Muhammad Ali Johar

Muhammad Ali Johar

(1878-1931)

Do not send me back to a colonized state, for I want to go back and live in an independent country.

Maulana Mohammad Ali Johar. [ 1930 ].

Islamic scholar Muhammad Ali Johar was a dynamic leader second only to Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself. He is best known for his leadership of the Khilafah movement, in whose capacity he was influential even among non-Muslims like Mohandas Gandhi.

The poet and journalist was educated at Aligarh and Oxford Universities and served in the Education Department of Rampur state, which was also his birthplace. He remained faithful to the All-India Muslim League, which he helped it’s found, and was particularly active between 1906 and 1928. He became president of the party in 1918.

As a journalist, he established the English weekly newspaper “Comrade” from Calcutta in 1911, and the Urdu weekly “Hamdard” in 1913 from Delhi. He had also been published in English newspapers like the Manchester Guardian and The Observer.

Like other stalwarts of the Pakistan movement, his concern for Muslim issues was prominent in his activism. What sets him apart from the other leaders of the movement though, is his active support for causes outside the subcontinent. Prominent among these was his championing of the cause of the Islamic Khilafah, which collapsed in 1924. He was jailed between 1911 and 1915 for his support of this cause. In 1915, he became the main leader of the Khilafah movement and led a delegation of Indian Muslims to London for this cause in 1920.

It is important to note that the Khilafat movement was not just focused on the Islamic world and the preservation of the Ottoman Caliphate. Another aspect of it promoted the freedom of all colonized people and nations. This aspect of the movement gained support from non-Muslim leaders as well, including India’s Mohandas Gandhi.

A former member of the Indian National Congress, he left the party in 1928 and expressed his support for Quaid-e-Azam’s fourteen points.

Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar died in London and was buried in Jerusalem. He had asked in his will that he be buried there because he did not want to return to a “slave country”.