Khilafat and Chauri Chaura

For six centuries the Ottoman Empire had spread across southeast Europe, western Asia and north Africa, and its sultan was also the Caliph: the political and religious leader of the Muslim world. After World War I the empire was broken up, and the Caliph's position became shaky.

In India, the Ali brothers (Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali) and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad launched the Khilafat Movement in 1919 to protect the Caliph's religious authority.

Gandhi saw a chance: to unite Hindus and Muslims against British rule and bring Muslims into the national movement. In 1920 the Khilafat leaders and the Congress joined hands, promising to fight together for both Khilafat and Swaraj.

It worked at first, increasing Muslim participation in the national movement and bringing large numbers of Hindus into the Khilafat cause.

But it was criticised from both sides. Some Congress members felt the Caliph's position in Turkey was no concern of India's. Some Muslim leaders doubted it because it tied Indian Muslims' loyalty to a religious power in faraway Turkey. And Jinnah left the Congress in 1920, warning against mixing the freedom movement with religion.

Then, in February 1922 at Chauri Chaura, protesters set a police station on fire and killed policemen.

Gandhi called it 'inhuman conduct' and suddenly called off the whole Non-Cooperation Movement, a decision that Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Chandra Bose all disapproved of. Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das then created the Swaraj Party, which tried a different strategy; it was short-lived, because Das died in 1925.

The Khilafat Movement itself died away when Mustafa Kemal abolished the Turkish sultanate in 1922 and the Caliphate in 1924. Historians still debate what it left behind: it united Hindus and Muslims for a while, but also strengthened a sense of separateness.