MEA weighs in on meeting between Indian diplomat Ausaf Sayeed and OIC Secretary-General, says it was held to ‘correct some misperceptions about India’.
In February, OIC invited India to attend the plenary after five decades. Now it has expressed concern over developments like scrapping of Article 370, Ayodhya verdict & CAA.
In tactical terms, the shirtless protest was worse than a self-goal. Suddenly, the fiascos of the AI Summit were forgotten, and the Youth Congress’s disruption became the issue.
IAF is fine with accepting the aircraft with 'must-haves', even if some other steps remain pending, which may take at least another year, it is learnt.
In spite of trying a million times
Your thoughts are still inclined towards muslims and it reflected in a subtle way that this article is written by a unknown Muslim writer who is trying to show the real image through his writings.
Well done muslim ?
This article shows Ibn Khaldun Bharati’s thorough grasp of the issue. I never fail to be dazzled by the breadth and depth of his knowledge of any subject that he chooses to discuss. And the way he organises and articulates his thoughts is positively first rate. After reading this article I also read all the four comments below, and three of them, albeit sounding serious, would come off as laughable to anyone who has some real understanding of the subject.
1. Right or Wrong Indian Muslims have a strong sense of Ummah solidarity, seeing the Arab world as their another support base. Even making jokes about Hindus surviving on support from Arab countries. I have seen my Muslim friends behaving as if they own Dubai and Doha.
2. Many Indian Muslims believe that the western world has a deep love for them. Have you seen Prince Charles packing dates for our Rozas?
3. Muslims believe ( or they just say so) Indian Hindus oppose Modi, the BJP, and the RSS. In Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kashmir, Punjab, Bengal, and Kerala, BJP will never win. In other states, they’ve lost support. In UP, they are on their way out.
When I mention that after the Lok Sabha, they have won Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi, Muslims remain silent.
Escapism is the most serious hazard to survival. Indian Muslims are acting mature but do not have any strategy to counter rising communal polarisation.
Why should the safety, security, well being, welfare of Indian Muslims have anything to do with the 57 member states of the OIC. They are full fledged Indian citizens. Each organ of the Indian state should work as diligently for them it does for members of the majority community. It is disrespectful to suggest that there is something lacking in their Indianness, that they look wistfully to foreign countries, most notably Pakistan, for support. They should not be required to make overt displays of loyalty to India, which are taken for granted for others.
Raihan Baig Saheb, thanks a lot for reading my article, and taking the trouble to leave your detailed comments here.
I’ll deal your comments in the same order as yours — serially and one by one.
1 – You say, “Maulana Jauhar’s statement was a reflection of the emotional and spiritual consciousness of Muslims as part of a global religious community, while being fully loyal to their Indian homeland.”
My contention is that the Two Circles concept was a figurative representation of the split personality of the Muslim community. The real circle — the “emotional and spiritual”, the one to which the their heart and mind belonged — was the Muslim world. The Indian circle was incidental to this conceptualisation. Their Indianness was an accident of birth. It was a physical incident, with little “emotional and spiritual” attachment.
You say, “dual identity does not mean dual loyalty”. It does. If it didn’t, the Indian Muslims would be more worried about India’s interests than the Muslim countries’. It’s a simple poser, has the pro-Muslim foreign policy advanced or compromised India’s interests? Please, answer this in your heart.
Mohammad Ali had a meteoric rise with the Khilafat movement, and, much like a meteor, petered out along with the movement. Was this movement meant to secure Swaraj, or was the Muslim acquiescence to Swaraj was at the condition that the Hindus should help them protect the Khilafat by the forcing the British into it? You know the answer well.
I need not remind you that Mohammad Ali participated in the First Round Table Conference as a part of the Muslim League’s delegation.
As for his “martyrdom”, well, he died of illness at a relatively young age of 51.
2 – I said that the Khilafat movement was aimed at saving the Ottoman caliphate. Swaraj wasn’t its purpose. It wasn’t an India centric movement. Yes, indeed it was a mass movement of Muslims which Mahatma Gandhi tried to harness to the national movement, but he failed in it. Khilafat brought the genie of Muslim separatism out of the bottle. You know how it led to the partition.
3 – Critiquing my views on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad of the period of Al Hilal, and Al Balagh, you say, “Azad’s aim was to awaken anti-colonial and pan-Indian consciousness among Muslims. He was a committed opponent of British rule and remained a fierce advocate of Indian unity and pluralism until the end.” Change the term pan-Indian with pan-Islamic, and I won’t have much to argue with you. If you had seen the two journals, or had read about its content and style, you would know that it was pan-Islamic, not pan-Indian. Maulana Azad’s campaign to become Imam-ul Hind, and his fatwa declaring India Darul Harb, which led to the migration of thousands of Muslims to Afghanistan and Central Asia, caused the damage which isn’t talked about much because of his later nationalist role.
As for Iqbal, you have more or less agreed with my view. However, let’s have the clarity that his shift to pan-Islamism was ideological, and therefore, political. I won’t call it philosophical.
4 – After Khilafat, Palestine has been the most emotive issue for the Indian Muslims. Foreign policy of the national movement, and of independent India was a prisoner of the Muslim sentiments for a long time.
Gandhi and Nehru wanted to keep the Muslims on their side. If their political pragmatism coincided with their idealism on the Palestine policy, it was indeed a rare coincidence. I would only draw your attention to the fact that India didn’t establish full diplomatic relations with Israel even after many leading Arab countries had done so.
5 – India is the country of over 20 crore Muslims, the third largest Muslim population in the world where the two countries with higher populations are just marginally above it. One out of ten Muslims in the world is a Muslim.
How come it bothers no Indian Muslim that their country is not represented on OIC? Aren’t they the same people whose political consciousness begins and ends with counting the number of Muslims in the parliament and the assemblies? They are happy about Zohran Mamdani’s win, but aren’t bothered about their absence from the OIC. Why?
6 – Whether the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate had universal support of the Muslims or not, all the leading and legitimate Muslims powers of the day in Arabia, and Turkey itself, were in its favour. The question, however, is — what was Indian Muslims stake in it? Had they ever been a part of it? To say the least, they were being quixotic. They had the urge to fight the British, but they couldn’t fight for India, so they fought for Turkey.
Conclusion : Indian Muslims must learn to draw right conclusions from the known facts. They can’t have one opinion for the private circulation and another for the public consumption. They must rid themselves of the too clever by half argumentation that doesn’t befit even Tahsil court’s vakil. Enough of glib vakalat and cheeky arguments. Let’s have some honest conversation now.
The article is full of lies, contains twisted quotes by Ali Jauhar, and misrepresents Mawlana Azad. This “Bharati” again proved him to be a WhatsApp university graduate!
The article presents a deeply flawed narrative based on selective history and sweeping generalizations about Indian Muslims. Below is a factual and principled rebuttal to its major claims:
1. ? “Two Circles” — A Misused Quote
The article quotes Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar from the Round Table Conference (1930):
> “I belong to two circles of equal size, but which are not concentric. One is India, and the other is the Muslim world… We as Indian Muslims belong to these two circles, each of more than 300 millions, and we can leave neither.”
This quotation is historically accurate. Maulana Jauhar did articulate a dual belonging — to the Indian nation and to the global Muslim Ummah.
❗ However, the conclusion drawn in the article — that this implies divided loyalty or anti-nationalism — is entirely unfounded.
Maulana Jauhar’s statement was a reflection of the emotional and spiritual consciousness of Muslims as part of a global religious community, while being fully loyal to their Indian homeland. His life, activism, and martyrdom in the cause of India’s independence are testament to that.
Dual identity does not mean dual loyalty. Just as a person can be a proud Indian and a global environmentalist or humanitarian, a Muslim can simultaneously identify with India and care about the global Muslim Ummah — without disloyalty to either.
2. Misrepresenting Pan-Islamism
The article equates Indian Muslim solidarity with the Ottoman Caliphate as disloyalty to India. This is misleading. The Khilafat Movement (1919–24) was not anti-national; in fact, it was one of the earliest mass movements against British colonialism, and had the support of Mahatma Gandhi as a strategy to unite Hindus and Muslims.
3. Misleading Framing of Maulana Azad and Iqbal
The article implies that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s writings and journals like Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh gave ideological shape to pan-Islamism, and suggests that this somehow weakened Indian nationalism. This is a gross mischaracterization.
While Al-Hilal did express concern for the global Muslim condition, Azad’s aim was to awaken anti-colonial and pan-Indian consciousness among Muslims. He was a committed opponent of British rule and remained a fierce advocate of Indian unity and pluralism until the end.
His participation in the Indian National Congress, his opposition to the Two-Nation Theory, and his authorship of India Wins Freedom clearly show his unwavering loyalty to a unified and secular India.
Portraying him as a progenitor of religious separatism is historically incorrect and intellectually dishonest.
Similarly, Allama Iqbal’s later poems may have expressed pan-Islamic visions, but his earlier works like Tarana-e-Hindi (“Saare Jahan Se Achha…”) are deeply patriotic. His shift was philosophical, not a rejection of Indian belonging.
4. India’s Palestine Policy Was Not Appeasement
The claim that India’s support for Palestine was to appease Muslims is historically incorrect. India’s position was rooted in its anti-colonial and moral diplomacy. Leaders like Nehru and Gandhi opposed Western imperialism in all its forms. The Non-Aligned Movement shaped India’s consistent stance — not community appeasement.
5. Unfair Blame on Indian Muslims for OIC Politics
To blame Indian Muslims for India not being included in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is absurd. That is a matter of international geopolitics, especially Pakistan’s influence, and has nothing to do with the loyalty of Indian Muslims.
6. Abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate Was Not Universally Supported
The article claims that Arabs and Turks supported the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate. This is factually incorrect.
In Turkey, the Sheikh Said rebellion (1925) was a direct response to Mustafa Kemal’s abolition of the Caliphate.
In the Arab world, major scholars including those of Al-Azhar University (Cairo) condemned the abolition.
The Jerusalem Conference (1931) and Mecca Conference (1926) were organized to revive the Caliphate, proving that strong opposition existed.
Popular opinion in Palestine, India, Egypt, and Syria viewed the Caliphate as an institution of religious unity and rejected its removal.
Only a small group of secular nationalist elites and pro-European forces supported the dismantling of the Caliphate — not the wider Arab or Turkish Muslim masses.
? Conclusion: Complex Identities, Undeniable Loyalty
Indian Muslims, like others, carry complex identities — spiritual, cultural, and national. Their bond with the Ummah is religious, not political; their loyalty to India is complete and evident in history, struggle, and sacrifice.
Attempts to delegitimize that loyalty by cherry-picking history and twisting statements — like that of Maulana Jauhar — do a disservice to both truth and national unity.
In spite of trying a million times
Your thoughts are still inclined towards muslims and it reflected in a subtle way that this article is written by a unknown Muslim writer who is trying to show the real image through his writings.
Well done muslim ?
This article shows Ibn Khaldun Bharati’s thorough grasp of the issue. I never fail to be dazzled by the breadth and depth of his knowledge of any subject that he chooses to discuss. And the way he organises and articulates his thoughts is positively first rate. After reading this article I also read all the four comments below, and three of them, albeit sounding serious, would come off as laughable to anyone who has some real understanding of the subject.
1. Right or Wrong Indian Muslims have a strong sense of Ummah solidarity, seeing the Arab world as their another support base. Even making jokes about Hindus surviving on support from Arab countries. I have seen my Muslim friends behaving as if they own Dubai and Doha.
2. Many Indian Muslims believe that the western world has a deep love for them. Have you seen Prince Charles packing dates for our Rozas?
3. Muslims believe ( or they just say so) Indian Hindus oppose Modi, the BJP, and the RSS. In Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kashmir, Punjab, Bengal, and Kerala, BJP will never win. In other states, they’ve lost support. In UP, they are on their way out.
When I mention that after the Lok Sabha, they have won Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi, Muslims remain silent.
Escapism is the most serious hazard to survival. Indian Muslims are acting mature but do not have any strategy to counter rising communal polarisation.
Why should the safety, security, well being, welfare of Indian Muslims have anything to do with the 57 member states of the OIC. They are full fledged Indian citizens. Each organ of the Indian state should work as diligently for them it does for members of the majority community. It is disrespectful to suggest that there is something lacking in their Indianness, that they look wistfully to foreign countries, most notably Pakistan, for support. They should not be required to make overt displays of loyalty to India, which are taken for granted for others.
Raihan Baig Saheb, thanks a lot for reading my article, and taking the trouble to leave your detailed comments here.
I’ll deal your comments in the same order as yours — serially and one by one.
1 – You say, “Maulana Jauhar’s statement was a reflection of the emotional and spiritual consciousness of Muslims as part of a global religious community, while being fully loyal to their Indian homeland.”
My contention is that the Two Circles concept was a figurative representation of the split personality of the Muslim community. The real circle — the “emotional and spiritual”, the one to which the their heart and mind belonged — was the Muslim world. The Indian circle was incidental to this conceptualisation. Their Indianness was an accident of birth. It was a physical incident, with little “emotional and spiritual” attachment.
You say, “dual identity does not mean dual loyalty”. It does. If it didn’t, the Indian Muslims would be more worried about India’s interests than the Muslim countries’. It’s a simple poser, has the pro-Muslim foreign policy advanced or compromised India’s interests? Please, answer this in your heart.
Mohammad Ali had a meteoric rise with the Khilafat movement, and, much like a meteor, petered out along with the movement. Was this movement meant to secure Swaraj, or was the Muslim acquiescence to Swaraj was at the condition that the Hindus should help them protect the Khilafat by the forcing the British into it? You know the answer well.
I need not remind you that Mohammad Ali participated in the First Round Table Conference as a part of the Muslim League’s delegation.
As for his “martyrdom”, well, he died of illness at a relatively young age of 51.
2 – I said that the Khilafat movement was aimed at saving the Ottoman caliphate. Swaraj wasn’t its purpose. It wasn’t an India centric movement. Yes, indeed it was a mass movement of Muslims which Mahatma Gandhi tried to harness to the national movement, but he failed in it. Khilafat brought the genie of Muslim separatism out of the bottle. You know how it led to the partition.
3 – Critiquing my views on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad of the period of Al Hilal, and Al Balagh, you say, “Azad’s aim was to awaken anti-colonial and pan-Indian consciousness among Muslims. He was a committed opponent of British rule and remained a fierce advocate of Indian unity and pluralism until the end.” Change the term pan-Indian with pan-Islamic, and I won’t have much to argue with you. If you had seen the two journals, or had read about its content and style, you would know that it was pan-Islamic, not pan-Indian. Maulana Azad’s campaign to become Imam-ul Hind, and his fatwa declaring India Darul Harb, which led to the migration of thousands of Muslims to Afghanistan and Central Asia, caused the damage which isn’t talked about much because of his later nationalist role.
As for Iqbal, you have more or less agreed with my view. However, let’s have the clarity that his shift to pan-Islamism was ideological, and therefore, political. I won’t call it philosophical.
4 – After Khilafat, Palestine has been the most emotive issue for the Indian Muslims. Foreign policy of the national movement, and of independent India was a prisoner of the Muslim sentiments for a long time.
Gandhi and Nehru wanted to keep the Muslims on their side. If their political pragmatism coincided with their idealism on the Palestine policy, it was indeed a rare coincidence. I would only draw your attention to the fact that India didn’t establish full diplomatic relations with Israel even after many leading Arab countries had done so.
5 – India is the country of over 20 crore Muslims, the third largest Muslim population in the world where the two countries with higher populations are just marginally above it. One out of ten Muslims in the world is a Muslim.
How come it bothers no Indian Muslim that their country is not represented on OIC? Aren’t they the same people whose political consciousness begins and ends with counting the number of Muslims in the parliament and the assemblies? They are happy about Zohran Mamdani’s win, but aren’t bothered about their absence from the OIC. Why?
6 – Whether the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate had universal support of the Muslims or not, all the leading and legitimate Muslims powers of the day in Arabia, and Turkey itself, were in its favour. The question, however, is — what was Indian Muslims stake in it? Had they ever been a part of it? To say the least, they were being quixotic. They had the urge to fight the British, but they couldn’t fight for India, so they fought for Turkey.
Conclusion : Indian Muslims must learn to draw right conclusions from the known facts. They can’t have one opinion for the private circulation and another for the public consumption. They must rid themselves of the too clever by half argumentation that doesn’t befit even Tahsil court’s vakil. Enough of glib vakalat and cheeky arguments. Let’s have some honest conversation now.
Best wishes,
IKB
The article is full of lies, contains twisted quotes by Ali Jauhar, and misrepresents Mawlana Azad. This “Bharati” again proved him to be a WhatsApp university graduate!
The article presents a deeply flawed narrative based on selective history and sweeping generalizations about Indian Muslims. Below is a factual and principled rebuttal to its major claims:
1. ? “Two Circles” — A Misused Quote
The article quotes Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar from the Round Table Conference (1930):
> “I belong to two circles of equal size, but which are not concentric. One is India, and the other is the Muslim world… We as Indian Muslims belong to these two circles, each of more than 300 millions, and we can leave neither.”
This quotation is historically accurate. Maulana Jauhar did articulate a dual belonging — to the Indian nation and to the global Muslim Ummah.
❗ However, the conclusion drawn in the article — that this implies divided loyalty or anti-nationalism — is entirely unfounded.
Maulana Jauhar’s statement was a reflection of the emotional and spiritual consciousness of Muslims as part of a global religious community, while being fully loyal to their Indian homeland. His life, activism, and martyrdom in the cause of India’s independence are testament to that.
Dual identity does not mean dual loyalty. Just as a person can be a proud Indian and a global environmentalist or humanitarian, a Muslim can simultaneously identify with India and care about the global Muslim Ummah — without disloyalty to either.
2. Misrepresenting Pan-Islamism
The article equates Indian Muslim solidarity with the Ottoman Caliphate as disloyalty to India. This is misleading. The Khilafat Movement (1919–24) was not anti-national; in fact, it was one of the earliest mass movements against British colonialism, and had the support of Mahatma Gandhi as a strategy to unite Hindus and Muslims.
3. Misleading Framing of Maulana Azad and Iqbal
The article implies that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s writings and journals like Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh gave ideological shape to pan-Islamism, and suggests that this somehow weakened Indian nationalism. This is a gross mischaracterization.
While Al-Hilal did express concern for the global Muslim condition, Azad’s aim was to awaken anti-colonial and pan-Indian consciousness among Muslims. He was a committed opponent of British rule and remained a fierce advocate of Indian unity and pluralism until the end.
His participation in the Indian National Congress, his opposition to the Two-Nation Theory, and his authorship of India Wins Freedom clearly show his unwavering loyalty to a unified and secular India.
Portraying him as a progenitor of religious separatism is historically incorrect and intellectually dishonest.
Similarly, Allama Iqbal’s later poems may have expressed pan-Islamic visions, but his earlier works like Tarana-e-Hindi (“Saare Jahan Se Achha…”) are deeply patriotic. His shift was philosophical, not a rejection of Indian belonging.
4. India’s Palestine Policy Was Not Appeasement
The claim that India’s support for Palestine was to appease Muslims is historically incorrect. India’s position was rooted in its anti-colonial and moral diplomacy. Leaders like Nehru and Gandhi opposed Western imperialism in all its forms. The Non-Aligned Movement shaped India’s consistent stance — not community appeasement.
5. Unfair Blame on Indian Muslims for OIC Politics
To blame Indian Muslims for India not being included in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is absurd. That is a matter of international geopolitics, especially Pakistan’s influence, and has nothing to do with the loyalty of Indian Muslims.
6. Abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate Was Not Universally Supported
The article claims that Arabs and Turks supported the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate. This is factually incorrect.
In Turkey, the Sheikh Said rebellion (1925) was a direct response to Mustafa Kemal’s abolition of the Caliphate.
In the Arab world, major scholars including those of Al-Azhar University (Cairo) condemned the abolition.
The Jerusalem Conference (1931) and Mecca Conference (1926) were organized to revive the Caliphate, proving that strong opposition existed.
Popular opinion in Palestine, India, Egypt, and Syria viewed the Caliphate as an institution of religious unity and rejected its removal.
Only a small group of secular nationalist elites and pro-European forces supported the dismantling of the Caliphate — not the wider Arab or Turkish Muslim masses.
? Conclusion: Complex Identities, Undeniable Loyalty
Indian Muslims, like others, carry complex identities — spiritual, cultural, and national. Their bond with the Ummah is religious, not political; their loyalty to India is complete and evident in history, struggle, and sacrifice.
Attempts to delegitimize that loyalty by cherry-picking history and twisting statements — like that of Maulana Jauhar — do a disservice to both truth and national unity.