74 the islamic prismThe Congress Party Versus the Muslim League
The Muslim League, formed in 1906, initially had no major an-
tagonisms with the INC. Mahatma Gandhi and other Congress Party
leaders took part in the deliberations of the Muslim League, and vice
versa. At times, INC and Muslim League sessions were held at the same
venue, often one following the other. Gradually, however, relations between
the two deteriorated and became tense, especially following the outbreak
of World War I and in response to Eu ro pe an threats against the Otto-
man Empire. As the Muslim League spearheaded the Khilafat struggle,
the Congress Party joined the movement with the aim of strengthening
and consolidating its support among the Muslims. This ended in a
po liti cal struggle between the two for the support and loyalty of Indian
Muslims. The Muslim League’s aspiration to be the exclusive represen-
tative of the Indian Muslims confl icted with the INC’s desire to repre-
sent the entire people of India, without any religious or other social
barriers. Such tensions were more palpable vis-à- vis the Palestine
question.
While the Congress Party remained unsympathetic toward Jewish
nationalism, the Muslim League went a step further and took a hostile
position against Zionism. Weeks after Arthur James Balfour promised
British support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine,
the Muslim League expressed its concern over the “safety and sanctity of
Holy Places.”^18 Muslim League members talked of the prophet Moham-
med’s injunction about the need to remove “the Christians, the Jews, and
the idolaters from the Jazirat al- Arab at all costs.” Welcoming the dele-
gates of the eleventh Muslim League session in Delhi in December 1918,
Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari (who in 1927 became president of the Congress
Party) remarked, “Palestine cannot be handed over to the Zionists, whose
sole claim to that land is that centuries before the birth of Christ, the
ancestors of the wandering sons of Israel had once lived in it. The achieve-
ments of Salahuddin Ayyubi and the blood of mujahideen did not fl ow, in
the days of the Crusades, to lose it to a people who cannot put forward
any recognizable claim to it.”^19 Others argued that if a Muslim country
was occupied by non- Muslims, eff orts should be made “to get it cleared
of them.”^20
Delivering the presidential address in December 1918, A. K. Fazlul
Haque underscored the determined support of the Indian Muslims to
the preservation and continuation of the caliph. In his view, the Arab