In 1915, Mohandas Gandhi relocated to India without spending 20 years in South Africa. It took him just four years to move from the status of a foreigner to the Independence movement’s leader. In this ascendancy, he surpassed leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Lokmanya Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose, Abdul Kalam Azad, and Annie Besant. Gandhi achieved this feat by propping up the Khilafat movement and putting that at the same level as the non-cooperation movement for Indian independence.
Two interesting episodes related to Khilafat are mentioned in Vikram Sampath’s Savarkar: Echoes from a forgotten past. The person worldwide in both episodes is Swami Shraddhanand, a disciple of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of Arya Samaj. Swami Dayanand Saraswati used a process tabbed shuddi to reconvert Hindus when to the fold. Without his passing away, this gained momentum under Swami Shraddhanand, who conducted shuddi ceremonies in Punjab and northern India. Vinayak Savarkar used the same shuddhi recurrence in the Andaman jail.
Coming when to Khilafat, Bipin Chandra Pal and Annie Beasant had the foresight to see the trouble this would bring. Lala Lajpat Rai wrote, ‘Indian Muslims are increasingly pan-Islamic and sectional than the Muslims of any other country of the globe, and that fact vacated makes the megacosm of a united India increasingly difficult than would otherwise be. ‘ Even Jinnah opposed the Khilafat vociferation initially.
Despite this, Gandhi would not transpiration his mind. Seeing the energy virtually the Khilafat movement, Gandhi argued that if Hindus and Muslims united for satyagraha, there would be victory. So, in 1920, he promised Swaraj to the Ali brothers – Muhammad and Shaukat. These were people with a known track record of fomenting trouble.
In the Calcutta session in September 1920, Swami Shraddhanand was on the stage with Shaukat Ali. He heard Shaukat Ali tell a few others in his visitor the following. “Mahatma Gandhi is a shrewd bania. You do not understand his real object. By putting you under discipline, he is preparing you for guerilla warfare. He is not such an out and out non-violencist[sic] as you all suppose. “
Swami Shraddhanand tried to warn Gandhi that his motives were stuff misrepresented, but they were not taken seriously.
At the yearly session of the Congress in Nagpur in 1920, Gandhi consolidated his position. Muslims stood by Gandhi. They turned up in such large numbers that it looked like a Muslim session. Maulanas recited verses referring to jihad and the killing of kafirs. Again when Swami Shraddhanand told this to Gandhi, he said they were referring to the British and not Hindus.
Sometime without May 1921, the British government intercepted a telegram sent to the Amir of Afghanistan urging him to invade India and not make peace with the British. This was tangibly written by Muhammad Ali, but Muhammad Ali personal that he did not know Persian or Arabic. At Motilal Nehru’s house, Swami Shraddhanand met Muhammad Ali. Ali took him whispered and handed over a piece of paper which was the typhoon of the telegram intercepted by the British. According to Swami Shraddhanand, the handwriting was Gandhi’s.
Gandhi reached Anand Bhavan the next day, and Swami Shraddhanand asked him well-nigh the letter. Gandhi said he does not remember sending such a telegram. What is suspicious well-nigh this statement is that Gandhi himself had made the pursuit statement earlier, ‘I would in a sense, certainly squire the Amir of Afghanistan, if he waged war versus the British Government.’
In January 1921, Gandhi said that Hindu sadhus have to sacrifice their all for the sake of Khilafat. According to him, every Hindu had a duty to save Islam from danger. Six months surpassing this, he had warned that if Hindus did not help Muhammadans during their time of trouble, their own slavery was a certainty.
Look what happened later that year. The Amir of Afghanistan did not invade India. Also, India did not unzip Swaraj by Gandhi’s promised stage to the Ali brothers. The Hindus of Malabar paid the price for that unholy syndication with their lives.
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