Imperial Paradoxes: A Caliphate for Subaltern Muslims

Abstract

This article deals with the imperial dilemmas of the globalized racial Muslim identity in the 1870s and the 1880s. While Pan-Islamic public opinion across multiple European empires singled out the Ottoman Caliphate as the voice and representative of the global Muslim community, the Ottoman Caliph-Sultan was the monarch of millions of Christian citizens of the Ottoman Empire. The article discusses the complex imperial politics of the Ottoman Caliphate from the perspectives of Ottoman and British governments, as well as from the perspective of Indian Muslim publics. It argues that the globalization of the ideas of Caliphate and Muslim solidarity in the late nineteenth century need to be understood in the context of the racialization of Muslims via their religion.