ANALYSIS - India’s Muslim modernists and the Ottoman Empire

By Omair Anas

- The writer is an assistant professor at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University's International Relations Department.

ANKARA (AA) - In 1877, an Anglo-Indian wrote to the British foreign office that if Turkiye were allowed to decline, the British Empire would endanger its hold on India because a victorious Russian army would claim the lion's share in the dismembered Turkiye. The colonial British observers see Turkiye mainly as a player in the British-Russian rivalry in Asia and wanted Turkiye to establish good relations with India’s local rulers, to keep them from Russians or French. However, gradually, Turkiye’s Ottoman rulers understood the rise of India’s independence movement and sympathized with pro-independence sentiments. Amid a British-Russian rivalry, the Ottomans were to balance could gain the ground by reaching out to India’s local rulers. The Ottomans managed to build close relations with the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Nawabs of Bhopal, Rampur, Mahmudabad, and Malabar.

During the Ottoman-Russian war in 1877-78, Turkiye received support and sympathy from many Indians and local rulers. Ottoman Foreign Minister Kececizade Mehmed Fuad Pasha preferred to lose some Ottoman provinces than losing the alliance with England. Indian rulers, mainly the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Bhopal were among the first to have sent financial and medical aid to the Ottoman Empire after the 1876 Ottoman-Russian war. In her letter on 29 Muharram 1294 (February 12, 1878) to the Ottoman Sultan, the Malika of Bhopal, Shahjahan Begum, called the Russian forces “defeated and humiliated” while praying for the orphans and injured of the war. She sent 150,000 British Pound while her husband Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan, sent 25000, along with 25700 from her family members. The Ottomans received support from Indian rulers, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Bhopal, in developing the residential and transportation infrastructure in the Hijaz. For this purpose, the Nizam of Hyderabad had provided a huge amount to the Ottomans to build Hijaz Railway.

With the development of the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Madina and the support of Indian Muslims for that, scholarly exchanges between India and Turkiye increased. Even though the Ottomans were losing political power, the modernization of the empire was seen with great hope by the Asian politicians who were in search of a non-Western model of modernity. Japan and the Ottomans were projecting themselves as the two models and started calling for Pan-Asian alliances. The pan-Asian sentiments soon spread all over the Asian cities and politicians across Asia started joining hands for the rise of Asia. At this juncture, pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism came along. The Ottoman-inspired modernization drive started in several countries including India where Indian rulers started establishing institutions of higher learning and translation projects. In 1877, an Ottoman delegation had also visited India and visited Aligarh where they met the founder of Aligarh Muslim University Sir Syed Ahmad. Sir Syed then had written that the Ottoman Sultan, in his modern outlook, is like a European ruler. The Prime Minister of Nizam of Hyderabad Nawab Vakar al Mulk Bahadur wrote a letter to the Ottoman Prime Minister on August 23, 1898, requesting him the photocopies of books of Mahmud Khan, Bayezid, and Nur-e-Osmani libraries. Among all educational initiatives that Indian Muslims had seen during that time, Hyderabad’s Dairatul Maarif-il Osmaniya had inspired a generation of Muslim modernists. Similarly, the Muslim modernist Shibli Numani had traveled to Turkiye and stayed here for a few months only to start his educational institutions in the future. Among all Islamic Madrasas established at that time, Shibli was considered the most modern and forward-looking Islamic reformer. He criticized both Aligarh Muslim University and Nadwatul Ulama and tried to establish his school of thought, though it gained only limited success. The impact of the Ottomans' educational reforms on Shibli should be seen as one of the reasons for his rebellious critique of the traditional education of Muslims. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jamaluddin Afghani, the most famous yet controversial reformist of the time, was also initially hosted by the Ottomans before he left for Paris. Similarly, another Muslim modernist Syed Ameer Ali was also a regular visitor of Istanbul and was the first who had welcomed the formation of the Ottoman Parliament in 1909. Documents suggest that he was also advising the Ottomans for more reforms in the Anatolia region. One of the reasons that the Ottoman reforms had inspired India’s Muslim modernists was the 1855 reform about non-Muslim citizens of the empire. These reforms allowed Turkiye’s Christian population equal citizenship rights, greater religious freedom, and inclusion in participation in state affairs. The rights of non-Muslims in Muslim political thoughts had taken a drastic change once the Tanzimat reforms empowered the non-Muslim populations. In one speech, the British foreign secretary had even claimed that now Turkiye’s Christian population has greater rights than Russian Christians.

Soon after the First World War, Indian freedom fighters wanted to establish an independent Indian government in exile in Kabul. For this purpose, Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, Muhammad Barkatullah Bhopali, and his friends started reaching out to Turkiye and Germany. After traveling to Berlin, Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh arrived in Istanbul to meet the Ottoman Sultan in May 1915. He had carried an important message of German war officers to Istanbul and had met the Turkish war minister Enver Pasha. This made the British authorities very anxious and a team of British intelligence followed them from Istanbul to Baghdad, to Kabul. However, Raja managed to reach Kabul and declared the first Indian government in exile on 1st December 1915 of which he was the first Prime Minister. Soon, an all-India agitation against the British plans against the Ottomans would start and Mahatma Gandhi would lead the famous Khilafat Movement. The Khilafat movement, despite having an agenda of protecting religious shrines from going to the British colonial administration, the movement had brought conservatives and modernists together shaping new modernity for Indian political thought where religious leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Husain Ahmad Madni would strongly support a united, modern, secular Indian republic. This is the reason that the Khilafat Movement remained relevant even after the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished and the movement extended its support to Mustafa Kemal in his reform to build a modern Turkish republic. At this juncture, Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi, a close aide of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose was invited to Istanbul where he was apprised about the reforms introduced by Mustafa Kemal. Maulana Sindhi returned to India and conveyed the message of Mustafa Kemal. When the prominent Turkish revolutionary leader Halide Edib visited India in 1938, she met Gandhi and other prominent leaders and stayed at Jamia Millia Islami. Her speeches made them clear that it is time for Indian Muslims to seek a composite, reformed, and modern worldview beyond the delusions of the past.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.