[ISLAM IN BRITISH INDIA / KHILAFAT MOVEMENT] یورپکی صداقت اوراسکا جواب [i.e., The authenticity of Europe and its answer]

ALI, MAULANA SHAUKAT (Indian Muslim leader of the Khilafat Movement) (1873-1938).

Chawkar Shali' Chawli, Pakistan, 1920.

Original stab-stitched wrappers. Cr. 8vo. (18 x 13 cm). In Urdu. 12 p. Weak printing on fragile pages, stains on extremities. Otherwise, a fair copy.

The very rare woodblock print pamphlet written by the freedom fighter of India under British rule, probably distributed clandestinely to gather the Khilafat Movement sympathizers against Britain. It’s unobtainable in online sources and not registered in institutional holdings, market, and auction records.

This pamphlet was written to criticize British colonialism and its attitude against the Khilafat Movement and 17-18 April events, just before the movement was introduced into the district of Malabar on 28 April 1920, by a Resolution at the Malabar District Conference, held at Manjeri. This small pamphlet was seemingly distributed also just before the non-cooperation movement, a political campaign launched on August 1, 1920, by Mahatma Gandhi to have Indians revoke their cooperation from the British government, to persuade them to grant self-governance. 

Maulana Shawkat Ali was an Indian Muslim leader of the Khilafat Movement that erupted in response to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He was the elder brother of the renowned political leader Mohammad Ali Jouhar.

Shaukat Ali helped his younger brother Mohammad Ali Jauhar to publish the Urdu weekly Hamdard and the English weekly Comrade. In 1915 he published an article that said Turks were right to fight the British. These two weekly magazines played a key role in shaping the political policy of Muslim India back then. In 1919, while jailed for publishing what the British charged as seditious materials and organizing protests, he was elected as the last president of the Khilafat conference. He was re-arrested and imprisoned from 1921 to 1923 for his support of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1919-1922). His fans accorded him and his brother the title of Maulana. In March 1922, he was in Rajkot jail and was later released in 1923.

Though he is widely known as an advocate of non-violence in the struggle against the British colonialists, he supplied guns to Indian revolutionaries like Sachindra Nath Sanyal.

In 1936, Ali became a member of the All India Muslim League and became a close political ally of and campaigner for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the future founder of Pakistan. He served as a member of the 'Central Assembly' in British India from 1934 to 1938. He traveled all over the Middle East, building support for India's Muslims and the struggle for independence from British rule in India. (Source: Wikipedia).

As of May 2024, we couldn’t trace any institutional holdings in OCLC and KVK.