THE dismemberment of the Ottoman empire and the abolition of the caliphate two years later in the 1920s evoked an emotional wave of anger among the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent that turned into a movement for the restoration of the caliphate. This movement was also joined by the Hindu communities and supported by almost all political parties, but in each case for different objectives. These are investigated in Naeem Qureshi’s book, Ottoman Turkey, Atatürk, and Muslim South Asia.

The politicians found the movement a rare platform for putting pressure on the British, one of the victorious powers in the First World War in which the Ottoman empire was defeated, to push them to wind up their empire and leave the subcontinent. Conservative Muslim leaders were meanwhile seeking the revival of an institution in Turkey whose existence during the Ottoman rule was a mere ritual. Incidentally, the caliphate was abolished by the leader of what came to be known as the Turkish revolution and not by the British. But the irony in the response of the Indian Muslims can hardly be ignored when one finds their key leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, refusing to play a leading role in the movement and Gandhi choosing to play a greater one.

Similarly, when Mustafa Kemal Pasha, popularly called Atatürk, rose to power in 1924 and declared Turkey a secular republic, many Muslims in India switched their sympathies from khilafat to him. The khilafat movement leaders had plans to mobilise Muslims across the world under a pan-Islamic set-up to achieve their goal but a conference convened in Cairo for the purpose in 1926 was a failure as most Muslim countries did not participate in it. The movement lost its momentum in India after the arrest of its leaders and rise of splinter groups in the main organisation.

It is worth noting that Ottoman emperor Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909) had also launched a pan-Islamic campaign to protect the empire from the West’s attacks and to neutralise democratic opposition at home. He sent Jamaluddin Afghani as his emissary to India in late 19th century to seek the support of Indian Muslims. This campaign, however, did not assume a precise shape until the Young Ottoman Intellectuals began to patronise it in an attempt to fix the structural faults of the empire.

The basic theme running through Ottoman Turkey is pan-Islamic indulgence of the Muslims of South Asia for the Ottoman empire and, upon its fall and rise of Atatürk, a shift in support to the latter and his secular republic. The book consists of nine articles written by Qureshi in different times but edited by him in a manner that makes it a coherent story. Qureshi looks into the relevance of pan-Islamism in the politics of Pakistan at a time when post-Ottoman Turkey itself is gradually moving away from Atatürk’s model of state and society. The “enigma” of pan-Islamism, he concludes, remains controversial because Muslims are far too divided with their own peculiar historical and political baggage. These factors would not allow the adoption of a common model.

Qureshi finds it surprising that Muslims in the subcontinent, after becoming aware of the views of Allama Iqbal and Jinnah, began admiring the role of the nationalists under Atatürk, and also the reforms aimed at the modernisation of Turkish society and economy. The leaders of Afghanistan and Iran also took similar steps to modernise their societies but could not succeed. In Pakistan, Ayub Khan and later Pervez Musharaf appeared fascinated by the Kemalist model of state but did not adopt it, fearing a backlash from the clergy on the secular aspect of the model.

What the pro-khilafat and pan-Islamists activists failed to understand was that every Ottoman sultan was also a caliph and hence a supreme religious and political leader of all Muslims across the world. However, in practical terms, this status and authority was hardly invoked. Besides, the empire was far from being an ideological entity. New territories were conquered not to spread Islam, nor people converted forcibly. A culture of tolerance flourished in the Ottoman universe in which people of any religion or social rank were provided opportunities to serve the state. As a result, many military commanders were Christian. Religious adherence was used more as a tool to attract followers than as a catalyst for expansion.

The focus was clearly on pragmatism as the empire expanded. At the pinnacle of its expansion, the empire controlled over two million square miles of land, reaching from Anatolia, the home of the empire, through the Balkans and south-west Europe, to south into present-day Yemen, and as far west into Africa as Algeria. Much of this expansion occurred under the leadership of “Suleiman the Magnificent” (1520-1566) whose reign marked the peak of Ottoman grandeur. For 640 years, the empire was a dominant force in the Middle East. But the 300 years of expansion were reversed beginning with the defeat of the empire at the hands of the Habsburg army in Vienna in 1683. Soon after, the empire lost most of its European territories.

Ottoman Turkey, Atatürk, and Muslim South Asia: Perspectives, Perceptions, and Responses

(History)

Oxford University Press, Karachi

By M. Naeem Qureshi

ISBN 9780199066346

416pp.