THE political rehabilitation of Turkey at Lausanne (1923) had pleased the Indian Muslims . But they had become increasingly worried about the rehabilitation of the Khilafat to its former glory, for which the Khilafat Conference on November 23, 1919 was held and the Khilafat movement on August 1, 1920 launched.
Initially, the Turkish nationalists, under Mustapha Kemal Pasha, had sworn by “the maintenance of the Sultanate and the Caliphate”, as in the second National Congress declaration of September 9, 1919 at Sivas under Kemal’s presidency, and “the liberty and independence of the Caliphate and Sultanate” in the Angora National Assembly Act of September 9, 1920, as well as in the Turco-Afghan treaty (Article 3) of March 1, 1921. Which was why Kemal was hailed as Saiful Islam and Mujahid-i-Khilafat.
But the Law of November 1, 1922, which vested Turkish “sovereignty and rulership in the juridical personality of the Turkish National Assembly” (GNA), which officially proclaimed Turkey a Republic as of March 16, 1919, with retrospective effect, had simultaneously deposed Sultan-Caliph Mehmet VI (1861-1926), abolished the Sultanate, and elected Abdul Mecid (Majid) ( - 1944) as caliph, but not as sultan. That Law also invested the right to elect a caliph in the GNA, asserting that “The Turkish state is the foundation on which the Caliphate is based”.
The disinvestment of the sultanate from the caliph’s domain meant the institution of a symbolic “pontif”, a sort of Pope, shorn of all temporal authority, and the conversion of the caliphal office into some sort of a spiritual or papal office. This Vaticanisation of the Khilafat was precisely what the Indian theologians had been asserting to be wholly foreign to Islam and what the Khilafatists had been trying so strenuously to avert since the end of the First World War. Now, that it had become a fait accompli, and that, ironically though, at the hands of the Turks themselves, the standard bearers of the Khilafat since the Ottoman conquest of Egypt (1517) and the abdication of the last Cairene Abbasid Caliph, Mutawakkil ( -1543), in favour of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520; ruled 1512-1520),- could the romantic Indian Khilafatists ignore it any more?
Hence after spirited discussion, a joint meeting of the Jamiat and Khilafat organizations accepted in December 1922 the Angora decision, but asked the Turkish Assembly “to maintain the power and prestige of the caliph as prescribed by the Shariah”, and not to make further changes in the status of the caliph without consulting the Islamic world.
But the Kemalists, now that they had won recognition both in the battlefield and on the conference table, paid little heed to Indian Muslim counsels in doing what they felt to be in Turkey’s best interest. The Angora authorities found that the caliph, though shorn of all temporal authority tended to become involved in Turkish domestic and foreign politics, as a competitor to the Turkish Assembly; hence a law was passed on March 3, 1924, seeking to abolish the caliphate, and send into exile Abdul Mejid and all members of his household.
This decision dismayed and disillusioned the Khilafatists . It was indicated by, among others, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind’s marathon cable to Kemal on March 11 which spoke of the “deep distress and consternation” the abolition had caused, of Khilafat being “the very essence of the Islamic faith”, and implored Kemal and the GNA “to reconsider their decision” since its “continuation. and re-establishment on true democratic foundations” would also be “a source of strength to the Turkish nation in its relations abroad” - that is, as an instrument of Turkish foreign policy against Western powers, which, in any case, Istanbul had been so effectvely invoking for a century and more.
In desperation, the Jamiat and the Khilafat Conference also requested Kemal himself to assume the caliphal office; so did the Egyptian Muslims, the other most important segment of the Muslim world. Undeterred Kemal proved himself to be extremely iron-willed. He, therefore, declined their offers, saying that he could not accept “the proposals and desires of people who are governed by Kings and emperors”, because they were not “in a position to execute my orders”; because it would be “ridiculous to rig me up with an illusionary role which has neither sense nor right of existence”.
Moreover, Kemal felt that “neither Turkey nor the handful of men she possesses could be placed at the disposal of the Caliph so that he might fulfil the mission attributed to him, namely, to found a state comprising the whole of Islam. The Turkish nation is incapable of undertaking such an irrational mission.” Thus was consigned to the dustbin of history the twelve hundred year old, hoary institution of Khilafat. Except for mingled cries of regret and despair and a scramble for the appropriation of the office by certain interested rulers, the abolition did not cause much of a ripple effect in the Muslim world, except in India.
Here, it struck the Khilafatists at their most sensitive point: it robbed them of their very raison d’etre . Of them all, the greatest casualty was that of Mohamed Ali (1878-1931), the hero of the Khilafat crisis and the most vocal protagonist of the restoration of the Turkish caliphal status quo ante bellum, who had risen meteor-like on the Indian political firmament and become the foremost symbol of the romanticist era in modern Indo-Muslim history. For the next seven years, he lived without a cause, forlorn and dejected plummeted from the pinnacle of glory.
