Networks of Denial and Justification: South Asian Responses to the Armenian Genocide
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0049Keywords:
Armenian Genocide, Khilafat Movement, Genocide Denialism, South Asia, Mushir Hosain Kidwai, GandhiAbstract
The second decade of the 20th century saw two pivotal events from the Middle East and South Asia: the Armenian Genocide and the Khilafat movement. Both events were influential in setting into motion a cascade of events whose repercussions are still felt acutely to this day. Simultaneous interest in these two pivotal moments has generated considerable scholarship over the last few decades. However, the prospect that these two events could be interlinked in underlying ways is a proposition that has not yet found any traction. Using a range of sources, this article attempts an initial foray into a critically understudied area: the denial and justification of the Armenian Genocide that was integral to the Khilafat movement in South Asia. Arguably one of the most potent examples of denial perpetuated by a non-perpetrator, the South Asian version of this narrative was cobbled together through a convergence of interests between the Muslim and Hindu elite in the region. Unraveling this vast network of denialism and justification warrants attention to underlying motivations and power configurations across a kaleidoscope of identities and geography—which this article seeks to uncover.
References
Ahmad, Aijaz. Lineages of the Present: Ideology and Politics in Contemporary South Asia. London, New York: Verso, 2000.
Akçam, Taner, and Ümit Kurt. The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015.
Alavi, Seema. Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Albrecht, Monika (ed.). Postcolonialism Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts and the Neocolonial Present. London, New York: Routledge, 2020.
Ali, Khalid. Ali Brothers: The Life and Times of Maulana Mohamed Ali and Shaukat Ali. Karachi: Royal Book Co, 2012.
Ali, Syed Ameer. “Address by the Right Hon. Syed Ameer Ali on Islam in the League of Nations.” Transactions of the Grotius Society 5 (1919): 126–144.
Allawi, Ali A. Faisal I of Iraq. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Ansari, K. Humayun. "Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” In Marmaduke Pickthall: Islam and the Modern World, edited by Geoffrey P. Nash, 23-46. Leiden and Boston Brill, 2017.
Appeal from I.S. Johannes, Vicar of Armenian church, Calcutta. Foreign and Political Department, September 1920, 531-534. National Archives of India.
Arnold, David. The Congress in Tamilnad: Nationalist Politics in South India, 1919-1937. Columbia: South Asia Books, 1977.
At the hand of the Turk, India’s Women and China’s Daughters. December 1915. Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.
Aydin, Cemil. “Globalizing the Intellectual History of the Idea of the ‘Muslim World.’” In Global Intellectual History, edited by Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, 159-186 New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Aydin, Cemil. The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Aydın, Cemil. “The Ottoman Empire and the Global Muslim Identity in the Formation of Eurocentric World Order, 1815-1919.” In Civilizations and World Order: Geopolitics and Cultural Difference, edited by Fred R. Dallmayr, M. A. Kayapınar and İsmail Yaylacı, 117-144. Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2014.
Aydin, Cemil. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Aziz, Khursheed Kamal . The Indian Khilafat Movement, 1915-1933: A Documentary Record. Karachi: Pak Publishers, 1972.
Baer, Marc David. Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020.
Behrens, Paul; Nicholas Terry; and Olaf Jensen. (eds.). Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
Balakian, Grigoris. Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.
Belgaum Samachar and Indu Prakash, Report on Newspapers published in the Bombay Presidency for the week ending 15th May 1920. Uttar Pradesh State Archives.
Brown, Judith M. Gandhi's Rise to Power, Indian Politics 1915-1922. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Cable to President Wilson. Central File: Decimal File 867.00/1173, Internal Affairs Of States, Turkey, Political Affairs. Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Turkey, 1910-1929. National Archives (United States).
Chief Commissioner’s Office, File no 54/1918. Delhi Archives.
The Church Missionary Review. December 1920. No.832. Church Missionary Society. Crowther Mission Studies Library.
Clark, Peter. Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim. London, New York: Quartet Books, 1986.
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: Vol 17. New Delhi: Publications Division, 1977.
Collection of Army Department correspondence relating to The European Crisis, 1914. Volume 710. 1919. National Archives of India.
Dadrian, Vahakn N., and Taner Akçam. Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011. Deringil, Selim. “‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, no. 02 (2003): 311-342. Dixon, Jennifer M. Dark Pasts: Changing the State's Story in Turkey and Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.
The Dominions and The Lausanne Conference. The National Archives. The UK.
The Dominions and the Peace Conference. The National Archives. The UK.
Dyer, Gwynne. “Turkish ‘Falsifiers’ and Armenian ‘Deceivers’: Historiography and the Armenian Massacres.” Middle Eastern Studies 12, no. 1 (1976): 99-107.
Ekmekcioglu, Lerna. “Republic of Paradox: The League of Nations, Minority Protection Regime and the New Turkey's Step-Citizens.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, no. 4 (2014): 657-679.
Fremantle, Anne. Loyal Enemy. London: Hutchinson, 1938.
Gandy, Christopher. “Clio with One Eye: A New Book on the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland 120, no. 2 (1988): 370-377.
Gandhi, Mahatma. Communal Unity. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1949.
Grainger, John D. The Battle for Syria, 1918-1920. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013.
Gürpınar, Doğan. “The Manufacturing of Denial: The Making of the Turkish ‘Official Thesis’ on the Armenian Genocide Between 1974 and 1990.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 3 (2016): 217-240.
Haynes, Douglas E. Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928. Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras: Oxford University Press, 1992.
History of Freedom Movement, NO 81, 1919. Tamil Nadu State Archives.
Hovannisian, Richard G. “Denial of the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later: The New Practitioners and Their Trade.” Genocide Studies International 9, no. 2 (2015): 228-247.
IB Weekly Report, May 1921. National Archives of India.
Ihrig, Stefan. Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016.
“Indian Reforms: A Symposium.” The Indian Review, October 1919.
Iqbal, Afzal. Life and Times of Mohamed Ali: An Analysis of the Hopes, Fears and Aspirations of Muslim India from 1878 to 1931. New Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-I-Delli, 1978.
Israel, Milton. Communications and Power: Propaganda and the Press in the Indian Nationalist Struggle, 1920-1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Glimpses of World History New York: Asia Publishing House, 1934.
Kévorkian, Raymond H. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011.
Kieser, Hans-Lukas. Talaat Pasha. Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide. Lawrenceville: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Kinross, Lord. Atatürk: The Rebirth of a Nation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.
Kumar, Krishna. Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Viking, 2001.
M.N. Roy. Memoirs. Delhi: Ajanta Publications/Ajanta Books International, 1987.
Manjapra, Kris. M. N. Roy: Marxism and Colonial Cosmopolitanism. London, New York: Routledge, 2010.
Marmaduke Pickthall. “Letters to the Editor. The Armenian Massacres.” The New Age, December 1915.
Marmaduke Pickthall. “The Cause of Massacres.” The New Age, May 1919.
Matiossian, Vartan. The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide: Language, History and Medz Yeghern. I.B. Tauris, 2022.
Mcpherson, Kenneth. “How Best Do We Survive?”: A Modern Political History of the Tamil Muslims. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.
Meleady, Conor. “Negotiating the Caliphate: British Responses to Pan-Islamic Appeals, 1914–1924.” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 2 (2016): 182-197.
Minassian, Gaïdz. The Armenian Experience: From Ancient Times to Independence. London: I.B. Tauris, 2020.
Minault, Gail. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Montgomerie to McPherson, Fortnightly report May 1920, Home Department. National Archives of India.
Muhammad, Shan. Unpublished Letters of the Ali Brothers. Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1979.
Mukherjee, Soumen. Ismailism and Islam in Modern South Asia: Community and Identity in the Age of Religious Internationals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Nanda, B. R. Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism, and Nationalism in India. Bombay, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Niemeijer, A. C. The Khilafat Movement in India, 1919-1924. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972.
Oliver-Dee, Sean. The Caliphate Question: The British Government and Islamic Governance. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009.
Özcan, Azmi. Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877-1924. Leiden, New York: Brill, 1997.
Panter-Brick, Simone. Gandhi and the Middle East: Jews, Arabs and Imperial Interests. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.
Papers of the late Sir Mark Sykes. FO 800/ 221. The National Archives. The UK.
Curzon's papers on the Near and Middle East, Mss Eur F112/278, British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers.
Paris, Timothy J. Britain, the Hashemites, and Arab Rule, 1920-1925: The Sherifian Solution. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Private Telegram for the Prime Minister and Mr Balfour, FO 800/199. The National Archives. The UK.
Qureshi, M. Naeem. Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918-1924. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 1999.
Report on Bolshevik activity in India. File no 5(a), CCO, December 1920. Delhi Archives.
Report on Indian Newspapers and Periodicals in Bengal for the week ending the 1st of January 1916, No. 27 of 1915. Uttar Pradesh State Archives.
The resolution passed at the Andhra Provincial Conference, Home Political, file no. 14, 1922—National Archives of India.
The Review of Religions Vol 19 (June 1920).
The Review of Religions Vol 21 (October 1921).
The Review of Religions Vol 21 (March & May 1922).
The Review of Religions Vol 28 (Oct & Nov 1919).
The Review of Religions Vol 28 (Oct & Nov 1919).
Rogan, Eugene L. The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Rumbold, Algernon. Watershed in India, 1914-1922. London: Athlone Press, 1979.
Savelsberg, Joachim J. Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021.
Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers Published in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Received up to 8th January 1896. IOR L/R/5/73. British Library.
Sharma, Shanker Dayal, and Indian National Congress. All India Congress Committee. Congress Approach to International Affairs 1970. Senate House Library, University of London.
Slight, John. The British Empire and the Hajj, 1865-1956. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Stephens, Julia Anne. Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in Modern South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Tejani, Shabnum. Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890-1950. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Tilak Raj Sareen. Indian Revolutionary Movement Abroad, 1905-1921. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1979.
Turkey. FO 800/151. The National Archives. The UK.
Tusan, Michelle Elizabeth. The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide: Humanitarianism and Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill. London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017.
Tusan, Michelle Elizabeth. The Last Treaty: Lausanne and the End of the First World War in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
War Diary, Force D, Volume 50 Part 1, From 1st to 15th September 1918. National Archives of India.
Wasti, Syed Razi. Memoirs and Other Writings of Syed Ameer Ali. Delhi: Renaissance Publishing House, 1996.
Wasti, Syed Tanvir. “Mushir Hosain Kidwai and the Ottoman Cause.” Middle Eastern Studies 30, no. 2 (1994): 252-261.
Weekly Report of the Director, Central Intelligence, 15th March 1920. Home Department Proceedings. National Archives of India.
Weekly Report of the Special Bureau of Information, October 1920. FO 262/1459. The National Archives. The UK.
Willis, John M. “Azad’s Mecca.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 3 (2014): 574-581.
Winter, Jay. The Day the Great War Ended, 24 July 1923: The Civilianization of War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Woodrow Wilson Papers, Series 5 Peace Conference Correspondence and Documents, 1914-1921, Subseries D Unofficial Correspondence, 1919 March. Library Of Congress. Washington, D.C.
Yenen, Alp. “The Talat-Tehlirian Complex: Contentious Narratives of Martyrdom and Revenge in Post-Conflict Societies.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 64, no. 2 (2022): 394-421.
Zamindar, April 28, 1913, Selections from the Indian Newspapers published in the Punjab, Vol.26, No.1. Uttar Pradesh State Archives.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Nagothu Naresh Kumar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
