Pickthall’s Islamic Politics 115
Pickthall remained defiant. He saw hope in the victory of the forces led by
Mustafa Kemal over the Greeks, and though the Ottoman Sultanate had been
abolished (but not yet the office of Caliphate), there was “a great opportunity of
revival and reform”.24 He allowed his name to be included in a seven- member
delegation the Central Khilafat Committee proposed to despatch to Turkey
in May 1924 to “meet the President [Mustafa Kemal] and the members of the
Grand National Assembly of Angora, the ‘Ulema and other prominent persons
in Turkey and to impress on them the desirability both in the interests of Islam
and Turkey to reconsider their decision about the Khilafat”.25 This visit did not
come about, either because passports were not issued or the Turks’ refusal to
receive them.26
The Raj did what it could to silence the paper. Pickthall’s second letter to
E.M. Forster, despatched after reading A Passage to India, described the
pressures:
At present we are under menace of extinction. Three officials, with the
Government of Bombay behind them, are suing us for defamation, claim-
ing defamation amounting to two and half lakhs. We have put up a defence
which would have been conclusive in an English court, where the attempt
on the part of a newspaper to perform a public service is a “justifying occa-
sion”. But here there is no statute to guard the proper freedom of the Press,
and I am told that it is practically impossible for a judgement to be given
in our favour. It is a very interesting experience and the “solidarity” of the
flustered English is exactly as described in your book. My complements
on your success in portraiture. I do not like your Indians half so well.27The closing sentence is likely a reference to the opposition of some board
members of Bombay Chronicle to the excessive coverage of Khilafatist activi-
ties and Gandhi’s Non-cooperation movement. Pickthall had referred to this
in his speech at the Parsi Assembly Hall. Pickthall and some colleagues were
backed by the “cosmopolitan Bombay” wing of Congress, and opposed by the
24 “The True Khilafat”, The Islamic Review, xi, 11 (November 1923), 391.
25 Muhammad, Adi Shan, Unpublished letters of the Ali Brothers (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat,
1979), 244–245; see letter from Maulana Shaukat Ali, dated 2 May 1924, to the Deputy Sec-
retary, Home Department, Government of India, applying for passports for the members
of the delegation. In addition to Pickthall, these were: Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Hakim
Mohammed Ajmal Khan, Maulvi Mufti Kifayatullah, Maulana Sulaiman Nadvi, Mr. Tas-
saduq Ahad Khan Sherwani and Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman.
26 Minault, The Khilafat Movement, 204.
27 Kings College Archives, EMF/18/430. Pickthall’s letter to Forster is dated 18th July 1924.