FROM MAULANA'S DESK

appeal of nationalism among the Arabs, on the other, gave a final burial to the Ottoman Caliphate. In such a situation, the movement for the restoration of the Caliphate was as pointless as trying to bring a dead man back to life, as people who had the vision to see things at that time well knew. It is astoundingly incomprehensible that while the headquarters of the Ottoman Caliphate (including much of the Arab world) was Turkey, the movement for its restoration was launched in far-off India, which had no link with it political or geographical. But this is precisely what happened, and the Muslims of India made immense sacrifices of their lives and wealth for the movement. Had they sacrificed all this for their own constructive progress, it would have helped improve their conditions greatly. Stranger still is that the hugely popular leaders of the Khilafat Movement seemed to have no idea that an international political institution like the Ottoman Caliphate could not be established through thunderous speeches and emotion driven writings. An institution of this sort always comes into being through historical causes and factors. History is like a bank. A community or people who have stored their assets in the ‘bank of history’, are the ones in a position to withdraw from it. A community that lacks the vision or insight will get nothing from this ‘bank’. The establishment of the Turkish Caliphate was no sudden event. Rather, the Turks had, over a period of centuries, developed a political ‘asset’ in the ‘bank of history’. Turk leaders then ‘encashed’ it in the form of the Ottoman Caliphate. Unfortunately the ‘assets’ that the Ottoman Turks had deposited in the ‘bank of history’ dried up towards the end of the 19th century resulting in the collapse of, the Ottoman Caliphate. From Syed Jamaluddin Afghani (d. 1897) to Abul Kalam Azad (d. 1958), several great Muslim personalities egged Muslims on to sacrifice their lives and wealth in the name of the protection of the Caliphate. They should have known that this was not a matter of protecting a political tradition. It was about ushering in a new history. Muslims lacked the ‘assets’ in the ‘bank of history’ for establishing an international political institution. In such a situation, spearheading a movement to establish an institution like the Ottoman Caliphate was like expecting a rocky, barren patch of land to magically transform itself into a lush garden! Other movements also emerged during the movement for independence from British rule. Two are of particular relevance in the context of our discussion: the Hindu revival movement, and what can be called a movement for Muslim revivalism. Gauging from their fiery leaders, these