NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 131 of 149

Correct — B, the statement that the Congress did not support it. The Congress did support the Khilafat cause: in 1920 an alliance was made between the Khilafat leaders and the Indian National Congress, and Gandhi and the Khilafat leaders undertook to work and fight together for both Khilafat and Swaraj. The Nagpur session of December 1920 committed the Congress to the joint Non-Cooperation programme. So the one characteristic that does NOT describe the movement is (b).

• (a)Mahatma Gandhi sought to link it to the Non-Cooperation movement — This is accurate, so it cannot be the answer. Gandhi saw the Khilafat question as the opportunity to bring Hindus and Muslims into a single national campaign, and the two causes were run as one programme from 1920.
• (c)It demanded that the Turkish Sultan must retain control over Muslim sacred spaces in the erstwhile Ottoman empire — This is also accurate. The movement's central demands were that the Caliph keep his temporal authority over the Muslim holy places and be left with enough territory to defend the faith, which is why the harsh terms imposed on Turkey after the First World War provoked it.
• (d)It was led by Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali — Correct as well. The brothers Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali were the movement's best-known leaders and were among those who formed the All India Khilafat Committee.

The Khilafat movement grew out of Indian Muslim anxiety over the fate of the Ottoman Sultan, who was also the Caliph, after Turkey's defeat in the First World War. Gandhi joined it to the national struggle, and the combined Khilafat and Non-Cooperation campaign of 1920-22 became the first genuinely mass movement of the freedom struggle.

The examiner has planted a negative statement among three positives, which is the standard shape of a NOT-question. If you remember one thing about Khilafat it should be the alliance, because the whole historical importance of the movement lies in the Congress joining it — that is what turned a religious grievance into a nationwide non-cooperation campaign, and what made its collapse after Chauri Chaura and Mustafa Kemal's abolition of the Caliphate so consequential.

• An alliance between the Khilafat leaders and the Indian National Congress was made in 1920.
• Gandhi and the Khilafat leaders promised to work together for the causes of Khilafat and Swaraj.
• The brothers Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali helped form the All India Khilafat Committee and led the movement.
• The demands centred on the Caliph retaining control of the Muslim holy places and sufficient territory.
• Non-Cooperation was launched in 1920 and endorsed at the Nagpur session in December of that year.

• Reading Khilafat as a purely religious movement outside national politics — the Congress alliance is the point.
• Confusing the Ali brothers with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was also active in the same years.
• Assuming the demands concerned Indian religious sites rather than the Ottoman holy places.

Khilafat appears as an assertion-and-reason pair, as a NOT-correct statement, or inside a chronology of 1919-22 events.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Khilafat movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement were run as a joint programme from

  • (a)1916
  • (b)1920
  • (c)1930
  • (d)1942

  Answer(b) 1920 — the year of the Khilafat-Congress alliance and the launch of Non-Cooperation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The All India Khilafat Committee was associated most closely with

  • (a)Bal Gangadhar Tilak and G. K. Gokhale
  • (b)Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali
  • (c)Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal
  • (d)Madan Mohan Malaviya and C. R. Das

  Answer(b) Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali — the brothers who led the movement.