Shaukat Ali (politician)

Early life

Shaukat Ali was born in 1873 in Rampur state in what is today Uttar Pradesh. He was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University. He was extremely fond of playing cricket, captaining the university team.

Ali served in the civil service of the United Provinces of Oudh and Agra from 1896 to 1913 for 17 years in British India.

Khilafat movement

Shaukat Ali helped his younger brother Mohammad Ali Jouhar publish the Urdu weekly Hamdard and the English weekly Comrade. In 1915 he published an article which said Turks were right to fight British.These two weekly magazines played a key role in shaping the political policy of Muslim India back then. In 1919, while jailed for publishing what the British charged as seditious materials and organizing protests, he was elected as the last president of the Khilafat conference. He was re-arrested and imprisoned from 1921 to 1923 for his support to Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1919–1922). His fans accorded him and his brother the title of Maulana. In March 1922, he was in Rajkot jail and was later released in 1923.

Nehru report

While still a supporter of Congress and its non-violent ethos, Ali even surpassed some of his colleagues in also providing support to the revolutionary independence movement. To this end, he supplied guns to Sachindranath Sanyal.

He opposed the 1928 Nehru Report. Instead, he demanded separate electorates for Muslims and finally the Khilafat Committee rejected Nehru Report. Shaukat Ali attended the first and second Round Table Conferences (India) in London in 1930-31. His brother Jouhar died in 1931, and Shaukat Ali continued on and organized the World Muslim Conference in Jerusalem.

In 1936, Ali became a member of the All India Muslim League and became a close political ally of and campaigner for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the future founder of Pakistan. He served as member of the 'Central Assembly' in British India from 1934 to 1938. He travelled all over the Middle East, building support for India's Muslims and the struggle for independence from the British rule in India.

Death and legacy

Ali died on 26 November 1938 at the residence of Begum Mohammad Ali, the widow of his brother, in Karol Bagh, a neighbourhood in Delhi. His body was buried in the vicinity of the Jama Masjid on 28 November.

Pakistan Postal Services issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honor in 1995 in its 'Pioneers of Freedom' series.