Maulana Barkatullah: The Forgotten Freedom Fighter and the University Rename Row

Maulana Barkatullah Latest News

• The executive council of Barkatullah University in Bhopal has passed a proposal to rename it Vagdevi Bhojpal University. The university was named after Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali in 1988 — before that, it was simply called Bhopal University. 
• The rename proposal has sparked debate about who Barkatullah was and whether erasing his name amounts to erasing an important chapter of India’s freedom struggle.

Who Was Maulana Barkatullah

• Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali was born on July 7, 1854, in Bhopal. He was a scholar, freedom fighter, and revolutionary who spent virtually his entire adult life outside India — working to end British rule from abroad.
• He studied in Bombay and then London. He began teaching in Liverpool, where he came into contact with Indian revolutionaries. 
• His writings and speeches drew the attention of British authorities, forcing him to leave for the United States in 1899.
• From that point, he never stopped moving — Japan, England, the US, Germany, Russia, Afghanistan, Brussels, Switzerland, France. 
  • In US, he corresponded with the freedom fighter Maulana Hasrat Mohani (who coined the slogan Inquilab Zindabad).
• Wherever he went, he built networks, wrote, spoke, and organised against British colonialism. 
• He died in September 1927 in Sacramento, California, while attending a Ghadar Party event, with his lifelong associate Raja Mahendra Pratap by his side. He is buried there.

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Core Beliefs of Barkatullah

• Barkatullah was a committed anti-colonial thinker who held one conviction above all others: India could only be free if Hindus and Muslims fought together.
• He saw the British policy of divide-and-rule as the primary obstacle to independence. 
• He wrote about the suffering of ordinary Indians — both Hindu and Muslim — under colonial economic exploitation, noting that millions had died of starvation. 
• His entire political career was built on the idea of composite nationalism — the belief that India’s freedom was a shared cause that transcended religion.

The Kabul Government: India’s First Government in Exile

• The most significant chapter of Barkatullah’s life came during World War I.
• In December 1915, Barkatullah, along with Raja Mahendra Pratap (a Hindu prince) and Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi (an Islamic scholar), established the Provisional Government of India in Kabul, Afghanistan. 
• This was India’s first government in exile — set up entirely outside British control.
• Raja Mahendra Pratap became President. Maulana Barkatullah became Prime Minister — which is why he is sometimes called the “first Prime Minister of independent India”.
• This was not merely symbolic. It was a bold political act — Indians of different faiths forming a government and asserting sovereign authority at a time when India was still firmly under British rule. 
• The Kabul government sought support from Afghanistan, Germany, and later Soviet Russia to challenge British power.

Meeting Lenin

• Four years after the Kabul government was formed, its leaders travelled to Moscow to meet Vladimir Lenin, then head of Soviet Russia.
• Barkatullah’s statement in Russia captures his worldview clearly. He described himself as neither a communist nor a socialist, but said his goal was the expulsion of the British from Asia. 
• He saw European colonialism — led by Britain — as the enemy, and found in the Soviets a natural ally against it.
• After the British victory in WWI dealt a severe blow to the revolutionaries’ plans, Barkatullah continued his work — travelling across Europe and keeping his cause alive until his death.

Why His Legacy Was Forgotten

• Barkatullah spent most of his life abroad and died in the US in 1927 — twenty years before Independence. 
• He was never part of the mainstream nationalist movement led by the Congress inside India. 
• His revolutionary activities were conducted across multiple countries, leaving little visible trace on the Indian public consciousness.
• He was formally recognised in 1988 when Bhopal University was renamed after him — a long-overdue acknowledgment of a son of the city who had given his life to its freedom.
• Historians argue that the proposal to rename the university now would undo even that belated recognition. 
• Historians said that instead of changing the university’s name, more should be done to popularise the legacy of Barkatullah.
• They note the irony that the central government has been actively working to popularise Raja Mahendra Pratap — Barkatullah’s closest associate — while his name faces erasure.

Source: IE | TP