (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981), 10–11.   6. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 70.   7. M. Mujib, Indian Muslims (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), 536.

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  75   8. B. R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1989), 124.   9. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 12. 10. Ibid., 10. 11. Ibid., 12–13. 12. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 14 and, 123–24 for Letter to Mahfuz Ali (14 January 1910). 13. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 126–27. 14. Afzal Iqbal, Life and Times of Mohamed Ali—An Analysis of the Hopes, Fears and Aspirations of Muslims in India from 1778 to 1931 (Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-I Delhi, 1978), 42–43. Afzal Iqbal reports that ‘the only Muslim of any consequence who opposed the principle of separate electorate was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who held that the principle was dividing the nation against itself’. 15. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 124n.3. 16. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 73. Also, Mohamed Ali to the Nawab of Jaora, 23 December 1910, in Hasan, ibid., 125. 17. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 73–74. 18. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 15. 19. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 133. 20. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 89. 21. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 18. 22. Ibid., 21. 23. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 133. 24. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 25. 25. Ibid., 14 (Dunlop Smith to Mohamed Ali, 31 January 1907). 26. Choudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, 1961), 12. 27. In fact, the Simla Deputation to the Viceroy was led by Aga Khan himself. As he wrote in The Memoirs,



Our achievement in 1906 seemed important enough and it was obvious to those of us most closely associated with it—especially Nawab Mohsen-ul-Mulk and myself—that, since we have obtained separate electoral recognition, we must have the political organization to make separate representation effective. The All-India Muslim League (AIML) was therefore founded at a meeting at Dacca later that year at which, as it happened, I was unable to be present. I was however elected its first President, and as such I remained until 1912 (Cited in Iqbal, Life and Times of Mohamed Ali, 41) Mohamed Ali’s later description of the formation of the League as a ‘command performance’ was, according to Iqbal, meant to please the Congress as he was then the Congress president. Khaliquzzaman is also dismissive of Mohamed Ali’s idea (Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 11–12).

76  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 28. Even before that, in October 1904, Mohamed Ali took the opportunity of expressing his pan-Islamic views while giving his maiden speech on the Muslim University project. He said the proposed university ‘provided the glittering vision of Pan-Islamism—a common centre where Muslims from all parts of the world would congregate and make active again a common Islamic consciousness that will be powerful in upholding Muslim interest in India and elsewhere’ (Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 19). 29. It should be noted that in a February 1912 issue of the Comrade, Mohamed Ali wrote a very well-argued and balanced article on the language question. He cogently argued that ‘Urdu is essentially the language of Hindustan’. While criticizing the staunch advocates of Hindi, like Madan Mohan Malaviya, who would press for cleansing Hindi of all Arabic, Persian or Urdu words, he expressed the hope that ‘the students of classics would no doubt be attracted by the inexhaustible mines of literature and philosophy in Sanskrit and Arabic’, and that ‘Muslims scholars would learn Sanskrit in larger numbers than they do at present’; he, at the same time, did not fail to point out that

if Urdu is sacrificed, we deprive millions of Muslims…of their tongue in which they lisped as children and in which they think to-day…Language is the expression of thought and where thought differs so radically as in Islam and Hinduism, can the same language express it adequately in each case? (Select Writings and Speeches of Maulana Mohamed Ali, compiled and edited by Afzal Iqbal [Kashmiri Bazar, Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1944], 27–43 [hereinafter, Select Writings and Speeches of Mohamed Ali])

30. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 11. 31. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 18. 32. Cited in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 14. 33. Select Writings and Speeches of Mohamed Ali, 4–5. 34. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 130. 35. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 90. 36. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 17. 37. Cited in Iqbal, Life and Times of Mohamed Ali, 38. 38. Cited in Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 22. 39. Quoted by Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 21. 40. Mohamed Ali to F. H. Lucas, 3 January 1912; cited in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 127–29. 41. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 80. 42. Comrade, 30 December 1911, cited in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 24. 43. ‘The Communal Patriot’, in Select Writings and Speeches of Mohamed Ali, 65–70. 44. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 16–17.

The Characters: The Ali Brothers  /  77 45. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 74. 46. Select Writings and Speeches of Mohamed Ali, 55–56, 61. 47. There were inherent contradictions in this conjunction of tendencies. Yet, at that moment the Hindus did not mind the expressions of pan-Islamic solidarity by the Indian Muslims because it was helping them to realize that the British government was no longer a safe custodian of Muslim interests and encouraging them towards solidarity with the Hindus. As Petrie, then the assistant director of the Intelligence Bureau, reported, ‘Many Hindu papers have abounded in expressions of somewhat fulsome sympathy for Muhammadans in Turkey and elsewhere, and the motives have, in many cases, been only too apparent.’ When in response to the Turkish troubles in the Balkans, Maulana Azad began to organize boycott meetings, many Hindus in Calcutta enthusiastically participated in those meetings. On the other hand, it would take a decade for the British to realize the implications of the inherent contradiction in this warming relationship between the Hindus and the Muslims, and therefore at the moment, they felt threatened by this combination and of the possibility of the dangerous turn it might take for them (P. C. Bamford, Histories of the Non-Co-operation and Khilafat Movements (Delhi: Government of India Press, 1925; Delhi: Deep Publications, 1974), 110–12. 48. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 76. 49. Ibid., 85. 50. Ibid., 82. 51. Ibid., 87. 52. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 21. 53. Hardinge to Meston, 14 November 1912; cited in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 20. 54. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 21, also, Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 31. 55. Cited in Hasan, ibid., 32. Interestingly, despite all these confessions of loyalty by Mohamed Ali, British appreciation remained decisively negative. We have already mentioned that his high-ranking bureaucrat friends failed him in getting a job he wanted. When in 1913, he along with Wazir Hasan sailed for England ‘for the purpose of explaining the Indian Muslims’ point of view’, the Viceroy informed the Secretary of State about the ‘self-imposed mission’ led by Wazir Hasan, ‘a man of no importance whatever’ and Mohamed Ali, ‘a mischievous agitator largely responsible for creating the present situation by provocative misrepresentation in his paper’ (Hasan, 136, n. 1). 56. P. C. Bamford, Histories of the Non-Co-operation and Khilafat Movements, 114. 57. Ibid., 115. 58. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 52. 59. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 28. 60. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 51. 61. Ibid., 32.

78  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 62. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 25, n. 17. 63. Mohamed Ali, My life, 93, 97. 64. P. C. Bamford, 117–19, 121. 65. Ibid., 121. 66. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 156–57. 67. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 31. 68. Ibid, 30ff. 69. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 35. 70. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 114. 71. Letter to Gandhi, 20 February, 1918; cited in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 36–37 (emphasis by Hasan).

4

‘Love at First Sight’ Good Muslims After his arrival in India from South Africa, Gandhi began searching for ‘good’ Muslim leaders. And, as he told a Khilafat meeting in May 1919: his ‘desire was satisfied when I reached Delhi and found the Brothers Ali…It was a question of love at first sight between us.’1 Mushirul Hasan reports that Gandhi ‘met the Ali brothers in Aligarh and Delhi in 1915 and early in 1916’.2 Interestingly, Mohamed Ali, writing his autobiography in 1923, by which time the relationship between Gandhi and the Ali brothers had fully blossomed but showed no sign of withering yet, is completely silent about these meetings. If there was a meeting between them in 1916 in Delhi, it must have been in Mehrauli during the brothers’ first leg of internment. But Mohamed Ali, even though he talked about receiving varieties of guests at Mehrauli, makes no mention of Gandhi.3 Gandhi, in his Autobiography, is a little more expressive about their first meetings. He came back from South Africa having been convinced that Hindu-Muslim unity was essential for the future of India. As he famously said, ‘My South African experiences had convinced me that it would be on the question of Hindu-Muslim unity that my ahimsa would be put to its severest test.’ It was this conviction that led 79

80  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

him to search for ‘the friendship of good Musalmans’ and made him ‘eager to understand the Musalman mind through contact with their purest and most patriotic representatives’. He mentions meeting the Ali brothers ‘only once or twice’ and while he ‘prized the contact with the Brothers…before closer contact could be established they were isolated’,4 obviously implying their subsequent internment. Gandhi landed in Bombay on 9 January 1915 after his extended sojourn in South Africa (beginning as a lawyer, he turned into an activist and the innovator of satyagraha for the cause of the Indian immigrants there) and on 15 May 1915, the Ali brothers were interned. Therefore, they had less than six months in which they could meet. Gandhi was of course aware of the developments in the Balkans, and even before his arrival in India, he probably could have a feel of the anxiety of the Indian Muslims regarding the future of Turkey. B. R. Nanda has recorded a meeting between the two sourced on the Tribune: In April 1915, three months after his return to India, when Gandhi visited Delhi, Hakim Ajmal Khan presided over the only public meeting he addressed in the capital of India. Mohamed Ali, the Pan-Islamist editor of the Comrade, thanked Gandhi on behalf of the citizens of Delhi, and made an appreciative reference to Gandhi’s simple attire—of a Gujrati villager—and to the fact that he was going about barefoot to mourn Gokhale’s death. ‘The thorns that prick the bare feet of Gandhi’, Mohamed Ali said, ‘are the thorns that should pierce through the hearts of all Indians’.5

This probably was the only meeting between them until the Ali brothers’ release from Betul jail in December 1919, for Gandhi’s efforts to meet them during their confinement was aborted by the government. Therefore, it is likely that Gandhi probably met the Ali brothers only ‘once’ rather than ‘twice’. But about ‘love at first sight’, there could be no doubt. Gandhi was indeed impressed by Mohamed Ali’s background, his power of expression, his religiosity, his concern for the future of Turkey and, above all, his capacity to reach the Muslim masses. He could gauge

‘Love at First Sight’  /  81

the influence of the Comrade among the young and educated Muslims and also how let down they felt at the brothers’ internment. If the Muslim masses were to be mobilized for his future struggle, it must be through such leaders as the Ali brothers. When he was invited to attend and speak before the Muslim League meeting in Calcutta after the imprisonment of the Ali brothers, he took the opportunity to remind the audience of their duty to secure the brothers’ release. Soon after, while he was taken to MAO College at Aligarh by his Muslim friends and spoke before the students, he invited those young men ‘to be fakirs for the service of the motherland’.6 It was during this time that he carefully studied the Khilafat issue and the Ali brothers’ views on it. Even if he had doubts about ‘the absolute merits of the question’ or about the practical possibility of realizing the Muslim demands, he was convinced that there was ‘nothing immoral in their demands’. Therefore, he concluded, as he himself confessed, that ‘if I would become a true friend of the Muslims, I must render all possible help in securing the release of the Brothers, and a just settlement of the Khilafat question’.7 It is difficult to know first-hand what impressions Mohamed Ali exactly had of Gandhi during the initial period of their contact. But as Khaliquzzaman notes, during his visit to the Ali brothers while they were in the second leg of their internment at Lansdowne towards the end of 1915, he found that the brothers thought very highly of Gandhiji and asked us to contact him as early as possible. They regarded him as a dynamic personality, and gave their opinion that ‘he alone can be our man’. They hoped that if Gandhiji could become the leader of the Congress, the Muslims might be able get its support ‘for the Turkish cause which was a religious question of the greatest importance to them’. The incident which impressed them very greatly about Gandhi’s views was his address to Calcutta students, in March 1915, in which he had said, ‘Politics cannot be divorced from religion’, and had gone on to emphasize that ‘if I were for sedition I would speak out for sedition and think loudly and take the consequences’.8

82  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Therefore, even though the scope for continuing personal contact between them was eliminated by the internment of the Ali brothers for the next nearly five years, the initial contact was warm enough to generate a strong sense of future possibility on both sides. During their internment, Gandhi tried hard to get in touch with them. In the Congress session of 1915, Gandhi could collect their address and wrote warmly to Mohamed Ali on 9 January 1916 from Ahmedabad: Dear Mr. Mohamed Ali: It was during the Congress session that I was able to get your address. I wanted to write to you to say that my heart went out to you in your troubles…Please also let me know if you are allowed to receive letters.9

During the next three years until their release even though Gandhi could not meet the Ali brothers, they remained at the centre of his thoughts. In numerous correspondences between 1917 and 1919, Gandhi expressed his feelings and concerns about the Ali brothers. In a letter to his son Manilal, written early in January 1918, Gandhi wrote, ‘I may have to enter into a big fight for Mohamed Ali’s release, but nothing has been decided yet.’10 On 12 February 1918 he wrote to his friend and collaborator in South Africa, Mr Albert West,11 ‘I am endeavoring to lead the movement for the release of the Ali brothers’.12 During this time he was eager to go to meet the brothers, but his engagements with the workers at Ahmedabad and peasants in Kaira held him up. In a very apologetic tone he wrote to Shuaib Qureshi, the editor of the New Era: I am ashamed of myself. I am most anxious to be there. Yet the facts seem to have conspired against me. The strike is still on, and it is of such a delicate nature that I dare not leave it. The Kaira affair, too, involving as it does the rights of several lakhs of people, demands my attention. I know that delay about the Ali brothers is dangerous. I therefore, stay where I am till I feel free. I know you will not have me do otherwise. Will you please apologise to Maulana Saheb? Do please keep me informed of what goes on there.13

‘Love at First Sight’  /  83

His continuing concern for the brothers was further expressed when he confessed to his youngest son, Devdas Gandhi, in April 1918, that as the mill workers’ struggle in Ahmedabad had left his mind ‘exhausted’, he considered the ‘fight for Mohammad Ali’s release is a crushing burden, though, I know, it has but to be borne’.14 For a long time the government did not frame any charge against the Ali brothers. C. R. Das, who was Mohamed Ali’s legal representative, could not do his work for his client in the absence of any charge.15 Mohamed Ali shared his thoughts on these problems with Gandhi. He also wanted Gandhi to be his guest at Chhindwara, but because the government would not allow that, this could not happen.16 When the charge was finally made, Gandhi had an opportunity to look into it. He wrote to Mohamed Ali: …never read a weaker or flimsier indictment…Your reply will be decisive, straight and dignified…I wish I was with you in Chhindwara to assist in drawing up your reply. That was not to be.17

He ended the letter in a tone which was as much personal as political: Please give my respect to Amma Saheb. I am pining to meet you all and to meet the children and come in closer touch with you. As I said at the Lucknow meeting, my interest in your release is quite selfish. We have a common goal and I want to utilize your services to the uttermost in order to reach that goal. In the proper solution of the Mohammedan question lies the realization of Swarajya. However, more of this when we meet, as I hope we shall soon do.

These are glimpses of carefully nurturing a relationship which both of them thought was pregnant with significant possibilities for themselves and for the country. Mohamed Ali used to write ‘long letters’ to Gandhi from his confinement, and Gandhi, true to his feelings, began to explore opportunities for their release.

84  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

‘Mr Gandhi’ becomes ‘Mahatmaji’ The Muslim League for its Calcutta meeting in December 1917 had elected Mohamed Ali as president in absentia. While the Raja of Mahmudabad actually presided, there was real concern for the release of the Ali brothers. ‘A Calcutta Muhammadan in the course of his speech threatened Government that if the Ali Brothers were not released, the whole Muhammadan community would renounce the honours and resign the posts conferred on them by Government’.18 Gandhi witnessed all this and when his turn to speak came, he also emphasized that it was a duty of the Muslims that they should try to secure the brothers’ release. On his own part, he took the matter in earnest. When the government wanted an undertaking of loyalty from the Ali brothers as a condition for their release, Gandhi wanted to help them in toning down the temper of the language of their response to the government. Mohamed Ali, in his response to Gandhi, gave him the liberty to state in public that both brothers ‘nevertheless believe in the British connection, and consider ourselves perfectly loyal citizens of the Empire’.19 While the letter was still formally addressed to ‘My dear Mr. Gandhi,’ an attempt to reach hearty informality was also visible in the expressions he used in closing the letter: ‘Affectionate esteem from both of us and dua from mother. You make us jealous of her affection for you.’ Shortly afterwards, in April 1918, the Viceroy invited Gandhi along with some other leaders to a War conference in Delhi. As official preparation for the conference was going on, Gandhi decided to take the risk of rupturing his relationship with the government on the issue of the Ali brothers’ release. In the preparatory meeting called by Sir Claude Hill, Member, Viceroy’s Executive Council, Gandhi expressed his ‘resentment’ for the absence of Tilak, Mrs Besant and the Ali brothers despite being alone in airing such views. He followed this with a letter to Hill (which both Charles Andrews and Mazhar-ul-Huq helped him to write) wherein he expressed his feeling that without the

‘Love at First Sight’  /  85

presence of the most powerful leaders of people, the proposed conference would likely be abortive. ‘So far as the Ali Brothers are concerned, there is no proof of their guilt before the public, and they have emphatically repudiated the charge of having corresponded with the enemy. Most Mohammedans think what the Ali Brothers think on the situation’, he wrote.20 In his letter to Mr Maffey, Private Secretary to the Viceroy, on 27 April 1918, having argued that the discharge of the Ali brothers had become more than imperative, he wrote: After considerable hesitation and deep thought, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot take part in the Conference…My reasons are set forth in my letter to Sir Claude Hill…I do not know whether His Excellency would still like to see me about the Brothers.21

To the great irritation of the high officials in the government, Gandhi connected the question of the brothers’ release with the issue of recruitment for the War. However, the Viceroy not only agreed to meet Gandhi, but also tried to persuade him to join the conference by pleading that Gandhi should not wreck the conference by keeping out of it: ‘You may, if you like, wreck it from within…If you don’t attend the Conference, your absence will have a very bad effect on India.’ After some initial hesitation, Gandhi decided to attend the conference: ‘In fear and trembling, I have decided, as a matter of duty, to join the Conference’, he wrote to the private secretary to the Viceroy. Quick came the reply from the private secretary: ‘The Viceroy does not believe in your “fear and trembling”. Nor do I.’22 Before attending the conference, he secured the Viceroy’s permission to speak in Urdu in support of his resolution and also to write a letter to the Viceroy explaining his stand on urgent issues. This was typical of Gandhi’s proactive approach to public matters: engaging with rather than withdrawing from a difficult situation to make something out of nothing. In the ‘classic’ letter of 29 April 1918, which the Viceroy permitted him to publish, Gandhi wrote:

86  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers One of my reasons for abstention and perhaps the strongest was that Lokmanya Tilak, Mrs. Besant and the Ali Brothers, whom I regard as among the most powerful leaders of public opinion, were not invited to the Conference. I still feel that it was a grave blunder not to have asked them… no Government can afford to disregard the leaders, who represent the large masses of the people as these do, even though they may hold views fundamentally different.23

Thus, insisting that the Ali brothers ought to be released and consulted at those critical times, Gandhi went on to declare his support for the cause dear to the brothers: Lastly, I would like you to ask His Majesty’s Ministers to give definite assurance about Mohammedan States. I am sure you know that every Mohammedan is deeply interested in them. As a Hindu, I cannot be indifferent to their cause. Their sorrows must be our sorrows.24

Around the same time, he also wrote to the private secretary of the Viceroy. ‘I dare not shirk an obvious duty regarding Ali brothers. Their internment had soured the Muslim section. As a Hindu I feel I must not stand aloof from them’.25 It was because of such interventions by Gandhi that the Viceroy decided to appoint a committee to examine the question of the release of the Ali brothers towards the end of 1918.26 Around that time the Ali brothers sent a message to Gandhi, through their lawyer Mr Ghate, requesting him to meet their mother. On 6 August 1918 Gandhi wrote to Ghate: Please assure Mataji as also our friends that I am leaving no stone unturned to secure a quick but perfectly honourable release. I know everything about Mr. Mohammad Ali’s illness. And I wish I could hasten the discharge even on that ground. But I hate to go on making appeals to the Government till we lose their respect for us. I take it that in due course they (Mr. Mohammad Ali and friends) will get copies of my correspondence with Sir William Vincent [Home Member in the Viceroy’s Council] through Mr. Shueb27 [sic]. Sir William talks of a tribunal of inquiry. I do not want to boycott it.

‘Love at First Sight’  /  87 Before throwing in a very big agitation, I want to give the Government every opportunity of a proper and decent retreat. I hope the Brothers will, if called upon, appear before the Committee. Should, however, an agitation become necessary I shall certainly interview the Mataji before embarking upon it. I suppose that is what she desires.28

And within weeks he wrote to Sir William Vincent about the brothers’ release.29 Although nothing came immediately out of it and the brothers had to remain one more year in confinement, it shows that Gandhi remained continuously engaged with the question of the Ali brothers’ release (‘My eye is fixed on Ali Brothers’, as he said). With the progress of the Rowlatt Bills, satyagraha was very much in the air. Gandhi considered the issue of the Ali brothers’ continued detention as another fit case for offering satyagraha.30 At the same time, he wanted to prevent the Ali brothers from making things more complicated for themselves and lost no opportunity for urging moderation upon the brothers.31 The Muslim League session at the end of 1918 was seized with the issue raised by the revolt of Sharif Husain of Mecca against the Khalifa. Consequently, it witnessed some fiery speeches, especially by the chairman of the Reception Committee, Dr Ansari, espousing panIslamism. The session was particularly noteworthy for two reasons. First, it marked the shifting of the leadership from the moderates to the extremists on pan-Islam. The long shadow of the Ali brothers was quite perceptible in the deliberations of the sessions. The Raja of Mahmudabad and Wazir Hasan were accused of becoming opposed to the Ali brothers on the Khilafat question and were asked to step down by some delegates. This led them to resign as president and secretary of the League. Jinnah thought that giving primacy to a foreign policy issue like the Khilafat was contrary to the constitution of the League, but as there were no takers for his point of view, he left the meeting followed soon by the Raja of Mahmudabad. However, Wazir Hasan was persuaded to continue as the secretary of the League.32 Second, the other special feature of the session was that for the first time the League welcomed the ulama into politics as the pan-Islam

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enthusiasts felt that the ulama, like Abdul Bari and others of his ilk who had been associated with the Turkish question for long and had closely worked with the Ali brothers, could help them best in spreading the message of pan-Islam to the masses. As Maulana Kifayetullah said, the ulama had left politics to the League in the past, but when the call went out, they were only too glad to join the political body.33 Maulana Abdul Bari emerged as the most forceful speaker on panIslamic interests and commitments of the Indian Muslims and called on them to ‘[r]emove the Jew, the Christian and the idolator from the Holy Places at all costs’.34 The news of all these developments was streaming into the ears of the Ali brothers in Chhindwara. No doubt, they became impatient for their release. But seeing no end to their misery and apprehending further damage to the interests of Turkish Caliphate and to the sentiments of the Muslims in India, the Ali brothers decided to send a Memorandum to the Viceroy on 24 April 1919 from Chindawara. They wrote: Moslem loyalty and support had so often been assured to Government in our generation, and even Moslem contentment was so often unduly taken for granted, that other communities had with some justice made our attitude towards the Government almost a matter of reproach. It was a strange return for all this loyalty and support, that, without any effective protest, and often with the concurrence of His majesty’s Government, blow after blow was aimed at the temporal power of Islam…If Britain decided to retain the goodwill of the Mussalmans, a hundred millions of whom were members of her composite Empire, she must befriend and keep the Caliphate on her side, and deal more fairly and equitably with Moslem Kingdoms and countries such as Persia, Afghanistan and Morocco.35

On the specific demands of the Indian Muslims, the Ali brothers further stated in the Memorandum: There should be no attempt by non-Muslim to interfere in the free choice by the Muslims of the Khalifa, the sovereignty of the Khalifa over the Holy Places should not be dismembered…Egypt and other territories of the

‘Love at First Sight’  /  89 former Turkish Empire should be restored to the Khalifa; Muslim religious places should not be occupied or controlled by non-Muslims.   The Muslim should not be asked to assist in the prosecution of war against the Khalifa; no Muslim should be punished for promoting sympathy with his brother Muslims in any part of the world; the British Government should pay more respect to the sentiments of Muslims in India and should cultivate friendly relations with the Muslim governments of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Morocco.36

He ended the Memorandum by giving an ultimatum that if within a ‘reasonable time’ the government’s attitude towards the Muslims does not change or their claims continue to be disdainfully treated it will be our duty to ask for Passports and to recommend the same grave and extremely painful step to our co-religionists so that they and we could migrate to some other land where to be a believing Mussalman and an ardent patriot is not considered a crime.37

Gandhi could not be happy when he saw the draft of this Memorandum. One of his cardinal principles for mobilization and action from South Africa days was that demands should be reduced to their minimum and there should be no mixing of issues. Besides, the AngloAfghan war had already started in early May and Gandhi promised the government to keep the peace. On 23 May 1919, he wrote to the Ali brothers: Your statement of the Mahomedan claim instead of representing an irreducible minimum was an exaggeration. I am sure you do not propose to raise questions affecting issues that were rightly or wrongly settled long before the war [the reference is to the demand for restoration of Egypt to Turkey]. You have a right to claim the restoration of the temporal status of Islam as it existed at the time of the outbreak of the war. I would like you even now to redraft your memorial. Make a reasoned and logical statement that must arrest and command the attention of the world. The success of any cause naturally and necessarily depends finally upon the will of God. But that will is almost conditioned by the manner in which we who approach the throne of the Almighty conduct ourselves;

90  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers and nothing avails there but cold reason sanctified by truth, humility and strictest moderation…If you adopt my proposal I would love to revise your draft.38

This reads almost like a headmaster to his student. But Gandhi could write this because already he not only had placed himself in a pivotal position with regard to the articulation of Muslim demands, but also had established his trustworthiness and dependability in relation to the Ali brothers. This becomes evident from the correspondence between Abdul Bari and the Ali brothers on the one hand, and Gandhi on the other at this time. Abdul Bari, writing to Gandhi on 27 April 1919, expressed his concern for promoting Hindu-Muslim unity and proposed the formation of a joint commission for that purpose. He made his proposal subject to Gandhi’s approval and said, ‘If you agree to this proposal the suggestion may be placed before a body of advisers and put into practice.’39 However, when Gandhi rejected the idea of a commission for achieving Hindu-Muslim unity at that juncture and argued instead that at that point of time ‘the energy of everybody is and must be concentrated upon Rowlatt legislation, Islamic questions and Reforms’, Maulana Bari promptly accepted his advice.40 Around the same time, Shaukat Ali conveyed to ‘my dear Mahatmaji’ that the Muslims could not take any rest ‘if even an inch of Moslem sacred lands went to any outsider’ and wrote, ‘We beg you to remember us in your prayers’.41 And Mohamed Ali, writing to ‘Mahatmaji’ on the same day, that is, 9 May 1919, tried to explain to him the brothers’ decision ‘to consider ourselves no more bound by the Defence of India Act’ and said, ‘I hope this will give you ample assurance that I am a true satyagrahi.’ He ended the letter by describing Gandhi as his ‘friend, philosopher and guide’.42 While during this early phase of their relationship Gandhi was always careful to cultivate the Ali brothers and to invest his all to strike trust and dependability, he was not agreeable to concede what he thought inappropriate. In his 23 May letter cited above, Gandhi stood his ground. If he did not consider the Memorandum as dignified, neither could he

‘Love at First Sight’  /  91

like the idea of defying the internment conditions [for proving to be a ‘true satyagrahi’]. He wrote: I would like you, if you could summon up the courage, to recall the notice of disobedience and tell the Viceroy that upon mature consideration [read under Gandhi’s advice] and for the sake of the cause for which you stand… you have decided not to disobey the order for the time being.

At the same time, he reassured the brothers, ‘[Y]ou may not know that in my recent confidential letters to the Viceroy and the Governor of Bombay I have definitely raised the Mahomedan question confining it to Khilafat and the holy places.’43 Apparently failing to convince Mohamed Ali, Gandhi wrote again on 5 June 1919 a long letter which included the following: I quite agree with you that so long as I cannot convince you, you must act according as you feel right. I can only add to what I have already said that I have discussed the contents of your letter to the Viceroy with several friends and they all practically without exception agree that the statement of claim does not represent the irreducible minimum and that withdrawal from India is not a practical step…The circumstances that attended the Prophet’s flight were totally different from those that attend your contemplated action…

Then, following his own sense of honour and decorum, the Mahatma hastened to add, But I must not presume unduly upon your kindness. I have no right whatsoever to enter into a religious discussion with you based on an interpretation of the Koran. I claim no intimacy with its teachings that you rightly possess…I need hardly assure you that I shall labour for a proper adjustment of the Mahomedan claims as adumbrated in my letter to the Viceroy.44

On the Way to Khilafat During the first half of the year 1919, Gandhi was struggling with Rowlatt Satyagraha and major developments like the Jallianwala Bagh

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massacre that followed from it. At the same time, he also remained in close communication with the Ali brothers and their mentor, Abdul Bari, regarding the Khilafat issue and the brothers’ release. Combining his principled view with his personal concern, he wrote to Mohamed Ali on 29 June 1919: I have been following everything about you since your being taken to Betul jail. I still retain the opinion I had formed regarding your memorial…I need hardly say that you are never out of my mind, although we may not for sometime come to meet face to face. I am in close touch with our public men, as also with those in authority regarding the Moslem question.45

As the Ali brothers were already imprisoned in Betul jail for their defiance of the conditions of their internment, Abdul Bari had written to Gandhi on 16 June 1919, seeking his advice regarding what they could do about it.46 A little later, after the conclusion of the European peace treaty, he wrote to Gandhi on the same subject again.47 Replying to Abdul Bari, Gandhi wrote on 27 August 1919: I feel it is not yet time for asking for the Brothers’ release…I do not think our efforts will succeed until the Turkish peace terms are disclosed…I am already in communication with His Excellency the Viceroy. I know what the Mohamedans feel...The time for joint and firm action is now…Satyagraha is the only remedy…In the dignity of Satyagraha in action lies the future of Islam, the future of India and parenthetically, the future of the Ali Brothers.48

Hindu-Muslim unity was at the centre of Gandhi’s mind, for without it, no stride towards Swaraj was possible. His opposition to the Rowlatt Act was because he felt that ‘it was an affront to the nation’: ‘national honour demanded its repeal’.49 He was supposed to have told Abdul Bari that through Rowlatt Satyagraha, ‘Hindu–Muslim unity would be complete and the government would be paralysed’.50 Rowlatt Satyagraha, as historian Ravinder Kumar has claimed, was ‘unprecedented in nationalist history’ for it was ‘subcontinental in character’ and attracted classes and communities—both Hindus and

‘Love at First Sight’  /  93

Muslims—mostly from urban areas which did not participate in nationalist agitations till then. Although it collapsed in the face of ferocious repression by the government, its distinctive contribution was, in Kumar’s view, that it ‘symbolised the transfer of “moral authority” over the country from the hands of the British Government into the hands of the nationalist leadership…vested in the person of Gandhi’.51 Yet it must be admitted that despite Muslim participation, ‘in large numbers’ in certain places, as an instrument of Hindu-Muslim unity, Rowlatt Satyagraha proved to be inadequate. Local discontent was, among others, one reason for participation in the movement as much for the Hindus as for the Muslims,52 but the Muslims had the additional cause for anxiety in their concern about the future of Islam. As an idea, Hindu-Muslim unity did not take hold in the minds of the people. This was quite evident in the fact that while on the day of hartal both Hindu and Muslim participation in processions was very large, in the morning after the day of hartal, that is, 7 April 1919, in the meeting arranged in Bombay for the administration of pledges on Swadeshi and Hindu-Muslim unity, Gandhi found ‘only a handful of persons’ present.53 And when on 21 March 1919 in Delhi, Swami Shraddhananda was invited by some Muslims leaders to speak from the pulpit of the Jama Masjid and he did speak from there, Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, disapproving of the event, commented: ‘In their silly excitement the Muslims took him next day inside the Jamai Mosque of Delhi and heard his speech from the pulpit.’54 Calcutta Muslims had also objected to the Swami’s presence in the Mosque as ‘unseemly and inadmissible’.55 It cannot, of course, be vouchsafed that but for the Ali brothers, Gandhi would not have taken up the Khilafat cause; yet it is true that despite his ambiguities about the absolute merit of the Khilafat issue or whether Muslim demand would really be met, the Ali brothers’ firm commitment to it and the impact of that commitment on the Muslim masses had indeed encouraged him to consider the issue as his own. If the Rowlatt Satyagraha and the consequent violence had

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happened to be the product of his ‘Himalayan Miscalculation’,56 in taking up the Khilafat issue, he felt he would be on terra firma to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity. Ground for the Khilafat Movement began to be prepared during the second half of 1919 and Gandhi shouldered his share of the task. The ulama, in general, did not understand the importance of the Khilafat issue until Maulana Abdul Bari decided to mobilize the ulama and issued a fatwa signed by 500 ulama and sent it to the Viceroy. This was soon followed by the formation of the Jamaat-i-Ulama-i-Hind under Maulana Bari’s initiative.57 Khaliquzzaman, as he himself reports, took a leading role in gathering a lot of notable personalities for ‘a conference under the aegis of the Muslim League to impress upon the British Government the determination of the Muslims to resist any injustice to the Turks and the Khilafat’. Despite rifts and conflict of personalities, particularly between Maulana Bari and the Raja of Mahmudabad, the conference was held in the third week of September 1919 in Lucknow. This was the first Khilafat conference.58 Gandhi did not attend this conference, but immediately preceding this conference, he addressed a Khilafat meeting in Bombay on 18 September which was attended by 10,000 Muslims.59 In his address, he promised Hindu support for the Muslim cause and advised satyagraha as the only means for their struggle. The resolution adopted by this meeting was drafted by hand by Gandhi himself and it asked for ‘fulfillment of the pledged word by the retired Hon’ble Lloyd George regarding Turkey and thereby restore the confidence of the Mohammedan subjects of His Majesty.’60 The Lucknow Khilafat Conference founded an all-India Central Khilafat Committee with Bombay as its centre and Seth Chotani, a successful Bombay businessman, as its president. Shaukat Ali, upon his release two months later, became the secretary of the Central Khilafat Committee. When the Central Khilafat Committee decided to observe 17 October 1919 as the Khilafat Day, Gandhi added fasting and hartal on that day as part of the programme.61 Gandhi also took

‘Love at First Sight’  /  95

care to write to Maulana Bari, suggesting that he should issue instruction for the maintenance of peace in the demonstrations that would take place around the Khilafat Day.62 A second Khilafat conference was held during 23–24 November 1919 in Delhi. Gandhi was the only Hindu present on the 23rd, although the next day the meeting was open to Hindus and many Hindus, including Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Swami Shraddhananda, were present. The conference witnessed a tussle between the UP Muslims and the Bombay group. Gandhi exerted himself to maintain peace between the two groups and the unity of the conference. It was in this conference that Gandhi ‘for the first time’ used the expression ‘non-cooperation’ as a strategy to deal with the government. However, despite insistence by extremists like Hasrat Mohani that boycott of British goods should be launched, Gandhi held his ground in opposing this idea, for he believed it would unnecessarily hurt British commercial interests.63 Besides, Gandhi also repeated his promise of Hindu help towards the Muslim cause, but without anything specific in exchange from the Muslims (like stopping cow killing). As he said: [B]ut we Hindus relying on our traditions do not consider it honourable to take something in return for offering our sympathy in a righteous cause… any help that the Hindus will offer to the Muslims at this time will be purely on the basis of their national and moral obligations; it should be without any consideration.64

The conference also instituted a committee to go into the question of non-cooperation. Thus, even before the Ali brothers’ release, Gandhi was clearing the path of the Khilafat Movement which was so dear to them, and with his gentle but firm presence, he was setting the direction that the movement should take.65 The end of 1919 was marked by the release of the Ali brothers along with several other leaders and as both the Congress and the Muslim

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League were holding their annual sessions in Amritsar at that time, the brothers headed to attend these. This was the first time that the Ali brothers were attending a Congress session. In the League session they emerged as the most important speakers, and both brothers delivered highly emotional speeches. Shaukat Ali expressed his earnest desire to go to Turkey and to die in their country. He asked the audience ‘whether they wished to remain British subjects or Muslims’. Mohamed Ali proclaimed that ‘they were subjects of God and not of Great Britain’ and advised his audience ‘to shed their blood in the cause of Islam’.66 But despite their tough speeches, the Ali brothers as well as the other extremists chose to remain within the limits set by Gandhi, and hence, resolutions were adopted, like in the Congress, agreeing to work the reforms. A resolution expressed deep resentment of the Muslims at the disregard of their repeated representations to the government. Hasrat Mohani added an amendment calling for boycott of the Indian army by the Muslims if the army was used for anti-Islamic purposes.67

Treading on the Edge of a Sword The terms of peace treaty with Turkey were not publicly known until May 1920, but there was a prevailing sense that there might not be much hope for either Turkey or the Caliphate. During the last few meetings of the Muslim leaders, there was talk of a fresh delegation to Britain to convey the feelings of the Indian Muslims to the British government. A small delegation was in fact sent in February 1920 which included Mohamed Ali. Even before that, a deputation consisting of the Ali brothers, Maulana Abdul Bari, Hasrat Mohani, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr Ansari, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (who had been released from externment early in January), Seth Chotani and several others met the Viceroy. Remarkably, Gandhi and Swami Shraddhananda were also part of this deputation. But at the same time, the feeling was growing that petitions and deputations would not be enough for achieving the redress they were seeking. Something else

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must be tried. Hence, anxiety and, associated with it, temper were running high and freely exhibited by men like Hasrat Mohani and Abdul Bari. In a Khilafat Conference held in Calcutta in February 1920, Bari gave a violent speech urging the audience to die for their religion. While he began his speech with the admission that it was a conference ‘of Hindus and Musalmans representing all shades of opinion’, he ended by inspiring the Muslims to use bricks if they had no firearms.68 On the one hand, ordinary Muslims still had no definite idea about the relevance or the importance of the Khilafat for them; on the other, there was also the widespread feeling that if it was a religious matter, they should not involve the Hindus in it for they did not quite understand ‘what idol worshippers had to do with the succession to the Prophet’.69 But leaders like the Ali brothers or Abdul Bari were of the opinion that although the Muslims were already talking about boycott or non-cooperation, none of this would make sense without the support of the Hindus. If Hindus, the majority community, were unconcerned about Muslim demands, it would be simply ignored by the government. Besides, and most dangerously for the Muslims, they thought it would leave the Muslims alone to take the heat of the government’s wrath creating further opportunity for the Hindus to exploit as had happened in the post-Mutiny years. That is to say, if British goods are boycotted or if cooperation is withdrawn from the government both Muslims and Hindus should be together and they must face the consequences together as well. Gandhi’s importance lay in the fact that he promised and also was in a better position than anybody else to ensure Hindu support for the Muslim cause. While the Ali brothers did develop a sense of personal attachment to Gandhi, such political calculation as this also made Gandhi indispensable for them. And Abdul Bari, in a telegram to Gandhi in October 1919 commending his role in strengthening unity all over India, pleaded with him that he should advise the Hindus to shed their indifference towards the Muslims and promised that the Muslims were ready to accept their advice.70

98  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Amidst such apprehensions, a meeting of the Khilafat Committee was held in Delhi on 20 January 1920. Here, Gandhi presented his plan for non-violent non-cooperation for the consideration of the Muslim leaders. The Ali brothers as well as their mentor, Abdul Bari, were present along with the other Muslim leaders like Hakim Ajmal Khan and Maulana Azad. Reportedly, Maulana Bari and the Ali brothers took some time to agree to Gandhi’s proposal, although they subsequently did agree.71 Why the Ali brothers hesitated is not entirely clear. Perhaps they wanted to know the mind of their mentor, Maulana Abdul Bari. The Khilafat Conference at Calcutta adopted a resolution on non-cooperation and also decided to observe the Khilafat Day on 19 March. Liberals among Muslims and Hindus as well as the Shia Muslims were against any confrontation with the government on the Khilafat question.72 If such a course promised to keep the political landscape less turbulent and more peaceful, it was also the path of inactivity and uneventfulness. But a moral ground for action presented itself in the form of ‘Punjab wrong’ and ‘Khilafat wrong’.73 The latter was more important in the sense that the Ali brothers with the help of the ulama were indeed capable of taking the issue to the Muslim masses and to mobilize them as had never happened before. And the Muslims encouraged by the extremism of the leaders like Abdul Bari, Hasrat Mohani or even by the impatient and intemperate Ali brothers could easily take the path of violence. On the other hand, if the Hindus could be brought around to support the Khilafat cause without preconditions, a firm ground for long-term communal unity, founded not on the accommodation of material interests but on the acceptance of certain vital cultural institutions and values, might be created. Gandhi could not let this possibility pass. Yet everything would depend on mutual respect and trust between the communities and on leading the agitation with moderation and reasonableness. Gandhi therefore took upon himself the task of treading on the edge of a sword. About

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Gandhi’s closeness with Mohamed Ali, B. R. Nanda has commented: ‘So glaring were the disparities in their background, outlook and temperament, that it seems extraordinary that Gandhi and Mohamed Ali should have been drawn to each other at all.’74 Yet the ‘extraordinary’ did happen, and Gandhi was on his way to act in unison with the Ali brothers whom he also had the responsibility to hold in check. But such a delicate act of balancing might not last forever. Knowing the intemperate language that Mohamed Ali was capable of using, Gandhi cautioned Shaukat Ali that the proposed deputation to England of which Mohamed Ali was a leading member had, a sacred mission…Its strength lies in its ability to appeal to Reason and Justice…[It] must therefore be moderate in presentation and firm in demand. We are asking nothing more than what the British ministers have pledged themselves to give.75

In the third all-India Khilafat Conference held in Bombay in the middle of February, Gandhi was not present. But within three weeks, Gandhi issued a manifesto in which he made his position in relation to the Khilafat question clear. The manifesto stated: The Khilafat Question has now become the question of questions…I trust the Hindus will realize that the Khilafat Question overshadows the Reforms and everything else….   If Muslim demands are not granted there is fear of violence following madness. Hence, (1) no violence in thought, speech or deed; (2) no boycott of British goods for Boycott is a form of violence; (3) no rest till the minimum is achieved; (4) no mixing up of other questions with the Khilafat Question….   What must be done on the proposed Khilafat Day: cessation of business on the 19th instant, but on a voluntary basis.   Non-co-operation is the only remedy if the demands are not granted. It is the cleanest remedy as it is the most effective, when it is absolutely free from all violence…Advice to the soldiers to refuse to serve is premature. It is the last, not the first step.76

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Speaking on the resolutions of the Calcutta Khilafat Conference, he said he was not alarmed, ‘though I don’t approve of the tone of some of them’. Answering whether the Hindus could accept all the resolutions, he said: I can speak only for myself. I will co-operate whole-heartedly with the Muslim friends in the presentation of their just demands so long as they act with sufficient restraint and so long as I feel sure that they do not wish to resort to or countenance violence. I should cease to co-operate and advise every Hindu, or for that matter, every one to cease to co-operate the moment there was violence actually done, advised or countenanced…My goal is friendship with the world and I can combine the greatest love with the greatest opposition to wrong.77

Gandhi was not the person to mince words. He laid down sufficiently clearly the parameters of his role with regard to the Khilafat question in his manifesto. Even before the publication of his manifesto, he telegraphed to Shaukat Ali on how the Khilafat Day should be observed: Advise you temper firmness with moderation and express truth in language of love not hate. Then only shall we win.78

As meetings began to be organized in all cities for the observance of the Khilafat Day and hartal, Shaukat Ali issued a message which concluded with a Gandhian imprint: ‘The 19th March must be a test of Muslim forbearance, patience, courage and orderliness.’79 Indeed, the Khilafat Day passed off peacefully. In a meeting of the Bombay Khilafat Committee, Gandhi moved a resolution congratulating peaceful hartal and emphasized the need for the Hindus to cooperate with the Muslims.80 Throughout the first half of 1920, numerous Khilafat conferences were held both at local and all-India levels in which the ulama participated along with the political leaders. With the publication of the Turkish peace terms in May 1920, the temperature of the speeches

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made often moved northward though Gandhi’s influence was also visible as was the pressure for abjuring violence and extremism for the inescapable sake of joint action with the Hindus. In these meetings hijrat (originally, flight of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina; in another sense, migration of Muslims to Islamic country), noncooperation and jihad were often freely and interchangeably discussed. Despite Gandhi’s opposition, but encouraged by some Khilafat leaders including the Ali brothers, some 20,000 Muslims from Sind and NWFP left India on the ground that it had become Dar-ul-harb (as opposed to Dar ul-Islam or lands under Muslim rule) and went to Afghanistan. As Afghan authorities were in no mood to welcome these brethren from India, these people had to move back to India in a dire state.81 Shaukat Ali declared in Bombay that by Turkish peace terms England had disregarded the religious obligations of the Moslem subjects. Henceforth, there can be no peace or rest for believing Moslems. The non-cooperation movement must be organized and started and the movement must be given a full and fair trial. If it fails, the Moslems must decide what to do.82

In a Khilafat conference in Sind in July, Shaukat Ali suggested hijrat and jihad as the only alternatives available to the Muslims and opined that ‘to kill or be killed in the service of God was matyrdom’. Of course, he could not skip the idea of non-cooperation either, as it had already been adopted with his personal support by the Central Khilafat Committee in June: hence, in his own style, he suggested that jihad included non-cooperation. Gandhi, who was also present, must have been feeling rather awkward at this way of putting it. But he preferred to clarify his position without contradicting brother Shaukat. Without discounting the possibility that Muslims could be violent and use the sword, he reminded the audience that ‘General Dyer [read the government] had proved he could be more violent and use a heavier sword’. He advocated non-violent non-cooperation against such a government and advised ‘23 crores of Hindus to help 7 crores

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of Muslims’. One cannot miss detecting even an element of sarcasm when, to those who would be too weak to practise non-cooperation, he advised hijrat.83 Earlier in March, the Khilafat delegation to England met the authorities there, but did not achieve much to write home about. As the press reported in India, Mohamed Ali and the other members of the delegation were received coldly and were curtly told by the British Prime Minister Lloyd George that in dealing with Turkey, there was no question of Crusade as it was being dealt with no differently than Christian Austria.84 Such reports further exacerbated the impatience of the leaders of northern India like Shaukat Ali, Abdul Bari and Hasrat Mohani and increased the tension which was already there between them and the moderate Bombay leaders of the Central Khilafat Committee. Not only extremists like Hasrat Mohani or Shaukat Ali, but even ‘level-headed’ pan-Islamists like Hakim Ajmal Khan or Dr Ansari were unconvinced about the efficacy of non-cooperation to counter British neglect of Muslim interests and sentiments.85 Consensus on the question of non-cooperation still evaded the Central Khilafat Committee. M. M. Chotani, the moderate president of the committee risking to force a decision wrote to Mohamed Ali in Europe in the middle of May, ‘The Central Khilafat Committee have now finally decided to vigorously take up the movement of Non-Co-operation in the event of an adverse decision [on Turkey]’. At the same time, he had to concede to Shaukat Ali in agreeing to hold the next meeting of the committee in Allahabad.86 Before it met in Allahabad, the Central Khilafat Committee issued a manifesto at the end of May in which, in order to strengthen Gandhi’s position within the Congress on non-cooperation as also to buttress the moderate position vis-à-vis the extremists on panIslam within the Central Khilafat Committee, it emphatically stated first that the joint Hindu–Muslim action rejects any idea of violence open or secret; second, that it wants to convince the Hindus that the Muslim signatories have no other aim than to serve their religion and

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the country of their birth; third, that the Mussalmans of India ‘will fight to the last man in resisting any Mussalman power [the reference perhaps was to Afghanistan with which Britain fought a war in 1919] that may have designs upon India’; fourth, that out of consideration for some of their Hindu friends [read Gandhi], they abandon boycott and agree to restore Swadeshi instead; and finally, that in case noncooperation fails, ‘the Mussalmans reserve the right to take such other and further steps as may be enjoined upon them by their religion’ for a satisfactory solution of the Khilafat question.87 Despite such gestures, tall Hindu leaders within the Indian National Congress, even some of Gandhi’s closest ones, could not reconcile with the idea that the Khilafat, which was a religious issue of the Muslims, should be taken up by the Congress and made into a national cause for launching non-cooperation agitation against the government on an all-India scale. The All-India Congress Committee (AICC), meeting in Banaras, opted for postponing a decision on non-cooperation till Calcutta Special Congress in September 1920.88 This pushed the North Indian Muslim leaders further to the brink. Abdul Bari rather starkly wrote to Shaukat Ali in the middle of May 1920: Tell Mr. Gandhi that while I myself will be guided by his advice, I will not restrain those people who in their haste go against it…we shall not sit [idle] relying upon him, but thanking him for his sympathy, we will fulfill our religious obligations.89

The Central Khilafat Committee met at Allahabad between 1 and 3 June 1920. Apart from Gandhi, the other important Hindu leaders present were Pandit Malaviya, Motilal Nehru, Lajpat Rai and B. C. Pal. On the very first day, the report of the Banaras AICC’s non-committal attitude to non-cooperation led Abdul Bari to question Gandhi’s sincerity and ability to influence the Congress. Hasrat Mohani advocated supporting an Afghan invasion and Shaukat Ali, apparently torn between his loyalty to Abdul Bari and his feeling that Gandhi was indispensable, ended up supporting Mohani’s point of view, but

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‘started weeping’. Gandhi tried ‘to cool tempers’ and promised ‘to sacrifice his life’ for their cause if the Muslims would accept non-violent non-cooperation.90 The second day of the conference saw Shaukat Ali more composed and resolute in his affirmation that the Muslims were quite ready to place themselves entirely under the guidance of Gandhi. ‘There was dead silence and people did not dare to speak one way or the other as if they did not approve of placing themselves blindly in the hands of Gandhi.’91 The joint Hindu–Muslim meeting that followed on the same day did not make Gandhi entirely happy. Although the Hindu leaders expressed deep sympathy with the Muslim claims, they could not agree on non-cooperation. A majority of them wanted to wait till the Calcutta Special Congress. The Muslim leaders, despite some among them making noises on supporting Afghan invasion, rallied around Shaukat Ali and the conference ultimately adopted non-cooperation in four stages.92 This Allahabad Conference of the Central Khilafat Committee thus placed the Muslims behind Gandhi. Since the Khilafat Committee by this time had marginalized the AIML and come to represent the Muslim voice, this was very important indeed for Gandhi. And he achieved this without conceding his position on hijrat, jihad or boycott. As he prepared for his next step, he wrote to the Viceroy at the end of the month that the concern of the Muslims in London, which he had personally observed in the early years of the War, was equally visible to him in India. ‘My duty to the Empire to which I owe my loyalty requires me to resist the cruel violence that has been done to Mussalman sentiment.’ He said he found only ‘three courses were open to the Mahomedans’: [O]ne, to resort to violence; two, to advise emigration on a wholesale scale; three, not to be a party to injustice by ceasing co-operation with the Government…I venture to claim I have succeeded, by patient reasoning, in weaning the party of violence from its ways. I confess that I did not attempt to succeed in weaning them from violence on moral grounds, but purely on

‘Love at First Sight’  /  105 utilitarian grounds. The result, for the time being at any rate, has, however, been to stop violence…I admit non-co-operation has great risks, but at this time, such risks have to be taken.93

Simultaneously, Gandhi sent an ‘ultimatum’ to the Viceroy signed by a large number of Muslim political leaders and ulamas on behalf of the Central Khilafat Committee in the form of a memorandum stating that unless the Muslim demands are met, they would begin non-cooperation from 1 August.94 And subsequently he wrote to the press: ‘The issue is clear. Both Khilafat and Punjab affairs show that Indian opinion counts for little in the councils of the Empire. It is a humiliating position.’95 Now, with Muslim support behind him, Gandhi decided to force the hand of the Congress. He decided to act on non-cooperation even before the Congress met in Special Session in Calcutta and decided on it. In a Muslim meeting in Bombay towards the end of July, a resolution was passed supporting non-cooperation. It appealed to both Hindus and Muslims to observe a third Khilafat Day. Gandhi was present and supported the resolution urging upon everyone that there should be no violence.96 The third Khilafat Day was observed on 1 August 1920. Meetings of Muslims and Hindus were held in cities like Bombay and Calcutta where non-cooperation was discussed and stages outlined. No violence was reported. Marking the beginning of non-cooperation, Gandhi returned his imperial medals with a letter to the Viceroy referring to the ‘Khilafat and Punjab wrongs’.97 When the Special Congress met in Calcutta in the first week of September, the choice before it was very limited. It could either put its seal on non-cooperation which had already begun or denounce Gandhi for having started it without the concurrence of the Congress. Shaukat Ali’s enthusiasm drew an unusually large number of Muslim delegates to the Congress. Stalwarts like C. R. Das, B. C. Pal, Lajpat Rai, Moonje, Baptista, Kelkar and others did not think that the country was ready for non-cooperation; yet they thought it wiser to concede to it in principle. Gandhi’s resolution asked for redress for both

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Khilafat and Punjab wrongs and he even agreed to include Swaraj when pressed by B. C. Pal. Shaukat Ali took upon himself the task of mobilizing Muslim support for Gandhi’s non-cooperation resolution and had even threatened to physically assault Jinnah for disagreeing with him.98 In the end, Gandhi was able to secure enough votes to see his resolution though, although, according to Nanda, it ‘was by no means a great triumph for him’.99 A special meeting of the AIML was also held at the same time in Calcutta, with Jinnah presiding. Though Jinnah was opposed to Gandhi’s programme, the League adopted it.100 Lala Lajpat Rai, the president of the Special Congress, felt sorry that Gandhi ‘should have tacked the Indian National Congress on to the Central Khilafat Committee’.101 Noting his opposition to Gandhi’s programme, he said while closing the session that now that the country had been committed to it, ‘he hoped that the Moslems would give a lead in the movement and would go ahead fearlessly and sincerely so that the Hindus would be morally forced to join wholeheartedly their Moslem fellow-countrymen in carrying out non-co-operation’.102 Mohamed Ali, who had gone to England as a member of the Khilafat delegation, had, in fact, become the unspoken leader of the delegation ‘perfectly dressed, dispensing political wisdom, epigrams, jokes and anecdotes’, living well ‘in a nice flat with heaps of good food, taxis to go about’. He organized meetings, made speeches, established two propaganda organs, namely, the Moslem Outlook in England and Echo de l’Islam in Paris, and much impressed the British audience except for those who mattered most, namely, Prime Minister, Lloyd George and the British press.103 Predictably, the Khilafat delegation failed to cut any ice with the British government or with the Allied Powers and came back empty-handed. Mohamed Ali and the delegation reached Bombay on 4 October 1920, that is, after the Non-cooperation Movement had begun and the Calcutta Special Congress had met. Immediately after his arrival in India, Mohamed Ali busied himself with non-cooperation activities with brother Shaukat. The Ali brothers went to their alma mater at Aligarh and tried to induce the trustees of

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the College to give up government aid as a mark of non-cooperation. When the trustees decided to maintain the old pro-British tradition of the College, the Ali brothers directly wrote to the students and their parents to withdraw from the college and did indeed influence a number of very brilliant students to come out. When the MAO College authorities failed to protect an increasing number of their students against the infection of non-cooperation, they decided to temporarily close down the college. Gandhi stood beside the Ali brothers in this agitation. With Gandhi’s help and backing, Mohamed Ali now proposed to found a new university to accommodate the students expelled by MAO College authorities. ‘On 11 October Gandhi visited Aligarh and spoke to the students on non-co-operation.’ He went back to Aligarh in November ‘to participate in the Committee for framing a constitution for the National Muslim University’.104 Thus, the Jamia Millia University was founded, first in Aligarh, which later shifted to Delhi in 1925. Mohamed Ali became its first Vice-Chancellor, though his ‘enthusiasm for the institution was short-lived’ and in December he resigned to devote himself more to politics.105 At the end of December 1920, Indian National Congress had its annual meet in Nagpur. Those leaders who had opposed Gandhi at the Calcutta Special Congress gave the impression of preparing to fight hard to defeat non-cooperation at Nagpur. Shaukat Ali took no chances and, like in Calcutta, he again mobilized a large number of Muslims to be present at Nagpur. Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, who was present, found the Nagpur session of the Congress to be ‘almost a Muslim session…for I believe the number of Muslims was so large as to give it a Muslim colour’.106 Jinnah opposed Gandhi’s resolution, but was strongly rebuffed by Mohamed Ali. When there was turbulence in the Bengal camp between the many opponents and a few supporters of Gandhi, Shaukat Ali ‘requisitioned a batch of sturdy volunteers from Punjab and Gujarat to put down the rowdy revolutionaries’.107 Surprisingly, the leaders opposing Gandhi in Calcutta, C. R. Das being the chief among them, decided to reverse their position and became

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supporters of Gandhi’s resolution. Indeed, C. R. Das himself moved the main resolution on non-cooperation. The resolution was passed without difficulty and Jinnah, having seen no scope for himself in the proposed scenario of massified politics, left for Bombay the same evening. The Ali brothers began working in tandem with Gandhi on noncooperation with great enthusiasm and began touring India with Gandhi to promote non-cooperation for the cause of the Khilafat. A little before the Nagpur Congress gave its final seal on noncooperation, in the middle of October 1920, in a mass meeting in Lucknow, attended by Motilal Nehru and the Ali brothers among others, Gandhi had said if the government could oppress 7 crores of Mohammedans today, it could do so to the other 23 crores (of Hindus) too. ‘If today we will not help Mohammedans who live in India to save their religion, our religion too we cannot save from danger.’ Gandhi described non-cooperation as ‘our religion’.108 And Shaukat Ali too, echoing Gandhi in his address, enthusiastically and daringly declared that ‘non-co-operation is our religion’.

Notes and References   1. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereinafter CWMG), vol. 15 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India), 295.   2. Mushirul Hasan, Mohamed Ali: Ideology and Politics (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981), 28.   3. Mohamed Ali, My Life: A Fragment (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 101.   4. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (hereinafter MKG), Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (New York: Dover, 1983), 398–99.   5. B. R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1989), 198.   6. MKG, Autobiography, 399.   7. Ibid.   8. Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, Green and Company, 1961), 33.   9. Mohamed Ali Papers, Roll No. 3 in micro (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). 10. Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 1 (Varanasi: Sarva Seva SanghPrakashan, 2008), 20.

‘Love at First Sight’  /  109 11. Albert West happened to be the first European in South Africa to sympathize with Gandhi’s cause and to support and join him. For an introduction to Albert West, see M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1928), 174ff. 12. Ibid., 33. 13. Ibid., 53. 14. Ibid., 93. 15. Correspondence between Mohamed Ali and S. R. Pandit, 18 October 1918 (Mohamed Ali Papers, Roll No. 4 in micro [New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library]). 16. Mohamed Ali–Gandhi correspondence, 19 September 1918 (ibid., Roll No. 4 in micro Nehru Memorial Museum and Library ). 17. M. K. Gandhi to Mohamed Ali, 18 November 1918 (ibid.). Also, Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 1, 261–62. 18. P. C. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements (Delhi: Government of India Press, 1925), 130. 19. Mohamed Ali to Gandhi, 20 February 1918, in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 155. 20. Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 1, 104. 21. Ibid., 106–07. 22. Ibid., 107–10. 23. Gandhi, Autobiography, 403–05. 24. Ibid. Also, Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 135; Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, I: 113–16. 25. Mohamed Ali, My Life, 155n17. 26. Ibid., 155. 27. Shuaib Qureshi, Mohamed Ali’s protégée and his son-in-law. 28. Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, I, 211–12. 29. Ibid., 239. 30. Gandhi to Charles Andrews, 25 February 1919 in Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, I, 299–300. 31. Ibid., 285–87. 32. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 43–44. 33. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 132. 34. Ibid., 133. 35. Gopal Krishna, ‘The Khilafat Movement in India: The First Phase (September 1919–August 1920)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1968), 40, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. 36. Ibid. 37. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 140. 38. Krishna, ‘The Khilafat Movement in India’, 41, n. 27. 39. Gandhi Papers, SN 6567 (National Archives of India [hereinafter, NAI]). 40. Gandhi to Abdul Bari, 4 May 1919, CWMG 18, 9; Maulana Abdul Bari to MKG, 10 May 1919 (Gandhi Papers, SN 6603 [NAI]).

110  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 41. Sahukat Ali to MKG, 9 May 1919 (ibid., SN 6601 [NAI]). 42. Mohamed Ali to MKG (ibid., SN 6601 [NAI]). 43. CWMG 18, 56–57. 44. Ibid., 18, 81–82. 45. Ibid., 18, 148. 46. Abdul Bari to MKG, 16 June 1919 (Gandhi Papers, SN 6663 [NAI]). 47. Abdul Bari to MKG, 4 August 1919, SN 6788. 48. CWMG 18, 322. 49. Gandhi to Montagu, 14 June 1919 (cited in Judith Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power [Cambridge: University Press, 1972], 164, n. 3). 50. Home Pol., Deposit, April 1921, No. 67. Cited in Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 168. 51. Ravinder Kumar, The Making of a Nation: Essays in Indian History and Politics (Delhi: Manohar, 1989), 12–13. 52. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, Chapter 5. 53. MKG, Autobiography, 416 and 418. 54. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 45. 55. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 197. 56. MKG, Autobiography, Chapter 33. 57. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 46. 58. Ibid., 45–49. 59. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 197. 60. CWMG 18, 411. 61. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, op. cit. 62. Gandhi to Abdul Bari, 10 October 1919 (CWMG 19, 46). 63. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 202–03. 64. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 50. 65. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 145. 66. Ibid., 146. 67. Ibid., 14 and 146–47. 68. Ibid, 148; also, Pioneer, 1 March 1920. 69. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 199, n. 3, 201. 70. Abdul Bari’s telegram to Gandhi, Gandhi Papers, SN 6970, 25 October 1919. 71. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 53–54. Also, Ansari to Gandhi, Gandhi Papers, SN 7143, 1 April 1920. 72. The 13th Shia Conference held in UP, announced unequivocally that ‘the Sultan of Turkey was not and could not be their religious head…they could not sever their loyal connection with the British Government’ (Pioneer, 5 April 1920). Similarly, the UP Liberal Association, with Tej Bahadur Sapru in Chair, resolved that the line of action regarding Khilafat was ‘highly detrimental to the interests of the country…that non-co-operation was wholly unsuitable’ (Pioneer, 26 May 1920). Besides, moderate Bombay Khilafat leaders, as well

‘Love at First Sight’  /  111 as Jinnah and the Raja of Mahmudabad and Wazir Hasan, were also against precipitating confrontation with the government on the Khilafat issue. 73. ‘Punjab wrong’ was the product of Dyer’s infamous action in Jallianwalla Bagh which resulted not merely in huge loss of innocent lives but also in unimaginable injury to India’s self-respect and honour. See, Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar (London: Rupa and Co. 2005), Chapters 16–17. ‘Khilafat wrong’ referred to Britain’s decision to ignore the war-time promise of Prime Minister Lloyd George to Indian Muslims not to interfere with the Holy Lands of Islam. Both these appeared as morally unacceptable to Gandhi; hence, ‘wrong’. 74. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 202. 75. CWMG, 19, 363–64. 76. Pioneer, 12 March 1920. Also, Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 150. 77. Ibid. 78. Telegram to Shaukat Ali, 6 March 1920 (CWMG 19, 444). 79. Pioneer, 13 March 1920. 80. Pioneer, 21 and 22 March 1920. 81. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 148–50; also, Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 56–57. 82. Pioneer, 20 May 1920. 83. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 160. 84. Pioneer, 22 April 1920. 85. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 215. 86. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 217–18. 87. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 155–56. 88. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 216–17. 89. Ibid., 218–19. 90. Home (Pol.) B., July 1920, cited in Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 219n2; also, Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 217. 91. Bombay Police Commissioner’s Report, Home (Pol.), B., July 1920; cited in Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 219. 92. Pioneer, 6 June 1920. Also, Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 157–58. 93. Pioneer, 26 June 1920. 94. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 159. 95. Pioneer, 1 July 1920. 96. Pioneer, 2 August 1920. 97. Pioneer, 4 August 1920. Gandhi was awarded the ‘Imperial War Medals’ for his services to the British in the Boer War in South Africa in 1900. See Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), 53–55. 98. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, 265.

112  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 99. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 232–36; also, Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 55–56. 100. Pioneer, 9 and 11 September 1920. 101. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 236. 102. Pioneer, 11 September 1920. 103. Mushirul Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 47. 104. Ibid., 56n33. 105. Ibid, 65; Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 57. 106. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 57. 107. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, 238. 108. Pioneer, 18 October 1920.

5

Troubled Alliance Gandhi’s Selfishness In November 1918, Gandhi wrote to Mohamed Ali while he was still languishing as an internee at Chhindwara: [M]y interest in your release is quite selfish. We have a common goal and I want to utilize your services to the uttermost, in order to reach that goal. In the proper solution of the Mahomedan question lies the realization of Swarajya.1

It is not quite clear what Gandhi had meant by the ‘Mahomedan question’. Did he mean exclusively the Khilafat question or the question of Hindu-Muslim unity within India, or both? Probably he meant both, for he considered Khilafat to be important because by supporting the Muslims on this issue, the Hindus could build the foundation of a true Hindu-Muslim unity and such unity was the condition precedent for Swaraj. And because he could imagine an unbroken connection of Khilafat through communal unity to Swaraj, he insisted that the Hindu support should not be exchanged for any material benefit for the Hindus, like cow protection. Only such onesided, disinterested and altruistic gesture could generate enough understanding and empathy on the part of the Muslims towards the Hindus that the cow protection issue would automatically take care 113

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of itself as Swaraj would also be ensured. Such ‘selfish interests’ also prompted Gandhi to famously say: ‘I have therefore called Khilafat our “Kamadhuk”’2 that is, that mythical cow which could deliver anything that one might want from her. Of course, Mohamed Ali was saying things which did indeed encourage Gandhi to think like this. For instance, in October 1920 Mohamed Ali said in Aligarh, ‘If Muslims wish to maintain Islam, they should join hands with the Hindus and free their country first… If the Hindus wished to free their country they should maintain the freedom of neighbouring countries [read Turkey]’.3 In fact, it might not be wrong to say that Gandhi felt the Khilafat was perhaps more important for the Hindus than for the Muslims, for these two communities had never before tried to come together or to live as friends ‘bound to one another as children of the same soil’. Somebody must initiate friendship, and the Hindus are in a better position to initiate, and provide the opportunity to the Muslims to follow. The Khilafat issue presents ‘an opportunity of a life time’ and the Hindus must not let that pass for it might ‘not recur for another hundred years’. Hence, Gandhi recommended, ‘[I]f the Hindus wish to cultivate eternal friendship with the Mussalmans, they must perish with them in the attempt to vindicate the honour of Islam.’4 Gandhi’s may be termed ‘selfish self-abnegation’, for it asks one to go out to respect and promote another’s religious–cultural point of view without bargaining for corresponding behaviour from the other, expecting that the other would understand and spontaneously respond. The Hindus ‘must be patient’; they might have to wait a while, but the Muslims would not be found wanting in responding to the Hindu gesture. With the Ali brothers in his mind, Gandhi said, ‘we have got enlightened Muslim opinion with us. It must take time for it to react upon the Mussalman masses.’5 Hopefully, the ultimate result would be mutuality, unity and consensual political action satisfying the self-interest of all. This strategy to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity and the joint struggle for Swaraj also prompted

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Gandhi to ignore many of Mohamed Ali’s failings. For instance, Gandhi did not hesitate to contradict his (and Tagore’s) close friend Charles Andrews when the latter disapproved of Mohamed Ali’s representation to the British government condemning the Turkish Treaty arguing that the representation was ‘as unclean as the Treaty’. Protesting, Gandhi vehemently stated: I do think that practically the whole of India is with Mohamed Ali. Mohamed Ali certainly believes that the whole of India is at his back in the condemnation…He has broken no pledge…Poor Mohamed Ali represents, as he considers, a weak nation and supports the cause of a power that has been already sufficiently humbled and humiliated. I am prepared to excuse some exaggeration in him.6

Gandhi’s faith in himself and confidence in the rightness of what he was doing had indeed produced immediate effect. His bonds with the Ali brothers were growing stronger as also the Ali brothers’ faith in communal unity. At the end of the Nagpur Congress, Shaukat Ali had found enough ground to emphatically declare an ‘indissoluble union’ between the Hindus and the Mahomedans.7 Despite the anti-noncooperation noise raised by the moderates and the liberals, Gandhi’s non-cooperation campaign tours throughout India, which began from the end of 1920, continued in the following year, mostly in the company with the Ali brothers. In these campaigns, Gandhi had taken up twin tasks for himself: one, to convince the mass audience as well as Muslim leaders of his (and desirably, of all Hindus) unselfish commitment to the Khilafat cause, and second, to promote the idea of non-violence among the Muslims, even by papering over differences between him and the Ali brothers in this respect. In a speech before the students and teachers in Surat on 6 October 1920, Gandhi said: Brother Mohamedali who is sitting by my side considers non-violence a weapon of the weak. Whether he is right or wrong, the fact stands that through that method itself one can learn the doctrine of the sword. I pointed out to brother Shaukatali that Muslims do not possess the strength of

116  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers Qurbani [sacrifice]. When they gain the strength to die, they will find that there remains absolutely no need for the use of the sword.8

Gandhi would take every opportunity to tell the Hindus of his high appreciation of the Ali brothers who were deeply religious and ‘Godfearing’. Close interaction of the Hindus with the Muslims could only be good for both: ‘If you harmonise with the Muslims, Swaraj is just in the offing.’9 Again, clarifying his stand on how the Hindus could promote their own self-interest through an unselfish commitment to the cause of the Muslims, he said in Calcutta: I have been going around with Maulana Shaukat Ali all these months, but I have not so much as whispered anything about the protection of the cow. My alliance with the Ali brothers is one of honour. I feel that I am on my honour, the whole of Hinduism is on its honour, and if it will not be found wanting, it will do its duty towards the Mussalmans of India. Any bargaining would be degrading to us. Light brings light, not darkness, and nobility done with a noble purpose will be twice rewarded.10

Despite Gandhi’s total efforts directed to integrate the Muslims into the non-violent Non-cooperation Movement by upholding the Khilafat cause, there were discordant voices among the Muslims. The ‘Bengal Muhammadan Association’ declared early in 1921 that ‘it would preach the advantages and benefits of loyal co-operation’ to save the Muslim community from the unwholesome influence of Gandhi’s movement. In Khilafat conferences held in the United Provinces and Bengal and in Meerut, the ulamas present voiced their opposition to an alliance with the Hindus for the promotion of the Khilafat cause and questioned the idea of Hindu-Muslim unity.11 Aman Sabha’s began to emerge to oppose Non-cooperation Movement in places like Aligarh, Shahjanpur, Bijnor, Pilbhit, Banaras, etc.12 As dependable collaborators of Gandhi, the Ali brothers were trying their best to bridge the gulf. They, especially Mohamed Ali, continued to make long and verbose speeches campaigning for non-cooperation.

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Referring to organizations like Aman Sabhas, he said in a speech at Allahabad on 11 May 1921: Aman Sabhas are organized these days. But I say that the greatest Aman Sabha is our Congress…Had there been no such sabhas (Congress Committees) a good deal of blood would have been shed by this time…The greatest Indian leader who is respected throughout…India, who cannot be called a coward and who is the most courageous man, has ordered us to restrain our feelings and control ourselves…If we give up our peaceful method, our movement will be a failure…Our religion permits bloodshed as well as its avoidance…I am convinced that the people of India can attain salvation through non-violent non-co-operation.13

Earlier, in a speech at Jhansi on 20 November 1920, he said: [T]he fact that the Muslims have made Mahatma Gandhi their leader in the matter of the khilafat and act under his advice and he consults us in other matters shows that we have learnt a lesson in India…[we] have realized that if the questions of the religions, Hinduism, Islam, Swaraj and the Punjab are to be settled in India today, both Hindus and Muslims should live together as brothers born of one mother.14

But then, the Ali brothers, in the presence or absence of Gandhi, also continued to make ambiguous and equivocal statements on their commitment to non-violence. In a speech before the Muslim Volunteers’ Conference at Erode, Madras, Mohamed Ali said that he differed from Mahatma Gandhi on the issue of violence/non-violence. He claimed that he favoured violence and as a Muslim, he would not flinch from adopting methods of violence, but conceded that as they were now practising non-violent non-cooperation, he would not recommend violent methods.15 A little earlier, in February 1921, Mohamed Ali had stated their relative positions on non-violence somewhat more clearly when he said in Faizabad: The Mussalmans wanted to seek the alliance of Gandhiji…in the work of the Khilafat but I told them…that we could not make him our ally as he

118  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers wanted us to banish from our hearts all thought of using the sword. I declared that God had given me the right to use the sword against my adversary when I had the power to do so and that no one could then stop me. This is our creed. But now we know and we see that our country does not possess that power and so long as we do not have the power we will be his (Gandhi’s) associates…we are, therefore, standing today on the same platform—he for reasons of principle and we for those of policy.16

Not that Gandhi was unaware of this. Even in 1920, he had admitted that if he had succeeded in ‘weaning the party of violence from its ways’, he had done so not on moral grounds ‘but purely on utilitarian grounds’.17 In early February 1921, Gandhi wrote regarding Shaukat Ali: ‘He does believe in non-violence, though he believes equally in violence. If he cannot secure honourable terms for the Khilafat by means of non-violence, and if he finds that he can usefully lead his people on the path of violence, he will do so.’18 Yet Gandhi also realized that the Khilafat issue had caught on the imagination of the Muslim masses, and leaders like the Ali brothers or even the more extremist ones like Hasrat Mohani or Abdul Bari were capable of mobilizing these masses in the name of the Khilafat. Muslim grievance was indeed directed against the British to begin with, but once frustration in realizing the Khilafat goals sets in, it would likely be vented on the Hindus with great potential for communal violence. It would inevitably lead to long-term disunity fulfilling the desire of the British government. If Swaraj was the goal, Hindu-Muslim unity was the means for it, and the means was more important than the goal itself in this instance. As Gandhi said, ‘…what is the alternative to HinduMuslim unity? A perpetuation of slavery? If we regard one another as natural enemies, is there any escape from eternal foreign domination for either of us?’19 Given this, it would have been utter folly to go with the moderates and the liberals and hold the Congress back from noncooperation and let the Muslims launch a mass movement, unlikely to be non-violent, against the British solely on their own. The only course open to Gandhi then was to do what he did, that is, to launch a mass movement of the Hindus and the Muslims calling upon the

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Hindus to be selfishly unselfish in supporting the Khilafat cause and to keep hoping that Hindu investment in the Khilafat agitation would create the psychological and political context for lasting mutual trust and unity between the two major communities. Instead of trying to bring the two communities together through something like the Lucknow Pact which was based on separate electorates—a formula Gandhi never thought proper—it would be better, Gandhi reasoned, to attempt to build up unity from the bottom.

Fault Lines Begin to Appear At this time the issue of a possible Afghan invasion created quite a flurry and ultimately some embarrassment for Gandhi. In late 1920, Shaukat Ali contacted the Afghan envoy with the idea of sending a Khilafat delegation to Afghanistan to study the unenviable condition of the Indian Muhajirs who had left India on the advice of the Ali brothers, among others. The idea of the delegation was, of course, opposed by the government and nothing came of it. Soon, in the Lucknow Khilafat Conference in February 1921, Mohamed Ali in his hyperbolic manner declared that the Indian Army was the army of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian police had become the police of Mahatma Gandhi. It was followed by a speech in Madras in April 1921 in which Mohamed Ali asserted that he would assist an Afghan army if it comes to invade India.20 It was repeated by Shaukat Ali in a speech in Etah on 13 May 1921.21 These speeches created considerable consternation among the Hindus, and it was rumoured that the government might arrest the Alis soon. Pandit Malaviya related a story to a press interviewer in Simla that a year before an Afghan, who came to India, had told him that the Amir and his government was willing to come to India to help Indians against the British government. Malaviya had then told the Afghans that in case of an invasion, every Hindu and the bulk of the Muslims who count and every Indian state without exception would array themselves on the side of the British government. Lajpat Rai also thought it prudent to give some thought to this subject and wrote a series of articles in his paper Bande Mataram under the

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title ‘Will Afghanistan invade us?’ Lajpat Rai argued that while the Hindus should make clear their intention not to establish a Hindu Raj in future India, the Muslims should also reassure the Hindus that they do not want any foreign Muslim power to rule India.22 Considering the importance of his alliance with the Ali brothers, Gandhi came out in Young India to state his position regarding what Mohamed Ali had said in Madras. In a somewhat circumlocuted manner, he came to Mohamed Ali’s defence: Why does the Government think of arresting brother Md. Ali? I have been saying the same thing as he. If he says that not a single Hindu or Muslim is going to help the British Empire this time, in case the Amir of Afghanistan invades India, I too have been telling the people the very same thing. I am not afraid of the Afghans…I would definitely say to the Amir that if the Empire refused to listen to us, refused obstinately to comply with our demands, we should certainly desist from helping it. I, rather we, do not possess today the strength to win over the Indian soldiers to our side, because they are not the masters of their temper yet. I may not, therefore, advise them today to refuse to fight on the side of the Government but is it [sic] ever possible for us to help in the maintenance of that Empire which we want to uproot?23

Having supported Mohamed Ali’s speech, Gandhi also added, ‘However, I warn the reader against believing in the bogey of an Afghan invasion.’24 But when Charles Andrews confronted him by asking whether his article on the Afghan bogey was not an invitation to the Afghans to invade India, an embarrassed Gandhi hastened to write: I do not believe the Afghans to be so foolish as to invade India on the strength of my article, but it is capable of bearing an interpretation put upon it by Mr. Andrews. I therefore hasten to inform all whom it may concern that not only do I not want to invite Afghans or anybody to come to our assistance. I am confident in our ability to settle with the Government. Besides, I believe only by non-violent means we will attain our end.25

But the matter did not stop there, nor did Gandhi’s embarrassment. In fact, the event led to the first fracture in the carefully built relationship

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between the Ali brothers and Gandhi. After the arrival of Lord Reading as the new Viceroy, Gandhi along with Kasturba went to meet him in May, reportedly on the advice of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Charles Andrews. What transpired between Gandhi and Reading regarding Mohamed Ali’s possible arrest following his Madras speech on Afghan invasion was not immediately made known to the public. But following their interview, Gandhi in a speech in Simla, referring to the issue of Afghan invasion, said he could not tolerate any foreign domination and he believed this was also the view of every Mohammedan in this country.26 At the end of May, the Ali brothers jointly made a signed statement to the press which amounted to an apology for their Madras speech. They said: Friends have drawn our attention to certain speeches of ours which, in their opinion, have a tendency to incite violence. We desire to state that we never intended to incite violence and we never imagined that any passages in our speeches were capable of bearing the interpretation put upon them. But we recognize the force of our friends’ argument and interpretation. We, therefore, sincerely feel sorry and express our regret for the unnecessary heat of some of the passages in these speeches and we give our public assurance and promise to all who may require it, that so long as we are associated with the movement of non-co-operation, we shall not directly or indirectly advocate violence at present, or in the future or create an atmosphere of preparedness for violence.27

The Pioneer further reported on the same day that the government which had decided to prosecute the Ali brothers suspended action in view of this apology. Gandhi, writing in Young India on 1 June, praised their step in view of the ‘big burden’ the brothers carried and their ‘responsibility for the prestige of Islam’.28 Meanwhile, the Bombay Chronicle on 30 May 1921 had reported that at an interview on 14 May at Simla, the Viceroy drew Gandhi’s attention to certain objectionable features in the speeches delivered by the Ali Brothers, and hinted that Government might prosecute them. Gandhiji asked the

122  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers Viceroy to withhold action and offered to get the Ali Brothers to issue an apology which he would draw up and show him in advance. This was done and certain changes suggested by the Viceroy were incorporated. The statement was finally issued by the Ali Brothers on May 29 with some verbal variations.29

The press, particularly the vernacular Muslim press, was immediately agog with the story that the Ali brothers had purchased their freedom by tendering this apology, and they did this at the prodding of Gandhi who had promised Lord Reading on securing such an apology. To weather the storm, Mohamed Ali in his speech at the Gujarat Provincial Khilafat Conference explained that they owed the apology not to the government, but to the Non-cooperation Movement to which they were as deeply attached as Gandhi.30 To convince Muslim public opinion, additional help was mobilized. Hakim Ajmal Khan and Dr M. A. Ansari, two very respected and senior Muslim leaders, issued a press statement defending Gandhi’s meeting with Lord Reading as ‘most unexceptionable’, for its purpose was to satisfy the Viceroy’s desire ‘to obtain first hand information of the non-co-operation movement’. They also made it a point to criticize the ‘pettifogging journalists’ for imputing motives to the Ali brothers’ apology when their only objective was to serve ‘the cause of their country and religion’.31 To buttress the point further, Gandhi himself offered an explanation of the apology: I am unable just now to go into the whole of the genesis, but I can safely inform the public that as soon as some friends brought passages in some of their speeches to my notice, I felt that they sounded harsh and seemed to be capable of being interpreted to mean incitement to violence. The air was thick with the rumours of their arrest. No non-co-operator can afford to go to prison on a false issue, certainly not on a denial of his faith, i.e., nonviolence. I felt at once that I should draw their attention to the passages, and advise them to make a statement clearly defining their position.32

But Gandhi said as much as he had left unsaid. In a long report on ‘Gandhi and the Ali Brothers’, the Pioneer informed that Gandhi’s

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explanation originally published in Young India was reproduced by Bombay newspapers and the absence of any reference to the decisive part played by Lord Reading was extensively commented upon. Of course, the Viceroy had no qualms to hide the fact from the public and, hence, in a speech at the Chelmsford Club, Simla, he spilled the beans by saying that Gandhi had indeed entered into an understanding with the government on the suspension of the prosecution against the Ali brothers in exchange for inducing a public apology from them. It is not entirely clear why the idea of an apology became necessary. Apparently, Gandhi had no objection to the speech on grounds of principle, for otherwise, he could not have supported it in the first place. The obvious intention behind the idea of apology was to keep the Ali brothers out of prison. But the Ali brothers should not have been interested in that, for imprisonment had the promise of greater political dividend. Besides, as Shaukat Ali in his Etah speech of 13 May said, they were expecting to ‘be subjected to serious prosecution’, because, among other reasons, ‘we think that when the Amir of Kabul invades India, it would be a sin for a Muslim to help the Government’.33 Judith Brown says that the ‘Alis did not want Gandhi to see the Viceroy in case he came to some sort of compromise which would be to the detriment of the Muslim cause’. If the Alis were not interested and if the speech did not violate the principle of non-violence, why did Gandhi go? Obviously, there was Hindu concern, as expressed by Malaviya, for instance, at the increasing leniency towards violence in one form or the other shown by the Muslim leadership, an example of which was the speech on the Afghan invasion. This might have swerved Gandhi from the course of the Ali brothers and provoked him to do something more than merely issuing a rejoinder to Andrews’ argument, as he did indeed do. For, while Muslim (and the Ali brothers’) support in both the Calcutta and Nagpur Congress sessions was critical for Gandhi and while the Khilafat Committee had provided him a platform, it was unthinkable for him to alienate the Hindus. Third, Gandhi might himself have a second thought on Mohamed Ali’s speech and its implications, especially in

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the background of the recent British–Afghan war. It is probable that both these latter points were playing in his mind leading him to take the plunge. As Rajmohan Gandhi says, ‘Hindus were troubled, and Reading, the Viceroy, confronted Gandhi with the brothers’ speeches, whereupon Gandhi said he would either obtain regrets or dissociate himself.’34 As for the Viceroy, the reasons were simple enough: an apology would not only discredit the Alis as weak-kneed but would likely drive a wedge between them and Gandhi. Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, and Reading conceded that the recantation did not lead to a breach between the Alis and Gandhi, but Montagu also thought that Gandhi’s insistence on the apology ‘must have left very unpleasant thoughts in their minds which are all too good’.35 And soon official reports from Bombay suggested that ‘relations between Gandhi and the Alis were extremely strained, and that the latter were smarting under a sense of wrong and betrayal’.36 The pernicious effect of the apology was not hard to see. Srinivas Shastri, the founder and the president of the Indian Liberal Federation, who was in London at the time wrote, Gandhi has had a triumph over the Ali brothers but they will try to be even with him and recover the ground they have lost…In doing so they are certain to injure themselves and come to grief. I believe this incident is the beginning of the end of N.C.O.37

Not only conservatives like Shastri, but even a friend, admirer and follower, and not at all a spokesman of Hindu sectarian interest, Motilal Nehru, became aghast with the incident. In a long letter to Gandhi written from Almora, Motilal regretted that having seen all the reports, ‘I am sorry to say that I am unable to derive any satisfaction from the study of the documents’. Sharp and argumentative as he was, he continued: The statement of the Ali Brothers taken by itself and read without reference to what has preceded and followed it is manly enough document. If in the heat of the moment they have said things which they now find may reasonably

Troubled Alliance  /  125 be taken to have a tendency to incite violence they have in publishing their regret taken the only honourable course open to public men of their position. I should also have been prepared to justify the undertaking they have given for the future had that undertaking been addressed to those of their coworkers who unlike themselves do not believe in the cult of violence under any circumstance whatsoever. But the general words ‘public assurance and promise to all who may require it’ cannot in the circumstances leave anyone in doubt as to the particular party who did require such ‘assurance and promise’ and at whose bidding it was given. The Viceroy’s speech [at Chelmsford Club, Simla] has now made it perfectly clear….   In this view of the case, and I fail to see what other view is possible, very serious questions affecting the whole movement arise…Indeed it seems to me that the whole principle of non-co-operation has been given away.38

Motilal was particularly caustic about the fact that it implied that while ordinary non-cooperators were being left to face the government’s ire for using language ‘far less strong than indulged in by the Ali Brothers’, the leaders remain ‘practically immune’. Motilal’s letter alerted Gandhi to the tangle he had put himself in. He made yet another attempt to clear the air. In his ‘Notes’ in Young India of 15 June 1921, he published Motilal’s letter almost entirely but without mentioning him, although it was ‘not meant for publication at all’. Admitting that it presented ‘the strongest argument in condemnation of my advice’, he said, ‘the letter breathes nobility and courage…the unfortunate utterance of the Viceroy is responsible for the misunderstanding’. He continued: The apology of the Brothers is not made to the Government. It is addressed and tendered to friends…It certainly was not given ‘at the bidding of the Viceroy’. I betray no confidence when I say that it was not even suggested by him…The whole principle of non-co-operation has not only not been ‘given away’ as the writer contends, but its non-violent character has been completely vindicated by the Brothers’ apology.39

At the same time, Motilal’s point about the suffering of the hapless non-cooperators as against the ‘immune’ leaders did indeed bother

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Gandhi. For, while explaining the incident to Moulana Abdul Bari on 9 June, that is, shortly after receiving Motilal’s letter, he had already admitted to this: Our friends have not signed the statement to avoid prosecution—I would have been glad for them to go to gaol if they had been imprisoned on the charge of disaffection. But no non-co-operator should seek imprisonment for inciting violence. Some passages in their speeches were capable of such construction. Hence it is necessary to make the statement they have made. The necessary consequence of the dropping of their prosecution should be the discharge of the others. But I do not know what will happen. There was no understanding between the Viceroy and myself on the point. 40

Then, after putting his signature, in the manner of a postscript, he further added, ‘You will see from the foregoing that those who are in gaol cannot make any statement to secure discharge—I take it they will…that they never intended or incited violence.’41 The ghost of the apology would not leave the Ali brothers soon either. Mohamed Ali, elected as president in the All-India Khilafat Conference at Karachi, reminded his audience in his speech that the apology or whatever you call it…was primarily meant for the public…I declare it was meant for Pandit M. M. Malaviya, who entertained fears of an Afghan invasion. It was meant to set at rest the fears of the Pandit…The apology was only concerning violence in general and not regarding any particular speech…We can never apologise to Government…The Viceroy at a dinner meeting in the Chelmsford Club boasted of having humiliated us…The Indian people would believe the Mahatma more than the Viceroy.42

Earlier, in the Provincial Khilafat Conference at Broach on 1 June 1921, Mohamed Ali said, I have not contracted with Lord Reading that I shall not undertake ‘jehad’ when God directs me…As long as non-co-operation exists, till then we shall stop using the sword. This is all I have stated to Mahatma Gandhi. I have made no promise to the Viceroy.43

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And possibly to restore the balance in his relationship with the Muslim leaders, Gandhi, who until then was resisting Muslim demand for adopting boycott, now moved to give an ‘urgent call to the nation for the boycott of all foreign cloth on 30 June 1921’,44 though he was still opposed to initiating civil disobedience.45

Walking into Prison Before 1920, when Mohamed Ali came to know Gandhi and to appreciate him well, he wrote warmly to Dr Kitchlew: It is Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, that has got to be dinned into the people’s ear, because he means Hindu-Muslim unity, non-co-operation, swadharma and swaraja while the rest are petty communal or local bodies, most of them tinged with personal ambition.46

If some of that warmth had become diluted after the apology incident, it did not disappear altogether. Yet, as if to get over the impact of the apology incident, the Ali brothers continued to make incendiary and inconsistent speeches. To a party of Indian soldiers who were proceeding on leave, Shaukat Ali said in Delhi: Swords, guns, bullets, whatever you get from them [the English] should be used against them and not in destroying our Indian brothers. If you act thus, you will be saved from great sin…Do you see Mahatma Gandhi, the Sardar of the country? Go and pay your homage to him.47

In Hyderabad (Sind), repeating his old argument, he said: There are two courses now open to us, hijrat or jehad…I do not think Non-co-operation is excluded from this programme [jehad]…to kill or be killed in God’s path is never dangerous…Let none entertain any idea of violence or bloodshed against Englishmen for it would tarnish our past reputation.48

The Khilafat Non-cooperation Committee in its report submitted in July and signed by Gandhi and Shaukat Ali among others advised

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Indian soldiers ‘to refuse to assist the British Government should it require them to fight against the Turks’.49 In the All-India Khilafat Conference in Karachi in early July, Mohamed Ali went a step further and a resolution was adopted stating that ‘it was wrong for Muslims to serve in the British army’. This was too much for the government to swallow and soon, in September, the Bombay government decided to prosecute the Ali brothers for their support to this resolution. On 16 September, Shaukat Ali was arrested in Bombay and Mohamed Ali in Madras.50 Gandhi, getting another chance to demonstrate his solidarity with the brothers—post-apology—came out with strong support for the Alis: ‘I am sorry that I was not present at that historic conference in Karachi and had I been present there and had the conference permitted me, I should also have supported that resolution.’ He praised the Ali brothers for their ‘steadfastness and patriotism’ and appealed to Muslims to follow their lead and be prepared to suffer even unto ‘the final consummation on the gallows—if need be’. And immediately organizing a meeting in Bombay, he produced a manifesto which, taking a principled stand, claimed for everyone a right to express opinion on the propriety of serving the government either as a civilian or as a soldier.51 Within a few days, writing in the Navajivan, he gave a call for celebrating the arrest of the brothers for it was ‘their victory; and their victory is ours’ as he saw in it ‘the dawn of swaraj’. He wrote, while shaking off the crooked shadows of the apology incident, that the Ali brothers were completely faithful to their pledge to remain non-violent. This does not mean that their speeches were altogether free from harshness or bitterness…The Brothers gave vent to their indignation, described the Government’s black deeds for what they were, and yet, by example and by argument, taught people to remain peaceful…they have fully kept their pledge to remain non-violent and are yet brave and dauntless. Their services (in the cause of) their religion and to society are beyond doubt...Sacrifice always brings the fulfillment of one’s cherished desire. I believe, therefore, that the moment of our victory has arrived, when we shall have swaraj and justice for the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs.52

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But people apparently were not remaining peaceful; rather, they were increasingly becoming restless, and not so merely as a reaction to the arrest of the Ali brothers. From the end of July, even before the arrest of the Ali brothers, serious riots were started by the Moplahs in Malabar in south India. The press began to report loss of European and Hindu lives and property and forcible conversion of the Hindus by the Moplahs. Reportedly, non-cooperation and Khilafat campaigns agitated the poor, ignorant and usually fanatical Moplahs. Many non-cooperators were also seen among the rioters. Madras Publicity Bureau reported that Mohamed Ali’s speech in Erode had considerably influenced the Moplahs and later, some loyal Moplahs issued statements condemning Gandhi and the Ali brothers for misleading them.53 Gandhi spoke about the ‘Moplahs’ lunacy’, ‘their turning mad’ which provided the government with the opportunity to suppress the Swadeshi Movement; yet he found, ‘compared with the violence of the Government…the violence of the Moplahs is not worth speaking of ’. While condemning violence and forcible conversion, he laid the blame on both Hindus and the Muslims as also on the government for the appalling state of the Moplahs: ‘All that they know is fighting. They are our ignorant brethren.’ And he hoped that in the near future ‘the Moplahs themselves would apologize for their deeds’.54 Small incidents of violence were taking place since April. As the year progressed, disturbances and violence were reported from Dharwar, Aligarh, Calcutta, Madras and Chittagong.55 Meanwhile, pressures for launching civil disobedience were mounting on Gandhi both from the Congress and the Khilafat committees. The AICC, meeting in Delhi in early November, authorized each provincial committee to launch civil disobedience under its own responsibility, provided it had fulfilled certain conditions. Gandhi was also moving towards launching mass civil disobedience on an all-India scale from the end of November.56 But very soon, with the arrival of the Prince of Wales in Bombay, riots started there between the Hindus and the Muslims on the one hand and Christians, Parsees and the Jews on the other.

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Gandhi rushed to the riot-affected areas and felt ‘sick-at-heart’. In a ‘chastened mood’, he declared that ‘mass civil disobedience cannot be started for the present’ and admitted it as a ‘humiliating confession of my incapacity’.57 He refused to eat or drink anything ‘till the Hindus and the Muslims of Bombay made peace with the Parsis, Christians and the Jews, till the non-co-operators have made peace with the cooperators’ and famously declared, ‘the fighting that I have witnessed during the last two days has sunk in my nostrils.’58 Bengal government in its communiqué made critical references to the dangerous potential of the volunteer forces raised by the Congress and Khilafat Committees drawing upon men ‘from the lower classes and even believed to be paid for their day’s work’.59 The Pioneer correspondent described Gandhi as a ‘Fallen star’ and Paisa Akhbar, a Muslim vernacular daily from Punjab, declared their honest belief that non-cooperation had a ‘very baneful influence for the country’.60 Meanwhile, the trial of the Ali brothers along with several others began in Karachi on grounds of alleged disloyalty. Mohamed Ali responded with usual tantrums. He refused to show respect to the judge, started a long address which the judge had to interrupt and broke into tears at the end of his final defence. Gandhi’s cautions did not have any influence on the Maulana. The Paisa Akhbar quoted ‘one of his contemporaries’ that ‘the Maulana has not gained in the estimation of the public by his undignified and almost childish behaviour in the court…he has been making himself a laughing stock’.61 In the end, the Ali brothers were sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment.62 While the Indian Liberal Federation meeting at the end of the year condemned Gandhi’s civil disobedience as responsible for the Malabar and Bombay violence, the chairman of the Reception Committee of the All India Muslim League urged merger of the Congress and the League after the great help of the Hindus on the Khilafat question. Hasrat Mohani, as president of the conference, agreed that the League should be reorganized on the lines of the Congress, although, following Mohamed Ali as he claimed, he continued to make extremist noises like complete independence through violence if non-violence

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fails.63 When a Conference of Leaders in Bombay made an attempt to bring the liberal and moderate leaders close to Gandhi and to try for an honourable settlement with the government, Sir Sankaran Nair distanced himself from such effort by arguing that in the case of the Ali brothers, the government’s position was strong and that even Gandhi knew that the brothers did not accept non-violence.64 Gandhi issued a rejoinder by claiming that Nair reads his position as more anti-government than it really was. He then quickly came to the defence of the Ali brothers saying that Sir Sankaran’s attack upon the Ali Brothers is hardly worthy of him. The Ali Brothers do believe in the possibility and necessity of the use of violence for the vindication of religious and national rights, but I know they are absolutely at one with the Congress programme, and they are more than ever convinced, as India is circumstanced, that non-violence is the only remedy open to her for the attainment of her freedom…It surprises me to notice that Sir Sankaran imagines that a round-table conference is possible without the presence of the Ali Brothers.65

At the same time, with pressures mounting on Gandhi, he decided to reconsider his temporary prohibition on civil disobedience following Bombay riots and, on 1 February 1922, issued a letter to the Viceroy offering to advise the postponement of civil disobedience of ‘an offensive character’ should His Excellency set free non-cooperating prisoners and declare a policy of ‘absolute non-interference with all non-violent activities in the country’.66 The government rejected his demands compelling him to issue a rejoinder asserting that the only alternative to civil disobedience was acceptance of ‘lawless repression of lawful activities of the people’.67 But as he began preparation for civil disobedience starting from Bardoli on 12 February, the violence at Chauri Chaura came to be reported by the press on 6 February. Immediately Gandhi wired to the members of the Congress Working Committee, saying the he could never be a party ‘to a movement half violent and half non-violent even though it may result in the attainment of so-called swaraj; for it will not be swaraj as I have conceived it’.68 The Congress Working Committee meeting at Bardoli on 11–12

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February suspended civil disobedience until the atmosphere was nonviolent.69 The government in London was for some time pressuring the Viceroy to arrest Gandhi. Within a month after the Bardoli decision, the government arrested Gandhi in Ahmedabad. He pleaded guilty during the trial in the Sessions Court saying, ‘I have no desire to conceal from this court that to preach disaffection towards the existing system of Government has become almost a passion with me.’ He was condemned to six years’ simple imprisonment.70 The Pioneer, an Anglo-Indian national daily, editorialized the event, commenting that the imprisonment was ‘the inevitable outcome of the fruits of his teaching during the last three years. Throughout this period, Mr. Gandhi has attempted to combine methods of agitation which are mutually incompatible.’71 In a meeting of the Legislative Assembly in Delhi, a demand was made for the Ali brothers’ release. In reply to this demand, Sir William Vincent, the home member, representing forcefully the government’s point of view, made a scathing criticism of their activities starting from 1911. Referring to the apology incident, Vincent said, ‘the ink on that apology was hardly dry when they were preaching disloyalty once more…they had made no apology; they replied to their violent friends who twitted them on the subject’. He also accused the brothers of mishandling funds: ‘One of the brothers collected money from unfortunate Mahomedans…while his accounts were never audited’. Referring to their call for hijrat, he said, the only ‘hijrat [Mohamed Ali] had ever done had been to Paris and London’.72 Gandhi lost no time in speaking out for the brothers. In an interview shortly before his arrest, he sharply, though briefly, responded to Sir Vincent’s diatribes by defending the brothers; he said, ‘giving out what they believed to be true, as they have done, is their greatest fault’.73

Thinning Unity Meanwhile, the Khilafat issue was fast moving towards a terminal point. Once Mustafa Kemal Pasha consolidated his position in Turkey,

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he first deposed the Sultan and quickly moved to complete abolition of the Caliphate between the end of 1922 and early 1924.74 The Indian Khilafatists, if anything, by repeatedly writing to Kemal’s government to restore the preeminent place of the Khalifa in Islam, which Kemal Pasha only saw as an unwanted interference in Turkish politics by Indian Muslims, only hastened the process of its complete abolition.75 With the abandonment of civil disobedience and the arrest of the Ali brothers and Gandhi, frequent riots began to take place in cities like Ajmer, Meerut, Multan, Karnal, Panipat, Saharanpur, Lahore, Agra and both Muslim and Hindu communal voices were becoming harsher. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya’s speeches and his call for shuddhi and sangathan among the Hindus added grist to the mill. The idea of Hindu-Muslim unity and the leadership of Gandhi and the Ali brothers gradually started to come to be scrutinized and often challenged by the vernacular press. A reading of the vernacular press shows the efforts of Gandhi and the Ali brothers hardly made much dent at the intermediate levels of leadership or in the attitude of the ulamas. In early 1922, Lord Northcliffe, after a tour of India, told the Associated Press before his departure: Returning to India after twenty five years’ absence, I am shocked at the change of demeanour and acts towards whites by Indians, especially Mahomedans, who were formerly most friendly. For the first time in Indian history they [Hindus and Muslims] are now acting in close combination.   I have interrogated over a hundred Moslems, of every class and sect. They are unanimous…the attitude of the Moslems is now either sullen silence or outspoken hostility….   All students of Islam know what that means. In the streets many Mahomedans are wearing anti-British white caps, which are emblems of Gandhism. Loyal Mahomedans demand instant arrest of Mr. Gandhi.76

During the course of 1922 and 1923, the situation came to be dramatically changed from what Lord Northcliffe saw and described in the early months of 1922. A perusal of the vernacular press in Bengal shows the trend. The Nayak, Calcutta, in its 7 March 1922 issue,

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expressed the apprehension that ‘the Khilafat party is sure to secede from the Congress gradually. Hasrat Mohani is clearing the way for this division’.77 The Bengalee, Calcutta, expressed itself similarly when it remarked that a strong party among Indian Muslims has risen against the Gandhi programme. It wants to go on a new path led by Maulana Hasrat Mohani. A perusal of Urdu newspapers of Delhi and Gorakhpur show that the Khilafat Party does not entirely support non-cooperation of Mahatma Gandhi.78

The Dainik Basumati, Calcutta, wrote in its 18 March issue that ‘some interested people are trying to bring about a break between Hindus and Musalmans and the Government have many allurements in their hands’.79 The Mohammadi, Calcutta, wrote on 5 April, ‘Those who entertain the belief that there is no room for patriotism in Mahommedanism may be learned in everything else, but they are quite ignorant regarding Islamic religion.’80 Referring to the increasing influence of Hasrat Mohani, the Prabhakar, Calcutta, asked on 29 April, ‘There was Mahatma Gandhi who by his personality and power of logic, defeated the Maulana; but who will do that now?’81 The Zamana, Calcutta, wrote on 9 December, ‘…we conclude that so long as India is not free, the liberty of the Islamic countries will never be safe’.82 From the end of 1922, however, there was discernible change in the tone and the expectation of the native papers in Bengal. The Nayak pleaded on 10 December 1922: It was when Islam was beset on all sides with grave dangers…the Hindu community under Mahatma Gandhi’s guidance took up the Khilafat cause as being its own…it is for the sake of gratitude at least…that the Mahomedans should not now part with the Hindus.83

The Swatantra, Calcutta, wrote on 1 July 1923: In joining the non-co-operation movement our Muhammedan countrymen were really pursuing a double-edged policy of starting a vast propaganda work and placing it on a sound basis…at the same time, agitating for

Troubled Alliance  /  135 more power in administration and communal representation. Thus, they made their power felt both ways.84

The Mussalman, Calcutta, referring to Pandit Motilal’s speech in Lucknow regretting ‘that Muslims have given too much latitude to their ulemas in politics’ and requesting them ‘to insist that in future they should refrain from politics’, wrote on 31 August 1923, ‘But Panditji should know so long as Islam remains, the Muslims will consult the ulemas not only on theological questions, but on political questions as well.’85 The vernacular press, Muslim as well as Hindu, in other parts of India began showing similar concerns. The Muslim, an organ of the Jamiat-ul-ulema, criticizing Gandhi for his Bardoli decree, pleaded for carrying out the full programme of civil disobedience. It carried a long letter written by ‘a Mahomedan’ in which the writer said: [W]e cannot help regretting that the Hindu-Muslim unity, engineered by Mahatma Gandhi and the Ali brothers, is only on the surface and temporary. Mahatma Gandhi, in spite of his title, prefers diplomacy and time serving to realities…In order to obtain his ends, he had to unite the Mahomedans with himself.86

The Lyall Gazette, Lahore, asked the Muslim non-cooperators to consider what their position would be ‘if, as is likely, on the settlement of the Turkish question, the Mussalmans resume their friendly relations with the Government’?87 The Wakil, Amritsar, a Muslim daily, while considering efforts for Hindu-Muslim unity as praiseworthy, wrote, ‘…there seems to us great doubt as to whether this unity, or desire for unity, has any real or lasting basis’.88 Soon it further wrote accusing the Muslims of losing their ‘power of judgment and discernment’ and weakening ‘their intellectual ability’, ‘for they made it their religion blindly to follow one man [Gandhi]’.89 The Kesri, Poona, an extremist Hindu daily on the other hand, accused that ‘the Mussalmans of India think much more of their brethren in other countries than their nonMoslem countrymen’.90

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Not only did the relation between the two communities about which there was much apprehension and despair come under scrutiny; the Muslim vernacular press also called into question the probity of the top khilafat leaders. The point was already made by Sir William Vincent in his Legislative Assembly speech. The Paisa Akhbar raised the issue of the recent ‘sensational disclosures’ showing ‘how mercilessly and irresponsibly the great leaders of the Khilafat Movement have frittered away the vast funds collected from the poor Mussalmans of India’.91 A few months later it further wrote: [T]he Mussalmans of India are not prepared to obey the commands of the Khilafat leaders blindly or to follow them like sheep. They are tired…to be constantly giving money for the leaders to spend on deputations, joy rides and so forth…We fail to understand how the Khilafat Committee proposes to explain its accounts.92

The same paper called upon the Muslims to ‘accord a decent funeral to the Khilafat committees’.93 The vernacular press, Hindu or Muslim, equally came to believe that the efforts to unite the two communities through Congress–Khilafat combination was a ‘stunt’ that had failed and no further attempt should be made to revive civil disobedience.94 By and large, the vernacular Muslim press was strongly for winding up the Khilafat Committee.

Alliance Alive but Troubled In the midst of these troubles and despair, the Ali brothers were released prematurely on 28 August 1923. A little before their release, the Mashriq, a Muslim journal from Gorakhpur, referring to the advice of ‘a contemporary’ that Mohamed Ali after his release should consider as his duty to spend all his energies in protecting the Muslims from the hands of the Hindus, wrote that Mohamed Ali is not the same as he was fifteen years ago. He is now trying to bring about Hindu rule. The charm [read Gandhi] under which he came

Troubled Alliance  /  137 is impossible to do away with. Therefore, we believe that as he comes out of jail, he will do his utmost to get back there as soon as he can…95

The Mashriq was not far wrong. After his release, Mohamed Ali attended the special Congress session in Delhi in September. Participating in an informal discussion in Dr Ansari’s bungalow, he pleaded for unity within the Congress in the context of the council-entry debate. Referring to the ulama’s fatwa against council-entry, he said it was a factor which governed the religious duties of the Mussalmans; yet he argued, whatever was the decision regarding council-entry, everybody should consider it as his religious duty not to leave the Congress.96 The Delhi Special Congress (followed by the annual Congress at Coconada), despite strong and united opposition, approved council-entry through a compromise resolution made possible by the influence and efforts of Mohamed Ali with the help of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and C. R. Das.97 However, to smoothen the path to compromise, Mohamed Ali informed the Subjects Committee as well as the Open Congress that Gandhi had sent him a message from prison to get the Congress alter its programme should the condition now require a change.98 Mohamed Ali became the president-elect for the annual session of the Indian National Congress to meet in December next at Coconada. But soon the story of Gandhi’s message to Mohamed Ali blew up and came to put the alliance between the Alis and Gandhi under strain. Mohamed Ali delivered a four-hour-long speech as president of the Coconada Session of the Indian National Congress in December 1923. He expressed his emotions with ‘sobs and tears for Mr. Gandhi’, who was still under detention.99 Rajagopalachari apparently was overwhelmed by this speech: speaking about it to Devdas Gandhi, he said it was much better than the ones by such eminent Congress presidents as Gokhale, Surendranath or Hume or Wedderburn. When Devdas came to see his father in Yeravda prison, he told Gandhi about Rajaji’s impression and asked him whether he had read the speech. Gandhi had seen it only in parts till then, but felt it did not stand ‘in comparison

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with those other ones’. By the time Rajaji came to see him, Gandhi had read the whole speech, but was not ‘able to agree with him’. What followed was an interesting conversation between them. Rajaji presumed that probably Gandhi had not read the other ones, for, according to him, Mohamed Ali’s speech was not as ‘heavy’ as those. To this Gandhi said, ‘Oh yes, I have’ and praised Gokhale and Surendranath again. He continued, ‘On the contrary, I think Mohamed Ali’s speech is heavy.’ He admitted that it was ‘a good speech well meant. There is no error of thought in it. But there is no study behind it. And it is unnecessarily laboured…I could cut it down to less than half its length and still retain the whole substance’. Being a personal friend or a political ally did not mean that he should praise what he considered a defect. Rajaji had to come around and admit that ‘brevity is not the soul of Mohamed Ali’s wit’.100 One wonders how Rajaji, despite his great intellect, missed the point. Mahadev Desai entered this interesting conversation in his Day-toDay with Gandhi on 18 January 1924. Two days earlier, the Pioneer briefly reported Srinivas Shastri’s interview with Gandhi at Sassoon hospital in Poona. According to the report, Shastri, towards the end the interview, had pressed Gandhi for a message for his fellows or the country. But Gandhi appeared very firm on it and said that as he was a prisoner of the government, he must honour the prisoners’ code. ‘He was supposed to be civilly dead…He had no message.’ Shastri next asked: ‘How is it then that Mr. Mohamed Ali communicated a message as from you the other day?’ Shastri admitted that he immediately regretted asking the question and then added, ‘He was obviously astonished at my question and exclaimed, “Mr. Mohamed Ali? A message from me?” Luckily at this point the nurse came in…and signaled me to depart.’101 A week later, in the Pioneer of 23 January 1924, Mohamed Ali issued a long statement ‘under pressure from friends’ in reply to Srinivas Shastri’s reported interview. He asked if Shasti regretted asking the question, why did he publish it: ‘from slip of tongue to slip of pen’? Referring to Gandhi as ‘his chief ’ several times in his statement, Ali said that the ‘message from Gandhi’ was in fact what Devdas Gandhi

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had told him about what Gandhi said. Before going to see Gandhi in Yeravda prison, Devdas met Ali at Bhowali when Ali told him that council-entry should be opposed and there should be no change in the Congress programme till Gandhi was in jail. After meeting Gandhi, Devdas reported back to Ali that ‘his father was deeply moved by my loyalty and love to him. He had, however, asked Devdasji to tell me that I “must not allow the love I bore to him to dictate my course of action at that juncture…he wanted course of action to be dictated by the love that I bore to my country itself ”.’ Ali continued: Before Devdasji had finished, I exclaimed, ‘quite like Bapu…He is the fittest man to be our dictator because he is so unwilling to dictate…’ Subsequently, when I moved in the Subjects Committee the resolution for the removal of the ban on Council-entry, I repeated almost word for word what I heard from Devdasji.

He said he did not mention Devdas’ name as he had not taken his permission to do so.102 In fact, on 12 September 1923, Mohamed Ali mentioned about Gandhi’s message to him while supporting council-entry resolution in the Special Congress in Delhi. Ali’s version of the message as it was published in the Hindu was: I do not want you to stick to my programme. I am for the entire programme. But if looking at the state of the country, you think that one or two items of the boycott programme should be discarded or modified or added to, then in the name of love of the country, I command you to give up those parts of my programme or alter them accordingly.103

Probably, in view of its potentiality for controversy, Mahadev Desai published in Young India of 4 October 1923, as part of his article on ‘Delhi Congress’, what Gandhi seemed to have personally said to Devdas Gandhi in Yeravda prison for communication to Mohamed Ali: I can send you no message because I am in prison. I have always disapproved of people sending messages from prison. But I may say that I am deeply touched by your loyalty to me. I would, however, ask you not to allow your loyalty to

140  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers me to weigh with you so much as your loyalty to the country. My views are very well-known. I expressed them before I went to jail, and there has been no change in them since. I may assure you that if you choose to differ from me, it will not affect by one jot the sweetness of relations between you and me.104

If these two versions of the message, one by Ali and the other by Mahadev Desai, have been correctly reported, then it is apparent that Mohamed Ali was not repeating the message ‘word for word’ or Devdas Gandhi did not deliver identical message to them. Both are possible in human communication, especially when one is not dealing with words that are in the written form. However, as is apparent, this mismatch created quite a bit of heat and put Mohamed Ali on the defensive. Yet such occasional bumpy rides notwithstanding, the alliance between the Alis and Gandhi did not collapse. Rather, it appeared that the alliance was indeed founded on the solid rock of mutual respect, understanding and love such that it could take in shocks and absorb them. At this time, the idea of a fresh pact (like the earlier Lucknow Pact) between the two communities as a necessary condition for maintenance of communal solidarity and civil peace became popular with some leaders. C. R. Das had tentatively proposed the ‘Bengal Pact’. Lajpat Rai and Ansari floated a draft of a ‘national pact’ a few days before the Congress met in Coconada. When during the Coconada Congress, a lively debate took place on Rai–Ansari proposal, Mohamed Ali took the opportunity to explain his personal view that no such pact was necessary. He pleaded for pushing ahead the constructive programme of Gandhi and impressively stated that Gandhi ‘was himself the greatest national pact’.105 A few days before Gandhi’s release from detention, the Ali brothers, among others, came to visit him in hospital in Poona. Mohamed Ali talked about the proposed Angora Deputation106 and updated him about the heated communal situation. Gandhi became worried about the burden on the Alis: ‘Can Shaukat Ali and Mohamed Ali bring it [communal strife] to an end?...What crime have Shaukat and Mohamed committed that they should bear the whole brunt themselves?’107 Mahadev Desai, in describing these touching scenes

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during 29 January and 1 February, records, ‘Mohamed Ali…kissed Bapu’s feet, but with the covering kept intact’. He went on to record, ‘The Big Brother (Shaukat Ali) comes and…fumbles about on Mahatmaji’s bed for his legs, which he finds with some difficulty, opens out the covering, and then kisses them’.108 Such was the warmth and love they felt towards each other post-Coconada Congress. And Gandhi, in a letter to Mohamed Ali from Sassoon hospital on 7 February 1924, two days after his release from prison on medical grounds,109 encouraging Ali to work for communal unity, wrote, ‘Your tenure of office [as Congress president] will be judged solely by what you can do in the cause of the union [of Hindus and Mussalmans].’110 The vernacular press was not impressed by the proceedings of the Coconada Congress. The Tej, Delhi, found it ‘verbose and meaningless’ and the Congress a failure.111 According to the Pioneer’s report, the Desh, a Hindu extremist daily, wrote that Mohamed Ali ‘pleased Muslims’ and gave ‘another unmistakable proof of his prejudice and partiality’. But then, it felt he could not do otherwise, ‘for he was mightily frightened of Musalman public opinion’.112 Another vernacular journal, Asia (Delhi), took Mohamed Ali to task for making a rather preposterous proposal that the untouchables should be divided by the Muslim preachers and Hindu missionaries into two sections and each absorb one into their own community. Resentfully it said that ‘the first platform for proselytism selected by the Maulana is that of the Congress. Maulana is guilty of a most unbecoming and biased action by announcing this from the Congress platform’.113 Perhaps, it was in view of the numerous controversies around the proceedings of the Coconada Congress that Mohamed Ali, as Congress president, sought Gandhi’s ‘instructions regarding situation recently created’ to guide deliberations in the forthcoming Working Committee meeting in Delhi. Gandhi, though released, was still recuperating at Sassoon hospital in Poona and felt he was ‘not informed or fit enough’ to guide deliberations of the Working committee meeting.114 Probably it was because of the inadequacy of information with him and his unfit condition that Gandhi did not express himself on

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Mohamed Ali’s queer suggestion regarding the untouchables. Besides, he considered his personal relations with the Ali brothers no less valuable than his political alliance with them. And within a fortnight, he received a moving telegram from Mohamed Ali informing him of his daughter’s death: ‘God’s will is done. He who gave me Amina has taken her away.’115 Gandhi replied on 25 March: I have your letter…I see that you have bourn [sic] the domestic affliction with the courage and resignation worthy of you. I had myself expected nothing less. I regard it as a privilege of friendship to receive the account you have given me of Amina’s last moments. She was a dear good soul. It would be exceedingly good if you could pass a week with me. I would love to have you, Begum Saheba and the whole of your suite…You may know that I am a better nurse than a politician, if I am at all.116

But then, on 10 April Gandhi somewhat cryptically wrote, My dear friend and brother: …I have sent you my assurance and give it to you again that I am not going to publish anything of my views on the two questions till I have met you…I do not need the slightest persuasion in favour of the proposition that both parties [read Hindus and Muslims] are to blame for the present tension, and when the time comes I am hoping and praying that God will give me the strength and courage to say the truth.117

We do not know what were these ‘two questions’ Gandhi wanted to discuss personally on meeting Mohamed Ali or if they did discuss them at all. Could it be that one of these questions related to the issue of dividing the untouchables?

Notes and References   1. M. K. Gandhi to Mohamed Ali, 18 November 1918, Mohamed Ali Papers (Roll No. 4 in micro) (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). Also, Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 1 (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970), 261–62.   2. Young India, 8 June 1921, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereinafter CWMG), 20, 192.

Troubled Alliance  /  143   3. P. C. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements (Delhi: Government of India Press, 1925), 53.   4. Young India, 19 May 1921, in Bharatan Kumarappa, ed., Communal Unity (Ahmedabad: Navajiban, 1949), 5–6.   5. Young India, 8 June 1921, in Kumarappa, Communal Unity, 12.   6. Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 2, 163–64 (Bapu to Andrews, 20 June 1920).   7. Pioneer, 2 January 1921.   8. Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 2, 259.   9. Speech in Dakore, 27 October 1920 in Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 3, 25. 10. Non-cooperation campaign speech in Calcutta, in Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 3, 162. 11. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 164– 66. 12. Pioneer, 28 May 1921. 13. Home (Poll), 1922, File 11 (National Archives of India, hereinafter, NAI). 14. Ibid. 15. Pioneer, 8 April 1921. 16. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 54. 17. Pioneer, 26 June 1920. 18. Young India, 2 February 1921, CWMG, 19, 315, cited in Judith Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 331n2. 19. Young India, 29 September 1921, in Kumarappa, Communal Unity, 20–21. 20. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 164, 166. 21. Home (Poll), 1922, File 11(NAI). 22. Pioneer, 25 May 1921. 23. Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 3, 276. 24. Young India, 4 May 1921, CWMG, 20, 59. 25. Pioneer, 21 May 1921. 26. Pioneer, 18 May 1921. 27. Pioneer, 1 June 1921. 28. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas (New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2006), 254. 29. CWMG, 20, 93n1. Appendix iii to the same volume, under the heading ‘Interview-cum-Apology’, cited the whole story as published in Young India of 4 August 1921. Two points were important in this story: first, that the Viceroy said, ‘after publication of the statement Mr. Mohamed Ali and Mr. Shaukat Ali could give any explanation’ by speeches without infringing the law; and second, ‘Mr. Gandhi even said that whether the prosecution took place or not, he would be bound…to advise them to express publicly their regret.’ CWMG, 20, 536–38. 30. Pioneer, 6 June 1921.

144  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 31. Pioneer, 9 June 1921. 32. Pioneer, 17 June 1921. 33. Speech delivered by Shaukat Ali at Marehra, Etah district, 13 May 1921 in Home (Poll), 1922, File 11 (NAI). 34. Gandhi, Mohandas, 254. 35. Ibid., 255. 36. Bombay Police Abstract, 1921 in Brown, Gandhi’s Rise, 333. 37. Cited in Brown, Gandhi’s Rise, 333. 38. Motilal Nehru to MKG, 3 June 1921. Motilal Nehru Papers (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). 39. CWMG, 20, 217–19. 40. Abdul Bari Papers (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library) (italics mine). The letter does not mention the year. I presume it is 1921. 41. Ibid. 42. Pioneer, 13 July 1921. 43. Home (Poll) 1922, File 11 (NAI). 44. B. R. Nanda, Gandhi—Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1989), 267. 45. Pioneer, 8 July 1921. In Bombay AICC, Gandhi prevented the passage of resolution on civil disobedience despite pressures for going ahead (Pioneer, 1 August 1921). 46. Cited in Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1991), 79. 47. Statement made by the speaker on 15 July 1921; in Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 173. 48. Statement made by the speaker on 23 July 1921; in ibid., 174. 49. Ibid., 173. 50. Pioneer, 19 September 1921. 51. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise, 333. Also, Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 176. 52. CWMG, 21, 196–200. 53. Pioneer, 21 and 23 September 1921. 54. CWMG, 21, 203–04. 55. Nanda, Gandhi, 272. 56. Ibid., 326. 57. Pioneer, 21 November 1921. Also, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, The Oxford India Gandhi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 229–30. 58. Pioneer, 21 November 1921. 59. Ibid. 60. Pioneer, 26 November 1921. 61. Paisa Akhbar, cited in Pioneer, 11 November 1921. 62. Pioneer, 3 November 1921.

Troubled Alliance  /  145 63. Pioneer, 1 and 12 January 1922. Apparently, Hasrat Mohani was claiming to have followed Mohamed Ali’s Erode speech. But complete independence idea was an old one with Mohamed Ali. When the Ali brothers came to attend the Amritsar Congress and the Muslim League session immediately after their release from Betul jail in December 1919, Mohamed Ali had an altercation with Khaliquzzaman on this issue. According to Khaliquzzaman’s testimony:

When our leaders got free from the first day’s Congress activities they came to attend the League meeting. As soon as he arrived, Mohamed Ali took out a note from his pocket and handed it over to Sayed Zahur Ahmad, who after reading it gave it to me. It was the draft of a resolution on Independence which the Maulana wanted to move. I said, ‘Maulana, under the rules of the League, you cannot move it because you have not given any notice of such an important change in the Constitution [of the Muslim League]. Apart from that even the Congress has not yet gone to that length; how do you consider it reasonable for the Muslim League to make such a declaration?’ He started shouting but I did not yield. Maulana Shaukat Ali sensing the situation intervened and said, ‘Let me have it; we will consider it later.’ He took from my hands the paper which did not see the light thereafter. (Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan [Lahore: Longmans, Green and Company, 1961], 51)

64. Pioneer, 18 January 1922. Sir Sankaran Nair was a lawyer, jurist and journalist. He became a member of the Viceroy’s Council in 1915, but resigned in 1919 in protest against the government’s repressive policy in Punjab. He also presided over the Amraoti session of the Indian National Congress in 1897. 65. Pioneer, 21 January 1922. 66. Pioneer, 5 February 1922. 67. Nanda, Gandhi, 344. 68. CWMG, 22, 350–51, cited in Nanda, Gandhi, 344. 69. Pioneer, 15 February 1922. 70. Pioneer, 12 and 20 March 1922. 71. Pioneer, 22 March 1922. 72. Pioneer, 11 March 1922. 73. Pioneer, 17 March 1922. 74. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 208–09. See also, Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 201–07, and A. C. Niemeijer, The Khilafat Movement in India, 1919– 1924 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), 144–63. 75. Nanda, Gandhi, 364–68.

146  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers   76. Pioneer, 1 February 1922. Lord Northcliffe was a British newspaper pioneer who revolutionized newspaper and magazine publishing in the early years of the twentieth century. For a while he was also the Director of Propaganda in Lloyd George government during the First World War.   77. Report of Indian Newspapers and Periodicals, Native Papers (Bengal), 1922, 216.   78. Ibid., 242.   79. Ibid., 265.   80. Ibid., 329.   81. Ibid., 383.   82. Ibid., 974.   83. Ibid., 975.   84. Ibid. (For week ending 7 July 1923.)   85. Ibid. (Week ending 8 September 1923.)   86. Pioneer, 10 March 1922.   87. Pioneer, 16 March 1922.   88. Ibid.   89. Pioneer, 1 April 1922.   90. Pioneer, 4 August 1922.   91. Cited in Pioneer, 15 August 1923.   92. Cited in Pioneer, 3 December 1923. See also, Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 188ff.   93. Cited in ibid., 29 August 1923.   94. Bengalee, cited in ibid., 21 September, and Wakil and Desh, cited in ibid., 11 October 1923.   95. Cited in the Pioneer, 22 August 1923.   96. Pioneer, 14 September 1923.   97. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 91–93.   98. Pioneer, 17 September 1923.   99. Pioneer, 31 December 1923. 100. Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 3, 311–12, 318. 101. Pioneer, 16 January 1924. 102. Pioneer, 23 January 1924. 103. CWMG, 23,175–76. This appears in a footnote to ‘Message to Mohamed Ali’. 104. Ibid. The CWMG published it under ‘Message to Mohamed Ali’. 105. Pioneer, 2 January 1924. 106. In their last efforts to save the Khilafat, Indian Khilafat leaders were preparing to send a deputation to Angora (Ankara). Gandhi was surprised to know that Hindus were also part of this deputation. While conversing with Jawaharlal he asked: ‘What concern have we in the matter?’ As Mahadev Desai

Troubled Alliance  /  147 says, Gandhi made sure that Jawaharlal does not relate this conversation to anyone other than, maybe, his father. Desai further records, ‘Jawaharlal had sounded Mohamed Ali on this matter [Hindus joining the Angora deputation], but was a little disappointed. Jawaharlal felt that he (Mohamed Ali) wanted to use Hindus simply as pawns’(Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 4, 22). Also, Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 209. 107. Diary entry on 28 January 1924, in Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 4, 17. 108. Ibid., 21 and 33. 109. Bamford, Histories of the Non-co-operation and the Khilafat Movements, 95. 110. Pioneer, 9 February 1924; also, in Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 4, 53. 111. Pioneer, 16 January 1924. 112. Pioneer, 23 January 1924. 113. Pioneer, 30 January 1924. 114. Mohamed Ali’s telegram to Gandhi, 24 February 1924 and Gandhi’s note on it, in Gandhi Papers, SN 8371 (NAI). 115. Mohamed Ali to Gandhi, Telegram, 11 March 1924, in Gandhi Papers, SN 8470 (NAI). 116. MKG to Mohamed Ali, 25 March 1924, in Gandhi Papers, SN 8584 (NAI). 117. MKG to Mohamed Ali, 10 April 1924, in Gandhi Papers, SN 8704 (NAI).

6

Journey Downhill Down, but Not Out The Government of India’s Home Department in its confidential report of 27 December 1923 stated: Mohamed Ali is in very low spirits. He is unable to put his heart in constructive work. He thinks that it is not possible for him to put the machinery of Non-Co-Operation back in its former working order. He has given up the work in despair. He is most of the time either with his wife or joking and sleeping. He has left everything to Shaukat Ali…The leaders are now afraid of going to jail…The Brothers are very keen about collection of money and enlistment of volunteers.1

Such was the mood in which the government’s informers found Mohamed Ali at the beginning of 1924. Reasons were not far to seek. Gandhi was still in jail. The Civil Disobedience Movement was a nonstarter. Constructive programme was no replacement for the intoxication that non-cooperation could generate. And above all, despite all the sound and fury that they were still indulging in about continuing the Khilafat Movement by appearing to be ‘more Turkish than the Turks’, the Alis could see the writing on the wall: the movement that had brought the Ali brothers to the crest of their popularity and which, with Gandhi’s unstinted support for and trust in them, had 148

Journey Downhill  /  149

raised them head and shoulders above all other Muslim leaders of the time, had become vacuous. The situation, therefore, was difficult for the Muslim masses in India as well. For, they had been tutored by their leaders to imagine themselves as the defenders and the ultimate restorers of a Pan-Islamic Order under the Caliphate. But the sudden developments in Turkey forced them to face up to the reality and to come out of their imaginary world which was no more. Khaliquzzaman considered it as a ‘catastrophe’ which forced the Muslims into ‘deep inertia and pessimism…the history of the next sixteen years of Muslim India is a mass of confusion and a chapter of political benightedness’.2 The Khilafat leaders were embarrassed, running out of ideas; yet were afraid to give up their public stand and look ridiculous. Khaliquzzaman records: I expressed my doubts whether the Khilafat organization could be maintained when the Turks were themselves throwing it away…I asked Maulana Mohammad Ali where the Muslims of India came into this picture…Khilafat organization had become to my mind an anachronism… The Maulana agreed with most of what I said but he was not a man to accept facts as facts. He was a born revolutionary aiming to destroy all that did not conform to his ideal, even though he might not be able to reconstruct what he had destroyed…He said ‘Keep the Khilafat Committee alive’.3

In fact, Muslim opinion became divided. Of course, the Central Khilafat Committee and the Jamiat-ul-ulama were still making absurd claims like ‘we should fight for Shariat rule in Turkey’ and Dr Ansari sent cables to the Turkish National Assembly that ‘abolition of Khilafat is fatal to Moslem world solidarity’.4 Mohamed Ali said, as much forcefully as was possible for him at that time while presiding over a meeting of the Bengal Khilafat Committee, ‘as Moslems, we who are not Arabs, cannot let the Arabs hand over the dominion over the land of Arabia to non-Moslems, we cannot countenance the section of Turkish nation disconnecting its national government from the Khilafat’.5 Fazlul Haq, on the other hand, found that ‘the Khillafat movement did not

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possess any reality now’.6 Many Muslim leaders began to think that ‘as the Khilafat Committee appeared to be on its last legs’, it was time for reinforcing the Muslim League.7 Much of the vernacular press, both Hindu and Muslim, became expressly critical too. The Asia (Delhi) wrote: ‘Possibly most Moslem movements in this country derive their life from the Khilafat…it gave Maulana Shaukat Ali the opportunity for collection of a very large sum of money in Ceylon.’8 The Muslim organ, the Mashriq wrote: ‘Islamic populations of Turkey, Arabia and the Hedjaz have repudiated the Khilafat. But when we have so called religious leaders like Mulana Shaukat Ali in this country, no scheme can be too ridiculous.’9 And the Bombay correspondent of the Aligarh Gazette wrote: ‘Our esteemed leaders continue to collect Khilafat funds with great earnestness, but what has happened to subscriptions earlier realized? Khilafat is now dead.’10 Over and above all this, adding to Mohamed Ali’s troubles was the fact that the communal fire lit around the Moplah revolt continued unabated and was spreading to new areas. Of course, being the president of the Indian National Congress at Coconada gave Mohamed Ali some opportunity to resuscitate his position. His successful achievement of a compromise between the no-changers and the pro-changers to save the Congress from a split enhanced his importance for a time but the so-called ‘Gandhi’s message to me’ incident and his advocacy for dividing up Indians into ‘missionary regions’ put him on the defensive. As a student of the Khilafat Movement concludes, Mohamed Ali’s efforts during the Coconada Congress ‘give the impression, not of an inspired leader trying to find new and bold solutions, but rather of a man baffled by a problem and polishing up old devices to find a way out of an impasse’.11 With Gandhi’s release, pressure upon both Gandhi and the Ali brothers started to build up. A feeling was growing that not only time was out for Gandhi’s movement, even Gandhi was fast losing his relevance. Lala Lajpat Rai declared that ‘triple boycott is as dead as a nail’.12 The Muslim vernacular press was increasingly airing the view

Journey Downhill  /  151

that not only the Ali brothers were engaged in inanities like senseless continuation of the Khilafat Movement, but by their blind commitment to Gandhi and the Congress, they were also becoming unfit for representing Muslim interests. The Mashriq wrote: ‘Gandhi’s influence has begun to fade away from the minds of his countrymen…there is more disunity and greater bitterness in India now than there has been ever before…the Ali Brothers and other Congress Mussalmans appear to be slaves of the Congress.’13 Mohamed Ali could sense that their grip on the minds of millions of Muslim masses, which was their most important asset, was loosening. Earlier, their loyalty to Khilafat was a strong enough glue to bind them to their religious cohorts, and their discipleship of Abdul Bari also helped them to appear as good Muslims and to keep in close touch with the ulama. But now, with the disappearance of the Khilafat, their involvement with the Congress and Gandhi, or with issues like council-entry or constructive programme, gave them an exclusively secular appearance, not at all enough to reassure the Muslim masses at a time of crisis. In other words, the times were critical, and they were feeling the pressure to explicate something that Khilafat issue had helped them to confound: the question was what to them came first, religion or the nation? Sections of the Muslim vernacular press had already alerted the Muslim leaders to consider whether after the demise of the Khilafat cause, they ought to continue with the Hindus to oppose the British or they should reconsider their strategy and go back, in essence, to Sir Sayyid Ahmed’s formula. To the Ali brothers, such thoughts were still unthinkable, for they were still soaked with Gandhi’s idea and imagery of Hindu-Muslim unity and a united battle for Swaraj. Lamenting the growth of communal conflicts, he said in his presidential speech in Coconada: What is it that has happened since that staunch Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, went to jail for advocating the cause of Islam that we must cease to cooperate with his co-religionists?...Is it possible for any honest and patriotic Indian to say that either community is wholly blameless?14

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Yet they needed to do something to salvage their image among the Muslims who were increasingly drifting apart. Mohamed Ali had once declared that next to Allah, he was a follower of Gandhi. But in a speech in April 1924, while comparing Hindu and Muslim religious beliefs, he not only claimed Islam as superior to Hinduism but also, in a reference to Gandhi, reportedly said that ‘an adulterous Mussalman was better than’ Gandhi.15 The Hindu press was not amused: it considered the remark indecent and unpalatable and the comparison ‘ill-advised’. When he saw the result of his action, Mohamed Ali, ‘in accordance with his ingrained habit’, burst forth into a series of explanatory letters and telegrams to the press. Further, in two separate letters giving more or less the same message, one written to Swami Shraddhananda and the other to the editor of Tej, Mohamed Ali wrote clarifying what he had said a month earlier: Some Mussalman friends have been constantly flinging at me the charge of being a worshipper of Hindus and a Gandhi worshipper. The real object of these gentlemen was to alienate from me the Mussalman community, the Khilafat Committee and the Congress, by representing that I had become a follower of Mahatma Gandhi in my religious principles. I had, therefore, on several occasions plainly declared that in the matter of religion, I professed the same beliefs as any other true Mussalman, and as such I claim to be a follower of the Prophet Mahomed (on him be peace!) and not of Gandhiji. And further, that since I hold Islam to be the highest gift of God, therefore, I was impelled by the love I bear towards Mahatmaji to pray to God that He might illumine his soul with the true light of Islam. I wish, however, to emphatically declare that I hold that to-day neither the representatives of Islam nor of the Hindu, Jewish, Nazarene or Parsi faiths can present another instance of such high character and moral worth as Gandhiji, and that is the reason why I hold him in such high reverence and affection…I regard Maulana Abdul Bari as my religious guide. His loving kindness holds me in bondage. I deeply admire his sincerity of heart. But in spite of all this, I make bold to say that I have not yet found any person who in actual character is entitled to a higher place than Mahatma Gandhi….   …As a follower of Islam, I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any non-Islamic religion. And in

Journey Downhill  /  153 this sense the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussalman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim, irrespective of his high character, even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself.16

Gandhi could not fail to understand Mohamed Ali’s desperation and the compulsion leading him to make such a circular and cumbersome argument as this. At the same time, it would have been nightmarish for Gandhi to see that the Alis were losing their hold on the Muslim public, for had not Gandhi confessed back in 1921 that ‘I can wield no influence over the Muslims except through a Muslim. There are many stalwart and good Muslims I know. But no Muslim knows me through and through as Shaukat Ali does?’17 Therefore, Gandhi lost no time to come forward, like he did so many times in the past, in defence of his personal friends and political allies. In a long article in Young India he expressed his anguish at seeing ‘a wilful attempt being made to widen the gulf between Hindus and Mussalmans’, an instance of which was the irresponsible reports in some newspapers of Maulana Mohamed Ali’s speech. Gandhi continued: That there should have been found any person willing to believe such a thing of Maulana Mohamed Ali, shows the degree of tension that exists between Hindus and Mussalmans…He says, in effect, that the creed of Islam is better than my creed. Is there anything offensive in the statement? So long as there are different religions, is not the Moulana’s position the only logical and honest one?18

The vernacular Hindu press was not convinced and felt irritated at the way Gandhi looked at the matter. The Desh reported that the Mahatma came out writing a long piece in which he not only exonerated Ali from all blame, but also criticized all the Hindu papers of North India. Today a little criticism of Mohamed Ali has made Mussalmans take up arms and even the Mahatma has been carried away by the tide.19

It would be interesting to note that nearly a year later, by which time he had a few disappointing experiences, Gandhi in reply to a

154  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

letter from Birendranath Sengupta who had raised the same issue again, wrote perhaps with a double entendre: I can see nothing to except in Moulana Mohamed Ali’s statement. May not a seven feet tall say of another five feet in height that the former is superior to latter in height, although the latter is superior to the former in every other respect? May not the Moulana truthfully say that he is superior to the so-called greatest man in the world in so far as the Moulana believes in a religion which in his opinion is the best of all? I think the Moulana has legitimately drawn the contrast.20

Staying on Course with Gandhi After the collapse of the Khilafat, Muslims leaders and organizations were making desperate efforts to find out ways to keep the Muslims engaged in the political process. Dr Kitchlew reported that the Khilafat Committee and the Jamiat-ul-ulama decided that it was a religious duty of the Muslims to fight for the establishment of Swaraj. The Muslim League while talking about its commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity argued for a proper basis of representation of the minorities. Jinnah called for more concessions to the Muslims. Among the Congress leaders, council-entry continued to remain a debatable issue, for C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru failed to convince Gandhi that councilentry could be consistent with non-cooperation principle.21 In the All-India Khilafat Committee meeting Shaukat Ali, as president, continued to harp on the Khilafat idea. But at the same time, he also chose to make Gandhian noises calling upon the Muslims to make sacrifices for the ‘freedom of the motherland’ and to maintain communal unity ‘as a matter of love, not fear’.22 Like the ‘Big Brother’, Mohamed Ali too while speaking at the AIML Conference in Lahore, presided over by Jinnah, defended civil disobedience and noncooperation as the ‘only dignified weapon under the present condition’. He also predicted that the pro-changers would have to come out of the Councils disappointed and disillusioned.23 The Tej, however, while appreciating the efforts of Mohamed Ali in preventing marks

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of bigotry expressed in the speeches at Muslim League Conference in Lahore, felt ‘yet his voice was no more than the voice of a man crying in the wilderness’.24 The Khilafat and Non-cooperation had mobilized both Hindu and Muslim masses but now in the post–non-cooperation doldrums there was no concrete political programme of action in which the masses could get involved in a wholesome way. There were many voices each criticizing the other so much so that the Aligarh Gazette truly described the state of the county as ‘Political Babel’.25 A strong Muslim voice was also emerging which argued for protection of the community’s material interests such as adequate share in representation and in employment as more important than a sentimental approach to Hindu-Muslim unity.26 The government was still very cautious, and carefully collecting information about extremist Muslim views and activities inspired by the ulama in different parts of India calling upon Muslims ‘to be prepared to sacrifice their lives and wealth’ in jihad against the infidels [Christians], while at the same time preferring to wait and see.27 Yet, in fact, the energy of the masses, both Hindu and Muslim, was already directed inwards and finding outlets not in anti-government movements but in communal conflicts and violent riots. The government, instead of being the target, became the arbiter in such conflicts. A serious Sikh-Muslim riot took place in Calcutta followed by a Hindu–Muslim one in Delhi. The situation within the Congress was pretty much similar. The Ali brothers were swinging like pendulum between the pro-changers and the no-changers and Mohamed Ali, as Congress president, was finding it hard to navigate. He was frequently corresponding with Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the general secretary of the Congress at the time, on Congress affairs.28 In an interview at Matheran, Mohamed Ali regretted the ‘present moribund condition of the Congress organization as a shame and disgrace to the country’ and advised the no-changers to direct themselves to the constructive programme rather than ‘constantly asking when the Swarajists would withdraw from the Councils’.29

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In the turbulent Ahmedabad AICC which, in Gandhi’s own words ‘defeated and humbled’ him, Gandhi got full sympathy and support from the Ali brothers. In the AICC meetings, Gandhi failed to carry his proposal for a penalty clause on spinning as he also failed to pass the resolution prohibiting the Swarajists from entering the executive committee of the Congress, and was thus compelled to accept ‘temporary heterogeneity’ within the party much to his dissatisfaction. Finally, ‘the Gopinath Saha resolution clinched the issue’ when he could defeat C. R. Das only by eight votes.30 Gandhi felt like fleeing. But old friendship worked like live wire. As Gandhi says: Shaukat Ali was sitting right opposite at a distance of perhaps six yards. His presence restrained me from fleeing. I kept asking myself, ‘Could right ever come out of wrong? Was I not co-operating with evil?’ Shaukat Ali seemed to say to me through his big eyes, ‘There is nothing wrong, for all will be right’ I was struggling to free myself from the enchantment. I could not.31

Gandhi was full of praise for Mohamed Ali who was presiding. ‘Maulana Mohamed Ali came through it all unscathed. He kept his temper fairly…I must confess that the suitors for fame most cheerfully obeyed his summary rulings…The President of the AICC commanded willing obedience.’32 Towards the close of the AICC, being pressed by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Gandhi sorrowfully spoke about his anguish that both with regard to the question of violence/non-violence and constructive programme he was having the feeling of a lack of straightforwardness and an attempt to hoodwink him and that it might be better for him ‘to keep miles away’ from the Congress. As Mahadev Desai recorded: [N]obody understood the message, and felt the pain, of Gandhiji better than the Maulana [Shaukat Ali]. He declared, ‘It is you who have moulded us into men out of slaves. It is true, we have not yet imbibed straightforwardness, but that you can instill in us only by remaining with us, not by running away’. It was as if with only these few words that the Maulana bound Gandhiji down to Congress work. The country cannot be too grateful to the

Journey Downhill  /  157 Maulana for that service. It was Maulana who had stood astride like a Colossus over the whole Cocanada session of the Congress. Is it any exaggeration to say that at Ahmedabad also, it was the same Shaukat Ali who, in spite of Gandhiji’s presence, had ridden the stage?33

Indeed, Shaukat Ali acted like a ‘humble soldier’ at Ahmedabad AICC. Giving an account of how he and his brother had brought about a compromise (between pro- and no-changers) at Cocanada he said they did so ‘not because they had lost their faith in their chief ’s programme but because they were anxious to avoid unnecessary controversy when there was better work awaiting them’. He emphatically declared that both brothers were one hundred per cent with Gandhi.34 Within less than a fortnight after Ahmedabad AICC, Delhi riots started and Mohamed Ali, already in Delhi, kept Gandhi informed about the developments. Communicating his utter helplessness in the face of violence, he wrote hopelessly on 12 July about the kind of ‘sorry figure’ the votaries of non-violence cut: ‘We are abused by men of our own communities and hit by men of opposite communities.’ Further elaborating the facts in a separate letter on the same day he wrote: ‘We of the Congress are worse than useless just now, the object of everybody’s wrath it seems—for no reason other than preaching restraint.’35 In a long follow-up letter on the same subject he informed Gandhi that not only in Delhi, but in much of north India, the ‘Congress’ or ‘non-cooperation’ meant nothing and he accused that ‘the credit of it all goes, in the first instance, to the misguided spirit of the sangathan movement and the superfluous boastings of the shuddhi leaders, to which we must add the activity of the fanatical section of the Tabligh (propaganda) leaders’. Significantly, reporting on his experience of ‘that section of Muslim opinion which held back from non-cooperation and Khilafat movements’ he frankly prognosticated on the ‘shadows’ of ‘what appear to me to be the coming events’: This school of thought is despaired of Hindu-Muslim unity, and has no confidence in itself to win ‘Swaraj’…It is apprehensive of Hindu Raj, and

158  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers that it has made up its mind to resist at any cost; for ‘are not the English better masters than what the Hindus might be’? The next argument is simple and obvious. Let us, in defence of our slave rights, continue our slavery, and resist enslavement by Hindus. They feel the galling fact of slavery, but say ‘it is better to remain slaves of a comparatively fair-dealing race, than to run the risk of being enslaved by a people of weak character’. I hope I have set out their argument fairly.36

He also informed Gandhi that even as Congress president, he was unable to follow up Gandhi’s advice to institute a preliminary inquiry into Delhi riots due to differences of opinion within the Delhi District Congress Committee regarding the personnel and working procedure of such a committee.37 At about this time Motilal Nehru, then the Swarajist leader, ‘bombarded’ Mohamed Ali with several questions accusing him of campaigning against the Swarajists and as Congress president, giving excessive emphasis on Gandhi’s constructive programme which in a way was a violation of the compromise at Delhi Special Congress and at Coconada Congress. Expressing both irritation and sarcasm in his reply to Motilal, Mohamed Ali, denying the charge, made amply clear that he thought Charkha and Khaddar were more efficacious than within-council activities. He reminded Motilal that ‘I do not quite know whether you understood that it was my deep personal affection for you that finally persuaded me to fight for the compromise resolution at the Delhi Special Congress’. Then, very tersely, and expressing boldly and unequivocally his loyalty to his ‘chief ’, he went on to say: I said…I do not favour exclusion of the Swarajists from the Congress executive. But Mahatma Gandhi was of a different opinion…and I would rather give in to him than give him up, for to my mind Swaraj was more likely to be secured with Mahatma Gandhi as the general of our peaceful forces than with yourself or with Das at their head…At Ahmedabad the Mahatma went a very long way to satisfy you; but far from appreciating his nobility, I found that the Swarajists under your leadership and Das’s wish to humiliate and defeat him, and now desire to capture the Congress at

Journey Downhill  /  159 Belgaum. These efforts, God willing, I shall combat to the best of my power, because I consider it to be a calamity for the Congress to be captured by the Swarajists.38

Meanwhile, after the close of the AICC in Ahmedabad and with the experience of all that had happened there the Ali brothers felt that the good of the Congress as also of the country required that Gandhi should be more intimately tied to Congress affairs as was the case before his imprisonment. Hence, they were pressing upon Gandhi that he should lead the Congress in Belgaum. On 27 July Gandhi wrote to Shaukat Ali from Sabarmati in response to his wire from Itarsi: Why do you want me to be President of the Congress at Belgaum? Surely, I shall influence people and proceedings whether I am President or not. My usefulness is gone if I cannot get the country to adopt Hindu–Muslim Unity and the Charkha as articles of faith. If we don’t get the expected response during the ensuing months regarding spinning and if we do not get Hindus and Mussalmans to come nearer, what should I do at Belgaum? As representing a stubborn minority, it is possible to do a lot. A superficial make-believe majority must hinder the movement.39

Yet, a few months later and after some more persuasion, Gandhi finally agreed to preside over the Congress for a year and he decided to take the mantle of Presidentship from the broad shoulders of his ‘brother’ and political ally Maulana Mohamed Ali at the end of the year in Belgaum.

Gandhi’s Faux Pas Despite his intense involvement in the factional fights within the Congress, Mohamed Ali also despaired the dark clouds hung by increasing communal conflicts and, being the agitationist that he was, he probably felt frustrated at the absence of concrete programme of action involving the masses. The vernacular press, both Hindu and Muslim, was doing whatever it could to foment an already tense

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communal situation. For instance, the Aligarh Gazette wrote in the middle of July: [I]t is madness to think that our Hindu brethren will be content to expel Englishmen only because they are foreigners. As a matter of fact, if the English could ever be turned out because of their being foreigners, it will be the turn of the Muslims after them.40

The Minnah found the reason why Hindu-Muslim unity was coming down with a crash was because ‘it was raised on a false foundation. In order to set on fire the passions of the ignorant masses [the leaders] made use of the dynamite of religion’ which today has turned the two communities ‘into armed camp against each other’.41 Al Medina accused Hakim Ajmal Khan of partiality in dealing with the causes of Delhi riots for fear of ‘offending Hindu feelings’.42 The Tej warned Gandhi that he need not visit Delhi after riots.43 The Aligarh Gazette, accusing Gandhi for all the communal disturbances, said, ‘non-co-operation is the root cause of all our troubles of today…Mr. Gandhi has been the founder and the chief exponent of this baneful movement’.44 The Mashriq advised, ‘only in British India can we expect that both communities would be given equal rights and be allowed to practise (sic) their religious observations without hindrance’.45 The Zulquarain pointed out, ‘the Mussalman devotees of Gandhism [read the Ali brothers] are wasting their time in plying the spinning wheel’. Without mentioning Mohamed Ali, it said, ‘we believe Hasrat Mohani is a true Musalman and feels for his community…Hasrat Mohani ranks above Gandhi…it is nothing short of suicide for [Muslims] to strive after swaraj’.46 If the Muslims were targeting the trio consisting of Malaviya, Lajpat Rai and Swami Shraddhananda for raising Hindu communal passions, the Hindu vernacular press was accusing Gandhi for not defending them strongly enough and being too soft on the Ali brothers’ lapses. If the Muslims were openly expressing their greater confidence in the British Raj of the present than any Swaraj (read Hindu Raj)

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of the future, the Hindus were whispering that ‘they have hope of the Englishman, but none of the Mussalman’.47 The situation was so unwholesome and unmanageable that Mohamed Ali started considering alternative options to give vent to his energy and began thinking of reverting to journalism. He informed Gandhi of restarting his Hamdard and Comrade and also of his worries for being penniless.48 It is not known if Gandhi could help with money, but he, of course, supplied him with manpower urgently needed by Ali. Gandhi agreed to send Swami Anandananda, the manager of the Navajivan Press, to help Ali in his press work even though it would put the Navajivan under pressure. As Gandhi wrote to Ali, ‘What is mine is yours—the Swami included.’49 Advising Ali to ‘use Swami freely’, he concluded that he was sending Swami ‘so that you and he can come near each other and know each other better. For me a proper regulation of these personal relations means more for Swaraj and Unity than a thousand public documents’. He immediately wrote to Anandananda as well, giving him not too brief a ‘brief ’ which conveys the impression that Gandhi probably had more in his mind than what was apparent: You are going to Delhi not as Rudra [the destroyer], but as Vishnu [the sustainer]. The question is not what the Maulana should do, but what I, i.e., you should do. It is my firm resolve to put into practice and use here to the letter all the philosophy that I have been propounding in Navajivan. You will assist me in this whole-heartedly….Consider the Comrade, the Hamdard as your own or my own…Do not think of returning from Delhi in a hurry.50

About two months later in a note, ‘Key to Success’, Gandhi congratulated Mohamed Ali for, in reviving his papers, he was ‘certainly taking upon his shoulders a great responsibility’ and he prayed for his success.51 But the arrangement with Anandananda apparently did not work for long. It could be that Mohamed Ali did not like Anandananda as a person as it could also be that he did not like the idea of turning his Comrade or Hamdard into another Navajivan from Delhi. For, as

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soon as on 11 November Gandhi wrote a letter to Ali apologizing for an ‘offensive’ letter Anandananda wrote to Mohamed Ali, while at the same time admitting that ‘I have neither the heart nor courage to part company with Swami’.52 In that tense atmosphere of 1924, communal riot continued to expand its area of destruction. Scarcely before the ink was dry on Gandhi’s ‘Gulbarga Gone Mad’,53 a major riot broke out in Kohat on 9 September. Gandhi was already deeply troubled by the challenge of and uncomfortable compromise with the Swarajists, the increasingly hostile Muslim mass reaction to the Ali brothers’ commitment to himself and his views, and by the knowledge that an increasing number of Hindus were holding him ‘responsible for many of these [communal] outbursts’.54 Even after the disgraceful violence in Delhi and Nagpur, Gandhi chose to say, ‘I do not despair. I believe with Maulana Shaukat Ali that these quarrels are short-lived distemper’.55 Writing on 7 August in Young India, he had emphatically restated his position: ‘I want lasting peace that springs from toleration of each other’s religion…whether as between ourselves and English or between Hindus and Mussalmans, we want change of heart. Everything else will follow as a matter of course.’ And on 18 September, labelling the Hindu-Muslim issue as ‘the question of questions’, he promised, ‘I am going to leave no stone unturned to reach the bottom of this sea of darkness, doubt and despair’.56 Yet the Kohat riot on top of a long chain of communal outbursts all over India shook him to his foundations. Writing in Young India, he confessed, ‘[T]here is no fight left in me.’57 For the sake of Congress unity (between pro- and no-changers) at that juncture, he proposed to suspend all forms of boycott other than that of foreign cloth and decided to promote spinning and khaddar propaganda and to pursue achievement of Hindu-Muslim unity.58 Yet these were not adequate. He decided upon a 21-day fast from 17 September.59 As he wrote a week after he began his fast, ‘The news of Kohat set the smouldering mass aflame. Something had got to be done. I passed two nights in restlessness and pain. On Wednesday, I knew the remedy.’60

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Subtle differences had begun to take place between the Ali brothers and Gandhi despite their intentions to the contrary. For instance, in February 1924, Sir Muhammad Shafi, a member of the Viceroy’s Council, had spent three hours with the Ali brothers to finally convince them that they need not oppose organizing ‘the Muslim community…for defending and promoting Muslim interests’ in the face of the ‘danger to Islam’ arising from the shuddhi and sangathan movements of the Hindus following the Moplah revolt.61 Some months later, in 18 September issue of Young India, Gandhi, with regard to the Gulbarga riots, expressed the view that ‘there was an organization at the back of the desecration’.62 At this, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Mohamed Ali met Gandhi to say that ‘they knew of no such organization and that had there been any they should know it’. The reputation of the visitors had shaken Gandhi’s confidence in his own statement, yet he was not prepared to dismiss the idea as it was based on, he claimed, strong evidence gathered by him. He did not rule out even the possibility of any government agency being involved. Hakim Shaheb and Ali then questioned Gandhi whether there was not a counter-organization of the Hindus. To this, Gandhi ‘told them I know of no Hindu organization instigating desecration of Mosques, but I did see that there was an organization of some Hindus…bent on provoking’. Whether Gandhi’s position could satisfy the visitors is open to conjecture. A similar problem existed with regard to Gandhi’s infamous statement about the ‘bully and the coward’. In Young India of 29 May 1924, in a long piece on ‘Hindu–Muslim Tension: Its Cause and Cure’, Gandhi wrote, [M] own experience confirms the opinion that the Mussalman as a rule is a bully, and the Hindu as a rule is a coward…Where there are cowards there will always be bullies…But I, as a Hindu, am more ashamed of Hindu cowardice than I am angry at the Mussalman bullying.63

Gandhi himself, in his later contributions, dealt with some of the criticisms of this statement and tried to explain his point.64 It is not

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known if the Ali brothers had expressed themselves on this, though it may not be difficult to surmise that they could not be happy. Like the ‘Mussalman’ writing a letter to Young India on this comment, they might well have thought that this would ‘excite the Hindus’. The statement certainly created misgivings in Muslim as well as Hindu minds. Rajmohan Gandhi, being uncomfortable with this statement, has explained it thus: Unusually for him, Gandhi had been carried away. He did not check himself because he sensed a contest for the Hindu heart between two versions of the future, his own and that of a growing anti-Muslim school of Hinduism, and wished his strength of feeling for fellow Hindus to come across.

Yet Rajmohan felt the remark did not meet even the standard of journalism that Gandhi himself believed in.65 Usually, in Delhi Mohamed Ali’s home was Gandhi’s address. When Kohat riot started, Gandhi was in Delhi and in Mohamed Ali’s house. And very suddenly he realized that the moment for penance had arrived and he must begin a fast. No one other than Mahadev Desai knew about it when he took the decision and Mahadev was instructed to ‘seal’ his mouth.66 When Mohamed Ali came to know about it, he reproached Gandhi with tears in his eyes: ‘What is this Bapu? Is this the kind of Mohabbat (love) you have for us? You have simply cheated us. You will take every step only after consultation with us—that was our understanding. Has it evaporated?’ Ali was not convinced when Gandhi told him of his compulsion for accountability ‘to Khuda first and last’. Gandhi thought it right that, as he subsequently wrote, he should be fasting under the roof of a Muslim. As he said: [W]as it right for me to go through the fast under a Mussalman roof? Yes, it was. The fast is not born out of ill-will against a single soul. My being under a Mussalman roof ensures it against any such interpretation. It is in the fitness of things that this fast should be taken up and completed in a Mussalman house.67

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But the Ali brothers found nothing romantic about it, for they felt a chill through their spine. What would happen to them if Gandhi had died in their house? Calling it a ‘hasty step’, Mohamed Ali frankly expressed his nervousness, ‘You simply laugh it out, you don’t worry at all but have you thought of what may happen to us?’ (Italics Desai.)68 Even the Begum Shaheba (Mrs Mohamed Ali), setting aside her veil and sitting down before Gandhi, tried her best to dissuade him, but nothing worked. On the second day of the fast, a pregnant conversation took place between Gandhi and Mahadev Desai when Desai asked him he could not see any meaning in this fast, for, unlike in the cases of Bombay riots and Chauri Chaura incident, Gandhi bore no personal responsibility in the present conflagaration. Calling it Desai’s misconception, Gandhi replied: ‘In Chauri Chaura the culprits…had never seen me, never known me. Today the culprits are those who know me and even profess to love me!’ Who Gandhi was referring to was left unsaid, but did he include among the ‘culprits professing to love him’ even the Ali brothers? We do not know, but the next thing Desai told him was, ‘Shaukat Ali and Mohamed Ali are trying their best to quench the conflagaration. But it is beyond them. Some men may be beyond their reach, even your reach. What can they do? What can you do?’ ‘That is another story’, was Gandhi’s answer: Shaukat Ali and Mohamed Ali are pure gold. They are trying their best, I know. But the situation is out of our hands today. It was in our hands six months ago. I know my fast will upset them. Indirectly it might have an effect on their minds, but it was not meant to produce an effect on any one’s mind.69

As Mahadev Desai records, Shaukat Ali came the next day and tried to dissuade Gandhi by suggesting that he should better ‘travel through the affected areas and purify the atmosphere’. Shaukat Ali probably had in his mind the very effective Khilafat–non-cooperation tours of 1920–21. But Gandhi dismissed it: ‘What could I effect even

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by means of a long tour? The masses suspect us today.’ He went on trying to convince Shaukat: ‘My dear Shaukat, I cannot bear the people accusing you and your brother of having broken your promises to me. I cannot bear the thought of such an accusation. I must die for it. This fast is but to purify myself.’ Desai tells us, ‘Gandhi felt relieved that the Maulana did not argue for long. It seemed that the Maulana could understand him in almost a hint.’70 Gandhi probably had a feeling that during the last few years, he had gone with the Muslims a long way in the hope that a spirit of tolerance would be generated among them as also among the Hindus, and leaving behind violence, both communities would forcefully attempt to find a common ground. But with all that had led to Kohat, Gandhi felt ‘hopeless’.71 He could also hear whispers that ‘being so much with the Mussalman friends, I make myself unfit to know the Hindu mind’.72 Despite being conscious of the fallacy involved in essentializing characteristics, he indeed had an innate belief, right or wrong, that while the Muslim is naturally ‘aggressive’, the Hindu is ‘essentially non-violent’: If Hinduism was ever imperialistic in the modern sense of the term, it has outlived its imperialism…The predominance of the non-violent spirit has restricted the use of arms to a small minority, which must always be subordinate to a civil power highly spiritual, learned and selfless.73

In view of the unceasing communal violence he felt responsible, if not guilty, for having asked the Hindus ‘to lay down their lives and property at the disposal of the Mussalmans’, only to find now so many temples desecrated and Hindu women and children ‘molested’. He asked Desai, ‘[H]ow can I now ask the Hindus to put up with everything patiently?’74 As Rajagopalachari thought, the fast was the product of Gandhi’s ‘grief at the failure of Muslim leaders to appreciate Hindu suffering or to return his gestures’.75 Of course, Gandhi still could write, ‘I have not a shadow of doubt that Islam has sufficient [strength] in itself to become purged of illiberalism and intolerance.’76

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Yet, he probably reasoned that time had come to put pressure on Muslim leaders, including the Ali brothers, to become more proactive for Hindu-Muslim unity, and he decided not to mind if ‘the brothers felt targeted by the fast’.77 There, of course, was an element of inevitability in Gandhi’s reasoning, though the consequence failed to fulfil his expectation.

Kohat Tragedy: Love despite Split? Kohat possibly was the wrong moment for Gandhi to choose, for the trajectory of the riot here was indeed complicated. About Kohat riot Gail Mianult writes, ‘As elsewhere, the incident was deliberately provoked, but whereas in many instances it was not easy to tell who had been the agents provocateurs, in Kohat it was clearly the Hindus.’78 In response to questions in the Legislative Assembly (Simla), Foreign Secretary Mr Bray made a statement based on the chief commissioner’s (NWFP) report in which he said, ‘The balance of probabilities was that the cause of the trouble was undoubtedly a provocative Hindu pamphlet’ circulated in Kohat by one Jivan Das, the secretary of the Sanatan Dharma Sabha, which was ‘insulting’ for the Muslims. When the local authorities promised to deal with it and arrested Das, the leaders of both communities were satisfied. But four days later Das was released on bail and asked to leave the district until sent for. On the following day, a large number of Muslims gathered to protest Das’ release, but when authorities promised that steps would be taken against him under appropriate sections, the mob apparently felt satisfied. However, the next day on seeing the mob, the Hindus panicked and started shooting which killed a Muslim boy. On 9 and 10 September, huge violence took place with both Muslim and Hindu casualties. Mr Bray mentioned the Hindu version as well which ascribed the riot to Muslim annoyance over the proposed construction of a new bathing tank for Hindu females. A large number of casualties occurred with large-scale looting and burning. Hindu inhabitants, at their request, were evacuated from the city.79 On 15 September, Bray made a further

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statement in the Legislative Assembly in which he quoted the chief commissioner saying, ‘I have been all over the city and the damage is undoubtedly very great. Fires still burning in many places. Some Hindu houses are untouched, but all the temples have apparently been rifled and the images broken.’80 Sir Charles Innes (who shortly would become the Governor of Burma), deputed by the Government of India to inquire into the incident and to recommend ways of reconciliation, produced a long report on 3 November 1924. In its broad outlines, it agreed with Bray’s statement. Innes found that while ‘the pamphlet containing the objectionable poem was the spark which caused the explosion’, the relations between the two communities had become unfriendly ‘since the termination of the Khilafat movement’. He pointed out certain critical lapses on the part of the administration and appreciated the cooperative stance of the older Hindu inhabitants of the city and many ‘well-disposed Muhammadans’. Almost all the Hindus wanted to be shifted out of Kohat to Rawalpindi as they felt insecure and lived there in refugee camps. As Kohat was very near to the tribal regions, the fear of a tribal invasion was real. He recommended that the most important thing was to get the Hindus back to Kohat, provided ‘they can return in an honourable manner’.81 While there was no let up in the occurrence of riots, Mohamed Ali, with Gandhi fasting at his home, decided to initiate a proposal, in association with Hakim Ajmal Khan and Swami Shraddhananda, for a Hindu–Muslim Peace Conference in Delhi. As Congress president, he also made an appeal to all communities for ‘large hearted toleration’. The Unity Conference took place at the end of September with Motilal Nehru in chair. Shaukat Ali moved a resolution deploring dissensions and conflicts, and Gandhi sent a message to Motilal. The conference adopted a number of liberal resolutions like freedom of faith and the liberty of voluntary conversion.82 However, the vernacular press was not impressed. The Tej labelled the resolutions ‘meaningless’ and the Zemindar (the Urdu daily of Punjab run by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan)

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considered it a theoretical exercise, ‘not doing anything on the ground’. The Al Imam reported that in north India, the mutual bitterness has reached such a stage that going beyond the ceremonial occasions, it is now expressed ‘in the relations and acts of every day life’.83 After breaking his 21-day fast, Gandhi became eager to visit Kohat, but his appeals for permission were turned down by the government.84 In a press statement, he appealed to the government to take the public into confidence for any settlement that it might propose.85 In early December, Gandhi along with Shaukat Ali left for attending Khilafat Conference in Amritsar on their way to Rawalpindi to meet Kohat Hindus and Muslims. On 10 December, Gandhi was in Rawalpindi interviewing Hindus from Kohat while Shaukat Ali interviewed the Muslims. A joint conference of Hindus and Muslims was held, addressed by both Gandhi and Shaukat Ali.86 The vernacular paper Partap of Lahore, however, reported that Gandhi’s mission in Rawalpindi was a failure as the Muslims of Kohat refused to come to Rawalpindi to be interviewed. Shaukat made every effort to meet them and was compelled to say that the ‘Kohat Mussalmans were the pet children of the Government’. Gandhi advised the Hindus that they should not return to Kohat till the Muslims take them back with honour.87 The Congress, meeting in Belgaum under Gandhi’s presidentship, also advised the Hindus and Muslims of Kohat not to accept the government’s findings till some representative body has inquired into it.88 Meanwhile, Mohamed Ali’s Hamdard took its stand on the government inquiry report and laid the blame entirely on the Hindus for the riot.89 And the AIML meeting in Bombay mildly condemned Gandhi’s views on Kohat on the ground that without hearing the Muslims of Kohat, he had arrived at an incorrect estimate. Mohamed Ali, in the League Conference, held the view that the Hindus left Kohat on their own accord, not driven out by the Muslims. He also complimented the government for their sincere anxiety to help the Hindus. Yet the Ali brothers did not fail to respect Gandhi’s views

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altogether. The League finally adopted the eminent Urdu journalist of Punjab Maulana Zafar Ali Khan’s resolution as amended by Mohamed Ali, which largely accommodated Gandhi’s views and, while admitting Hindu provocation, advised the Muslims to be sympathetic towards the Hindus, to invite them to return to Kohat and settle their differences. It also recommended that a joint HinduMuslim Committee should inquire into the whole affair and until then judgement should be suspended. Shaukat Ali criticized Jinnah for his criticism and rejection of the resolution and strongly defended his brother’s draft.90 These, however, were attempts to paper over some basic differences between the findings of Gandhi and Shaukat Ali during their meetings in Rawalpindi.91 In the 12 February issue of Young India, Gandhi confessed that he had to disappoint the readers, for he could not yet publish the findings on Kohat as only now he was forwarding his notes to Shaukat Ali for his ‘endorsement, addition or amendment’. He admitted his ‘failure to bring about peace’ while, at the same time, reiterating his advice that the Hindus should not return to Kohat unless they could ‘with self-respect and dignity’. But also, somewhat strangely, Gandhi, describing himself as ‘a broken reed, not worth relying upon’, counselled the Kohat Hindus to act as Malaviyaji ‘advises them’.92 Given the fact that, rightly or wrongly, the Muslims— leaders and masses alike and including the Ali brothers—considered Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya as most responsible for communal mobilization of the Hindus, one wonders how Gandhi’s advice would act on the ground. When the Young India of 26 March came out with the reports, it was evident that, as Gandhi wrote, there were ‘material differences…on the inferences…from the same facts’ as also ‘in the degree of reliance…placed upon evidence…by witnesses’ between himself and Shaukat Ali. Gandhi found forced conversion of the Hindus as the prime cause behind the trouble while Shaukat Ali did not give any credence to the issue of conversion at all; attempt by Muslim traders to oust their Hindus counterparts that Gandhi

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spoke about as another important factor was ignored by Shaukat, and instead, he found the clever and better educated Hindus were eating into the interests of the Muslim gentry with government’s cooperation. Gandhi was of the view that the pamphlet by Jivan Das was indeed offensive, but the Hindus had made sufficient reparations for it and, therefore, there was no excuse for the Muslim onslaught for several days. Shaukat Ali, on the other hand, considered the Hindus as much responsible as the Muslims. Shaukat was not agreeable to endorse Gandhi’s position.93 Already and before publication, Gandhi could notice the wide divergence in their respective views and, with great concern, he had written to Shaukat Ali on 23 February: My Dear Friend and Brother: …I have twice read your commentary and I see the wide gulf that separates us in the affair…I tremble to publish our statements. The publication will give rise to an acrimonious discussion. I would therefore even suggest the whole matter being examined by Hakim Shaheb or Dr. Ansari…But if after we have exhausted all our resources to come to a joint conclusion, we fail, we must dare to let the public know our difference…and know too that we shall still love one another and work together.94

Next day, Shaukat Ali wired to Gandhi to say that he was ‘greatly relieved’. Also, he warmly accepted Gandhi’s invitation to join him on the train at Baroda on their way to Delhi.95 That their divergent reports were published a month later shows that travelling together on train ‘to have leisurely discussion’ did not help reconciliation of views between them, and Gandhi and Shaukat Ali were left with the option to try the path of love despite split.

Notes and References   1. Home Department (Political), Files 1923-15/IV (Secret).   2. Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, Green and Company, 1961), 74.

172  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers   3. Ibid., 68–69.   4. Pioneer, 8 and 14 March 1924.   5. Pioneer, 21 March 1924.   6. Pioneer, 6 March 1924.   7. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, 76.   8. Cited in Pioneer, 20 March 1924.   9. Cited in Pioneer, 31 March 1924. 10. Cited in Pioneer, 23 May 1924. 11. A. C. Niemeijer, The Khilafat Movement in India, 1919–1924 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), 160. 12. Partap, cited in Pioneer, 13 February 1924. 13. Cited in Pioneer, 9 May 1924. 14. Cited in Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 198. 15. Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims (Karachi: Anand T. Hingorani, 1942), 93. 16. Gandhi appended an excerpt from these two letters to his article ‘Campaign of Misrepresentation’ in Young India, 10 April 1924, in Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 93–98. 17. Cited in Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 179. 18. Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 93–94. 19. Cited in Pioneer, 2 May 1924. 20. Letter to Birendranath Sengupta, 2 March 1925 in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereinafter CWMG), 26, 214. 21. Pioneer, 21, 23 and 24 May 1924. 22. Pioneer, 24 May 1924. 23. Pioneer, 26 May 1924. 24. Cited in Pioneer, 6 June 1924. 25. Cited in Pioneer, 6 July 1924. 26. The Mashriq, cited in Pioneer, 13 June 1924. 27. Home (Poll) File 19/1923 (Confidential) (National Archives of India, hereinafter, NAI). 28. Mohamed Ali–J. L. Nehru correspondence on Congress matters: several letters exchanged between middle of January and end of June, 1924. Mohamed Ali Papers (in micro, Roll 5) and J. L. Nehru Papers, Part I, vol. 48 (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). 29. Pioneer, 12, 1924. 30. Gopinath Saha was a Bengali freedom fighter who attempted to kill the notorious Head of the Detective Department of Calcutta Police, Charles Tegart, but erroneously killed on 12 January 1924 Ernest Day, a White civilian who had come there for official business. Gopinath was arrested and executed by the government. This led to a lot of indignation among Indians and at

Journey Downhill  /  173 Ahmedabad, C. R. Das put a resolution extolling his love for the country and his ultimate sacrifice. For Gandhi, the implication for passing such a resolution at the AICC would be that the Congress condoned violence. The thinness of the margin by which Das’ resolution could be defeated was a big disappointment for Gandhi as, to him, it appeared as a pointer to the thinness of Congress’ commitment to non-violence. 31. Gandhi, ‘Defeated and Huimbled’, Young India, 3 July 1924 in Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 4 (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh-Prakashan, 2008), 296–303. 32. Ibid., 297. 33. Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 4, 99. 34. Pioneer, 2 July 1924. 35. Mohamed Ali to MKG, two letters, both dated 12 July 1924, in Mohamed Ali Papers (in micro, Roll 5) (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). 36. Mohamed Ali to MKG, 21 July 1924 in Mohamed Ali Papers (in micro, Roll 5) (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). Also, Pioneer’s report on Mohamed Ali on Delhi riots, 31 July 1924. 37. Mohamed Ali to MKG, 31 July 1924, in Mohamed Ali Papers. 38. Mohamed Ali to Motilal Nehru, 5 August 1924, in Mohamed Ali Papers (in micro, Roll 5) (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). 39. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 27 July 1924, CWMG, 24, 467. 40. Cited in Pioneer, 18 July 1924. 41. Ibid. 42. Cited in Pioneer, 15 August 1924. 43. Pioneer, 23 August 1924. 44. Pioneer, 12 September 1924. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 133. 48. Mohamed Ali to MKG, 31 July 1924 in Mohamed Ali Papers (in micro, Roll 5) (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). 49. MKG to Mohamed Ali, 8 September 1924, CWMG, 25, 107. 50. MKG to Anandanda, 8 September 1924, CWMG, 25, 110. 51. The note ‘Key to Success’ was sent o 31 October 1924, ibid., 277–79. 52. MKG to Mohamed Ali, 11 November 1924, ibid., 302–03. 53. Young India, 28 August 1924, in Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 157–60. 54. Ibid., 157. 55. Ibid., 146. 56. Ibid., 163–69. 57. Cited in Pioneer, 14 September 1924. 58. Ibid.

174  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 59. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006), 291. Khaliquzzaman wrongly puts the date as 18 September in Pathway to Pakistan, 77. See also, Desai, Day-to-Day, vol. 4, 194. 60. Gandhi, ‘All About Fast’, in To the Hindus and Muslims, 179–80. 61. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, 285. 62. M. K. Gandhi, Communal Unity, ed., Bharatan Kumarappa (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1949), 74–75. 63. Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 110. 64. For instance, ‘A Mussalman Outburst’, in Young India, 12 June, and ‘What May Hindu Do?’ 19 June 1924. 65. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, 289. 66. Desai, Day-to-Day, vol. 4, 189. 67. Gandhi, ‘All About the Fast’, in To the Hindus and Muslims, 180–81. 68. Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day, vol. 4:, 193. 69. Desai, Day-to-Day, vol. 4, 194–95. 70. Ibid, 197–200. 71. Interestingly, this was Gandhi’s own expression in his written text of the explanation for the fast meant for publication in the Navajivan. Devdas Gandhi, who was looking after the journal at the time, had changed it to ‘helplessness’—a rectification which Gandhi profusely appreciated (Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, 293). Mohamed Ali, writing in January 1925, ascribed the change to the Associated Press (Ali, ‘The Challenge to Our Love for Freedom’, in Select Writings and Speeches of Mohamed Ali, edited and compiled by Afzal Iqbal, 329). 72. Gandhi, ‘All About Fast’, in To the Hindus and Muslims, 181. 73. Gandhi, ‘What May Hindus Do?’, in To the Hindus and Muslims, 131–32. 74. Desai, Day-to-Day, vol. 4, 195. 75. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, 291. 76. Young India, 25 September 1924, in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 99. 77. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, 293. 78. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 196. 79. Bray’s report in Pioneer, 14 and 17 September 1924. Initial report on the riot, Pioneer, 13 September 1924. 80. Pioneer, 18 September 1924. 81. Report by Sir Charles A. Innes. Home (Poll) 1925, F-31/II (NAI). 82. Pioneer, 27 September to 3 October 1924. 83. Pioneer, 15 and 31 October 1924. 84. Gandhi, ‘The Kohat Visit’, in To the Hindus and Muslims, 196–98. 85. Pioneer, 20 November 1924. 86. Pioneer, 12 December 1924. 87. Pioneer, 20 December 1924.

Journey Downhill  /  175 88. Pioneer, 26 December 1924. 89. Tej reported it with its own comments, cited in Pioneer, 20 December 1924. 90. Pioneer, 2 January 1925. 91. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, 296. 92. Gandhi, ‘Kohat Hindus’, in Young India, 25 February 1925 in To the Hindus and Muslims, 204–05. 93. Babu Rajendra Prasad’s note to ‘Kohat Hindus’, ibid., 204n1; also, CWMG, 24, 336. 94. CWMG, 24, 190–91. 95. Shaukat Ali to Gandhi, Telegram, 24 February 1925, in MKG Papers, SN 10630 (NAI).

7

End of the Road The Going Gets Rough Early in December 1924, the Hindu of Lahore wrote: It is true that up to now the name of Mahatma Gandhi receives honourable mention in Mussalman assemblies, but the fact that the Mussalmans are keeping aloof from this very conference (Punjab Provincial Congress Conference), to attend which the Mahatma is making so long a journey clearly shows that only the Ali Brothers think alike with Mahatma Gandhi among Mussalmans.1

In 1921 and 1922, such a reference to the Ali brothers would certainly have been complimentary, but at the end of 1924 it could hardly be so. For meanwhile, a sea change had taken place in the attitudes of the two major communities towards each other. And the reportage in the vernacular press was a good index of it as it probably was both the creator and disseminator of mass political perception. With reference to the Allahabad riots which took place in early November 1924, the Akhbar-i-Am (the oldest vernacular journal of Punjab) candidly wrote that the masses, both Hindu and Muslim, paid no heed to the decisions of their leaders. ‘When Muslims and Hindus cannot refrain from fighting after Mahatma’s fast and after the Unity Conference, we

176

End of the Road  /  177

must conclude that communal dissensions have now become second nature with the people of our country…both communities have taken leave of all sanity and wisdom.’2 With reference to the same event, Al Imam (Delhi) wrote, the Hindus are organized and well-funded, but the Muslims have none of these: ‘They must make up now, give up mutual jealousies and set up a strong organization.’3 Whatever the Ali brothers might still say or do,4 for numerous Muslims, the Khilafat Movement had truly turned into history. Clearly a line of thinking was re-emerging among thoughtful Muslims which insisted on the protection of their community’s tangible interests within India rather than continuing to latch the community on to the religious passion for an international symbol of Islam, however unreal it might have become. And they felt the best way of doing so was to renew their relationship with the British. The chairman of the Reception Committee of the Khilafat Conference in Amritsar, Daud Ghaznavi, stressed Hindu-Muslim unity no doubt, but at the same time he did not fail to point out that the issues like ‘cow slaughter, namaz or arti’ were not important issues. The ‘important issue was communal representation and the Mahomedans, being a minority, cannot give this up’.5 The Mashriq of Gorakhpur had already declared communal representation as a must.6 A few weeks later, it commented, ‘Indian Mussalmans are now convinced they must guard their own interests before they can think of freedom for the country.’7 At the All-India Khilafat Conference, Dr Kitchlew, as president, encouraged the Muslims to join the Congress because he found a lack of interest in the Congress on the part of the Muslims. Mohamed Ali advised everyone to become charkha-mad, but Hasrat Mohani opposed obligatory position on charkha.8 Most interestingly, Mian Hissam Din, a member of the Amritsar Municipal Committee, in course of a meeting with regard to Gandhi’s impending visit to Amritsar in early December, denounced the political views of Gandhi and remarked that if he met Gandhi, he would request him ‘to divide India into two

178  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

colonies, one for the Hindus and the other for the Muslims as their differences were so acute’.9 An urge for refocusing Muslim political thinking and redirecting the community’s political goals was clearly visible in many ways. For instance, presiding over a conference of Bengal Muslim leaders held at Serajgunj, Maulana A. K. Fazlul Haque spoke of his decision to form a new association of Muslims, ‘Bengal Moslem Union, to promote the best interests of the community by lawful means’. The conference also demanded that the proportion of communal representation should be raised.10 Such thoughts were followed up when a Muslim deputation headed by Honourable Khan Bahadur Ebrahim Haroon Jaffar, a Poona philanthropist and a member of the Viceroy’s Council, waited on His Excellency the Viceroy at the Government House and presented an address in which the wish was expressed for the Muslims’ ‘full responsibility and service’ in government, and a demand was made for ‘Muslim representation ensuring a satisfactory ratio’. The Viceroy, Lord Reading, in reply had warm words to say: I fully recognize the prominent position occupied by the Moslem community in India in the past and in the present…You may feel confident that in the future too, the same spirit of sympathy and interest will animate my government and my own actions as regards all that concern your important community.11

Such deputations from different provinces continued to meet the high officials of the government. Following a deputation from the Bombay Muslims, Bengal Muslims also had one to the Viceroy while he was in Calcutta at the end of December. Lord Reading, of course, paid tribute to ‘Mohammedan loyalty’ and promised to be always ‘protective of Moslem interests’.12 At about the same time, Sir William Marris, the governor of the United Provinces, gave a very significant address at Aligarh Muslim University in which he said: There have been many signs of late that the Moslem community is taking serious stock of its position…It would be presumptuous and foolish for

End of the Road  /  179 any outsider to offer them counsel. But we may look on with interest and sympathy…The Mussalmans of India are Indians and they are Moslems also. Whether there is any divergence between the two is for the Moslems only to decide. If there is such divergence and a choice must be made, then they will surely ask themselves, which capacity offers the Moslems of India the happier, safer, richer future? If there is no such ultimate divergence, it still seems necessary to consider how the community can best be stayed together against the intermittent stresses which nevertheless must occasionally threaten its cohesion. To an onlooker these seem to be the great questions to which best Moslem thought of the country should be devoted; for their solution will immensely affect the Moslem future.13

Obviously, the government made no secret of the important axe it had to grind in exhibiting its worries regarding whether the Muslims were thinking right and also to convey the promise that whatever might have happened during the last few years, it would always be there for the Muslims to fall back upon if necessary. The Muslim community had become polyvocal, but it was not difficult to discern the dominant stream within this polivocality. That stream clearly argued for thinking out the community’s political interests and guarding the community against the majority’s pressure. As Al Bashir (Agra) said, large number of Muslim leaders were ‘in chains of subjection to Mahatma Gandhi, cannot speak their minds…’14 While the Muslim local press was insisting on strengthened communal representation as a good way to counter the community’s felt insecurity, the Hindu journals rejected the idea, for, as the Tej (Delhi) said, it was ‘another term for the very negation of a united nationality—a poisonous principle’.15 The depth of animosity between the two communities can be understood when we notice that the Hindu vernacular journals, rather than feeling sad, in fact, were celebrating Gandhi– Shaukat Ali divergence on Kohat riots. The Tej, while regretting the disagreement, wrote nearly in a fit of prescience: [T]hose Hindus who believed in a patched up peace with Muslims owing to the alliance between Gandhi and the Ali Brothers and thereby obstructed rebuilding the national edifice will be convinced that the old chapter is

180  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers entirely closed…It will not be strange, if opposition against the Mahatma is led among the Muslims by those who at present time is [sic] nearest to him’.

And the Hindu of Lahore said that the public considered the Ali brothers as the real friend of Mahatma and believed no difference was possible between them. ‘Friendship of Mahatma and Shaukat Ali became a household word. But Kohat incident has weakened and broke this last bond of union. In reality no Muslim, even Ali Brothers could not displease the rank and file of his community.’16 Al Medina of Bijnor (the United Provinces) wrote that Gandhi ‘has now become a heavy burden on the delicate plant of political life in this unfortunate country…’17 Therefore, the going was rough for the Ali brothers. The events of the past year were weighing like a mountain on their back. On the one hand, they came under heavy fire from the representatives of Muslim mass public opinion; on the other, they had their loyalty to the friendship with Gandhi and also the heavy imprint of Gandhian thought on their minds. They also felt threatened by the increasing voice of the shuddhi (purification) and sangathan (consolidation) movement. While they and their Khilafat committees continued to make Gandhian noises on spinning and khaddar and to jointly address with Gandhi cow protection meetings, they were not comfortable with the situation. Mushirul Hasan says that by the end of 1924, Mohamed Ali’s enthusiasm for the Congress ‘seemed to dampen’.18 Yet it must be admitted that even in early 1925 they sincerely believed in the possibility of joint Hindu–Muslim effort for Swaraj. The Hamdard, rightly being very critical of the idea of a shudh (pure)—Hindu India, argued that the Muslims meant to continue as Musalmans having no intention of leaving India and spoke about its suggested alternative solution, ‘that is, a united and common Swaraj’.19 Again, in its April issue it wrote with reference to the hopes of a Labour government in England that it would be ‘height of folly to expect that this party would give any concessions in the present state of disruption and Hindu-Muslim

End of the Road  /  181

difference in this country. Let us remember that only when India can give proof of a united front, can we get anything’.20 And in a meeting of the All-India Cow Protection Society in Bombay presided over by Gandhi, Shaukat Ali deplored the fact that Hindus and Muslims were fighting each other and also promised Muslim support for cow protection.21 Being a fighter for a cause, Mohamed Ali was still making laudable efforts to secure a middle and reasonable position between the Muslim communalists and Hindu fanatics and thereby to build bridges between himself and the Muslim masses without burning bridges with the Mahatma or the Congress. He wrote a long essay in the Comrade titled ‘In Defence of Gandhi’s Leadership’. It was less in Gandhi’s defence than an attack on the politics of Lala Lajpat Rai.22 But in a remarkable piece written in his journal on 6 February 1925 on communal representation, he appeared to be at his best.23 He began by referring to Gandhi’s message to the Unity Conference in Delhi last September wherein Gandhi had suggested that a time-bound committee ‘should be appointed to invite representative opinion and investigate the whole question of the share of various communities in representation and in the public services’, and regretted how it all went up in smoke due to lack of serious interest. He advised the Muslims not to be over-worked on the question of safeguarding their interests through communal representation, etc., for ‘Swaraj itself will prove the sovereign remedy for all our national ills’, adding that if such hopes ‘are belied, there is nothing that can prevent the Muslims from seeking and securing justice through Civil War or through Civil Disobedience’. At the same time, he advised the Hindus that they should accept all the Muslim demands, for, after all, the Muslims do not want to convert Hindu majority into minority and ‘so long as majority rule is accepted, the Hindu position in all constituencies is safe enough’. Speaking forthrightly, he argued that while it could be accepted that communal representation might disfigure the Swaraj constitution, ‘a communal monopoly is worse than communal representation, and

182  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

when majority is accepted by the minority, it is only right that the minority should be credited with some abhorrence of communal representation’. But going beyond the two confronting postures and in true Gandhian fashion, he recommended that in view of the intercommunal feelings then prevailing, it would be best if proportional representation was accepted, allowing each constituency to decide whether to go for territorial or separate electorates and certain fundamental laws were put into the Swaraj constitution to absolutely protect minority rights. He concluded by telling the Muslims: Make no stipulations for the future but ask for Swaraj without any terms, without any conditions…But while we say this, we know that it is the easiest thing for the Hindus to remove Muslim mistrust of Swaraj by a generosity that will cost them but little [sic].

Where Are the Ali Brothers? The events of 1924 were weighing upon Gandhi no less. By the last quarter of 1924, the stormy days in politics had begun and Gandhi was trying his best to protect his boat that he had so carefully built on his alliance with the Ali brothers. He found it necessary that no politics should be allowed to interfere with warm personal relations and respectful references. On the death of the Ali brothers’ mother, Bi-Amma, whom Gandhi had always considered his own mother, Gandhi went to their house and witnessed an ‘impressive and solemn scene’ which he wanted the readers of Young India to know. He wrote, ‘I heard no sobbing, though I noticed tears trickling down Moulana Mohamed Ali’s cheeks. The Big Brother restrained himself with difficulty, though there was an unusual solemnity about his face.’24 Mohamed Ali, promising to make the country charkha-mad, took care to take the help of religion. Gandhi could not take it lightly, and wrote that ‘Maulana Mohamed Ali has collected maxims in praise of the spinning wheel from the literature of Islam and published them in his Hamdard. Readers will find their translations in this Navajivan and should reflect upon them’.25

End of the Road  /  183

As president of the Belgaum Congress in December 1924 Gandhi formalized the pact he had already arrived at with C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru, admitting the Swarajists’ right to follow their own path from within the Congress which, in a sense, was the completion of a cycle started by Mohamed Ali at Coconada a year before around much controversy. However, in his brief presidential speech, Gandhi’s focus was on communal unity. Restating his position, he said, ‘The meaning of Hindu-Moslem Unity is that if I am a sanatani I will have as much place in my heart for Maulanas Mohamed Ali and Shaukat Ali as I have for Malaviyaji, even if the former treats us as enemy.’26 By 1924 Gandhi took no time to realize that Khilafat as the glue between the Ali brothers and himself had gone dry and, therefore, time had come to place the idea of unadulterated Swaraj before everyone, including the Ali brothers. There was no time to waste by allowing the Muslims to pursue a mirage. In his speech at the AIML conference in Bombay at the end of December 1924, Gandhi finally decided to call into question the relevance of the idea of Khilafat for the Indian Muslims and advised the Muslims that like the rest of the Indians, they ought to make Swaraj their goal; ‘Khilafat–Swaraj’ was a thing of the past whether or not it could serve its purpose and pan-Islamic dreams could be realized, if they must, through the attainment of Swaraj within India: If you want to help Egypt and as I have told Maulana Mohamed Ali, the only course is to get Swaraj first. Then, and then only you can help in real sense Turkey, Egypt and Arabia. If Hindus and Muslims are united not only by paper pacts and resolutions but by heart then and then only you can protect Islam in India and abroad.27

Mohamed Ali’s writings such as ‘Communal Representation’ in the Hamdard and Comrade in early 1925 show that Gandhi was indeed able to impress him with such arguments. This is also evident in his reaction to Gandhi’s Presidential speech at Belgaum Congress. In a long ‘Leader’ in his journal in January 1925, Mohamed Ali complimented Gandhi

184  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

for his brief speech at Belgaum, his intolerance of ‘unnecessary rhetoric’ and described him as ‘an ascetic in his writing’. He then proceeded to elaborate Gandhi’s every point, justifying and supporting them with his usual wit, rhetoric and verve. Significantly and boldly, Ali made the observation that in Islam there were certain duties and prohibitions imperative for every Muslim to follow, but between ‘these duties and prohibitions lies a vast stretch of ground in which he is free to roam about’ and he placed communal fraternity and Swaraj within this space: We claim to know enough of Islam to be able to say that it does not require a Muslim to impose the rule of Muslim sovereign upon non-Muslim subjects, and it does not require him to subvert the rule of a non-Muslim sovereign over Muslim subjects so long as he is free to follow the commandments of his God.28

Yet the pressure of Muslim mass public opinion was becoming too great for Mohamed Ali to put up with. The masses, instead of following the leaders, began to chase and dictate them, which for the leaders became difficult to ignore. While communal riots were raging throughout the country—from Rawalpindi to Kumbhakonam, from Sholapur (Bombay) to Calcutta, Chittagong and Dacca, the Hindu Mahasabha was adopting resolutions against communal representation and organizing Hindu volunteers for protection of Hindu women.29 Unpleasant voices calling for Gandhi’s ouster from the Congress were occasionally being heard both from the Hindu and Muslim ends.30 Sections of the Muslim press criticized Mohamed Ali for his call for a Hindu–Muslim ‘united front’ in India for attainment of Swaraj.31 The Madras Mail commented that those Muslim leaders who were advising the Muslims to think of themselves as Indians first and Muslims afterwards could not be in earnest, or if in earnest, they were not expecting ‘their advice to be followed’. It felt that Fazlul Haque was ‘much more candid’, for ‘he tells his fellow Moslems to think of their own community first and then of Indian Swaraj’.32 A growing

End of the Road  /  185

consensus in the Muslim vernacular press and public opinion was clearly visible that the Hindus were resorting to nationalist passion to undermine palpable rights and interests of the Muslims. In this state of utter confusion, the Ali brothers were likely suffering from anxiety and a sense of uncertainly. For them, it was increasingly becoming a choice between their Muslim following and Gandhi’s friendship. As the Mashriq would unabashedly write a few months later: Shaukat Ali is spinning the wheel of the Khilafat, Mohamed Ali is writing the same things in his paper which we wrote twenty years ago. He tells us that there is no salvation without unity. He also must be convinced in his heart that there is no unity in this country and therefore, no swaraj is possible. Let our Hindu and Muhamedan leaders not be misled by the sincerity of their minds or by personal enthusiasm. What they need is to gauge the mind of the general public.33

As an immediate response to these incongruent demands, the Ali brothers began to dissociate themselves from Gandhi in public appearances. In his speech at ‘Kaliparaj’ Conference at Vedchi on 18 January 1925, Gandhi reported to his audience that ‘Mohamed Ali has wired seeking forgiveness for his inability to attend’ and tried to explain it away by referring to his ‘illness’ and his responsibility for running two journals.34 In his speech at Ernakulam on 8 March, Gandhi, a little sadly, said: I have not beside me my friend Maulana Shaukat Ali or Maulana Mohamed Ali. As you know we had become almost inseparable in all our travels in India. One of the brothers, however, is today immersed in his journalism and the other Big Brother has practically buried himself in and about Bombay.35

The same explanation was repeated by Gandhi in his speeches in Comilla and Dacca on 15 and 17 May.36 But such explanations notwithstanding, Gandhi could hear loud whispers that after Kohat, his

186  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

friendship with the Alis had come to an end. He wanted to tackle it head on as he had always thought that his relationship with the brothers should appear as the best example of how Hindus and Muslims could come together and act in unison as blood brothers. Hence, he issued a message for the suspecting public, but which possibly was meant for the ears of the brothers too: It is sign of the times that there should be people who think that as none of them is with me during my tour, there must be some rupture between me and the Ali Brothers…many people suspected an open rupture between us. I told them that there was none and there was likely to be none…Friendships are not easily made, they are less easily broken. They bear much strain. The only strain they cannot stand is dishonesty or faithlessness. Let no one imagine that differences between Maulana Shaukat Ali and myself about Kohat have put any strain whatsoever upon our relations.37

It did not help matters, however, as far as the brothers’ public presence was concerned. Not convinced by Mohamed Ali’s excuse that he was too busy with his papers, Gandhi, chiding Mohamed Ali, wrote on 18 May 1925: My dear friend and brother: …We were doing little when we were swimming with the tide. We have to exert ourselves only when we swim against it. My faith in the twins [the Alis] is also unshakable, not in your method of work however. If you rigidly set apart time for every activity, you will find a margin left. The busiest man has always time for more.38

By this time, personal meetings between Gandhi and the Alis had become rare. Even correspondence between them had markedly declined. In a two-page hand-written letter to Gandhi ‘after ages’, Shaukat Ali said he was ‘faded and tired’. He informed ‘dear Mahatmaji’, ‘Mohamed Ali’s health and affairs worried me a great deal owing to his unmethodical… routine of life. He is in a mess—nothing serious but still sufficient to worry two such poor workers as ourselves and our only refuge Ansari

End of the Road  /  187

is still in Europe’. He ended by adding that he ‘must see you and report things. Please pray for us’.39 With affection and wit, Gandhi immediately responded to Mohamed Ali’s ‘difficulties’: ‘My heart is with him. He is so improvident and for want of method, of all the public workers he, perhaps, takes the first rank’. Gandhi did not forget to tell Shaukat that his letter to Mohamed Ali written a fortnight ago still remains unresponded.40 Yet Gandhi continued to repose faith in the Ali brothers. When a little later, Mohamed Ali would suggest that Andrews and Stokes41 should try to bring the two communities together, Gandhi rejected the idea and wrote to ‘Bhaishaheb’: ‘You alone can bring them together when time comes.’42 Shaukat Ali had become a member of the executive committee of the All-India Spinners’ Association and he was also doing some spinning, though not to Gandhi’s satisfaction. But Mohamed Ali, despite promoting the idea of charkha and khaddar in his writings and speeches, could not interest himself in the act of spinning. Early in the year, Gandhi was writing to both the brothers affectionately rebuking them for indifferent spinning and expressing his wish to see them at the earliest opportunity.43 But Gandhi could not turn them into great spinners. When a reader of Young India inquired why he did not find Mohamed Ali’s name in the list of members of the Spinners’ Association published in the same journal, Gandhi replied ‘Maulana Mohamed Ali has sent no yarn, so he is obviously not a member’.44 But even before he replied to this ‘reader’ of Young India, he wrote to Mohamed Ali referring to this letter: I also ask the same question…If you tell me you are too worried or too busy, I am not prepared to accept the excuse…I know you swear by the Spinning Wheel. I know that you recognise that the Spinners’ Association is the proper body and therefore it is that I would refuse to accept any excuse from you.

While at the same time, affectionately inquiring about him, Gandhi pleaded to see him at the earliest even if briefly: ‘I expect to see you at

188  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

the station when I pass through Delhi.’45 It is not known whether the meeting at the station in fact took place. In the face of the ceaseless communal conflagration, Gandhi decided in March 1925 to retire from politics for a year as he found no role for himself in that ‘surcharged atmosphere’. He decided to put away the ‘hopeless tangle’ in his ‘cupboard’.46 In April 1925, in answer to an interview by a Muslim lawyer, he confessed, ‘I no longer regard myself as an expert on the Hindu-Muslim question. My opinion has therefore only an academic value.’47 Despite this, however, he could not escape from expressing himself on Hindu–Muslim riots or other communal issues, which is why he had to admit that ‘however much I may wish to avoid it, the Hindu-Moslem question will not avoid me’.48 Yet in ‘retirement’ his whole idea was to distance himself from the unpleasant daily politics which he was unable to influence or shape and to create the space for devoting himself to popularizing spinning and charkha and removal of untouchability. Nearly a year later, while making a statement on his ‘retirement’, he said, the ‘apparent inaction’ was really ‘concentrated action’. He said as he had no faith in communalism, he felt he should hold himself ‘in reserve till the storm is over and the work of rebuilding has commenced’. He believed party and political complications go over the heads of millions and for them ‘there is only the spinning wheel’ and he was engaged in attending these tiny wheels. When the storm is over and the parties are united, they will find that the country has been prepared by silent hands…I have staked my all on charkha. I invite the signatories to follow the lead of the charkha.49

Shaukat Ali had happened to be a signatory to this statement and Gandhi expected Shaukat to be equally enthusiastic about charkha. In his letter of 11 April, he had advised Shaukat to ‘please give a silent hour to the spinning wheel, concentrating all your attention upon it’.50 But when in a letter Gandhi pressed Shaukat on the matter of spinning and khaddar,51 Shaukat describing himself as a ‘spent bullet’,

End of the Road  /  189

submitted as politely as possible his (and Muslims’) inability to devote to these at least for the present (probably implicit reference was to the communal situation): You are right when you say that you will judge us by the actual result as to our interest in spinning and khaddar. We Moslems are passing through very troublesome times and I thank God, we are fighting like brave soldiers with our backs to the wall.52

Friends No More Rajmohan Gandhi writes, after Kohat the ‘Ali brothers slowly drifted away from Gandhi’.53 There is no doubt that disagreement on Kohat created a major breach in the relationship. In an unusually terse letter to Mohamed Ali on Ali’s resolution on Kohat riots, which was carried in place of Zafar Ali’s at the AIML Conference, Gandhi wrote: The resolution of Zafarali Khan is really better than yours. You have meant well but you have done badly. Your resolution reads as if Hindus richly deserved what they got…Zafarali Khan’s resolution is…far less offensive. You have erred grievously…How I wish you had remained silent. I have read the resolution again and again and the more I read the more I dislike it. Yet you must hold on to it, if you don’t feel that it is wrong. What I want to do is to act on your heart and thereon (on) your head. I am not going to desert you whilst I have faith in you. The resolution is a revelation of the working of your mind. However crude the language, it shows your belief. I must, therefore, put forth greater effort still and see if I cannot bring you to a correct perspective.54

Gandhi’s comments on the subject in private conversations, such as ‘nothing could be a greater eye-opener than this [Mohamed Ali’s resolution]’, or regarding Shaukat’s stand on Kohat that ‘the cat will be out of the bag by the end of the year’,55 reveal that, rightly or wrongly, Gandhi felt deeply disappointed and let down by the brothers. Yet Gandhi, as was typical of him, never lost his cool and tried his best to keep the brothers on track by inviting them to devote more time to

190  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

spinning. However, this did not, and could not, work as monumental issues affecting communal relations—issues which went far beyond ‘music before mosque’ or ‘cow protection’ presented themselves. The question of minority representation and reservation, of majority and minority provinces—to put somewhat negatively, the issues of loaves and fishes of office, which were largely driven under the carpet by the Lucknow Pact—quickly reemerged with the coming of the Simon Commission. And for the Ali brothers, it was impossible to ignore Muslim anxieties or to try to reorient them, and to be upstaged and to leave the populist Muslim platform to eager aspirants like Jinnah. The years 1927 and 1928 were years of deliberation and agitation, of hopes and frustration for India. The year 1927 opened with the news of AIML Conference. Jinnah moved the most important resolution asking for a Royal Commission to revise the constitution of India on the basis of principles like adequate representation of minorities and separate electorates for communal groups. He argued that Congress’ position on minorities was ‘not assuring’ and felt that communalism wouldn’t go through talks and sentimentalism, nor could nationalism be created by having a mixed electorate.56 Yet within three months, ‘thirty prominent Muslims’ gathered in Delhi to create the Delhi Proposals by which they agreed ‘to surrender their long-cherished preference for separate electorates’, even if conditionally.57 Jinnah played an important role in bringing about these proposals. When, later in the year, the AICC met in Bombay, Jinnah sent a telegram to Chairman Srinivas Iyengar to ‘earnestly urge the Congress to accept’ the joint electorate proposal of Delhi Muslim leaders. Despite the Hindu Mahasabha’s coolness to the idea, Motilal Nehru took the lead to get the AICC accept the Muslim offer.58 Gandhi, despite maintaining that he could not serve any useful purpose by attending AICC’s unity conference in Bombay because he was ‘out of tune with the positions taken up either by the Hindus or the Muslims’ and he knew that his ‘presence can only mar the harmony of the proceedings’,59 did give his backing to Motilal’s efforts.60 The same spirit was exhibited

End of the Road  /  191

and the idea of joint representation was accepted when the Indian National Congress met for its annual conference in Madras by the end of the year.61 Meanwhile, in October1927, the new Viceroy, Lord Irwin, summoned Gandhi to Delhi to be told that a statutory commission under Sir John Simon would come to India in 1928 and make constitutional proposals.62 Gandhi, hurrying from Mangalore to hear this much, was not amused. However, the news that the Commission would not include any Indian at once created huge political controversy amid claims of boycotting it. The Congress called for absolute boycott of the Commission, but the issue divided the Muslims and even the Muslim League became divided between pro-boycott (Jinnah– Kitchlew) and anti-boycott (Mohamed Shafi) factions holding separate annual conferences of the League in Calcutta and Lahore, respectively. In the Lahore meeting supporting cooperation with the Commission, Masudul Hasan of the United Provinces said, ‘[B]oycott would lead Moslems to ruin their interests by swallowing the poisonous pill of Indian nationalism.’ The Ali brothers followed the Congress line and at the Madras Congress Mohamed Ali thanked God for sending the Commission which made Indians realize that they could no longer place trust in the British government, but only in themselves, the Hindus in the Muslims and the Muslims in the Hindus. In the Calcutta meeting of the Muslim League, Mohamed Ali strongly spoke for boycott of the Commission. The meeting also approved the Delhi Proposals and Madras Congress’ stand on the abandonment of separate electorate. Shaukat Ali, who was also present there, described it as a ‘revolution’ and congratulated the League for it.63 In a largely attended public meeting in Calcutta presided over by Subhas Chandra Bose, important leaders—Ansari, Jinnah, Besant, Malaviya, Kitchlew, Jawaharlal and Shaukat Ali—all spoke supporting the ‘Madras unity achievements’. Ansari as Congress president soon gave a call for expediting the process of unity and accordingly, an All-Parties Conference met in

192  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Delhi in February.64 But bitter controversies and differences developed among leaders and Jinnah accused Motilal of going back on Delhi Proposals. The pro-boycott faction of the Muslim League, which included the Ali brothers, also felt that the draft proposal of All-Parties Conference was ‘not in conformity with the resolutions’ League had passed in its Calcutta session.65 The adjourned meeting of the conference again met in May in Bombay and achieved some sort of consensus by which a committee under Motilal was constituted to frame a future constitution for India. Mrs Besant moved the resolution on this committee and Shaukat Ali seconded it.66 By early July the committee concluded its deliberations and on 15 August 1928 its report, famously known as the Nehru Report, was made public. Gandhi did not believe that the time was ripe for drafting a constitution, yet once the committee under Motilal Nehru was constituted, he looked forward to it with positive expectations. When the Nehru Report was out, Gandhi wrote in Young India, ‘Pandit Motilal Nehru and his colleagues deserve the highest congratulations for the very able and practically unanimous report.’67 When the All-Parties Conference met again in Lucknow at the end the month, the Nehru Report was accepted by leaders like Ansari, Azad, Lajpat Rai and Malaviya. Only Hasrat Mohani dissented on its ‘dominion status’ recommendation. Mohamed Ali’s preference for ‘complete independence’ was known even earlier, but he was in Europe at the time. Shaukat Ali supported the report, though in an interview with the Associated Press, he said he ‘stood by the Madras Congress resolution and was averse to upsetting considered judgment of the Congress’. He said his co-religionists and Khilafatists would grant ‘ten years to see how joint electorates would work’.68 However, there were simmering differences among the Muslims on the Report. The Report not only recommended universal franchise and abolished separate electorates as expected; it also rejected weightages and reservation of seats in legislature for Muslims, though it admitted separation of Sind from Bombay and creation of NWFP as a separate province. Even if initially Muslims in Bengal and Punjab found

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it acceptable, in the United Provinces the reaction was negative.69 Shuaib Qureshi, as a member of the Nehru Committee, had voiced his objections. Soon extremist Muslim voices could be heard against the Report.70 And the Ali brothers were found amongst them. In fact, even before the Nehru Report was prepared and made public, Shaukat Ali wrote a letter to Gandhi accusing Motilal of working in league with the Hindu communal elements. He began his letter with his family and other matters and then towards the end of the letter, very casually, he mentioned that there ‘is one other matter on which I am feeling very much upset’. Referring to a telegram he received from Shuaib (a member of the Nehru committee) informing him of Panditji’s (Motilal) ‘adamant’ attitude, Shaukat wrote: It is very serious and I am afraid if we do not realize the situation Pandit Motilal would be the cause of very serious trouble…he wants the Madras resolution to go and the Mussalmans to give up the Reservation of seats…I am afraid if Panditji insists to adopt the [Hindu] Mahasabha formulas, then the position of the Moslem Cogressmen would be most unpleasant. We can never go back to the English, and our Hindu friends are deserting us…In my opinion he [Motilal] ruined our non-cooperation movement, he has ruined the Swaraj Party and now he will bring disruption in the ranks of the Congress. You will excuse my writing this frankly to you. We Moslems have given a fight all along the line to the reactionary element in our camp. I think we had a right to expect our Hindu co-workers to tackle their mischief-making groups. Instead of doing that we unfortunately see that they desire to upset the well-considered mandate of the people given barely nine months ago at Madras.71

Despite their differences over Council-entry four years back and despite their differences regarding the place of religion in politics, Gandhi had no trust deficit in Motilal. Therefore, he was amazed at this letter and wrote back to Shaukat: ‘Your remarks about Motilalji make painful reading. I am unable to pass any judgment, but I do feel that he is incapable of willfully coming to a perverse decision.’ Gandhi promised to do anything Shaukat expects ‘if I can see eye to eye with you and have the ability to do it’.72

194  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Meanwhile, Shaukat began publicly accusing Gandhi that he had tried to prevent Shuaib from becoming a member of the Nehru Committee. Gandhi came to know about it from Mahadev Desai and wrote to Shaukat: [I]t is news to me that I tried to keep Shwaib [sic] out. I do not even remember what I said about him and others. All I know [sic] that I never dreamt of keeping Shwaib out of anything…What led you to think that I wanted to keep Shwuaib [sic] out with a purpose?...I know you to be too good not to make amends if and when you see your error. Even your errors make you lovable so long as I retain the opinion which I do, that you are truthful and fear God. Why should I worry over what I may hold to be your error, seeing that I err often enough and need the indulgence of friends and foe alike?73

Meanwhile, Shaukat Ali’s objections to Motilal’s handling of the issues within the committee had expanded into near-rejection of the Report. Dr Kitchlew expressed his surprise at the opinion expressed by Shaukat and Md. Yakub that the Muslim League did not accept the Report at Lucknow.74 Interestingly, such Muslim reactions were coming to overlap with the government’s efforts to nourish the Hindu– Muslim divide. The special correspondent of the Pioneer, in a report from Simla on ‘Moslems and Nehru report’, wrote: Much will be made in the country about the Moslem caveats to the Nehru Report. The protest is more apparent than real. It represents a real triumph for the Government activity in the lobbies and elsewhere. It is doubly unfortunate that at this time the Moslem leaders lend too susceptible an ear to the whispers of the Government spokesmen.75

Within a few days, the same newspaper reported that a number of leading Muslims from Bengal and Punjab met at the residence of Malik Firoze Khan Noon, minister for Local Self-Government, Punjab, and recorded their view criticizing the Nehru Report and suggesting major amendments for the protection of Muslim interest. Their statement was signed by Noon and Mohammad Iqbal among others.76 The Ali brothers must have been aware of such initiatives.

End of the Road  /  195

Early in September, in a signed article in the Navajivan, Gandhi again expressed his appreciation of the Report: ‘Lucknow has achieved another historic victory…The success in Lucknow is mainly due to Pandit Motilal Nehru and Dr. Ansari, who deserve hearty congratulations.’77 But the Ali brothers had already made a choice. They refused to join in chorus with Gandhi, for they felt that ground realities demanded that they should be on the side of their own community rather than acting as a bridge between the two communities.78 If that means giving up the Mahatma, so be it. On 23 October 1928, Shaukat Ali wrote an acerbic 11-page letter to Gandhi, vomiting fire on Motilal and his Report. He accused Motilal of always being opposed to the Madras Congress resolution and said that things would have been settled with Jinnah amicably in Delhi All-Parties Conference itself ‘but for Pandit Motilal Nehru’s obstinacy’. He recounted the history of his quarrel with Motilal from ‘when the Swaraj Party was started’ and said: You have forgiven them [Motilal and his company], may even have forgotten the wrongs they may have done, but most of us cannot do it; at least, I cannot put up with any bluster from Motilalji nor can I forgive him for the harm he did to non-co-operation movement. You can retire from active politics, being many minded [sic], but unfortunately we cannot; and I have got to save my Moslem brethren from going to the English fold.

Shaukat then went on to explain that he never said that Gandhi ‘made every effort to keep Shuaib out’ of the Nehru Committee. He wanted Shuaib on the committee, because he thought ‘Shuaib alone, and possibly Sobash [sic] Bose were the only members who could put forward the Moslem point of view’. He further pointed out that the Muslim masses were not with Ansari or Maulana Abul Kalam Azad or Zafar Ali Khan but that his quarrel really is not with Ansari but with Pandit Motilal, who knowing that I was giving expression to the views of millions of Mussalmans, yet would not listen…What pained me in Lucknow was the arrogance and

196  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers the Mahasabha mentality of even our friends [read Motilal]…The whole conference put together did not realize how much the Mussalmans could swallow and digest and how far they could go. It was a big task before us to make them accept Joint Electorates which, I think, in itself was a very great gain…The Mussalmans had been kept down by our influence. Jinnah gradually crept up to gain the position…we naturally lost position with our own people…This way you cannot win the confidence of the Mussalmans…I have chalked out a line for myself…I want Moslems to have nothing to do with the English, ignore the Hindus also…It matters little if any action of mine annoys you today or any action of your [sic] makes me angry. We have fought together side by side and will carry the wounds we earned together to our graves. They are a link between us but I beg you not to ignore the warnings I give you. We cannot allow things to drift because that way lies danger and that terribly ugly thing called civil war…I have always believed in the real heart to heart Hindu-Moslem unity.79

Ending the long letter with ‘Yours in great sorrow’, he added as a post-script: ‘It is painful for me to write such a letter and it will be painful; for you to read it. I feel that we must act and not allow things to drift.’ Gandhi, in his short reply wrote that he read it carefully. I shall want much stronger proof than you give to sustain your indictment of Dr. Ansari and Motilalji. You may not see eye to eye with them, but we may not impute motives to those who differ from us. But I shan’t argue with you. I know some day you will see the light or if I am under a delusion I shall have mine dispelled.80

Meanwhile, Mohammad Shafi had given a call for an All-India Muslim Conference for formulating an authoritative and final Muslim position on the Nehru Report. Shaukat Ali became a strong advocate of the idea while Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, the Raja of Mahmudabad, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and many others opposed such a call as unnecessary. Mahmudabad argued separate electorate was a negation of the first principles of representative government and Maulana Zafar Ali found Shaukat Ali’s stand ‘extremely unfortunate and inexplicable’.81

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But Shaukat Ali determinedly pursued his line and in a speech in Cawnpore (Kanpur) he sharply made his point much to the annoyance of Gandhi. On 25 November Shaukat Ali wrote another long letter to Gandhi nearly saying goodbye. Repeating his point that he had a ‘legitimate grievance and quarrel with Motilalji’, Shaukat told Gandhi, ‘we cannot see eye to eye over this Nehru Report…However, we are free to do what we can in support of our views and that ends the matter’. On his Cawnpore speech, he blamed inexact translation from Urdu in which the speech was delivered and inaccurate reporting by the Associated Press and recommended Gandhi to read the Khilafat to get a better idea of it. He wrote he had two purposes at Cawnpore: ‘[o]ne, to warn the Hindus and stop them from creating an atmosphere of civil war and second, to drag out even the reactionary Mussalmans from playing into the hands of the English’. He wanted the Muslims ‘to stand on their legs’ rather than depending on either the English or the Hindus. He advised Gandhi to read his speech carefully in Urdu and to pay attention to its substance, not language. Coming back to Nehru Report, he continued, ‘I have a right to differ from Motilalji or, for that matter, from anybody’ (read Gandhi) and, nearly in the language of threat, he said, if people made light of him, they should ‘realize what painful results could be produced by such acts…I…have so far succeeded in keeping the Mussalmans back, but we cannot do it any further’. Finally, he expressed what he could not do earlier for ‘fear of misunderstanding’, that this letter Gandhi should treat ‘as my resignation’ from the Khadi Board and added, ‘Let us hope this contemporary fit of insanity would soon disappear and then we could work together.’82

New Dawn of Wisdom and Sanity But it was also apparent that the Ali brothers were losing popularity among their Muslim cohorts and getting marginalized. Mohamed Ali came back from his European and Near Eastern tours towards the middle of November. In a meeting of the AIML, his aspiration

198  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

to preside over the impending AIML Conference in Calcutta was thwarted when he lost against the Raja of Mahmudabad by 44 votes to 17.83 The All-Parties Muslim Conference meeting in Calcutta at the end of the year also ended in bitter controversies over the Lucknow settlement, the Ali brothers being its strongest critics.84 Presiding over the All-India Khilafat Conference, held at the same time and place, Mohamed Ali called the signatories of the Nehru Report as ‘not leaders, but misleaders’ and angrily said: You make compromises in your constitution, with false doctrines, immoral conceptions, and wrong ideas…Twenty-five per cent is our proportion of the population and yet you will not give us 33 per cent in the Assembly. You are a Jew, a bania.85

But Gandhi had to reply to Shaukat’s letter of 25 November. Not only Shaukat’s unabashedly communal remarks at Cawnpore were at issue. Several years back in 1924, during the height of the Kohat tragedy, the Muslim vernacular journal, the Wakil, had reported Shaukat Ali’s remark that it was not the Congress that gave any financial aid to the Khilafat; rather the treasury of the Khilafat was responsible for the success of the Non-cooperation Movement.86 Now four years later, the Maulana was further airing such accusations. In a hard-hitting letter, pointing out that there was no ‘substantial difference’ between what the Associate Press had reported and what Shaukat Ali himself sent to him, Gandhi wrote on 30 November: No, the speaker at Cawnpur is not the Maulana with whom I have been so long familiar and with whom I have passed so many happy days as with a blood-brother and bosom friend. The Maulana of Cawnpur is an utter stranger to me. The Maulana I have known vowed that he was so bound to the Hindu for his help during the Khilafat agitation that he would put up with him, even if he ravished his sister…Well, I do not ask him to suffer to the extent that he promised; but I do plead with him on bended knees to revise his Cawnpur speech, admit that he was out of sorts…You chose in 1920 to be co-sharer with the Hindu in his virtues as well as his vices for eternity, in his strength as well as his weakness….

End of the Road  /  199   I would go all the way with you in accusing the Hindus of his many misdeeds; but I am unable to hold with you that he has ever been the aggressor, ever the tyrant and his Mussalman brother always the injured victim…in my opinion…the Mussalman is at least equally guilty with the Hindu, if not on the whole more so…The assumption of infallibility is unworthy of you. I ask you to disown it for friendship’s sake.

Then Gandhi chose to remind Shaukat that indeed, for a time the Khilafat Committee paid for his expenses but it was ‘at your instance, not on my request’, for Gandhi never travelled at Congress expenses even for Congress work and his ‘traveling expenses have always been borne by my friends’. He had agreed to accept Khilafat money as Shaukat thought ‘it would be more graceful if I let you pay my traveling expenses’. But the manner in which Shaukat had put the matter now (which gave the impression as if Gandhi had asked for and depended on Khilafat money for his non-cooperation campaign), Gandhi ‘felt inclined to offer to return the whole of these expenses with interest if you will accept them without being insulted or offended’. Then, on the broader question of Muslim financial contribution for noncooperation, Gandhi added: Let me also correct another grave error. The Tilak Swaraj Fund is a matter of audited record…You will perhaps be painfully surprised to discover that let alone 20 lacs, there are not even two lacs received from Mussalmans for the Tilak Swaraj Fund. I do not make a grievance of this, but I want you to hold truth as a sacred thing. And if you want me to produce the handsome figures of Hindus who have paid to the Khilafat coffers I shall gladly do so and perhaps it would be another surprise for you…If I am erring, I would like you to correct me not by a counter assertion but by figures.87

To Shaukat Ali’s request for Gandhi’s permission to publish their recent correspondence, Gandhi said while he had ‘no anxiety to see our correspondence in print’, if Shaukat was in a warring mood, he could certainly publish. But if you are still the old gentle brother…then read this letter again and again…Read it with Mohamed Ali…Then lay aside all other work and both

200  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers of you come down to Wardha, you with a determination to hold me in your pocket. You will find me easy enough to carry. I am fast losing weight.88

And finally, restating his approach to Hindu–Muslim relations, Gandhi felt compelled to add, whether you feel my presence in your pocket or not, I am there. My unchangeable creed is non-violence and universal brotherhood, therefore, I repeat what I have said from a thousand platforms that mine is a unilateral partnership and therefore my partnership with you and the other Mussalmans is indissoluble. Though they may disown me a million times, I shall still be theirs.89

And he ended the letter appreciating Shaukat’s resignation from the All India Spinners’ Association expecting him ‘to come back’ at an appropriate time.90 The new year started with the Muslim All-Parties Conference in Delhi with Aga Khan as president. It was fondly remembered that it was the same Aga Khan who had led the Muslim Deputation to Lord Minto to claim protection for the community’s interest back in 1908 and secured separate electorate in the first place. The theme of this conference also was the cry of ‘Islam in Danger’ and an emphatic rejection of the Nehru Report in favour of retaining separate electorate. The Ali brothers were indeed present. Mohamed Ali seconded the formal resolution. In his speech he opined that the ‘Nehru Report intended that the [Hindu] Mahasabha should rule the country and advised the Muslims not to be afraid of the Hindus as in all past battles the Moslems had [overwhelmed] the Kafirs’.91 Gandhi, hearing about the proceedings of the Delhi Muslim Conference from Dr Ansari, wrote, it ‘makes distressful reading. We have to live it down’.92 Some two months after having received Gandhi’s bitter letter of 30 November, Shaukat Ali wrote a short courteous letter to Gandhi on 16 January 1929, saying that he was too busy, yet ‘very anxious

End of the Road  /  201

to run up to Ahmedabad to see you for a few hours’ and promised a longer letter in a day or two.93 To this Gandhi replied equally warmly, ‘awaiting your promised letter…still more your promised visit’.94 But Gandhi had definitely lost his value in the Ali brothers’ estimation as towards the end of 1929, Shaukat Ali wrote to Mohamed Ali, ‘I am afraid he [Gandhi] is not fit to lead any great movement; he is too individualistic.’95 In December 1929 the Congress session at Lahore, with Jawaharlal Nehru as president and with Gandhi’s full support, declared complete independence as India’s goal, and in February 1930 the Working Committee meeting at Sabarmati Ashram invested Gandhi with full powers to begin civil disobedience movement. Gandhi started the movement from 11 March.96 In the middle of April Shaukat Ali wrote to Gandhi accusing him of not consulting Shaukat on the civil disobedience movement. Gandhi immediately wrote back, for he could not let Shaukat’s ‘letter go unanswered even for a night’: I had no knowledge of the extent to which I had fallen in your estimation.   If I had lost confidence in you, I should certainly have told you. What I have lost I have told you—confidence in your judgment. Even now I shall defend the Nehru Report. But I own it is useless if it cannot satisfy the Mussalmans or the other minorities…Surely it should be enough for you that the Nehru Report and with it the communal scheme are buried…   Your charge that I did not consult you on embarking on civil disobedience is true. But how could I when I knew there was no meeting ground between us?   …My conscience is clear. I have deserted neither you nor the Mussalmans. Where is the desertion in fighting against the Salt Tax and the other inequities and fighting for independence?   …You are at liberty to publish the whole correspondence between us.97

Meanwhile, the Ali brothers already did their best to prevent the Muslims from joining the Civil Disobedience Movement. Despite promising in the recent past to hold away even the most reactionary

202  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

Muslims from the English and faulting the Nehru Report for not claiming complete independence as against dominion status, from 1929 the Ali brothers began to gradually warm up to the government and show interest in attending the proposed Round Table Conference. With their mentor Maulana Abdul Bari dead (September 1926) and relationship with Gandhi withered, they veered towards their one-time foe Mohamed Ali Jinnah. On 16 January 1930, a year before his death, Mohamed Ali wrote to Jinnah: I was sufficiently impressed by the Viceroy’s announcement to believe that a change of heart was at long last taking place, and I was willing to take part, if invited, in the Round Table Conference…while I am not committed to a refusal of Dominion Status at once, I cannot commit myself to an abhorrence of Independence either.98

And he requested Jinnah to see if the Viceroy would invite him to the Round Table Conference. The Viceroy, having failed to convince the Congress to join the Conference, was only too glad to nominate Mohamed Ali as an invitee along with 56 others.99 And Mohamed Ali did not fail to acknowledge the government’s kindness: ‘I thank you for kindly conveying to me the invitation of His Majesty’s Government to the Round Table Conference…In fact it was our efforts that saved the Muslims from being misled into joining the present Civil Disobedience movement’.100 The enfant terrible of Aligarh finally came back to bite the dust at Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s feet. And shortly, in 1933, Shaukat Ali began to negotiate with the Viceroy for restoration of his monthly pension of Rs 150, which he enjoyed as a retired officer in the Opium Department, but which he did not draw since 1 June 1919 when he ‘had felt very strongly against the British policy of weakening Muslim states’.101 When the government sanctioned its restoration from October 1933, he was ‘much pained’ because he had claimed restoration from June 1919 itself.102 The government, however, refused to take into account the period during which he was an opponent of the government. Hence, Shaukat

End of the Road  /  203

Ali wrote a further letter submitting the date from which he became a ‘sane politician’: In continuation of our conversation at Delhi I gave you the true date when wisdom dawned on us and we become [sic] sane politicians. My brother signed the joint manifesto of Indian leaders on the 1st November 1929. In December we met Mr. Gandhi at Lahore and we discussed the whole question frankly. Few days after in December 1929 the Khilafat Conference gave a clear lead by ordering us to accept the invitation to the Round Table Conference…So you can safely and correctly take the 1st January 1930 as the date, when we began active co-operation with the Government.103

Notes and References   1. Hindu, reported in Pioneer, 6 December 1924.   2. Cited in Pioneer, 16 November 1924.   3. Ibid.   4. For instance, with reference to an interview which Mohamed Ali gave to one Mr Perceval Laudon of the Daily Telegraph, London, he told the press in India that he considered the Khilafat to be ‘not a weapon of offence in the hands of Islam, but only a sure shield for defence against European aggression’. Ali further said that he ‘looked forward to the revival of the Khilafat in its pristine glory’ and accused Europe of ‘crooked diplomacy’ (Pioneer, 5 September 1924).   5. Pioneer, 8 December 1924.   6. Reported in Pioneer, 20 September 1924.   7. Reported in Pioneer, 22 November 1924.   8. Pioneer, 28 December 1924.   9. Pioneer, 4 December 1924. 10. Pioneer, 2 February 1925. Even earlier, in a letter written on 8 September 1924, Fazlul Haque had clearly chalked out a purely communitarian programme with Maulana Abdul Bari at its centre. He wrote,

Maulana Abdul Bari sahib is the one man in the whole of India who can bring together the scattered forces of Islam in India…It is not necessary to discuss whether the Khilafat movement has been a success or failure. The fact that must be admitted is that there is no need of that movement now. That chapter is closed and the Muslims (sic) of India must begin a new chapter… It is absolutely essential that we should all meet on a common platform— Khilafatists, non-co-operators and others…and make out a programme for the community…Having consolidated ourselves, we should meet the leaders

204  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers of other communities and then make out a programme for the whole of India. But it is essential that all Muslim leaders of all shades of opinion must meet and join hands—swear to co-operate with one another—with joint hands on the palm of the Maulana [Bari]. (Fazlul Haque to Anis Bhaiya, Mohamed Ali Papers [donated by Mushirul Hasan] [Nehru Memorial Museum and Library]) 11. Pioneer, 5 December 1924. 12. Pioneer, 1 January 1925. 13. As reported in Pioneer, 18 February 1925. 14. Reported in Pioneer, 21 February 1925. 15. Pioneer, 17 April 1925. 16. Pioneer, 4 April 1925. 17. Pioneer, 17 April 1925. 18. Mushirul Hasan, Mohamed Ali: Ideology and Politics (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981), 83. 19. Reported in Pioneer, 23 March 1925, 355–69. 20. Reported in Pioneer, 17 April 1925. 21. Pioneer, 2 May 1925. 22. Mohamed Ali, ‘In Defence of Gandhi’s Leadership’, in Select Writings and Speeches of Maulana Mohamed Ali, compiled and edited by Afzal Iqbal (Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1944), 373–89. 23. Mohamed Ali, ‘Communal Representation’, in Iqbal, Select Writings and Speeches of Maulana Mohamed Ali, 355–69. 24. Young India, 20 November 1924, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [hereinafter CWMG], 25, 332–33 (in his ‘Notes’ in Navajivan, he wrote ‘pearl-like tears’ [CWMG, 25, 371]). 25. CWMG, 25, 346. 26. Ibid., 464–70. 27. Ibid., 25, 525. 28. Mohamed Ali, ‘The Challenge to Our Love of Freedom’, in Select Writings and Speeches, 329–51. 29. Pioneer, 8 April 1925. 30. Tej disapprovingly reporting Maharashtra Provincial Conference speeches (Pioneer, 27 May 1925). 31. Mashriq, reported in Pioneer, 21 February 1925. 32. Reported in Pioneer, 12 June 1925. 33. Reported in Pioneer, 20 March 1926. 34. CWMG, 26, 18. 35. Ibid., 256. 36. Ibid., 27, 100, 122. 37. ‘Notes’, in Young India, 28 May 1925 (CWMG, 27, 162–63).

End of the Road  /  205 38. CWMG, 27, 124–25. 39. Shaukat Ali to MKG, 9 April 1926 (Gandhi Papers, SN 10716 [NAI]). 40. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 11 April 1926, CWMG, 30, 228. 41. Andrews, mentioned in Mohamed Ali’s letter was, supposedly, Charles Andrews. Stokes’ identity is not clear. 42. 4 June 1926, CWMG, 30, 531–32. 43. Gandhi to Shaukat Ali, 11 and 23 April 1926 (Gandhi Papers, SN 19446 and SN 19448; Gandhi to Mohamed Ali, 27 April 1926; Gandhi Papers, SN 19389 [NAI]). 44. 3 April 1926, CWMG, 30, 228. 45. MKG to Mohamed Ali, 27 April 1926, Gandhi Papers, SN 19389 (NAI). 46. Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1885–1930 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 212. 47. Young India, 2 April 1925 in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 112. 48. Young India, 22 October 1925, in Gandhi, Communal Unity, 117. 49. Pioneer, 11 September 1926. 50. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 11 April 1926, Gandhi Papers, SN 19446 (NAI). 51. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 10 September 1926, Gandhi Papers, SN 19687 (NAI). 52. Shaukat Ali to Gandhi, 14 September 1926, Gandhi Papers, SN 10995 (NAI). In his letter to Shankerlal [Banker] written a few months later, he similarly expressed his inability to attend the Spinners’ Council meeting due to the ‘worries’ he was passing through and advised him to tell Mahatmaji ‘if he can put someone in my place, he has my consent, though I wish to remain’. Towards the end of his letter he suggested, ‘I wish we could have along with every Congress office or near it, “Spinner’s Clubs” where we could go to become experts or send novices for lessons’. One wonders if the suggestion was made seriously or in jest (Shaukat Ali to Shankerlal, 11 January 1927, Gandhi Papers, SN 11762 [NAI]). 53. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006), 297. 54. MKG to Mohamed Ali, 1 January 1925, in Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 5, 111–12. 55. As recorded by Mahadev Desai. Desai also informs that Gandhi was initially unwilling to let Mahadev take a copy of his letter to Mohamed Ali, ‘but agreed afterwards’ (Ibid.) 56. Pioneer, 1 and 2 January 1927. 57. Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 249. 58. Pioneer, 18 May 1927. 59. Pioneer, 31 October 1927. 60. Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 249. 61. Pioneer, 30 December 1927. 62. Gandhi, Mohandas, 315–16. 63. Pioneer, 2 and 4 January 1928.

206  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 64. Pioneer, 22 February 1928. 65. Pioneer, 9 March 1928. 66. Pioneer, 21 May 1928. 67. Reported in Pioneer, 19 August 1928. 68. Pioneer, 29 and 30 August 1928. 69. Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 260–61. 70. Maulana Shafee Daoodi, President of the Khilafat Conference, ridiculed the leaders of the All-Parties Conference as ‘Gods deciding the destinies of India’. In a signed statement, Md. Iqbal (Punjab), Sir Abdul Qayum (NWFP) and A. H. Ghaznavi (Bengal) claimed that the communal interests of the Muslims have not been safeguarded by the Report. Maulavi Mohamed Yakoob, President of the AIML (Calcutta session), denied that the AIML had approved the Nehru Report in Lucknow, an impression, according to him, wrongly given by M. C. Chagla (Pioneer, 9, 10 and 12 September 1928). 71. Shaukat Ali to Gandhi, 16 July 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13465 (NAI). 72. Gandhi to Shaukat, 18 July 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13465 (NAI). 73. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 24 September 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13692 (NAI). 74. Pioneer, 17 September 1928. 75. Pioneer, 13 September 1928. 76. Pioneer, 17 September 1928. 77. Pioneer, 12 September 1928. 78. Jinnah, who was in England for a time after the publication of the Nehru Report, maintained on coming back that the ‘Lucknow decisions are not the last word’. He appealed ‘to all those who do not agree with the Lucknow decisions not to rebel, but to…organize themselves…and stand united’, and advised that they ‘should press every reasonable point for the protection of their community’ (Pioneer, 28 October 1928). The Ali brothers probably felt safe to be on the right of Jinnah. 79. Shaukat Ali to MKG, 23 October 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13710 (NAI). 80. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 3 November 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13711 (NAI). 81. Pioneer, 14 October 1928. 82. Shaukat Ali to MKG, 25 November 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13733 (NAI). 83. Pioneer, 15 November 1928. 84. Pioneer, 24 December 1928. Also, Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 266–67. 85. Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, 262; also, Pioneer, 28 December 1928. Jawaharlal Nehru has speculated that if Mohamed Ali had been in India during the time Nehru Report was being debated, ‘it is just conceivable that matters would have shaped differently. But by the time he came back, the break had already taken place and, inevitably, he found himself on the other side’ (Nehru, An Autobiography [Bombay: Allied publishers, 1962], 120). But Nehru’s speculation presumes the continuation of Mohamed Ali’s trust in Gandhi which in fact was no longer there.

End of the Road  /  207   86. Reported in the Pioneer, 30 November 1924.   87. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 30 November 1928, Gandhi Papers, SN 13744 (NAI); also in CWMG, 38,128–32.   88. Ibid.   89. Ibid.   90. Ibid.   91. Pioneer, 3 and 4 January 1929.   92. MKG to Ansari, 17 January 1929, Gandhi Papers, SN 15287 (NAI).   93. Shaukat Ali to Gandhi, 16 January 1929, Gandhi Papers, SN 15284 (NAI).   94. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 18 January 1929, Gandhi Papers, SN 15285 (NAI).   95. Shaukat Ali to Mohamed Ali, 7 October 1929, Mohamed Ali Papers, Roll No. 6 (in micro) (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library).   96. Bipan Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence (New Delhi: Penguin, 1988), 270.   97. MKG to Shaukat Ali, 19 April 1930, Gandhi Papers, SN 16810 (NAI).   98. Mohamed Ali to M. A. Jinnah, 16 January 1930, in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 159–61.   99. Choudhury Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, Green and Company, 1961), 108. 100. Mohamed Ali to the Earl of Halifax, 11 September 1930, in Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 164–66. 101. Shaukat Ali to Mr Mieville, Secretary to the Viceroy, 10 August 1933, in Shan Muhammad, Unpublished Letters of the Ali Brothers (Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-I Delhi, 1979), 283–84. 102. Shaukat Ali to Secretary, Home Department, Government of India, 15 August and 12 October 1933, in Muhammad, Unpublished Letters of the Ali Brothers, 286–90. 103. Shaukat Ali to Sir Harry Haig, 2 December 1933, in Muhammad, Unpublished Letters of the Ali Brothers, 291.

8

Conclusion Multiculturalism before Its Time

Dilip Kumar Roy, the writer, composer and an eminent devotional singer with a unique baritone voice from Bengal, visited Romain Rolland in August 1922. Recording this meeting in his diary, Rolland wrote: Roy…to whom I speak of Gandhi, agrees that (as I remarked) Gandhi has a practical realism which is almost disconcerting in the context of his idealism. By way of example, he [Roy] tells me in confidence that the two Indian Muslim leaders, the Ali brothers, with whom Gandhi has formed an alliance, are of very dubious moral character, and Gandhi must be aware of the fact; yet the saint takes them as allies and speaks of them with the most affectionate esteem, because he considers them indispensable to the great work of Indian unification. I see in Gandhi something quite different from an internationalist of my type: he is a nationalist, but of the greatest, the loftiest kind, a kind which should be a model for all the petty, base or even criminal nationalisms of Europe.1

Despite Roy’s unashamedly negative assessment of the Ali brothers, Gandhi’s alliance with them did indeed achieve a unity between the two great communities about which Ikram, a Pakistani historian wrote,

208

Conclusion  /  209

‘The scenes that took place cannot be easily imagined by those who did not see them. The Hindus and the Muslims literally drank water from the same cup.’2 And Hakim Ajmal Khan, while presiding over the Muslim League session in 1919, somewhat prematurely said, ‘If thankfulness can be expressed in words, let me in the name of the Indian Muslim community thank the Hindus from the bottom of my heart.’3 The unity, however dramatic, was ephemeral; it did not last for much more than a year, cut short by the outbreak of communal riots. Roy was not a follower of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. But Tagore, an acclaimed universalist and famous for his cosmopolitanism, was more suspect of Gandhi’s route to unity through Swaraj/nationalism and the Khilafat. Speaking on the boycott of educational institutions as part of Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement for the attainment of Swaraj, he said: I have no faith in your historical patriotism. The ideas of nationalism which you have imbibed from books do not appeal to me. I have a lot of admiration for the sage who has spread the idea of Swaraj throughout India but I assert that education is a concomitant of Swaraj. Education has two aspects. We must go to the West, and I have invited the West to come to us for higher truth. I believe in a union of East and West or else happiness is far to seek.4

Like many others, Tagore was also suspect about the consequences of Gandhi’s involvement with the Khilafat Movement for ultimate Hindu-Muslim unity. For the communal violence following the Noncooperation Movement, he squarely blamed the Khilafat agitation and he deplored that ‘nobody paid any attention to my warning’.5 More explicitly he had told Romain Rolland in 1926 that in supporting Indian Muslims as he did in the Khilafat affair Gandhi was not working, as he hoped, for the unity of India, but for the pride and force of Islam, factors which are at present emerging in violent Hindu-Muslim disturbances of which the latter, cunningly supported by the British Government, are the instigators.6

210  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

While Romain Rolland (and probably Dilip Kumar Roy too) saw Gandhi’s nationalism as special because it was virtuous, Tagore was not impressed, even though he had great respect for the Mahatma. Tagore wrote: What is swaraj! It is maya, it is like a mist, that will vanish leaving no stain on the radiance of the Eternal...Swaraj is not our objective…We, the famished, ragged ragamuffins of the East, are to win freedom for all Humanity. We have no word for Nation in our language. When we borrow this word from other people, it never fits us.7

Tagore was not willing to accept a world marked by distinct human groups with national identities and cultures (or religions for that matter), and separated by well-fortified national borders. He felt, ‘[W]hatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origins.’ Creating intense feeling of national separateness/identity could not be the goal of India’s struggle. Rather, India should try to attain her own emancipation through and in the emancipation of Man. For him, nation and nationalism were not important categories for the attainment of this end. As far back as 1908, Tagore wrote, ‘Patriotism cannot be our true political shelter; my refuge is humanity.’8 Despite Tagore’s severe criticism of Gandhi’s politics during 1921–22, as expressed in the public debate between them through the pages of the Modern Review and Young India, Gandhi held his ground. While the Mahatma had no difference with the views of the ‘Gurudev’ on the ultimate goal of universal human freedom, he believed that the route to that goal was long and the struggle en route was hard: A drowning man cannot save others. In order to be fit to save others, we must try to save ourselves. Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. It is health giving, religious and therefore humanitarian. India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for humanity. The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cat’s teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.9

Conclusion  /  211

Gandhi’s understanding was that communitarian and national identities must be faced and transcended to reach the universal human identity.10 In this understanding, the communal self was no enemy of the national self, nor was the community interest opposed to national interest just as nationalism was no bar to universalism. Like many communitarians of today, Gandhi would probably have said, ‘the nation was a community of communities’. India could be richer if her Hindus were better Hindus and Muslims better Muslims. To dispel Tagore’s doubts, Gandhi could express the hope that his ‘movement was altering the meaning of old terms, nationalism and patriotism, and extending their scope’.11 Among the Muslim leaders with a mass following, Gandhi found the Ali brothers to be closest to his line of thinking. For had not Mohamed Ali said that ‘all communal interests had to be adjusted to…harmonize the paramount interests of India’, or that the Providence had given us ‘the mission of solving a unique problem [of communities, sects and denominations] and working out a new synthesis, a Federation of Faiths?’12 As Gandhi confessed, ‘I have thrown myself into the arms of the Ali Brothers because I believe them to be true and god-fearing men.’13 DD I have described the relationship between Gandhi and the Ali brothers which began towards the end of the second decade of the twentieth century with great warmth, continued through the early years of the third decade with intensity and a great deal of publicity and, by the end of that decade, dried up and came to an end. Trying to figure out the trend of the closeness marking the relationship, I looked into the frequency of the mentions of the Alis in the indexes of the volumes of the CWMG (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi). Table 8.1 gives us an idea which indeed goes to confirm the pattern we have described in the text. Table 8.1 shows that from 1925 onwards, Gandhi rarely found an occasion to mention the names of the Ali brothers in letters, writings

212  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers Table 8.1. Frequency of Mentions of the Alis in CWMG Index by Volume No. Vol.     Period

M. Ali *

S. Ali *

Ali Bros.*

Total

14 Oct. 1917–July 1918

23

20

—

43

15 Aug. 1918–July 1919

20

17

—

37

16 Aug. 1919–Jan. 1920

08

09

—

17

17 Feb.–June 1920

05

14

—

19

18 July–Nov. 1920

33

57

—

90

19 Nov. 1929–Apr. 1921

25

47

—

72

20 Apr.–Aug. 1921

16

14

32

62

21 Aug.–Dec. 1921

38

17

55

110

22 Dec. 1921–Mar. 1922

05

11

16

32

23 Mar. 1922–May 1924

24

11

03

38

24 May–Aug. 1924

28

18

—

46

25 Aug. 1924–Jan. 1925

45

31

09

85

26 Jan.–Apr. 1925

07

18

05

30

27 May–July 1925

13

09

15

37

28 Aug.–Nov. 1925

01

12

04

17

29 Nov. 1925–Feb. 1926 (The text of Satyagraha in South Africa; no mention of the Ali brothers in the rest of the volume) 30 Feb. 1926–June 1926

08

05

01

14

31 June–Nov. 1926

01

02

—

03

32 Nov. 1926–Jan. 1927

04

01

01

06

33 Jan.–June 1927

—

01

01

02

34 June–Sept. 1927

01

02

—

03

35 Sept. 1927–Jan. 1928

02

03

05

10

36 Feb.–June 1928

02

—

—

02

37 July–Oct. 1928

—

06

—

06

38 Nov. 1928–Feb. 1929

02

04

—

06

39 Feb. 1929

—

—

—

40 Feb.–May 1929

02

—

02

04

(Table 8.1 Contd.)

Conclusion  /  213 (Table 8.1 Contd.) No. Vol.     Period

M. Ali *

S. Ali *

Ali Bros.*

Total

41 Jan.–Oct. 1929

—

—

04

04

42 Oct. 1929–Feb. 1930

01

—

01

02

43 Mar.–June 1930

04

05

—

09

44 July–Dec. 1930

—

—

—

0

45 Dec. 1930–Apr. 1931

04

04

—

08

Notes: *All mention of the Ali brothers fall under these three heads. The time periods covered under different volumes are different which explain some variation in frequency; yet the trend is clear. Where a mention covers a number of pages (for example, 331–35), we have counted it as a single mention.

or speeches. If we divide the whole period of their friendship or alliance into two halves, we see that for the first eight years, from October 1917 to January 1925, there are 651 total mentions in CWMG indexes, while from January 1925 to April 1931, there are only 163 mentions. Indeed, this relationship which began with a ‘bang’, so to say, happened to end in a ‘whimper’. DD Mohamed Ali received widely divergent assessment from his biographers and historians, hagiographic as well as harsh, probably more of the latter than the former. But nearly all agree that his life was a tragedy. While the beginning was heroic, it ended tamely. His volatility always got the better of his discretion. He emerged on the all-India political landscape in association with Gandhi, and despite occasional lapses, he appeared to remain firm on the question of Hindu-Muslim unity. But gradually moving away from Gandhi, he became towards the end of his life only a spokesman for his community, and not a widely accepted one at that. He not only broke with the Congress of

214  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

which he once was the president and described the Congress as the greatest ‘aman sabha’ (organization for peace), but he also broke with his religious mentor Abdul Bari on the question of supporting Ibn Saud of Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) and denounced him a few days before Bari’s death. He also broke with his long-time guide and friend Ansari on the question of continuing the Khilafat committees even after the abolition of the Khilafat in Turkey, despite the fact that those committees were heightening, as Ansari argued, communal consciousness and encouraging communal strife.14 He failed to define his place in relation to the government and the British because his position in relation to Gandhi began to become confounded. From an apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity and second only to Allah, Gandhi became to his eyes the one who wanted to hold the entire Muslim community in India in slavery to the Hindus. In the mid-1920s, he restarted his journals Hamdard and the Comrade, soon to close them down for lack of finance. Allegations floated against both the Alis regarding mismanagement of Khilafat funds. As he drifted away from Gandhi and the theme of Hindu-Muslim unity, the rationality of mind and liberalism of spirit that this Oxford-trained historian had once shown during the years of the Non-cooperation Movement gradually deserted him and his outlook narrowed down. He spent a lot of his energy—even threatening the government that he would rouse the entire Muslim community in open revolt, to keep his community out of the ambit of the Sarda Act (1929), because the Act sought to prohibit child marriage, and Mohamed Ali pleaded that therefore it was against the Shariat. He lacked discipline in organizing his finances or even in taking care of his health. His diabetes ruined his eyes and his health. His voyage to take part in the Round Table Conference in 1931 became his last. Breathing his last in England on 4 January 1931, he was buried, by the choice of his relatives, in Jerusalem which came under Israel’s control.15 Professor Mujib says, ‘[H]is last appeal to the British to give India freedom or else he would not return alive was no more than a pathetic admission of his failure.’16 Shaukat Ali, being a follower of

Conclusion  /  215

his younger brother in politics, could not have compensated for his lapses. After Mohamed Ali’s death, Shaukat gradually lost importance and went into oblivion. DD Dilip Kumar Roy was not alone among contemporaries to have a very negative view of the Ali brothers. Of course, Shan Muhammad, a political scientist at Aligarh Muslim University, in a recent study regrets, not unjustifiably, Mohamed Ali’s departure from the Congress in 1928 as a ‘great loss’. He says that the ‘Ali Brothers by all standards were above their contemporaries and made ceaseless efforts to achieve a free India…their deepest emotion was Hindu-Muslim unity’.17 Jawaharlal Nehru, who was pressed to become the secretary of the Indian National Congress by Mohamed Ali during his presidency in 1924, provided a more even-handed assessment. He indeed felt irritated by his frequent references to religion and god; yet he thought Mohamed Ali ‘was devoted to the idea of Indian independence’ and ‘it was always possible to come to some mutually satisfactory arrangement with him on the communal issue’.18 Yet, as the correspondence between Jawaharlal and Mohamed Ali show, their relationship as secretary and president of the Congress, respectively, was more of a formal and institutional character than informal and personal and was lacking in warmth. Jawaharlal was not particularly responsive to the problems and complaints that Ali as president of the Indian National Congress communicated to him. Subhas Chandra Bose felt that in their dress, manners and lifestyle, the Ali brothers met the wishes of the most conservative sections of the Muslims and this had helped them to garner raving popularity among Muslim masses.19 Mushirul Hasan refers to Abdul Haq who thought Mohamed Ali ‘lacked balance and a sense of proportion in his writings and speeches…It is a pity that Mohamed Ali had no control over himself, a weakness which contributed to his failures.’20 Hasan further quotes Abbas Tyabji, the president of the Gujarat Conference, who writing to Gandhi in October

216  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

1920 said, ‘Whatever opinion you…may have of the Ali Brothers many of us take them to be splendid agitators and very little more. They certainly are not the type of men in whom we would have much faith.’21 Hasan has also mentioned historian Percival Spear’s impression of Mohamed Ali when he met Ali at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 1924. Spear’s cryptic comment was, ‘To me he seemed to be too suave to be sincere and too insincere to be noble. In fact I took an instant dislike to him.’22 Among many Hindu leaders, the conviction was strong that the Ali brothers were pan-Islamists and through the Khilafat Movement, they were only trying to strengthen Islam in India, not Indian nationalism. Yet undoubtedly, the brothers had impressed Gandhi. He probably thought that their commitment to non-violence, even though instrumental, and to Hindu-Muslim unity would remain unshakable. Gandhi assumed that a good leadership was most important in a movement and if it was in place, it would be able to carry the masses with them.23 In a letter to Hakim Ajmal Khan in 1922, Gandhi wrote, ‘Given a sufficient number of Hindus and Mussalmans, with almost a fanatical faith in everlasting friendship between the Hindus and the Mussalmans of India, it shall not be long before the unity permeates the masses.’24 Hence, he took his relationship with the Ali brothers as an example before the Hindu and Muslim masses of ‘heart unity’ between the two communities which, in turn, would constitute the substance of the nation. The riots, particularly in Delhi, Gulbarga and Kohat, apparently led to a thinning of Gandhi’s confidence in the willingness and/or ability of the Ali brothers in containing Muslim violence. He probably thought some pressure on them and other more communally oriented leaders among the Muslims might help the situation which was why he decided to take to fasting in Mohamed Ali’s house in Delhi, despite the risk of embarrassing them. But as later events showed, the Alis were not merely embarrassed, but they also felt pushed to a corner. Thenceforth, they began playing truant to Gandhi and within a short time, the relationship broke down.

Conclusion  /  217

DD The implication is not that the critics of the Ali brothers were right and Gandhi was wrong, or that the Alis’ commitment to communal unity was false from the beginning. The charge of insincerity, whether against the Alis or against Gandhi (à la Judith Brown), is easy to level but difficult to sustain. Historian Peter Robb, in a long and perceptive essay, has re-examined the question of Muslim separatism in course of a discussion of Mushirul Hasan’s book A Nationalist Conscience: Ansari, the Congress and the Raj.25 The inter-communal outbreaks of violence in the 1920s apparently emerged from nowhere or they were taken to be the work of ‘extremists’. Of course, there is a link in the events beginning from the Moplah rebellion and ‘its extra-ordinarily cruel suppression’—to quote Jawaharlal Nehru,26 to shuddhi and sangathan movements of Pandit Madan Mohan Malavya to Muslim response through their counterparts, tabligh (propaganda) and tanzim (organization), to the increasingly violent communal outbreaks. Robb is not happy with the explanation that the conflicts emerged from a void or from the extremists. Of course, the British had their own responsibility, not only for encouraging fanatic and violent elements, as was suspected even by Gandhi. After 1918, the British, on the one hand, gave the impression—or was it a mere ‘pretence’ as Robb points out—that ‘the principle of self government had been conceded, and that its achievement waited chiefly upon the Indians’ ability to settle their differences’.27 At the same time, British writers, journalists and civil servants, such as Alfred Lyall, Valentine Chirol, Reginald Craddock, assiduously propagated the view that India was no nation and that communal organizations were natural in India.28 Thus, the twin prospect of independence and adult suffrage on the one hand and the constructed intellectual climate describing India as a ‘non-nation’ on the other compelled both communities to make efforts to come to terms with each other as well as to harden their positions. The Canadian political theorist Charles Taylor has made a similar argument in a different context. He argues that the prospect

218  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

of democracy replacing alien rule over multicultural Empire at once raises the question of identity: ‘Will it simply be that of the majority? Are we heading for Hindu Raj?’29 Thus, holding the prospect of electoral democracy served a strategic purpose for the British: it went on to justify the minority separatist veto,30 and in consequence, to widen the distance between the Hindus and the Muslims. Robb goes further to claim that Muslim religious identity was already there and ‘the process of Muslim separatism was concerned with harnessing and modifying identity…not with creating it’. He asks: [W]as the development of Muslim separatism merely a matter of propaganda and popular mobilization, an extension of the religio-political concerns of the elites…? The argument of this essay is that it was not…Muslim communalism rested on an old sense of identity formed in comparison with the Hindus and honed further even in the very early stages of British rule.31

But then, whatever was the exact point of time that Muslim communal identity was formed, the point is that Gandhi knew it was there and that was why he did not ask the Muslims to give up their religion or their communal identity to become part of the new nation. He was possibly depending on the hypothesis that despite their separate identities, the Hindus and the Muslims had lived together in the past and could do so in future. He invited them to come together to constitute the nation in spite of their separate religious/communal identities. In fact, he persuaded the Hindus to support the Khilafat Movement ‘to vindicate the honour of Islam’ and to pave the way for Hindu–Muslim ‘blood brotherhood’, as the vocabulary of modern nationalism would have it.32 But then, by 1925 the Alis lost their conviction in Gandhi’s argument not simply because ‘they changed their mind’, as Robb says,33 but probably because the Muslim mass following they had created by espousing the cause of pan-Islam was pushing the other way, and it was beyond their capacity to control it any more without giving in or to withstand the criticism of the vernacular local press supposedly representing mass opinion. The leaders began to follow the followers

Conclusion  /  219

giving a lie to Gandhi’s hope that elite faith in Hindu-Muslim unity would permeate the masses. Gandhi frankly admitted this in 1930 when in response to Professor Sayed Rauf Pasha’s question asking why the Ali brothers had failed despite all their influence on Muslim masses to dispel Muslim suspicion or even Gandhi himself had failed to carry the Hindu community on the settlement of the communal question, Gandhi’s reply was: ‘Deep-rooted suspicions cannot be dispelled by leaders however influential they may be.’34 What we cannot easily answer is whether such leadership failure was natural and hence inevitable, or that the leaders had panicked and wanted to retain their constituencies at any cost, or the leaders simply opted for the easier solution (that is, communal mobilization) made more attractive for one side by British prodding, reinforcing similar inclination on the other side. Seen in this context, the controversy over the Nehru Report, over the inclusion of a particular person (Shuaib Qureshi) in the committee or over holding Motilal Nehru to be the enemy of communal unity, etc., appear as mere epiphenomena. The truth of the matter perhaps lay elsewhere even if we fail to discern it. DD Further, it is necessary to note that politics characterized by the passion for unity generated by Khilafat–Non-cooperation Movement came to be replaced by politics of interest by the mid-1920s.35 Muslims largely came to rediscover that they had an identifiable political interest in India dictated by the concerns of their community and distinguishable from that of the Hindus—‘rediscover’, because Sir Sayyid Ahmed had already told them so which, in the meantime, they had chosen to forget. The British rulers, of course, made no mean effort to warn the Muslims about what was their true interest and how to protect it, but again the anti-British passion in the wake of the Khilafat crisis was too strong. Once the weight of the Khilafat issue was removed from their back and the prospect of modern majoritarian electoral politics

220  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers

loomed large as not-too-distant a possibility, the Muslim elites as well as the masses began to reflect on their corporate identity and communal political interest and the British enthusiastically encouraged their wayward allies to come back to their fold. A chasm was clearly visible from the late 1920s between the hope for an independent democratic future on the one hand, and the claim for the right of selfdetermination of a religious minority on the other.36 Gandhi understood the issue and advised in 1924 that for ‘political matters, a pact or an understanding is certainly necessary’—which probably implied something like what more recently the Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart has famously propounded as ‘consociational arrangement’37 (the Nehru Report came closest to such an arrangement but it failed to secure elite agreement across communal divide), but he still insisted that ‘in my opinion restoration of friendly feeling is a condition precedent to any effectual pact’ (italics mine).38 In other words, he was advancing the case for multicultural/multi-religious living within one nation and one secular state on the basis of mutual trust and friendship which alone could make, to use modern language of multiculturalism, ‘dialogical consensus’ on ‘operative public values’ possible.39 But by then, his ‘heart unity’ appeal had no takers and Mohamed Ali joined Jinnah in refusing to give the joint electorate scheme of the Nehru Report a trial even for a limited time. It would be counterfactual to speculate on whether had Gandhi prioritized agreement on material interests like reservations, weightage, share of jobs, over mutual trust, friendship and ‘heart unity’, things could have been different. DD In the 1920s, Gandhi’s idea of a territorial multicultural nationalism was too early for its time, for the world was just witnessing redrawing of the maps of Europe and the Near East on the basis of the then ruling principle of self-determination of ethnic nationalisms.40 It would require many tragedies of the twentieth century, many manifestations of ‘criminal nationalism’ (to use Romain Rolland’s expression), from

Conclusion  /  221

Nazism in Germany to ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the Balkans, to make a case (and still a weak one for that) for tolerance and multicultural nationhood that Gandhi had aspired for. If, even towards the end of 1924 and in the face of Hindus and Muslims ‘fighting like cats and dogs’, Gandhi could declare with brimming confidence—as he still had faith in his alliance with the Alis—that he was ‘striving to be the best cement between the two communities’;41 within three years he had to beat a retreat, for a time at least, saying, ‘I dare not touch the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity. It has passed out of human hands, and has been transferred to God’s hands alone.’42

Notes and References   1. Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India Press, 1976), 5.   2. Cited in Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding the Muslim Mind (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1987), 81.   3. Ibid.   4. Pioneer, 21 August 1921.   5. Pioneer, 24 September 1924.   6. Extract form Romain Rolland’s Diary, 21–29 June 1926 in Romain Rolland– Gandhi Correspondence, 61.   7. Modern Review (Calcutta), May 1921 in The Mahatma and the Poet, compiled and edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1997/2001), 55.   8. Tagore to Abala Bose, wife of the eminent Indian scientist, Jagadish Chandra Bose; cited in Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 108. See Chapter 5 for Sen’s discussion of Gandhi–Tagore differences.   9. Bhattacharya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 91. 10. Rakhahari Chatterji, ‘The Transcendental Individual: Gandhi and the Limits of Liberalism’, Gandhi Marg (New Delhi) 25 (2, July–September 2003): 179–90. 11. Gandhi’s reply to Tagore in Young India, 1 June 1921 in Bhattacharya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 63. 12. Mushirul Hasan, Mohamed Ali: Ideology and Politics (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981), 80–81. 13. MKG, ‘An Appeal to Bombay Citizens’, Young India, 24 November 1921, in To the Hindus and Muslims (Karachi: Anand T. Hingorani, 1942), 77. 14. Hasan, Mohamed Ali: Ideology and Politics, 119. 15. Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding the Muslim Mind, 121.

222  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers 16. M. Mujib, Indian Muslims (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), 539. 17. Shan Muhammad, Muslims and India’s Freedom Movement (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 2002), 151–52. 18. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1962), 120. 19. Subhas Chandra Bosu, Samagra Rachanavali, vol. 2 (Bengali) (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1983), 23. 20. Hasan, Mohamed Ali, 111n1. 21. Ibid., 111–12. 22. Ibid., 112n3. 23. In his Satyagraha in South Africa (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [CWMG], 29) Gandhi has shown how important is responsible and wise leadership for a movement. The book, in fact, is a fascinating lesson in leadership. 24. ‘To Hakimji’, in Gandhi, To the Hindus and Muslims, 87. 25. Peter Robb, ‘Muslim Identity and Separatism in India’, in his Liberalism, Modernity and the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 26. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, 87. 27. Ibid., 205. 28. Ibid., 211–15. 29. Charles Taylor, ‘Democratic Exclusion (and its Remedies?)’, in Rajeev Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy, eds Bhargava, Amiya Kumar Bagchi and R. Sudarshan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 148. 30. Robb, Liberalism, Modernity and the Nation, 211. 31. Ibid., 218–19. 32. Young India, 11 May 1921 in M. K. Gandhi, Communal Unity, Edited by Bharatan Kumarappa (Ahmedabad: Navajiban, 1949), xii, 5–6. 33. Robb, Liberalism, Modernity and the Nation, 203. 34. CWMG, 43, 367–68. 35. See Albert O. Hirchman, The Passions and the Interests (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977) for a historical analysis of how, under capitalism and modernity, interest replaces passion from the centre of politics. 36. The tension between democracy and self-determination principle has been thoroughly and interestingly discussed by Robert Dahl in Democracy and its Critics (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1991). 37. Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley: The University of California, 1975) and Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). It may not be wrong to infer this sort of implication from Gandhi’s statement of 1924, for he again said in 1930 (post-Nehru Report) that ‘Mussalmans and all other minorities will have to be placated. If they are not, there must inevitably be civil war’ (Young India, 24 April 1930, CWMG), 43, 306–07. 38. Young India, 29 May 1924 in Communal Unity, 60.

Conclusion  /  223 39. Bhiku Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 266–69. 40. For an incisive discussion of how the application of the principle of ethnic self-determination turned out to be ‘a recipe for almost limitless conflict’, see Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 41. Young India, 25 September 1924, in Communal Unity, 85–88. 42. Young India, 13 January 1927, in Communal Unity, 135.

Index Ahmad, Maulana Hafiz Muhammad, 30 Akhlaq Namas, 41 al-Afghani, Jamaluddin al-Asadabadi, 28, 30 al-Hasan, Mahmud, 30 Ali, Abdul, 52 Ali, Mohamed, 14, 17–18, 29, 32–34, 44–45, 47, 52–60 articles of, 62–63 Bengal Partition and, 64–65 communal consciousness, 53–54 Comrade, 63–65, 67–69, 71 early politics, 60–74 Europe’s temporal aggression against Turkey and, 68–69 on Hindu-Muslim cooperation, 66–67 jobs, 56–57 on Kanpur Mosque incident, 63, 66 love for the Quran, 55, 74 Muslim League and, 56–57, 75n27 at Oxford, 54–55 Red Crescent Medical Mission to Turkey, 69 school days, 53 sentiments towards faith, 56–57, 76n28 years of confinement, 72–74 Ali, Shaukat, 14, 18–19, 44–45, 58–61, 96

Cawnpur speech, 198–99 early politics, 60–74 job of ‘Pilgrims’ Broker, 59 letter correspondence with Gandhi, 200–201 Old Boys’ Association, 59–60 relation with brother, 58–60 years of confinement, 72–74 Ali, Zulfiqar, 52 Ali brothers, Gandhi and, 79–91, 97–99, 115–17, 182–89 concern for the brothers, 82–83 critics of, 217 disagreement, beginning of, 127–32, 163–67, 179–80, 189–97 first meeting, 79–80 Gandhi’s fast, 165–66 letters to Mohamed, 83, 91 losing popularity, 197–203 Madras speech and idea of an apology, 119–23 Mohamed’s impression on Gandhiji, 81 release of, 80–81, 84–89 torubled alliance and unity, 132–42 Aligarh Gazette, 155 Aligarhis, 31 All-India Congress Committee (AICC), 103, 156–57, 159 All-India Muslim League (AIML), 59, 104, 106, 154, 169, 189, 197–98 224

Index  /  225 Al Medina, 160, 180 Aman Sabhas, 116–17 An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 3 Andrews, Charles, 115 Anjuman-e-Khuddam-e-Ka’aba, 45, 49, 70 Anjuman-i-Moalla, 56 Ansari, Mukhtar Ahmad, 29, 45, 96, 122, 137, 140, 191 Archbold, Mr, 32, 61–62 Arya Samajists, 7 Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam, 29, 46, 96, 98, 156, 195–96 Aziz, Abdul, 71 Baksh, Sheikh Ali, 52 Balkan War, 68 Bamford, P. C., 72 Bande Mataram, 119 Bano, Abadi, 53 Baptista, 105 Barani, Ziauddin, 41 Barelwis, 31–32 Bari, Maulana Abdul, 44–45, 47, 70, 92, 96–97, 103, 118, 126, 151, 202 Basu, Bhupendranath, 37 Beck, Theodore, 26, 54 Beg, Salimullah, 32 Begum, Abadi Bano, 52 Bengal Partition, 1911, 35 benign neglect, 3 Besant, Annie, 36 Bi-Amma, 182 Bose, Subhas Chandra, 191 British-Muslim relations (1857), 24–25 Brown, Judith, 123 Central Khilafat Committee, 94 Chandra, Bipin, 5 Chandra, Satish, 40, 42

Chatterjee, Partha, 5–6 Chirol, Valentine, 217 Chotani, M. M., 102 Chotani, Seth, 96 Civil Disobedience Movement, 148, 201 civil society, 13 Gandhi’s model, 22n39 Clark, G. S., 57 Coconada Congress, 141 community development of, 9 Gandhi’s concept of, 9–11 community consciousness, growth of, 39–42 community loyalty, 10 cow protection, Gandhi’s role, 6–7 Cow Protection Society, 7 Craddock, Reginald, 217 Criminal Investigation Department (CID), 72–73 cultural/communal identity, 12, 211 CWMG (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi), 211–13 Dar al-Ulum Deoband, 30 dars-e-nizamiya, 29 Dar ul-harb (house of war), 45 Das, C. R., 83, 105, 107–8, 137, 140, 154, 156, 183 Das, Jivan, 167 Defence of India Act, 47 Deobandis, 29–31 Desai, Mahadev, 17, 138–40, 156, 165, 194 Desh, 153 Deutsch, Karl, 8 Din, Mian Hissam, 177 Dutt, Romesh Chandra, 56 Eaton, Richard, 39 European concept of nationhood, 8

226  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers factional fights within Congress, 159 Fazl, Abul, 41 Firangi Mahal, 29–30, 43–44

Hindu Sangathan, 7 Hunter, W. W., 24 Huq, Mazhurul, 32

Gandhi, Devdas, 83, 137–39 Gandhi, Manilal, 82 Gandhi, Rajmohan, 6, 124, 164, 189 Gandhi’s movement in South Africa, 3–6 communist criticism, 4–6 Marxist historians, views of, 5–6 Rolland’s views on, 4 Gellner, Ernest, 10 George, Lloyd, 94, 102 Ghate, Mr, 86 Ghaznavi, Daud, 177 Gokhale, Gopalakrishna, 35 Gurukul education, Gandhi on, 7

Indian National Congress, 33, 107 Indian peasants’ movement, 5 Innes, Sir Charles, 168 inter-communal dialogue, 12 Iqbal, Afzal, 38–39 Iqbal, Mohammad, 29, 194 Islamic scholarship in India, 29 Iyengar, Srinivas, 189

hadith, 30 Hamdard, 169, 180 Haque, Maulana A. K. Fazlul, 178 Hasan, Masudul, 191, 215–17 Hasan, Mushirul, 46, 63, 79, 180 Hasan, Wazir, 32, 34 Hassan, Wazir, 34 Hill, Sir Claude, 84 Hind Swaraj, 12 Hinduism, Gandhi’s views, 7 Hindu Mahasabha, 7 Hindu–Muslim relations, 4, 13–14, 16–17, 24, 79–80, 176–77 alternative theories, 27–33 Gandhi on, 90–93 Hindi-Urdu controversy and, 32 Indo-Muslim society, role of, 30–33 Mughal Empire and, 27–28 Muslim League vs Indian National Congress, 33–37 separate electorates, issue of, 33–37 Sir Sayyid’s modernist communitarian approach, 24–27 Hindu-Muslim unity, 154–59

Kanpur Mosque incident, 63, 66 Kelkar, 105 Khaliquzzaman, Choudhury, 46, 72–73, 93–94, 107, 145, 149 Khalji, Alauddin, 41 Khan, Aga, 59 Khan, Hakim Ajmal, 45, 73, 96, 98, 163, 168, 209, 216 Khan, Mahabat, 42 Khan, Maulana Zafar Ali, 170 Khan, Sir Abdul Qayyum, 73, 151, 202 Khan, Sir Sayyid Ahmed, 19, 24–27, 36–37, 45, 53, 61–62, 72 approach to Muslim problem, 26–27 on autonomy of the Indian Muslim community, 26 fundamental clash between Hindu and Muslim interests, 26 Muslim relation with the Raj, 26 personal attitude to religion, 25 Khan, Zafar Ali, 195 Khilafat Committee, 94, 98, 100–102, 104–6, 149–50

Jaffar, Khan Bahadur Ebrahim Haroon, 178 Jamia Millia University, 107 Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, 33–37, 47, 170, 189, 192, 202

Index  /  227 Khilafat Conferences, 98–108, 119, 126–27 Khilafat Day, 100 Khilafat Movement, 7, 12, 18–19, 91–96, 149, 151, 177, 198, 218 Gandhiji and, 91–96 growth of, 38–47 Khilafat delegation to Afghanistan, idea of, 119 reason for, 44 torubled alliance and unity, 132–42 Khilafat Non-cooperation Committee, 127 Khilafat question, 87, 98–99 Khusrau, Amir, 42 Kidwai, Rafi Ahmed, 196 Kitchlew, Dr, 127, 154, 177, 191, 194 Kohat riot, 167–71, 189 Kumar, Ravinder, 5, 92 Kymlicka, Will, 12–13, 17, 21n33 Lellyveld, Joseph, 4 liberal individualist political thought, 2 liberal nation states, 11 Lijphart, Arend, 2 Lucas, F. H., 65 Lucknow Khilafat Conference, 94–95 Lucknow Pact, 37, 119, 140, 189 Lyall, Alfred, 217 Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education,’ 38 Maginot Line, 39 Mahmud, Syed, 46 Majlis Muid ul-Islam, 44 majority community, 15 Malaviya, Pandit Madan Mohan, 7, 37, 49–50, 94, 103, 119, 123, 133, 170, 192, 217 Marris, Sir William, 178 Marris, W. S., 62 Marx, Karl, 2–3 Marxism, 2

Mashriq, 137, 150–51 Mauss, Marcel, 8 Mazhar-ul-Haque, 36 Mill, John Stuart, 2 Minault, Gail, 38 minority community, 15 Mohani, Hasrat, 56, 96–97, 103, 118, 192 Mohsin-ul-Mulk, 32–33, 55, 61–62 Montagu, Edwin, 124 Moonje, 105 Moore Jr, Barrington, 5–6 Morison, Theodore, 55 Morley-Minto Reforms (1909), 34 Muhammad, Shan, 215 Mulk, Nawab Viqar-ul, 64 multicultural citizenship; see multiculturalism multiculturalism, 11–17, 220–21 critics of, 15 Muslim Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College, Aligarh, 25, 107 Muslim commitment to Swaraj, 154–59 Muslim religious/communal identity, 17 Myrdal, Gunnar, 3 Nanda, B. R., 25, 60, 80, 99, 106 national identity, 211 nationalism, 209–10, 220–21 national minorities, 3 nation-building European model of, 8 Gandhi’s idea of, 8–9 Navajivan, 195 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 201, 215, 217 Nehru, Motilal, 36, 94, 103, 124–26, 154, 158, 183, 189, 192, 195 Nehru Report, 15, 192–94, 196–98, 219 nineteenth-century political thought, 2

228  /  Gandhi and the Ali Brothers non-cooperation movement, 19, 95, 97, 102, 105, 209 ‘selfish interests’ of Gandhi in, 113–19 Noon, Malik Firoze Khan, 194 Northcliffe, Lord, 133 North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), 73 Nu’mani, Maulana Shibli, 29, 31, 54 O’Dwyer, Michael, 57 Pal, B. C., 103, 105–6 Pan-Islamic Society, 55 Parekh, Bhiku, 13, 17 Pasha, Mustafa Kemal, 132–33 Pasha, Sayed Rauf, 219 Qureshi, Shuaib, 46, 82 Rai, Lala Lajpat, 7, 103, 105–6, 119, 140, 150, 192 Rajagopalachari, Chakravarti, 137–38, 166 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 6 Razzak, Maulana Abdur, 44 Reading, Lord, 178 religious community, 10 religious/cultural identities, 11–12 Ripon, Lord, 26 Robb, Peter, 217–18 Robinson, Francis, 31, 39–40, 43, 50n35 Rolland, Romain, 4, 208–9 Rowlatt bills, 73 Rowlatt Satyagraha, 92–93 Roy, Dilip Kumar, 208, 210, 215 Roy, M. N., 4 sangathan (consolidation) movement, 7

sangathan movement, 157, 163, 180, 217 Sapru, Tej Bahadur, 36 Sengupta, Birendranath, 154 separate electorate scheme, issue of, 33–37, 47 Sepoy Mutiny, 43 Shafi, Sir Muhammad, 163, 191, 196 Shastri, Srinivas, 124, 138 Shiraz-ul-Akhbar, 71 Shraddhananda, Swami, 7, 13, 96, 152, 168 shuddhi movement, 180, 217 shuddhi (purification) movement, 7 Simon, Sir John, 191 Sindhi, Maulana Obeidullah, 73 Sirhindi, Shaikh Ahmad, 42 Smith, Dunlop, 57, 61 socialism, 2 Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, 40 Swaraj, definition of, 12 Swaraj, movement for, 4 Tagore, Rabindranath, 209–11 Taylor, Charles, 11, 218 Tej, 141, 152, 154, 160, 168, 179 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 36 Tilak Swaraj Fund, 199 Turkish Treaty, 115 ulama, 31, 41–46, 94, 116, 137, 151, 155 untouchability, Gandhi’s stance on, 14, 22n41 Vincent, Sir William, 87 Viqar-ul-Mulk, 61 Waliullah, Shah, 30 Weber, Eugen, 8 ‘white man’s burden’, 3 Young India, 163–64, 170, 192

About the Author Rakhahari Chatterji was UGC Emeritus Fellow in Political Science at Calcutta University. He has taught Political Science for over 45 years now. He was a visiting faculty in many international universities such as University of Michigan, University of Chicago and University of Virginia. Dr Chatterji was a professor in Political Science and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Calcutta University. He has written and edited around 10 books and over 80 papers, published in various national and international journals and newspapers. His most recent published works are Tulanatmak Rajniti Parichaya (Bengali version of Comparative Political Analysis, 2011), Introduction to Comparative Political Analysis (2010) and Comparative Politics: History, Methods and Approaches (2003). He has also edited Politics India: The State-Society Interface (2009).

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