70 the islamic prismfears of Indian Muslims toward the Hindus were not dissimilar to that of
the Jews and their struggle in Palestine. Democracy seemed a euphe-
mism for legitimizing majority domination and the resultant loss of their
par tic u lar identity. Driven by this fear of the other, both the yishuv and
the Muslim League, which represented this segment of thought in India,
found in the British a close and trusted ally. The Congress Party was cer-
tainly aware of the misgivings that powerful segments of the Muslim
population had regarding the majority Hindus.
It was under these circumstances that the Muslim world witnessed the
disintegration and demise of the Ottoman Empire. This radically altered
the attitude of the Indian Muslims toward the Raj and brought them into
confl ict with the British rulers. Their sovereign and temporal loyalties
clashed, and they sided with the latter. The Indian Muslims, who had pre-
viously been praying for the welfare of their London- based “sovereign
ruler,” King George V, now off ered prayers for their Istanbul- based “tem-
poral ruler,” Mehmed VI. This gave birth to a pop u lar struggle among the
Indian Muslims known as the Khilafat movement.
The Congress Party viewed Muslim fears over the caliph as a means to
forge closer po liti cal ties with the community. The participation of Mus-
lims was a precondition for its nationalist credentials, and the Congress
Party was aware of the general Muslim mistrust of its legitimacy and
objectives. While it had some Muslim leaders among its ranks, its Mus-
lim mass base was small. In December 1923, INC President Mohammed
Ali aptly summed up the dilemma facing the nationalists: “the Congress
which called itself ‘Indian’ and ‘National’ felt the need for Muslim par-
ticipation, for it could not justify its title without it.”^6 Thus its leaders, es-
pecially Mahatma Gandhi, saw the Khilafat movement as an opportunity
to strengthen Hindu- Muslim unity against the British. Despite obvious
religious dogma, the nationalist leaders presented the struggle around
the caliph as an integral part of their wider national agenda.
As a result, the INC called for a settlement of the Turkish question “in
accordance with the just and legitimate sentiments of Indian Mussal-
mans and the solemn pledges of the Prime Minister” of Great Britain,
failing which, it warned, “there will be no real contentment among the
people of India.”^7 At a special session in Calcutta in September 1920, the
INC went a step further and proclaimed: “it is the duty of every non-
Muslim in every legitimate manner to assist his Mussalman brother in
his attempt to assist the religious calamity that has overtaken him.”^8 The
following year, the CWC urged the Indian soldiers who fought in World