Khilafat movement

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The Khilafat Movement , also known as the Indian Muslim Movement (1919–24), which arose in India in the early 20th century as a result of Muslim fears of the integrity of Islam . These fears were aroused by attacks by the Italians (1911) and the Balkans (1912–13) on Turkey - whose sultan, as caliph, was the religious leader of the global Muslim community - and Turkey's defeats in the First World War .

Since the rule of the Great Mughals in India, which was ended by the British in 1761, the Indian Muslims worshiped the Turkish caliphs because they themselves did not live under Islamic rule. To support the caliph, they founded the caliphate movement.

Mahatma Gandhi was impressed by the sacrifice of the Muslims and saw an excellent opportunity to reconcile and fraternize Muslims and Hindus , although the majority of the Hindus were indifferent to the pan-Islamic feelings of their fellow citizens for the morally undignified Ottoman caliph. He saw in this a real religious need of the Muslims.

After the Amritsar massacre in 1919, the Indian National Congress held a party meeting in Amritsar , which was attended by a large number of important Indian politicians, such as Gandhi, Motilal Nehru , Ali Jinnah , Hazrat Mohani , Bal Gangadhar Tilak , Chittaranjan Das and Madan Mohan Malaviya . Shaken by the news about the massacre, the participants discussed how they should react to what they saw as the half-hearted reform intentions of the British ( Montagu-Chelmsford reforms ). Not least because of the massacre, a boycott of British goods was debated. In the run-up to the gathering, Gandhi had learned that there were Muslim voices calling for support for the caliphate campaign and, in return, willing to offer the Hindus demanded that the cattle not be slaughtered. He was bothered by the prospect of political “horse trading”, which he felt was dishonorable. It was at this conference that Gandhi first drafted the non-cooperation campaign .

Ali Jinnah, the secular representative of the Muslim League , criticized Gandhi's support for the campaign to maintain the caliphate in 1919/1920, which Jinnah saw as support for religious zealotism .

background

The Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II tried to develop extensive pan-Islamic propaganda. His successor Mehmed V called on the Muslims in the Allied colonies to jihad in 1914 . This call had practically no military consequences.

At the end of the First World War , the Allies dictated the last Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI in August 1920. the Treaty of Sevres in which the Ottoman Empire's Arab territories (Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia , Syria , Palestine lost) final, Armenian territories, Cilicia and Eastern Thrace should lose, Italian and French spheres of influence and Kurdish autonomy had to accept the straits Bosporus and Dardanelles internationalized and the privileges of the European branches in Istanbul should be restored. The Ottoman Empire had to accept what Mustafa Kemal and the Young Turks were not ready to accept. Thereupon Mustafa Kemal and the National Assembly in Ankara, which he directed, abolished the Ottoman caliphate after the sultanate in 1924 , which was of little importance in the Ottoman Empire, a process that was discussed by intellectuals in the Muslim world for a long time.

consequences

It is controversial to what extent Gandhi's support for the caliphate campaign was wise, as it may have given impetus to later calls for Muslim separatism . With the abolition of the caliphate by the newly founded Turkish republic in 1924, the caliphate campaign became obsolete. With the caliphate campaign, the Muslim League was temporarily pushed out of the political foreground.

literature

  • Muhammad Naeem Qureshi: Pan-Islam in British Indian politics: a study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918 - 1924. Brill, Leiden u. a., 1999.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietmar Rothermund : Under Gandhi's gentle leadership - The Indian struggle for freedom , in: Die Zeit-Lexikon Welt- und Kulturgeschichte, Volume 13, First World War and Interwar Period, ISBN 3-411-17603-2 , p. 475.
  2. ↑ Fischer Weltgeschichte, Volume 33, Das Moderne Asia, 1969, p. 36
  3. ↑ Mahatma Gandhi: Mein Leben , Frankfurt / M., 1983, ISBN 3-518-37453-2 (English first edition 1930), p. 242ff.
  4. ↑ Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan , Cambridge: CUP, 1994, ISBN 0-521-45850-1 , p. 8
  5. ↑ Fischer Weltgeschichte, Volume 33, Das Moderne Asia , 1969, p. 38.