Insight into Gandhi’s approach to multiculturalism
Reviewed by B. L. Chakoo

Gandhi and the Ali Brothers
by Rakhahari Chatterji.
Sage. Pages 229. Rs 695

The Khilafat Movement — as it began, unfolded and ended — was a highly complicated event in shaping Hindu-Muslim unity in the early 20th century India. Though it was thought to be basically concerned with the fate of the Caliph in the faraway Ottoman Empire, it gradually assumed tremendous significance in the history of contemporary India as it got "entwined with the emerging mass-based struggle" for freedom against British rule.

The leaders of this Movement were Ali brothers – Mohamed and Shaukat, who, during the early 1920s, personally and politically collaborated with Gandhi. In fact, Mohamed Ali wrote to Dr. Kitchlew: "It is Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, that has got to be dinned into the people’s ear, because he means Hindu –Muslim unity, non-cooperation and swaraja, while the rest are petty communal or local bodies, most of them tinged with personal ambition."Gandhi, at that time, took every opportunity to inform the Hindus of his high admiration of the Ali brothers. He put in all efforts to integrate the Muslims into the non-violent Non-cooperation Movement by upholding the Khilafat cause.

But not much later, the discordant voices among the Muslims in the "Bengal Muhammadan Association" declared that it would preach "the advantages and benefits of loyal cooperation to save the Muslim community from the unwholesome influence of Gandhi’s movement." And in Khilafat conferences held in the United Provinces and Bengal and in Meerut. "the ulamas present voiced their opposition to an alliance with Hindus for the promotion of the Khilafat cause and questioned the idea of Hindu-Muslim unity,"even though the Ali brothers continued to say that both Hindus and Muslims should live together "as brothers born of one mother."

The Ali brothers (left) Mohammed and Shaukat Ali

However, Gandhi’s expectation from this Movement was very high as he, at least for a time, believed it to be "foundational for Hindu-Muslim unity in India."

He even devoted himself wholeheartedly to bringing about the two communities – Hindus and Muslims – into a harmonious relationship, and without pleading or desiring an impossible fusion between the two peoples, he tried to unite them in a brotherhood. But, due to some political, social and religious reasons, the Movement did not survive even a decade and by the end of the 1920s it "withered."

Gandhi and the Ali Brothers –which, if patiently read, offers deep and fresh insights into Gandhi’s multiculturalism and his approach to the Muslim community –is perhaps one of the best books on the Khilafat movement and Ali brothers’ close collaboration with Gandhi. Though admittedly deficient in serious research, it is an interesting and skilful study of the intense relationship between Gandhi and Ali brothers particularly in context of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements; and of how it was forged and came to "a dead end" so soon.

Combining rigour with readability, the book leaves one with the feeling that Gandhi’s concept of "multicultural nationalism" or Hindu-Muslim unity was too idealistic and too early for its time: and compels the reader to think that it would "require many tragedies of the twentieth century, many exposures of criminal nationalism, from Nazism in Germany to ethnic cleansing in Balkans," to make a case for understanding, recognition, tolerance and multicultural nationhood which Gandhi greatly aspired for.

The book justly opens with "Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Gandhi." Following an entirely descriptive rather than interpretative method, the writer here vigorously suggests that Gandhi’s approach to the Muslim question during 1920s can best be understood from "the communitarian-multiculturalist perspective." Less penetrative, chapter two traces the micro-history of the Indian Muslims from the time of Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan quite perfectly but in a summary way. The third chapter shrewdly documents the Ali brothers’ background and their rise as the prime movers of the movement and "the main architects with Gandhi of the would-be Hindu-Muslim united front" against the British Empire in India.

The four chapters that follow provide an interesting account of the friendship between Ali brothers and Gandhi – its speedy germination, slow growth and fast end in tears. The concluding chapter draws our attention on a sophomoric explanation of the collapse of this friendship. Here the writer’s observation that from "an apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity and second only to Allah, Gandhi (later on) became to his (Mohamed Ali’s) eyes the one who wanted to hold the entire Muslim community in India in slavery to the Hindus" – is disturbing and a pathetic admission of the Ali brothers’ failure.

In brief, the book’s narrative and its milieu are competently reconstructed from ample collection of books, letters and papers, and from the stories of informants.

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