Interview: Could the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world have shifted towards India?

When journalist Imran Mulla first encountered the last Ottoman caliph as a history student at Cambridge, he did not expect it would lead him to a scrubby stretch of land near Ellora, to the archives of London, and into the twilight world of princely Hyderabad.

His debut, Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince, traces an improbable political and dynastic alliance between the last Ottoman caliph, Abdulmejid II, and the Asaf Jahi dynasty of Hyderabad. At its heart is a question that has long slipped from public memory: could the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world have shifted, in the early 20th century, towards India?

In conversation with Scroll over a Zoom call, Mulla was measured and precise, careful about what the archive proves and what remains conjecture. The story he reconstructs is at once intimate and geopolitical: of an exiled caliph painting on the French Riviera; of a fabulously wealthy but cautious Nizam of Hyderabad navigating the end of empire; and of Princess Durrushevar, who moved from Istanbul to Nice to Hyderabad and carved out a life that was both constrained and quietly radical.

Charting the last leg of the Ottoman Empire, the Nizam’s ambitions, and the British mechanisms, the book showcases a great diversity in Muslim history, which is quite unexpected, and how the Indian subcontinent was central to the Islamic world in the early 20th century (before partition), a fact that has been completely erased.

Much of the author’s research draws on archival material in London, particularly the India Office Records at the British Library, where he found correspondence that had not previously been quoted in detail. Among these are a 1944 dispatch by the British Resident in Hyderabad discussing the reported designation of the Nizam’s grandson as a future caliphal claimant and communications in 1946 between senior colonial officials weighing the implications of Hyderabad’s interest in building a mausoleum for Abdulmejid II.

He also revisits the memoirs of the Nawab of Chhatari, Hyderabad’s prime minister, mining their Urdu text for references to conversations about the caliphate that have largely escaped scholarly attention. All these have resulted in a book that is eminently readable and meticulously researched.

A journey spanning continents

The book opens near Aurangabad, not in Istanbul. Mulla describes trekking to an isolated, crumbling mausoleum close to the Ellora caves. Inside is a sunken pit for a grave that was never occupied.

“That tomb was meant for Abdulmejid II,” he said, “When I finally saw it on the horizon, the whole story came alive. It has a kind of imperial majesty, even in ruin. Plaster is falling off the walls; it looks as though it could collapse at any moment. And yet it is unmistakably an Ottoman imperial mausoleum.”

The Caliph, however, was never buried there. He lies in Medina. The empty tomb in Maharashtra is a relic of a plan that never came to fruition. “I came across Abdulmejid II and was struck by how unusual he was,” said Mulla. “He was a painter, a talented musician, and a literary critic: a cultivated, sophisticated man.”

When the Turkish Republic abolished the caliphate in 1924, Abdulmejid II had held the title for little over a year. “He was bundled off onto the Orient Express and exiled,” he said. “And then, in most historical accounts, he simply vanishes.”

Historians typically end the story there: the Ottoman Empire collapses, Turkey becomes a republic, and the caliph is dispatched to Europe. Mulla wanted to know what happened next. Did he accept his fate and retreat into private life? Or did he continue to believe he was the rightful leader of the Muslim world?

“It turned out that he very much believed he was still the caliph,” Mulla said. “He did not see the abolition as legitimate.”

After leaving Istanbul, Abdulmejid II settled in Nice, on the French Riviera. The image jars: a deposed caliph living among European high society. “He was a Francophile,” Mulla explained. “He loved French culture. In Nice, he painted, he played music, and he went to the beach. The younger Ottoman royals attended fancy dress parties and mixed with European aristocracy.”

But beneath the surface, there was political calculation. Abdulmejid II sought recognition from Muslims across the world. In 1931, he was meant to attend a major Islamic congress in Jerusalem. He hoped it would bolster his claim. But he was prevented from travelling. The moment passed.

“There’s a pale glamour to dispossessed royalty,” Mulla reflected. “We are drawn to these figures who lose everything. But in Abdulmejid’s case, the tragedy is cumulative. Each scheme he invested in ultimately failed.”

From Istanbul to Hyderabad

One of those schemes involved Hyderabad.

In the early 20th century, the princely state of Hyderabad was ruled by the Asaf Jahi dynasty. Its ruler, Mir Osman Ali Khan, was widely reputed to be the richest man in the world.

In 1931, Abdulmejid II’s daughter, Durrushevar, married the Nizam’s son, Prince Azam Jah. The match was carefully negotiated. It bound together a dethroned Ottoman dynasty and one of the wealthiest princely houses in India. “As part of the arrangement, it was agreed that the firstborn son of the marriage would be in line to be the Nizam,” Mulla said, “In Abdulmejid’s mind, this created a future in which his grandson might be ideally placed to revive the caliphate.”

The logic was subtle. Hyderabad was not just wealthy; it had symbolic weight. It was a Muslim-ruled state with global connections. If the grandson of the last caliph ruled there, he could potentially claim spiritual leadership from a position of prestige and security.

Central to this story is a controversial document that surfaced in Hyderabad. Allegedly signed by Abdulmejid II in 1931, it appears to transfer the caliphate, in trust, to the Nizam until the next generation comes of age.

Mulla was cautious. “I am not a manuscript expert,” he said. “Some people believe the deed is authentic. Others contest it. Princess Esra (of the Hyderabad royal family), for instance, has said she does not believe it to be genuine.”

He presents the competing views without drawing a definitive conclusion. “History often leaves us with ambiguity,” he says. “Conversations happened in private. Intentions were not always written down.”

What is clearer in the archives, he argues, is that the idea of a revived caliphate centred on Hyderabad was seriously entertained. British officials discussed the possibility. Hyderabad’s political and aristocratic elite were aware of the stakes.

The limits of ambition

If Abdulmejid II was animated by a sense of lost grandeur, the Nizam was more cautious. “He had to balance enormous pressures,” Mulla said. “He was an authoritarian ruler, yes, but also a pragmatic one.”

As the British prepared to leave India, Hyderabad’s future was uncertain. The Nizam explored options that might preserve autonomy. Ultimately, the state was integrated into India in 1948.

For Mulla, the parallel between the caliph and the Nizam lies in their brush with diminished sovereignty. “Abdulmejid was exiled outright,” he added, “The Nizam, by contrast, remained in Hyderabad. He kept his palaces and much of his wealth. But he ceased to be a sovereign ruler.”

Both men had entertained visions that exceeded the political realities of their time. Both saw those visions recede. “Abdulmejid died in Paris during the Second World War, amid chaos,” Mulla said, “He never saw the end of Hyderabad’s autonomy. He never knew that the broader plan had collapsed.”

In Hyderabad, however, it is often the women of this story who are remembered most vividly. Princesses Durrushevar and her cousin Niloufer arrived in the 1930s to intense public fascination (she married Moazzam Jah, the younger son of the Nizam). They were young, glamorous, and foreign. Oral histories in the city still recall their beauty in almost mythical terms.

“But Durrushevar was much more than a fashion icon,” Mulla insisted. “She was remarkably strong and independent-minded.” She had grown up in exile, first in Istanbul’s aftermath, then on the Riviera. At 17, she agreed to marry Azam Jah. Hyderabad was alien terrain: culturally, linguistically, and climatically. But she adapted: she wore saris and navigated court life even as her marriage was not particularly happy.

Durrushevar became involved in philanthropic and educational initiatives, particularly concerning women’s welfare. She supported hospitals and schools and used her position to advocate for social reform. Niloufer’s experience was more difficult. Her marriage was troubled, and she spent less time in Hyderabad. Yet she too engaged in charitable work.

“In both cases,” Mulla explained, “we should resist reducing them to footnotes in a dynastic drama. They were actors in their own right.”

A forgotten centrality

Why revisit this story now? Part of the answer lies in its sheer improbability. The notion that the fate of the Ottoman caliphate might have intersected so intimately with a princely state in India disrupts tidy national narratives.

In recovering this intertwined history of the Ottoman caliphate and Hyderabad, Mulla invites readers to reconsider the subcontinent’s place in global Muslim politics during the early 20th century. Before Partition, India was home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, and Hyderabad functioned as a significant cultural and intellectual centre. The idea that a future caliph might have ruled from the Deccan is startling precisely because it has slipped so far from contemporary consciousness.

Mulla resists indulging in counterfactual speculation about what might have been. Instead, he emphasises what the episode reveals about a moment when political futures were still fluid. “The importance of this story,” he says, “is that it shows how interconnected these worlds were: London, the Riviera, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Bombay, and Hyderabad. It complicates the neat boundaries we tend to draw.”

In resurrecting this near-forgotten historical account, Mulla restores to view a chapter in which Hyderabad was not peripheral but central to debates that spanned continents, and a plan, if not derailed, would have changed the world as we know it.