Ataturk's legacy is that he single handedly
first saved and then transformed the country
by the sheer force of his will.
He forced Turkey to modernize, he forced the people to give up Islamic culture and the Islamic way of life.
He single handedly built out of the ruins
of the Ottoman Empire a modern secular, powerful
and prosperous Turkey, a Turkey for the Turks…
Now Mohandas Gandhi strongly and whole heartedly
supported the Khilafat Movement, he grew personally
closed to the Khilafat leader's, he exhorted
the people of India to support the Khilafat movement.
Gandhi's championing of the Khilafat movement
unified and brought together Indian Muslims
from across the nation, it unified them in
service of a foreign cause that had nothing
to do with Indian freedom movement.
It unified them in allegiance to a foreign
ruler, an Islamic system of governance and Sharia law.
It legitimized the idea that Indian Muslims
allegiance elsewhere and have interest that
do not align with India's.
It planted the idea of otherhood of separateness
that their cause and their destinies were
separate from those Indian non-muslims.
Before I begin I would like to thanks Srijan
Foundation for inviting me here to give this talk.
So I'm going to speak about The Turkish Origins
of India's Partitions.
So this is the story about India, but it begins
a long time ago in a land, that’s very far
away and this is the land of modern nation
of Turkey.
So in this map we can see where Turkey is
located in the context of Asia and Europe.
Its approximately 2000 km from the western
borders of India and to the west of Turkey
you have Europe and to the right of Turkey
you have Asia and to the north you have the
Caucasus region and to the south you have
the sea, the Mediterranean sea.
So Turkey have borders with Greece and Bulgaria
it also share borders with Georgia, Armenia
and in Asia Turkey shares with Syria, Iraq
and Iran.
Now Turkey straddle, an imaginary line between
Europe and Asia.
97% of Turkey is located in the Peninsula
of Anatonia which lies in Asia and 3% of the
Turkey on the other side is in Europe in the
Balkan Peninsula.
Now European and Asian portion of Turkey are
divided, they are separated by two narrow
passage sea which are strait of Bosphorus
and the straits of the Dardanelles.
But Turkey occupies a key strategic transcontinental
location between Europe and Asia and as a
result, over the Millennia it is conquered
and ruled by Awhoju of ancient civilization.
So these included the Assyrians, the Hittites,
the Mitani, the Persians, the Greek, the Romans,
various European Crusaders and the Ottoman
Empire, the Turkish ottoman Empire.
Now among this the most significant, the Greeks
were had a presence in Anatolia since around
2000 BCE which is around 4000 years before
now.
The Greek writer Herodotus who is considered
among the western world to be the father of
History was born in Anatolia and the ruins
of the ancient city of Troy are also located in Anatolia.
Now in 667 BCE, the Greek founded a city called
Byzantium or Byzantian on the western bank
of the Bosphorus Straits.
Anatolia becomes part of the expanding Roman
Empire sometime after 200 BCE and 500 years
later when the western Roman empire was in
terminal decline, Byzantine Empire started prospering.
So the western Roman Empire fell in around
the 5th century CE and millions of people
continue to live in the Roman Empire in the
east up to the middle age.
This Byzantine Empire began around 330 CE
when the emperor Constatine rebuilt and refounded
the ancient of Byzantium and he name the city
as new Roman.
So Constantine was the first emperor to officially
adopt Christianity as its official state religion,
which would have far-reaching consequences.
So the Eastern Roman Empire came to be known
as the Byzantine Empire based on the Capital
City's old name and after this emperor Constantine
death the city came to be known as Constantinople,
the city of Constantine.
The Byzantine Empire went on to have a very
long interesting and tumultuous history and
finally in 1453 the ottoman Sultan Muhammad
the Conqueror captured Constantinople and
brought a conclusive end to the Byzantine
Empire.
When the Byzantine empire fell its inhabitants
were mostly Christians.
They were of Greek Romanian, a Roman Armenian and Georgian ethnicity and there were lots of Jews as well.
Now one of the most significant events of
the first Millennium after the birth of Christ
was the emergence of Islam as a driving force
of Conquest after the death of the Prophet
Muhammad in 632 CE and institution called
the Caliphate was founded.
It is called Khilafah in Arabic.
The caliphate is an Islamic State under the
leadership of a ruler called the Caliph.
The Caliph is considered to be the supreme
religious leader and of the Muslims and the
religious successor of the Prophet Muhammad.
He is regarded as the defender of Islam and
the supreme leader of the Islamic ummah, which
is the worldwide Islamic community.
The first Caliphate called the Rashidun Caliphate
was established immediately after Muhammad's
death in 632 CE.
The four Rashidun Caliph are called the Orthodox
Caliphs because they were selected from the
circle of friends of the Prophet Muhammad
and they ruled from Arabia.
So the Rashidun caliphate lasted from 632
CE to 661 CE and these are the four Rashidun
caliph - Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali.
So the Rashidun caliphate was characterized
by a 25-year period of Rapid military expansion.
By the 650s the caliphate in addition to the
Arabian Peninsula had subjugated West Asia
the trans-caucasus region, which is to the
north of the region of turkey.
It had conquered parts of North Africa from
Egypt, after Tunisia is a conquered, the entire
Iranian plateau and it had even conquered
some parts of ancient India including Afghanistan
and some parts of Central Asia in the East.
The second caliphate is the Umayyad caliphate,
it would from Damascus in Syria between 661
CE and 750 CE.
The Umayyads continued the Muslim conquests
incorporating more of Central Asia, Sindh,
Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, which
is today Spain all of these parts into the
Muslim world at its greatest extent the umayyad
caliphate covered more than 11 million square
kilometers and it had more than 33 million
subjects among its population, which makes
it one of the world's largest Empire in history
both in terms of area and the proportion of
the world's population.
The third caliphate is the Abbasid caliphate.
It ruled from Baghdad from 750 CE to 1258
CE.
During the Abbasid caliphate most of India,
much of India fell to the Islamic invasions.
Those Islamic invasions were not part of the
caliphate, they came from the north.
So, in this period Muslim scholars began to
discover Indian works of mathematics, science, art, etc.
These were translated from Sanskrit into Arabic
and as a result the Islamic world discovered
concepts such as toxicology, pharmacology,
surgery, astronomy, the decimal system algebra
and trigonometry and for a few centuries while
India fell into decline, the Islamic world
enjoyed a golden age where mathematics, science
and astronomy prospered and flourished.
This golden age of Islam came to an abrupt
halt in 1258 CE when the Mongol Empire captured
sacked and depopulated the city of Baghdad
and nearly obliterated the Islamic world.
So by the time, some of the knowledge which
these which the Islamic world acquired from
India had made its way to the west to Europe
and very soon Europe's own golden age, the
scientific revolution began approximately
500 years before today.
After the Mongol conquest of Baghdad, the
Mamluk sultanate of Egypt claimed the title
of caliph and declare the re-establishment
of the caliphate in Cairo.
So the Mamluk caliphate had rather shrunk
and it rule between 1261CE and 1517 CE and
it came to an end when the ottoman Sultan
Selim the first conquered Egypt and made it
part of the Ottoman Empire.
So the fifth and the final caliphate is the
ottoman caliphate which rule out of Constantinople
from 1517 CE to 1924 CE the previous century.
Now during this second and the third caliphate
that is the Umayyad caliphate and the Abbasid
caliphate large parts of Central Asia began
to be incorporated into the Islamic world
and this is when Islam first came into contact
with the turkic people, that's what they look
like Central Asian nomads.
So the earliest record of the Turkic people
go back to around 200 BCE when they were present
in eastern central Asia and Siberia in the
north of Asia.
The turkic people originally practiced the
religion called Tengrism.
So Tengrism is a Central Asian religion characterized by animism, Shamanism, ancestor worship and polytheism.
Animism is the belief that all objects, all
places, all Creatures possessed a distinct
spiritual Essence and Shamanism involves religious
practitioners called shamans who interact
with the spirit world.
And later on the Turks also Incorporated elements
of Buddhism in the religious practices.
So to make a long story short as a result
of the Islamic expansion into Central Asia.
The various turkic tribes ended up converting
to Islam and this began, this became the starting
point of an age of turkic expansion and conquest.
So soon after that Northern India came to
be invaded conquered and ruled by three successive Turkic dynasties.
These were the Mamluk dynasty from 1206 to 1290.
Its founder was Qutb ud-Din Aibak.
The Khilji Dynasty 1290-1320, one of its most
prominent rulers was Alauddin Khalji and the
Tughlaq Dynasty from 1320 to 1413.
Muhammad bin tughlaq is quite famous among
this dynasty.
So these were relatively short-lived dynasties
and the rule was marked with massacres, torture,
cruelty, forcible conversion to Islam and
rebellions.
The Islamic invader Taimur also known as Taimur
in India was of turkic ethnicity.
He's Infamous for massacring over a hundred
thousand people in just one day in 1398 right
here in the Delhi.
Taymor is estimated to have massacred a total
of more than 17 million people over the course
of his career in India, in Iran, in Anatolia,
in the Caucasus and the Middle East.
Now in the 13th century the Mongol Empire
led by Genghis Khan and his descendants rampaged
across Asia and Europe and smashed every King,
country and Empire that stood in its way.
So, the Turks of Central Asia fled for the
lives in all directions.
Among them was a turkic tribe led by a man
called Sulaiman Shah.
So for centuries, they had pitched through
their tents among along the shores and on
the edge of the Gobi desert, which is north
of China present day China.
But now they found the Mongol conquerors pressing into them coming from the north and threatening their lives.
So Sulaiman Shah fled South and came via Armenia
in to Anatolia and that's where that's the
first presence of the Turks in the region
which is known as Turkey.
So Suleyman Shah died and his son Ertuğrul
ruled in his stead and after him came Osman
after whom the Ottoman Empire is named and
from father to son, ten generations of Ottoman
Sultans came the followed each other.
There were often vicious and brutal, often
unjust and bestial.
But they were rulers, leaders of men and Generals.
They found in front of them a world of dying
Empire, the decades seljuk Empire, the worn-out
Arab Empire of Baghdad and the corrupt Byzantine
Empire, these days smashed and conquered within
300 years of the death of Sulaiman Shah, his
10th descendant Sulaiman, the Magnificent,
the lawgiver ruled an immense Empire that
stretched across three continents from Albania
to the Adriatic coast and to the Persian Frontier
and from Egypt to the Caucasus, Hungary and
the Crimea, the Crimea is up north of the
Black Sea.
So hungary and Crimea where his vassals.
The kings of Europe came to him with gifts
asking for help in the corals.
His armies stood across the road to the east
which means that the road to India was cut off.
And his Fleet sailed Supreme in the entire
Mediterranean region.
North Africa was beholden to him and also
Constantinople was his.
So Sulaiman the Magnificent made one big bid
at world domination.
He hammered on the gates of Vienna and seized
the Christian World by the throat.
He failed and Venus arrived.
Sulaiman the Magnificent died in 1566 and
the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest territorial
extent during the rule of Sultan Muhammad
the fourth around 1683 CE.
Now during this time, a curious thing happened.
The original Turkish Invaders look like proper
Central Asian nomads.
What a couple of centuries later their descendants
looked more like the local people of Anatolia
and the Balkans. So how did that happen?
So according to a turkic custom that stretches
back to the centuries back to the day of when
they were Nomads in Central Asia when a boy
reaches the cusp of adulthood is required
to prove his bravery and valor.
One of the ways of doing this is for him to
sneak into the camp of another tribe capture
a girl of marriageable age, fight over father
Brothers relatives if required, bring it back
to his camp and taken his wife.
This ancient turkic custom this called bride
kidnapping.
It is still widely practiced in the Central
Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan.
It is also practiced in the Caucasus region
even today.
These places Degestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan,
chechnya and similar customs are practiced
wherever you have people of turkic and even
Islamic demographics such as Cyprus, but also Pakistan.
So when these Central Asian turkic Nomads
conquered Anatolia, they found themselves
in a prosperous fertile well populated land
and there was no shortage of women to kidnap his brides.
It wasn't even hard to kidnap the womenfolk
of a subjugated and conquered people and so
in Anatolia, in Greece, in the Balkans and
other conquered territories, the Turks went
on a kidnapping spree.
They policy of systematically abducting, converting
and marrying local girls and women and as
a result of that over the course of a few
generations the Turks went from looking like
Central Asian Nomads to Europeans. Now ottoman rule was brutal.
It was characterized by massacres, by ethnic
cleansing, by systematic bride kidnapping,
by large scale conversion to Islam, the imposition
of sharia law and the imposition of jizya
tax on non-muslims.
Another distinctive ottoman practice was called
the blood tax.
This was a practice in which the Ottoman Empire
sent military officers to take Christian boys
ages 8 and above, from their families in Eastern
and Southeastern Europe in order that they
be raised to serve the state.
So this tax of son's was imposed only on the
Christian subjects of the empire in the villages
of the Balkans and Anatolia.
The boys were converted and indoctrinated
into a Islam with the primary objective of
training them for the military or the Civil
Service of the Empire and the most capable
among them were enlisted in elite infantry
units called the janissaries that formed the
ottoman Sultans household troops and bodyguards.
Now after Sulaiman the magnificent's death,
his son Selim II became Sultan and with Selim
II came corruption.
The 1911 Britannica Encyclopedia article on
selim II remarks that he was the first Sultan
entirely devoid of military virtues and willing
to abandon all power to his ministers provided
that he was left free to pursue his orgies
and debauchery.
So after Selim II, with only one exception, there came 27 Sultan's each more degenerate than the last.
The palace Harem and the eunuchs took control
the empire.
So without leaders the Turks went the Way
of all flesh.
The steel fiber went out of them, their energy,
their resilience, their Vitality, all disappeared.
They became lazy apathetic and corrupt.
And as a consequence of that, their long oppressed
subject people revolted against them.
Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria declared their
independence.
And within 300 years of the dying of Sulaiman
the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire lay bankrupt,
decrepit and dying.
So it was around this time, in the mid to
late 18th and 19th century that the Ottoman
Empire came to be called the ‘sick man of
Europe’.
Convinced that the Ottoman Empire must break
up the European powers, Russian eager to grab
and annex whatever they could and wherever
the dare.
So Russia sees the Crimea and the Caucasus
and Russia also lead claims to Constantinople
and the road which went to the Mediterranean
Sea.
France captured Syria and Tunisia each, England
occupied Egypt and Cyprus and the new and
expanding Germany championed the ottoman Sultan
the Khalif Abdul hamid against the rest of Europe.
His intention was obviously to Annex his territories
as soon as the, as the other powers of beaten off.
So all these great a powerful European nations
claimed special rights and privileges and
the greedy as their meal as far as like vultures
this they set waiting for the end.
They will or they were all afraid of each
other and they were all anticipating a great
War which indeed did happen soon enough.
But none of them at this point dare to rush
in and so the dying Ottoman Empire lived on
and the sultan Abdul Hamid from his Palace
on the Bosphorus cunningly played all this
Powers one against the other.
In 1870 Russia invaded, declared war and advanced
up to more than 10 miles of Constantinople.
But the rest of Europe world Russia not to
proceed any further.
So four years later, after the invasion by
Russia in 1881, there was born in the town
of Thessaloniki, which is now in Greece, those
born of a Turk named Ali Riza and Zübeyda
his wife, a boy whom the named Mustafa.
So, Ali Riza was a timber dealer and a former
government employee and Zübeyde came from
a long-established family of Albanian stock.
Now Ali Riza died when Mustafa was seven years
old.
So Mustafa grew up in fairly modest circumstances
and had five siblings only one of which survived
childhood it was a sister.
After the death of the father the family moved
to the countryside with to live with one of
Mustafa uncle and Mustafa did not attend school
regularly until you move back to Thessaloniki
at the age of nearly 10 and he wasn't there
for long.
He dropped out of school again, but at the
age of around 15, he applied to a middle school,
was accepted and graduated in 1895 as one
of the top students.
This is where his mathematics teacher gave
him the surname Kemal In Praise of his skills.
Kemal means perfection in Arabic.
In 1889 the first Armenian massacres took
place in Turkey followed by others in 1894,
1896, 1915 and 1920 which ended in the complete
disappearance of the Armenians from Turkey.
After graduation Mustafa attended Cadet School
in Macedonia.
In 1899 he moved to Constantinople capital
of the Empire and became an officer in the
military academy over there.
In 1908 as an army Chief of Staff.
He supported the Young Turk Rebellion which deposed the sultan and restored a constitutional government.
In 1911 and 1912 he fought as a major in the
Italian - Turkish war.
In 1912, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria
formed an alliance and attacked the Ottoman Empire.
This was the first Balkan war and Mustafa
Kemal fought in it as well.
In 1914, turkey took its obsolescent Army
into the first world war as an alley of Germany.
In February, 1915 a large British naval fleet
comprising battleships, destroyers and transport
Fleet, a transport ships entered the Straits
of the Dardanelles.
Their plan conceived by Winston Churchill
was to enter the narrow straight smash the
ottoman defensive forces using the enormous
Firepower of their battleships, land a large
occupation force of about 80,000 soldiers
and take Constantinople.
At this time, Mustafa Kemal was an unknown
officer.
He commanded a feeble, ill-equipped and outmatched
Turkish division at the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Yet His Brilliant strategy and ferocious personal
leadership change the course of the battle and the war.
Day after day, week after week, month after
month, his forces beat back the British, Indian
French, Australian and New Zealand troops
time of the time and for them to a vicious
and brutal stalemate after 10 months the British
signal defeat and sail back leaving behind
a new hero in Turkey.
Mustafa Kemal gained worldwide acclaim and
prestige for role in serving Turkey.
But yet, just one victory and one great General
was not enough for turkey.
The world war was lost and the end of this
war in 1918 brought with it the end of the
old Ottoman Empire.
In one of the suburbs of Paris, Sevres, the
Ottoman Empire was dismembered, its largest
chunks for handed over to the British and
the French.
Other valuable possessions were assigned to
the Italians and the Greeks.
Constantinople and the Straits way internationalized.
Constantinople was occupied by British and
French troops and the parts of the former
Ottoman Empire inhabited by Arabs were placed
under great power tutelage.
Other former Turkish possessions, like Armenia
and Kurdistan were to gain independence.
Under the treaty of Sevres, the Turks were
cut off not only from the Mediterranean Sea,
all they were given was a small region in
the highlands of Anatolia.
The Khalif eager to Retain his power his title
and his privileges, extended his full cooperation
to the British, to the occupiers.
He ordered the Turkish Army to stamp out all
opposition to the foreign occupation.
He drew upon his authority as the leader of
the Islamic world and called upon his subjects
to stand by the Khalif and the throne.
Priests throughout Turkey repeated his message
and exhorted the people to support the Khalif.
So many towns and villages rose up in support
of the caliph and others rose up against the occupation.
So what happened was that the town was divided
against down family against family, father
against son, brother against brother and from
end-to-end Turkey was drawn, was torn in the
hideous nightmare of Civil War.
Meanwhile Greece prepared for a new invention
of Turkey, confident that the Allied armies
would not prevent it from doing so and on
May 5th 1919 the Greeks landed their troops
on the shores of Anatolia.
At this time when this happened most of a
Kemal was in the town of Ankara in Anatolia.
He organized a Turkish Liberation movement
and raise the free Turkish Army.
His goal was to create a modern Turkish Republic
exclusively for the Turkish people and he
was constantly in danger of being captured
and executed by the caliph forces.
Mustafa Kemal quickly gathered the troops
of an occupied Turkey and went to war with
Greece, the war with the Greeks lasted three
years from 1919 to 1922.
This was a war of extermination across justice
and no mercy was asked or given.
In September 1922 the Greeks were driven back
to the Agean sea.
Thousands of Greeks poured into the town of
Smyrna on the western shore of Anatolia.
They were fleeing from Mustafa kemal's armies.
So offshore Allied ships or stood by and watched,
while Mustafa kemal's forces entered the city
and then they took vengeance, brutal massacres
were committed, unspeakable atrocities were
committed and then the city was burned.
The final atrocity of the Great War the final
atrocity that ended the war.
The outcome of the Great Fire of Smyrna was
the complete Exotics of the Greek and Armenian
population of the city to Greece.
So that was the end of the war.
After winning the war, Mustafa Kemal remove
his uniform never don, never wear it again.
He was given the title of Ghazi which means
holy Warrior and he was granted dictatorial
powers by the elected National Assembly.
The foreign occupation forces were evacuated
from Constantinople and Khalif Muhammad the
sixth whose family had reigned over turkey
for seven centuries feared for his life and
went into Exile as crowds cheered is going.
The war ended with a compulsory population
exchange between Greece and Turkey based on
religious identity.
This resulted in a near complete expulsion
of Christians from Turkey and a similar exposure
of Muslims from Greece.
In 1914 non-muslims made up more than 19 percent
of Turkish population.
By 1927, there are only 2.5% of turkeys population
and in 2005 this figure had dropped to just 0.2 percent.
Ataturks dream of a Turkish Republic exclusively
for the Turkish people came true.
In 1924, the ottoman caliphate was abolished.
So as the first president of the Turkish Republic
Mustafa Kemal kept his Limitless wartime powers
and his command of the army.
He renamed Constantinople to Istanbul and
he made Ankara the capital of Turkey.
He established Turkey as a truly secular Republic.
He abolished the use of the Arabic script
in turkey, and he adopted the Latin script instead.
Instead of Friday, which is the day sacred
to Islam, he proclaimed the Western Sunday
as the official day of rest.
He banned the burqa and the Hijab, he abolished
polygamy.
He gave women equal rights under the law and
opened all trades and professions to women
and he ordered Turkish citizens men as well
as women to adopt western clothes and western
style family names.
He himself accepted the title of Ataturk,
which means father of the Turks.
Ataturk adopted six young orphan girls.
One of his adoptive daughters went on to become
the world's first female fighter pilot.
In 1938 Ataturk died at the age of 58.
He spent 13 years of his life in active warfare
fighting for turkey after that for 15 years
till his death, he was Turkeys first president
and absolute ruler.
Other thoughts Legacy is that he single-handedly
first saved and then transformed the country
by the sheer force of his will, he forced
turkey to modernize, he forced the people
to give up Islamic culture and the Islamic
way of life.
He single-handedly built out of the ruins
of the Ottoman Empire a modern secular powerful
and prosperous Turkey a Turkey for the Turks.
So now over story moves East towards to India.
In 1915, after about 21 years in South Africa,
Mohandas Gandhi sailed to India and upon arriving
he joined the Indian National Congress.
He quickly became an enormously influential
powerful and popular leader.
Now in 1919 as we saw the ottoman caliph supposition
was greatly weakened and made ineffectual
by Mustafa kemal's Turkish Liberation movement.
This raised the very real possibility that
the caliphate could be abolished.
Now these events were happening in a far off
country 2000 kilometers away from India.
They had nothing to do with India or with
India's Freedom Movement.
No one in India even knew about these things except for India's British educated English-speaking Elite.
So, in 1919 several of these British educated
Indian Muslim leaders formed the all India
Khilafat committee and launched what come
to be known as the Khilafat movement.
They included people such as Muhammad Ali
Johar his brother Shaukat Ali, Abul Kalam
Azad and Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari who happens
to be a former vice president Hamid Ansari grand uncle.
They aim to build political Unity among Indian
Muslims and use that influence to protect the caliphate.
They also founded the Jamia millia islamia
in 1920 to promote independent education and
unity for Indian Muslims.
Now Mohandas Gandhi strongly and wholeheartedly
supported the khilafat movement.
He grew personally closed the Khilafat leaders.
He exhorted people the people of India to
support the khilafat movement.
Now a question how many of you have Twitter
accounts?
please raise your hands. So quite a few right?
So the average Twitter user I would say would
have about a couple of hundred followers approximately
now everybody who's on Twitter has strong
opinions and passionate beliefs about various
things about politics, especially and the
tweet the views and opinions passionately
the problem though for the average Twitter
user is that they don't have much traction
their views and opinions don't reach a big
or a wider audience because only a handful
of people follow them.
Now let's say that you have a Twitter account
which has 100 followers and you tweet all
the time, but you don't get very much interaction.
Now what if and influencers of a big Twitter
account with say a million followers were
to follow you and start retweeting your tweets.
So what would happen then?
So in that case what will happen is that you
will get thousands of new followers overnight
and your followers will keep growing as this
influencer keeps repeating your your Tweets,
the number of people interacting with you
will grow exponentially you will start connecting
with an entire community of like-minded people
and more and more people will join the community
and pretty soon you will find that you no
longer need the momentum of the retweets of
the big influencer to influence others.
So essentially what happens is that you become
an influence of yourself and your ideas opinions
and your voice reins traction.
It gain currency your opinions gained currency.
Now imagine that Twitter existed in 1919 and
everybody had Twitter accounts.
So if that were true then who would have the
biggest Twitter account.
Mahatama Gandhi because he was the most influential
and popular leader of the time not just India,
but worldwide. So let's say he has a hundred billion followers or two for five.
She was very popular, very popular and very
influential and these obscure and unknown
khilafat leaders. There would have just a handful of Twitter followers.
right thousand two thousand five thousand.
So that's not nearly enough to build any kind
of traction.
Now what if Gandhi followed The khilafat leaders
Twitter account and begin retweeting the tweets
and opinions regularly daily.
So what will happen is that these Khilafat
leaders would quickly become powerful influencers
themselves, they would gain a big fellow following
themselves and soon they would not need done
is help anymore to build the following and
pursue their political agenda.
So this thought experiment illustrates the
effect that Gandhi's championing of the khilafat
movement had in 1919 or 1920 it gave enormous
publicity to this cause to this to an obscure
movement in support of a foreign cause a movement
that was irrelevant to India and indifferent
to the cause of India's independence.
Nobody in India know about the movement or
the cause Gandhi gave it importance and brought
it right into the national Center Stage.
So Gandhi championing of the khilafat movement
unified and brought together Indian Muslims
from across the Nation, it unified them in
service of a foreign cause that had nothing
to do with India's Freedom Movement and unified
them in allegiance to a foreign ruler and
Islamic system of governance and Sharia law.
It legitimized the idea that Indian Muslims
Allegiance elsewhere and have interests that
do not align with India's.
It planted the idea of other hood of separateness.
That their interests and causes and their Destinies were separate from those of India's non-muslims.
Gandhi's trumpeting of the khilafat movement
also led to millions of Hindus and sikhs and
others participating the in the movement.
So the impression was that the word Khilafat
has something to do with the Arabic word Khilaf
which means ‘opposition’, it means ‘dissent’.
That word obviously, we know, it's quite widely
used in Hindi.
And if I'm not mistaken, this false notion
was also taught in India's history textbooks
after independence.
Khilafat movement wasn't was a movement against
the British, a moment to oppose the British.
So what happened was that millions of Hindus
and Sikhs and Buddhists, Jains and others
took part in the khilafat movement.
So what happened was that millions of Hindus
and Sikhs and others they took part of the
khilafat movement, in the belief that it was
about opposing the British when in reality.
They were agitating in favor of restoring
and Islamic system of governance and Sharia law.
In 1922 the khilafat movement leaders criticized
Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and broke
their ties with him and after 1924 when Ataturk abolished the caliphate, interest in the movement faded away.
But however the khilafat movement had a powerful
cascading effect on the Indian Freedom struggle.
It became the catalyst for the demand for
an Islamic Pakistan separate from India.
It's principal leaders The Ali Brothers joined
the Muslim League and the went on the play
a major role in the growth of the Muslim leagues
popular appeal and the subsequent Pakistan
movement which culminated in the partition
of India.
Now curiously enough Muhammad Ali Jinnah was
highly critical of Gandhi's support for the
khilafat movement. He saw it as an endorsement of religious fanaticism.
Jinnah was a member of the Indian National
Congress since 1906.
He was a member of the so-called moderate
group in the Congress which favored hindu-muslim
unity in achieving self-government.
Jinnah even opposed the formation of the all
India Muslim League in 1906.
At that time he said that the principle of
separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims
was dividing the nation against itself.
So these were the views of Jannah.
Now Jinnah was a prominent Congress leader
during the decade of the first world war.
He led the Congress delegation to London in
1914.
By 1920, Gandhi whose methods and policies
Jinnah strongly disagreed with had taken over
the Congress leadership and Jinnah found himself
marginalized.
Disillusioned and frustrated he resigned from
the Congress that year.
He spent much of the next 14 years in political
wilderness spending much of the time in England.
In 1932, Jinnah read Ataturk's biography.
This had a profound effect on Jinnah. He became obsessed with Ataturks.
For a while, it was all that he talked about
even at home, even to his daughter Dina, who
was about 13 years old at the time.
Ataturk's life story gave Jinnah a new purpose
in life.
Jinnah return to India in 1934 and set out
to work for a separate Homeland for India's
Muslims using Ataturk's career and actions
as a template.
So when the British eventually partitioned
India the compulsory population exchange between
Greece and Turkey was replicated in a one-sided
way in the form of Pakistan's expulsion and
eradication of its Hindu and Sikh population.
Events such as the Armenian Genocide and the
burning of the City of Smyrna were replicated
in the violence and Terror that Jinnah Unleashed
during the so-called direct-action day and
also in the unspeakable violence and atrocities
perpetrated during partition.
Those tactics were seen again in the Kashmir
Valley in 1989, in the genocide, in occupation
of the Kashmiri pandits and Customs such as
bride kidnapping that we spoke about earlier,
are still rampant in Pakistan and they are
used exclusively on young Hindu girls.
Jinnah died in 1948. This is his mausoleum. This is Ataturk's mausoleum.
So Jinnah was inspired by Ataturk's in life
and in his death.
Now, let's be realistic. Jinnah was no Ataturk. Ataturk's was an absolute Colossus of a man.
He was a truly great military commander and
an equally great reformer of his country.
Jinnah had no comparable qualities.
Jinnah was fortunate that his Ambitions aligned
perfectly well with the British plan to partition India.
So the credit for ideas partition does not
go to Jinnah, it goes to the British and the
Indians who helped them.
Now the theme of this talk is to show how
a sequence of events that was set the precedent,
set in motion in Turkey a long time ago, eventually
ended up culminating in India's partition.
The other theme of this talk is that since
we have covered the careers of Ataturk and
Gandhi in some detail, these are two extremely
different leaders were both regarded as the
fathers of their Nation.
Why not compare and contrast them and see
what the throws up.
So we can do that by asking the following
questions.
Was Gandhi a good leader? Was he a strong leader?
Was he successful was he or was he a bad leader
of poor leader, a weak leader?
Did you feel as a leader?
And what about Ataturk's, he a good leader?
Was he a strong leader?
Was it successful or was he a bad leader? So how do we determine this answer?
Do we go by gut feeling or is there a more rigorous way of evaluating a leaders leadership qualities?
So what if we ask this question in the, instead
as a leader, what was Gandhi's constituency?
In other words whom did Gandhi represent as
a leader?
whom they deserve? So this question reveals two things.
First the essence of leadership is service
and second one cannot be a leader without
having a constituency. So what's a constituency?
It's a finite set of people whose interests
or leader protects and promotes.
It's a finite set of people whom the leader
represent and serves.
So the essence of leadership is service.
The service on one's constituency, a leaders
constituency is always finite.
So we all recognize these words.
We know what they mean. But do we know what they represent?
These words represent a leader promised to
his constituency, to his people, the people
he serves, the leader is obviously Lord Krishna
as we know and who are the people whom he serves?
They are the people who follow the path of righteousness of Dharma and there is a finite group of people.
It's not infinite because not everybody follows
Dharma or wants Dharma to prevail and therefore
this shows us that the essence of leadership
is the service of a finite number of people,
a finite constituency.
So if you take if you think of any great leader,
you will be immediately able to identify who
is their constituency.
For example, whom did Julius Caesar serve? The people of Rome. right?
What about Napoleon? The people of France.
What about Abraham Lincoln - the United States.
Ataturk's? And so it's immediately clear, isn't it?
So what about this gentleman, who does it
serve himself?
Whom does the prime minister of Pakistan serve?
Does he serve the people or he served the
army and whom does the Pakistan army serve?
Whom did this gentleman serve? Whom did Gandhi serve?
Did he serve the people of India the entire
undivided population of India?
Did he serve the Indian civilization?
Did he or did he serve a subset of the population,
the Hindus, Sikhs, etc.
Did he served the Muslims or did he serve
the British?
So that's a question. We need to ponder both.
Now what about the Good Shepherd and his flock
of sheep?
Whom does the shepherd serve?
See the shepherd ensures that his flock is
well taken care of.
It has the best grass to graze upon, ensures
that they have enough water to drink.
It takes care of his flocks security.
It keeps the big bad wolf away.
He provides his flock with a safe comfortable
secure place to stay at night.
In other words he dedicates his entire existence
to the service of his flock.
So he serves his flock, right? So who did he serve?
He serves whoever owns the flock of sheep,
right.
He served the sheep's owners, the flock’s
owner.
So this is not service right?
He's serving the person who owns the Sheep.
So the shepherd is not the Sheep's leader,
he is the prison guard, he is the slave driver, isn't he?
The ship's owner is the Shepherd boss and
sheep are the shepherd's subordinates.
The shepherd's service extends upwards not
downwards.
So that is not leadership that is merely providing
service for a fee.
The shepherd may look like a great leader
and a great servant to his flock, but he is
not so, appearances can deceive.
Now do we have any corporate project managers here? Nobody, okay.
So let's say we have a corporate project manager
who manages let's say 20 people whom does
she serve? She serves the company, right?
She doesn't serve those people. She's just managing them. So that is not leadership. That is not leadership.
So let's dig a little bit deeper.
That Gandhi actions aligned with India's national
interest and what about Ataturk's where his
actions aligned with? the national interest
of Turkey.
So once again to answer these questions, we
need to ask ourselves.
What is the national interest?
Is it some vague arbitrary undefinable concept
or is it something that we can actually Define
in a more precise manner?
So, how about we Define the national interest
as ensuring the long-term security prosperity
and territorial Integrity of the nation and
its people.
So we can test that out by applying the definition
to the nation of the sheep.
The sheep have a small nation a small territory
within which they graze and live.
The shepherd takes care of the long-term security
of the sheep as well as that of the children
and descendants for the long term foreseeable
future forever basically.
The shepherd also ensures that the sheep are
well fed, well-watered and that they never
have to do a day's work in their life.
In other words, the sheep our assured long-term
prosperity for themselves and for their descendants,
the shepherd also takes care of the sheep's
territorial Integrity.
No other predator animal is allowed to intrude.
So we have a situation where the sheep's long-term
security is assured their long-term prosperity
is assured and the territorial Integrity is
also assured and yet they are nothing but slaves.
So these sheep are born into a world of Illusion.
A world of apparent never-ending comfort and
security they live their entire lives under
this illusion of security prosperity and comfort.
They see that friends and family taken away
from time to time, but they don't think much of it.
They trust the good Shepherd.
So when is this beautiful illusion shattered, but it's too late when they reach the slaughterhouse, right?
So what was missing in our definition of the
national interest, it is self determination
and cultural Integrity.
You see the Sheep don't have any self determination,
they just follow the shepherd's orders.
They're happy and they're comfortable and
they enjoy having somebody to tell them what to do.
That's why they're enslaved.
And also the shepherd has imposed his own
preferred culture and lifestyle upon the sheep.
Its a culture and lifestyle that's foreign
to the sheep to the species.
They are not allowed to practice their natural
indigenous culture and lifestyle which is
roaming around and climbing hills and all
that and the sheep are blissfully unaware of this.
They think that they live the way things ought
to be.
So over improve definition of the national
interest could be.
Ensuring the long-term security, prosperity,
general territory Integrity self-determination
and cultural Integrity of a nation and its
people.
So that's not a very bad definition and we
can use this definition to answer that question,
which you asked earlier.
Yes, where Gandhi's actions are aligned with
India's national interest based on that definition
that we just saw and what about Ataturk's?
So there is something that we can think about
and one more question.
What If instead of Ataturk's, Turkey had a
leader who had Gandhi's qualities and what
if instead of Gandhi India had a leader of Ataturk's qualities. Would history have turned out differently?
Thank you.
