Mohammad Ali Jauhar: The Freedom Fighter Who Fought With a Pen

In November 1930, at the Round Table Conference in London, a sick man in a black sherwani told the British delegates, “If you do not give us freedom in India, you will have to give me a grave here.” About six weeks later he was dead. He was buried in Jerusalem, at his own wish, rather than in a land under British rule. His name was Mohammad Ali Jauhar (also spelled Mohammed Ali Johar), and he was fifty two years old.

Jauhar was one of the leading Muslim figures of the Indian freedom movement. His weapons were newspapers, Urdu poetry and public speeches, and he spent much of his adult life either in an editor’s office or in jail. His elder brother Shaukat Ali was at his side in nearly every campaign, and the two were known across India simply as the Ali brothers.

Jamia Millia Islamia University founded by Mohammad Ali Jauhar

Mohammad Ali Jauhar’s early life in Rampur

Mohammad Ali was born on 10 December 1878 in Rampur, a princely state in what was then the United Provinces and is now Uttar Pradesh. His father, Abdul Ali Khan, held a post at the Rampur court but died when Mohammad Ali was two. His mother, Abadi Begum, later known to the whole country as Bi Amman, brought up her five sons alone. The family story is that she sold her jewellery to pay for their schooling.

Bi Amman wanted her sons to have both a traditional Islamic education and a modern English one. Mohammad Ali studied in Bareilly and then at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. From Aligarh he went to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read modern history and graduated in 1902.

From civil servant to editor: Comrade and Hamdard

Back in India, he first worked in the administration of Baroda state and then in Rampur. Office work did not suit him. What he wanted to do was write.

In January 1911 he launched Comrade, an English weekly, from Calcutta. It quickly became one of the most widely read English-language papers run by an Indian. His editorials were sharp, well read and openly critical of colonial policy. He wrote about the injustices of the empire, about the need for Hindu-Muslim unity and about reform movements in Turkey and Egypt that Indian Muslims were following closely.

In 1913 he started a second paper, the Urdu Hamdard, from Delhi. Between the English paper for the educated elite and the Urdu one for a much wider public, he built a readership across north India that few journalists of his time could match.

Why were the Ali brothers jailed in 1915?

The First World War pulled Mohammad Ali into open conflict with the government. When Britain went to war with the Ottoman Empire in 1914, he saw it as a war on the seat of the Caliphate. In Comrade he argued that Indian Muslims could not in good conscience back Britain against the Caliph.

In May 1915 the government arrested both brothers and interned them without trial. They were moved between places of detention for more than four years and released only in December 1919, just in time to attend the Congress session at Amritsar that month.

The Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements

Once free, the brothers threw themselves into the Khilafat Movement, a mass campaign to protect the position of the Ottoman Caliph after the war. Mahatma Gandhi backed it because he saw a chance to bring Hindus and Muslims together against British rule. Gandhi and the Ali brothers toured India together, speaking at huge public meetings.

Between 1920 and 1922 the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements together became the largest mass campaign of Indian resistance up to that point. Millions boycotted British goods, students left government colleges, officials resigned and people gave back their titles and honours. The movement was called off by Gandhi in February 1922 after the violence at Chauri Chaura.

The Karachi trial of 1921

In July 1921, at the Khilafat Conference in Karachi, Mohammad Ali declared that it was against Islam for a Muslim to serve in the British army while Britain was at war with Turkey. He was charged with sedition along with others who shared the platform, and in November 1921 he was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment.

He did not plead for mercy. Instead of a legal defence, he used the courtroom to state his beliefs at length and left the court to decide. His statement was reprinted across India and is still read by students of the freedom struggle.

Congress President at Kakinada, 1923

In December 1923, shortly after his release, he was elected President of the Indian National Congress at its session in Kakinada (then called Cocanada). He was one of the few Muslims to hold the post in the years before independence.

His presidential address is still read as an important document of the period. In it he argued for Hindu-Muslim unity and for freedom from British rule. He also spoke out against untouchability, and according to some accounts, in favour of wider rights for women.

The break with Gandhi and the Congress

By the late 1920s the partnership with Gandhi was breaking down. When the Nehru Report of 1928 proposed a constitution that, in Mohammad Ali’s view, did not protect Muslim political interests, he opposed it in public. From being one of Gandhi’s closest allies he became one of the sharpest critics of the Congress leadership.

The split hurt both sides. The two men had worked as brothers in arms for most of a decade, but Mohammad Ali now argued that the Congress was moving towards the views of the Hindu majority, and he would not follow it.

The Round Table Conference and his death in London

In 1930 he sailed for London to attend the First Round Table Conference. He was already gravely ill with diabetes and had spent much of the previous year in hospital. Doctors told him not to travel. He went anyway.

In his speech on 19 November 1930 he told the conference he would not return to India as a subject of British rule. Either he would go home to a free country, or he would die on foreign soil. He spoke again on 24 November. On 4 January 1931 he died in London.

His body was taken to Jerusalem and buried, as he had asked, in the compound of the Al Aqsa Mosque. He had wanted to rest in a Muslim land that was not ruled from London.

What did Mohammad Ali Jauhar leave behind?

Outside Urdu-speaking circles, his part in the freedom struggle is often passed over. His papers set a standard for political journalism in India, and his speeches gave a generation of Muslim leaders the language of protest. His years with Gandhi changed how the Congress ran mass campaigns.

The clearest physical reminder of him is Jamia Millia Islamia, founded in 1920 during the Non-Cooperation Movement by Mohammad Ali, Shaukat Ali and other leaders. It started at Aligarh, moved to Delhi a few years later and is now a central university. Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Rampur, set up much later, carries his name in his home town.

He wrote poetry under the pen name Jauhar, and lines attributed to him are still quoted at public meetings:

Toofan se kuchh na bigrega mera aye nakhuda,
Mera jahaz to jahaz e faqiran e tabar hai.

A storm cannot harm me, O sailor. My ship is the ship of the faithful.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Mohammad Ali Jauhar a member of the Muslim League?

Yes. He was associated with the All-India Muslim League from its early years as well as with the Congress, and over his career he led in both, along with the Khilafat Committee.

Who was Bi Amman?

Bi Amman was Abadi Begum, the mother of Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali. She raised her sons alone after their father’s death and later spoke at Khilafat meetings herself.

Where is Mohammad Ali Jauhar buried?

He is buried in Jerusalem, in the compound of the Al Aqsa Mosque. He died in London on 4 January 1931 and had asked not to be buried in a land under British rule.

Sources and Further Reading

Mohammad Ali Jauhar, My Life, A Fragment, Ferozsons
Afzal Iqbal, The Life and Times of Mohamed Ali, Idarah e Adabiyat e Delhi
Mushirul Hasan, Mohamed Ali: Ideology and Politics, Manohar Publications
National Archives of India, records of the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements