The Aims and Objects of Khilafat Movement

The Aims and Objects of Khilafat Movement!

The Khilafat issue was not directly linked to Indian politics but it provided the immediate declaration to the movement and gone and added advantage of cementing Hindu-Muslim unity against the British.

The Khilafat Movement was against dismemberment of Turkey.

The British attempt at clipping the power of the Sultan of Turkey and fragmentation of his territory after the World War I aroused publics are against British in India. In early 1919 a Khilafat Committee was famed. It demanded first that the Khalifa’s control over Muslim sacred places should be restored and secondly, he should be left with sufficient territories.

Initially the Khilafat leaders limited their actions to meeting, petitions deputations in favour of the Khilafat. However, later on a militant trend emerges demanding an active agitation such as stopping all cooperation with the British. The All India Khilafat Conference held in Delhi in November 1919, a call made for Boycott of British goods.

The Khilafat leaders also clear spilt out that unless peace terms after the war were favourable to Turkey, they would stop all cooperation with the government. The movement succeeded in bringing a radical nationalist trend among the Muslim youth. It made traditional Muslim scholars critical of the British.

The Congress-support made it inter-religious and mass based. Its most important success was that it ensured Hindu-Muslim unity which was inevitable for the success of freedom struggle. The Khilafat issue, however, lost its value and merged along the Non-cooperation Movement of 1921.