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could be the initial reason but the establishment of various Islamic dynasties
since the eleventh century precluded the need for the allegiance to an
Islamic power or authority located outside India. The appearance of the
British imperialism, the defeat of Mughals in 1857 and the deposition and
exile of last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar to the then Burma the fol-
lowing year marked a new but painful phase.
The arrival of the British rule thus marked an end of the eight-century-
old Muslim rule in northern India and the Muslims looked for solace
elsewhere. It was only then the Caliph concurrently held by the Ottoman
Empire figured in the Indian Muslim imagination. The Ottoman sultan
gradually emerged as the symbol and representative of the Islamic history,
legacy and glory (Minualt 1982 , 4–7). Therefore, the British campaign
against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War was resented by the
Indian Muslims. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan—the founder of the Muslim
Anglo-Oriental (MAO) college, which later became the Aligarh Muslim
University (AMU)—captured the dilemma facing the Muslims when he
observed:
When there were many Muslim kingdoms, we did not feel much grief when
one of them was destroyed; now that so few are left, we feel the loss of even
a small one. If Turkey is conquered, that will be a great grief, for she is the
last of the great powers left to Islam. We are afraid that we shall become like
the Jews, a people without a country of our own. (Morison 1932 , 95–96)A sense of desperation set in among the Indian Muslims, and from the
elite to ordinary believers almost everyone felt that their faith was in
danger and sought to rally behind the beleaguered Ottoman Sultan cum
caliph. Muslim unity was one of the watershed moments in the Indian
nationalist struggle. Otherwise, there was a political detachment between
the Indian Muslims and the Islamic empires of the Middle East.
At the same time, a large number of Indians including Muslims enlisted
for the First World War in the British military expeditions in the Middle
East, especially the Gallipoli and Palestinian campaigns. Over 2500 Indians
lay buried in the Baghdad’s Northgate War Cemetery while thousands of
Indians were part of the British campaign that fought and freed Haifa
from the Ottoman rule in September 1918.
Moreover, the initial hesitation and delays in the issuance of the
Balfour Declaration which pledged support for a Jewish national home in
Palestine have been attributed to British officials flagging the sentiments
P. R. KUMARASWAMY AND MD. M. QUAMAR