“As a token that these reforms will be fully and completely carried out, the Ottoman Government pledges itself to accept the co-operation of one of the Great Powers on condition its independence shall not be infringed upon and its national pride shall not be wounded.”
As soon as it was known in what spirit the treaty of peace with Turkey was going to be discussed between the Powers, and what clauses were likely to be inserted in it, a clamour of protest arose throughout the Moslem world.
That treaty could not but affect the most important group of Mohammedans, the Indian group, which numbers over 70 million men and forms nearly one-fourth of the population of India. As soon as the conditions that were to be forced on Turkey were known in India, they roused deep resentment, which reached its climax after the Amritsar massacre. Some of the clauses which the Allies meant to insert in the treaty plainly ran counter to the principles of Mohammedanism; and as they hurt the religious feelings of the Moslems and disregarded the religious guarantees given to the Hindus and all the Moslem world by the present British Cabinet and its predecessors, they could not but bring on new conflicts in the future. Besides, the blunders of the last five years had united Hindus and Mohammedans in India, as they united Copts and Mohammedans in Egypt later on, and it was also feared that the Arabs, whose hopes had been frustrated, would side with the Turkish Nationalists.
At the end of 1918, Dr. Ansari, M.D., M.S., chairman of the Committee of the All-India Muslim League, in the course of the session held at Delhi at that time, set forth the Muslim grievances. But the address he read could not receive any publicity owing to the special repressive measures taken by the Government of India.
In September, 1919, a Congress of Mohammedans, who had come from all parts of India and thus represented Muslim opinion as a whole, was held at Lucknow, one of the chief Muslim centres. In November another congress for the defence of the Caliphate met at Delhi; it included some Hindu leaders, and thus assumed a national character. Next month a third congress, held at Amritsar, in the Punjab, was presided over by Shaukat Ali, founder and secretary of the Society of the Servants of the Ka’ba, who had been imprisoned like his brother Mohammed Ali and released three days before the congress; it was attended by over 20,000 Hindus and Mussulmans.
This meeting confirmed the resolution taken by the previous congress to send to Europe and America a delegation from India for the defence of the Caliphate. On January 19, 1920, a deputation of Indian Mussulmans waited upon the Viceroy of India at Delhi, to request that a delegation might repair to Europe and America, according to the decision of the congress, in order to expound before the allied and associated nations and their governments the Moslems’ religious obligations and Muslim and Indian sentiment on the subject of the Caliphate and cognate questions, and to be their representatives at the Peace Conference.
The non-Mussulman Indians supported the claims which the 70 millions of Indian Mussulmans, their fellow-countrymen, considered as a religious obligation. In an address drawn up by the great Hindu leader, the Mahatma Gandhi, and handed on January 19, 1920, by the deputation of the General Congress of India for the Defence of the Caliphate to His Excellency Baron Chelmsford, Viceroy and Governor of India, in order to lay their aims before him, they declared they raised a formal protest lest the Caliphate should be deprived of the privilege of the custody and wardenship of the Holy Places, and lest a non-Muslim control, in any shape or form whatever, should be established over the Island of Arabia, whose boundaries, as defined by Muslim religious authorities, are: the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, thus including Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, beside the Peninsula of Arabia.
This General Congress of India, according to the manifesto it adopted during its sittings at Bombay on February 15, 16, and 17, 1920, gave to the delegation sent to Europe the following mandate, with respect to the Muslim claims regarding the Caliphate and the “Jazirat-ul-Arab”:
“With respect to the Khilafat it is claimed that the Turkish Empire should be left as it was when the war broke out; however, though the alleged maladministration of Turks has not been proved, the non-Turkish nationalities might, if they wished, have within the Ottoman Empire all guarantees of autonomy compatible with the dignity of a sovereign State.”