Now if history and what supposedly happened in the past does not affect the present and the future, and since what happened in the past at a given time point - which was then the "present", and the "future" for that time point is the "present" for us - so what "Khilafat" supposedly did for the psyche of the Indian muslim should not be predictive, and should not have any influence on the behaviour or future behaviour of IM? No?
So using the conclusion of Khilafat as claimed by anyone, we cannot claim that pan-Islamism for IM has forever been ruled out. But then again, another reason we are asked not to go too deep into the past because then the past can be suitably modified to suit ideological agenda. Here the ideological agenda is to erase any possible suspicion or pointer towards continued presence or renewal of pan-Islamic tendencies in the IM.
Did Khilafat have no pan-Islamism consequence? Depends on your underlying ideological commitment towards the post-Independence Nehruvian propaganda or not.
The Khilafat fiasco by MKG brought in Abdullahahel Baqi of Dinajpur, Muniruzzaman Islamabadi of Chattagram, Mawlana Akram Khan of 24-Pargana, Shamsuddin Ahmed of Kushthia, and Ashrafuddin Ahmed Chowdhury of Tripura, into the Bangyia pRADESH Congress - and all were later prominent in the ML. Mawlana Akram Khan was key figure in the lead up to the partition from within ML.. Suhrawardy was the Secretary of the Khilafat Committee for a long time and along with the others he joined the Swaraj party bloc of Congress. They jointly shared power in Kolikata Municipal Corporation after winning the elections of 1924. CRD became the Mayor, Suhrawardy the Deputy-Mayor, and SCB the Chief Executive Officer. Suhrawardy left Congress with other leaders mentioned above to revive the ML. He was the Prime Minister of Bengal that delayed acting against Muslim rioters during Direct Action Day and only brought out the BIA when the numerical majority Hindus and Sikhs began to retaliate. The Muslim families were taken to the Park Circus Maidan under army and police protection - something that was missing for almost three days to Hindus and the Sikhs. He became the fifth Prime Minister of the undivided Pakistan. But already in 1926 he stood by and defended the Muslim rioters who were arrested during the great Calcutta riot of that year, including personally intervening to secure bail of a notorious "goonda" Mina Peshawari, murderer of several Hindu slum- dwellers [Mina Peshwari's "para" and location is still famous -for spawning others of his ilk later].
For a start we can take this from Hamza Alawi [impeccable background from the "secularist" line - because who says and where - matters more than what he says - this was in EPW]
Misreading Partition Road Signs, Hamza Alavi, 4515-4517, EPW, Nov 2-9, 2002.The Khilafat movement(1918-1924), in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi, torpedoed the new
political dynamic of the joint struggle of the Muslim League and the Congress against the colonial rule that was set in motion by the Lucknow Pact. It also undermined the secular leadership of the Muslim League. Instead, it helped to mobilise one section of the Sunni ulama the hardliner Deobandis,on the namely, basis of some false assumptions about the
post-war' hostility' of the British towards the Ottoman sultan, their khalifa. The
movement capitalised on the pan-Islamic sentiments amongst the Indian Deoband Muslims.These sentiments were centred on the role of the Ottoman Sultan as the 'Universal Khalifa'. It ignored the fact that the Ottoman Sultan was not recognised as the Khalifa by the populist Barelvi tradition of the Indian Sunni Islam (arguably, the majorityof Indian Muslims). The Barelvis, like the Arab nationalists, rejected the claims of the Ottoman Sultan to be the Khalifa on the doctrinal ground that he was not of Quraysh descent.19 The Khilafat movement got off the ground after Gandhi decided to take it over,becoming, in his own words,the 'dictator of the movement. Leaders of the movement, like Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal, Ansari Shaukat Ali and Mohammd Ali, sought guidance from him for every action.2 It is difficult to discuss critically the role' of Mahatma Gandhi,a man who became a saint. But until the end of first world war, Gandhi had yet to establish himself as a major Indian political leader His early moves can best be understood in the context of his attempts to achieve that end.He became the undisputed leader of the Indian nationalist movement by the time he had finished with the Khilafat and the movements. Gandhi's movement undermined the secular leadership of the Muslim League, and for the time being ,established the mullahs in that place. Gandhi even helped the mullahs to set up a political organisation of their own (in 1919), namely the Jamiat-i-Ulama Hind,which was reincarnated in Pakistan as the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam, the extreme hardliner fundamentalists who were instrumental in the rise of the Taliban in
Afghanistan. Thanks to Gandhi,the Khilafat movement implanted the religious idiom in the modern Indian Muslim politics for the first time. A-key moment in that was when Ansari organised an invasion of the Delhi Session of the All Indian Muslim League in 1918 by the mullahs.
[...]
Directly, as a reaction to the Khilafat movement and the politicisation of religion, there followed in the 1920s a long period of the worst communal rioting that India had ever known.
Those interested can look up assessments of who really "withdrew" the Khilafat movement, from the very favourable Gopal Krishna, published in several CUP journals and the many papers that have worked on the consequences of the Khilafat adventure. It may be quite revealing as to links for subsequent mullhaization and international identification of IM in post independence India.
By the way, I think we have now to think of Palestine as an internal and domestic issue of India, and same goes for Salman Rushdie or Tasleema Nasreen - against all of whom there has been purely intra-Indian concerns of "aggressive" demonstrations. [riots or mob violence only happens from other communities]
