Encyclopedia of Islam

Khilafat Movement

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The caliph was the head of the Islamic com-

munity in Sunni Islam. Although some believe 

the office ended with the capture of b

aghdad

 by 

the Mongols in 1258, throughout Islamic history 

there have been numerous attempts to revital-

ize the office, or at least to claim the caliph as a 

title. The Khilafat Movement represents a modern 

attempt to regenerate the ancient office in a time 

when Muslims were being threatened both by the 

downfall of the Ottomans, the last great Islamicate 

empire, and by Western 

colonialism

. By the end 

of World War I the British Empire stretched from 

Canada to Hong Kong, with most of the world’s 

Muslims ruled by a European power. This had 

been the case for Indian Muslims since 1857, 

when the British brought the 300-year-old Mughal 

Empire to its final end. Thus, the Khilafat Move-

ment was guided by Muslim elites whose immedi-

ate ancestors had ruled India for centuries.

Led by the brothers Muhammad Ali (d. 1931), 

his brother Shaukat Ali (d. 1938), Abul Kalam 

Azad (d. 1956), and Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari (d. 

1936), among others, the movement success-

fully, albeit briefly, mobilized Indian Muslims, 

communities long separated from each other by 

sect, language, and region. It aimed to preserve 

the caliphate as the center of the Muslim world 

and to keep Arab lands and holy sites free from 

non-Muslim control. To this end, Khilafatists led 

delegations to Europe several times to press their 

demands; a number were imprisoned by the Brit-

ish on charges of conspiracy.

The movement received a major boost when 

Mohandas K. g

andhi

 (d. 1948), the leader of the 

Indian National Congress, took up the Khilafat 

cause in 1919 as part of the noncooperation 

movement against British rule. Noncooperation 

involved boycotting British goods, giving up 

political posts in the Anglo-Indian government, 

and, generally speaking, not cooperating with the 

mechanisms of British rule. Since Hindus domi-

nated the Congress, adoption of the Khilafat cause 

did much to further Muslim-Hindu cooperation 

on an all-India scale and led to the belief that 

Indian self-government was in the best interest of 

India’s Muslims.

Muslim-Hindu unity was not to last. Gandhi’s 

suspension of noncooperation and factionalism, 

based on personal, religious, and ideological dif-

ferences, ended the delicate Khilafat-Congress alli-

ance in 1922. The final blow came when Mustafa 

Kemal a

tatUrk

 (d. 1938), the leader of the newly 

secular nation of t

Urkey

, abolished the caliph-

ate in 1924. It is ironic that Indian Khilafatists 

were stressing Pan-Islamism at a time when most 

nations with Muslim majorities, Turkey included, 

sought to base their legitimacy along cultural and 

linguistic and not religious lines. Such “ethnolin-

guistic nationalism” characterized much of the 

Muslim world until the 1960s, perhaps dooming 

the Khilafat Movement to failure.

Kerry San Cherico