Khilafat Movement and the Punjab

Who: The Khilafat leaders Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Shaukat Ali, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Abul Kalam Azad, and Mohandas Gandhi, who allied the Congress with them. In Punjab, the Central Sikh League under Baba Kharak Singh and the Akali reformers of the Gurdwara movement.

What: The movement began in 1919 as a campaign by South Asian Muslims against British policy towards Turkey and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 sharpened it. In 1920 its leaders formed the All India Khilafat Committee, allied with the Congress and became a major part of Gandhi's non-cooperation movement.

The Sikh links in Punjab are on record. The Central Sikh League held its first session at Amritsar on 29 December 1919, alongside the sessions of the Congress and the Muslim League. At its second session, at Lahore in October 1920, it voted to support non-cooperation and began enrolling volunteers, as the Congress and the Central Khilafat Committee were also doing. After the Nankana Sahib massacre of February 1921, Gandhi came to the shrine on 3 March with the Khilafat leaders Shaukat Ali and Muhammad Ali. When the Golden Temple keys were surrendered on 19 January 1922, Gandhi wired that the first decisive battle for India's freedom had been won. The Khilafat movement ended in 1922, after the non-cooperation movement ended, and the Republic of Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924.

Where: All over India, with Amritsar, Lahore and Nankana Sahib in Punjab as the places where Sikh and Khilafat politics met.

Why it mattered: For a few years Sikh, Congress and Khilafat politics moved together in Punjab, in the same months as the anger over Jallianwala Bagh. The Akali campaign for control of the gurdwaras had its own aim, and the SGPC, formed on 15 November 1920, carried that work forward. The end of the Khilafat movement in 1922 closed this period of joint action.