This is so correct, it seems to deserve the term ‘prophetic’.
To the Right Hon. A J Balfour, O.M, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
1. Sir – Referring to our memorial of Jan 1 respecting Constantinople, Thrace and the homeland of the Turkish nation, we beg to observe that we refrained from expressing our opinion with regard to the other parts of the Turkish Empire, reserving it for a further representation to his Majesty’s Government, as we were not acquainted at that time with the suggestions before the Peace Conference for their ultimate disposition.2. We now learn from the Press that it is proposed to form them into self governing States, under the protectorate of one or other of the Allied and Associated Powers. As there is no Mohammedan representative on the Conference to place before it the opinions of his Majesty’s Mussulman subjects concerning the vast problems affecting the whole Islamic world which form the subject of consideration by the Conference, we venture to take the only constitutional course left to us for acquainting his Majesty’s Government and the Allied and Associated Powers with our views – viz., to submit those views in this memorial.
3. We welcome the proposal to create self-governing institutions in the occupied Provinces of Turkey and in Armenia under the guarantee of the League of Nations, but we most strongly deprecate the suggestion to sever them absolutely from the Turkish Empire. Our reasons for this submission are not sentimental; they are founded on grounds of expediency and policy which we respectively venture to think deserve the serious consideration of his Majesty’s Government and the Allied and Associated Powers. The evidence as to the depth of feeling, not only among the vast Mussulman population of India, but also among the Afghans and the frontier tribes (who form the bulk of the Mussulman element in the Indian Army) against the dismemberment of Turkey, and in favour of the preservation of her prestige, is accumulating day by day.
4. We hope that, with the disappearance of the two Empires that had hitherto exploited Asiatic unrest and misgovernment to their own advantage with a view to final political or economic absorption, the new peace would assure the pacific development of Western and Middle Asia on durable lines. We have no hesitation in expressing our conviction that Turkey, under a Government such as she has now been fortunate enough to obtain, with her prestige among Mussulmans of the world, would be an immense source of strength to England and the Allied Powers who rule over large masses of Moslems.
5. We fear, however, that the complete and absolute severance from the Turkish Empire of the provinces whose future status is under consideration will give rise to a rankling sense of injustice.
6. In any event, we venture strongly to urge that these proposed new autonomous States should not be withdrawn from the spiritual suzerainty of the Ottoman sovereign as Caliph. Our reasons for making this submission are based, firstly, on our desire for the peaceable development of Western Asia; and secondly, on the necessity, in our opinion, of an endeavor on the part of his Majesty’s Government to meet, so far as possible, the wishes and legitimate feelings of the Mussulmans, who form fully one-fourth of the population of the Empire.
7. Under the Sunni system of jurisprudence, the investiture of a new ruler by the Caliph, the Chief Pontiff, regularizes his status in the eyes of his people and makes any rising against him illegal ; it gives him prestige in the Mussulman world, and places him in an unimpugnable position. This was the reason that led the Mussulman sovereigns of India, before the rise of the Shiah Empire, which divided them from the Western Sunnis, to apply and obtain investiture from the Chief Pontiff. In our opinion, therefore, if the Peace Conference were to leave the Ottoman Sovereign or Caliph with the prestige of conferring on the rulers of these propose autonomous States on their accession to their respective thrones the usual investiture, it would not only conciliate Mussulman feeling, but would add to the guarantees of peace and pacific development among the people of those countries. To sever them altogether, both secularly and religiously, from the Ottoman State would, in our opinion, lead to constant trouble, and leave behind, as we have already ventured to submit, a legacy of bitterness which we humbly think might be avoided.
8. With regard to the suggested creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, we desire to observe that if the Peace Conference were to decide to create that province into a self-governing State, the entire Mussulman world would resent its being placed under any but a Mussulman ruler, whatever other form the Government may take. Not only is Jerusalem intimately associated with the Mussulman religion and Mussulman religious traditions, but in the long course of fourteen centuries the land has become covered with the memorials of the Mussulman faith. To convert it into a Jewish State or to place it under a Jewish ruler would be most repugnant to Mussulman feelings, especially as only one-seventh of the population of Palestine is Jewish. History proves that the Jews can live in the closest amity with their Mussulman fellow-subjects under Moslem rulers, and enjoy exceptional privileges not conceded to them even now by many European nations.
9. Finally we venture to appeal once more to his Majesty’s Government and the Peace Conference that, in devising the new form of government for Armenia, the rights and interests, together with the religious institutions and places of worship, of the large Mussulman population inhabiting that province (who in many districts form the majority) should be safe-guarded and that they should be protected from persecution, and that they should be placed on an equal footing with the non-Moslem population in the enjoyment of all civil rights and privileges – We have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient and humble servants.
Shaikh MH Kidwai of Gadian
Khwaja Kamalud Din
Marmaduke Pickthall
S H Kidwai of Rampure
Ibrahim S Haji
Aga Khan
Ameer Ali
AA Baig
MH Ispahani
AA Mirza
A S M Anik
(Twenty other signatures)(ref: Samuel Marinus Zwemer, “The Moslem World” (1919), Harrisburg, Pa)
Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan – Oxford University Press
Born a year before the Indian National Congress’s founding session in December 1885, Wilayat Ali belonged to the Kidwai gentry that trace its descent to a Turkish immigrant, Kidwatuddin, who came to India in the wake of Shahabuddin Ghori’s invasions in 11-91-92 (1). Brother of the sultan of Rum and the kingdom’s qazi, Kidwatuddin’s conflict with the king drove him into exile with his wife and son. He wandered across many lands before coming to the saint of Ajmer, Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti (1142-1236). The Khwaja’s influence won him preferment in the Delhi sultanate. His descendants claimed that Ghori had received him with full honours on the outskirts of Delhi (2). Similar stories lend credence to the belief that he, and adventurer, managed to make his way up the social ladder.
Qazi Kidwa (Kidwai means ‘elevate in Arabic’, as Kidwatuddin had come to be called, led an expedition to Awadh against refractory Bhar chieftens (3). In 1201, he attacked the Bhar Raja of Jagdeopur, the modern Juggaur, seizing a large tract of fifty-two villages that became his jagir. These became known as Qidwara, and Masauli is one of them (4). In the early twentieth century this tiny village had a primary school, but nothing else of any significance (5). Today, it has a Rafi Memorial Junior High School, a railway station called Rafinagar, and an elaborately built mausoleum constructed over Rafi Ahmed Kidwai’s grave. From a few hundred in the early twentieth century, Masauli’s population has increased to approximately 13,000.
Qazi Kidwai reached Ayodhya in 1205. This is when his success story begins. He is said to have converted several Hindu groups to Islam, and settled in a locality later designated as Kidwai Mohalla. He died three years later; his tomb, now destroyed, stood close to Aurangzeb’s mosque. His descendants took advantage of Qazi Kidwai’s reputation, and used his connections to rise to high poisitions in the service of the Delhi Sultans and the Awadh Nawabs. His son, Qazi Azizuddin, married Qazi Fakhrul Islam’s daughter at the court of Qutubuddin Aibak (r. 1206-10). Burried in Satrikh, an area Azaizuddin administered, his tomb still exists in the mango grove known as Qazi Ashraf’s Bagh.
During the reign of Aibak’s successor Iltutmish (r.1211-36), contemporary sources recorded continuous ‘holy wars’ against the refractory tribes, and the overthrow of a chief named Bartu, ‘beneath whose sword about a hundred and twenty thousand Mussalmans had attained martyrdom’ (6). This was roughly the period when the Kidwai Sheykhs of Juggaur began moving into Bara Banki, occupied Dewa and other places in the west and acquired estates. Salar Ahmad’s family of Juggaur, fourth in descent from Qazi Kidwa, acquired the Gadia taluqa in 1843, and later extended its holdings in Dewa, Nawabganj, and Partapganj.
The Kidwais of Juggaur were related to the Jasmara families, who were descendants of Qazi Qeyamudding. Among them Qazi Abdul Malik, Muhammad Hamid, and Fakhrullah figure prominently under the Mughals. Their resilience and staying power was amazing. While many of their fellow taluqdars declined for one reason or the other, the Kidwai Sheykhs of Juggaur managed to retain most of their estates until the abolition of zamindari in free India (8).
(1) According to another version, he was Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna’s contemporary, came to India with one of his contingents, and settled in Ayodhya. A.M. Dariabadi (Aap-biti Lucknow, 1989 p24)
(2) Anis Kidwai, Ghubar-e karawaan p. 29
(3) An ‘aboriginal race’ which at one time dominated the eastern half of Awadh. Their earliest habitat was Bahraich, which is said to owe its name to them. Crooke, Tribes and Castes Vol 2. pp 1-11; Sleeman Journey Through the Kingdom of Oude pp.246-7) According to Faizabad’s district gazetteer, ‘they remained here and there till the days of the Janpur kingdom and then vanished, becoming either Hindus or proselytes to Islam’. H.R. Nevill, Fyzabad: A Gazetteer, Vol xliii (Allahabad, 1928) p 150
(4) Zarina Bhatty, ‘Status and Pwoer in a Muslim Dominated Village of Uttar Pradesh’, Imtiaz Ahmad (ed), Caste and Social Stratification Amoung Muslims in India (New Delhi, 1978) p 212.
(5) DG, Bara Banki 1904 p 231.
(6) ABM Habibullah, The Foudnation of Muslim Rule in India (Allahabad, 1961 2nd rev edn), p 104.
(7) DG, Bara Banki, 1904, p 103.
(8) DG, Bara Banki, 1904, p 155.
InshaAllah, I will be wrapping up the few more select excerpts from this book and then provide my thoughts and rationale in sharing these snippets.
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‘Of bigoted Mussalman’, Bara Banki’s settlement officer conceded, “I have little personal knowledge; these men either stay at their own houses or keep their bigotry to themselves in government service’ [1] This simple observation says a lot about Awadh’s qasba life in the second half of the nineteenth century.
A devout Muslim told Meer Hasan Ali about the strong similarities between his community and the Hindu population: “the out-of-door celebrations of marriage festivals, for instance, which are so nearly resembling each other, in the same classes of society, that scarcely any difference can be discovered by the common observer” More than a century later, a leading scholar at Lucknow’s Nadwat al-ulama opined that social life of India’s Muslims did not present any marked difference from the cultural norms and pattern around them. Distinctive features, customs, and manners, too, like those of their local compatriots, marked their culture [2]
In other words, besides differences and distinctions there were also relationships and interactions.
Today, the history of Islam in South Asia – the writing of which has always been peculiarly susceptible to the climate of current politics – demands a serious intellectual reassessment. The historian Aziz Ahmed (1913-1978) refers to ‘the alternating and simultaneous process of mutual attraction and repulsions’ in medieval Indian society. Steering clear of such generalizations, I suggest that the qasbas predisposed ashraf or families comprising the gentry to the rational and ethical dimensions of Islam, to the virtues of charity, tolerance, generosity, good neighbourly conduct, and to those elements of piety that go into the making of the Perfect Man or Insan -e Kamil. Without denying the existence of negative critiques or the wide gap between ideals and reality, I draw attention to one Weltanschauung of significance, the rationalist and humanist construction of Islam. To be educated in the second half of the nineteenth century meant to be steeped in those values, and promised signity and advancement in life. Hence the comment that, presumably, alludes to such people, especially the aspiring intellectuals: “The Mussalamans of Oudh cannot, as a body, be accused of bigotry or intolerance” [3] This is corroborated by Meer Hasan Ali’s experience in Lucknow, of being received without prejudice, and allowed to observe her European habits and Christian faith. [4] Some, if not all, the men who figure in her narrative thus became typical carriers of moral and ethical piety or akhuwat, in the qasbas.
Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan – Oxford University Press
[1] Chamier, Report, p51
[2] S.A.H.A Nadwi The Masalman (Luikcnow 1977) p41
[3] Irwin Garden of India, p 38
[4] Ali, Observations on the Mussulmans of India Vol 2. p 424
On many weekends Wliayat Ali and his group took time off from their professional and domestic chores to gather together in Bara Banki. For this they used the loop line of the Awadh and Rhilkhand railway system. It ran from the erstwhile Nawabi capitalto Faizabad, the city founded by Saadat Ali Khan (1772-39) and refurbished by Safdar Jang (vazir from 1748 until 1753), and Banaras, traversed the district from west to east, and passed throguh Bara Banki, Rasauli, Safdarganj, Dariabad, Makhdumpur, Rauzagaon, and Rudauli. En route, they visited the shrine of Shah Abdur Razzaq (1636-1724) at Bansa, who not only won the recognition of his contemporaries but who exerted after his death one of the most powerful influences in Awadh spiritual history. His shrine, a nucleus of ascetic pietism, shelters the devotee, Hindu and Muslim alike, from disease and mental ailments, and offers a place where one seeks refuge from the pressures of everyday life. In the 1870s, the urs at Bansa attracted as many as five thousand devotees. The Shah’s twenty-three immediate successors included at least three members of the Kidwai, and six of the Farangi Mahal family. sitting cross-legged at one of the shrines, they may well have repeated the following lines:
I stood by the Reformer’s tomb: that dust
Whence here below an orient splendour breaks,
Dust before whose least speck stars hang their heads,
Dust shrouding that high knower of things unknown. (Iqbal)
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Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan – Oxford University Press
Satrikh, the home of several ‘respectable’ Muslim families who had built several mosques of burnt bricks, was the site of a huge fair held in March at the shrine of Sheykh Salat, the father of Ghazi Miyan Salar Masud, whose shrine is at Bahraich. Pilgrims visited the shrine, bringing with them long poles covered in cloth, which is left at the shrine. A leather worker living in Rudauli built the mausoleum in 1799. Sleeman’s Hindu camp followers revered the shrine as much as the Muslims (*) At such sites dotted on Awadh’s graph, and this is indeed a point that needs to be constantly underlined, the ulama and the theologian could scarcely turn against the more emotive and expressive aspects of Sufism. This was true of Rudauli as of Bilgram. The follow statement sums up the overall tone and tenor of Awadh society:
“When the conch sounded in the temples in its notes [in Bilgram], the Muslims heard the voices of unity and kinship. When the call for prayer (azan) sounded, the mellifluous voice entranced the Hindus to accept Allah’s greatness. During Muharram, Hindus and Muslims walked shoulder to shoulder reciting elegies and dirges. Music did not provoke violence nor did the Pipal tree cause conflict. The slaughter of animals during Bakr Id did not lead to human killings. In short, be it matters of religion or matters temporal Hindus and Muslims were like sweetness in milk… This is the atmosphere in which I grew up” -Hosh Bilgrami, Mushahidat p. 3
* Abul Fazl comments on the shrine “The common people of the Muhammadan faith greatly reverence this spot and pilgrims visit it from distant parts, forming themselves inbands and bearding gilded manners.” One day Muhummad Husain Khan asked the Sheykh (Abul Fath of Khairabad) ‘ what sort of man was Salar Masud” The Sheykh replied, “he was an Afghan who met his death by martyrdom”. -Muntakhabu-t-tawarikh pp 46-7
Amoung the many traditions quoted is the following one: ‘Sahu Salar died in Satrikh 800 years ago, was considered as holy man, but probably little would have been known of him but for his son Syud Salar Mahmud Ghazi who was very active in the crusades all over Oudh; and eventually was killed in Bahraich at the early age of 21 years’ Chamier Report p 55,288
the truth on 
m.a.kidwai,CME/IND.RLY.(retd.) on 
