India guarantees the inviolability of the holy places of Islam

On 2 November 1914 the government of British India issued, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, a statement on the holy places of Islam. The Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, announced that the holy places of Arabia, including the holy shrines of Mesopotamia, and the port of Jeddah would be immune from attack or molestation by British naval and military forces. There was one condition: the Turks were not to interfere with pilgrimages from India to these places. At London’s request the governments of France and Russia gave similar assurances.

The statement was addressed above all to the Muslims of India, of whom there were then more than 60 million. A war with the Ottoman Empire, whose sultan bore the title of caliph and was the guardian of Mecca and Medina, could put their loyalty to a severe test. Thousands of pilgrims set out from India every year on the Hajj, and Muslims made up a large part of the soldiers of the Indian Army, already fighting in France and just being sent to the Persian Gulf and Egypt. The government therefore stressed that in this war “no question of a religious character” was involved. The holy shrines of Mesopotamia were above all the tombs of the imams, important to Shias, in Karbala and Najaf, in the country towards which an expedition from India was just heading.

The assurance was part of a wider British policy towards the Muslim world. Two days earlier Lord Kitchener had promised the Sharif of Mecca protection if the Arabs supported Britain. The Viceroy’s statement was well received in India. Muslim leaders, headed by Aga Khan III, and the Muslim League affirmed their loyalty to the Crown and presented Turkey’s entry into the war as the work of the Germans.

The guarantee had its limits, however. When in June 1916 the Sharif of Mecca launched the Arab Revolt, British warships and seaplanes supported the rebels’ attack on the Turkish garrison in Jeddah, which surrendered after a few days. Anti-British agitators in India later pointed out in leaflets that, despite the Viceroy’s promise, the British had shelled Jeddah.