In September 1920, Marmaduke Pickthall left his native England for India, where he had accepted the editorship of the leading Nationalist newspaper, the Bombay Chronicle. As editor, Pickthall defied the British authorities by promoting both the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movements – the latter led by brothers Mohamed and Shaukhat Ali to defend the ailing Ottoman empire and preserve its Sultan as Caliph, the leader of the universal Muslim community. By the time Pickthall arrived in India, the Khilafat Movement had endorsed Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation campaign. Pickthall first met Gandhi a few days after he took up his post at the Chronicle and campaigned alongside him and the Ali brothers for the next four years.Like Gandhi, Pickthall believed that a ‘universal brotherhood’ which transcended religion and nationality was essential for a successful Non-Cooperation campaign, and therefore for the Khilafat Movement too: ‘Great as is the debt of gratitude which Muslims owe to India for their help and sympathy at such a crisis, I think it is in good part repaid by the revival of their pride as Asiatics which has come to them from their association with the [Hindus] on the typically Asiatic question of Khilafate, and not to Hindus only, but to Parsi, Jewish, Sikh, and Christian sympathizers.’At a Central Khilafat Committee (CKC) meeting in 1921, Pickthall moved a resolution which, ‘In view of the fact that the destiny of the people of India is inevitably linked with that of the neighbouring Asiatic Nations and Powers, […] requests the All-India Congress Committee to promote feelings of amity and concord with neighbouring States, and with a view to establish mutual good will and sympathy, to formulate a clear and definite foreign policy for India.’ Later in the summer, the Congress adopted Pickthall’s resolution and acknowledged his role in bringing to their attention ‘a matter of such importance.’A year into the Non-Cooperation campaign, the government’s efforts to create a rift between Gandhi and the Ali brothers began to pay off. Having decided to prosecute the latter for inciting violence, Lord Reading, the Indian Viceroy since April 1921, arranged a series of private meetings with Gandhi. Reading offered to pardon the Ali brothers if they issued a public apology which repudiated violence. Gandhi acted as broker, convincing the Ali brothers to issue an apology, which Pickthall printed in the Chronicle.As Reading hoped, his meddling created the first significant division within the Non-Cooperation movement: some Hindu leaders criticised Gandhi for co-operating with the Viceroy; and many Muslims believed that Gandhi had betrayed the Ali brothers, leading to demands that the CKC sever relations with Hindus. Since the Ali brothers backed Gandhi, the Hindu-Muslim alliance survived, albeit on less secure foundations than before.Pickthall was still committed to Gandhi, describing him privately at this time as ‘such a wonderful man that I for one am quite prepared to trust him blindly.’ When, in June 1921, Pickthall was called upon to speak at a Non-Cooperation fundraising event, he reported that the audience ‘wouldn’t let me start for quite two minutes, but what really pleased me was that Gandhi gave the sign for the applause when I stood up. It meant that he at any rate appreciated what I have been trying to do in India; and that is all I really care for. There is no one else who counts.’Also read: S.A. Brelvi, Journalist and Secular Nationalist Who Stood Up to the British RajPickthall backed Gandhi’s endorsement of the Swadeshi (self-sufficiency) movement by declaring a boycott of foreign cloth in favour of Indian khadi (or khaddar), hand-spun and woven natural fibre cloth. The campaign was announced in the Chronicle under the headline ‘What We Must do Now: Boycott Foreign Cloth by August 1.’ Pickthall explained to his friend Anne Fremantle that khadi had a spiritual aspect:Everything a patriotic Indian wears must now be made in India, and every follower of Gandhi must be clad in white from head to foot. Like everything that Gandhi orders, this is symbolical. The world is dyed with false, fictitious, poisonous colours. We must purify ourselves, must make ourselves pure white, then Allah Himself will make us blossom forth again in pure, true colours, when the end is gained, which is the brotherhood of man throughout all India and all Asia.Gandhi appreciated Pickthall’s adoption and interpretation of khadi:I was astonished to see Mr. Pickthall […] come to the meeting [in Bombay, August 1921] dressed in a khadi cap, and still more pleased by his speech, brief but full of the purest sentiments. He said: ‘This is a movement of self-purification. India will lose nothing by wearing only white clothes for some time to come. Let them fill in colours after they have, clad in white, achieved their goal.’ We wear white khadi as we have no time to get it dyed. Moreover, many of us do not like colours, as they are of foreign make. That Mr. Pickthall should see in the whiteness of khadi the purity of our movement—this struck me as a very beautiful idea.The wearing of khadi at public meetings throughout the summer seemed to help Pickthall clarify his thoughts about colonialism. In August, for example, he wore what the Chronicle called ‘the uniform of Indian independence’ when addressing a meeting about the repression of Indians in British Kenya: ‘I know […] that the Indians are prepared to give and take as much as any other people; but when interests of men who are foreigners to the British Empire are given preference merely because they have a white skin over citizens of the British Empire then we have just cause to say that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Empire.’Unlike many Khilafatists in summer 1921, Pickthall did not disapprove of Gandhi’s private meetings with Reading. After all, he had also broken non-cooperation by meeting the Bombay Governor, Sir George Lloyd, at Government House. In a letter to Fremantle’s father, Frederick Huth Jackson, Pickthall doubted whether the new Viceroy ‘has yet an inkling of the truth, that, in order to settle the Indian question in so far as it is critical, he has first to get the Turkish question settled in the way the Indians wish’:To me in the thick of the non-co-operation movement that truth grows more apparent every day. Gandhi has met Lord Reading and we all feel much more hopeful of a speedy and peaceful settlement. But a section of the English here are wicked. They love violence, and if they can produce another massacre, will surely do so. They threaten me and all Khilafat workers with short shrift.Pickthall’s words were prophetic. Days later, on July 1, British police opened fire on peaceful protesters accompanying Khilafatists to jail at Dharwar (Dharwad), around 300 miles south-east of Bombay. Three protesters were killed, 40 injured and, in subsequent disturbances, many were arrested. Some 50 protestors were later sentenced to imprisonment, including local newspaper editors and reporters.Pickthall was ill with malaria at the time, but learnt about the incident through an Associated Press telegram, and immediately dispatched a Chronicle reporter to investigate. Pickthall was disturbed to hear that journalists in Dharwar were deliberately obstructed by the local authorities: ‘It makes my blood boil, and I have been writing strongly appealing to the higher powers to intervene.’Although he was confined to bed, Pickthall was not powerless. He and his deputy, Syed Abdullah Brelvi, charged Mr Venkatram, assistant editor for news, to write an (unsigned) exposé, which was published under the headline ‘A Crime Against Humanity’ on July 11.The article, and subsequent Chronicle reports about the incident, contradicted the official version of events, which held that ‘the police had to deal with a riotous assembly, which, if unchecked, would have indulged in violence of all sorts.’ The Chronicle maintained that the demonstrators were both peaceful and unarmed, the victims of police provocation. The newspaper condemned the indiscriminate arrests – and, later, prosecutions – of around 250 activists, and called for an independent inquiry. Pickthall was summoned to meet a disgruntled Governor Lloyd:I went, much hoping that he would intervene at Dharwar, and was merely going to ask me what I knew of the affair. But nothing of the kind. […] I was shown in to His Excellency, who at once began reproaching me with the attitude I had taken over the Dharwar affair, as if he took it as a personal insult! He threatened me—very gingerly and politely—with prosecution if I dared go on with the campaign, and wanted to extract a promise from me, which, of course, I would not give. After wrangling for an hour […] he said: ‘I’m sorry; then, good-bye. I’ve done what I can for you.’ ‘I’m sorry too, for I think you’ve missed an opportunity of doing right in a way which every Indian would appreciate.’ And so we parted, and I do not know whether I am only threatened with a prosecution in case I am not careful, or whether a case is already being brought against me.Jamie GilhamA Great English MuslimHurst and Oxford University Press (2026).Pickthall told a close friend in London, ‘I expected to be arrested and deported or decapitated the next day.’ A little later, he wrote more confidently to another friend: ‘If I had been the “enemy” of [Lloyd’s] Government in my newspaper next day and if he had retaliated with my deportation or prosecution, the feeling throughout India would have been with me. He would, in fact, have made my fortune and destroyed his own.’Pickthall was rather naive: although it took them close to three years, the British authorities successfully used the Chronicle‘s coverage of the Dharwar incident to force Pickthall’s resignation and threaten his very place in India, a country he had learnt to love and regard as his home.Extracted from Jamie Gilham, A Great British Muslim: The Life and Times of Marmaduke Pickthall (London and New York: Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2026).Jamie Gilham is a historian of Western Islam.