Maulana Barkatullah: Freedom Fighter and Head of India's First Government in Exile

Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali was an Indian freedom fighter who is often remembered as the 'first prime minister of independent India'. This is because in 1915 he, along with associates such as Raja Mahendra Pratap, set up India's first 'government in exile' in Kabul. He has come into discussion again because the executive council of a university in Bhopal, which was named after him in 1988, has passed a proposal to change its name. The institution had been called Bhopal University before 1988.

Barkatullah is believed to have been born on July 7, 1854, in Bhopal. A bright student, he studied in Bombay and then London, and later taught in Liverpool, where he met Indian revolutionaries. His writings and speeches drew the unfavourable attention of the British government, and in 1899 he left for the United States. He devoted much of his life to working for India's freedom from abroad, travelling across Japan, England, the United States, Germany, Russia and Afghanistan to build support and alliances for the cause. He died in the United States in 1927.

A central theme of his politics was Hindu-Muslim unity. He firmly believed that the British could be driven out of India only if all communities stood and fought together and resisted attempts to divide them. Historians note that he worked closely with people of every faith and region, and that this vision is best seen in the Provisional Government of India set up in Kabul.

That Provisional Government of India was formed on December 1, 1915. Raja Mahendra Pratap, a Hindu prince, became its president, while Barkatullah became prime minister; the Islamic scholar Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi was also a key member. It was one of the earliest times that Indians set up their own independent political body outside British control. During the First World War, Barkatullah and his associates went to Germany and tried to persuade captured Indian soldiers to form an army against the British. He was also closely linked with the Ghadar Party, founded in 1913, which sought India's independence through armed struggle.

Four years after the Kabul government was formed, its leaders travelled to Moscow to meet the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. Scholars say that rather than renaming institutions, more effort should be made to popularise the legacy of leaders like Barkatullah, whose long years of work abroad meant his contribution was not widely known within India during his lifetime.